Improving Data Delivery in Unreliable Networks Using Network Coding and Ant-Colony Optimization

Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) comprise interconnected wireless nodes that receive and transmit data across applications and platforms. This paper addressed the problem of link failures in WSNs that potentially could lead to the loss of data packets while still in transit. This was achieved through the use of network coding which is known to address capacity bottleneck problems in WSNs. In particular, a technique called Ant Agent-Assisted Network Coding (AAANC) is proposed that employs the ant colony optimization technique in addition to network coding operations. The main aim of AAANC is to facilitate the successful delivery and decoding of coded data packets in the presence of link failures. AAANC employs a packet route selection technique that is inspired by the social behavior of natural ants. For natural ants, a strong pheromone trail along a path indicates a promising route to a food source, and this is analogous to a reliable communication link for routing data packets in this paper. Through simulations, AAANC was compared to diagonal pseudorandom network coding (DNC) and triangular pseudorandom network coding (TNC), and it proved to have a superior performance in terms of packet delivery ratio and number of decoded packets. Significant performance gain can be achieved if AAANC algorithm is made to dynamically adapt the ant colony and network coding parameters in response to traffic changes.