Enhanced Wireless Sensor Network setup strategy supported by intelligent software agents

A well know problem in the Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) research area is the usage of appropriate strategies to setup the sensor nodes such that they may accomplish sensing missions. This problem refers to the selection of appropriate nodes to perform the different tasks required to the missions´ accomplishment and may be thus characterized as an instance of the task and resource allocation problem. Traditional approaches consider pre-planned strategies, which are not flexible to deal with changes in the network and environment operating conditions. This paper presents an enhanced agent-oriented strategy, which consists of a usage of mobile intelligent agents to disseminate missions and nodes´ information over the network, as well as stationary software agents installed in the sensor nodes to provide advanced reasoning apparatus for decision making purposes. The proposed enhancement complements the original agent-based approach with robustness features required to overcome extreme adverse conditions in which an ordinary WSN presents poor results. Results from simulations provide evidences of the efficiency of the complete enhanced approach.