A game-theoretic formulation of multi-agent resource allocation

This paper considers resource allocation in a network with mobile agents competing for computational priority. We formulate this problem as a multi-agent game with the players being agents purchasing service from a common server. We show that there exists a computable Nash equilibrium when agents have perfect information into the future. From our game, we build a market-based CPU allocation policy and a strategy with which an agent may plan its expenditures for a multi-hop itinerary. We simulate a network of hosts and agents using our strategy to show that our resourceallocation mechanism e#ectively prioritizes agents according to their endowments and that our planning algorithm handles network delay gracefully. 1. INTRODUCTION Mobile-agent systems allow programs to autonomously relocate from one host to another. An agent may jump to one site to filter a database, jump to another site to access a camera, and to a third to process the results of the previous two hops before returning ...