Routing and bandwidth management for Wireless Mesh Networks using ant intelligence

As bandwidth is a scarce resource in Wireless Mesh Networks (WMNs), a primary challenge of such networks is to design an effective bandwidth management mechanism. This paper presents a new scheme for bandwidth management using TOPSIS method utilizing a collection of mobile agents or “ants” to perform Quality of Service (QoS) provisioning by dynamic management of bandwidth. We introduce ANTTOPSIS to ensure better performance by collecting and disseminating necessary routing and bandwidth information as the ants travel throughout the network. We argue that ANTTOPSIS scheme is a suitable approach to support end-to-end QoS in WMNs where network topology and node connectivity are varying with time. Using explorer agents and reservation agents, ANTTOPSIS delivers adaptive services to support flow establishment and restoration. Moreover we discuss how ANTTOPSIS fits into our broader vision of flow management for WMNs. The result of simulation displays an improved performance in terms of bandwidth utilization, packet delivery ratio and delay.