Decentralized ad-hoc networks are a rather new and active field of research. A tremendous amount of work has been done in applied computer science, but so far, work on algorithmic foundations has been limited.

The main objective of project SwarmNet is to address problems that arise in these networks during self-organized setup and operation. The sensor networks we consider consist of a potentially huge number of independent small devices that can communicate only by radio transmission. These devices are generally equipped with very scarce resources like energy, computing power and memory. We assume that no central authority and no specialized location hardware like GPS is available. In the first stage of the project, another assumption is that nodes are not mobile.

Our major goal is to use simple local protocols in order to achieve distributed knowledge of global properties and structures. A critical issue is energy efficient communication. With these two things in mind we are developing efficient algorithms that use discrete and geometric structures. While focusing on a theoretical view on the network, we still keep an eye on practical applicability.