An ant colony optimization model for wireless ad-hoc network autoconfiguration

The dynamic host configuration protocol (DHCP) has been a commonly employed technique to distribute IP addresses on networks where static address allocation may not be appropriate. DHCP is normally feasible on networks that are client-server based as it needs a server for address management. Wireless ad hoc networks on the other hand do not have a central entity that would be responsible for network management to make DHCP possible. Ad-hoc autoconfiguration is defined as the problem of issuing unique IP addresses to the individual machines or nodes that are in such ad hoc networks. Mobile nodes in wireless networks are loosely bound to their respective networks as the wireless channel is prone to break-ups easily. This makes an ad hoc network configuration highly space and time transient. Network administration models under such environments demands a highly dynamic approach and most commonly found wireline solutions do not scale easily to wireless networks. In this paper we propose a swarm intelligence based and highly dynamic model for achieving autoconfiguration in wireless ad hoc and other similar (wireless sensor) networks.