Distributed simulation of MAS

Abstract

The efficient simulation of multi-agent systems presents particular challenges which are not addressed by current parallel discrete event simulation (PDES) models and techniques. While the modelling and simulation of agents, at least at a coarse grain, is relatively straightforward, it is harder to apply PDES approaches to the simulation of the agents' environment. In conventional PDES approaches a system is modelled as a set of logical processes (LPs). Each LP maintains its own portion of the state of the simulation and interacts with a small number of other LPs. The interaction between the LPs is assumed to be known in advance and does not change during the simulation. In contrast, the environment of a MAS is read and updated by agent and environment LPs in ways which depend on the evolution of the simulation. As a result, MAS simulations typically have a large shared state which is not associated with any particular agent or environment LP. In [1] we proposed a new approach to the distributed simulation of MAS in which the shared state is maintained by a tree of additional logical processes called Communication Logical Processes (CLP). In this paper we refine this model by giving precise definitions of a set of operations which allow agent and environment LPs to interact with the shared state and briefly outline how these operations could be implemented by a CLP. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2005.