Intelligent Agent Based Delay Aware QoS Unicast Routing in Mobile Ad hoc Networks

Quality of Service (QoS) support in Mobile Ad hoc NETworks (MANETs) is a challenging task due to bandwidth and delay constraints, varying channel conditions, power limitations, node mobility and dynamic topology. This paper proposes an intelligent agent based ondemand (source initiated) delay aware QoS routing scheme in MANETs by using software agents that employ neuro-fuzzy logic supported by Q-learning. The proposed scheme operates in following steps. (1) Source node uses an agent that uses Dynamic Source Routing (DSR) to find various paths, their bandwidth and packet loss rate to reach a destination. (2) Parallely, a static neuro-fuzzy agent at the source node is used to optimize membership functions of fuzzy parameters according to user delay requirement of the fuzzy inference system (FIS); also, a fuzzy Q-learning static agent at the source node is employed to optimize the consequent part of if-then rules of FIS. (3) Fuzzy static agent at the source node decides whether node on a path satisfies delay requirement for an application according to the user by considering fuzzy parameters, bandwidth, packet loss rate and delay. (4) A path with QoS satisfied nodes will be selected by fuzzy QoS static agent and (5) mobile agents are used to maintain and repair the path. The scheme has been simulated in various network scenarios to test operation effectiveness and observed that proposed scheme performs better than the existing fuzzy based DSR routing methods.