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A Distributed Agent System for Managing a Web-based Sensor Network with Field Servers

Published by the American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineers, St. Joseph, Michigan www.asabe.org

Citation:  Computers in Agriculture and Natural Resources, 4th World Congress Conference, Proceedings of the 24-26 July 2006 (Orlando, Florida USA) Publication Date 24 July 2006  701P0606.(doi:10.13031/2013.21877)
Authors:   Tokihiro FUKATSU, Masayuki HIRAFUJI, Takuji KIURA
Keywords:   Field Server, Sensor Network, Agent System, Web monitoring, Scalability, Robustness

This paper presents the framework and function of an agent system developed for Field Server to manage Web-based sensor network. This system consisting of an agent program, program configuration files, and a Web interface, can easily and autonomously manage Web-based sensor nodes via the Internet. It can perform simple function such as monitoring to more complex and intelligent operations to adapt to various conditions as specified by the user in the program configuration files. The users can easily access and change the agent management via the Web interface in the agent system. It is also designed to handle Web-based nodes, Web applications and Web information as nodes, so its functions can be easily expanded by simply interacting with these nodes without changing the agent program. Moreover, the agent system is designed to treat itself as just one of the nodes resulting to a highly scalable and robust system. A meta-agent system, which can treat another agent system, coordinates the function of managing many nodes in the whole system so that it can achieve scalability system. The nested structure of the agent system in which several agent systems handle several nodes multiply, serves as a data backup mechanism as well as a way to avoid bottlenecks. Results of the trial experiments show the agent system for Field Servers is a robust and scalable system for long-term field monitoring, effective data handling, and management based on the situation.

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