Dynamic Multi-Hop Clustering for Mobile Hybrid Wireless Networks

In mobile wireless networks communication is often improved by sending messages along a stable backbone of more reliable communication paths. Building such a backbone requires efficient clustering algorithms which aggregate network nodes into logical groups, each group being managed by a clusterhead and any two neighboring clusters being interconnected by at least one gateway node or gateway path. In this concept k-hop clustering refers to cluster structures where cluster members are at most k hops away from their clusterhead. While the dynamicity of mobile wireless network is often considered as a challenge, in this work the author explicitly exploits node mobility in order to support cluster formation and maintenance of k-hop clusters.