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Hindawi Publishing Corporation
International Journal of Distributed Sensor Networks

Volume 2015, Article ID 642189, 12 pages
http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2015/642189
Research Article
An Energy-Efficient Multipath Routing Algorithm Based on Ant
Colony Optimization for Wireless Sensor Networks
Mengjun Tong,1,2 Yangli Chen,1,2 Fangxiang Chen,1,2
Xiaoping Wu,1,2 and Guozhong Shou1,2
1
School of Information Engineering, Zhejiang A&F University, Linan City 311300, China
Zhejiang Provincial Key Laboratory of Forestry Intelligent Monitoring and Information Technology Research,
Linan City 311300, China
Correspondence should be addressed to Mengjun Tong; tongmj163@163.com

Received 30 October 2014; Revised 8 March 2015; Accepted 16 April 2015
Academic Editor: Shaojie Tang
Copyright 2015 Mengjun Tong et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License,
which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
An energy-efficient ACO-based multipath routing algorithm (EAMR) is proposed for energy-constrained wireless sensor networks.
EAMR is a hybrid multipath algorithm, which is reactive in path discovery and proactive in route maintenance. EAMR has
improvement and innovation in the ant packet structure, pheromone update formula, pheromone update mode, and the mechanism
of multipath. Average energy consumption and congestion of path make pheromone update formula more reasonable. Incremental
pheromone update mode may easily lead to local optimum. The pheromone will be thoroughly updated when a node receives a
backward ant. EAMR makes an innovation in multipath mechanism which becomes more reasonable to multipath between source
node and destination node. Probabilistic routing mechanism is designed to make stream flow into network more balanced. The
simulation results show that the proposed algorithm achieves an improvement in energy efficiency, packet delivery ratio, and endto-end delay.
1. Introduction
Wireless sensor network (WSN) [14] is a new generation
of sensor networks, integrating sensors and wireless network
technology. It has very broad application prospects and
will have a tremendous impact on human life. Wireless
sensor network typically has a large number of nodes,
which are energy limited and cannot be replenished. Saving
and balancing energy consumption of nodes, extending the
network lifetime, is one of the primary design goals of
wireless sensor networks [5]. Data transmission between two
nodes is typically done with conventional multipath routing
algorithms such as AOMDV through one same path all the
time. It will lead to energy exhaustion of some nodes in
the path, causing node failure and network partitioning,
which seriously affects the network lifetime. To achieve better
load balancing throughout the network, packet forwarding
should be based on the current situation of the network.
Routing algorithms based on ant colony optimization (ACO),
which use control packets called ants to inform each node

of the current situation of the network and select next
hop according to the probability formula, are ideal for the
design of load-balancing multipath routing protocols. ACObased routing algorithms are one of the hotspots in the
present study. On the basis of the analysis of various types of
multipath routing protocols, this paper proposes an energyefficient ACO-based multipath routing algorithm (EAMR)
and presents a series of simulations that are conducted
to evaluate the performance of EAMR. ACAD (Automatic
Clustering inspired by Ant Dynamics) is a simple heuristic
algorithm that can automatically detect any number of well
separated clusters, which may be any shape, for example,
convex and/or nonconvex. Inspired by the dynamics of
ants, the algorithm iteratively partitions the dataset based
on its proximity matrix. It is different from the existing
ant colony based clustering techniques. NISR (a Nature
Inspired Scalable Routing protocol for MANETs) protocol
is inspired by bees and ant colonies. Ants and bees help
2
each other to find food sources, update quality of paths to
these food sources continually, and determine pheromone
of paths. PACONET (an improvised ant colony optimization
algorithm for MANETs) uses two kinds of mobile agents,
FANTs and BANTs. FANTs are transmitted in a controlled
broadcast manner to determine new routes. BANTs establish
the path based on the information gathered by FANTs. These
mobile agents leave certain amounts of pheromones at the
time they depart from the node.
2. ACO and ACO-Based Routing Algorithms

Ant colony optimization [6] sources from the optimization
mode of ant foraging. Ant colony system (ACS) is a distributed biological system. By collaboration, the ants can
complete the arduous task that a single individual is incapable
of completing, which is the manifestation of biological swarm
intelligence. When ants leave the residence to find food,
they release the chemicals called pheromones on the path.
The pheromone is volatile. Shorter paths can be completed
quicker and more frequently by the ants and will therefore
be marked with higher pheromone intensity. These paths
will then attract more ants, which will in turn increase the
pheromone level, until there is convergence of the majority of
the ants onto the shortest path. Ultimately, ants can find the
optimal path through the cooperation. Routing in wireless
sensor networks follows the same principle. The node which
needs to send data packets releases the ant-like packets to the
destination node, and the ant-like packets are returned from
the destination node, forming a path to the final destination
node [79].
AntNet [10] is developed according to the principles of
ACO. It is also one of the most successful ACO-based routing
protocols by far. In AntNet, the concepts of the forward ants
and the backward ants are presented. The forward ants choose
the next hop randomly according to the heuristic information
values in the routing tables. And the ID of the node passed
will be appended to the head of the ant. All the forward
ants are converted to the backward ants as soon as they
arrive at the final destination. The backward ant travels back
to the source node through the reverse route and releases
pheromones on each link passed by.
ARA [11] is the earliest on-demand multipath algorithm
that applies ant colony algorithm to ad hoc wireless networks.
Routing discovery relies on forward ants and backward ants.
In routing discovery, ARA broadcasts forward ants which
only carry a unique sequence number. If a node receives a
forward ant that it has never got, it sets up a reverse path and
rebroadcasts the ant to the neighbors. On the contrary, if the
node has received a duplicate ant, it will drop the ant. By this
way, only one path can be formed to the destination. When
a forward ant reaches the destination node, it is converted
to a backward ant and returns following the reverse path. If
an intermediate node receives the backward ant, it creates a
path to the destination node (including next hop, destination,
and pheromone) and then continues transmitting along the
reverse path. Intermediate nodes set up the corresponding
routing tables instead of dropping same backward ants.

