Fixed number of mobile nodes range expansion by cooperative transmission based on improved ant colony algorithm

We explore range expansion along an appointed direction using a fixed number of mobile nodes which do distributed MIMO (multiple-input-multiple-output) in diversity configuration, known as cooperative transmission (CT). The emphasis is on optimal groupings and locations of groups to maximize the multihop reach along a line by using the same number of nodes in clusters based on the improved ant colony algorithm (IACA). The contribution of this paper is modified the heuristic function and the pheromone update rule based on the objective function to avoid local optimal result. We proposed the method of combining the discrete algorithm (DA) and IACA together to solve the continuous space optimization problem. The deployment is implemented and the simulation experiments compared IACA with ACA, which proves IACA is effective, and the IACA has an advantage of high accuracy and time saving.