An Efficient Control Mechanism of Mobile Agents

Abstract

The control of tasks in traditional distributed systems is a well researched field for which many solutions exist. These solutions exploit well defined parent-child relationships given in distributed systems; but they are not applicable in mobile agent systems, since no similar natural relationships between agents exist. Thus new mechanisms have to be developed. In this paper, we present an efficient control mechanism for mobile agents. It is based on the tracking method of AgentTracer and agent shadow, and we combine this tracking method with the energy concept. In the tracking mechanism, an artificial relationship between agents and the AgentTracer is defined. The AgentTracer has many entries for all the agents that are created in its area. Each entry records the current location of the dependent agent. Removing an entry at AgentTracer implies that the dependent agent is declared an orphan and eventually be terminated. In an extension of the basic mechanism we additionally allow the AgentTracer to be mobile.