The multipath to the destination node can be formed. The
updating of the pheromone relies on data packet and timesetting volatilization. No other types of packets are required;
thus overhead is reduced.
In ARAMA [12], when a node needs to establish or
maintain a path to the destination node, it sends a forward
ant to a neighbor node rather than flooding. Intermediate
nodes IDs are appended to the forward ant. What is more,
path information of the forward ant (such as hops, remaining
energy, bandwidth, and queue length) is also appended or
changed. ARAMA defines the concept of the grade. The value
is calculated by the backward ant and saved in nodes. The
formula of the grade relies on the link information such as
energy. When an intermediate node receives a backward ant,
the pheromone is updated according to the path gradient of
the ant. Pheromone of link which is passed by the backward
ants is increased, and the other link pheromone volatilizes.
The purpose of volatilization is to make nodes forget the
old path quicker. The backward ants are deleted when they
reach the source node. The data transmits along the best path.
When the best path is destroyed, another path can be used to
send data packets immediately.
Di Caro et al. proposed AntHocNet protocol [13].
AntHocNet is an ACO-based multipath hybrid routing protocol. The protocol is reactive in path discovery and proactive
in route maintenance. The routing algorithm has four major
phases: reactive route establishment, random data routing,
proactive path maintenance and exploration, and link failure
handling.
When a node which does not have route information to
the destination node needs to communicate, it broadcasts a
forward ant with all its neighbors for path discovery. Each
nodes routing table has a pheromone table. If the table has
pheromone information to the destination node, the forward
ant chooses the next hop based on pheromone information
in the tables.
The forward ant carries a list which saves the nodes that
it has passed. The forward ant changes into a backward ant
when it arrives at the destination node. Then the backward ant
returns to the source node following the path the forward ant
has passed. During the process of returning, the backward ant
updates the pheromone table and routing table of the nodes
that it passes, including delay, hops, and other information in
the tables.
Data packet begins to be sent after the path has been
built from the source to the destination. When an intermediate node has multiple routes to the destination node, it
stochastically gets the next hop according to the values in
phenomenon table.
The advantage of AntHocNet is that it finds multipath
in path discovery so that it can reduce frequency of path
discovery. And the phase of route maintenance requires a lot
of ants. In addition, each node holds a routing table which
records all the destination nodes that the node can reach. It is
not suitable for large scale networks like AntHocNet.
Rosati et al. [14] proposed the DAR (Distributed Ant
Routing) protocol. DAR is a reactive ACO-based routing
protocol. Unlike proactive routing, reactive routing protocol
need not send the forward ant regularly. When there is

no data to transmit, it can reduce cost and the energy
consumption of nodes. In the DAR protocol, the forward
ants only care about the nodes in cross and choose next hop
by only using the pheromone information. The backward
ants only release a constant value of flavor in the return
link. Nodes stochastically choose the next hop according to
the phenomenon when it sends data packets. In the DAR
protocol, ants save all the passed nodes IDs, so it is suitable
for small networks. The networks convergence is slow and
sometimes also leads to local optimum.
Wang et al. [15] proposed HOPNET protocol which is a
hybrid routing protocol. This protocol divides the network
into a plurality of regions and adopts proactive routing in
regions and reactive routing between regions. Because the
area of every region is not large, the cost of internal proactive
routing is not great. HOPNET has more advantages in large
networks.
In [16], Misra et al. proposed EAAR protocol based on
AntHocNet. Minimum hops count and energy path are taken
into account in pheromone update formula. The study of
Ducatelle et al. [17] indicates that pheromone update formula
is not rational by only considering hops, because fewer hops
may cause the longer distance between nodes, and signal
intensity may be too low. The connection may be loose and
easily leads to network partition. In addition, the farther
distance between the nodes can also cause more energy
consumption during the data transmission [18].
In [18], it proposes a pheromone diffusion mode of the
ant colony algorithm based on routing protocol DBACRA.
The protocol is divided into two types, the actual and virtual
pheromones, which guide the ant packet and data packet
to the path search, when the actual pheromones of the
backward ants are from the destination node, releasing the
link of the pheromone. Data transmission also needs the
actual pheromone to be completed. Virtual pheromones are
spread by the destination node; the whole network forms
the preliminary virtual pheromones by the certain amount of
time. They can guide the forward ants to reach the destination
node. The forward ant can guide the actual and virtual
pheromones to reach the destination node. As a result of
the virtual pheromones being propagated by the diffusion
method, in a mobile or relatively large network, the virtual
pheromones are also very easy to fall into the loop.
Camilo et al. [19] proposed EEABR (energy-efficient
ACO-based routing) protocol. EEABR is an energy-efficient
ACO-based routing algorithm. The forward ants head of the
EEABR protocol can save nodes IDs with the two recent
hops which reduces the length of the forward ant packet,
saves the energy consumption of nodes, and prolongs the
life of wireless sensor networks. But the EEABR uses the
same packet structure of the forward ant and the backward
ant which increases the unnecessary energy cost. EEABR
regularly sends forward ants in proactive routing mode. In
the absence of the data source mode, it reduces the energy
consumption of the whole network. At the time of routing
maintenance, EEABR not only sends the forward ant by the
regular method, but also makes the extra overhead of the
protocol. What is more, more packets are forwarded to the
path, causing the network energy consumption imbalance
3
and reducing the life-span of the network. In the EEABR
protocol, the intermediate nodes discard the ants similar to
the forwarded ants, so it cannot form effective multiple paths.
Some of the multipath routing protocols mentioned
before do not consider the energy of network. If we follow
the traditional ant colony algorithm to find the optimal
path, all traffic will be almost focused on a path and it
will lead the nodes on this path to die soon. So this type
of protocols cannot be directly applied to WSNs. Some
protocols, although taking into account the remaining energy
on each path, do not consider the rate of the energy
consumption. Other protocols do not take into account the
network congestion. Considering factors mentioned before
and combined with ACO, an energy-efficient ACO-based
multipath routing algorithm (EAMR) is proposed. EAMR has
improvement and innovation in pheromone update formulas,
pheromone update mode, and the mechanism of multipath
establishment.
3. Energy-Efficient ACO-Based Multipath

