Biologically Inspired Approaches for Wireless Sensor Networks

Biological systems present a remarkable adaptation, reliability and robustness in the dynamic and even hostile environments. Also, the networks that govern the flow of resources and information are ubiquitous in nature. Most of them are performed by individuals in a distributed and self-organized way. These mechanisms provide useful paradigms for designing the wireless sensor networks, where the individual nodes operate without central control. This paper investigates the existing sensor network design paradigms that inspired from the biological system. The investigation ranges from cell level mechanisms to collective activities performed by social insects, in an effort to apply these inspirations to the sensor networks. This paper involves the problems in the design of wireless sensor networks, including routing, congestion control, medium access control, and clustering problem