Application of Distributed AI and Cooperative Problem Solving to Telecommunications

A cursory survey of applications in the DAI literature suggests that a primary area of using DAI technology for real-world systems can be found in telecommunications. This paper explores the current state-of-the-art of DAI and cooperative problem solving in this domain. Telecommunication networks have proven in the last five years to be a fertile ground for problems involving the coordination of distributed intelligence. A wide range of problems from distributed traffic management to resolution of service interactions in intelligent networks have led to conceptual studies and prototype developments involving systems of cooperative agents. Although there are currently no fielded systems that can be said to be DAI-based, we believe these will begin to appear within the next five years. We give an overview of the full range of potential applications found in the literature and additionally consider four applications in more detail, including the authors contributions to the field.