Clustering is a process that divides the network into interconnected substructures, called
clusters. Each cluster has a cluster head as coordinator within the substructure. Each cluster
head acts as a temporary base station within its zone or cluster and communicates with other
cluster heads.
CBRP is designed to be used in Wireless sensor network and mobile ad hoc network. The
protocol divides the nodes of the ad hoc network into a number of overlapping or disjoint 2-hop
diameter clusters in a distributed manner. Each cluster chooses a head to retain cluster
membership information. There are four possible states for the node: Normal, Isolated, Clusterhead
(CH) and Gateway. Initially all nodes are in the state of Isolated. Each node maintains the
Neighbor table where in the information about the other neighbors nodes is stored; cluster
heads have another table (cluster heads neighbor) where include the information about the other neighbor cluster heads is stored. [13] The protocol efficiently minimizes the flooding traffic
during route discovery and speeds up this process as well.