Hybrid Bio-Inspired Routing Algorithms for Scalable and Adaptive Wireless Ad Hoc Networks

Abstract

Wireless ad hoc network (WANETs) has been a key enabler in realizing fast and infrastructure-independent communications requirements in situations where lives of people have to depend on mission-critical operations, inclusive of disaster recovery, military coordination as well as remote environmental monitoring. But the same dynamic and decentralized structure of these networks makes it extremely difficult to realize scalability, as well as, adaptation especially in high mobility environments and changing node density, and varying wireless connection quality. INC can be associated with degraded performance with historical routing protocols in terms of packet loss, latency, and control overhead especially in such conditions. In order to overcome such drawbacks, this paper has suggested a new hybrid bio-inspired routing protocol which combines the locally adaptive behavior characteristic of the Ant Colony Optimization (ACO) and the globally convergent efficiency of the Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO). The hybrid structure has been designed to provide a dynamic balance of exploration and exploitation which allows to perform high quality route exploration and path regeneration in highly changing network topologies. Largescale simulations in different conditions with research variability in terms of node mobility, scale and density- prove that the presented algorithm is more robust than standard bio-inspired protocol and standalone bio-inspired protocols. Its effectiveness in scalable and adaptive routing is confirmed by its achieved large improvements to packet delivery ratio, end-to-end delay and routing overhead. The primary value of the paper is a synergistic hybridization approach, whereby different, but complementary, bio-inspired heuristics are combined into a single routing paradigm. The development offers an encouraging chance to future-generation WANETs with abilities of accommodating the performance requirements of new wireless applications, especially those frameworks that need stability and real-time flexibility.