Agent Coordination Mechanisms for Multi-National Network Enabled Capabilities

Modern advanced information technology enables military organisations to share information, such that decision making occurs at all levels within the chain of command. In a network centric approach to warfare, assets like sensors, shooters and C2 systems are interconnected in an infostructure, or information grid. By sharing information and combining capabilities, these assets work together to achieve enhanced capabilities. In the Netherlands, this is termed Network Enabled Capabilities (NEC). Under NEC, assets can dynamically form temporary “teams” to fulfill a specific task. To realize such agile configurations of assets, the problem of managing tasks between assets has to be tackled. In this work we argue that specialized software components, called intelligent agents, are suitable for coordinating tasks between assets. NEC systems can be viewed as a type of multiagent systems (MAS) in which agents represent assets and connect them to the information grid. Now, coordination mechanisms, as explored in the field of MAS design, are also applicable in a NEC setting. The aim of the research reported in this paper is to identify which coordination strategies are suited to NEC. We take the following approach. First, we give an overview and classification of agent based coordination mechanisms and their properties. We suggest a taxonomy of agent coordination strategies. Next, we identify the key requirements for coordination mechanisms in a NEC setting. Based on these requirements we argue that explicit, centralized coordination strategies with low communication overhead in a cooperative environment are best suited as primary coordination strategy. Finally, we compare our research with other initiatives, employing agent technology. We recognize that there is no single best way to coordinate, and that for local clusters of agents other types of coordination strategies might be preferable. Therefore we suggest a hybrid NEC coordination strategy, composed of a global primary coordination strategy, with subordinate clusters of agents that use local coordination strategies. This can be a mechanism for handling multi-national coalitions. In the proposed architecture, agents are organized in a nested structure of clusters, or holons.