Methodology for Discrete Event Modeling/Simulation of Mobile Agent Systems

A mobile agent is an autonomous software agent capable of moving from one computer to another while performing its tasks. We view the agent as a discrete event system in the view of its computation and communication. This paper presents a methodology for modeling and simulation of such a mobile agent system as a discrete event system. The methodology is based on the Mobile Discrete Event System Specification (MDEVS) formalism and the associated simulation environment AgentSim which are previously developed by the authors. Within the methodology an atomic model represents dynamics of a mobile agent; a coupled model is modeled as mobile agent servers for representation of structural changes between atomic agents. Being based on the object-oriented environment the modeling methodology exploits inheritance of basic classes AtomicModel and CoupledModel provided by AgentSim.