This thesis proposes different approaches to address routing and security of MANETs using swarm technology. The mobility and infrastructure-less of MANET as well as nodes misbehavior compose great challenges to routing and security protocols of such a network. The first approach addresses the problem of channel assignment in multichannel ad hoc networks with limited number of interfaces, where stable route are more preferred to be selected. The channel selection is based on link quality between the nodes. Geographical information is used with mapping algorithm in order to estimate and predict the links’ quality and routes life time, which is combined with Ant Colony Optimization (ACO) algorithm to find most stable route with high data rate. As a result, a better utilization of the channels is performed where the throughput increased up to 74% over ASAR protocol. A new smart data packet routing protocol is developed based on the River Formation Dynamics (RFD) algorithm. The RFD algorithm is a subset of swarm intelligence which mimics how rivers are created in nature. The protocol is a distributed swarm learning approach where data packets are smart enough to guide themselves through best available route in the network. The learning information is distributed throughout the nodes of the network. This information can be used and updated by successive data packets in order to maintain and find better routes. Data packets act like swarm agents (drops) where they carry their path information and update routing information without the need for backward agents. These data packets modify the routing information based on different network metrics. As a result, data packet can guide themselves through better routes. In the second approach, a hybrid ACO and RFD smart data packet routing protocol is developed where the protocol tries to find shortest path that is less congested to the destination. Simulation results show throughput improvement by 30% over AODV protocol and 13% over AntHocNet. Both delay and jitter have been improved more than 96% over AODV protocol. In order to overcome the problem of source routing introduced due to the use of the ACO algorithm, a solely RFD based distance vector protocol has been developed as a third approach. Moreover, the protocol separates reactive learned information from proactive learned information to add more reliability to data routing. To minimize the power consumption introduced due to the hybrid nature of the RFD routing protocol, a forth approach has been developed. This protocol tackles the problem of power consumption and adds packets delivery power minimization to the protocol based on RFD algorithm. Finally, a security model based on reputation and trust is added to the smart data packet protocol in order to detect misbehaving nodes. A trust system has been built based on the privilege offered by the RFD algorithm, where drops are always moving from higher altitude to lower one. Moreover, the distributed and undefined nature of the ad hoc network forces the nodes to obligate to cooperative behaviour in order not to be exposed. This system can easily and quickly detect misbehaving nodes according to altitude difference between active intermediate nodes.

An ad hoc network is a collection of mobile wireless devices that cooperate with each other to route packets amongst themselves. The main difficulty in designing routing algorithms for such a network is the large number of topology changes that the network undergoes due to device movement. Selective flooding is a routing technique that is more resilient to topology changes than traditional algorithms but is more bandwidth efficient than pure flooding. An on-demand selective flooding algorithm has been designed and tested on the ns-2 simulator. In scenarios involving a large number of topology changes, selective flooding outperforms other ad hoc network routing techniques. Unfortunately, selective flooding is much more bandwidth hungry and is unable to scale to handle reasonable traffic loads. Interestingly, the analysis of selective flooding reveals major problems with traditional ad hoc networking techniques. Many current algorithms demonstrate shortcomings when dealing with bursty traffic, and current wireless hardware cannot handle ad hoc networking traffic in an efficient manner. These issues need to be addressed before ad hoc networking technology can become feasible for widespread use.

An ad hoc network is a collection of mobile wireless devices that cooperate with each other to route packets amongst themselves. The main difficulty in designing routing algorithms for such a network is the large number of topology changes that the network undergoes due to device movement. Selective flooding is a routing technique that is more resilient to topology changes than traditional algorithms but is more bandwidth efficient than pure flooding. An on-demand selective flooding algorithm has been designed and tested on the ns-2 simulator. In scenarios involving a large number of topology changes, selective flooding outperforms other ad hoc network routing techniques. Unfortunately, selective flooding is much more bandwidth hungry and is unable to scale to handle reasonable traffic loads. Interestingly, the analysis of selective flooding reveals major problems with traditional ad hoc networking techniques. Many current algorithms demonstrate shortcomings when dealing with bursty traffic, and current wireless hardware cannot handle ad hoc networking traffic in an efficient manner. These issues need to be addressed before ad hoc networking technology can become feasible for widespread use.

Road accidents represent a serious social problem and are one of the leading causes of human death and disability on a global scale. To reduce the risk and severity of a road accident, a variety of new safety applications can be realized through wireless communications among vehicles driving nearby each other, or among vehicles and especially deployed road side units (RSUs), a technology known as a vehicular ad hoc network (VANET). Most of the VANET-enabled safety applications are based on broadcasting of safety messages by vehicles or RSUs, either periodically or in case of an unexpected event, such as a hard brake or dangerous road condition detection. Each broadcast safety message should be successfully delivered to the surrounding vehicles and RSUs without any excess delay, which is one of the main functions of a medium access control (MAC) protocol proposed for VANETs. This thesis presents VeMAC, a new multichannel time division multiple access (TDMA) protocol specifically designed to support the high priority safety applications in a VANET scenario. The ability of the VeMAC protocol to deliver periodic and event-driven safety messages in VANETs is demonstrated by a detailed delivery delay analysis, including queueing and service delays, for both types of safety messages. As well, computer simulations are conducted by using MATLAB, the network simulator ns-2, and the microscopic vehicle traffic simulator VISSIM, in order to evaluate the performance of the VeMAC protocol, in comparison with the IEEE 802.11p standard and the ADHOC MAC protocol (another TDMA protocol proposed for ad hoc networks). A real city scenario is simulated and different performance metrics are evaluated, including the network goodput, protocol overhead, channel utilization, protocol fairness, probability of a transmission collision, and safety message delivery delay. It is shown that the VeMAC protocol considerably outperforms the existing MAC schemes, which have significant limitations in supporting VANET safety applications. In addition to enhancing road safety, in-vehicle Internet access is one of the main applications of VANETs, which aims at providing the vehicle passengers with a low-cost access to the Internet via on-road gateways. This thesis presents a new strategy for deploying Internet gateways on the roads, in order to minimize the total cost of gateway deployment, while ensuring that a vehicle can connect to an Internet gateway (using multihop communications) with a probability greater than a specified threshold. This cost minimization problem is formulated by using binary integer programming, and applied for optimal gateway placement in a real city scenario. To the best of our knowledge, no previous strategy for gateway deployment has considered the probability of multihop connectivity among the vehicles and the deployed gateways. In order to allow a vehicle to discover the existence of an Internet gateway and to communicate with the gateway via multihops, a novel data packet routing scheme is proposed based on the VeMAC protocol. The performance of this cross-layer design is evaluated for a multichannel VANET in a highway scenario, mainly in terms of the end-to-end packet delivery delay. The packet queueing at each relay vehicle is considered in the end-to-end delay analysis, and numerical results are presented to study the effect of various parameters, such as the vehicle density and the packet arrival rate, on the performance metrics. The proposed VeMAC protocol is a promising candidate for MAC in VANETs, which can realize many advanced safety applications to enhance the public safety standards and improve the safety level of drivers/passengers and pedestrians on roads. On the other hand, the proposed gateway placement strategy and packet routing scheme represent a strong step toward providing reliable and ubiquitous in-vehicle Internet connectivity.