Efficient Flooding in Ad hoc Networks using Cluster Formation based on Link Density

Although flooding has the disadvantages like a transmission of duplicated packets and a packet collision, it has been used frequently to find a path between a source and a sink node in a wireless ad hoc network. Clustering is one of the techniques that have been proposed to overcome those disadvantages. In this paper, we propose a new flooding mechanism in ad hoc networks using cluster formation based on the link density which means the number of neighbors within a node`s radio reach. To reduce traffic overhead in the cluster is to make the number of non-flooding nodes as large as possible. Therefore, a node with the most links in a cluster will be elected as cluster header. This method will reduce the network traffic overhead with a reliable network performance. Simulation results using NS2 show that cluster formation based on the link density can reduce redundant flooding without loss of network performance.