A layered architecture for real-time distributed multi-agent systems

摘要

Real-time computations in open distributed systems have functional as well as coordination requirements. Specifically, distributed agents may require to be coordinated to satisfy real-time and other quality of service (QoS) constraints. However, this coordination is difficult to achieve because of the unpredictability of computational resource availability in an open system.A three-layered architecture for computations in an open distributed multi-agent system is presented, which keeps functional, coordination and resource concerns of an application separate, allowing each to be studied separately. Functional requirements of the computation are pursued by a system of primitive agents called actors. Timing constraints are imposed on these agents through meta-operations carried out by coordinators. Resource encapsulations called cyberorgs are used for creating execution environments for agents and coordinators with predictable availability of resources.Programming constructs aredeveloped for implementing cyber-orgs and coordinators.