Mesh Router Nodes Placement for Wireless Mesh Networks Based on an Enhanced Moth–Flame Optimization Algorithm

This paper proposes an enhanced version of Moth Flame Optimization (MFO) algorithm, called Enhanced Chaotic Lévy Opposition-based MFO (ECLO-MFO) for solving the mesh router nodes placement problem in wireless mesh network (WMN-MRNP). The proposed ECLO-MFO incorporates three strategies including the chaotic map concept, the Lévy flight strategy, and the Opposition-Based Learning (OBL) technique to enhance the optimization performance of MFO. Firstly, chaotic maps are used to increase the chaotic stochastic behavior of the MFO algorithm. Lévy flight distribution is adopted to increase the population diversity of MFO. Finally, OBL is introduced to improve the convergence speed of MFO and to explore the search space effectively. The effectiveness of the proposed ECLO-MFO is tested based on various scenarios under different settings, considering network connectivity and client coverage metrics. The results of simulation obtained using MATLAB 2020a demonstrate the accuracy and superiority of ECLO-MFO in determining the optimal positions of mesh routers when compared with the original MFO and ten other optimization algorithms such as Genetic Algorithm (GA), Simulated Annealing (SA), Harmony Search (HS), Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO), Artificial Bee Colony (ABC), Cuckoo Search Algorithm (CS), Bat Algorithm (BA), Firefly optimization (FA), Grey Wolf Optimizer (GWO), and Whale Optimization Algorithm (WOA).