An Emerging Ant Colony Optimization Routing Algorithm (acora) for Manets

Ad hoc networks are characterized by multi-hop wireless connectivity, frequently changing network topology and the need for efficient dynamic routing protocols. A mobile ad hoc network (Manet) is a collection of mobile nodes which communicate over radio. These kinds of networks are very flexible, thus they do not require any existing infrastructure or central administration. Therefore, mobile ad hoc networks are suitable for temporary communication links. The biggest challenge in this kind of networks is to find a path between the communication end points, what is aggravated through the node mobility. In this paper we present a new ad-hoc routing algorithm ACORA, which is based on swarm intelligence. We refer to the protocol as the Ant Colony Optimization Routing Algorithm (ACORA). Ant colony algorithms are a subset of swarm intelligence and consider the ability of simple ants to solve complex problems by cooperation. Several algorithms which are based on ant colony problems were introduced in recent years to solve different problems, e.g. optimization problems. We aim to show that the approach has the potential to become an appropriate algorithm for mobile multi-hop ad-hoc networks, which are based on simulations made with the implementation in ns-2.