A Study on the Energy-Efficient Ant-Based Routing Algorithm for Wireless Sensor Networks

In this paper,an improved energy-efficient ant-based routing algorithm(IEEABR)is proposed according to the theory of ant colony optimization.In the proposed algorithm,the improved aspects include ant packet structure,formulas of probability selection and pheromone updating.The data transmission efficiency is increased by designing different packet structures for forward ants and backward ants.In the procedure of probability selection,considering the residual energy of an ant's neighbor,it is impossible that the neighbor node with less residual energy is selected as its next hop node,which balances the energy cost of a network.The path optimization is performed in the new approach by making a forward ant release pheromone in the path search process which accelerates convergence process of the algorithm.At the same time,a list of neighbor nodes address is added into forward ant packets for reducing the occurrence probability of routing loops.A series of simulations for IEEABR are performed by using NS2.The simulation results show that the proposed algorithm can prolong the network lifetime,and reduce the average energy consumption effectively.