2009
Efficient and Robust Communication Topologies for Distributed Decision Making in Networked Systems
J.S. Baras and P. Hovareshti
Proceedings of the 48th IEEE Conference on Decision and Control, pp. 3751-3756, Shanghai, China, December 16 - 18, 2009.
Abstract
Distributed decision making in networked systems
depends critically on the timely availability of critical fresh
information. Performance of networked systems, from the
perspective of achieving goals and objectives in a timely and
efficient manner is constrained by their collaboration and
communication structures and their interplay with the networked
system’s dynamics. In most cases achieving the system
objectives requires many agent to agent communications. A
reasonable measure for system robustness to communication
topology change is the number of spanning trees in the graph
abstraction of the communication system. We address the
problem of network formation with robustness and connectivity
constraints. Solutions to this problem have also applications in
trust and the relationship of trust to control. We show that
the general combinatorial problem can be relaxed to a convex
optimization problem. We solve the special case of adding a
shortcut to a given structure and provide insights for derivation
of heuristics for the general case. We also analyze the small
world effect in the context of abrupt increases in the number
of spanning trees as a result of adding a few shortcuts to a base lattice in the Watts-Strogatz framework and thereby relate
efficient topologies to small world and expander graphs.