Routing Algorithm
Based on the limited energy characteristic of WSN, an
ACO-based multipath routing algorithm is proposed in this
paper. EAMR uses a new multipath mechanism. In the
pheromone update formulas, EAMR takes into account the
energy consumption rate of path, the remaining minimum
energy of path, the hops from sink, and the congestion
status of path. When a source node which does not have
routing information to the destination node needs to send
data packets, it broadcasts forward ants to the destination
sink node. Sink node generates corresponding backward
ants, which will travel along the forward path back to the
source node. Backward ants release pheromones on the path
when they move back to the source node. In traditional
way of pheromone updating, pheromone is more and more
accumulated on a path so that more and more data packets
will be sent on this path. As a result, network cannot
automatically balance load. Different from the traditional
incremental pheromone update mode, however, pheromone
will be thoroughly updated when a node receives a backward
ant in EAMR. When a node has multiple paths to the
destination node, it will stochastically select one of them in
accordance with pheromone to the sink node. The probabilistic routing strategy leads to data load spreading according to
the estimated quality of the paths. If the probabilities are kept
up-to-date, this will lead to automatic routing load balancing.
3.1. Path Discovery. EAMR is a mixed multipath routing
algorithm. It is reactive in the route establishment phase.
After route establishment, EAMR is a proactive routing
algorithm. When a source node, , needs to communicate
with the destination node, , and it does not have routing
information about , it broadcasts a reactive forward ant, say
(here an ant is representative of a control packet). Due to
the initial broadcasting, each neighbor of receives a replica
of , say (the notation refers to indexing; the
replica of a single broadcast is represented as ). After
(a)
(b)
Figure 1: The paths of forward ant (a) and backward ant (b).
the next hop, the next neighboring node will receive

(, , . . . are integers). As these broadcast ants come from the
same source node and generate at the same moment, we call
them similar ants. Similar ants have the same source node
address and sequence. The task of each ant . . . is to
find a path connecting and . At each node, an ant is either
unicast or broadcast, according to whether or not the current
node has routing information for . If current node does not
have routing information for , it broadcasts a forward ant.
Otherwise, if routing information is available, the forward ant
:
will choose its next hop with the probability
(1)
where
is the pheromone of link (, ) in the routing
will be described
tables whose destination node is .
in detail later in this section. is the set of neighbors on
node in routing tables, through which node can reach the
destination node. 1 is a factor which is used to adjust the
importance of pheromone to forward ants choosing next hop,
which is greater than or equal to 1.
When a node receives the first forward ant, it forwards the
ant and saves some information about the ant in the accesslist (access-list structure in Section 3.4). If the ant received
is not one of the similar ants of the first forward ant, the
node could receive the ant and forward it. As a special case,
if the node is a neighbor of the source node, it only accepts
the forward ants that are directly from the source node and
rejects any other ants. Therefore, when the node receives a
similar ant, it has to carry out the loop detection at first,
that is to say, the current node looks into ants head and
searches the identification of itself. If there is a loop, the node
drops this ant directly; otherwise the similar ant should follow
the multipath mechanism to establish multipath between the
source node and the destination node. Steps are elaborated as
follows.
First, make a judgment for whether the first hop of
received similar ant and the existing similar ant in accesslist is same. First hop is the first node the ant arrived at after
leaving source node. If it has no similar first hop, current node
should compare newly received ants delay new and hops new
with similar ants delay sim and hops sim in access-list. If
new < sim and new < sim , accept the new
forward ant. In this paper, is set to 1.5 and is set to 2.5.
The arguments can be adjusted according to different network
environments.
Second, if it has similar first hop, EAMR makes a

judgment for whether the last hop of received ant and the
existing similar ant in access-list are the same. If it has no
similar last hop, as soon as new < sim and new <
sim , EAMR accepts the new forward ant. In this paper,
is set to 1.5 and is set to 2.5. The arguments can be adjusted
according to different network environments.
Third, if both first hop and last hop of newly received ant
are the same as the similar ant saved in access-list, EAMR
accepts the new forward ant only when new < sim .
Through this method, multiple paths can be obtained. If
a path fails, another path can be used. Multipath contributes
to energy and load balancing of the network. Through this
method, the forward ant can arrive at the destination node.
WSN environment is complex due to network congestion
and delay issues. In order to reduce the unnecessary cost,
some ants that reach the destination node too late will be
dropped, and the destination node does not send backward
ants accordingly. When the destination node receives a
forward ant and has never received its similar ants before,
the destination node starts a waiting timer. Those ants who
arrive after waiting timer timeout will be dropped and do
nothing. Waiting timer timeout interval is calculated by (2).
We can see in Section 3.4 that the structure of forward ants
contains the Src time field, which records the time when ants
leave the source node, so that the end-to-end delay will
be very easy to get. is a parameter which can be adjusted
appropriately according to the network environment:
= .
(2)
During the time interval, as shown in Figure 1, when

