Multi-agent System architectures for Wireless Sensor Networks

Abstract

Traditionally Multi-Agent Systems have been thought of in terms of devices that possess a relatively rich set of resources e.g. power, memory, computational ability and communication bandwidth. This is usually necessary due to the complex deliberation and negotiation processes they require to fulfil their goals. Recently, networked devices have become available on the millimeter scale called Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs), which pose new challenges because of their constrained resources. However what these devices lack in resources they make up for in numbers due to their small inexpensive nature. In this paper we identify some of the existing MAS architectures for WSNs, and we propose some novel architectures of our own. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2005.