Agent based QOS routing in Mobile Ad-hoc Networks: An overview

As the multimedia has long achieved acceptance for the conveyance of information, QOS based multimedia routing is an important requirement in Mobile Adhoc Networks. QoS based routing over MANET requires an adaptive and fast solution for the path search problems. The complexity of routing in MANET increases due to the characteristics like dynamic topology, absence of centralized authority, time varying QoS requirements etc. The major challenge in this kind of networks is to find a path between the communication end points satisfying user´s QoS requirement for multimedia and real time applications. However, the level of service is sensitive to the availability, Bandwidth, delay, jitter and loss ratio. The integration of these QoS parameters increases the complexity of used algorithms. The ant colony optimization is a best choice as it exhibits number of desirable properties for MANET routing. This paper provides an overview of research carried in Ant Colony Optimization (ACO) based QOS routing algorithms for MANET.