Enhanced AntNet protocol for wireless multimedia sensor networks

Abstract

The field of wireless multimedia sensor networks (WMSN) attracts more and more the research community as being an interdisciplinary field of interest. This type of network becomes a low cost, multifunctional due to advances in micro-electromechanical systems, as well as proliferation and progression of wireless communications. However, transmitting collected multimedia information must meet the QoS criteria such as delay, bandwidth, packet loss rate, etc. Many routing protocols have been developed for WMSN. Recently, the most known ones are based on meta-heuristic, that show desirable properties of being adaptive, scalable, and robust. This paper presents a new routing protocol for WMSNs based on AntNet protocol which is inspired by the stigmergy-driven shortest path following behavior of biological ants. Our aims in this work is to provide as well as possible the best QoS in terms of delay and Packet Delivery Ratio(PDR). The results of simulations compared to the AODV show that our work has better delay and PDR. © 2013 Springer-Verlag.