On Autonomous Clustering in Wireless Sensor Networks with Directional Antennas

This paper proposes a decentralized algorithm for organizing an ad-hoc sensor network into clusters with directional antennas. The proposed autonomous clustering scheme aims to reduce the sensing redundancy and maintain sufficient sensing coverage and network connectivity in sensor networks. With directional antennas, random waiting timers, and local criterions, cluster performance may be substantially improved and sensing redundancy and communication interference can be drastically suppressed. The simulation results show that the proposed scheme achieves connected coverage and provides efficient network topology management.