A Biologically Inspired Energy-Aware Routing Algorithm for Communications in Cyberworlds

This paper presents a new version of swarm-intelligence inspired ad hoc routing algorithm for communications in Cyberworlds, based on evolutionary cooperation in a biological swarm. We use the principle of swarm intelligence to reinforce good quality routes with only local communication. The data traffic is influenced at each node, and the communicating nodes observe this influence to update their tables. By locally monitoring the network transmission queue length and other MAC layer information, this algorithm can forward data traffic through paths that avoid network congestion areas. In order to conserve energy, this algorithm intelligently power off the network interfaces of the nodes that are either not currently involved in any communications or in the area where congestion occurs. We also include an evaluation methodology to simulate ad hoc networks, and the simulation results show that this novel routing algorithm performs well for a variety of network conditions.