Combination of self-organization mechanisms to enhance service discovery in open systems

Abstract

Decentralized systems have emerged as an alternative to centralized approaches for dealing with dynamic requirements in new business models. These systems should provide mechanisms that contribute to flexibility and facilitate adaptation to changes in the environment. In this paper, we present two self-organization mechanisms for a decentralized service discovery system in order to improve its performance. These mechanisms are based on local actions of agents that only consider local information about queries they forward during the discovery process. The self-organization actions are chosen by each agent individually when the agent considers them to be appropriate. The actions are: remaining in the system, leaving the system, cloning, and changing structural relations with other agents. We have evaluated each self-organization mechanism separately but also the combination of the two as the environmental conditions in the service demand change. The results show that the proposed self-organization mechanisms considerably improve the performance of the service discovery system.

A Framework for Distributed Interaction in Intelligent Environments

“…MAS paradigms are very valid solutions for smart-environment support, but the listed works are usually directly connected to the right device or use a central system that collects the provided services. A distributed context provides flexibility and adaptability [25], while a central "service manager" presents some limitations, especially in very populated environments; however MAS solution of Valero et al [26] inherits benefits by well known models such as JADE 4 and Jason 5 .…”

“…The latter approach uses a distributed network of interacting devices; they have their own sensors and reasoners and are focused on smaller targets, usually related on the set of categories they belong to. If the first case is more easily aware of what is happening, the last is more flexible, and especially useful in dynamic contexts [25], where many users interact with the available technology together; moreover, the current market offers more and more devices focused on simple tasks, but that can be exploited to make the overall environment more intelligent. In all the adopted strategies, Human-Computer Interaction (hereafter HCI) plays a fundamental role.…”