A Review of Agent Based University Course Time Tabling Systems

In this paper, we carry out an extensive survey of various mobile agent systems that have been utilized in solving university course time tabling problem. University time tabling is an NP-hard problem which has been researched by vast amount of researchers. This is because it is a scheduling problem faced by many universities. This scheduling problem involves a number of hard (mandatory) constraints as well as soft (a lot more flexible) constraints that must be satisfied in order to generate an efficient time-table. A number of methods have been adopted in solving the university course time tabling problem such as the use of linear numberings, evolutionary algorithms, graph coloring among others. One recent technique employed involves mobile agents. Mobile agents are simply software agents which move from system to system within the network transporting both their state and code. They are not bound to the system where their execution begins. This work will involve the analysis of such systems used for university course timetabling in order to highlight their advantages and disadvantages