Bio-inspired networking – the basis for efficient communication in sensor and actor networks

Recent approaches in the domain of bio-inspired networking enabled further scalability and efficiency in communication and coordination in massively distributed systems. Sensor and Actor Networks (SANETs) represent a specific class of such environments in which classical communication protocols often fail due to scalability problems. This presentation outlines biological communication techniques, which are known as cellular signaling pathways. We show the adaptation of these principles to the world of SANETs at the example of our 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.