Simulation Tools in Wireless Sensor Networks : Ant Colony Optimization of a Local Routing Algorithm

Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) consists of spatially distributed autonomous sensors to monitor physical or environmental conditions, such as temperature, sound, vibration, pressure, motion or pollutants, and to cooperatively pass their data through the network. Network Management of such a sensor network is a very big challenge. Also the fast changing nature and the adhoc necessity of the network prevents the choice of a Centralized Solution which can decide the best route to route packets and at the same time minimize the different parameters like congestion, load, etc. Also no single node can take up the job of centralized manager due to the limited energy and processing capabilities of mobile nodes. Hence this has resulted in the need for a distributed approach which involves limited processing and power from the individual nodes but which work towards a concerted goal of routing and network management. This paper proposes a routing algorithm based on ant colonies. A local routing, instead of storing the whole network graph, will be more suitable in order to keep track of the information going to a destination node. A testing environment has been established for a future simulation. Keywords— Distributed Computing, Swarm Computing, Wireless Sensors Networks, Particle Swarm Optimization.