Swarming activities to distribute information in large sensor networks

Abstract

In nature, large autonomous networks of organisms form swarms adopting strategies that are highly adaptable and can sene as an inspiration for the design offuture sensor networks. The technique we propose in this paper is inspired by the "integrate-and-Jire" model applied the analysis of many biological swarms. This fechnique, which we call Opponunistic Large Arrays (OM), allows to eficiently jiood a wireless network with information and, at the same time, permits to transmit reliably to far destinations that the individual nodes are not able to reach (the reachback problem). The idea is that the leader will ignite an avalanche of signalsfrom the other nodes and the resulting distributed activity will constitute specijicpattems embedding informationfrom the leader and the nodes themselves. An adaptive receiver that acquires the resulting pattern, will be used to extract the information produced. We show, through numerical simulations, that in broadcasting applications our system gains in both energy-savings and broadcasting delay.