A Swarm Quality of Service Based Multi-Path Routing Algorithm (SAMRA) for Wireless Ad Hoc Networks

With a widespread development of multimedia applications in mobile ad hoc networks, there is an increasing needs for QoS guarantees. Therefore protocols that are designed for these networks should be more greatly involved in satisfying application needs while optimizing network resources. This task is rather difficult due to the highly dynamic topology of mobile ad hoc networks and their limited resources. Actually, different routing algorithms are proposed in order to route various kinds of sources (such as voice, video, or data) with diverse traffic characteristics and Quality of Service Requirements (QoS). The goals of QoS routing are in general twofold: selecting routes with satisfied QoS requirement, and achieving global efficiency in resource utilization. The prediction of these goals in real time is quite difficult, making the effectiveness of "traditional" protocols based on analytical models questionable. In this paper we first discuss some key design considerations in providing QoS routing support, and present a review of previous work addressing the problem of route selection in interaction with QoS constraints. We then devise a solution based on swarm intelligence paradigm based on reinforcement learning approach that we find more adapted for this kind of problems. Finally, we discuss some possible future directions for providing efficient QoS routing mechanisms in wireless ad hoc networks.