Solving the MANET Routing Problem using Ant Colony Algorithm

Mobile ad-hoc networks (MANETs) are a collection of mobile nodes communicating wirelessly without a centralized infrastructure. The biggest challenge in MANETs is to find a path between communicating nodes, that is, the MANET routing problem. The considerations of the MANET environment and the nature of the mobile nodes create further complications which results in the need to develop special routing algorithms to meet these challenges. Swarm Intelligence, a bio-inspired technique, which has proven to be very adaptable in other problem domains, has been applied to the MANET routing problem as it forms a good fit to the problem. In this thesis, a study of Ant Colony based routing algorithms is carried out taking into consideration two of the most popular algorithms Ant based algorithms, AntHocNet and the Ant Routing Algorithm (ARA). A thorough analyis of ARA is carried out based on the effect of its individual routing mechanisms on its routing efficacy. The original ARA algorithm, although finds the shortest path between source and destination, is observed to not be competitive against other MANET algorithms such as AODV in performance criteria. Based on the analysis performed, modifications are proposed to the ARA algorithm. Finally, a performance evaluation of the original ARA and the modified ARA is carried out with respect to each other, and with respect to AODV, a state of the art MANET routing algorithm vis-a-vis mobility criteria. The motivation behind the thesis is to realize application of MANETs in real world applications by solving the problem of routing