Spatial Self-Organization in Networks of Things

Abstract

Miniaturized, wirelessly networked embedded systems combined with Peer-to-Peer computing principles have started to pervade into objects of everyday use, like tools, appliances or the environment, thus implementing ensembles of autonomous, interacting “networked things”. With the development of the Peer-it framework, integrating a self-contained, miniaturized, universal and scalable embedded systems hardware platform, basically containing sensors, actuators, computing and wireless communication facilities, and a Peer-to-Peer (P2P) based software architecture, we have proposed a “stick-on” solution for the implementation of networks of things (NoTs). The Peer-it design and miniaturization ultimately aim to yield a “smart label”, ready to be sticked on to literally every “thing” as a NoT enabler. The paper addresses the issue of spatial awareness of objects within NoTs, and proposes abstractions of space based on (i) topology, (ii) distance and (iii) orientation. Experiments are conducted to investigate on the ability of objects in a NoT to self-organize based on their spatial orientation.