MANET Data Routing Protocol based on Ant Colony Optimization

Abstract

Mobile ad hoc network (MANET) is a decentralized, multihop, wireless network with least infrastructure. Therefore, it is necessary that they should be self organizing, self healing, self configuring and adaptable to frequent changes in network. Routing algorithms plays an important role in the improvement of the performance of any network and to increase the throughput they need to be tuned with the network environment. ACO presents a problemsolving paradigm that suits the dynamicity and mobility of mobile ad hoc networks. AntHocNet is a hybrid multipath algorithm, designed along the principles of ACO routing. It consists of both reactive and proactive components. It does not maintain paths to all destinations at all times, but sets up paths when they are needed at the start of a session. This is done in a reactive path setup phase, where ant agents called reactive forward ants are launched by the source in order to find multiple paths to the destination, and backward ants return to set up the paths. The above problems of MANET can be solved by applying ACO framework in the process of data routing. Also it is necessary to take further the performance of the AntHocNet algorithm by improving its different components.