Evaluating activator-inhibitor mechanisms for sensors coordination

The possibility to employ reaction-diffusion models to build spatial patterns in sensor networks has been advocated in other works. Nevertheless it has not been investigated how the biologically-inspired solutions perform in comparison to more traditional ones taking into account specificities of sensor networks like severe energy constraints. In this paper we present some preliminary results on the comparison between a biologically inspired coordination mechanism based on activator-inhibitor interaction and a simple mechanism, where nodes do not communicate but activate their sensing circuitry according to some probability.