Designing Light Weight Cluster Based Routing Protocol for Mobile Ad Hoc Networks

Abstract

Mobile ad hoc network (MANET) is a network of self-organizing, battery constraint nodes that communicate without pre-existing infrastructure in either distributed or clustered structure. Clustering offers a reliable method of connecting mobile nodes, allocating resources effectively, enhancing data transmission quality and enhance network scalability. However, in clustered mobile ad hoc network, cluster formation and cluster-head selection pose considerable clustering overhead which unnecessarily consumes significant amount of energy that causes cluster head change. Besides, cluster-head is loaded with packet forwarding and network management resulting in early cluster-head death. To solve these problems and extend network lifetime, we designed light weight cluster-based routing protocol to minimize overhead during cluster head selection and cluster formation. Our route selection algorithm minimizes cluster head load by sharing the packet forwarding responsibility to member nodes. Thus, cluster head failure due to energy drain caused by overloading of cluster-head is minimized. Furthermore, route selection considers residual energy of nodes which reduces member node failure. Our proposed solution is implemented in NS-3.35 and its performance is compared to existing works NWBCA and PB-WCA in terms of number of cluster head change at a given pause time, clustering overhead in the overall simulation time, cluster head changes at different node speed and clustering overhead at different mobile node speed. The proposed LWCRP shows better performance than the existing works in all the performance evaluation metrics and improves overall network lifetime and network performance.