Ant intelligence routing algorithm for wireless sensor networks

Abstract

In this paper, we present ant intelligence routing algorithm (AIRA), an adaptive, energy efficient and multiple-path protocol designed for wireless sensor networks. The primary goals of the protocol design are energy efficiency and self-organization without compromising throughput. AIRA reduces energy consumption by enabling low-duty-cycle operation and clocking neighbors to power of their radios to avoid unnecessary listening and interference during data transmission in a multihop network through adaptive sleeping technique. This greatly improves energy efficiency. It supports self-organization of individual nodes and reduces control overheads by using data packets themselves to maintain an established route for communication. Finally, AIRA applies synchronized sleeping technique to improve energy efficiency of the entire network. In an extensive set of simulations, we compare our routing algorithm with a state-of-the-art algorithm, and show that it gets better performance over a range of different scenarios. © 2012 Springer-Verlag.