Autonomic Cooperative Communications

Background

As the number of globally interconnected devices is becoming substantially large, the resulting networked systems are getting prone to configuration issues and resiliency becomes one of their key characteristics. Following the rationale behind self-management of autonomic computing, the main trend in networking nowadays is to put emphasis on the ability of a networked system to self-configure, self-optimise, self-heal, and self-protect without any explicit need for external human intervention. This is crucial, for complexity reasons, as complete automation appears to be the only reasonable and justified way forward. In particular, devices may improve the related system robustness by sharing their computational resources through the application of cooperative schemes having been elevated to the level of Autonomic Cooperative Behaviour. For this reason the autonomic system design behind the Generic Autonomic Network Architecture was applied to synergise both the concept of Virtual Antenna Arrays and Multi-Point Relay station selection heuristics of the Optimised Link State Routing protocol, so that substantially large set-ups of devices could be considered to imitate the operation of Human Autonomic Nervous System. This was achieved with the aid of Autonomic Cooperative Networked System design allowing for the overall system to be controlled by Decision Making Entities within Autonomic Control Loops.