International Journal of Computer Trends and Technology (IJCTT) - volume4 Issue5May 2013

ISSN: 2231-2803 http://www.ijcttjournal.org Page 1214

An Efficient Unicast Routing Protocol for AdHoc Wireless
Sensor Networks
1) B. Chinmayi Roopa 2) K.Raghava Rao 3) N.V.K.Ramesh
M.Tech, Project Scholar Professor in CSE Assoc. Professor
Dept of ECM, K L University, Guntur

ABSTRACT
Adhoc Wireless Sensor Networks are dynamic in their topology, so the routing packets become difficult due to
which the problems become more. One of the problems is route recovery. The route recovery algorithm is
proposed for Ad hoc wireless sensor networks. In this when a source need to find a path to destination it sends
the packet in a unicast way and the source selects the nodes which is nearer to it and forwards the data while
forwarding data to the nodes sometimes the path may not be available to the destination or the path may be
infected with the congestion so it can be solved with proposed route recovery algorithm. This can be achieved
by using Omni directional antenna. So that we can recover the path thus providing the efficiency in routing in
adhoc wireless sensor networks.
Keywords: Ants, Ant Colony, Pheromone, Stigmergy, forward Ant
1. INTRODUCTION
Wireless sensor networks is the network in which it
routes the data packets from source to destination
.The sending of packets is done in many ways by
using different routing protocols. The unicast and
multicast methods are used mostly. Unicast means
from point to point, in this method the source
forwards the data to its near node and that node
forwards to other node. Data transfer is done in a
single path in unicast and where as in multicast the
sending of data from source to destination in a
multipath way which means the packets coming
from source takes different paths and reaches the
destination through intermediate nodes.
Since wireless sensor networks have an adhoc
topology, the network topology will be changing in
an ever changing manner and also the infrastructure
is not fixed so that routing of packets will become
difficult. For this reason many routing protocols
were discoverd, but still due to the constraints
present in forwarding nodes and the other factors,
efficient routing is difficult in adhoc wireless
sensor networks.The existing major routing
protocols have overcoming like high energy
consumption and high control overhead. So, we
need to move to a new method based on the ants
model.
The routing protocol based on ants comes under the
phenomenon of swarm intelligence. It is a
technique which talks about the behaviour of
centralised and self mechanisms. Ant colony is one
of the popular techniques in the swarm intelligence.
The behaviour of ants in the routing protocol is
based on the chemical substance called
pheromone based on that substance the ants
chose the shortest path and travel in that direction.
The sensing of environment signals is defined as
the stigmergy. Based on this principle the
International Journal of Computer Trends and Technology (IJCTT) - volume4 Issue5May 2013
ISSN: 2231-2803 http://www.ijcttjournal.org Page 1215

behaviour of ants can be analysed. Ants are
simple autonomous agent which moves in a colony
for searching food from source to destination. The
principle of stigmergy has attracted the scientists
due its flexibility and robust in nature. During the
transmission of information from source to
destination no need of any extra messages to send
to the destination, the destination will itself change
according to the behaviour of networks. From this
we can say that the ant based protocol is good for
the adhoc topology networks. The below algorithm
explains about the improving of efficiency in the
networks and to deliver the ants in time to avoid
time out.
2. RELATED WORK
The new method ant colony as introduced above
the algorithm mainly deals with the ants. We may
think that ants are the simple insects but these
insects have certain behaviour which has attracted
many researchers due to the communication system
that they follow for transmitting messages. Since
ants are blind, but still they follow a system which
is very amusing and a self centralised system based
on the pheromone trails which they leave while
travelling. Based on this a very famous algorithm
has been proposed called Ant Colony optimization
algorithm which is the back bone of the existing
algorithms [1]. After that many number of
algorithms have come into existence like the Ant
based Routing algorithm which is otherwise called
as ABC [2].It depends mainly on the pheromone
table which will contain information for every
possible destination in the network. The technique
of updating is very simple whenever an ant arrives
at a node, the corresponding node will be increased
and updated in the table. Similarly in this context
we have ARA which is called as Ant based colony
routing algorithm [3]. It sets up the path in an on-
demand way. It uses the mechanism of route
discovery phase, route maintenance and its failure
handling, so that it works better than the other
algorithms [3].The third algorithm we come across
in this series of algorithms is probabilistic emergent
routing algorithm (PERA) [2]. The hello messages
are sent to all the neighbours who will discover and
they will be updated only when a backward ant
comes from the destination.
The fourth algorithm which comes in this series is
the AntHocNet: an ant based hybrid routing
algorithm [4]. It uses proactive and reactive agents..
It can follow the strategy of repairing its own path
in the case of failure of the link between the nodes
and sends a message to all its neighbours until a
new path can be established and uses flooding
mechanism.The Ant net is a group of ants which
are combination of unsophisticated Ones which
cannot perform well when they are not in a group
[5]. and when a group is formed they can perform
very well. It basically uses the mechanism of
random way in selecting a neighbour [7].It uses
two types of queues which are low priority queue
and high priority queue. The data packets and the
forward agents use the low priority queue and the
backward agent uses the high priority queue.The
Ant algorithms basically are used for routing
purposes, and with the help of these we can find the
shortest path and con obtain a network which will
consume less power.
In that series another algorithm has been introduced
which compares itself with the existing major
routing protocols and the algorithm is named as the
random ant like unicast routing protocols (RAUR)
for ad hoc wireless sensor networks [6]. In which
the selection of node to which the data has to be
sent is decided before the selection of next hop. It
uses three control packets like request packets and
reply packets and error packets and it uses the
principle of randomness.Random way model [7]
uses a mobility model by which the packets move
International Journal of Computer Trends and Technology (IJCTT) - volume4 Issue5May 2013
ISSN: 2231-2803 http://www.ijcttjournal.org Page 1216

