Hybrid routing scheme of multi agent ant based system in MANET combination of proactive and reactive

A Mobile Ad Hoc Networks (MANET) is a self-configuring network connected by wireless links and they are a collection of mobile nodes which communicate over radio. There are various routing protocols available for MANETs. Broadly they are classified into three. One is Proactive protocol, each node maintains one/more tables containing routing information to every node in the network. All nodes update these tables so as to maintain a consistent and up-to-date view of the network. Two is Reactive protocols, all up-to-date routes are not maintained at every node. Instead the routes are created as and when required. The route remains valid till the destination is reachable or until the routes no longer needed. Ant colony optimization (ACO) depicts a proactive behavior, is a metaheuristic for solving hard combinatorial optimization problems inspired by the indirect communication of real ants. Multi Agent System (MAS) depicts a reactive behavior, is used to solve problems that are difficult or impossible for an individual agent or a monolithic system to solve. Three is Hybrid Protocols, try to profit the advantages of both reactive and proactive protocols and combine their basic properties into one. They have the potential to provide higher scalability than pure reactive or proactive protocols. In this paper, a hybrid routing scheme that combines the best properties of ACO and MAS is proposed. The proposed hybrid protocol reduces the end-to end delay, minimizes the packet loss and results in maximum packet delivery ratio.