A Novel Enhanced Weighted Clustering Algorithm for Mobile Networks

Chang Li, Yafeng Wang, Fan Huang and Dacheng Yang, Member, IEEE
Wireless Theories and Technologies Lab (WT&T) Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications Beijing, P. R. China lichang@bupt.cn
AbstractMany applications of mobile Ad Hoc networks (MANETs) adopt hierarchical structure for the scalability and simplify of management. Clustering is the most popular method to impose a hierarchical structure in MANETs. As a newly proposed weighing based clustering algorithm, the Weighted Clustering Algorithm (WCA) has improved performance compared with other previous clustering algorithms. However, the high mobility of nodes will lead to high frequency of reaffiliations which will increase the network overhead and minimize the network lifetime. To solve this problem, we propose an improved weight based clustering algorithm, namely enhanced weighted clustering algorithm (EWCA). The goals of the algorithm are maintaining stable clustering structure, minimizing the overhead for the clustering set up, maximizing lifespan of mobile nodes in the system, and achieving good endto-end performance. Through simulations we have compared the performance of the proposed algorithm with that of WCA in terms of the number of clusters formed, number of re-affiliations, and the lifespan of the network. The results demonstrate the superior performance of the proposed algorithm. Keywords-ad hoc networks; clustering; cluster head; Weighted Clustering Algorithm; lifetime

including the designation of the members of the cluster and the maintenance of the cluster. Clustering algorithm is usually performed in two phases: clustering formation and clustering maintenance. In the clustering formation phase, elect CH among the nodes in the network. After electing CHs, some of the nodes are move out from the current cluster and attached to another cluster, this leads to the second phase, the clustering maintenance. We believe a good clustering scheme should preserve its structure as much as possible when nodes are moving and the topology is slowly changing. Otherwise, recomputation of CHs and frequent information exchange among the participating nodes will result in high computation cost overhead. Therefore, the proposed algorithm aims to avoid excessive computation in the cluster maintenance, and the current cluster structure should be preserved as much as possible. In this paper, we propose an enhanced weighted clustering algorithm (EWCA) to maintain stable clusters by keeping a node with weak battery power from being elected as a CH, minimizing the number of clusters, and minimizing the overhead for the clustering formation and maintenance. The rest of this paper is organized as follows. In Section 2, we review relevant several clustering algorithms proposed previously and its limitation. Section 3 presents the proposed algorithm for mobile ad hoc networks. The analysis of performance and simulation results of the proposed algorithm is given in Section 4. Finally, we give conclusions of this paper in Section 5 II. PREVIOUS WORK

I.

INTRODUCTION

Current wireless cellular networks solely rely on the wired backbone by which all base stations are connected, implying that networks are fixed and constrained to a geographical area with a pre-defined boundary. However, ad hoc is a selforganized and self-configuring multi-hop wireless network. It does not rely on a fixed infrastructure and works in a share wireless media. So it plays a critical role in places where a central backbone is neither available nor economical to build. Due to the nature of the network, it can be widely used in temporary and emergency scenarios. For example, ad hoc networks can be applied to battlefield, disaster recovery situations, emergency search-and-rescue operations, and so on[1,2]. Furthermore, the major problems of mobile devices are gathered in the fluidity of move and limited energy. Consequently, a multi-clusters network architecture for wireless systems should to be able to dynamically adapts itself with the changing network configuration. By definition, the clustering consists in dividing the network in several groups named clusters. One node in each cluster is appointed as a cluster head (CH) and is given some responsibilities

Clustering algorithms can be based on criteria such as energy level of nodes, their position, degree, speed and direction. Probably the most crucial point when dealing with clustering is the criterion how to choose the CH. The number of CHs strongly influences the communication overhead, latency, inter- and intra-cluster communication design as well as the update policy. Several clustering mechanisms have been proposed, namely, Lowest-ID [6], Highest-Connectivity [5], and Weighted Clustering Algorithm (WCA) [3]. The Highest-Degree uses the degree of a node as a metric for the selection of CHs. The degree of a node is the number of neighbors each node has. The node with maximum degree is chosen as a CH, since the degree of a node changes frequently, the CHs are not likely to play their role as CHs for very long.

