Energy efficient multipath ant colony based routing algorithm for mobile ad hoc networks

This paper describes the novel wireless routing protocol made for mobile ad hoc networks or wireless sensor networks using the bio-inspired technique. Bio-inspired algorithms include the routing capabilities taken from the social behavior of ant colonies, bird flocking, honey bee dancing, etc and promises to be capable of catering to the challenges posed by wireless sensors. Some of the challenges of wireless sensor networks are limited bandwidth, limited battery life, low memory, etc. An energy-efficient multipath routing algorithm based on the foraging nature of ants is proposed including many meta-heuristic impact factors to provide good robust paths from source to destination to overcome the challenges faced by resource-constrained sensors. Analysis of individual impact factor is represented which justifies their importance in routing performance. The multi-path routing feature is claimed by showing energy analysis as well as statistical analysis in-depth to the readers. The proposed routing algorithm is analyzed by considering various performance metrics such as throughput, delay, packet loss, network lifetime, etc. Finally, the comparison is done against AODV routing protocol by considering performance metrics where the proposed routing algorithm shows a 49% improvement in network lifetime.