This paper studies the weighted average consensus problem for networks of agents with fixed directed asymmetric unbalance information exchange topology. We suppose that the classical distributed consensus protocol is ...This paper studies the weighted average consensus problem for networks of agents with fixed directed asymmetric unbalance information exchange topology. We suppose that the classical distributed consensus protocol is destroyed by diverse time-delays which include communication time-delay and self time-delay. Based on the generalized Nyquist stability criterion and the Gerschgorin disk theorem, some sufficient conditions for the consensus of multi-agent systems are obtained. And we give the expression of the weighted average consensus value for our consensus protocol. Finally, numerical examples are presented to illustrate the theoretical results.展开更多
This paper investigates the remote tracking control problem of Network-based Agents with communication delays existing in both forward and feedback communication channels.A networked predictive tracking controller is ...This paper investigates the remote tracking control problem of Network-based Agents with communication delays existing in both forward and feedback communication channels.A networked predictive tracking controller is proposed to compensate the negative effects caused by bilateral time-delays in a wireless network. Furthermore, the problem of consecutive data loss in the feedback channel is solved using aforementioned controller, where lateral movement perturbations are introduced.Simulations and experiments are provided for several cases,which verify the realizability and effectiveness of the proposed controller.展开更多
This paper proposes fault tolerant algorithms for routing mobile agents in a single channel wireless sensor network which cover every node in the network. These algorithms use local knowledge (assume no knowledge of g...This paper proposes fault tolerant algorithms for routing mobile agents in a single channel wireless sensor network which cover every node in the network. These algorithms use local knowledge (assume no knowledge of global deployment or topology, etc). We propose the algorithms and show mathematical analysis to support our claims. The paper ends with simulation studies and discussion of results.展开更多
The nature of adhoc networks makes them vulnerable to security attacks. Many security technologies such as intrusion prevention and intrusion detection are passive in response to intrusions in that their countermea- s...The nature of adhoc networks makes them vulnerable to security attacks. Many security technologies such as intrusion prevention and intrusion detection are passive in response to intrusions in that their countermea- sures are only to protect the networks, and there is no automated network-wide counteraction against detected intrusions, the architecture of cooperation intrusion response based multi-agent is propose. The architecture is composed of mobile agents. Monitor agent resides on every node and monitors its neighbor nodes. Decision agent collects information from monitor nodes and detects an intrusion by security policies. When an intruder is found in the architecture, the block agents will get to the neighbor nodes of the intruder and form the mobile firewall to isolate the intruder. In the end, we evaluate it by simulation.展开更多
In this paper, the problems of target tracking and obstacle avoidance for multi-agent networks with input constraints are investigated. When there is a moving obstacle, the control objectives are to make the agents tr...In this paper, the problems of target tracking and obstacle avoidance for multi-agent networks with input constraints are investigated. When there is a moving obstacle, the control objectives are to make the agents track a moving target and to avoid collisions among agents. First, without considering the input constraints, a novel distributed controller can be obtained based on the potential function. Second, at each sampling time, the control algorithm is optimized. Furthermore, to solve the problem that agents cannot effectively avoid the obstacles in dynamic environment where the obstacles are moving, a new velocity repulsive potential is designed. One advantage of the designed control algorithm is that each agent only requires local knowledge of its neighboring agents. Finally, simulation results are provided to verify the effectiveness of the proposed approach.展开更多
Inspired by the immune theory and multi-agent systems, an immune multi-agent active defense model for network intrusion is established. The concept of immune agent is introduced, and its running mechanism is establish...Inspired by the immune theory and multi-agent systems, an immune multi-agent active defense model for network intrusion is established. The concept of immune agent is introduced, and its running mechanism is established. The method, which uses antibody concentration to quantitatively describe the degree of intrusion danger, is presented. This model implements the multi-layer and distributed active defense mechanism for network intrusion. The experiment results show that this model is a good solution to the network security defense.展开更多
To enhance the security of network systems, puts forward a kind of software agent is put forward, which has the induction ability of network frameworks and the ability of behavior independence. It is mobile scanning a...To enhance the security of network systems, puts forward a kind of software agent is put forward, which has the induction ability of network frameworks and the ability of behavior independence. It is mobile scanning agent. More attentions is paid to expound how to design and realize mobile scanning agent. Besides, it is also explained the programs of mobile scanning agent system. In the end, it expects mobile scanning agent.展开更多
Ad Hoc network is a kind of multi hop, self-organizing wireless network without center. Each node in network can be used as host as well as router and it can form any network topology through wireless connections. Bec...Ad Hoc network is a kind of multi hop, self-organizing wireless network without center. Each node in network can be used as host as well as router and it can form any network topology through wireless connections. Because of characteristics of itself, many new service items and application fields appear;meanwhile, it is also faced with many new security threats. Using immune agent can perceive the change of network node and make corresponding decision behavior, find the misbehavior nodes in the network as soon as possible and reduce the network attack and improve the immune competence of network.展开更多
