An Ant-Colony Routing Algorithm for Wireless Sensor Network

According to real-time and limited energy of the wireless sensor network (WSN), this paper proposed an ant-colony algorithm (ACO) for optimal routing. The algorithm limited the search space to next node based on search angle and designed directional pheromones to guide ants to the destination node. Using negative feedback mechanism encouraged later ants to choose the optimal path. When ants are timeout with limited life cycle, go back along the way and reduce the pheromone. Probability-transfer function contained the factors of distance, energy, pheromones and search angle. Compared with other ACOs, the results show that it can balance the energy consumption and improve the routing in aspects of energy, dead nodes, short path and time delay.