Application of Ant’s Colony’s Metaphor to Address Management in Mobile ad hoc Networks

Abstract

Address management is a critical pro­cess in a network, because any node wishing to make part of the network must first obtain an address.

Address management in MANETs poses particular challenges, due to their operation conditions, their dynamic topology and the unique events that take place inside them. This article presents an approach for solving the address management problem in this environment, using the self-organization and emergency principles governing the behavior of social insect colonies, particularly ant colonies. The article presents results that evaluate the proposal’s validity and efficiency through several scenarios. Three fundamental aspects were evaluated: Model functionality, efficiency and impact on user applications. The obtained results show the proposed model is able to identify, manage and solve all the events related to address management in a MANET, in an efficient manner.