the destination node receives a forward ant, it will convert
the ant into the corresponding backward ant, which will go
back to the source node through the route the same as the
forward one did. If an exception occurs with the next hop
of the backward ant, such as change of the location of the
node, then the ant will be killed. When a backward ant from
node moves to node , the pheromone of node needs to be
updated; node should update or create routing information
to the destination node, according to the following rule:
=
,
Min1
4
(ETX2 3 avg
)
(3)
where ETX [20] (the expected transmission count metric)

of a link is the minimum expected pathway which the total
number of data transmissions (including retransmissions)

required to successfully send a data packet to the destination. ETX which incorporates the effects of link loss ratios,
asymmetry in the loss ratios between the two directions
of each link, and interference among the successive links
of a path is based on packet delivery ratios, which finds
high throughput of multihop paths. The ETX of a path is
estimated as the accumulation of ETX values over all links
constituting the path, which minimizes the transmission
cost. Updating of the routing ETX is compared with other
routing, which chooses the value of ETX to be the least as
the best route, sends the information to the routing module,
and is recorded in the routing table. The ETX can decrease
the energy consumed per packet. is the delay from the
forward ant leaving source node to the backward ant arriving
at the current node. avg is the average energy consumption
on a path from the source node to the destination node
and can be obtained from the backward ant packet. Min is
the energy value of the minimum energy node on the path
that backward ant passes. avg shows the energy consumption
conditions on the path. The larger value of avg indicates
that more energy has been consumed on the link and more
data packets have been transmitted on the path. Hence the
nodes on the path should be distributed less load traffic in
future data transmission. Min indicates the energy bottleneck
of a path. Paths that have energy bottleneck should be also
distributed less load traffic in future data transmission. This
helps extend the life of the nodes and the network. Sometimes
a nodes death will lead to the segmentation of the entire
network, especially in the case of mobile nodes, where a
node may move to the junction of two parts of the network
and die early, leading to the segmentation of the network.
ETX value of a route which is the sum of the ETX for
each link is the link count which the successful transmission
(including data retransmission) of a packet required from
current node to the destination node . According to the
feedback mechanism through the MAC layer, if the data gets
ACK response information, it will successfully deliver to the
destination node. Otherwise the source node has to resend
the data packets. When the retransmission reaches a certain
threshold, it will discard the packet and the MAC layer will
inform the upper network layer that the error occurred in
the process of transmitting the data packets. It is a metric
based on link capacity; this parameter can not only consider
the length of the path, but also consider the packet loss rate.
Packets should reach the destination node along the path
with the ETX of a link as small as possible. The fewer the
ETX of the link counts are, the more pheromones will be
released on the link, and packets are more likely to choose
this link. What is more, it will shorten the time delay of the
data transmission. If the next hop chooses the ETX value
which is smaller than itself, so as not to form a loop, is
obtained by current time minus Src time in the backward ant
packet (Src time will be described in Section 3.4). In general,
the path with small transmission delay is better than the big
delay path which may be at the congestion state because of
relatively large load. According to (3), pheromone is released
less in longer delay link. 1 , 2 , 3 , and 4 are coefficients
that can be adjusted appropriately according to the network
environment.
5
3.2. Data Session. Each node establishes the routing information by ants. Once backward ant returns, the data stored
in the buffer can be sent out. The node that needs to
send data packets should choose the next hop from a set
of neighbors with the probabilistic routing strategy. The
probability formula is defined as
(4)
where 2 is a factor which can adjust pheromones on

probabilistic routing selection. The greater the value of 2
is, the more likely it is to choose the link which has more
pheromones as next hop. It can be adjusted appropriately
according to the network environment. In this paper, 2 is an
integer value not smaller than 1. The paths that have more load
transmission tend to have longer delay and less remaining
energy, and through the automatic updates of pheromones,
data packets will automatically be sent to the path which has
more energy and no congestion. Finally, the entire network is
load balanced.
Pheromone evaporation occurs periodically. For every
time period, nodes evaporate the pheromone value automatically. Equation (5) is the pheromone evaporation formula:
= ,
(1 ) ,
,
(5)
where lies between 0 and 0.05.

3.3. Route Maintenance and Link Failures. Each node needs
routing maintenance during the data transmission. EAMR
uses the way to send forward ant regularly for routing
maintenance. When a node begins to send data packets, it
produces the forward ant regularly. The interval of sending
forward ant is based on the speed of the node movement
and network condition. In this paper, interval is set for 5
seconds. But whether to send the forward ant needs to take
into account the pheromones in each link of the routing tables
and the length of access-list. If the maximum pheromone of
all links is less than a threshold and the length of access-list
is less than limit value, forward ants could be sent. It can
guarantee that forward ants are asynchronously sent in the
network. Similarly, when source node receives a backward
ant, it can also decide whether to send forward ant according
to the above method. If the maximum pheromone exceeds
the threshold or the length of access-list is greater than upper
limit, it should reset send timer. In this paper, pheromone
threshold is set to 30% of original value. The length of accesslist upper limit can be set based on network scale and nodes
memory size. Upper limit is set to the 20% of total number of
nodes in the experiment of this paper.
In order to avoid nodes in the same path sending
duplicate forwarding ants, when a node receives a forward
ant, it needs to reset the forward ant send timer. As a result,
the node which is transmitting data between source node
and destination node forwards the ant it received and delays
sending the forward ant which is produced by itself. By this
way, the node can reduce the number of data packets it sends,
thus reduces the cost of network.
Type
Src_address
Seqno
Visitednode
Esum
Src_time
TTL
Figure 2: Packet structure of forward ant.
Type
Visitednode
Src_time
Emin
Eavg
ETX
Figure 3: Packet structure of backward ant.
Forward ants have two ways for sending, unicasting,

