A Hybrid Routing Algorithm Based on Ant Colony and ZHLS Routing Protocol for MANET

Mobile Ad hoc networks (MANETs) require dynamic routing schemes for adequate performance. This paper, presents a new routing algorithm for MANETs, which combines the idea of ant colony optimization with Zone-based Hierarchical Link State (ZHLS) protocol. Ant colony optimization (ACO) is a class of Swarm Intelligence (SI) algorithms. SI is the local interaction of many simple agents to achieve a global goal. SI is based on social insect for solving different types of problems. ACO algorithm uses mobile agents called ants to explore network. Ants help to find paths between two nodes in the network. Our algorithm is based on ants jump from one zone to the next zones which contains of the proactive routing within a zone and reactive routing between the zones. Our proposed algorithm improves the performance of the network such as delay, packet delivery ratio and overhead than traditional routing algorithms.