Deadlock verification of a DPS coordination strategy and its alternative model in pi-calculus. (1st January 2012)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Robles-Granda, Pablo D.; Khorasani, Elham S.; Rahimi, Shahram; Carver, Norman
• Is Part Of: International journal of intelligent information and database systems. Volume 6:Number 2(2012)
• Page Start: 154
• Page End: 179
• Publication Date: 2012-01-01
• Subjects: pi-calculus -- distributed problem solving -- DPS -- coordination strategies -- multi-agent systems; Database management -- Computer programs -- Periodicals; Information retrieval -- Computer programs -- Periodicals; Information storage and retrieval systems -- Computer programs -- Periodicals; Artificial intelligence -- Periodicals; Expert systems (Computer science) -- Periodicals; Intelligent agents (Computer software) -- Periodicals; 006.33
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1751-5858

Abstract

A key issue for distributed problem solving (DPS) systems is coordination of the agent's actions, and methods for producing effective coordination strategies remain an active area of research. Because there are not yet approaches that can automatically produce such strategies, some human engineering is often still necessary. As a result, there is a need for a formal tool to support such human engineering. In a previous work (Khorasani et al., 2009), we investigated the use of pi-calculus as a formal language for modelling DPS coordination strategies and showed how such models could be used to evaluate the time performance of a strategy. In this paper, we focus on verification of coordination strategies. More specifically, we utilise the formal semantics of pi-calculus to detect deadlocks in a coordination strategy. We also show how, by imposing certain constraints on the pi-calculus model, one would be able to design a deadlock-free coordination strategy.