A bargaining-specific architecture for supporting automated service agreement negotiation systems

The provision of services is often regulated by means of agreements that must be negotiated beforehand. Automating such negotiations is appealing insofar as it overcomes one of the most often cited shortcomings of human negotiation: slowness. Our analysis of the requirements of automated negotiation systems in open environments suggests that some of them cannot be tackled in a protocol-independent manner, which motivates the need for a protocol-specific architecture. However, current state-of-the-art bargaining architectures fail to address all of these requirements together. Our key contribution is a bargaining architecture that addresses all of the requirements we have identified. The definition of the architecture includes a logical view that identifies the key architectural elements and their interactions, a process view that identifies how the architectural elements can be grouped together into processes, a development view that includes a software framework that provides a reference implementation developers can use to build their own negotiation systems, and a scenarios view by means of which the architecture is illustrated and validatedComisión Interministerial de Ciencia y Tecnología (CICYT) SETI (TIN2009-07366)Junta de Andalucía P07-TIC-2533 (Isabel)Ministerio de Ciencia y Tecnología TIN2010-21744-C02-1Ministerio de Ciencia y Tecnología TIN2007-64119Junta de Andalucía P07-TIC-02602Junta de Andalucía P08-TIC-4100Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación TIN2008-04718-

A bargaining-specific architecture for supporting automated service agreement negotiation systems

The provision of services is often regulated by means of agreements that must be negotiated beforehand. Automating such negotiations is appealing insofar as it overcomes one of the most often cited shortcomings of human negotiation: slowness. Our analysis of the requirements of automated negotiation systems in open environments suggests that some of them cannot be tackled in a protocol-independent manner, which motivates the need for a protocol-specific architecture. However, current state-of-the-art bargaining architectures fail to address all of these requirements together. Our key contribution is a bargaining architecture that addresses all of the requirements we have identified. The definition of the architecture includes a logical view that identifies the key architectural elements and their interactions, a process view that identifies how the architectural elements can be grouped together into processes, a development view that includes a software framework that provides a reference implementation developers can use to build their own negotiation systems, and a scenarios view by means of which the architecture is illustrated and validatedComisión Interministerial de Ciencia y Tecnología (CICYT) SETI (TIN2009-07366)Junta de Andalucía P07-TIC-2533 (Isabel)Ministerio de Ciencia y Tecnología TIN2010-21744-C02-1Ministerio de Ciencia y Tecnología TIN2007-64119Junta de Andalucía P07-TIC-02602Junta de Andalucía P08-TIC-4100Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación TIN2008-04718-

Automatic Service Agreement Negotiators in Open Commerce Environments

There is a steady shift in e‑commerce from goods to services that must be provisioned according to service agreements. This study focuses on software frameworks to develop automated negotiators in open commerce environments. Analysis of the litera‑ ture on automated negotiation and typical case studies led to a catalog of 16 objective requirements and a conceptual model that was used to compare 11 state-of-the-art software frameworks. None of them was well suited for negotiating service agreements in open commerce environments. This motivated work on a reference architecture that provides the foundations to develop negotiation systems that address the previous requirements. A software framework was devised to validate the proposal by means of case studies. The study contributes to the fields of requirements engineering and software design, and is expected to support future efforts of practitioners and researchers because its findings bridge the gap among the existing automated negotiation techniques and lay the founda‑ tions for developing new software frameworksMinisterio de Educación y Ciencia TIN2006–00472Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación TIN2009–07366Junta de Andalucía P07-TIC-2533 (Isabel)Ministerio de Educación y Ciencia TIN2007–64119Junta de Andalucía P07-TIC-02602Junta de Andalucía P08-TIC-4100Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación TIN2008–04718-

The significance of bidding, accepting and opponent modeling in automated negotiation

Given the growing interest in automated negotiation, the search for effective strategies has produced a variety of different negotiation agents. Despite their diversity, there is a common structure to their design. A negotiation agent comprises three key components: the bidding strategy, the opponent model and the acceptance criteria. We show that this three-component view of a negotiating architecture not only provides a useful basis for developing such agents but also provides a useful analytical tool. By combining these components in varying ways, we are able to demonstrate the contribution of each component to the overall negotiation result, and thus determine the key contributing components. Moreover, we are able to study the interaction between components and present detailed interaction effects. Furthermore, we find that the bidding strategy in particular is of critical importance to the negotiator's success and far exceeds the importance of opponent preference modeling techniques. Our results contribute to the shaping of a research agenda for negotiating agent design by providing guidelines on how agent developers can spend their time most effectively

