Density-based clustering techniques are used in a wide range of data mining applications. One of their most attractive features con- sists in not making use of prior knowledge of the number of clusters that a dataset contains along with their shape. In this paper we propose a new algorithm named Linear DBSCAN (Lin-DBSCAN), a simple approach to clustering inspired by the density model introduced with the well known algorithm DBSCAN. Designed to minimize the computational cost of density based clustering on geospatial data, Lin-DBSCAN features a linear time complexity that makes it suitable for real-time applications on low-resource devices. Lin-DBSCAN uses a discrete version of the density model of DBSCAN that takes ad- vantage of a grid-based scan and merge approach. The name of the algorithm stems exactly from its main features outlined above. The algorithm was tested with well known data sets. Experimental results prove the efficiency and the validity of this approach over DBSCAN in the context of spatial data clustering, enabling the use of a density-based clustering technique on large datasets with low computational cost.
As an example, LDBSCAN (Local-Density Based Spatial Clustering for Applications with Noise) @cite_51 uses a slightly modified model that provides the definition of local density to identify non-isodensity clusters.
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Density-based clustering algorithms are attractive for the task of class identification in spatial database. However, in many cases, very different local-density clusters exist in different regions of data space, therefore, DBSCAN method [M. Ester, H.-P. Kriegel, J. Sander, X. Xu, A density-based algorithm for discovering clusters in large spatial databases with noise, in: E. Simoudis, J. Han, U.M. Fayyad (Eds.), Proceedings of the Second International Conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining, Portland, OR, AAAI, Menlo Park, CA, 1996, pp. 226-231] using a global density parameter is not suitable. Although OPTICS [M. Ankerst, M.M. Breunig, H.-P. Kriegel, J. Sander, OPTICS: ordering points to identify the clustering structure, in: A. Delis, C. Faloutsos, S. Ghandeharizadeh (Eds.), Proceedings of ACM SIGMOD International Conference on Management of Data Philadelphia, PA, ACM, New York, 1999, pp. 49-60] provides an augmented ordering of the database to represent its density-based clustering structure, it only generates the clusters with local-density exceeds certain thresholds but not the cluster of similar local-density; in addition, it does not produce clusters of a data set explicitly. Furthermore, the parameters required by almost all the major clustering algorithms are hard to determine although they significantly impact on the clustering result. In this paper, a new clustering algorithm LDBSCAN relying on a local-density-based notion of clusters is proposed. In this technique, the selection of appropriate parameters is not difficult; it also takes the advantage of the LOF [M.M. Breunig, H.-P. Kriegel, R.T. Ng, J. Sander, LOF: identifying density-based local outliers, in: W. Chen, J.F. Naughton, P.A. Bernstein (Eds.), Proceedings of ACM SIGMOD International Conference on Management of Data, Dalles, TX, ACM, New York, 2000, pp. 93-104] to detect the noises comparing with other density-based clustering algorithms. The proposed algorithm has potential applications in business intelligence.