Emergence of coordination in scale-free networks

Article type: Research Article

Authors: Delgado, Jordi | Pujol, Josep M. | Sangüesa, Ramón

Affiliations: Software Department, Technical University of Catalonia, C/Jordi Girona 1-3, 08034 Barcelona, Spain. E-mail: {jdelgado, jmpujol, sanguesa}@lsi.upc.es

Abstract: We use several models of scale-free graphs as underlying interaction graphs for a simple model of Multi-Agent Systems (MAS), and study how fast the system reaches a fixed-point, that is, the time it takes for the system to get a 90% of the agents in the same state. The interest of these kind of graphs is in the fact that the Internet, a very plausible environment for MAS, is a scale-free graph with high clustering and <k_{nn}>, the nearest neighbor average connectivity of nodes with connectivity k, following a power-law. Our results show that different types of scale-free graphs make the system as efficient as fully connected graphs, in a clear agreement with our previous research (Artif. Intell. 141, pp. 175–181).

Journal: Web Intelligence and Agent Systems: An international journal, vol. 1, no. 2, pp. 131-138, 2003