Energy saving and load balancing in wireless ad hoc networks through ant-based routing

Energy saving and traffic load balancing are two important issues that affect the performance of wireless networks, especially MANET. In this work, a novel routing algorithm over MANETs called LBE-ARAMA has been proposed. It allows to discover minimum MDR paths preserving the energy and to balance the data traffic through the round trip time (RTT) delay evaluation on the path from source to destination . This algorithm is based on swarm intelligence approach, in particular, ant colony behavior. The proposed algorithm is able to satisfy multiple metrics for a multi-objective optimization like end-to-end delay, load balancing and energy saving. The novelty of our approach is the introduction of a new pheromone updating policy associated with the use of multiple metrics. In order to evaluate the proposed algorithm simulation campaigns have been conducted and a performance comparison with AODV and ARAMA protocols have been carried out through the NS-2 simulator.