Research on Clustering Protocol in Mobile Ad Hoc Networks

Mobile ad hoc network (MANET), composing of wireless nodes with communication functions, is an autonomous network system which is temporary, multi-hop and centerless. Its installation does not require any infrastructure, and can be widely used in military, emergency and disaster relief, harsh natural environment and inconvenient transportation. Nodes in MANET use wireless transceivers to send and receive signals between nodes. Nodes send data to cluster heads and then forward them uniformly. Due to the limited energy of nodes, communication between nodes should effectively use energy to extend the network life cycle. This paper is based on this background, aiming at the clustering problem of MANET. Before clustering, the elbow method is combined with the silhouette coefficient, and the similarity in the cluster and the dissimilarity between the clusters are introduced to avoid the local optimal solution. Finally, the clustering algorithm is used to cluster the nodes. In the selection of cluster head, the ring model is used to optimize the selection of cluster head by comprehensively considering the residual energy of nodes and the distance between nodes and the cluster center. It effectively prolongs the network lifetime of mobile ad hoc networks, improves the network throughput and reduces the packet loss rate.