As sensors that do things like detect
touch and motion in cell phones get smaller, cheaper, and more reliable,
computer manufacturers are beginning to take seriously the decade-old idea of
“smart dust”—networks of tiny wireless devices that permeate the environment,
monitoring everything from the structural integrity of buildings and bridges to
the activity of live volcanoes. In order for such networks to make collective
decisions, however, they need to integrate information gathered by hundreds or
thousands of devices.
But networks of cheap sensors scattered
in punishing and protean environments are prone to “bottlenecks,” regions of
sparse connectivity that all transmitted data must pass through in order to
reach the whole network. Keren Censor-Hillel, a postdoc at MIT’s Computer
Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, and Hadas Shachnai of Technion—Israel
Institute of Technology presented a new algorithm that handles bottlenecks much
more effectively than its predecessors.
The algorithm is designed to work in
so-called ad hoc networks, in which no one device acts as superintendent,
overseeing the network as a whole. In a network of cheap wireless sensors, for
instance, any given device could fail: its battery could die; its signal could
be obstructed; it could even be carried off by a foraging animal. The network
has to be able to adjust to any device’s disappearance, which means that no one
device can have too much responsibility.
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