We have conducted deep near-infrared surveys of the Sh-2 255, W3 Main and NGC 7538 massive star forming regions using simultaneous observations of the J H Ks-band with the near-infrared camera SIRIUS on the UH 88-inch telescope. The near-infrared surveys cover a total area of ∼ 72 square
arcmin of three regions with 10-σ limiting magnitudes of ∼ 19.5, 18.4 and 17.3 in J, H and Ks-band, respectively. Based on the colour-colour and colourmagnitude diagrams and their clustering properties, the candidate young stellar objects are identified and their luminosity functions are constructed in Sh-2 255, W3 Main and NGC 7538. A large number of previously unreported red sources (H − K > 2) have also been detected around these regions. We argue that these red stars are most probably pre-main sequence stars with intrinsic colour excesses. The detected young stellar objects show a clear clustering pattern in each region: the Class I-like sources are mostly clustered in molecular cloud region, while the Class II-like sources in or around more evolved optical H II regions. We find that the slopes of the Ks-band luminosity functions of Sh-2 255, W3 Main and NGC 7538 are lower than the typical values reported for the young embedded clusters and their stellar populations are primarily composed of low mass pre-main sequence stars. From the slopes of the Ks-band luminosity functions, we infer that Sh-2 255, W3 Main and NGC 7538 star forming regions are rather young (age ≤ 1 Myr)
