Concurrent Dynamic Backtracking for Distributed CSPs

A distributed concurrent search algorithm for distributed constraint satisfaction problems (DisCSPs) is presented. Concurrent search algorithms are composed of multiple search processes (SPs) that operate concurrently and scan non-intersecting parts of the global search space. Search processes are generated dynamically, started by the initializing agent, and by any number of agents during search. In the proposed, ConcDB, algorithm, all search processes perform dynamic backtracking. As a consequence of dynamic backtracking, a search space scanned by one search process can be found unsolvable by a different search process. This enhances the efficiency of the ConcDB algorithm. Concurrent search is an asynchronous distributed algorithm and is shown to be faster than asynchronous backtracking (ABT). The network load of ConcDB is also much lower than that