An Ant Colony Based Routing Protocol to Support Multimedia Communication in Ad Hoc Wireless Networks

In mobile ad hoc networks, the protocols proposed for multimedia data communication have failed to ensure a stable QoS, because of changing link stability and link-failures. In this paper we describe AntHocNetM, a routing algorithm to support multimedia communications in mobile ad hoc networks based on Ant Colony Optimization framework. The algorithm consists of both reactive and proactive components In a reactive path setup phase, multiple paths are built between the source and destination of a data session. The multimedia data are send over the stable, failure-free paths. During the course of the session, paths are continuously monitored and improved in a proactive way. The algorithm makes use of ant-like mobile agents establishes multiple stable paths between source and destination nodes. By simulation experiments, we show that the performance of AntHocNetM outperforms the standard AODV routing algorithm in terms of end-to-end delay, delivery ratio and jitter.