UNIVERSITY COLLEGE DUBLINDUBLIN CITY UNIVERSITY SMI || NCSR || CDVP A Methodology for the Deployment of Multi-Agent Systems on Wireless Sensor Networks

UNIVERSITY COLLEGE DUBLIN DUBLIN CITY UNIVERSITYSMI || NCSR || CDVP

A Methodology for the Deployment of Multi-Agent Systems on

Wireless Sensor Networks

Richard Tynan, Antonio G. Ruzzelli, G.M.P. O’Hare

Adaptive Information Cluster (AIC)Smart Media Institute

Department of Computer ScienceUniversity College Dublin

Ireland


Summary• Wireless sensor networks (WSNs)• Intelligent agents in WSNs• Methodology for agent deployment

– Centralized approach at the BSs– Distributed approach at the BSs – Distributed approach at the sensor nodes

• Methodological tool support– Data recorder/player– Sensor abstraction– New project wizard

• Conclusion


Wireless sensor networks

• Few number of Base stations (BSs) and a large number of tiny devices (sensors)

• WSNs are used for long unattended applications

• Sensors are power constrained• Sensors collect data which are sent to one or

more BSs• Communication are in Multi-hop fashion


Why agents in WSNs

• Intelligent network management• To improve the adaptivity of the networks • To take local decision between neighbouring

nodes rather than at the BS. Hence:– Energy saving– More accurate and faster response to

network changes– Increase of preciseness of the action taken

Cons: Accommodate BDI agents is very challenging due to devices computationally limited


Methodology phase 1: Centralised Base station implementation

•A single agent placed at the BS

•The agent receives raw data from nodes then analyse them

•The agent identifies and solve anomalous behaviour of the network or part of it.

•The agent communicate to the BS what action to take.


Methodology phase 2: Distributed Base station implementation

•The second phase transforms the centralised solution in a distributed agent-base implementation

•The key point of this phase is to have a mapping between agents of a MAS and sensor nodes


Agents-nodes mapping at the BS• One-to-One

– Each node is controlled by one agent that deliberates accordingly

– Nodes can be seen as agent perceptors

• Many-to-One

– Many agents map to an individual node

– E.g. useful when nodes have several sensory modalities

• One-to-Many– A single agent map to a group of neighbouring nodes– E.g. useful when decision may be taken by analysing a

group of nodes locally placed


Methodology phase 3: Distributed agents implementation

•Agents on the nodes can be modelled through the agents at the BS

•Hence, agents on the nodes can be easily debugged at the BS

•The distributed implementation can be achieved by mapping the statements that govern the agents behaviour (such as commitment rules) to the language of the device .


Methodological tool support 1:

WSN data recorder/player

• The recorder/player tool allows both to register parameters of an experiment and to log the data for replay later to similar experiments

– It results in a big increase of experiments performed

– Useful for comparison with similar experiments obtained by changing parameters

– An experiment can be run several times for verification


Methodological tool support 2: Observable network abstraction• It provides an abstraction to the sensor network by

creating an array of sensor objects through the observer design pattern

• The array is observed through a centralised solution• A received transmission is mapped to the required

sensor object

– It reduces the coupling between application layer and physical sensors.


Methodological tool support 3: New project wizard

• It has been created for new project in TinyOS• The IDE generates a shell of the application• Then a project directory and some files of the application

are created

Code generated by the New Project Wizard for the Top Level Configuration file.


Conclusion

• We described an approach to deploying correct distributed algorithms on embedded devices

• The approach tends to be more practical than other more formal and mathematical approaches studied.

• The key of the approach lies on the one-to-one mapping of agents to nodes

• The methodology allows the verification of the correctness of applications before the real deployment

• While not so rigorous, it allows for a rapid deployment of a distributed algorithm already debugged for an high standard


Thank you for your attention

• Questions are welcome

Documents

UNIVERSITY COLLEGE DUBLINDUBLIN CITY UNIVERSITY SMI || NCSR || CDVP A Methodology for the Deployment of Multi-Agent Systems on Wireless Sensor Networks