Ant-like Mobile Agents for Load Balanced Routing (AMLBR) in MANETs

A Mobile ad-hoc network (MANET) is a multi-hop wireless network, where nodes communicate with each other without any pre-deployed infrastructure. It is ideal for use in scenarios such as battlefield operations, disaster relief and emergency situations where fixed infrastructure is not available for communications and rapid deployment is important. The highly dynamic topologies, limited bandwidth availability and energy constraints make the routing problem a challenging one. Routing protocols in the MANETs has received a tremendous amount of attention from researches. Among other techniques, Swarm Intelligence paradigm is a promising technique that addresses the flexible nature of MANETs. In this book, we present a new protocol, called Ant-like Mobile Agents for Load Balanced Routing (AMLBR) in mobile ad-hoc networks, for efficient data transmission in MANETs. The proposed algorithm uses mobile agents that mimic ant swarm intelligence behavior to discover and maintain paths in a MANET. It balances the load distribution among various routes and deposits pheromone proportional to the total load at the nodes that a swarm member traverses.