Agent-Based Wave Computation: Towards Controlling the Resource Demand

In recent years, the mobile agent paradigm has received significant consideration in the context of large complex decentralized systems. Tasks such as system monitoring, load balancing and resource management have been successfully mapped onto this paradigm. Although the significance of the agents' resource demand has been recognized and discussed, few mechanisms have been developed to control the demand as a function of resource availability. In this paper, we propose an agent based computing model that incorporates the concepts of wave computation. In particular, mechanisms to dynamically adapt the agent population are investigated. Related issues, such as wave propagation and termination are discussed. Further, we present the results of a variety of simulation experiments used to investigate the properties of the proposed algorithms.