Routing algorithm based on ant colony optimization for mobile social network

Mobile social network (MSN) is a type of delay tolerant network explicitly considering social characteristics of the terminal nodes. The existing Ad Hoc routing protocols assume that there is at least one complete communication path between the source node and the target node. So they cannot be applied to MSN directly. The key to solve the problem of content distribution in mobile social network is how to transmit the data to the target node in the case of there is no complete communication path between the source node and the target node. As the routing algorithm based on ant colony optimization has great ability to adapt it, it is an effective method to deal with the dynamic topologies of MSN. Based on the social network characteristics of MSN, this paper proposes a new MSN routing algorithm ACOMSN based on ant colony optimization. The algorithm uses the method of processing the node information on the transmission path to get the information list between the node pairs, so as to select the appropriate relay node to provide effective information when forwarding data to other nodes. In addition, ACOMSN designs methodologies for pheromone updating and data forwarding. The simulation experiments on real data sets show that comparing with typical MSN routing algorithms, ACOMSN can effectively improve the critical performance of data transmission with considerable overhead in MSN.