Survey on Clustering Schemes for Transparency Reduction in MANET

Mobile ad-hoc networks (MANETs) are a form of wireless networks which do not require a base station for providing network connectivity. As MANETs have some limitations, Cluster based routing is one of the routing schemes for MANETs in which various clusters of mobile nodes are formed with each cluster having its own Cluster head which is responsible for routing among clusters. Clustering in Mobile Ad Hoc Networks (MANETs) has many advantages compared to the traditional networks. Clustering in mobile ad hoc networks plays a very important role in improving resource management and network performance (routing delay, bandwidth consumption and throughput). This paper, presents a comprehensive survey of recently proposed clustering algorithms, which we classify as Identifier Neighbor based clustering, Topology based clustering, Mobility based clustering, Energy based clustering, and Weight based clustering. We also include clustering definition, review existing clustering approaches, evaluate their performance and cost, discuss their advantages, disadvantages, features and suggest a best clustering approach.