A Multi-Hop Clustering Protocol for MANETs

Ad hoc networks are self-organizing multi-hop systems consisting wireless nodes which can communicate with each other without pre-existing infrastructure. Clustering has evolved as an important research topic in mobile ad hoc networks(MANETs) as it improves the system performance of MANET, in the presence of both mobility and a large number of mobile terminals. In this paper, we propose a new clustering protocol for MANETs. The proposed protocol yields small number of multi-hop clusters with large size, so as to support large ad hoc networks. The proposed protocol utilizes routing information to adjust the topology of the clusters so as to reduce the overhead of the cluster maintenance and extend the life time of the cluster head. The objective of the clustering strategy is to achieve scalability and efficient routing. The simulation results show that the proposed protocol provides good performance in terms of the number of formed clusters and the percentage of connected nodes.