Ant Colony-Based Multi-Path Routing Algorithm for Wireless Sensor Networks

The energy constraint sensor nodes operate on limited batteries, so the energy consumption is a key design criterion for the routing protocols in wireless sensor networks. Comparing with single path routing algorithm, multi-path routing algorithm can balance the network energy distribution and extend the network lifetime better. In this paper, we propose an Ant Colony- Based Multi-path Routing Algorithm, which uses Ant Colony Algorithm(ACA) to discover disjoint multipaths between the source nodes and sink node. We also propose a load balancing scheme to distribute the traffic over multipaths discovered. Simulation results show that our proposed algorithm achieves a higher node energy efficiency and longer network lifetime than that of the previous multipath routing algorithm.