Performance Evaluations of an Ant Colony Optimization Routing Algorithm for Wireless Sensor Networks

Previous research of ant-based routing algorithms mainly focused on energy efficiency. However, how ant-based routing algorithms perform in other metrics has been neglected. In this research, we compare the packet delivery ratio, the end-to-end delay and the first packet arrival time of an ant colony optimization (ACO) routing algorithm with three routing protocols commonly used in MANET, namely, AODV, DSDV, and DSR, in the wireless sensor network setting. We found that the ACO is not only energy efficient but also has the best performance in both the packet delivery ratio and the first packet arrival time compared to other routing algorithms. In some cases, it might not perform well in the end-to-end delay.