A improved weight based clustering algorithm in mobile ad hoc networks

Clustering is an important concept for mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs), because clustering makes it possible to guarantee basic levels of system performance, such as throughput, delay and also security issues such as availability, in the presence of both mobility and large number mobile terminals. Many clustering protocols for MANETs have been proposed in the literature. As a newly proposed weighing-based clustering algorithm, the Weighted Clustering Algorithm (WCA) has excellent performance compared with other previous clustering algorithms. However, the high mobility of nodes will lead to high frequency of re-affiliations which will increase the network overhead and minimize the network lifetime. To solve this problem, we propose an improved weight based clustering algorithm (iWCA), the goals of the algorithm are maintaining stable clustering structure, minimizing the overhead for the clustering set up, maximizing lifetime of nodes in the system, and achieving good performance. The simulation results demonstrate the superior performance of the proposed algorithm.