EAQR: An energy-efficient ACO based QoS routing algorithm in "wireless sensor networks "

Considering the features of non-uniformly distributed traffic load and possibly existing of the traffics requiring different performance in wireless sensor networks, this paper proposes EAQR, a novel routing protocol based on an improved Ant colony optimization (ACO) algorithm. The algorithm concentrates on the provision of QoS and balanced energy-consumption over the whole network. With the introduction of some metrics like the minimum path energy and path hop count and by means of advancing pheromone trail model of the ant colony system, the algorithm innovatively provides two heuristic ways respectively based on the length and the comfort of path to meet the different performance requirements of real time and common traffics. Simulation experiments show that EAQR has the following advantages comparing with existing algorithm: (1) differentiates dissemination service for Real time (RT) and Best effort (BE) traffic; (2) achieves lower delay for RT traffic; (3) exhibits substantially longer network lifetime; (4) behaves more scalable and robust.