An Ant Colony Optimization-based QoS routing algorithm for wireless multimedia sensor networks

The transmission of video and imaging data in Wireless Multimedia Sensor Networks (WMSN) requires both energy efficiency and QoS assurance, in order to ensure the efficient use of sensor resources, an Ant Colony Optimization based QoS routing model is proposed to improve the routing protocol of WMSN. Firstly, a routing model for WMSN QoS was presented and then a routing algorithm ACOWMSN was brought forward, which uses the network restrict condition to update the pheromone concentration. The forward ants collects QoS parameters, and the backward ants carry QoS information to update the local node status during returning to source node. The simulation results show that the algorithm has better performance than the traditional QoS routing protocol and can significantly improve the network lifetime.