Simple Ant Routing Algorithm

A mobile ad-hoc network has limited and scarce resources and thus routing protocols in such environments must be kept as simple as possible. This paper presents a MANET routing protocol, inspired in insect societies´ biological models, the simple ant routing algorithm (SARA), which provides a simple and efficient routing solution. SARA uses a controlled neighbour broadcast route discovery procedure, aimed at reducing the routing overhead of existing solutions. In this controlled neighbour broadcast strategy, every node collects routing information received from its neighbours and updates its own routing information accordingly, but only one of them is responsible for forwarding this information. The selection of the node which will be responsible for this task is made. Simulation results have shown that, besides reducing the overhead incurred by the routing protocol, SARA also provides a solution to detect early congestion link situations and tries to re-route the traffic through alternative routes (if available).