An Energy Balanced Clustering Algorithm for Mobile Ad Hoc Networks

We propose an energy balanced clustering algorithm, which considers several important clustering parameters integrally, including node's relative velocity, distance, remaining energy and identification. The algorithm uses a filter mechanism to elect the most appropriate nodes to be the cluster heads, which breaks through the limitation of setting the weight parameters manually according to the network state in the weight based clustering algorithm; it also introduces a cluster head rotation mechanism to balance the energy consumption among all nodes and prevents some nodes' energy to be exhausted too early. Simulation results show that the algorithm not only improves the clusters stability but also prolongs the node's lifetime significantly.