An Improved Ant Colony QoS Routing Algorithm Applied to Mobile Ad Hoc Networks

Due to the bandwidth constraint and dynamic topology of mobile ad hoc networks, supporting QoS becomes a multi-constrained QoS routing problem for mobile ad hoc networks. This paper proposes an improved ant colony QoS routing algorithm (IAQR) for ad hoc networks. The IAQR algorithm introduces a routing modeling with four QoS constrained requirements associated with nodes or links, and defines four rules besides congestion avoidance rule. The algorithm can find a route in ad hoc networks that satisfies more QoS requirements of the incoming traffic and at the same time reduces constrained resources consumption as much as possible. Moreover, it can avoid congestion after judging by average queue length quickly. Simulation results show that IAQR algorithm can obviously improve packet delivery ratio and reduce end to end delay.