Protocol design and implementation for bee-inspired routing in mobile ad hoc networks

The characteristic of mobility and the ease of deployment make wireless ad hoc networks suitable for a variety of real life applications that cover a wide range from civilian to military purposes. The lack of a fixed infrastructure demands all participating nodes to function as end points of a communication session and also to have routing capabilities. The latter allows data packets to be forwarded to nodes in a multi-hop manner and tackles the routing problem when nodes are joining, leaving or moving around within the network topology unexpectedly. At any time nodes need to be able to provide adaptive, optimal and efficient routing solutions. In order to solve the challenging problem of routing in wireless ad hoc networks, this thesis applies methods from nature and, in particular, from the world of honeybee colonies. A new routing protocol design and its implementation, BeeIP, are proposed and tested. Using honeybee foraging and dancing metaphors, the protocol utilizes special packets to discover paths between sources and destinations. Real honeybees constantly monitor the goodness of their findings based on a number of quality factors such as the distance from the hive, the sweetness of the sugar solution, etc. Then, they efficiently distribute the future flights following the most optimal path. Focusing on these key concepts, this work investigates the extent to which a range of low-level network parameters can be used to represent and constantly monitor the goodness of the paths. The design uses a new model to map the honeybee dances and to efficiently use multiple paths for future data transmissions. This thesis makes a number of novel contributions. Firstly, an extended mapping of the quality factors from nature to networks and a model to utilize them in order to represent and measure the quality of the paths. Next, the use of statistical prediction by considering prior gathered knowledge to detect any possible improvement or deterioration of path quality over time. Finally, a comprehensive comparison with state-of-the-art protocols in the ns-2 network simulator, the results of which show that BeeIP is able to outperform the others under different conditions and, in particular, in networks of high density, rate of mobility and increased data traffic. Therefore, the proposed design is a viable solution for routing in wireless ad hoc networks.