On modeling of self-organizing systems

Abstract

A goal of computing and networking systems is to limit administrative requirements for users and operators. A technical systems should be able to configure itself as much as possible to increase the usability. This leads to the design of self-organizing systems. Self-organizing systems emerge as an increasingly important area of research, not only for computer networks but also in many other fields. For analyzing properties of complex systems, a mathematical model for these systems may be useful. Whether a model with discrete time or with continuous time fits better, depends on the properties of the system and which analysis should be done in the model. In this paper we give a comparison between discrete and continuous models and we give a formal definition for modeling continuous complex systems. Then this theory is applied to model slot-synchronization in wireless networks.