Load Balancing: an Approach based on the Clustering in Ad Hoc Networks

Mobile ad hoc networks consist of freely moving nodes responsible of not only forwarding packets for other nodes but can also perform extensive computations. One of the most critical issues in these networks is the significant differences in term of processing and energy capacity between the nodes, inducing a load imbalance. Thus, sharing the load between the overloaded and idle nodes is a necessity in ad hoc networks. In this paper, we present a new load balancing algorithm based on clustering where a subset of nodes ’clusterheads’ is elected to maintain some balance within their respective clusters while minimizing the overall communication cost. Our primary goal is to minimize the total execution time of the tasks by distributing the workload among nodes. Another goal is to extend the overloaded nodes lifetime inducing a stability of the network. The simulation results have shown that network performance can be reached by distributing load to idle nodes within the network.