when nodes are clustered as a group, then how the routing has been taken place? what is the use for clustered routing?
The concept of clustering is not equally promising in the area of MANET because of nodes mobility, unlike WSN, where the nodes are assumed to be comparatively static.
The major challenge is the maintenance of cluster head (CH). As the nodes are mobile two cluster heads may come in a proximity and the CH selection algorithm should avoid this conflict. Similarly, a CH may move to another location, leaving no CH in that zone, or a node other than the cluster may move out of a cluster and and join another cluster.
Still, there are few routing protocols available in literature for MANET which are cluster or hierarchy based.
See the following paper "The Cluster head Gateway Switch Routing protocol (CGSR)"
Divide the design space is in to hops (Zones) called cluster and given cluster header to each hop and then find out boarder nodes and try to establish route within the cluster by proactive routing approach and for far nodes use reactive routing ( hence hybrid routing mechanism).
The clustering helps to reduce the signaling messages. In fact, in each cluster zone, the header receive frequent signaling messages to have necessary information about the other clusters and it provides these information to the nodes in its cluster zone when needed.
a cluster based gateway switch routing protocol is a hierarchical routing protocol to provide scalability support in MANETs
The only case when clustering works well in MANET is if the nodes within a cluster have similar kind of mobility.
In such cases you need to use one of protocols / algorithms for inter cluster routing and another for intra-cluster routing.
In MANET clustering can be done many ways as already discussed by people here. Clusters can be created using nodes' geographical position or it can be based on mobility pattern. In case of wireless network clustering has large overhead which is the disadvantage of applying clustering in MANET.
Clustering in MANET is a challenging issue that need to be focused more due to the nodes' mobility.
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