Network Structure-Aware Ant-Based Routing in Large-Scale Wireless Sensor Networks

Abstract

Routing algorithms for large-scale sensor networks should be capable of finding energy efficient paths to prolong the lifetime of the networks in a decentralized manner. With this respect, Ant System has several proper characteristics for routing algorithm in large-scale wireless sensor networks. First, its distributed mechanism enables routing algorithm to find a solution with only local information and be robust for uncertainties in wireless sensor networks. Second, the framework of the Ant System is proper to solve dynamic problems such as routing problem. Transition probability in Ant System can be used to estimate how good a given routing path is. Capturing these features, this work proposes two Ant Systems based routing algorithms, which are AS-RWSNs (Ant System for Routing in Wireless Sensor Networks) and SAAS-RWSN (Structure-Aware AS-RWSN). The AS-RWSN applies the original Ant System to routing algorithm for wireless sensor network and SAAS-RSN upgrades AS-RWSN with considering properties of network structure such as degree of node. In SAAS-RSN, sensors with high node degree have high data traffic since they have more routing paths. Consequently, SAAS-RSN achieves an energy balance over sensor network through this routing scheme. We demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed algorithms by comparing three existing routing algorithms.