Topology Control by Transmission Range Adjustment Protocol for Clustered Mobile Ad Hoc Networks

Abstract

The growth of interest and research on multihop wireless network is exponential in recent years. In mobile ad hoc networks (MANET), the nodes play the role of routers to forward the packets of neighbor nodes as there is no fixed infrastructure available to do so. Clustering is a proven solution that maps the architecture of cellular networks into ad hoc networks. Here, selected nodes form the virtual backbone of the network and take part in packet routing. This achieves faster packet delivery as limited nodes are responsible for the same even though the network is not strongly connected. In this paper, a distributed topology adaptive clustering algorithm is designed that requires local information by the nodes for the formation of clusters. The role of cluster head is fairly distributed among the nodes to obtain a longer network lifetime. The change of cluster heads and the mobility of nodes disturb the node connectivity resulting in communication instability. To overcome such situations, a topology control protocol is developed that adjusts the transmission range of concerned mobile nodes to achieve local connectivity among nodes within the clusters even after the hand-off by the heads takes place.