TEA-CBRP: Distributed cluster head election in MANET by using AHP

Mobile Ad hoc Network consists of a set of mobile nodes that are communicating in a wireless channel. In this network, the number of nodes and their mobility have an impact on the routing performance. In order to improve the routing performance of large scale Mobile Ad Hoc Networks, clustering is one of the solution. When clustering is implemented, an unconditional cooperation among the intra cluster and inter cluster nodes is necessary. In the event where a malicious or selfish node is elected as a cluster head, the routing performance gets significantly affected. In this paper, the key decision factors such as the trust value, remaining energy, and the time of availability of the mobile node is explored to elect a cluster head. Further, these three decision factors are incorporated into the Analytical Hierarchy Process technique in order to elect the most cooperative node as the cluster head. An enhancement to the existing Cluster based Routing Protocol, is proposed in this paper and then enhanced work, is termed as Trust Energy Availability based Cluster Based Routing Protocol. A network based on the proposed protocol is simulated. The important routing performance parameters such as packet delivery ratio, end to end latency, routing packet overhead, and the number of times cluster head changes are discussed for the simulated network and the results are compared with AODV and CBRP routing protocols. The simulation results have shown that the proposed cluster based routing protocol improves the network performance by eliminating malicious and selfish nodes from being elected as cluster head.