91,625 research outputs found
Hedonic Coalition Formation for Distributed Task Allocation among Wireless Agents
Autonomous wireless agents such as unmanned aerial vehicles or mobile base
stations present a great potential for deployment in next-generation wireless
networks. While current literature has been mainly focused on the use of agents
within robotics or software applications, we propose a novel usage model for
self-organizing agents suited to wireless networks. In the proposed model, a
number of agents are required to collect data from several arbitrarily located
tasks. Each task represents a queue of packets that require collection and
subsequent wireless transmission by the agents to a central receiver. The
problem is modeled as a hedonic coalition formation game between the agents and
the tasks that interact in order to form disjoint coalitions. Each formed
coalition is modeled as a polling system consisting of a number of agents which
move between the different tasks present in the coalition, collect and transmit
the packets. Within each coalition, some agents can also take the role of a
relay for improving the packet success rate of the transmission. The proposed
algorithm allows the tasks and the agents to take distributed decisions to join
or leave a coalition, based on the achieved benefit in terms of effective
throughput, and the cost in terms of delay. As a result of these decisions, the
agents and tasks structure themselves into independent disjoint coalitions
which constitute a Nash-stable network partition. Moreover, the proposed
algorithm allows the agents and tasks to adapt the topology to environmental
changes such as the arrival/removal of tasks or the mobility of the tasks.
Simulation results show how the proposed algorithm improves the performance, in
terms of average player (agent or task) payoff, of at least 30.26% (for a
network of 5 agents with up to 25 tasks) relatively to a scheme that allocates
nearby tasks equally among agents.Comment: to appear, IEEE Transactions on Mobile Computin
Beyond swarm intelligence: The Ultraswarm
This paper explores the idea that it may be possible to
combine two ideas – UAV flocking, and wireless cluster
computing – in a single system, the UltraSwarm. The
possible advantages of such a system are considered, and
solutions to some of the technical problems are identified.
Initial work on constructing such a system based around
miniature electric helicopters is described
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