Agent placement in wireless embedded systems: Memory space and energy optimizations

Embedded applications can be structured in terms of mobile agents that are flexibly installed on available nodes. In wireless systems, such nodes typically have limited battery and memory resources; therefore it is important to place agents judiciously. In this paper we tackle the problem of placing a newcomer agent in such a system. The problem has two main components. First, enough memory space must be found or created at some node to place the agent. Second, the placement should be energy efficient. We present heuristics for tackling these two goals in a stepwise fashion, as well as a branch and bound method for achieving both goals at the same time. Our algorithms are centralized assuming a single entry point through which agents are injected into the system, with adequate knowledge of the system state and enough resources to run the proposed algorithms. The algorithms are evaluated under different simulated scenarios, and the tradeoffs across the two metrics (space, energy) are identified.