Ant-based adaptive message forwarding scheme for challenged networks with sparse connectivity

We propose a new class of message routing schemes for mobile wireless networks with intermittent network connectivity. The proposed schemes are based on swarm intelligence (SI) and exploit the statistical properties of time-varying network connectivity for opportunistic message forwarding. We also consider a special form of our proposed schemes which can be viewed as a marriage between the SI and the backpressure algorithm and investigate its stability. We demonstrate that there is a fundamental trade-off between the adaptation rate and the stability region of the proposed scheme.