This work is supported by National High Technology Research and Development Program of China (863 Program) (Grant No.2007AA01Z211).

978-1-4244-3693-4/09/$25.00 2009 IEEE

Moreover, as the number of ordinary nodes in a cluster is increased, the throughput drops and system performance degrades. The Lowest-ID chooses the node with the lowest ID as CH, the system performance is better than Highest-Degree in terms of throughput. However, a major drawback of this algorithm is that it is solely based on the ID of nodes without considering the qualifications of a node possibly being elected as a CH. Also, those CHs with smaller ID suffer from the battery drainage, resulting short lifetime of the system. Chatterjee et al [3], propose the WCA which works differently from the algorithms described above since it is only invoked on demand by isolated nodes. To determine the CH nodes, the algorithm considers the ideal number of nodes that a cluster can handle, the mobility, the distance between a node and its neighbors and the battery power, WCA assigns weights to these different parameters, a node is selected to be the CH when it has the minimum weighted sum of four indices. The CH election procedure is invoked at the time of system activation, and also when the current dominant set is unable to cover all the nodes. After the election, all the nodes are in clusters with a CH in each cluster and each node has a list constituted by its neighbors and the set of all the CHs. Due to the dynamic nature of the system considered, the nodes as well as the CHs tend to move in different directions, thus the system has to be updated from time to time. The update may result in formation of new clusters. It may also result in nodes changing their point of attachment from one CH to another within the existing dominant set, which is called reaffiliation. If a node detaches itself from its current headcluster and attaches itself to another CH, then involved CHs update their member list instead of invoking the election algorithm. If the node goes into a region not covered by any CH, then the CH election algorithm is invoked and the new dominant set is obtained. As a result, the overhead induced by WCA is very high. If a node moves into a region that is not covered by any CH, then the cluster set-up procedure is invoked throughout the whole system. This triggers re-affiliations and unnecessary overhead for the well operating clusters. To solve this problem, we propose an improved weight-based clustering algorithm EWCA which can enhance the stability of the network by taking the overhead of re-election CH and its energy into consideration. III. THE PROPOSED ALGORITHM

A. Clustering set up In this stage we need the position of nodes, thus it is necessary that each node broadcasts its ID to all its neighbors in the same transmission range. Each neighbor that received the broadcasted message can estimate its distance from the strength of the signal received. Global Position System (GPS) can be another solution, however it has the disadvantage of more energy consumption. Step 1: Find the neighbors of each node i (i.e., nodes within its transmission range). This gives the degree d i of this node.

di =

i I ,i i

'

{dist (i, i ) < tx },

'
'

range

(1)

Where txrange is the transmission range of i . Step 2: Compute the degree-difference i = d i for each node i , where is the number of nodes (pre-defined threshold) that a CH can handle ideally. Step 3: For every node, compute the sum of the distances Di with all its neighbors as
Di = dist (i , j ) , dist (i , j ) =
n

(2)
2

(x

x j ) + (yi y j ) ,
2

j =1

(3)

Where dist(i , j ) is the distance between node i and node j , x and y defines the position of the node i or j . Step 4: Calculate the mobility of the node. The mobility is evaluated periodically in order to expect the future state of the network, it is defined as follows 1 Mi = Di (t ) Di (t + t ) , (4) t 1 n Di (t ) = dist(i , j ) (t ), (5) n j =1 Where M i is the relative speed of the node versus the other nodes, Di (t ) is the average distance between the node i and all its neighbors at time t , n is the number of neighbors of node i .
Step 5: Calculate the consumed energy of a node i ,

Ei = dik e ,
k =1

(6)

