An associativity based energy aware clustering technique for mobile ad hoc networks

Abstract

Node clustering is a widely used approach to address the scalability issue of large-scale mobile ad hoc networks(MANETs). It eases the implementation of routing and resource management by constructing an abstract hierarchy of the flat network architecture of MANETs. Its effectiveness however depends largely on the clusters stability which is measured by the lifetime of the clusters. The aim of this paper is to propose a fully distributed clustering algorithm that addresses the stability of mobile nodes in terms of neighborhood associativity and remaining energy. The algorithm maximizes the cluster lifetime by choosing those nodes as clusterheads which have the highest neighborhood associativity and remaining energy. It also tries to minimize the number of clusters in the network by giving priority to higher degree nodes. Simulation results show that the algorithm identifies clusters that are stable with respect to cluster lifetime and the frequency of reaffiliations of mobile nodes. © 2010 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.