A Comprehensive Review of Ant Colony Optimization (ACO) based Energy-Efficient Routing Protocols for Wireless Sensor Networks

Abstract

Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) have always been a hot area of researchers for finding more solutions towards making WSN network more energy efficient and reliable. Energy efficient routing is always a key challenging task to enhance the network lifetime and balance energy among the sensor nodes. Various solutions have been proposed in terms of energy efficient routing via protocol development, various techniques have also been incorporated like Genetic Algorithm, Swarm Intelligence etc. The main aim of this research paper to study all the routing protocols which are energy efficient and are based on Ant Colony Optimization (ACO). This paper also highlights the pros and cons of each of routing protocol which has been developed on lines of Energy Efficiency and has also been compared among one another to find which protocol outwits one another. Further, we conclude that Swarm Intelligence being a novel and bio-inspired field has contributed as well as contributing much in the area of improving routing issues of sensor networks.