1st International ICST Conference on Bio Inspired Models of Network, Information and Computing Systems

Research Article

The adaptive social hierarchy: a self organizing network based on naturally occurring structures

  • @INPROCEEDINGS{10.1145/1315843.1315886,
        author={Andrew Markham and Andrew  Wilkinson},
        title={The adaptive social hierarchy: a self organizing network based on naturally occurring structures},
        proceedings={1st International ICST Conference on Bio Inspired Models of Network, Information and Computing Systems},
        publisher={ACM},
        proceedings_a={BIONETICS},
        year={2006},
        month={12},
        keywords={Social Hierarchy; Adaptive Routing; Low power},
        doi={10.1145/1315843.1315886}
    }
    
  • Andrew Markham
    Andrew Wilkinson
    Year: 2006
    The adaptive social hierarchy: a self organizing network based on naturally occurring structures
    BIONETICS
    ACM
    DOI: 10.1145/1315843.1315886
Andrew Markham1,*, Andrew Wilkinson1
  • 1: Department of Electrical Engineering, University of Cape Town, Rondebosch, 7701, South Africa
*Contact email: mrkand007@mail.uct.ac.za

Abstract

Wireless networks can be used for relaying information acquired by mobile animal borne tags. To date, no research has considered the large amount of diversity presented by the animal kingdom which impacts the design of the network. We consider here how the weight of the animal affects the size of the tag, and hence the energy that it can carry. We use a common structure in Nature, the social dominance hierarchy, and form a similar hierarchy based on energy. Nodes adjust their perceived rankings through continual tournaments using simple, locally applied rules to result in a stable and adaptive structure. We show that the number of levels in the hierarchy controls traffic density and consequently energy usage. To further conserve energy of low ranked nodes, we propose a simple cross-layer protocol. We show through simulation that our power-aware protocol outperforms those with no knowledge of energy.