A channel allocation algorithm includes a channel acquisition and a channel selection scheme. Most of the previous work concentrates on the channel selection algorithm since early channel acquisition algorithms are centralized and rely on a MSS to accomplish channel acquisition. The centralized schemes are neither scalable nor reliable. Recently, distributed dynamic channel allocation algorithm...

Planning for distributed agents with partial state information is considered from a decisiontheoretic perspective. We describe generalizations of both the MDP and POMDP models that allow for decentralized control. For even a small number of agents, the finite-horizon problems corresponding to both of our models are complete for nondeterministic exponential time. These complexity results illustr...

In this paper we address the Model Predictive Control (MPC)-based path planning problem for Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs). Our goal is to find trajectories that are safe with respect to grounding and collision, fuel efficient and satisfy criteria for communication such that the UAVs form a chain with a given radio communication capacity. A centralized MPC and a distributed MPC approach to sol...

Decentralization in the health sector has been widely implemented since the 1970s as a reform mechanism with mixed results. This study describes Fiji's 2 attempts at decentralizing its health sector and examines the implications they have had for the functions of planning, financing, and delivery of health services. The first wave attempted a major restructure by devolving Fiji's health system....

Flexible manufacturing systems working in highly dynamic modern markets requires innovative concepts towards flexible management, production scheduling and planning. The agent-based technology provides a desired flexibility, supports a short reaction time and can underlie the required planning mechanismes. Moreover it does not require any centralized elements allowing a distributed implementati...

Using or extending Markov decision processes (MDPs) or partially observable Markov decision processes (POMDPs) to model multiagent decision problems has become an important trend. Generally speaking, there are two types of models: centralized ones and decentralized. The centralized ones focus on finding the best joint action given any global state, while the decentralied ones try to find out th...

experiences from urban development plans and assessments of their concrete and tangible results in the past decades indicate lack of adequate success of our urbanization system to responding needs of our citizens. this has resulted in need to find a fundamental solution to transforming the centralized system into decentralized. recent changes in regard to a change of approach from master plan t...

A general-purpose application platform is presented for planning, control and monitoring of heterogeneous mobile multi-robot teams. The hybrid architecture with hierarchical layers is designed for multiple robots system (MRS) by combining the centralized task planning with the distributed motion control. It provides a solution to task reuse, team-oriented planning and hardware abstraction, whic...

In horizontal collaborations, carriers form coalitions in order to perform parts of their logistics operations jointly. By exchanging transportation requests among each other, they can operate more efficiently and in a more sustainable way. Collaborative vehicle routing has been extensively discussed in the literature. We identify three major streams of research: (i) centralized collaborative p...

Strikingly, Ogawa and Wildasin (2009) find that in a model with heterogenous jurisdictions, interjurisdictional capital flows, and interjurisdictional environmental damage spillovers, decentralized planning outcomes are equivalent to that under a single centralized planner. Taken to its extreme this result renders international agreements such as the Kyoto Protocol irrelevant. We first show the...