A Distributed Clustering Algorithm without an Explicit Neighbourhood Knowledge

Ad-hoc networks have received significant attention over the last few years as these emerging networks provide a fast deployable multi-hop wireless infrastructure for a growing number of applications when a wireline network is neither available nor economical to build. To overcome the scalability problem, creating hierarchies among the nodes seems to be a promising approach and an effective way to organize the network as the number of nodes increases. In this paper, we present a novel distributed clustering algorithm for ad-hoc networks. Our algorithm is based on a synchronized and layered process. Its main objective is to minimize the number of control messages exchanged during the clustering process.We evaluate our algorithm using the Visidia simulation test bed and show that it outperforms one of the most known clustering algorithms in minimizing both the number of control messages and the number of elected clusterheads.