Approximating Size of Maximal Clique in a Node´s Neighbourhood in the Ad Hoc Networks

This paper presents an algorithm for approximating the size of the maximal clique containing a given node in the ad-hoc network. The size of the maximal clique of a node can be used while deciding whether or not the node will be a part of a virtual backbone. An algorithm is distributed, based on 2-hop neighbourhood information, and works in O(Delta⁵) time, where Delta is the maximum node degree in the node´s neighbourhood. The simulation results show that the algorithm makes an accurate result in over 95% cases for the maximal clique consisting of up to 10 nodes. In many cases the structure of a clique can be identified.