Adaptive Clustering in a Hierarchical Ad Hoc Network

Abstract

This paper describes a two-level hierarchical architecture for ad hoc networks to resolve the routing scalability problem. Mobile hosts are organized into nonoverlapping clusters and clusters and clusterheads are elected to form the upper level backbone. We design a self-organizing dynamic reclustering algorithm to maintain the cluster structure in face of topological changes. A network model which is composed of hexagon units is proposed for simulation study. Under this simulation environment, we analyze four reclustering approaches and show that our cluster maintenance approach provides a stable cluster structure in a monbile ad hoc network.