Efficient Routing of Mobile Agents in a Stochastic Network

 

Amir Elalouf¹, Eugene Levner², and T.C.E. Cheng³

 

¹ Bar-Ilan University, Ramat Gan, Israel (e-mail: amir.elalouf@biu.ac.il).

² Ashkelon Academic College, Ashkelon, Israel (e-mail: elevner@acad.ash-college.ac.il).

² Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Kowloon, Hong Kong (e-mail: edwin.cheng@inet.polyu.edu.hk).

 

Manuscript received on June 1, 2012.
Accepted for publication on August 23, 2012.

 

Abstract:

Mobile agents are autonomous programs that may be dispatched through computer networks. Using a mobile agent is a potentially efficient method to perform transactions and retrieve information in networks. Unknown congestion in a network causes uncertainty in the routing times of mobile agents so the routing of mobile agents cannot rely solely on the average travel time. In this paper we deal with a given stochastic network in which the mobile agent routing time is a random variable. Given pre-specified values R and PR, the objective is to find the path with the minimum expected time under the constraint that the probability that the path time is less than R is at least PR. We show that this problem is NP-hard, and construct an exact pseudo-polynomial algorithm and an ε-approximation algorithm (FPTAS) for the problem.

Key words: Agent-based architecture, fast routing algorithm, FPTAS, stochastic routing.

 

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