Improving Ad Hoc Network Performance by using an Efficient Cluster Based Routing Algorithm

A Mobile Ad-Hoc Network (MANET) consists of a number of mobile nodes that are connected dynamically without any infrastructure. In this network type, the use of the clustering technique significantly reduces the routing traffic that occurs during the routing process. Clustering is used to divide an ad-hoc network into small sets of nodes, where each cluster consist of a cluster head, ordinary nodes and gateway nodes. Clustering can be used for the effective utilization of resources for large ad-hoc networks. This paper measures the impact of using clustering strategy in MANET and how this strategy can enhance the performance of this network, and resulted in increasing the calculated quality parameters, like throughput, packet delivery ratio, end-to-end delay and normalized control overhead. This study produced a simulation for Low-Energy Adaptive Clustering Hierarchy (LEACH) which is considered one of the clustering based routing protocols. A comparison is done between LEACH with the other types of routing protocols such as AODV, DSDV and OLSR which are considered non-clustering routing protocol. Conclusion and discussion of the simulation results have demonstrated the importance and effect of using clustering in MANETs.