Managing parallel inquiries in agentsʹ two-sided search Original Research Article

In this paper we address the problem of agents engaged in a distributed costly two-sided search for pairwise partnerships in Multi-Agent Systems (MAS). While traditional two-sided search mechanisms are based on a purely sequential search of all searchers, our mechanism integrates an ability of some of the agents to maintain several search efforts in parallel at each search stage. We show that in many environments the transition to the new mechanism is inevitable since the adoption of the parallel-interactions based search suggests a greater utility for the searching agents. By exploring the appropriate model equations, we present the new dynamics that drive the equilibrium when using such a mechanism in MAS environments. Complementary algorithms are offered, based on the unique equilibria characteristics found, for facilitating the extraction of the agentsʹ strategies. The analysis methodology used supplies a comprehensive solution to a self contained model, and also offers a great value for future work concerning distributed two-sided mechanisms for MAS. Towards the end of the paper we review two of these important models that can benefit from the proposed analysis.