Energy-aware ant colony optimization based routing for mobile ad hoc networks

In mobile ad hoc networks, nodes are mobile and have limited energy resource that can quickly deplete due to the multi-hop routing activities, which may gradually lead to an un-operational network. In the past decades, the hunt for a reliable and energy-efficient MANET routing protocol has been extensively researched. In this thesis, a novel routing scheme for MANETs (so-called MAntNet) has been proposed, which is based on the AntNet approach. Precisely, the AntNet algorithm is modified in such a way that the routing decisions are facilitated based on the available nodes energy. Additionally, some energy-aware conditions are introduced in MAntNet and replicated in the conventional AODV routing protocol for MANETs. The resulting energy-aware M-AntNet (E-MAntNet) and energy-aware AODV(E-AODV) are analyzed using NS2 simulations. The results show that E-MAntNet performs significantly better than MAntNet and E-AODV both in terms of network residual energy and number of established connections in the network.