Edinburgh Napier University

  Specknets consist of hundreds of miniature devices, which are each capable of processing data and communicating wirelessly across short distances. Such networks, with their great complexity, pose considerable challenges for engineers due to the unreliability and scarce resources of individual devices. Their limitations make it difficult to apply traditional engineering approaches. In this paper, we describe a model inspired by the dendritic cells of the innate immune system; often overlooked in artificial immune systems, dendritic cells possess a unique ability to scout the body environment and then present an integrated picture of the internal state of the body to the adaptive system. We adopt a model, inspired by this approach, to sense the state of a Specknet and provide experimental results to show that useful information can be gathered from the Specknet in order to determine local states. Experiments are conducted using realistic random topologies in a simulation environment, in a scenario which models sensing temperature changes.