An ant colony algorithm based on orientation factor for QoS multicast routing in ad hoc networks

The ad hoc network has been attracting more and more attention for its special attributes and applications. This paper proposes an ant colony algorithm with orientation factor and applies it to multicast routing problem with multi-constraints QoS in the ad hoc network. The orientation factor is a heuristic element based on GPS, which enables the ant to get rid of the initial blindness when searching paths, and overcome the drawbacks of slow convergence existing in the basic ant colony algorithm, increasing the speed of convergence and speeding up the finding of feasible solution to the multi-constraint problem. Simulation results show that the modified algorithm makes it possible to find feasible solution to the multicast routing problem with delay and delay variation-bounded. And compared with the conventional ant colony algorithm, the convergence speed of the modified algorithm is improved and the number of packets used for computing routing decreases obviously.