A clustering algorithm to produce power-efficient architecture for (N,B)-connected ad hoc networks

Reducing the waste of the limited battery power in exchanging cluster maintenance messages is one of the important issues in designing clustering algorithm for the wireless ad hoc networks. Analyses show that this can be achieved by reducing the number of generated clusters and the variance of the number of cluster members. By assigning critical node (the only neighbor of boundary node) the highest weight (or priority) to be selected as a clusterhead, we show that the number of cluster maintenance overheads is reduced by the proposed Distributed Clustering Algorithm with Critical, Node First (DCA/CNF) based approaches. As a consequence, the limited battery power is conserved and the organized network architecture is power efficient.