Swarm Intelligence and Problem Solving in Telecommunications

This paper describes how biologically-inspired agents can be used to solve control problems in Telecommunications. These agents, inspired by the foraging behaviour of ants, exhibit the desirable characteristics of simplicity of action and interaction. The collection of agents, or swarm system, deals only with local knowledge and exhibits a form of distributed control with agent communication effected through the environment. In this paper we explore the application of ant-like agents to the problem of routing in telecommunication networks. Introduction The notion of complex collective behaviour emerging from the behaviour of many simple agents and their interactions is central to the ideas of Artificial Life. Nature provides us with many examples of social systems where individuals possess simple capabilities when compared to their collective behaviours which are much more complex. Such systems span several levels of evolutionary complexity, from simple bacteria [Shapiro 88], to ants..