CIF: Small: Collaborative Research: Coordination and Cooperation in Networked Multi-Agent Systems

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Networked wireless systems have significantly affected society, as cellular and WiFi networks are now ubiquitous in our daily life. An important class of networks is that of decentralized networks, which are characterized by a lack of fixed infrastructure, a multi-hop nature, and node mobility; such features provide significant flexibility, but also introduce a variety of design issues. A fundamental problem in decentralized networked systems is the coordination of activities of different nodes, where the availability of sufficient communication resources is critical in order for agents to cooperate and coordinate. This project takes a distinctive approach to develop a fundamental understanding of the interplay between communication and cooperation to achieve coordination and addresses the communication and coordination of probabilistic actions in networked multi-agent systems. This can be seen as an instance of network-based stochastic open loop control where a single communication message is sent to the agents to control their behavior in the absence of feedback. The project investigates two interrelated research tasks. First, the PIs wish to understand both the fundamental information-theoretic limits of coordination in small multi-terminal networks and the dependency of these limits on the communication network topology. The second research goal addresses the design of explicit coordination codes from error correction codes and to assess their performance under stringent delay and complexity constraints.The proposed research has the potential to enable advances in applications where actions must be communicated to ensure a specific behavior. Examples are multi-agent systems for the exploration of an unknown topology, distributed surveillance applications, automatic traffic control applications, and load balancing in large computer networks and in power grids. Additional activities related to the project include the integration of research outcomes in courses at the undergraduate and graduate level and the mentorship of minorities and women in science and technology.