A heuristic and distributed QoS route discovery method for mobile ad hoc networks

Abstract

Quality of service (QoS) routing has been receiving increasingly intensive attention in mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs) fields. Many works have been done to overcome the passive factors due to the natural characters of MANETs such as performance constraints and dynamic network topology. In this paper, we present a new QoS route discovery algorithm for MANETs based on hybrid heuristic optimize algorithm. This method integrates the route discovery scheme with a swarm intelligent algorithm and the local search method based on SA. The ant algorithm has powerful ability of global search that will help to increase the probability of success in finding QoS feasible paths, and the route selection method based on probability can control flooding to reduce network overhead in the process of route discovery. The local search method based on SA is used to increase the convergence rate of route discovery algorithm and avoid the problem of stagnancy routes. The simulation experiment results based on NS2 show that network performance is improved obviously, and the method proposed is efficient and effective. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2005.