DeCoF: A Decentralized Coordination Framework for Various Multi-Agent Systems

A key requirement to realize modern distributed systems is the ability to adapt the system's behavior autonomously at runtime towards changing environmental conditions, in order to preserve their operation even in the presence of uncertain changes. The different parts of such a distributed self-organizing system have to be coordinated in order to achieve meaningful adaptations. To avoid single point of failures, decentralized coordination is a key element for the realization of robust and scalable self-adaptation. Due to their inherently decentralized system architecture Multi-Agent Systems (MAS) are well suited to realize such self-organizing systems relying on decentralized coordination. This paper proposes a decentralized coordination framework which focuses on equipping different types of MAS with self-organizing capabilities. Thereby, it shall support various types of MAS so that developers are not limited to a specific platform, while also supporting the coordination of applications consisting out of different, heterogeneous (Multi-Agent) technologies, e.g. required in the area of co-simulations.