A Distributed Agent-Based Simulation Model for Large Wireless Sensor Networks

Sensor networks have grown in interest in the last few years. A sensor network is composed of low-cost, low-power nodes densely deployable over a (possibly in-hospitable) territory in order to monitor the state of the environment, e.g., temperature, sound, radiation and so forth. Sensors have the ability to self-organize in an interconnected network so as to cooperatively collect, aggregate and disseminate information to end users. In this paper a lightweight actor infrastructure is suggested which is wellsuited to the development of sensor networks and more in general of multi-agent system models. The paper describes the design and implementation of an efficient actor-based distributed simulation model for studying specific aspects of large wireless sensor networks. Both simulation results and model execution performance are documented. Finally, directions of ongoing and future work are identified.