An approach for QoS-aware routing in mobile ad hoc networks

Quality of service (QoS) routing in mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs) is a big challenge because of dynamically varying network topology and the limited availability of resources. Many techniques for solving the QoS routing problem in MANETs are available. Ant colony optimization is a promising solution that can be applied in wireless ad hoc networks. However, existing routing protocols that require additional control message exchange between neighbors to compute QoS parameters are too slow to react to fast topology change and increase network load and overhead. To decrease the overhead introduced to collect information from neighbor nodes and to obtain an accurate estimate of QoS parameters, we use the Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) to obtain these values locally. Artificial ants evaluate these values to find the paths that satisfy application QoS requirements. The simulation results implemented using the ns-3 network simulator show that QoS routing based on ant colony optimization (QoRA) is scalable and performs well.