Ant Agent-Based Multicast Routing with QoS Guarantees

This paper designs a novel ant agent-based multicast routing algorithm with bandwidth and delay guarantees, called QMRA, which works for packet-switching networks where the state information is imprecise. In our scheme, an ant uses the probability that a link satisfies QoS requirements and the cost of a path instead of the ant´s trip time or age to determine the amount of pheromone to deposit, so that it has a simpler migration process, less control parameters and can tolerate the imprecision of state information. In this paper, the proof of correctness and complexity analysis of QMRA are given. And that, experimental results show our algorithm can achieve low routing blocking ratio, low average packet delay and fast convergence when the network state information is imprecise