Analysis of Energy Efficiency for Clustering-based Wireless LAN in Free Space and Multipath Environments

Energy consumption is a major concern in the communication of wireless LAN (WLAN) because the WLAN requires high-energy resources. One way to reduce energy consumption is to use clustering on the network. Clustering is useful in network scalability and energy savings. A WLAN typically experience symptoms called multipath that may take the form of reflection, diffraction, and free space. This paper analyses energy efficiency for WLAN based clustering in free space and multipath environments. The research method has several stages consisting of a system model, mathematical analysis and computer simulation for clustering-based WLAN in both environments. The simulation results show that the bit rate and data size have the impact on energy consumption and energy efficiency on the network. The higher bit rate, the lower the energy consumption in the networks. The energy consumption increases as the data size increases. Then, high-energy efficiency can be achieved by using the higher bit rate in the networks. Moreover, the energy efficiency of clustering-based WLAN in free space is higher than that of the multipath environment. It means that multipath transmission has the impact on the energy consumption and efficiency.