Self-Adjustment Mechanism Guaranteeing Asymptotic Stability of Clusters Formed by Autonomous Decentralized Mechanism

—Clustering mechanisms are crucial for scalable routing in mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs). We have previously proposed an autonomous decentralized clustering mechanism that is based on differential equations. This method adopts both the diffusion effect for autonomous decentralized control, and the drift effect for balancing with the diffusion effect. In our conventional mechanism, we need to set the strength of diffusion effect stronger than the drift effect because fine tuning for balancing both effects is difficult. However, it results in a decrease of the number of clusters by the diffusion effect, and it is a problem on forming sustainable cluster structures. We need the solution of this problem for clustering in MANET. In this paper, we propose a mechanism autonomously adjusting the effects of both diffusion and drift. We show that our proposed mechanism can form sustainable cluster structures reflecting the characteristic of our conventional mechanism. Finally, we evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed mechanism for an environment in which the fusion of subnetworks occurs.