Effect of availability factor threshold and clustering gap on performance of clustering mechanisms for multi-cluster mobile ad hoc networks

Mobile ad hoc networks consist of mobile nodes communicating with each other without the presence of any fixed network infrastructure. Existing mechanisms for cluster formation, e.g. node-id based, and degree based, focus on a particular characteristic of the network. The authors have presented earlier a unified mechanism for cluster formation, which not only encompasses existing mechanisms, but also provides means to explore new mechanisms. Two key parameters of this unified mechanism are: availability factor threshold, a/sub TH/, and clustering gap, /spl Delta/g, i.e., the time between two consecutive clustering decisions. We present the results of the experiments conducted to observe the effect of these two key parameters on the performance of clustering mechanisms. We also present a new performance metric, the unserviced index, which indicates the number of nodes not serviced by any clusterhead at a given time.