Where q is the times period which a node i acts as CH and

As mentioned above, the overhead induced by WCA control messages is very high, since it uses a large part of bandwidth for building and maintaining the dominant set (discovery of neighbors, election process, signal strength monitoring), which cannot be used for useful data transmissions. In this section, we present the proposed Enhanced Weighted Clustering Algorithm (EWCA). The proposed algorithm is an enhanced version of WCA to achieve distributed clustering set up and to extend lifetime span of the system. EWCA consists of the clustering set up and clustering maintenance phases.

d ik is the degree of a node i act as a CH at k th times, Ei implies how much battery power has been consumed during a node i act as CH, e indicates how much battery power has been consumed since we assumed that consumption of battery power is more for a CH than for an ordinary node.
Step 6: After this, we calculate the quality normalized to 1 for each node by pondering each parameter by a coefficient. The quality of the node is a measure of its suitability as a cluster head. Step 7: Calculate a combined weight wi = w1 i + w2 Di + w3 M i + w4 Ei , w1 + w2 + w3 + w4 = 1 ,

(7) (8)

For each node i , The coefficients w1 , w2 , w3 and w4 are the weighing factors for the corresponding system parameters. Step 8: Choose the node with a minimum wi , to be the CH. All the neighbors of the chosen CH can no longer participate in the election algorithm. If a node is an isolated node, it becomes a CH automatically. Step 9: Repeat Steps 2 to 7 for the remaining nodes not yet assigned to any cluster. According to step 6, it is a nonoverlapped cluster. The CH election takes place at the start of the simulation and when a node can no longer be covered by the dominant set.

Figure 2. election of a clusterhead due to battery power consumption

IV.

PERFORMANCE ANALYSIS

B. Clustering maintenance The second phase is the clustering maintenance. There are two situations that invoke the clustering maintenance. One is node movement to the outside of its cluster boundary and the other is excessive battery consumption as a CH. When an ordinary node moves to the outside of its cluster boundary, it is required to find a new CH to affiliate with. If it finds a new CH, it hands over to the new one. If a node moves out of its cluster and does not receive packets from any other node for a specified period of time, it declares itself as CH. This strategy make the cluster is more stable than WCA. Fig. 1 shows the detail of the strategy, if a node moves out of the transmission range of its current CH, it broadcasts a find CH message. If the node does not receive any CH Ack message within a given time period, it declares itself as a CH by sending a Cluster message. Fig. 1 shows an example of the normal node becoming a CH case.

In this section, we present the performance of the proposed algorithm EWCA obtained by simulation. The measured performance of the proposed algorithm was compared with that of WCA. The simulation parameters have been listed in table 1. In the simulation experiments, N was varied between 10 and 70, and the transmission range was varied between 10 and 70 m. At every time unit, the nodes are moved randomly according to the random way model in all possible directions in 100 100 meters square space with velocity distributed uniformly between 0 and maximum displacement along each of the coordinates. This behavior is repeated for the duration of the simulation. We assumed a predefined threshold for each CH which can handle (i.e. cluster size) is 10 nodes (ideal degree). The weight values used are w1 = 0.7, w2 = 0.2, w3 = 0.05 and w4 = 0.05, parameters w1 and w2 are higher than w3 and w4 because we want properties of connectivity and distance with neighbors to be more important for a good CH than low mobility and battery energy. In order to study the effect of the network density on the resulting topologies and to evaluate the cluster maintenance algorithm, we varied the number of the nodes inside the terrain and the power transmission range parameter.
TABLE I. Parameter N X*Y Speed R SIMULATION PARAMETERS Value 10-70 100100 3-20 m/s 10-70 m 10 nodes 500 sec 0.7,0.2,0.05,0.05

