Fruit Flies Making Inroads on Autonomous Computing

Jucius Maximus writes "The configuration of base stations in cell phone networks has always been problematic because you can never predict how many phones will connect to which base station. And sometimes adjacent antennas will use the same frequency leading to dropped calls. Such configuration challenges may have solutions in autonomous computing. An article on C|NET describes how British Telecom is examining the development of fruit flies, hoping that nature has already found the solution to this problem. This technology could also be applied to 'threat-sensing' on computer networks."

Comments

For the curious, this is how the fly works

[DrJay]

They were a bit vague on what goes on in the fly, so here's a short synopsis:

The entire back of the fly has the potential to become either a sensory organ or cuticle (the fly's skin). Things get narrowed down by the expression of some sensory-promoting proteins in clusters of cells at specific locations. The process they're intrigued by is how a single cell within this cluster becomes sensory.

All of these cells begin expressing a signal and a receptor for that signal. When the signal is received, a cell will turn down the expression of both the signal and the sensory promoting genes. Cells that aren't receiving the signal will turn down the expression of the receptor and turn up the expression of the signal. Thus, when a cell isn't seeing a lot of signal, it both reduces its ability to see any more, and increases its signaling to surrounding cells.

In the end, it all becomes a balancing act between signaling and seeing signaling from neighboring cells. The thought is that the initiation of the process is somewhat stochastic - some cells may turn on the signal earlier than others or start of expressing it at a higher level. The result of the signaling reinforcing itself is that this initial small advantage is greatly amplified, and becomes an all-or-nothing decision.

I hope that is more coherent than i think it is...

JT

Only if the engineer is an idiot

[Icepick_]

I'm a RF engineer with a major US wireless provider. I do this on a day to day business.

The configuration of base stations in cell phone networks has always been problematic because you can never predict how many phones will connect to which base station.

True. However, it doesn't much matter most of the time. We monitor the usage of our sites, and expand those that require it. We also preemtivly expand those that are predicted to require it, and those that we know are going to cover major events, IE concerts, conventions, etc.

And sometimes adjacent antennas will use the same frequency leading to dropped calls.

If this is happening, your RF engineer is an idiot. The process of planning what sites use what frequencies is somewhat intensive, but putting the same frequency on two addjacent sites is a complete fsck up. More typical is a site overshooting and interfering with another one several miles away.

But with dozens of base stations, each broadcasting with six of the 29 available frequencies

I know that BT has alot more capacity problems than most places here in the US. However, my company uses 3 frequencies per site, from a list of 24. Each site also freqency hops on a list of 18 more freqencies. Hopping really makes all this possible.