PC-DPOP: A New Partial Centralization Algorithm for Distributed Optimization

Fully decentralized algorithms for distributed constraint optimization often require excessive amounts of communication when applied to complex problems. The OptAPO algorithm of [Mailler and Lesser, 2004] uses a strategy of partial centralization to mitigate this problem. We introduce PC-DPOP, a new partial centralization technique, based on the DPOP algorithm of [Petcu and Faltings, 2005]. PC-DPOP provides better control over what parts of the problem are centralized and allows this centralization to be optimal with respect to the chosen communication structure. Unlike OptAPO, PC-DPOP allows for a priory, exact predictions about privacy loss, communication, memory and computational requirements on all nodes and links in the network. Upper bounds on communication and memory requirements can be specified. We also report strong efficiency gains over OptAPO in experiments on three problem domains.

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