An Efficient Ant Colony Based Routing Algorithm for Better Quality of Services in MANET

Abstract

The mobile ad-hoc networks (MANET) are infrastructure less and decentralized group of mobile nodes where the routers and mobile hosts are connected over wireless radio links. With the easy availability and widespread use of the highly mobile and portable devices such as laptop, sensor devices, PDAs etc, the mobile ad hoc networks are receiving increasing attention as there is a growing need for connectivity between these devices in real time, without the help of any fixed infrastructure. In MANET, the nodes communicate with each other using multi-hop communication system. The nodes and routers are free to move within the network and it is a difficult task to maintain the network topology as it changes randomly and unpredictably. Therefore, in mobile domain, establishing suitable and effective paths between the communicating end points while satisfying the time varying QOS requirements for wide variety of applications, has become a big challenge now. In this paper, we have presented a new on demand QOS routing algorithm for mobile ad hoc network with the concept of Ant Colony Optimization. This algorithm is based on swarm intelligence. It is inspired by the behaviour of the biological ants of finding optimal route to the food source in a collective but decentralized manner. With the introduction of new quality of service parameters like link stability time and available buffer size in the context of ant colony system, this algorithm provides effective routes for end to end communication.