A novel heuristic routing algorithm using simulated annealing in ad hoc networks

Abstract

Multi-constrained quality-of-service routing (QoSR) is to find a feasible path that satisfies multiple constraints simultaneously, as an NPC problem, which is also a big challenge for ad hoc networks. In this paper, we propose a novel heuristic routing algorithm based on Simulated Annealing (SA_HR). This algorithm first uses an energy function to translate multiple QoS weights into a single metric and then seeks to find a feasible path by simulated annealing. The paper outlines simulated annealing algorithm and analyzes the problems met when we apply it to QoSR in ad hoc networks. Theoretical analysis and experiment results demonstrate that the proposed method is an effective approximate algorithms showing good performance in seeking the (approximate) optimal configuration within a period of polynomial time. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2005.