Principles and protocols for power control in wireless ad hoc networks

Transmit power control is a prototypical example of a cross-layer design problem. The transmit power level affects signal quality and, thus, impacts the physical layer, determines the neighboring nodes that can hear the packet and, thus, the network layer affects interference which causes congestion and, thus, affects the transport layer. It is also key to several performance measures such as throughput, delay, and energy consumption. The challenge is to determine where in the architecture the power control problem is to be situated, to determine the appropriate power level by studying its impact on several performance issues, to provide a solution which deals properly with the multiple effects of transmit power control, and finally, to provide a software architecture for realizing the solution. We distill some basic principles on power control, which inform the subsequent design process. We then detail the design of a sequence of increasingly complex protocols, which address the multidimensional ramifications of the power control problem. Many of these protocols have been implemented, and may be the only implementations for power control in a real system. It is hoped that the approach in this paper may also be of use in other topical problems in cross-layer design.