and broadcasting, during route maintenance. Unicasting a
forward ant whose next hop is decided by (1) only updates the
pheromone of the existing path. There is 10% probability to
broadcast forward ant. There are two reasons why EAMR has
to send broadcast ants: on the one hand, if a unicast packet
was sent, it only updates the pheromones which already
exists but does not explore new paths (especially under the
condition that the nodes had moved or the energy was
consumed), this may cause the original routing fail to work.
On the other hand, broadcasting ants can explore new paths
and avoid falling into local optimum. When a broadcasting
ant reaches the neighborhood and the neighbor may have no
routing information at the moment, then the neighbor node
will continue to broadcast the ant. It will soon cause the flood
in the entire network and it is costly. So we are limited to the
broadcasting ants. TTL of broadcasting ant is set to 2 (this
value can be changed according to the environment) in this
paper. That is to say, if the ant does not find a new path after
two hops, it will be killed. Because of taking into account the
fact that the new path is near the current path, EAMR uses
this hop restriction mechanism.
The environment of WSN is complex, so the node in the
data transmission process may lose connection with neighbor
and cause link failure. Like many other protocols, EAMR
protocol also adopts the Hello mechanism, sending Hello
message to neighbors regularly. It is easy to find whether
the neighbor is reachable and judge whether the link to this
neighbor has failed. Of course, it is necessary to inform the
neighbor initiatively when the node itself has a fault and
makes neighbor nodes find the link failure in time.
When the node finds a link to a neighbor node that
has fault, the node should delete the neighbors information
from its neighbor table and routing table. Before deleting,
the node should judge whether the removed neighbor is the
only next hop node to the destination. If it is the only next
hop, the node should send link failure notification to other
neighbors. Even though the neighbor node is not the only
next hop to the destination node, the route is the best route
by viewing the pheromones. The node should also send link
failure notification to other neighbors. During the forward
ant transmission, the current node needs to save last hop,
by which the ant sends to current node. If node needs to send
link failure notification, it only sends back to the last hop
without broadcast. It can reduce the cost. The node receiving
the link failure notification processes as the same method.
When a node knows the link failure by sending packet
failure and there is no other path used to send data packets,
the node should start to repair route by sending repairing

ants. The mechanism is similar to AODV and the distinction
is that, in order to reduce the energy consumption, the
repairing ants are not broadcast but sending several repairing
ants according to the number of neighbors. Repairing ants
have maximum hops limit (hop limit is 3 in this paper). The
node starts timer at the time of sending the first repairing
ant. If it does not receive the backward repairing ants at the
end of the timer, it is obvious that there are no paths to the
destination node. As a result, the node has to discard cache
data and send link failure notification to its last hop.
3.4. Packet Structure of EAMR. In the packet structure of
EAMR, the forward ant needs to save all the nodes IDs which
it has visited in Visitednode list. The list acts as a blacklist
when selecting next hop by using probability formula in
neighbor table. That is to say, only the nodes which exist
in neighbor table and do not exist in the Visitednode have
the opportunity to become the next hop. The Visitednode
field increases the packet length of the forward ant but
avoids a loop. The backward ant also followed the nodes in
Visitednode list to return to the source node.
Figure 2 is the packet structure of the forward ant. Type
represents the type of packet. Src address is the source
nodes address which produces the forward ant. Seqno is
the sequence when the source node generates the forward
ant. Every forward ant has a unique sequence number.
The node which receives the forward ant can use flag
Src address, seqno to determine whether it receives a
similar ant. Esum is the sum of energy consumption of the
Visitednode by the ant. Esum is used for pheromone update.
The Src time field records the time when ants leave the source
node. TTL reflects ants life-span in the network. It has two
main functions; first, it can limit the range of ant search;
second, it prevents ants unrestricted in the network circles
from wasting source of network. The Visitednode field is used
to save all the nodes IDs which the forward ant has visited.
Forward ants die out after reaching the destination node,
and those which meet the requirements can be transformed
into a corresponding backward ant. Figure 3 suggests the
packet structure of backward ant. Eavg is average energy consumption in a path from the source node to the destination
node. Esum is divided by the node count of Visitednode to
get the Eavg which is calculated by destination node. Eavg
is used for pheromone update in (3). Emin is energy value
of the minimum energy node on the path that backward ant
passes. Src time is the time when corresponding forward ant
leaves the source node. Visitednode is the path which the
Src_address
Seqno
F_hop
L_hop
Hops
Src_time
TTL
Figure 4: Structure of access-list element table.
Nei_addr
Nei_energy
Hops
Pheromone
Last_update_time
Figure 5: Structure of the neighbor table.
forward ant passes and gets from the forward ant. Backward
ants will go back to the source node through the path the same
as the forward one did and update pheromone according to
formula (3) in link. There are differences between backward
ants and forward ants that the backward ants have no TTL
field, because the backward ants have already carried the
path information Visitednode. If backward ants next hop
is unreachable, the backward ants will be dropped. ETX
of a path is estimated as the accumulation of ETX values
over all links constituting the path. Using ETX for path
selection minimizes the transmission cost and achieves a high
throughput.
If an intermediate node receives a forward ant which
meets the requirement of forwarding, it should save the
ant in access-list. Figure 4 is the element table structure
of access-list. Each element table corresponds to an ant.
The combination of marker Src address, Seqno is used to
determine whether packet is the similar ants. F hop is the
first hop from source node to current node. L hop is the
last hop from source node to current node. The two marks
are mainly used for multipath rule of similar ants. Accesslist does not save the whole Visitednode of the forward ant;
it can save limited resources of sensor nodes. Hops are the
hop count of the source node to the current node. Src times
meaning is similar with that of the structure of forward ants,
which recorded the time when the ant leaves the source node.
Hops and Src time are all used for multipath rule of similar
ants. TTL is the survival time of the element table. When an
element table is timeout, it will be deleted.
Figure 5 is the structure of neighbor table which saves
the neighbors information and pheromone to the destination
node. Nei addr is the address of neighbor. Nei energy is
neighbors current energy. Hops are the distance of destination node to the neighbor node and hop is the unit. Hops
initial value is a constant BIGGEST HOPS when neighbor
table is initialized in this paper. The value is set to 9999 which
means the neighbor cannot be used as the next hop for packet
forwarding. When the node receives a backward ant, the
node updates the value of hops and releases the pheromone
according to formula (3) on the link. Releasing pheromone
means updating the pheromone in Figure 5. Pheromone is
to vaporize at regular intervals. The initial value of the
pheromone is zero. If it finds there are no pheromones in all
the links when a node receives a forward ant, it will broadcast
the forward ant. Last update time is the time that updates the
neighbor node table recently.
Figure 6 is the structure of Hello packet. Src addr is the
address of neighbor that sends Hello packet. Node energy is
Type
Src_addr
Node_energy
Figure 6: Structure of Hello packet.
the current energy of neighbor. Nodes maintain the neighbor

