The clustering algorithm for efficient energy management in mobile ad-hoc networks

Abstract

MANET (Mobile Ad-hoc Network) consumes much energy due to their dynamic capabilities, complexities, constraints of design such as lack of a specified communication infrastructure, and their change over time. One strategy to reduce energy consumption is to optimize routing in these networks, which is, in turn, one of the most important challenges in these networks. In addition, optimal routing will increase the network lifetime and lead to its stability. Considering the high efficiency of clustering methods among the routing algorithms we present a new clustering method and considering good performance of Evolutionary Algorithms (EAs) in finding proper head clusters, we present a specific EA-based method named ICA (Imperialist Competitive Algorithm) via numerical coding. By thinking of specific conditions of a MANET and estimating the mobility direction of nodes, we prevent from additional reclusterings leading to reducing the overload. We have evaluated our proposed method for: 1) accuracy (including the reproducibility, convergence and stability criteria) through three case studies with different numbers of nodes and ranges and 2) efficiency (by comparing to other methods). Moreover, we applied our proposed method to a case study (multi-robot system) with low velocity.