Study On Adaptive Intelligent Routing Strategies In Mobile Ad-Hoc Networks

Mobile Ad-hoc Networks (MANETs) are decentralized networks of autonomousmobile nodes, in which communicates between mobile nodes are performed viawireless connections without support of any infrastructure. Being flexibly formed,MANETs are widely applied in such areas as military, public safety, anti-terrorism,rescue, surveillance of environment, emergency communication, and more.Routing is critical for a MANET to run effectively, which belongs to the networklayer of the open systems interconnection (OSI) model developed by the InternationalOrganization for Standardization (ISO). The main functions of routing are routediscovery, route selection, and packet delivery. It is challenging for us to designappropriate routing strategies effectively used in MANET due to its characters ofwireless connection, highly mobility, decentralized, and multi-hops.In view of low stability and reliability in existing routing strategies for MANETs,noting the energy limitation of the nodes in MANETs, based on ant colonyalgorithms, we present a power-aware and adaptive routing algorithm for MANETs.This algorithm is referred to as Ant-based Power-aware Routing Algorithm (APRA),which mimics ants' behaviors for searching food and makes artificial ants explorepossible route between source and destination nodes. In addition, it takes the nodes'remaining energy levels as well as the hops of the route into account. In the APRA,the routes with less hops and the nodes on the routes with high level of remaining energy can be selected with highest likely, so that traffic loads of the MANET arebalanced and the lifespan of the nodes and the whole MANET are prolonged.The results of the simulation study show that the APRA is able to find the bestroute in a short time. In addition, the APRA is one of distributed algorithms and onlyuses local information of the MANET. It exhibits highly robustness and adaptability.When the topology of a MANET changes, the APRA can find a new route quickly byrenewing the pheromone in each route to meet the topology's change.MANETs have been listed as the frontiers in the National Mid- and Long-TermScientific and Technological Development Plan Guideline (2006-2020) which isissued by the State Council of China. As an advanced technique, the results of thisstudy have significant academic and practical value on design, application,management and maintenance of MANETs.