A trust based congestion aware hybrid Ant Colony Optimization algorithm for energy efficient routing in Wireless Sensor Networks (TC-ACO)

Congestion is a problem of paramount importance in resource constrained Wireless Sensor Networks, especially for large networks, where the traffic loads exceed the available capacity of the resources. Sensor nodes are prone to failure and the misbehavior of these faulty nodes creates further congestion. The resulting effect is a degradation in network performance, additional computation and increased energy consumption, which in turn decreases network lifetime. Hence, the data packet routing algorithm should consider congestion as one of the parameters, in addition to the role of the faulty nodes and not merely energy efficient protocols. Unfortunately most of the researchers have tried to make the routing schemes energy efficient without considering congestion factor and the effect of the faulty nodes. In this paper we have proposed a congestion aware, energy efficient, routing approach that utilizes Ant Colony Optimization algorithm, in which faulty nodes are isolated by means of the concept of trust. The merits of the proposed scheme are verified through simulations where they are compared with other protocols.