A metrics suite for the communication of multi-agent systems

Multi-agent systems are composed of autonomous entities that cooperate forming emergent behaviors. The communication between agents is sometimes unpredictable, and the resulting communication patterns can become crucial in their performance. This paper presents a metrics suite for evaluating the communication of the multi-agent systems. These metrics assist designers in detecting undesirable communication patterns in multi-agent systems, in order to improve their cooperative behavior. At the same time, we provide a demonstration that a well balanced communication is related to high levels of Quality of Service measured by response times.Project Agent-based Modelling and Simulation of Complex Social Systems (SiCoSSys), supported by Spanish Council for Science and Innovation, with grant TIN2008-06464-C03-01