A tree routing protocol based on ant colony algorithm for mine goaf monitoring

Abstract

This paper proposes a novel routing protocol called ZACATREE, which will prolong the Zigbee network lifetime, reduce the end-to-end delay, and improve the reliability of mine goaf monitoring. Using ant colony algorithm to search for the next hop would effectively reduce energy consumption while tree structure is helpful to reduce the end-to-end delay and packet loss rate. The simulation results show that the ZACATREE protocol can improve the network lifetime by 27.7% compared with the AODV protocol, while the end-to-end delay can be reduced by 16.92% and 46.04% abatement in the packet loss rate is obtained. Therefore, the performance of mine goaf monitoring network can well be improved by using the ZACATREE protocol. © 2012 Springer-Verlag GmbH.