Hybridization of enhanced ant colony system and Tabu search algorithm for packet routing in wireless sensor network

In Wireless Sensor Network (WSN), high transmission time occurs when search agent focuses on the same sensor nodes, while local optima problem happens when agent gets trapped in a blind alley during searching. Swarm intelligence algorithms have been applied in solving these problems including the Ant Colony System (ACS)
which is one of the ant colony optimization variants. However, ACS suffers from local optima and stagnation problems in medium and large sized environments due to an ineffective exploration mechanism. This research proposes a hybridization of Enhanced ACS and Tabu Search (EACS(TS)) algorithm for packet routing in WSN. The EACS(TS) selects sensor nodes with high pheromone values which are calculated based on the residual energy and current pheromone value of each sensor node. Local optima is prevented by marking the node that has no potential neighbour
node as a Tabu node and storing it in the Tabu list. Local pheromone update is performed to encourage exploration to other potential sensor nodes while global pheromone update is applied to encourage the exploitation of optimal sensor nodes. Experiments were performed in a simulated WSN environment supported by a
Routing Modelling Application Simulation Environment (RMASE) framework to evaluate the performance of EACS(TS). A total of 6 datasets were deployed to evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm. Results showed that EACS(TS) outperformed in terms of success rate, packet loss, latency, and energy efficiency
when compared with single swarm intelligence routing algorithms which are Energy-Efficient Ant-Based Routing (EEABR), BeeSensor and Termite-hill. Better performances were also achieved for success rate, throughput, and latency when compared to other hybrid routing algorithms such as Fish Swarm Ant Colony
Optimization (FSACO), Cuckoo Search-based Clustering Algorithm (ICSCA), and BeeSensor-C. The outcome of this research contributes an optimized routing algorithm for WSN. This will lead to a better quality of service and minimum energy utilization.