Swarm intelligence based routing protocol for wireless sensor networks: Survey and future directions

Swarm intelligence is a relatively novel field. It addresses the study of the collective behaviors of systems made by many components that coordinate using decentralized controls and self-organization. A large part of the research in swarm intelligence has focused on the reverse engineering and the adaptation of collective behaviors observed in natural systems with the aim of designing effective algorithms for distributed optimization. These algorithms, like their natural systems of inspiration, show the desirable properties of being adaptive, scalable, and robust. These are key properties in the context of network routing, and in particular of routing in wireless sensor networks. Therefore, in the last decade, a number of routing protocols for wireless sensor networks have been developed according to the principles of swarm intelligence, and, in particular, taking inspiration from the foraging behaviors of ant and bee colonies. In this paper, we provide an extensive survey of these protocols. We discuss the general principles of swarm intelligence and of its application to routing. We also introduce a novel taxonomy for routing protocols in wireless sensor networks and use it to classify the surveyed protocols. We conclude the paper with a critical analysis of the status of the field, pointing out a number of fundamental issues related to the (mis) use of scientific methodology and evaluation procedures, and we identify some future research directions.