Interference Reduction in Mobile Ad Hoc and Sensor Networks

Abstract

There are still a lot of open questions in the field of MANETs and sensor networks. If a topology incurs a large interference, either many communication signals sent by nodes will collide, or the network may experience a serious delay at delivering the data for some nodes, and even consume more energy. So, we reach to the conclusion that interference imposes a potential negative impact on the performance of wireless networks. In the last few years, researchers actively explored topology control approaches for such networks. The motivation of topology control (TC) is to maintain the connectivity of the network, reduce the node degree and thereby reduce the interference, and reduce power consumption in the sensor nodes. Some literatures have pointed out that a node can interfere with another node even if it is beyond its communication range. To improve the network performance, designing topology control algorithms with consideration of interference is imminent and necessary. Since, it leads to fewer collisions and packet retransmissions, which indirectly reduces the power consumption and extends the lifetime of the network. In this thesis, we propose a new interference-aware connected dominating set-based topology construction algorithm, namely, IACDS algorithm, a simple, distributed, interference-aware and energy-efficient topology construction mechanism that finds a sub-optimal Connected Dominating Set (CDS) to turn unnecessary nodes off while keeping the network connected and providing complete communication coverage with minimum interference. IACDS algorithm utilizes a weighted (distance-energy-interference)-based metric that permits the network operator to trade off the lengths of the branches (distance) for the robustness and durability of the topology (energy and interference).