This paper proposes an adaptive agent model with a hybrid routing selection strategy for studying the road-network congestion problem. We focus on improving those severely congested links. Firstly,a multi-agent system...This paper proposes an adaptive agent model with a hybrid routing selection strategy for studying the road-network congestion problem. We focus on improving those severely congested links. Firstly,a multi-agent system is built,where each agent stands for a vehicle,and it makes its routing selection by considering the shortest path and the minimum congested degree of the target link simultaneously. The agent-based model captures the nonlinear feedback between vehicle routing behaviors and road-network congestion status.Secondly,a hybrid routing selection strategy is provided,which guides the vehicle routes adapting to the realtime road-network congestion status. On this basis, we execute simulation experiments and compare the simulation results of network congestion distribution,by Floyd agent with shortest path strategy and our proposed adaptive agent with hybrid strategy. The simulation results show that our proposed model has reduced the congestion degree of those seriously congested links of road-network. Finally,we execute our model on a real road map. The results finds that those seriously congested roads have some common features such as located at the road junction or near the unique road connecting two areas. And,the results also show an effectiveness of our model on reduction of those seriously congested links in this actual road network. Such a bottom-up congestion control approach with a hybrid congestion optimization perspective will have its significance for actual traffic congestion control.展开更多
An intelligent manufacturing system is modeled currently from the viewpoint of manufacturing applications,and the network platform’s influence to manufacturing applications is not considered adequately. However any b...An intelligent manufacturing system is modeled currently from the viewpoint of manufacturing applications,and the network platform’s influence to manufacturing applications is not considered adequately. However any bottleneck in service oriented architecture (SOA) for the manufacturing network can affect the agility of the IT environment. In this paper,to achieve a trade-off between manufacturing resources and network resources,the manufacturing network is modeled with multi-agent,in which two kinds of basic elements,the manufacturing application unit and the network carrier of manufacturing information,are presented. And their main characters are described by colored petri net. The manufacturing application model drives the network platform that inversely provides this application model technology supports. The proposed multi-agent system is demonstrated through an example integration scenario involving production plan,resources management and execution subsystems. And the result suggests that analyzing and designing the system architecture of networked manufacturing should give due attention to the operation system as well as manufacturing applications.展开更多
Quantitatively evaluation of antibacterial activities of inorganic antibacterial agents is an urgent problem to be solved. Using experimental data by an orthogonal design, a prediction model of the relation between co...Quantitatively evaluation of antibacterial activities of inorganic antibacterial agents is an urgent problem to be solved. Using experimental data by an orthogonal design, a prediction model of the relation between conditions of preparing inorganic antibacterial agents and their antibacterial activities has been developed. This is accomplished by introducing BP artificial neural networks in the study of inorganic antibacterial agents. It provides a theoretical support for the development and research on inorganic antibacterial agents. Key words inorganic antibacterial agent - antibacterial activity - neural networks - nanometer material展开更多
The broadcast nature of wireless network makes traditional link-layer attacks readily available to anyone within the range of the network. User authentication is best safeguard against the risk of unauthorized access ...The broadcast nature of wireless network makes traditional link-layer attacks readily available to anyone within the range of the network. User authentication is best safeguard against the risk of unauthorized access to the wireless networks. The present 802.1× authentication scheme has some flaws, making mutual authentication impossible and open to man-in-the-middle attacks. These characteristics make traditional cryptographic mechanism provide weak security for the wireless environment. We have proposed the use of mobile agents to provide dependable Internet services delivery to users, this will guarantee secure authentication in wireless networks and we examine the feasibility of our solution and propose a model for wireless network security.展开更多
The technical characters of mobile agent (MA) originated in the distributional artificial intelligence domain is introduced. A network management construction based on agent (NMCA) is then proposed. The NMCA struc...The technical characters of mobile agent (MA) originated in the distributional artificial intelligence domain is introduced. A network management construction based on agent (NMCA) is then proposed. The NMCA structure features are elaborated in detail. A prototype design of NMCA is given by using the jKQML programming. The establishment of NMCA platform will be helpful to reduce the correspondence load of network management and improves the efficiency and the expansion ability of network management systems.展开更多
Distributed Compressed Sensing (DCS) is an emerging field that exploits both intra- and inter-signal correlation structures and enables new distributed coding algorithms for multiple signal ensembles in wireless senso...Distributed Compressed Sensing (DCS) is an emerging field that exploits both intra- and inter-signal correlation structures and enables new distributed coding algorithms for multiple signal ensembles in wireless sensor networks. The DCS theory rests on the joint sparsity of a multi-signal ensemble. In this paper we propose a new mobile-agent-based Adaptive Data Fusion (ADF) algorithm to determine the minimum number of measurements each node required for perfectly joint reconstruction of multiple signal ensembles. We theoretically show that ADF provides the optimal strategy with as minimum total number of measurements as possible and hence reduces communication cost and network load. Simulation results indicate that ADF enjoys better performance than DCS and mobile-agent-based full data fusion algorithm including reconstruction performance and network energy efficiency.展开更多
