Load balancer for energy efficient clustering protocol in MANETs

Energy efficiency is a significant area of research in mobile ad hoc networks. The mobile nodes are uncertain and may lead to failure of nodes. The uncertainty of mobile nodes is mainly due to their mobility, draining of battery power and energy consumption. One way of handling this uncertainty is to prevent nodes from failure through the Load Balancing Factor (LBF). This can be achieved by the clustering technique which increases throughput and reduces delay. In this paper, load balancing among clusters is proposed for the AHP-Entropy-TOPSIS based Clustering Protocol (AETCP) to handle uncertain mobile nodes. The AETCP is based on a multicriterion decision-making method which was proposed earlier. The AETCP is the integration of the Analytic Hierarchy Process, Entropy and Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to an Ideal Solution. The predefined energy threshold is applied to the mobile nodes to take part in cluster-head nodes' election using the AETCP. Simulations were carried out by applying the LBF and the predefined energy threshold to the AETCP, and better results achieved in terms of the average cluster size, reaffiliation rate, energy, load balancing factor, throughput and delay.