Abstract:

Though the basic ant colony algorithm can find out the optimum solution when solving optimal path problems,it is easy to fall into a local optimal solution，and meanwhile the convergence time is too long.Considering the lack of applications of the basic ant colony algorithm in wireless sensor network routing，we propose an improved ant colony algorithm，and apply it to the wireless sensor network routing. This algorithm not only adds the dynamic penalty function and the weighting factors to the state transition probability formula，but also combines the local pheromone update and the global pheromone update to update the path information.We fully take into account of the transmission distance from nodes to nodes and the residual energy of the sensor nodes as well.The simulation results obtain some different curves from the basic ant colony algorithm and the improved algorithm in the residual energy of the sensor nodes and network transmission delay in wireless sensor network routing，verifying the efficiency of the improved ant algorithm in wireless sensor network routing.

Key words: wireless sensor networks;routing protocols;ant colony algorithm;network delay;energy efficient