Quorum sensing on mobile ad-hoc networks

Mobile ad-hoc networks (MANETs) are an increasingly important networking paradigm that will be the backbone of important defense and first response networks. Group decision-making is key to these environments, but is made difficult when MANETs are introduced due to network disruptions, bandwidth limitations, and host mobility patterns. Results gathered using standard group decision-making algorithms can become inaccurate, time-insensitive, or computationally undecidable. This paper focuses on a group decision-making approach using agent-based quorum sensing (ABQS) on MANETs. A mobile agent collects information (e.g., votes) from each host on a network until it can make an informed decision about global preference. This agent exploits the inherent tradeoff between efficient vote collection and result accuracy in order to provide better results, when considering survivability, hosts visited, hops made, and time spent, with only a very slight drop in correctness---benefits that greatly outweigh costs. Experimental evidence from live MANETs demonstrates the effectiveness of this solution.