Trust-based routing optimization using multi-ant colonies in wireless sensor network

Nowadays, with the advancement of new technologies such as the Internet of Things, new applications and intelligent networks, the use of wireless sensor network increased considerably. They are prone to a variety of attacks. Thus, network security is of utmost importance to researchers. In the past, methods such as cryptography, authentication and hash function were used to create security in this type of network. However, due to the limitations of this type of network, trust-based methods are used today. Finding a secure route for transferring data among available routes greatly increases security in this network. In this paper, we present aTrust-based Routing Optimization using Multi-Ant Colonies (MACRAT) scheme which is based on the improvement of the ant meta-heuristic algorithm and an improved method for trust assessment which is presented. The simulation results illustrate that MACRAT is more efficient than existing routing protocols. The results show that MACRAT improved by 10% in black hole detection compared to ESRT protocol and by 4% compared to M-CSO protocol, the packet loss rate in MACRAT improved by 30.14% compared to ESRT protocol and 6% compared to M-CSO protocol.