An Ant-based Multipath Routing Algorithm for QoS Aware Mobile Ad-hoc Networks

In the wireless ad-hoc network management, Quality of Service (QoS) is an important issue. Along with the QoS ensuring, another desirable property is the network reliability. In data communications, multi-path routing strategy can cope with the problem of traffic overloads while balancing the network resource consumption. In this paper, we propose a new multipath routing algorithm for QoS-sensitive multimedia services. Based on the ant colony optimization technique, the proposed algorithm can establish effective multi-paths to enhance the network reliability. According to the load balancing strategy, data packets are adaptively distributed through the established paths while maintaining an acceptable level of QoS requirement. The most important feature of the proposed approach is its adaptability to current traffic conditions. Simulation results indicate the superior performance of the proposed algorithm, while other schemes cannot offer such an attractive performance balance.