Ant Colony Based Mechanism for Increasing Life Time of Critical Nodes

Abstract

MANET nodes act as a host as well as a router which increases the significance of every node for their participation in communication. Loss of any node in the network results in failure of links connected to the node which brings the importance of increased lifespan of a node. Some nodes during frequent transaction at critical network scenario consume more energy and become ill with critical energy level. Special attention towards these nodes can improve the lifespan of the node. In this paper an ant colony-based pheromone deposition mechanism was proposed to extend the lifetime of ill nodes. Pheromone deposited for the neighbor in the pheromone table helps in identifying frequently communicated neighbor. The proposed algorithm identifies the ill node and requests its frequently communicated neighbor for a tie up. The neighbor shares the workload of the ill node with mutual agreement. This method also improves the performance of a network by limiting pheromone deposition practice for low weighted nodes with low energy and high density (packet in queue). The proposed method increases lifespan of ill nodes and thereby increases the lifetime of entire network. The proposed work was also compared with existing protocol and the results have proved that the proposed mechanism has increased lifetime and reduced energy consumption of the entire network.