An efficient multilateral negotiation system for pervasive computing environments

In this paper we propose an automated negotiation system that can efficiently carry out multilateral negotiations with multi-attributes in pervasive computing environments. For the multilateral negotiation system proposed in our study, an e-commerce framework for pervasive computing environments in which the components can dynamically join and disjoin a virtual market is also introduced. This framework overcomes the locality of pure ad hoc networks and supports efficiently multilateral negotiation models in pervasive computing environments. In order to achieve the applicability toward multilateral negotiations, the concept of a mediator agent and the bilateral negotiation scheme based on linear programming is utilized for the proposed system. The experimental results show that the proposed system produces higher joint profits in negotiations about 5% and is about 96 times faster in reaching agreements on the average under the condition of agreement for reciprocity than a negotiation system based on the trade-off mechanism. r 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.