An Improved Cluster Maintenance Scheme for Mobile AdHoc Networks

Cluster based routing in Mobile AdHoc Networks (MANETs) improves performance of routing by maintaining route information within a cluster head (CH). However, due to the movement of CH, new CHs are required to be selected from time to time and hence introduce additional overhead. If the frequency of CH changing could be reduced then the cluster based routing would be a better choice for routing in MANETs. This paper proposes an Improved Cluster Maintenance Scheme (ICMS) primarily focused on minimizing frequency of CH changing process. The proposed method makes cluster more stable. The proposed ICMS is simulated in ns-2 and simulation result is compared with Least Cluster head Change (LCC), (CBRP) and Incremental Maintenance Scheme (IMS) in conditions of clustering overhead, cluster member and cluster head changing by applying different range of speed and pause time for all mobile nodes. The simulation results show that ICMS perform better over LCC, CBRP and IMS.