Near-Neighbor Based Engineering: A New Systems Engineering Approach for Emergent, Swarming Networks

A significant body of literature exists about emergent, swarming systems, but little has been written concerning approaches to facilitate their design. As we began to design a swarming sensor network system of systems, we recognized the need for a tractable systems engineering approach beyond the classical one. In particular, although we could define the system requirements and appropriate allocations using conventional methods, the key features of "stable swarming" and automatic scalability were not readily addressed. This paper describes a new system-of-systems design approach called "near-neighbor-based engineering" and its application to a swarming network.