01
Observe
Build a changing picture of reachable nodes, interfaces, link quality, latency, loss, bandwidth, congestion, battery state, movement and gateway availability.
All Things projects
MathBrooks Things · Active Research · Pre-deployment
Tessera™
Keep machines communicating when the network changes.
At one site, sensors, vehicles and robots may rely on Wi-Fi, radio, cellular and satellite. Tessera investigates how to coordinate those connections so important messages can find a viable path as conditions change.
One coordination layer. Many ways to connect.
Sensor
Vehicle
Robot
Worker
Drone
Gateway
Tessera
Observe · Decide · Adapt
Wi-FiRadioCellularSatellite
The idea
One network view across many connections.
Tessera is MathBrooks research into an adaptive network-control layer for machines, sensors and edge devices.
Instead of every application understanding all the communications infrastructure around it, Tessera would maintain a view of the available network and help determine how information should move through it.
Connections may be expensive, unreliable, power-hungry or temporary. Messages may have different priorities. The research asks whether a network can understand these conditions and continuously make better communication decisions.
The Tessera model
Applications express what they need. Tessera evaluates how the network can provide it.
Applications & machines
RobotsVehiclesSensorsDronesIndustrial equipmentEdge AIHuman communications
Tessera · Research model
- What needs to communicate?
- How important is it?
- Which devices and connections are available?
- What routes exist and what do they cost?
- Which route best satisfies the requirement?
Available infrastructure
Wi-FiBluetoothPrivate RFLong-range radioCellularFibreSatelliteDevice-to-device
Tessera investigates the layer between machines and the infrastructure available to them. It would coordinate compatible communications resources rather than replace Wi-Fi, cellular, radio or satellite.
A simple example
How does a remote site reach its gateway — and itself?
A sensor may not reach the gateway directly, but it may reach a nearby vehicle. That vehicle could reach a local radio node, then the gateway and its satellite connection.
Sensor
Vehicle
Local radio
Gateway
Satellite
Internet
This is an illustrative route, not a deployed Tessera system. The research will test when coordinating these options is useful.
Not every message is equal
Tell the network what matters.
An emergency alert may need low latency and high reliability. A software update may wait. Routine telemetry may tolerate delay. Intent-aware networking is one long-term Tessera research direction.
Emergency alert
Critical priority · Very low latency · Very high reliability
Sensor telemetry
Normal priority · Moderate latency · High energy sensitivity
Software update
Low priority · High bandwidth · High delay tolerance
The application describes the outcome. The network evaluates how best to achieve it.
Observe · Decide · Adapt
Respond to the network as it actually is.
02
Decide
Evaluate possible routes against the requirements of each communication. The best path may not be the shortest path.
03
Adapt
Investigate route, gateway and interface selection, prioritisation, failover, multipath and store-and-forward behaviour as conditions change.
A decision can balance reliability, latency, energy, bandwidth, stability, priority, cost and policy.
ReliabilityLatencyEnergyBandwidthStabilityPriorityCostPolicy
Research hypothesis
Better network outcomes must be measured.
In sufficiently dynamic and heterogeneous edge environments, maintaining a shared model of network conditions and communication requirements may enable better communication decisions than treating each network and route independently.
Modern networks already have sophisticated routing, failover and optimisation. Simply rerouting traffic would not prove a meaningful contribution. Tessera may examine graph algorithms, optimisation, heuristics, predictive models, reinforcement learning or hybrid systems. The method must earn its place through evidence.
Tessera Lab
Start with approximately 100 simulated nodes.
The first environment will be a virtual network laboratory representing sensors, vehicles, machines, gateways, workers and edge computers. It will simulate movement, changing links, congestion, packet loss, failures, energy constraints, multiple interfaces and traffic priorities.
Existing networking is the benchmark.
Experiments will compare Tessera candidates with appropriate established approaches. Equal or better baseline performance, limited improvements and added overhead all matter.
Claims must reduce to numbers.
The goal is to identify whether a useful problem exists and under which conditions an adaptive approach helps.
DeliveryLatencyRecoveryEnergyOverheadStabilityPriority performanceCostCompound disruption
Humans remain in control.
Adaptive infrastructure must remain observable, governable and controllable. The proposed control plane would expose topology, links, node and gateway health, traffic priorities, active routes, degradation and recovery events.
Prioritise safety traffic during congestion.
Keep certain data off public networks.
Use satellite only below a terrestrial connectivity threshold.
Keep specified machines within the local network.
Where this could matter
Mixed connectivity in the physical world.
Mining
Vehicles, workers, machines and sensors across large, difficult environments.
Agriculture
Sensors, pumps, vehicles and drones distributed across large areas.
Industrial operations
Factories, warehouses, ports and energy infrastructure.
Autonomous systems
Robots, vehicles and drones using local, edge and cloud infrastructure.
Remote infrastructure
Sites where cellular, radio, satellite and local networks coexist.
Emergency networks
Temporary communications assembled from available connectivity.
Development path
Simulate → Emulate → Deploy
Tessera is currently research, not a deployed networking product. Each phase must produce evidence before the next.
Phase 01
Simulate
Build Tessera Lab with approximately 100 virtual nodes. Model movement, interfaces, congestion, failure and traffic priorities; compare candidate strategies with established baselines.
Phase 02
Emulate
Move selected experiments to physical devices with real radios, interference, limited compute, batteries and moving hardware.
Phase 03
Deploy
Run alongside existing infrastructure in a bounded operating environment and measure actual performance before making field claims.
Phase 01 gate: Does Tessera demonstrate a meaningful advantage under clearly defined conditions?
The longer-term question
Which connection should a machine use, when, and for what?
As robots, vehicles, drones, machines and sensors gain more ways to communicate, coordinating those options may matter more. Tessera's ambition is to investigate a layer that understands what needs to communicate, what it requires and what infrastructure is available.
Give the connected physical world a better way to communicate.
Current status
Research in formation.
Tessera Lab · Phase 01: 100-node simulation, network-state model, multiple interfaces, baseline routing, failure modelling, traffic priorities and adaptive decision experiments.
No field-performance claims are currently made.
Research with us
Help test the question.
We welcome network engineers, telecommunications and edge-computing researchers, robotics teams, industrial operators, and communications hardware companies working across complex physical environments.
Request the Tessera Research Brief