A multi-objective approach for the clustering problem in wireless ad hoc networks

MOAD6 Research Team, Mohammadia School of Engineering, Mohammed V University of Rabat, Morocco

^* e-mail: khalilamine@research.emi.ac.ma

Abstract

Ad hoc networks are infrastructure-less computer networks consisting of heterogeneous mobile devices connected by wireless links. The devices are essentially faced to several limitations in terms of embedded energy, processing power, bandwidth, and internal memory. Clustering has been introduced in ad hoc networking to provide hierarchy and stability and to support information circulation reduction, energy management, and scalability. It consists of a process of self-aggregation of nodes into a set of sub-networks called clusters where each cluster would be managed by a master node called cluster centre responsible for gathering, maintaining and updating the cluster topology information as well as ensuring the data routing over the network. The set of cluster centres institutes a temporary network core that enhances the topology maintenance. From a graph perspective, this set represents a dominating set, that is a set of nodes such that each node of the network is either an element or adjacent to at least one element of this set. This paper develops a constrained bi-objective optimisation model for finding a dominating set that provides a trade-off between maximising the energy amount and minimising the cardinality. A bi-objective simulated annealing meta-heuristic for constructing near-optimal solutions is then presented.