Dynamic Selfishness Scheme for Prolonged Network Lifetime in MANETs

Mobile Ad hoc Networks (MANETs) finds tremendous application in modern communication networks comprising of diversified devices running on heterogeneous platforms, yet communicating with each other so as to provide seamless services. A MANET is a collection of wireless mobile nodes which may form a temporary network, without the use of any fixed infrastructure or centralized administration. Nodes rely on multi-hop routing protocols to forward data packets sent from a source node to a destination node which is out of its transmission range. Every node may function both as a data source and a router that forward data for other nodes. As the nodes are battery driven which is a resource that needs to be optimized, the nodes are programmed to become selfish once the residual energy level of the batteries reached the specified critical stage. At this stage, the node enters into "battery saving mode" in which it reduces its functionality significantly. Most of the nodes are programmed to become selfish, i.e., these nodes stop working as relay nodes to forward the packet, but accepts only those packets which are intended for these nodes. However, this node behavior changes the overall efficiency of the network dramatically as the MANETs operate without any centralized control. In this Paper, a dynamic selfishness scheme is proposed for the mobile nodes so as to prolong network lifetime, while at the same time, maximizing the throughput by minimizing the loss due to packet dropping. Simulation is carried using MATLAB and the theoretical results are compared with simulation to validate the model.