SmartGate: A MAC Protocol for Gateway Discovery in Clustered Ad-Hoc Networks

In the absence of established infrastructure, Mobile Ad-Hoc Networks (MANETs) can provide a fast and efficient way of communication among the nodes. In this paper, we present a MAC protocol with clusterhead and gateway selection algorithm. Clustering schemes are expected to achieve better scalability since most of the topology changes within a cluster are hidden from the rest of the network. Here, we use Node Identifier Packet (NIP) to form the members of a cluster and depending upon several QoS metrics (e.g. bandwidth, battery life, SINR) the clusterhead has been selected. For inter-cluster communication, we choose the gateway nodes. However, during the gateway selection procedure, we ensure that the maximum number of clusters that can be connected with the help of a single gateway does not exceed its tolerable overhead. This paper also provides the computational overhead of packet transfer for the gateway selection scheme. Simulation results show the performance of the protocol under different scenarios.