A Rule System for Network-Centric Operation in Massively Distributed Systems

Sensor and Actor Networks (SANETs) represent a specific class of massively distributed systems in which classical communication protocols often fail due to scalability problems. New control paradigms are needed in this place. This paper outlines biological communication techniques as known cellular biology, which are known as cellular signaling pathways. We show the adaptation of these principles to the world of SANETs by discussing a rule-based control system for network-centric communication and data processing. This system is able to perform data pre-processing such as data aggregation or fusion as well as data-centric communication based on rules that are distributed throughout the entire network. First simulation results demonstrate that this system is able to outperform classical routing approaches in specific SANET scenarios.