Artificial Immune Network (aiNet) algorithms have become popular for global optimization in many modem industrial applications. However, high-dimensional systems using such models suffer from a potential premature c...Artificial Immune Network (aiNet) algorithms have become popular for global optimization in many modem industrial applications. However, high-dimensional systems using such models suffer from a potential premature convergence problem. In the existing aiNet algorithms, the premature convergence problem can be avoided by implementing various clonal selection methods, such as immune suppression and mutation approaches, both for single population and multi-population cases. This paper presents a new Multi-Agent Artificial Immune Network (Ma-aiNet) algorithm, which combines immune mechanics and multiagent technology, to overcome the premature convergence problem in high-dimensional systems and to efficiently use the agent ability of sensing and acting on the environment. Ma-aiNet integrates global and local search algorithms. The perform- ance of the proposed method is evaluated using 10 benchmark problems, and the results are compared with other well-known intelligent algorithms. The study demonstrates that Ma-aiNet outperforms other algorithms tested. Ma-aiNet is also used to determine the Murphree efficiency of a distillation column with satisfactory results.展开更多
This paper studies consensus problems in weighted scale-free networks of asymmetrically coupled dynamical units, where the asymmetry in a given link is deter:mined by the relative degree of the involved nodes. It sho...This paper studies consensus problems in weighted scale-free networks of asymmetrically coupled dynamical units, where the asymmetry in a given link is deter:mined by the relative degree of the involved nodes. It shows that the asymmetry of interactions has a great effect on the consensus. Especially, when the interactions are dominant from higher- to lower-degree nodes, both the convergence speed and the robustness to communication delay are enhanced.展开更多
Efficient reuse of limited radio spectrum is vital issue to support increasing number of mobile terminals and heterogeneous traffic scenarios. Dynamic channel allocation (DCA) technique is suitable to solve the proble...Efficient reuse of limited radio spectrum is vital issue to support increasing number of mobile terminals and heterogeneous traffic scenarios. Dynamic channel allocation (DCA) technique is suitable to solve the problem. The drawback of dynamic channel allocation is it may upgrade performance of one cluster and degrade performance of other cluster in large scale cellular network. To balance performance of clusters and increase carried traffic in network, there is need of enhancement of DCA techniques. To introduce improvement in the dynamic channel approach, the paper suggested Multi Agent System (MAS) of physical agents ported at base stations working on the principle of cooperative negotiation to improve the QoS of the network. We formulated an integrated framework which includes fundamental mechanism of call admission control and resource management using hybrid channel allocation (HCA). To balance performance index of various clusters of network, agent negotiation is executed. Our simulation results show that it is possible to significantly enhance performance index of network due to MAS-HCA approach when compared with ES based and ILP based HCA schemes proposed in literature.展开更多
The quality of K-12 education has been a very big concern for years. Previous methods studied only one or two factors, such as school choice, or teacher quality, on school performance. Therefore the results they provi...The quality of K-12 education has been a very big concern for years. Previous methods studied only one or two factors, such as school choice, or teacher quality, on school performance. Therefore the results they provide can be limited. We propose a multi-agent approach to integrate multiple actors in a school system. These actors include teachers, students, supporting staffs and administrators. The interactions among these actors compose a hierarchical school social network. We first detect the hierarchical community structure in this school network by using an agglomerative hierarchical algorithm. Existing agglomerative hierarchical algorithms usually calculate similarity or dissimilarity between two clusters by using some measure of distance between pairs of observations. We, however, develop a method that calculates similarity based on social interactions between interactions is essential in multi-agent systems. Our algorithm is applied to 15 school districts in Bexar County, Texas, and it provides satisfying results on generating the hierarchical structure of all school districts. We then use the detected structure of the social network to evaluate the school system’s organization performance. We design and implement a funding evaluation model to decompose the funding policy task into subtasks and then evaluate these subtasks by using funding distribution policies from past years and looking for possible relationships between student performances and funding policies. Experiments in the 15 school districts in Bexar County show no significant correlation between student performance and the amount of the funding a school district received.展开更多
基金supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China(6127312661363002+3 种基金61374104)the Natural Science Foundation of Guangdong Province(10251064101000008S2012010009675)the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities(2012ZM0059)
文摘This paper studies the weighted average consensus problem for networks of agents with fixed directed asymmetric unbalance information exchange topology. We suppose that the classical distributed consensus protocol is destroyed by diverse time-delays which include communication time-delay and self time-delay. Based on the generalized Nyquist stability criterion and the Gerschgorin disk theorem, some sufficient conditions for the consensus of multi-agent systems are obtained. And we give the expression of the weighted average consensus value for our consensus protocol. Finally, numerical examples are presented to illustrate the theoretical results.