Figure 1. the normal node becoming a clusterhead

Idea degree duration w1,w2,w3,w4

Because a CH plays a role as coordinator in its cluster, it is feasible to assume that a CH must process more tasks and thus needs to consume more battery power than ordinary node, it should work as a CH in turn. Each CH updates the amount of consumed battery power when it sends and receives packets. If the amount of consumed battery power becomes more than a pre-defined threshold value, the CH resigns and the CH becomes an ordinary node, and it broadcasts a CH resign message. Then all the nodes in the cluster need to determine a new CH. Each node calculates its weight value and broadcasts it using a weight information message. Then each node builds a new set and resorts to the cluster set-up algorithm given in Fig. 2. After choosing an appropriate CH, other nodes affiliate with the newly elected CH. Fig. 1 shows an example of change CH case.

Meaning Number of nodes Size of the network Speed of the nodes Transmission range Ideal number of nodes for each cluster Time of simulation Weighing factor

Fig. 3 compared the average number of clusters of EWCA with that of WCA [3]. For this, N is set to 20 and 60 using both algorithms. The transmission range is varied as described above, the number of clusters decreased as the transmission range increased. The results show that the proposed algorithm produced less clusters than WCA. As mentioned above, reducing the number of CHs strongly influences the communication overhead, latency, inter-cluster and intracluster communication design as well as execution of reorganization of clusters. As a result, our algorithm gave better performance in terms of the number of clusters when the node density in the network is high.

30 EWCA:20 nodes EWCA:60 nodes WCA:20 nodes WCA:60 nodes

25 average number of clusters

20

20 km/s, the proposed algorithm produced about 43.5% more minimum lifespan of a node than WCA. These results demonstrate an important fact that more stable clustering architecture may also lead to a longer network lifetime. This is because in our clustering algorithm, most nodes with lower battery power will become ordinary nodes, which have fewer tasks and consumes lower battery power, thus the lifetimes of ordinary nodes will be longer.
140

15

10

130
5

120 minimum lifespan of nodes 110 100 90 80 70 60 50 40 10

EWCA(5m/s) EWCA(20m/s) WCA(5m/s) WCA(20m/s)

0 10

20

30

40 50 transmission range

60

70

Figure 3. Average number of CHs

We simulate a system of 30 nodes on a 100 100 grid. The relationship between re-affiliation count and transmission range is illustrated in Fig. 5. The nodes can move in all possible directions with velocity varying from 0 to a maximum value 20m/s. Fig. 5 indicates that re-affiliation per unit time of EWCA is lower obviously in transmission range 30 to 50, compared with the WCA. EWCA and WCA have similar reaffiliation per unit time in other intervals. We explain the reason as follows: When transmission range is small, every CH only manages few nodes, so the re-affiliation frequency is not high. While the transmission range becomes large, one cluster can cover a large area. Thus, it is not easy for a node to move out of the transmission range of its CH. The benefit of decreasing number of re-affiliations mainly comes from the localized cluster maintenance in our algorithm.
3.5 EWCA WCA 3

20

30

40 number of nodes

50

60

70

Figure 5. The minimum lifespan of nodes

V.

CONCLUSION

In this paper we have presented an improved weight based clustering algorithm EWCA that can be applied in MANETs to improve their stability. EWCA mainly focuses on reducing the frequency of re-affiliation, the lifetime of the node and the number of cluster. Also, it has a feature to control battery power consumption by switching the role of a node from a CH to an ordinary node. The performance of the proposed EWCA demonstrated that it outperforms WCA in term of re-affiliation count, lifetime of the network and better end-to-end performance with less overhead. REFERENCES

2.5 reaffiliation count

[1]

1.5

[2]

[3]
20 30 40 50 transmission range 60 70

0.5 10

[4]

Figure 4. Average number of re-affiliations

Fig. 5 shows the mutation of the minimum lifespan of nodes with respect to the number of nodes with different node speeds. We observe that when the mobility of nodes increased, nodes consumed more battery power. Therefore, the minimum lifespan of nodes decreased in both EWCA and WCA. As we can see in figure 5, with the number of nodes 70 and the speed

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