5 research outputs found
When Smoothness is Not Enough: Toward Exact Quantification and Optimization of the Price-of-Anarchy
Today's multiagent systems have grown too complex to rely on centralized
controllers, prompting increasing interest in the design of distributed
algorithms. In this respect, game theory has emerged as a valuable tool to
complement more traditional techniques. The fundamental idea behind this
approach is the assignment of agents' local cost functions, such that their
selfish minimization attains, or is provably close to, the global objective.
Any algorithm capable of computing an equilibrium of the corresponding game
inherits an approximation ratio that is, in the worst case, equal to its
price-of-anarchy. Therefore, a successful application of the game design
approach hinges on the possibility to quantify and optimize the equilibrium
performance.
Toward this end, we introduce the notion of generalized smoothness, and show
that the resulting efficiency bounds are significantly tighter compared to
those obtained using the traditional smoothness approach. Leveraging this
newly-introduced notion, we quantify the equilibrium performance for the class
of local resource allocation games. Finally, we show how the agents' local
decision rules can be designed in order to optimize the efficiency of the
corresponding equilibria, by means of a tractable linear program.Comment: 9 pages, double column, 1 figure, 1 table, to appear in the
proceedings of the 2019 IEEE Conference on Decision and Contro
Optimal Price of Anarchy in Cost-Sharing Games
The design of distributed algorithms is central to the study of multiagent
systems control. In this paper, we consider a class of combinatorial
cost-minimization problems and propose a framework for designing distributed
algorithms with a priori performance guarantees that are near-optimal. We
approach this problem from a game-theoretic perspective, assigning agents cost
functions such that the equilibrium efficiency (price of anarchy) is optimized.
Once agents' cost functions have been specified, any algorithm capable of
computing a Nash equilibrium of the system inherits a performance guarantee
matching the price of anarchy. Towards this goal, we formulate the problem of
computing the price of anarchy as a tractable linear program. We then present a
framework for designing agents' local cost functions in order to optimize for
the worst-case equilibrium efficiency. Finally, we investigate the implications
of our findings when this framework is applied to systems with convex,
nondecreasing costs.Comment: 8 pages, double column, 1 figure, 2 tables, submitted to 2019
American Control Conferenc
Utility Design for Distributed Resource Allocation -- Part II: Applications to Submodular, Covering, and Supermodular Problems
A fundamental component of the game theoretic approach to distributed control
is the design of local utility functions. Relative to resource allocation
problems that are additive over the resources, Part I showed how to design
local utilities so as to maximize the associated performance guarantees [1],
which we measure by the price of anarchy. The purpose of the present manuscript
is to specialize these results to the case of submodular, covering, and
supermodular problems. In all these cases we obtain tight expressions for the
price of anarchy that often match or improve the guarantees associated to
state-of-the-art approximation algorithms. Two applications and corresponding
numerics are presented: the vehicle-target assignment problem and a coverage
problem arising in wireless data caching.Comment: 15 pages, 10 figure
Optimal mechanisms for distributed resource-allocation
As the complexity of real-world systems continues to increase, so does the
need for distributed protocols that are capable of guaranteeing a satisfactory
system performance, without the reliance on centralized decision making. In
this respect, game theory provides a valuable framework for the design of
distributed algorithms in the form of equilibrium efficiency bounds. Arguably
one of the most widespread performance metrics, the price-of-anarchy measures
how the efficiency of a system degrades when moving from centralized to
distributed decision making. While the smoothness framework -- introduced in
Roughgarden 2009 -- has emerged as a powerful methodology for bounding the
price-of-anarchy, the resulting bounds are often conservative, bringing into
question the suitability of the smoothness approach for the design of
distributed protocols. In this paper, we introduce the notion of generalized
smoothness in order to overcome these difficulties. First, we show that
generalized smoothness arguments are more widely applicable, and provide
tighter price-of-anarchy bounds compared to those obtained using the existing
smoothness framework. Second, we show how to leverage the notion of generalized
smoothness to obtain a tight characterization of the price-of-anarchy, relative
to the class of local cost-sharing games. Within this same class of games we
show that the price-of-anarchy can be computed and optimized through the
solution of a tractable linear program. Finally, we demonstrate that our
approach subsumes and generalizes existing results for three well-studied
classes of games.Comment: 27 pages, 6 figure
Distributed control and game design: From strategic agents to programmable machines
Large scale systems are forecasted to greatly impact our future lives thanks
to their wide ranging applications including cooperative robotics, mobility on
demand, resource allocation, supply chain management. While technological
developments have paved the way for the realization of such futuristic systems,
we have a limited grasp on how to coordinate the individual components to
achieve the desired global objective. This thesis deals with the analysis and
coordination of large scale systems without the need of a centralized
authority.
In the first part of this thesis, we consider non-cooperative decision making
problems where each agent's objective is a function of the aggregate behavior
of the population. First, we compare the performance of an equilibrium
allocation with that of an optimal allocation and propose conditions under
which all equilibrium allocations are efficient. Towards this goal, we prove a
novel result bounding the distance between the strategies at a Nash and Wardrop
equilibrium that might be of independent interest. Second, we show how to
derive scalable algorithms that guide agents towards an equilibrium allocation.
In the second part of this thesis, we consider large-scale cooperative
problems, where a number of agents need to be allocated to a set of resources
with the goal of jointly maximizing a given submodular or supermodular set
function. Since this class of problems is computationally intractable, we aim
at deriving tractable algorithms for attaining approximate solutions. We
approach the problem from a game-theoretic perspective and ask the following:
how should we design agents' utilities so that any equilibrium configuration is
almost optimal? To answer this question we introduce a novel framework that
allows to characterize and optimize the system performance as a function of the
chosen utilities by means of a tractable linear program.Comment: PhD Thesis, ETH Zuric