ANTMANET: A Routing Protocol for Mobile Ad Hoc Networks

The rapid development of MANETs poses substantially different challenges for routing protocols in comparison with traditional wired networks. New classes for routing algorithms have emerged, for example Ant Colony Optimization (ACO), which is inspired by the collective behavior of various ant species. ACO algorithms use control packets to search for the shortest path from source to destination. The heuristic of ACO is able to find alternative paths to the same destination. A data packet is transferred along a path selected based on a favorability probability. In this paper we propose ANTMANET, a novel ACO routing protocol utilizing the location information by adding a local zone technique to create faster route discovery by using less control packets resulting in less overhead. ANTMANET has proven better overhead and less delay when compared to different MANET routing protocols.