Self-organization and multiagent systems: I. Models of multiagent self-organization

• Authors: V. I. Gorodetskii
• Venue: Journal of Computer and Systems Sciences International
• Year: 2012

Nowadays, there are many problems whose complexity is much higher than the capabilities of modern information technologies. Such problems arise in economics, ecology, managing state-level infrastructures and global computer and telecommunication systems, ensuring the safety of society, and in many other fields. Even though these problems seem to be quite different, they have many common features, which imply common difficulties in their solution. These features are as follows: they are large-scale problems, they are open, have unpredictable dynamics and complex structure, include mobile components, and some others. The management in such systems is a challenging task, which requires a revision of modern views, models, architectures, and development technologies. A response to this challenge is the increasing activity in the field of principles and mechanisms of self-organization and in the software tools for their development. Although the paradigm of self-organizing control systems is not new, it is now at a new step of development, which involves, in particular, its integration with the multiagent system paradigm. The purposes of this paper are to analyze the state-of-the art in the field of multiagent self-organizing systems, to provide a critical review of the available applications, analyze development techniques, and generalize the results obtained in this field. The paper consists of two parts. In the first part, we discuss the modern interpretation of the principles of self-organization is analyzed, and the reasons for which the integration of these principles with the achievements in the field of multiagent systems provides a new impetus to the development of information technologies in the context of most complex modern applications. A systematization and description of the self-organization models and mechanisms implemented in the framework of the multiagent architecture is given, and biological self-organization mechanisms are discussed. Applications of self-organizing multiagent systems in telecommunication, grid resource management, and routing in computer networks with dynamic topology, as well as applications in distributed learning and in detecting intrusions into computer networks are described.