Topology creation and impact on consensus in multi-agent systems

Abstract

Mobile ad hoc sensor networks are characterized by dynamic changes in communication links and network topology mainly due to node mobility. In such networks, it is a challenge to build a communication system that lasts longer and requires less reconfiguration and less communication overhead. In this study, we propose an on-demand topology reconfiguration approach for multi-agent systems aimed at enhancing the connectivity and performance. The proposed strategy groups nodes, elects cluster-heads and finally selects gateways for inter-cluster communication. This study, also, seeks to investigate the impact of topology structural characteristics on consensus building among multi-agent nodes. The structural properties evaluated are the algebraic connectivity ratio, average path, average cluster coefficient, average matching index, modularity and the average participation. The consensus is measured by nodes average state update. Statistical methods are employed to explore the interaction between these structural properties and the consensus. A theoretical analysis is provided to support the statistical results. Finally, a comparative study of three distributed strategies for task allocation in a multi-agent system is presented. The objective is to determine for each node its course of action and the tasks it needs to accomplish. The methods are based on self-organizing map technique, Hungarian method and a linear programming optimization formulation. A theoretical section is provided to support the dynamics of these techniques and some of the results.