From Internets to Bionets: Biological Kinetic Service Oriented Networks

Abstract

As the trend toward ubiquitous and pervasive computing continues to gain momentum, new networking paradigms need to be developed to keep pace with the needs of this emerging environment. In the near future we can expect the number of nodes to grow by multiple orders of magnitude as tags, sensors, body networks etc., get fully integrated into the communication superstructure. Not only will the amount of information in these all-embracing pervasive environments be enormous and to a large degree localized, but also the relaying needs for maintaining an end to end reliable ‘always on’ networks, as we know today, will be, for the vast majority of the pervasive users beyond their resource capabilities, and in addition redundant, considering the needs of the personalized services dominating these networks. The ambiance within which these nodes will act will be intelligent, mobile, self-cognitive and not limited to machine to machine communication. In these networks the end to end concept of always on communication that formed the basis of the Internet for the last three decades will become passe. The next ‘Internet’ frontier will be the challenge of adjusting to the omnipresent, intelligent and self-cognitive networking environments which are becoming an integral part of the new societal reality.

These networks will be characterized by their ability to continuously adjust to the environment, by their, often intelligent, users mobility and by their architecture being defined by the services at hand. Compared to classical networking architectures, in these environments communication networks will locally self-organize when the opportunity or need arise, will adjust and evolve over time and will cease to exist when obsolete with respect to a given service or application. Given the need for continuous adjustment and evolution, the user-service focus, the mobility, and the evolving distributed intelligence and user cooperation not imposed by arbitrary service independent protocols, but sought by those users sharing a common interest in service, the underlying networks behavior may seem closer to living organisms. Secondly, the biological model fits well the concept of services that define the network at any given point in time. In this context the biological model can naturally define a service as the organisms chromosomes, which not only store genetic information but participate and are subject to rules of evolution, leading to the ability of the service to evolve and adjust to changing environments. Furthermore, given the complexity and size of user population - unpredictable user needs, to remain competitive and’ survive’. Thirdly, most of the information exchange in these networks occurs locally between users on the move, or kinetic, users. The intelligence, resources and mobility of the kinetic users who carry services in their chromosomes, makes it possible to mimic the interaction occurring in the biological world where mating and mutations lead to interactions that form the basis of evolution. Using this analogy it becomes possible to derive network elements as well as behavioral rules from nature to replace current protocol concepts, and thus avail the communication system of the benefits of natural evolution perfected over millions of years. With this approach the mobile pervasive environments may witness a paradigm shift in the way we view networking is perceived, rather than contemplating a gradual evolution of the classical protocols and their adaptation to the ‘next generation network’ which cannot deal with the growth and nature of the emerging pervasive environments.

In this chapter we first define the principles and rules of the BIOlogical kiNETic Service centered (BIONETS) or Bionetic networks. We then consider their application in the case of wireless sensor networks and evaluate their effectiveness considering a real life parking service scenario.