Suitability of Ant Colony Optimization as an Application to MANET

Mobile ad-hoc networks (MANETs) are infrastructure-less networks consisting of wireless devices called as mobile nodes which are organized in autonomous fashion. The highly dynamic topology, limited bandwidth availability and energy constraints make the routing problem a challenge in MANETs. Ant colony optimization (ACO) is a population based meta-heuristic for combinatorial optimization problems such as communication network routing problem. In real life, ants leave a kind of chemical substances to mark the visited path that they pass through. Ants on reaching destination came back to the source node. Ants on their way, back to source choose the path with the highest pheromone. ACO technique matches the routing requirements of Mobile Ad-hoc Networks because of its motivating properties like foraging and self-organizing nature. Optimal paths can be proposed with negligible overhead in this way by using ant based routing algorithm. The problem of stagnation can also be rectified. This paper reviews the appropriateness of using Ant Colony Algorithm for mobile Ad-hoc Networks.