基金supported in part by the National Natural Science Foundation of China(61333003,61690212)
文摘This paper investigates the remote tracking control problem of Network-based Agents with communication delays existing in both forward and feedback communication channels.A networked predictive tracking controller is proposed to compensate the negative effects caused by bilateral time-delays in a wireless network. Furthermore, the problem of consecutive data loss in the feedback channel is solved using aforementioned controller, where lateral movement perturbations are introduced.Simulations and experiments are provided for several cases,which verify the realizability and effectiveness of the proposed controller.
文摘This paper proposes fault tolerant algorithms for routing mobile agents in a single channel wireless sensor network which cover every node in the network. These algorithms use local knowledge (assume no knowledge of global deployment or topology, etc). We propose the algorithms and show mathematical analysis to support our claims. The paper ends with simulation studies and discussion of results.
基金This project was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (60672068)the National High Technology Development 863 Program of China (2006AA01Z436, 2007AA01Z452.)
文摘The nature of adhoc networks makes them vulnerable to security attacks. Many security technologies such as intrusion prevention and intrusion detection are passive in response to intrusions in that their countermea- sures are only to protect the networks, and there is no automated network-wide counteraction against detected intrusions, the architecture of cooperation intrusion response based multi-agent is propose. The architecture is composed of mobile agents. Monitor agent resides on every node and monitors its neighbor nodes. Decision agent collects information from monitor nodes and detects an intrusion by security policies. When an intruder is found in the architecture, the block agents will get to the neighbor nodes of the intruder and form the mobile firewall to isolate the intruder. In the end, we evaluate it by simulation.
基金supported by National Basic Research Program of China (973 Program) (No. 2010CB731800)Key Project of National Science Foundation of China (No. 60934003)+2 种基金National Nature Science Foundation of China (No. 61074065)Key Project for Natural Science Research of Hebei Education Department, PRC(No. ZD200908)Key Project for Shanghai Committee of Science and Technology (No. 08511501600)
文摘In this paper, the problems of target tracking and obstacle avoidance for multi-agent networks with input constraints are investigated. When there is a moving obstacle, the control objectives are to make the agents track a moving target and to avoid collisions among agents. First, without considering the input constraints, a novel distributed controller can be obtained based on the potential function. Second, at each sampling time, the control algorithm is optimized. Furthermore, to solve the problem that agents cannot effectively avoid the obstacles in dynamic environment where the obstacles are moving, a new velocity repulsive potential is designed. One advantage of the designed control algorithm is that each agent only requires local knowledge of its neighboring agents. Finally, simulation results are provided to verify the effectiveness of the proposed approach.
基金Supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (60373110, 60573130, 60502011)
文摘Inspired by the immune theory and multi-agent systems, an immune multi-agent active defense model for network intrusion is established. The concept of immune agent is introduced, and its running mechanism is established. The method, which uses antibody concentration to quantitatively describe the degree of intrusion danger, is presented. This model implements the multi-layer and distributed active defense mechanism for network intrusion. The experiment results show that this model is a good solution to the network security defense.
