Abstract

Availability of cheap positioning instruments makes it possible for routing algorithms to use the advantage of knowing the positions of nodes in a mobile ad hoc network. Position based routing algorithms may fail to find a route from a source to a destination or the path that they find may be longer than the shortest path if the network contains nodes with irregular transmission ranges. On the other hand, routing algorithms which are based on ant colony optimization (ACO) find routing paths that are close in length to the shortest paths. The drawback of these algorithms is the large number of messages that needs to be sent or the long delay before the routes are established. In this thesis we propose two position based ACO routing algorithms for mobile ad hoc networks, POSANT and HYBNET. POSANT combines the idea of ant colony optimization with information about the position of nodes. HYBNET is a hybrid routing algorithm for mobile ad hoc networks which adapts itself to different network topologies. Our simulations show in most cases, POSANT and HYBNET perform better than the other routing algorithms.