A theoretical and computational basis for CATNETS

The main content of this report is the identification and definition of market mechanisms for Application Layer Networks (ALNs). On basis of the structured Market Engineering process, the work comprises the identification of requirements which adequate market mechanisms for ALNs have to fulfill. Subsequently, two mechanisms for each, the centralized and the decentralized case are described in this document. These build the theoretical foundation for the work within the following two years of the CATNETS project. --Grid Computing

Dependable Distributed Computing for the International Telecommunication Union Regional Radio Conference RRC06

The International Telecommunication Union (ITU) Regional Radio Conference (RRC06) established in 2006 a new frequency plan for the introduction of digital broadcasting in European, African, Arab, CIS countries and Iran. The preparation of the plan involved complex calculations under short deadline and required dependable and efficient computing capability. The ITU designed and deployed in-situ a dedicated PC farm, in parallel to the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) which provided and supported a system based on the EGEE Grid. The planning cycle at the RRC06 required a periodic execution in the order of 200,000 short jobs, using several hundreds of CPU hours, in a period of less than 12 hours. The nature of the problem required dynamic workload-balancing and low-latency access to the computing resources. We present the strategy and key technical choices that delivered a reliable service to the RRC06

Consensus-based approach to peer-to-peer electricity markets with product differentiation

With the sustained deployment of distributed generation capacities and the more proactive role of consumers, power systems and their operation are drifting away from a conventional top-down hierarchical structure. Electricity market structures, however, have not yet embraced that evolution. Respecting the high-dimensional, distributed and dynamic nature of modern power systems would translate to designing peer-to-peer markets or, at least, to using such an underlying decentralized structure to enable a bottom-up approach to future electricity markets. A peer-to-peer market structure based on a Multi-Bilateral Economic Dispatch (MBED) formulation is introduced, allowing for multi-bilateral trading with product differentiation, for instance based on consumer preferences. A Relaxed Consensus+Innovation (RCI) approach is described to solve the MBED in fully decentralized manner. A set of realistic case studies and their analysis allow us showing that such peer-to-peer market structures can effectively yield market outcomes that are different from centralized market structures and optimal in terms of respecting consumers preferences while maximizing social welfare. Additionally, the RCI solving approach allows for a fully decentralized market clearing which converges with a negligible optimality gap, with a limited amount of information being shared.Comment: Accepted for publication in IEEE Transactions on Power System

A Secure and Fair Protocol that Addresses Weaknesses of the Nash Bargaining Solution in Nonlinear Negotiation

Negotiation with multiple interdependent issues is an important problem since much of real-world negotiation falls into this category. This paper examines the problem that, in such domains, agent utility functions are nonlinear, and thereby can create nonconvex Pareto frontiers. This in turn implies that the Nash Bargaining Solution, which has been viewed as the gold standard for identifying a unique optimal negotiation outcome, does not serve that role in nonlinear domains. In nonlinear domains, unlike linear ones, there can be multiple Nash Bargaining Solutions, and all can be sub-optimal with respect to social welfare and fairness. In this paper, we propose a novel negotiation protocol called SFMP (the Secure and Fair Mediator Protocol) that addresses this challenge, enabling secure multilateral negotiations with fair and pareto-optimal outcomes in nonlinear domains. The protocol works by (1) using nonlinear optimization, combined with a Multi-Party protocol, to find the Pareto front without revealing agent’s private utility information, and (2) selecting the agreement from the Pareto set that maximizes a fair division criterion we call approximated fairness. We demonstrate that SFMP is able to find agreements that maximize fairness and social welfare in nonlinear domains, and out-performs (in terms of outcomes and scalability) previously developed nonlinear negotiation protocols

Theoretical and Computational Basis for Economical Ressource Allocation in Application Layer Networks - Annual Report Year 1

This paper identifies and defines suitable market mechanisms for Application Layer Networks (ALNs). On basis of the structured Market Engineering process, the work comprises the identification of requirements which adequate market mechanisms for ALNs have to fulfill. Subsequently, two mechanisms for each, the centralized and the decentralized case are described in this document. --Grid Computing