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A Feedback-based Decentralised Coordination Model for Distributed Open Real-Time Systems
Ref: HURRAY-TR-120713       Publication Date: Sep 2012

Abstract:
Moving towards autonomous operation and management of increasingly complex open distributed real-time systems poses very significant challenges. This is particularly true when reaction to events must be done in a timely and predictable manner while guaranteeing Quality of Service (QoS) constraints imposed by users, the environment, or applications. In these scenarios, the system should be able to maintain a global feasible QoS level while allow- ing individual nodes to autonomously adapt under different constraints of resource availability and input quality. This paper shows how decentralised coordination of a group of autonomous interdependent nodes can emerge with little communication, based on the robust self-organising principles of feedback. Positive feedback is used to reinforce the selection of the new desired global service solution, while neg- ative feedback discourages nodes to act in a greedy fashion as this adversely impacts on the provided service levels at neighbouring nodes. The proposed protocol is general enough to be used in a wide range of scenarios characterised by a high degree of openness and dynamism where co- ordination tasks need to be time dependent. As the reported results demon- strate, it requires less messages to be exchanged and it is faster to achieve a globally acceptable near-optimal solution than other available approaches.

Luis Miguel Nogueira

,

Luis Miguel Pinho

,

Jorge Coelho

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