Abstract

Aim: This work evaluates the existing secure ant colony protocols of MANETs such as ASHFIK, AAMRP, and MANHSI with each other. Here, each node in the proposed ad hoc network protocols is known with a trust value. Each trust value represents the corresponding security level and a node with a higher trust value is authorized to monitor and lead its neighboring nodes as a core node.

Background: Trusted critical MANET is a secure wireless network that is used in different critical applications. Military battlefields are an example of these applications that force on people a number of needed things, including robustness and reliable performance within high mobility situations and constraints (e.g. hostile attacks, cost, and battery limits).

Objectives: In this work, the extremely important similarities between the features of critical MANETs and the core-based routing protocols that are based-on ant colonies are discussed.

Methods: The metrics used in this evaluation are the availability, reliability, packet delivery ratio, and total overheads, while the performance is serious and stubborn because of the mobility of node, senders & #039; number, and size of a multicast group.

Results: The results of the simulation show that ASHFIK provides better availability, reliability, Packet Delivery Ratio (PDR), and lower total overheads. In addition, the results show that ASHFIK has a consistent performance with a different group size of the network, which means that it is a trusted and scalable network of ant colony core-based routing protocols.

Conclusion: Here, the existing different mobile ad hoc networks based-on ant colonies were discussed. According to our comparative study, the ASHFIK protocol can be used as a good routing protocol for critical MANETs that are based on ant colonies.

Keywords: MANET, ant colony optimization, ant colony routing, core-based routing protocol, AAMRP, ASHFIK.

Graphical Abstract