Experimental Evaluation of MANET Based on Autonomous Clustering and P2P Overlay Network

A Mobile Ad hoc NETwork(MANET) is a wireless network that consists of mobile nodes without the aid of base stations. However, in case that the node density is low, the connectivity between nodes become lower and many data packets cannot be forwarded in the MANET. In this paper, we propose the scheme to configure a MANET based on autonomous clustering and P2P overlay network to enhance the connectivity in the MANET. In the proposed scheme, it is assumed that all nodes have wireless devices both to communicate with neighboring nodes such as Wi-Fi and Bluetooth and to access to the wireless infrastructure such as 3G and LTE. The autonomous clustering dynamically divides a MANET into multiple sub networks called clusters and elects a cluster head in each cluster. The cluster head communicates with the other cluster heads through the P2P overlay network that is constituted based on the wireless infrastructure such as 3G and WiMAX. In the proposed scheme, cluster heads periodically exchanges control packets with each other to configure and maintain the P2P overlay network. From the simulation results, we can confirm that the proposed scheme could achieve high connectivity between nodes in the MANET owing to the P2P overlay network and the autonomous clustering.