Intercluster Ant Colony Optimization Algorithm for Wireless Sensor Network in Dense Environment

Wireless sensor networks have grown rapidly with the innovation in Information Technology. Sensor nodes are distributed and deployed over the area for gathering requisite information. Sensor nodes possess a negative characteristic of limited energy which pulls back the network from exploiting its peak capabilities. Hence, it is necessary to gather and transfer the information in an optimized way which reduces the energy dissipation. Ant Colony Optimization (ACO) is being widely used in optimizing the network routing protocols. Ant Based Routing can play a significant role in the enhancement of network life time. In this paper, Intercluster Ant Colony Optimization algorithm (IC-ACO) has been proposed that relies upon ACO algorithm for routing of data packets in the network and an attempt has been made to minimize the efforts wasted in transferring the redundant data sent by the sensors which lie in the close proximity of each other in a densely deployed network. The IC-ACO algorithm was studied by simulation for various network scenarios. The results depict the lead of IC-ACO as compared to LEACH protocol by indicating higher energy efficiency, prolonged network lifetime, enhanced stability period, and the elevated amount of data packets in a densely deployed wireless sensor network.