04084934.

  Unlike infrastructure based wireless networks, nodes in mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs) will also have to act as intermediate nodes for data routing. These additional transmissions will further drain the power resources of mobile nodes which are anyway likely to be running on limited battery power. This paper proposes a Power-Aware Ad hoc On-demand Distance Vector routing protocol (PAW-AODV) for such power limited applications. This uses the overall power resources of the system more efficiently than the standard AODV protocol by choosing routes based on a power-based cost function. We implement our proposed PAW-AODV protocol by suitably modifying AODV and study it through simulations using QUALNET.