Utilizing Social Insect-Based Communities for Routing in Network-based Sensor Systems

The emergence of new technologies such as Internet/Web/Network-of-Things and large scale wireless sensor systems requires the collection of data from an increasing volume of networked-based sensors for analysis. This increases the challenge of routing in network-based sensor systems. This paper presents a study to utilize social insect-based communities for routing in wireless sensor networks. The authors will use for discussion two types of insects: ants and termites. Social insect communities are formed from simple, autonomous and cooperative organisms that are interdependent for their survival. These communities are able to effectively coordinate themselves to achieve global objectives despite a lack of centralized planning. The performances of these insect-based algorithms were tested on common routing scenarios. The results were compared with other routing algorithms with varying network density and showed that insect-based routing techniques improved on network energy consumption with a control over best-effort service.