A Resource Allocation Strategy in a Robotic Ad-Hoc Network

Ad-hoc networks, being infrastructure-less, have much scarcer amounts of bandwidth. Most multi-robotic applications adopt decentralised approaches in order to avoid single points-of-failure. A decentralised approach would require robots to continuously update each other to coordinate their actions. For successful coordination, hard real-time requirements must be met. Thus, a resource allocation strategy is required to fulfil these requirements. This paper presents a novel resource allocation strategy that uses auction-based methods to allocate the network resource among nodes in a robotic ad-hoc network. The strategy's aim is two-fold: 1) to allocate the network fairly among all nodes when unmanned; 2) to allocate more of the network resource to a node that the user may favour over the other nodes. It has been tested in two different indoor environments to see how environmental factors affect the performance of the system. The experimental results show that the proposed resource allocation strategy improves the use of bandwidth and enhances transmission.