Meta-Heuristics Techniques and Swarm Intelligence in Mobile Ad Hoc Networks

The infrastructure-less and the dynamic nature of mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs) demands new set of networking strategies to be implemented in order to provide efficient end-to-end communication. MANETs employ the traditional TCP/IP structure to provide end-to-end communication between nodes. However, due to their mobility and the limited resource in wireless networks, each layer in the TCP/IP model requires redefinition or modifications to work efficiently in MANETs. One interesting research area in MANETs is routing. Routing is a challenging task and has received huge attention from researches. Due to the adaptive and dynamic nature of these networks, the Swarm Intelligence approach is considered a successful design paradigm to solve the routing problem. Swarm intelligence is a relatively new approach to problem solving that takes inspiration from the social behaviours of insects and of other animals. In particular, the collective behaviour of ants have inspired a number of methods and techniques among which the most studied and the most successful is the general purpose optimization technique known as Ant Colony Optimization (ACO) meta-heuristic. ACO takes inspiration from the foraging behaviour of some ant species. These ants deposit a chemical substance called pheromone on the ground in order to mark some favourable path that should be followed by other members of the colony. This behaviour has led to development of many different ant based routing protocols for MANETs. In this chapter, a description of swarm intelligence approach and ACO meta-heuristic is given, an overview of a wide range of ant based routing protocols in the literature is proposed and finally other applications related to ACO in MANETs and new directions are discussed.