from source to destination in a random manner in
terms of its speed

3. COMPARISON OF ANT
ALGORITHMS
Comparison is a phenomenon by which we
can compare the properties of different issues. On
comparing the above algorithms, we arrive at
different points. Coming to the ant based routing
algorithm was developed for wired networks [2].It
updates the pheromone table while moving from
moving from source to destination and in the Ant
net it updates the table only
While moving forward. RAUR does not use any
hello packets instead it use request packets to
forward the data packets while in PERA uses the
hello messages to broadcast the data. ARA is quite
similar to PERA. RAUR keep the unicast way
which is similar to the basic characteristics of the
ACO algorithm.
In all the above algorithms instead of packets ants
are used so there will be no extra messages
required and they use only the local information
and also depending the type of algorithm the
characteristics of the ant are varied and also the
mechanism of finding shortest path are varied due
to which the scalability and flexibility of the
mechanism increases and the ageing of ants is done
in most cases which reduces the lifetime of the ants
and these ants can reduce the power consumption.

(A)Real ants follow a path between nest and food
source.
(B) An obstacle appears on the path: Ants choose
whether to turn left or right with equal probability.
(C) Pheromone is deposited more quickly on the
shorter path.
(D) All ants have chosen the shorter path

3.1ROUTERECOVERY ALGORITHM
Basically this algorithm uses three packets i.e., the
request packet, the error packet, reply packet and
sent the ants in a unicast way. In order to move
from source to destination we have to find a path,
the path can be found by the following procedure.
Source discovers a node so that the data can be
forwarded to the intermediate node and by
calculating the distance through which we can
reach the destination in a less amount of time we
reach to the destination by using that path. During
the above mechanism if a node fails somewhere in
the middle then the recovery has to be done
otherwise there will be problems in the network. So
the route recovery mechanism plays an important
role and it also improves the efficiency of the
network. For the route recovery process we can use
omnidirectional antennas so that it spreads in all
ways equally and whenever a route has been failed
we can move to other route immediately so that
there will not be any delay in the transmission from
source to destination. Increase in the delay may
lead to other problems in the network.
The request packets when send to other nodes if
they will not find a path they move to other path so
that there will not be any time out of the ants i.e.,
nothing but ageing of the ants. Ageing of ants
means the lifetime of ants in the network. If the life
time of ants is more the delivery of packets will be
done ghastly. If the life time of packets is less the
ants may die in the middle which leads to unwanted
traffic in the network causes the congestion
problems so the lifetime of the packet should be
increased.
The ant based algorithms are used to find the
shortest path between the source and destination so
that the cost of the networks will be less. These
International Journal of Computer Trends and Technology (IJCTT) - volume4 Issue5May 2013
ISSN: 2231-2803 http://www.ijcttjournal.org Page 1217

social insects help to solve different problems and
produce a efficient results which can improve the
efficiency of the network and also increase the life
time.
3.2 Algorithm Description
The pseudo code of the algorithm explains how to
initialize the path and send the path through the
logical router and forward the ant.In the structure
of backward ant it uses the time stamp and sends
the backward ant through the logical router.
Structure of Forward Ant
typedef struct
{
/* the packet type 0..3 (2 bits) */
uint8_t pktType : 2;
/* we may request an optional backward ant */
uint8_t requestBackwardAnt : 1;
/* a flag if the backward ant has already been sent
*/
uint8_t backwardAntSent : 1;
/* unused */
Uint8_t unused : 4;
NodeAddress srcAddr;
LOG_RT_ADDR destRtAddr;
Uint16_t seqNumber,ttl;
/* the coordinates of the source node, required to
determine source zone */
float srcpos_x, y;
/* the first logical router we relayed to, required for
backward ant */
LOG_RT_ADDR firstLogRtId;
/* the last logical router that was passed, required
for pheromone update */
LOG_RT_ADDR lastLogRtId;
float lastLogRtPos_x ,y;
/* timestamp when the packet was initiated */
clocktype srcSentTimestamp;
} MABR_FWD_ANT_Packet;
Structure of Backward Ant
typedef struct
{
/* the packet type 0..3 (2 bits) */
uint8_t pktType : 2;
/* flag that no convenient logical router zone was
available for
* relay and the packet was sent only using GPSR */
uint8_t noRelayZoneAvailable : 1;
/* unused */
uint8_t unused : 5;
NodeAddress srcAddr;
NodeAddress destAddr;
Uint16_t seqNumber, ttl;
Float srcpos_x , y;
Float destpos_x, y;
LOG_RT_ADDR lastLogRtId;
float lastLogRtPos_x;
/* timestamp when the packet was initiated*/
Clocktype srcSentTimestamp;
Clocktype fwdAntDelay;
uint16_t fwdAntHopCount;
LOG_RT_ADDR fwdAntFirstRelay;
} MABR_BWD_ANT_Packet;
4. CONCLUSION
We attempted experiment to improve the efficiency
of the sensor network by using omnidirectional
antenna with our route recover algorithm. We
found improved results with this proposed
approach over earlier approach which improved the
efficiency of the network and for the future
considerations we consider the improvements over
the random networks and also over the networks
having different topologies.
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ISSN: 2231-2803 http://www.ijcttjournal.org Page 1218

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