Self-Administered Information Sharing Framework Using Bioinspired Mechanisms

Abstract

The promising potential of distributed and interconnected lightweight devices that can jointly generate superior information-collecting and problem-solving abilities has long fostered various significant and ubiquitous techniques, from wireless sensor networks (WSNs) to Internet of Things (IoT). Although related applications have been widely used in different domains in attempting to collect and harness the ever-growing information flows, one major issue that impedes the further advancement of WSNs or IoT-based applications is the restricted battery power. Previous research mainly focuses on investigating novel protocols to save energy by reducing data traffic with the aid of optimal or heuristic algorithms. However, data packet behaviours and significant parameters involved are mostly preconfigured in a supervised-learning fashion rather than using an unsupervised learning paradigm and therefore may not adapt to uncertain or fast-changing environments. Hence, this paper concentrates on optimising the behaviours of data packets and significant parameters in a widely tested routing protocol, namely, Cognitive Packet Network (CPN), with the aid of several bio-inspired algorithms to increase the efficiency of energy usage and information acquisition. Two novel packet behaviours are introduced, and an on-line parameter calibration scheme is proposed to realise packet time-to-live (TTL) adjustment and rate adaptation. The simulation results show that the introduction of the bioinspired algorithms can improve the efficiency of information sharing and reduce the energy consumption.

Joint Optimization for Pedestrian, Information and Energy Flows in Emergency Response Systems With Energy Harvesting and Energy Sharing

“…For instance, the research in [35] utilises an ad hoc cognitive packet network (AHCPN) based routing protocol to search energy efficient and delay tolerant communication links for evacuees between portable devices and the backend cloud center; packets are relayed to nearby portable devices with higher remaining power before performing energyintensive uploading operations to the cloud center. Similarly, the work in [36] develops a smart cloud evacuation system to provide individual escape guidance with the aid of front-end smartphones and back-end datacenters; multimedia information such as text, voice and images gathered by smartphones are transmitted to datacenters for further human activity and emergency event analysis, so as to offload intense computations for saving energy at the front end. The study in [37] proposes a bio-inspired emergency alarm system to distribute emergency messages in an IoT network; a self-adaptive packet behaviour optimisation mechanism is proposed to reduce the energy consumption in communications and computations by dynamically adjusting parameters such as rate and time-to-live of data packets.…”