Autonomous management and control of sensor network-based applications

A central challenge facing sensor network research and development is the difficulty in providing effective autonomous management capability. This is due to a large number
of parameters to control, unexpected changes of the network topology and dynamic application requirements. Network management
is also a challenging task for the remote user due to the large-scale of the network and scarce visibility of live network
happenings. Preferably the network should have autonomous decision-making capabilities as network conditions and application
requirements changes. To cope with such uncertainties, firstly we consider Octopus, a powerful software tool that provides live
information about the network topology and sensor data. At present, the tool can provide monitoring and require a user to
control the network state manually. This paper describes how Octopus is reengineered to accommodate a multi-agent system
to provide autonomic managing capabilities. In particular, we detail two distinct architectures, the static and mobile agent
architectures, which can be effectively applied to deliver autonomous system management. This paper sets the basis for a
full autonomous network management via a multi agent system to work with Octopus.