table by sending Hello packet periodically to each other.
Hellos sending interval can be different according to the
different scenes. Hello interval can be smaller if the mobile
node moves fast. In this paper, Hello interval is set to 2
seconds. If it does not receive the neighbor Hello packet more
than 6 seconds, the neighbor information should be removed
from the neighbor table.
3.5. Algorithm of EAMR. See Algorithm 1.
4. Simulation Results and Discussion

In order to test the effect of algorithm applied to WSN,
this experiment made a comparative analysis of EEABR,
EAMR, AOMDV [21], and AntHocNet. NS2 is open source
software and an effective simulation tool; it is the mostly
used simulation for studies on network. In the simulation
environment, all levels can be controlled by the experimenter
in the network structure. Users only need to concentrate
on the basic element in the experiment, for the rest of
the part can be transparent. Result can be achieved by
configuring the environment parameters of the ideal network
environment and can be real-time tracking and record the
key nodes of important information. In order to get real-time
information about network performance evaluation, experiment follows the reproduction of some special circumstances.
It is difficult to do it in the real network. NAM tool in NS2
can demonstrate the operation of the network animation;
users can visually see the network protocol, can understand
all kinds of environments or other factors on the shadow
of the network, and also can be compared to demonstrate
the advantages and disadvantages of various methods. The
trace of NS2 object in the process of communication can be
recorded in the specific event at the trace files; users can use
the data processing tools in NS2 gawk to statistical data trace
files, analysis throughput, time delay, packet loss rate, and
other parameters. The simulation platform is ubuntu 10.04 +
NS2.34. We completed the EAMR source codes which match
to integrate the NS2, including EAMR packet structures
and EAMR agent class, and added the EAMR source codes
Input:
The following blank tables of all nodes are input:
(1) The neighbor table: A table containing all nodes in the neighborhood of a node.
(2) Routing table: A table containing the next hop to transfer packets.
(3) Access-list: A table containing all distinct paths initialized by source node.
Initial pheromone for all nodes = 0.
Output:
Update tables with all the values required to transmit data.
Pheromone value which takes into account the energy consumption rate of path, the remaining minimum energy path,
the hops from sink and the congestion status of path for selected nodes.
Steps:
(1) At its initial stage, nodes should create a connection with their neighbors through broadcasting of Hello packet.
Initialize the access-list of every node as NULL.
(2) a source node which needs to transfer data checks in the routing table:
if the source node exists which there is routing information to destination node:
the forward ant is sent to next step according to the routing information.
else
rebroadcast the forward ant and add the sent forward ant into the access-list.
(3) if an intermediate node is the neighboring one of source node:
accept the forward ant which sends form the node.
if the intermediate node receives a forward ant which the value of TTL is 1:
discard it.
if what the node received is not a similar ant:
add the ant into the access-list.
if the ant exists which there is routing information to destination node:
choose the next step according to the formula (1).
else
broadcast a forward ant.
else
if the ant which creates a loop:
discard it.
else
follow the multipath mechanism in Section 3.1.
(4) if the destination node received forward ant for the first time:
discard it, create the backward ant which will go back to the source node through the route as same as the
forward one did and the destination node starts a wait timer.
if the ants arrive within the time:
change into backward ants and be back.
else
discard them.
(5) if the intermediate nodes receive a backward ant:
delete the comparative ant information which it saved in access-list.
if the intermediate node is not the neighboring one of destination node:
calculate the value of pheromone based on formula (3) and release it on link.
else
send packet to the destination node and neednt to release pheromone.
(6) When the source node receives the first backward ant, the pheromone should be released on link right away. And also
the routing table to destination node should be created. Whats more, the source deletes the forward ant information it saved in
access-list. Meanwhile, Data transmission is initiated with each packet. the data saved in cache is sent out. The data packet will
be chosen next hop based on formula (4). If the nodes are the neighboring ones of destination node, its unnecessary to choose
by formula, it could send packets to the destination node directly.
(7) On link failure, Step (1) is repeated from the node that hast route to send data packet.
Algorithm 1: EAMR algorithm.
into the NS2 simulation software. In accordance with the

