Improved Life of Watchdog Nodes in Ad hoc Networks

Abstract

Clustering or Cluster formation of nodes in wireless networks facilitates resource reuse and increases the performance capacity of the system. This paper presents a cluster-based solution to improve life of watchdog nodes that are designed to monitor intrusions in ad hoc network. The proposed approach ensures load sharing, increased robustness, added security and high reliability such that the entire network becomes fault tolerant. Unlike the existing systems, the algorithm intends to create multiple cluster heads for each cluster, thereby balancing the monitoring nodes’ work load and reducing reelection overhead. Simulation results show the competence of the proposed work over the existing approaches in terms of performance metrics such as percentage of alive nodes, cluster head election time, re-election time, election rate and communication overhead.