Virtual Sensor Networks: An Embedded Agent Approach

Many documented instances of existing research on Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) use deployments that either fall short of, or barely meet, the resource requirements of the application. In this paper, it is envisaged that future WSN deployments will far exceed the resource requirements of any one single application. In a similar fashion to the use of virtual machines on a mainframe, sub-networks of adequate resources will be carved out of the entire deployment to fulfil the requirements of multiple applications. These will be hosted simultaneously on the network, and in many cases, certain WSN nodes will form a component in a number of these Virtual Sensor Networks (VSN). Such VSNs will also be dynamic in nature, adapting resources as nodes go offline. An additional requirement of such networks will be to engage in opportunistic power management, such as node hibernation, while the networks are adapting. In this paper, a solution for both of these issues is proposed, underpinned by a Multi-Agent System (MAS) resident on individual nodes. This solution facilitates both the practical operation of adaptive VSNs, while ensuring aggregate energy consumption can be minimised.