A new clustering protocol for Mobile Ad-Hoc networks

Mobile ad-hoc network (MANET) is a type of communication network which is used for data communication between a group of mobile nodes using wireless channels. Clustering has evolved as an important research topic in MANETs as it improves the system performance of large MANETs. Clustering is a process that divides the network into interconnected substructures, called clusters. Each cluster has a cluster head as coordinator within the substructure. In this paper, we propose a new clustering protocol for MANET. The proposed algorithm is a very quick clustering algorithm and creates minimum clusters with maximum member node in each cluster. The simulation results show that the proposed algorithm provides better performance in terms of the number of formed clusters and average number of transition (state change) on cluster heads when compared to that of other weight based algorithms such as weighted clustering algorithm (WCA).