ACO Agent Based Routing in AOMDV Environment

Mobile Ad-hoc Network (MANET) is a group of moving nodes which can communicate with each other without the help of any central stationary node. All the nodes in the MANET act as router for forwarding data packets. The nodes in the network also move randomly and there exists no fixed infrastructure. So, path breaks are the frequent problem in MANET. The routing protocol faces a lot of problem due these path breaks. Therefore, the routing protocol which is multipath in nature is more reliable than a unipath routing protocol. Ant colony optimization is a relatively new technique which is suitable for the optimization problems. AOMDV is a multipath routing protocol. Thus, if there happens to be path break, the packets can start following the new path which has already been selected. In this paper, we are trying to add ant’s agents into AOMDV behavior. In this way, the new protocol will be benefited by the dual properties i.e. of ant’s nature and multipath nature of AOMDV. The modified concept is simulated and the outcomes are compared with AOMDV, AODV and DSR routing protocols for few performance parameters. Results obtained are encouraging; the new algorithm performs better than traditional unipath and multipath routing protocols.