An ant system-based routing algorithm for wireless sensor networks

In this paper, a general combinatorial Ant System-based distributed algorithm modeled like a dynamic optimization problem is presented. In the proposed algorithm, the solution space of the dynamic combinatorial optimization problem is mapped into the space where the ants will walk, and the transition probability and the pheromone update formula of the ant system are defined according to the objective function of the communication problem. We test and compare the performance of our routing algorithm against well-known routing schemes for wireless sensor networks and via simulations show that it consumes less energy per packet and extends the lifetime of the network.