Jiang Ailian, Zheng Lihong
Department of Computer Science, Taiyuan University of Technology, Taiyuan 030600, China.
School of Computing and Maths, Charles Sturt University, Wagga Wagga, NSW 2678, Australia.
Sensors (Basel). 2018 Mar 29;18(4):1020. doi: 10.3390/s18041020.
Low cost, high reliability and easy maintenance are key criteria in the design of routing protocols for wireless sensor networks (WSNs). This paper investigates the existing ant colony optimization (ACO)-based WSN routing algorithms and the minimum hop count WSN routing algorithms by reviewing their strengths and weaknesses. We also consider the critical factors of WSNs, such as energy constraint of sensor nodes, network load balancing and dynamic network topology. Then we propose a hybrid routing algorithm that integrates ACO and a minimum hop count scheme. The proposed algorithm is able to find the optimal routing path with minimal total energy consumption and balanced energy consumption on each node. The algorithm has unique superiority in terms of searching for the optimal path, balancing the network load and the network topology maintenance. The WSN model and the proposed algorithm have been implemented using C++. Extensive simulation experimental results have shown that our algorithm outperforms several other WSN routing algorithms on such aspects that include the rate of convergence, the success rate in searching for global optimal solution, and the network lifetime.
低成本、高可靠性和易于维护是无线传感器网络（WSN）路由协议设计的关键标准。本文通过回顾基于蚁群优化（ACO）的WSN路由算法和最小跳数WSN路由算法的优缺点，对它们进行了研究。我们还考虑了WSN的关键因素，如传感器节点的能量约束、网络负载平衡和动态网络拓扑。然后，我们提出了一种将ACO和最小跳数方案相结合的混合路由算法。该算法能够找到总能耗最小且各节点能耗均衡的最优路由路径。该算法在寻找最优路径、平衡网络负载和维护网络拓扑方面具有独特的优势。WSN模型和所提出的算法已使用C++实现。大量的仿真实验结果表明，我们的算法在收敛速度、寻找全局最优解的成功率和网络寿命等方面优于其他几种WSN路由算法。
