An adaptive strategy for resource allocation with changing capacities

Abstract

In this paper, we study a class of resource allocation problems with changing resource capacities. The system consists of competitive agents that have to choose among several resources to complete their tasks. The objective of the resource allocation is that agents can adapt to the dynamic environment autonomously and make good utilization of resources. We propose an adaptive strategy for agents to use in the resource allocation system with time-varying capacities. This strategy is based on individual agent's experience and prediction. Simulations show that agents using the adaptive strategy as a whole can adapt effectively to the changing capacity levels and result in better resource utilization than those proposed in previous work. Finally, we also investigate how the parameters affect the performance of the strategy. © 2009 ICST Institute for Computer Sciences, Social Informatics and Telecommunications Engineering.