A Penalty-Based Approach to Handling Cluster Sizing in Mobile Ad Hoc Networks

In Mobile Ad Hoc Networks (MANETs) nodes are allowed to move freely which causes instability in the network. To handle this, the nodes are grouped into clusters which make the topology of the network appear more stable. In proposed algorithms, the size of these clusters has been either ignored or handled insufficiently. This Thesis proposes a penalty-based approach to handle cluster sizing in a more appropriate manner. A configurable penalty function is defined which assigns penalties to each of the possible cluster sizes. The penalty is then used in conjunction with a merge qualifier to determine if a merge is allowed. Merges will be allowed if the total penalty of the two clusters decreases as a result of the merge. Additionally a split merge process has been developed to allow a number of nodes to split from a cluster and merge with a new cluster. A separate split merge qualifier is used to determine if a split merge will be allowed to happen; it will as long as the total penalty of the two clusters after the split merge is less than the total penalty before the split merge. Simulations and thorough analysis of the results show that the proposed changes are on par with the base algorithm used; however, the penalty function allows for a more complex clustering sizing strategy

Cluster-adaptive two-phase coding multi-channel MAC protocol (CA-TPCMMP) for MANETs

This paper introduces a novel joint clustering and multi-channel medium access control (MAC) protocol for mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs) based on a scalable two-phase coding scheme, where the first-phase code is used for differentiating the clusters and the second-phase code is employed to distinguish the nodes in a specific cluster. It mitigates the hidden terminal problem (HTP) during data transmission and efficiently incorporates the procedure of code assignment with adaptive clustering. We also introduce the connection detection and confliction resolution mechanisms for the allocation of the first-phase code in the control channel. Simulation results show that substantial improvement in terms of control overhead can be achieved by the proposed protocol over the traditional distributed code division multiple access (CDMA) based multi-channel MAC algorithms with clustering or without clustering.Accepted versio