(www.interscience.wiley.com) DOI: 10.1002/wcm.578 Mitigating the impact of node mobility on ad hoc clustering

This paper explores the impact of node mobility on distributed and mobility adaptive clustering (DMAC), a typical clustering protocol for mobile ad hoc networks. In particular, in this paper we evaluate the cost of maintaining the DMAC clustering structures when the nodes move according to three different mobility models, namely, the random way point model, the Brownian motion and the Manhattan mobility model. Via ns2-based simulations, we have observed that the mobility models have different impact on protocol performance. The general trend, however, appears to be the same for networks of increasing size. The second contribution of this paper concerns investigating ways of mitigating the impact of mobility on the clustering structure and hence over the overall network performance. We consider a generalization of DMAC (GDMAC) where rules are established to decrease the number of cluster updates. Via simulation we have observed that GDMAC is effective in reducing the clustering overhead imposed by mobility, and the corresponding maintenance cost. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. KEY WORDS: wireless ad hoc networks; clustering protocols; mobility management 1