Bee-Inspired Routing Protocols for Mobile Ad Hoc and Sensor Networks

In this chapter we shift our focus from fixed telecommunication networks to Mobile Ad Hoc Networks (MANETs) and Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs). These emerging networks are receiving a significant amount of attention from researchers. We first present BeeAdHoc, a new routing algorithm for energy-efficient routing in MANETs, and then BeeSensor, a power-aware routing protocol for WSNs. Both algorithms mainly utilize two types of agents, scouts and foragers, for routing. Both algorithms are reactive source routing algorithms and they consume less energy compared to existing state-of-the-art routing algorithms because they utilize fewer control packets for routing. The results of our experiments indicate that both algorithms consume significantly less energy compared to state-of-the-art routing algorithms, without making any compromise on traditional performance metrics (packet delivery ratio and delay). We also discuss implementation of BeeAdHoc inside the Linux kernel on mobile laptops and its testing and evaluation in a real-world MANET consisting of eight mobile nodes.