文摘To enhance the security of network systems, puts forward a kind of software agent is put forward, which has the induction ability of network frameworks and the ability of behavior independence. It is mobile scanning agent. More attentions is paid to expound how to design and realize mobile scanning agent. Besides, it is also explained the programs of mobile scanning agent system. In the end, it expects mobile scanning agent.
文摘Ad Hoc network is a kind of multi hop, self-organizing wireless network without center. Each node in network can be used as host as well as router and it can form any network topology through wireless connections. Because of characteristics of itself, many new service items and application fields appear;meanwhile, it is also faced with many new security threats. Using immune agent can perceive the change of network node and make corresponding decision behavior, find the misbehavior nodes in the network as soon as possible and reduce the network attack and improve the immune competence of network.
基金Sponsored by the Natural Science Foundation of Hunan ProvinceChina(Grant No.13JJ3049)the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities(Grant No.2012AA01A301-1)
文摘This paper proposes an adaptive agent model with a hybrid routing selection strategy for studying the road-network congestion problem. We focus on improving those severely congested links. Firstly,a multi-agent system is built,where each agent stands for a vehicle,and it makes its routing selection by considering the shortest path and the minimum congested degree of the target link simultaneously. The agent-based model captures the nonlinear feedback between vehicle routing behaviors and road-network congestion status.Secondly,a hybrid routing selection strategy is provided,which guides the vehicle routes adapting to the realtime road-network congestion status. On this basis, we execute simulation experiments and compare the simulation results of network congestion distribution,by Floyd agent with shortest path strategy and our proposed adaptive agent with hybrid strategy. The simulation results show that our proposed model has reduced the congestion degree of those seriously congested links of road-network. Finally,we execute our model on a real road map. The results finds that those seriously congested roads have some common features such as located at the road junction or near the unique road connecting two areas. And,the results also show an effectiveness of our model on reduction of those seriously congested links in this actual road network. Such a bottom-up congestion control approach with a hybrid congestion optimization perspective will have its significance for actual traffic congestion control.
文摘An intelligent manufacturing system is modeled currently from the viewpoint of manufacturing applications,and the network platform’s influence to manufacturing applications is not considered adequately. However any bottleneck in service oriented architecture (SOA) for the manufacturing network can affect the agility of the IT environment. In this paper,to achieve a trade-off between manufacturing resources and network resources,the manufacturing network is modeled with multi-agent,in which two kinds of basic elements,the manufacturing application unit and the network carrier of manufacturing information,are presented. And their main characters are described by colored petri net. The manufacturing application model drives the network platform that inversely provides this application model technology supports. The proposed multi-agent system is demonstrated through an example integration scenario involving production plan,resources management and execution subsystems. And the result suggests that analyzing and designing the system architecture of networked manufacturing should give due attention to the operation system as well as manufacturing applications.
文摘Quantitatively evaluation of antibacterial activities of inorganic antibacterial agents is an urgent problem to be solved. Using experimental data by an orthogonal design, a prediction model of the relation between conditions of preparing inorganic antibacterial agents and their antibacterial activities has been developed. This is accomplished by introducing BP artificial neural networks in the study of inorganic antibacterial agents. It provides a theoretical support for the development and research on inorganic antibacterial agents. Key words inorganic antibacterial agent - antibacterial activity - neural networks - nanometer material
基金Supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China (60874063) and Innovation and Scientific Research Foundation of Graduate Student of Heilongjiang Province (YJSCX2012-263HLJ)
文摘The broadcast nature of wireless network makes traditional link-layer attacks readily available to anyone within the range of the network. User authentication is best safeguard against the risk of unauthorized access to the wireless networks. The present 802.1× authentication scheme has some flaws, making mutual authentication impossible and open to man-in-the-middle attacks. These characteristics make traditional cryptographic mechanism provide weak security for the wireless environment. We have proposed the use of mobile agents to provide dependable Internet services delivery to users, this will guarantee secure authentication in wireless networks and we examine the feasibility of our solution and propose a model for wireless network security.
文摘The technical characters of mobile agent (MA) originated in the distributional artificial intelligence domain is introduced. A network management construction based on agent (NMCA) is then proposed. The NMCA structure features are elaborated in detail. A prototype design of NMCA is given by using the jKQML programming. The establishment of NMCA platform will be helpful to reduce the correspondence load of network management and improves the efficiency and the expansion ability of network management systems.