AntHocNet protocol functions, we also realized this protocol
for NS2 to make a comparison with EAMR performance.
4.1. Simulation Scene and Factor Setting. The mobile scene
file is created by the CMU tool set, sink node on the central
location of network. The factor setting of mobile scene is

shown in Table 1. CBR is selected to be the scenario of Data
flow, which is created by the CMU tool cbrgen.tcl. The factor
setting of data stream is shown in Table 2.
In order to facilitate study of the protocol improvement
in energy consumption, in this paper, the first-order ratio
9
70
Table 1: Factor setting of mobile scene.

Value
100
1500 m 1500 m
250 m
10, 20, 30, 40, 50 m/s
0s
100 s
Table 2: Factor setting of data stream.

Factor
Bandwidth
Type
Number of CBR sources
Packet sending rate
Data packet size
Value
2 Mbps
CBR
20
10 packets/s (40 Kbps)
512 byte
Value
Type of channel
MAC type
Network interface type
Interface queue model
Transmission of radio
Energy model
Routing protocol
Antenna type
Node initial energy
Sink node energy
Length of the network interface
queue
Channel/wireless channel
Mac/802 11
Phy/WirelessPhy
Queue/drop tail/Pri queue
Propagation/two-ray ground
Energy model
AOMDV, EEABR, EAMR, and
AntHocNet
Antenna/omniantenna
2J
100 J
50
Table 4: Factor setting of EAMR.

Factor
1
1
2
3
4
2
50
40
30
20
10
20
Value
1
2
1
1
1
1
1
10
0.05
model [22] is selected for the energy transfer model. The

factor setting of sensor nodes is shown in Table 3. The factor
setting of EAMR algorithm is shown in Table 4.
4.2. Performance Analysis. The following performance metrics were used for the sake of comparison of our proposed
30
40
50
Node speed (m/s)

AOMDV
EEABR
Table 3: Factor setting of sensor nodes.

Factor
60
Packet delivery ratio
Factor
Nodes number of network
Range of movement
Node communication range
Node moving speed
Maximum pause time
Simulation time
AntHocNet
EAMR
Figure 7: Packet delivery ratio.
protocol, EAMR, with the benchmark protocols discussed

earlier: delivery ratio, delay, routing overhead, and energy
efficiency. Several simulation experiments were performed.
Some of the key results obtained are reported below.
The relationship between the packet delivery ratio of
four kinds of protocol and maximum movement velocity
of nodes is shown in Figure 7. Besides AOMDV, the other
three protocols for data transmission use the mechanism of
multipath probabilistic routing, and the delivery ratio of the
three protocols is higher than AOMDV. EEABR performs
better than AOMDV, which is designed for the packet
delivery ratio. As we introduce mobility in the environment,
the performance of these protocols decreases substantially.
AntHocNet uses the mechanism of multipath probabilistic
routing, but the packets will be more likely to send to the
link which has more pheromones. With data packets sent,
pheromones will be increased on the link and then a good
path will come to many load streams. Thus, it will cause local
link busy and increase packet loss probability. So AntHocNet
is not as good as the EAMR in the slowly moving scene.
EAMR uses a better multipath mechanism; pheromone will
adjust with current energy and load condition of the path in
time, and the data will be more balanced injected into each
path of the network. It leads to automatic load balance in
network at last. It will be more reasonable for EAMR when
the data flow is busy and node movement speed is fast. In
addition, the mechanism of link failure recovery of the EAMR
is more reasonable. As a result, EAMR outperforms the other
three protocols when the routing problems arise. In the
moving scene, EAMR protocol shows a better performance
in packet delivery than the other three protocols.
Figure 8 shows the relationship between the average
delays on end-to-end with nodes maximum moving speed
10

0.8
25
0.7
20
Router consumption
End-to-end delay (s)
0.6
0.5
0.4
15
0.3
10
0.2
0.1
10
20
AOMDV
EEABR
30
Node speed (m/s)
40
50
AntHocNet
EAMR
Figure 8: End-to-end average delay.
in four protocols. Obviously, in the aspect of average delay,

EEABR, AntHocNet, and EAMR are much better than
AOMDV. AntHocNet is more likely to send data packets
to delay link of the minimum. AntHocNet has better final
results compared to the other two protocols when packet
sending rate is slow. When the node moves faster, EAMR
presents the better results. On the one hand, the multipath
mechanism of EAMR has completed more paths to the
destination node than the other two protocols. Pheromone in
each link will adjust with current energy and load condition
in time, resulting in load balancing. On the other hand, the
EAMR will use a mechanism of link failure recovery. When
the routing problems arise, it can quickly resume routing and
reduce the packet sending blindly and reduce the time delay
correspondingly. When a node moves faster, unreachable
possibilities of the next hop will increase, and the data packets
dropout and routing reconstructs will be increased. In this
case, the delay of all the four protocols has tendency to
increase.
ACO-based routing protocols show a good performance
in terms of delivery ratio and delay, but such a good
performance is increased overhead for the price. In order to
adapt to the constant moving and location changing of nodes,
EAMR sends the forward ant regularly in route maintenance,
through the backward ant update pheromone on paths. What
can be seen from the preceding simulation results is that
EAMR improves data delivery ratio and reduces the transmission delay, but the regular ant transmission also increases
routing overhead. Both AntHocNet and EEABR also regularly send ant package in route maintenance. In many aspects,
the routing overhead of EAMR is less than AntHocNet.
These aspects include the method of forward ant send
in route maintenance, multipath mechanism, pheromone
20
10
AOMDV
EEABR
30
Node speed (m/s)
40
50
AntHocNet
EAMR
Figure 9: Routing overhead.
update mechanism based on energy, and improved link

