Notice of Violation of IEEE Publication PrinciplesA New Automatic Clustering Algorithm via Deadline Timer for Wireless Ad-hoc Sensor Networks

This paper proposes a decentralized algorithm to organize an ad-hoc sensor network into clusters. Each sensor operates independently, monitoring communication among others. Those sensors which have many neighbors that are not already part of a cluster are likely candidates to creating a new cluster by declaring themselves to be a new cluster-head. The clustering algorithm via deadline timer (CADT) provides a protocol whereby this can be achieved and the process continues until all sensors are part of a cluster. Because of the difficulty of analyses simplified models are used to study and abstract its performance. A simple formula to estimate the number of clusters which will be formed in an ad-hoc network is derived based on the analysis, and the results are compared to the behavior of the algorithm in a number of settings.