Ant colony optimization for energy-efficient broadcasting in ad-hoc networks

Abstract

In wireless ad-hoc networks, nodes are generally equipped with batteries, making energy a scarce resource. Therefore, power consumption of network operations is critical and subject to optimization. One of the fundamental problems in ad-hoc networks is broadcasting. In this work we consider the so-called minimum energy broadcast (MEB) problem, which can be stated as a combinatorial optimization problem. We develop an ant colony optimization algorithm for two scenarios: networks in which nodes are equipped with omni-directional, respectively directional, antennas. The results show that our algorithm consistently outperforms other methods for this problem. © 2008 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.