Is it possible the secret is using swarm intelligence to collectively create a p2p mesh network. Maybe following p2p mesh networks then managed by swarm intelligence.
Using peer to peer mesh networks you can actually locate users relative location to you, without supplementing with a gps.
This company that develops p2p mesh technology
http://meshnetworks.com/pages/applications/military_defense.htm
Article About Mesh Networks system
http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0HEP/is_3_22/ai_114533121
Using a peer-to-peer mesh, soldiers dropped into enemy territory, or firefighters in a skyscraper with spotty conventional radio coverage, could exchange text, voice, graphics and video without relying on fixed infrastructure.
If a disaster crippled the infrastructure that supports other wireless networks, people on a peer-to-peer mesh could still communicate. That would put them in a better position than subscribers whose cell phones fell silent during last summer's blackout in the northeastern U.S.
A peer-to-peer network resists damage, and is therefore a good choice for public-safety applications, because the wireless devices that compose it are like a swarm of bees, said Rick Rotondo, vice president of technical marketing at MeshNetworks in Maitland, Fla.
"You can flick as many bees as you want, but that swarm just fills in the holes and keeps coming," Rotondo said. If a router on a peer-to-peer mesh stops working, "the routes are going to heal, and you're just going to go around to another router. That makes it very hard for a natural disaster or a man-made disaster to deny the network to the first responder."
MeshNetworks is one of the first vendors to come to market with peer-to-peer mesh networking technology. The company employs a proprietary radio protocol - Quadrature Division Multiple Access (QDMA) - and transmits at 2.4 GHz. Its Mesh Enabled Architecture (MEA) relies on software that routes communications among mobile devices, continually evaluating conditions to choose the best path. Network nodes can be notebooks, handheld computers or other devices that accept MeshNetworks' communications card.
Because the nodes relay data from one to the next, rather than from a single mobile device to a fixed access point, the peer-to-peer mesh can transmit data at high speeds over much longer distances than a conventional Wi-Fi network, within the same power restrictions, Rotondo said.
The company offers pure peer-to-peer networks and networks that mix mobile and fixed routers. MeshNetworks also offers location services without relying on the global positioning system; instead, it uses triangulation to pinpoint each device on the mesh.
Last summer, the Orange County Fire Rescue Department in Winter Park, Fla., tested prototype location devices from MeshNetworks for tracking firefighters inside a burning building. Bill Godfrey, deputy chief in the department's training and rescue division, eventually hopes to protect firefighters on the job with devices that would combine location with communications capabilities. Such devices would enable firefighters to relay data among themselves and outside to the department's Rapid Intervention Team (RIT). RIT personnel would track firefighters on MeshNetworks-enabled computers.
"The ability to know where the firefighter was when he was in trouble, or track the firefighters on the fire ground, would be of great interest to the RIT if they had to go in and make a rescue," Godfrey said.
The department is now working with MeshNetworks to refine the location technology. For example, the pilot revealed that there is no need to supplement triangulation techniques with a GPS receiver outside the building. Rather than calculate each firefighter's position on the earth, the system merely needs to track his location relative to the rescuer.
"If I can see their dot on a screen, and I can see the dot representing where I am on a screen, and I can walk my dot to their dot and find them, I've got a win," Godfrey said. The peer-to-peer mesh can do this without GPS.
First responders may augment their communications by using "bread crumbs" - handheld devices that they drop on the floor behind them as they move, creating a path for relaying data to the outside, Rotundo said. However, bread crumbs currently are not part of the system in Orlando.
If MeshNetworks perfects its location technology, Orange County Fire Rescue would use the broadband network to transmit video from inside burning structures and back up its voice radio system, Godfrey said.
At the other end of the continent, another public-safety agency, the San Mateo, Calif., Police Department (SMPD), has embraced the second variety of meshing: the fixed mesh. Like a conventional Wi-Fi network, this uses an array of hot spots. But, instead of wiring every access point to the network backbone, a fixed mesh provides a wired backhaul at a small number of hot spots. The other nodes relay data wirelessly among themselves. Like mobile devices in the peer-to-peer network, these fixed devices use software to monitor network conditions and choose the most efficient way to route data to its destination - to the wireline link, or from that link back to a mobile device.
Article on Swarm Intelligence
http://www.eet.com/article/printabl...refix=in_focus/communications&sub_taxonomyID=
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