A Multi-Agent Routing Protocol With Congestion Control For MANET

This paper discusses a routing protocol that uses multi-agents to reduce network congestion for a Mobile Ad hoc NETwork (MANET). MANET is a multihop wireless network in which the network components such as PC, PDA and mobile phones are mobile. The components can communicate with each other without going through a server. Two kinds of agents are engaged in routing. One is a Routing Agent that collects information about network congestion as well as link failure. The other is a Message Agent that uses this information to get to their destination nodes. MAs correspond to data packets and determine their direction autonomously using an evaluation function. We developed both a simulation environment and protocols, and performed simulations under different conditions of mobility and traffic patterns to demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach. Keywords—agent-based modeling, communication networks and protocols, network simulation, multi-agent systems, mobile ad-hoc network