Ant colony-based energy control routing protocol for mobile ad hoc networks under different node mobility models

Abstract

The energy of nodes is limited in mobile ad hoc networks(MANETs). In order to extend the network lifetime, how to select the best route is a critical issue for routing protocols in MANETs. In this work, we propose the ant colony-based energy control routing (ACECR) protocol to find an optimal route by using the positive feedback character of ant colony optimization (ACO). In our ACECR protocol, the routing choice depends on not only the number of hops between nodes and the node energy, but also the average and the minimum energy of the routes. The performance of our ACECR routing protocols is evaluated in different mobility models. In addition, we do extensive simulations to study the movement characteristics of different mobility models and their effect on routing protocols. Simulation results show that ACECR has a better performance in balanced energy consumption and a longer network lifetime compared with existing protocols.