A Multipath Lifetime-Prolonging Routing Algorithm for Wireless Ad Hoc Networks

Dynamic networks can be tremendously challenging when deploying distributed applications on autonomous machines. Further, implementing services like routing and security for such networks is generally difficult and problematic. Consequently, multi-agent systems are well suited for designing distributed systems where several autonomous agents interact or work together to perform a set of tasks or satisfy a set of goals, hence moving the problem of analyzing from a global level to a local level therefore reducing the design complexity. In our previous paper, we presented a Multi Agent system model that has been adapted to develop a routing protocol for ad hoc networks. Wireless ad hoc networks are infrastructureless networks that comprise wireless mobile nodes which areable to communicate with each other outside the wireless transmission range. Due to frequent network topology changes, the limited energy and underlying bandwidth, routing becomes a challenging task. In this paper, we present a new version of routing algorithm devoted for mobile ad hoc networks. Our new algorithm helps controlling the network congestion and increasing the network lifetime by effectively managing nodes energy and link cost. The performance of our new version is validated through simulation. The Simulation results show the effectiveness and efficiency of our new algorithm compared to stae-of-the-artsolutions in terms of various performance metrics. Keywords—Mobile Multi Agent System; Ad hoc Network Lifetime; Ant Routing Protocol; Distributed Algorithm; Network Congestion