maintenance mechanism. As Figure 9 shows, the routing
overhead of AOMDV outperforms other protocols.
As Figure 10 shows, the definition of average energy
consumption is that the average energy is consumed when
the final destination node accepts a packet. The smaller the
average energy is consumed, the higher the energy efficiency
of the network will be. EEABR takes into account the various
factors such as the power consumed in transmitting a packet.
EEABR, being a multipath energy-aware routing protocol,
shows the better performance compared to the past ACObased existing protocols. The multipath mechanism and the
mechanism of link failure recovery of EAMR show the better
performance followed by AntHocNet. What is more, EAMR
route maintenance mechanism also makes EAMR send less
forward ants, which reduces the average energy consumption.
The average energy consumption of network is minimal in
EAMR. As nodes move faster, the data packets drop and
routing request also has sharp increase. It is clear that in the
cases with high mobility the results show a higher variation,
which decreases with less mobility.
5. Conclusions
In this paper, we studied the existing ACO-based routing
protocols and proposed EAMR. In the EAMR, the ant packet
structure, pheromone update formulas, pheromone update
mode, and the mechanism of multipath established are all
improved.
In the pheromone update formulas, EAMR takes into
account the energy consumption rate of path, the remaining minimum energy path, the hops to the sink, and the
congestion of path. Different from traditional incremental
11
References
0.8
0.75
Energy efficiency
0.7
0.65
0.6
0.55
0.5
0.45
10
20
AOMDV
EEABR
30
Node speed (m/s)
40
50
AntHocNet
EAMR
Figure 10: Average energy consumption of network.
pheromone update mode, the pheromone will be thoroughly

updated when the node receives a backward ant. With a
new multipath mechanism, EAMR can be more reasonable
to establish multiple paths between the source node and the
final destination node. Probabilistic routing mechanism is
designed to make data flow into network more balanced.
In particular, we can make conclusions from the performance of EAMR, EEABR, AOMDV, and AntHocNet. From
the simulation results, it is clear that EAMR achieves an
improvement in energy efficiency, packets delivery ratio, and
end-to-end delay.
Conflict of Interests
The authors declare that there is no conflict of interests
regarding the publication of this paper.
Acknowledgments
This work is supported in part by NSFC, National Basic
Research Program of China under Grant no. 61174023,
Zhejiang Provincial Key Laboratory of Forestry Intelligent
Monitoring and Information Technology Research, and Zhejiang A&F University research program foundation talent to
start Project no. 2014FR015. It is also supported by funds
from the preresearch project of the Research Center for Smart
Agriculture and Forestry, Zhejiang A&F University, which
starts Project no. 2013ZHNL02. Zhejiang Provincial Science
Technology Plan Projects Key Science Technology Specific
Project under Grant no. 2012C13011-1.
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which use control packets called ants to inform each node

2. ACO and ACO-Based Routing Algorithms

International Journal of Distributed Sensor Networks

International Journal of Distributed Sensor Networks

3. Energy-Efficient ACO-Based Multipath

International Journal of Distributed Sensor Networks

the next hop, the next neighboring node will receive

Second, if it has similar first hop, EAMR makes a

During the time interval, as shown in Figure 1, when

where ETX [20] (the expected transmission count metric)

International Journal of Distributed Sensor Networks

where 2 is a factor which can adjust pheromones on

where lies between 0 and 0.05.

International Journal of Distributed Sensor Networks

Figure 2: Packet structure of forward ant.

Figure 3: Packet structure of backward ant.

Forward ants have two ways for sending, unicasting,

the node should start to repair route by sending repairing

International Journal of Distributed Sensor Networks

Figure 4: Structure of access-list element table.

Figure 5: Structure of the neighbor table.

Figure 6: Structure of Hello packet.

the current energy of neighbor. Nodes maintain the neighbor

4. Simulation Results and Discussion

International Journal of Distributed Sensor Networks

into the NS2 simulation software. In accordance with the

location of network. The factor setting of mobile scene is

International Journal of Distributed Sensor Networks

Table 1: Factor setting of mobile scene.

Table 2: Factor setting of data stream.

Table 4: Factor setting of EAMR.

model [22] is selected for the energy transfer model. The

Node speed (m/s)

Table 3: Factor setting of sensor nodes.

Packet delivery ratio

Figure 7: Packet delivery ratio.

protocol, EAMR, with the benchmark protocols discussed

International Journal of Distributed Sensor Networks

End-to-end delay (s)

Figure 8: End-to-end average delay.

in four protocols. Obviously, in the aspect of average delay,

Figure 9: Routing overhead.

update mechanism based on energy, and improved link

International Journal of Distributed Sensor Networks

Figure 10: Average energy consumption of network.

pheromone update mode, the pheromone will be thoroughly

[1] J. Li and H. Gao, Survey on senor network research, Journal

International Journal of Distributed Sensor Networks

Hindawi Publishing Corporation

Hindawi Publishing Corporation

Hindawi Publishing Corporation

Submit your manuscripts at

Hindawi Publishing Corporation

Hindawi Publishing Corporation

Hindawi Publishing Corporation

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Acoustics and Vibration

Hindawi Publishing Corporation

Active and Passive

Shock and Vibration