Simulation is one approach to analyze and model the real world complex problems. Multi-agent based systems provide a platform to develop simulations based on the concept of agent-oriented programming. In multi-agent systems, the local interaction between agents contributes to the emergence of the global phenomena by getting the result of the simulation runs. In MABS systems, interaction is one common aspect for all agents to perform their tasks. To interact with each other the agents require yellow page services from the platform to search for other agents. As more and more agents perform searches on this yellow page directory, there is a decrease in the performance due to a central bottleneck.In this thesis, we have investigated multiple solutions for this problem. The most promising solution is to integrate distributed shared memory with the directory systems. With our proposed solution, empirical analysis shows a statistically significant increase in performance of the directory service. We expect this result to make a considerable contribution to the state of the art in multiagent platforms.
Contents
1 INTRODUCTION
1.1 THESIS STRUCTURE
2 BACKGROUND
2.1 AGENT
2.2 MULTI-AGENT SYSTEM – THE CONTEXT
2.3 SIGNIFICANCE OF MULTI-AGENT SYSTEMS
2.4 JADE AS MABS PLATFORM
3 PROBLEM STATEMENT
3.1 AIMS
3.2 OBJECTIVES
3.3 RESEARCH QUESTIONS
3.4 EXPECTED OUTCOMES
3.5 RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
3.5.1 Problem Analysis / Literature review – Qualitative method
3.5.2 Prototype development/Simulation – Quantitative method
3.5.3 Results/Conclusion – Implementation
4 JADE ARCHITECTURE ANALYSIS
4.1 JADE ARCHITECTURE
4.1.1 Main Container
4.1.2 Directory Facilitator (DF)
4.1.3 Agent Management Service (AMS)
4.1.4 Container Table (CT)
4.1.5 Local Agent Descriptor Table (LADT)
4.1.6 Global Agent Descriptor Table (GADT)
4.2 AGENT COMMUNICATION LANGUAGE
4.2.1 KQML
4.2.2 FIPA
4.3 JADE MESSAGING SERVICE
4.3.1 Message Queue
4.3.2 Communication Interfaces
4.4 AGENT TASKS EXECUTION MODEL IN JADE
4.5 RELATED WORK
4.6 PROBLEM IDENTIFICATION – QUALITATIVE APPROACH
4.7 EMPIRICAL ANALYSIS OF JADE PERFORMANCE
5 PROPOSED SOLUTION
5.1 DESIGN APPROACH
5.1.1 Solution 1: Shared Memory Approach
5.1.2 Solution 2: Distributed Shared Memory Approach
5.2 IMPLEMENTATION STRATEGY
5.2.1 Implementation 1: Shared Memory Approach
5.2.2 Implementation 2: Distributed Shared Memory Approach
5.2.3 JSTM Implementation
6 EXPERIMENTS
6.1 SETUP
6.1.1 Environment
6.1.2 Variables
6.2 EXPERIMENT: SCALABILITY ACCORDING TO NUMBER OF DIRECTORY ITEMS
6.2.1 Experiment – Normal DF Search
6.2.2 Experiment – Shared memory approach
6.2.3 Experiment – Distributed Shared memory approach
6.2.4 Performance Comparison Original DF vs. DSM vs. Shared memory
6.2.5 Experiment – Performance metrics on Single vs. multi platform
6.3 EXPERIMENT: SCALABILITY ACCORDING TO SEARCHING AGENT NUMBERS
6.3.1 Experiment – Normal DF Search
6.3.2 Experiment – Shared memory approach
6.3.3 Experiment – Distributed shared memory approach
6.3.4 Performance Comparison Original DF vs. DSM vs. Shared memory
7 CONCLUSION AND FUTURE WORK
7.1 ANSWERS TO RESEARCH QUESTIONS
7.2 RESULT SUMMARY
7.3 FUTURE WORK
7.3.1 Improvements
8 REFERENCES
APPENDIX ‘A’
Author: Shahid Hussain, Hassan Shabbir
Source: Blekinge Institute of Technology
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