Data aggregation in wireless sensor networks using ant colony algorithm

Data aggregation is important in energy constraint wireless sensor networks which exploits correlated sensing data and aggregates at the intermediate nodes to reduce the number of messages exchanged network. This paper considers the problem of constructing data aggregation tree in a wireless sensor network for a group of source nodes to send sensory data to a single sink node. The ant colony system provides a natural and intrinsic way of exploring search space in determining data aggregation. Moreover, we propose an ant colony algorithm for data aggregation in wireless sensor networks. Every ant will explore all possible paths from the source node to the sink node. The data aggregation tree is constructed by the accumulated pheromone. Simulations have shown that our algorithm can reduce significant energy costs.