Route Swarm: Wireless Network Optimization through Mobility
This addresses the problem of improving wireless network performance for applications like sensing and routing using mobile robots, though it appears incremental as it builds on existing robotic and network control concepts.
The paper tackles the problem of coordinating networked robots for wireless network optimization by proposing a hybrid architecture called INSPIRE that decouples information flow and physical control, demonstrating through simulation that it dynamically reconfigures robots to ensure high-quality routes between static nodes.
In this paper, we demonstrate a novel hybrid architecture for coordinating networked robots in sensing and information routing applications. The proposed INformation and Sensing driven PhysIcally REconfigurable robotic network (INSPIRE), consists of a Physical Control Plane (PCP) which commands agent position, and an Information Control Plane (ICP) which regulates information flow towards communication/sensing objectives. We describe an instantiation where a mobile robotic network is dynamically reconfigured to ensure high quality routes between static wireless nodes, which act as source/destination pairs for information flow. The ICP commands the robots towards evenly distributed inter-flow allocations, with intra-flow configurations that maximize route quality. The PCP then guides the robots via potential-based control to reconfigure according to ICP commands. This formulation, deemed Route Swarm, decouples information flow and physical control, generating a feedback between routing and sensing needs and robotic configuration. We demonstrate our propositions through simulation under a realistic wireless network regime.