Discovery service in ad hoc networks using ants

Abstract

Recently, owing to advances of wireless communications people enjoy network services almost anywhere. Nevertheless, it is causing that the network resources be unsatisfactory for the number of users that increase continually. Besides, sometimes it is necessary to make use of network services in places where there is no fixed infrastructure available. For these reasons, the research of new technologies for more efficient service delivering is necessary. An ad-hoc wireless network is a network which consists of a collection of wireless nodes (all of which may be mobile) that dynamically create a topology among them without using any such infrastructure or administrative support, [1]. In addition, they are self-creating, self-organizing and self-administering, so they come into being solely by interactions among their constituent wireless mobile nodes and only such interactions are used to provide the necessary control and administration functions supporting such networks. Ad-hoc wireless networks offer unique benefits and versatility for certain environments and certain applications, but unfortunately numerous challenges must be overcome to realize the practical benefits of ad-hoc networking. These include effective routing, mobility management, power management, security, [1], [2], Quality of Service (QoS) requirements,[3], medium access and discovery services, [4], [5]. In this thesis, we pretend to fulfill both the routing and the discovery services in an ad-hoc network, making use of a routing model, which is based on the ant behavior.