Low-Complexity Nanosensor Networking Through Spike-Encoded Signaling

The Internet of Nano-Things will employ wireless sensor nodes that are not only extremely small in size and large in number but also severely restricted in their power supply. While a large part of the design of such networks will rely on the engineering of physical aspects, such as developing technology for efficient energy harvesting, sensing, and communication, a significant role will also be played by the algorithms underlying the operation of nodes to ensure that optimal use is made of the limited supply of energy. This paper discusses concepts that will facilitate the design of such algorithms, such as spike-based encoding of signals and data aggregation through gossiping. We propose a method to extract information from a sensor network using nonpacket spike-based communication with local interactions between nodes. Rather than gathering sensor values from each individual node and sending them to a central destination node, measurements from the nodes are processed through the interactions between nodes, while diffusing in the network, to obtain an integrated value characteristic for all nodes' measurements.