文摘Distributed Compressed Sensing (DCS) is an emerging field that exploits both intra- and inter-signal correlation structures and enables new distributed coding algorithms for multiple signal ensembles in wireless sensor networks. The DCS theory rests on the joint sparsity of a multi-signal ensemble. In this paper we propose a new mobile-agent-based Adaptive Data Fusion (ADF) algorithm to determine the minimum number of measurements each node required for perfectly joint reconstruction of multiple signal ensembles. We theoretically show that ADF provides the optimal strategy with as minimum total number of measurements as possible and hence reduces communication cost and network load. Simulation results indicate that ADF enjoys better performance than DCS and mobile-agent-based full data fusion algorithm including reconstruction performance and network energy efficiency.
基金Acknowledgments This work was supported by the National Science Fund for Distinguished Young Scholars (No.60625302), National Natural Science Foundation of China (2009CB320603), Shanghai Key Technologies R&D Program(10JC1403500), Chang3iang Scholars and In- novative Research Team in University(IRT0721), the 111 Project(B08021), Shanghai Leading Academic Discipline Project(B504) and Zhejiang Natural Science Fund (Y1090548).
文摘Artificial Immune Network (aiNet) algorithms have become popular for global optimization in many modem industrial applications. However, high-dimensional systems using such models suffer from a potential premature convergence problem. In the existing aiNet algorithms, the premature convergence problem can be avoided by implementing various clonal selection methods, such as immune suppression and mutation approaches, both for single population and multi-population cases. This paper presents a new Multi-Agent Artificial Immune Network (Ma-aiNet) algorithm, which combines immune mechanics and multiagent technology, to overcome the premature convergence problem in high-dimensional systems and to efficiently use the agent ability of sensing and acting on the environment. Ma-aiNet integrates global and local search algorithms. The perform- ance of the proposed method is evaluated using 10 benchmark problems, and the results are compared with other well-known intelligent algorithms. The study demonstrates that Ma-aiNet outperforms other algorithms tested. Ma-aiNet is also used to determine the Murphree efficiency of a distillation column with satisfactory results.
基金Project supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos 10775060 and 10805033)the Doctoral Education Foundation of National Education Committeethe Natural Science Foundation of Gansu Province
文摘This paper studies consensus problems in weighted scale-free networks of asymmetrically coupled dynamical units, where the asymmetry in a given link is deter:mined by the relative degree of the involved nodes. It shows that the asymmetry of interactions has a great effect on the consensus. Especially, when the interactions are dominant from higher- to lower-degree nodes, both the convergence speed and the robustness to communication delay are enhanced.
文摘Efficient reuse of limited radio spectrum is vital issue to support increasing number of mobile terminals and heterogeneous traffic scenarios. Dynamic channel allocation (DCA) technique is suitable to solve the problem. The drawback of dynamic channel allocation is it may upgrade performance of one cluster and degrade performance of other cluster in large scale cellular network. To balance performance of clusters and increase carried traffic in network, there is need of enhancement of DCA techniques. To introduce improvement in the dynamic channel approach, the paper suggested Multi Agent System (MAS) of physical agents ported at base stations working on the principle of cooperative negotiation to improve the QoS of the network. We formulated an integrated framework which includes fundamental mechanism of call admission control and resource management using hybrid channel allocation (HCA). To balance performance index of various clusters of network, agent negotiation is executed. Our simulation results show that it is possible to significantly enhance performance index of network due to MAS-HCA approach when compared with ES based and ILP based HCA schemes proposed in literature.
文摘The quality of K-12 education has been a very big concern for years. Previous methods studied only one or two factors, such as school choice, or teacher quality, on school performance. Therefore the results they provide can be limited. We propose a multi-agent approach to integrate multiple actors in a school system. These actors include teachers, students, supporting staffs and administrators. The interactions among these actors compose a hierarchical school social network. We first detect the hierarchical community structure in this school network by using an agglomerative hierarchical algorithm. Existing agglomerative hierarchical algorithms usually calculate similarity or dissimilarity between two clusters by using some measure of distance between pairs of observations. We, however, develop a method that calculates similarity based on social interactions between interactions is essential in multi-agent systems. Our algorithm is applied to 15 school districts in Bexar County, Texas, and it provides satisfying results on generating the hierarchical structure of all school districts. We then use the detected structure of the social network to evaluate the school system’s organization performance. We design and implement a funding evaluation model to decompose the funding policy task into subtasks and then evaluate these subtasks by using funding distribution policies from past years and looking for possible relationships between student performances and funding policies. Experiments in the 15 school districts in Bexar County show no significant correlation between student performance and the amount of the funding a school district received.