Principles and applications of swarm intelligence for adaptive routing in telecommunications networks

Abstract

In the past few years, there has been much research on the application of swarm intelligence to the problem of adaptive routing in telecommunications networks. A large number of algorithms have been proposed for different types of networks, including wired networks and wireless ad hoc networks. In this paper, we give an overview of this research area. We address both the principles underlying the research and the practical applications that have been proposed. We start by giving a detailed description of the challenges in this problem domain, and we investigate how swarm intelligence can be used to address them. We identify typical building blocks of swarm intelligence systems and we show how they are used to solve routing problems. Then, we present Ant Colony Routing, a general framework in which most swarm intelligence routing algorithms can be placed. After that, we give an extensive overview of existing algorithms, discussing for each of them their contributions and their relative place in this research area. We conclude with an overview of future research directions that we consider important for the further development of this field.