Mobile Ad hoc Networks and its Clustering Scheme

Neva Agarwala

Abstract: Adaptability is a key issue in the successful operation of a MANET while Mobile Ad-Hoc Networks (MANET) has many characteristics that are a challenge to manage, like bandwidth and power constraints, dynamic topology, etc. Unfortunately, this feature of MANET have not been investigated and optimized in great detail in the past. Hence, this provides an ideal opportunity and so forms the heart of this thesis. This thesis attempts to initiate such an adaptability study, by introducing a performance metric called Performance Factor (PF), which directly investigates the performance of a link by considering the bandwidth available to a link and distance between the Cluster head and the user node. An algorithm has been proposed that utilizes this performance metric to ensure that all nodes receive optimum performance while ensuring an optimum number of clusters is maintained. All in all, the thesis puts forward a new area of research on MANET, along with a scheme for MANET network to better adapt to the changes in its topology and an analysis that validates the use of this scheme.

Keywords: MANET, Clustering, Multi-hop, Routing Protocols