A biologically-inspired approach to designing wireless sensor networks

Abstract

Abstract--In this paper, we contend that there are significant advantages in treating some classes of sensor networks as biological-like systems-both in structural design characteristics and in operational processes. We show how this design process leads to a sensor network system that is robust to topological changes, is scaleable and self-organising-and has a number of other desirable features. The operating system kOS was designed to support the operation of distributed biologically-inspired algorithms, in order to accomplish tasks in a sensor network system. We look at t h e design of kOS and anaiyse its performance. The work presented has been implemented in an environmental monitoring project, and has applications in other areas.

BiSNET: A biologically-inspired middleware architecture for self-managing wireless sensor networks

“…Britton et al [20] proposes to apply biological mechanisms to an operating system for sensor networks, called kOS, in order to make them robust to topological changes, scalable and self-organizing. However, kOS has not implemented any specific biological mechanisms yet.…”

A Biologically Inspired Sensor Wakeup Control Method for Wireless Sensor Networks

“…The optimization can be accomplished even in the case that each individual is much limited in sensing ability. Recently, many works have been done on the biologically-inspired WSN modeling, such as cooperative routing [23], operating system design [24], thread management [25], time synchronicity [26] and sensor movement strategy [27]. However, little research has been reported on the biologically-inspired SWC.…”

A Decentralized Dynamic Sensor Activation Protocol for Chemical Sensor Networks

“…Our first analytical model employs the known analogy between the information spread in a network of communicating agents and the propagation of epidemics across a population. Although the epidemiology-based approach has been applied to other problem domains [5], [6], [7], [8], [9], [10]), it has not been specifically used to study the effects of dynamic sensor activation. We extend the model initially proposed in [8].…”