SearcharxivSearch

arXiv · 1707.00796

Efficient sensor network planning method using approximate potential game

Abstract

This paper addresses information-based sensing point selection from a set of possible sensing locations, which determines a set of measurement points maximizing the mutual information between the sensor measurements and the variables of interest. A potential game approach has been applied to addressing distributed implementation of decision making for cooperative sensor planning. When a sensor network involves a large number of sensing agents, the local utility function for a sensing agent is hard to compute, because the local utility function depends on the other agents' decisions while each sensing agent is inherently faced with limitations in both its communication and computational capabilities. Accordingly, a local utility function for each agent should be approximated to accommodate limitations in information gathering and processing. We propose an approximation method for a local utility function using only a portion of the decisions of other agents. The part of the decisions that each agent considers is called the neighboring set for the agent. The error induced by the approximation is also analyzed, and to keep the error small we propose a neighbor selection algorithm that chooses the neighbor set for each agent in a greedy way. The selection algorithm is based on the correlation information between one agent's measurement selection and the other agents' selections. Futhermore, we show that a game with an approximate local utility function has an $ε$-equilibrium and the set of the equilibria include the Nash equilibrium of the original potential game. We demonstrate the validity of our approximation method through two numerical examples on simplified weather forecasting and multi-target tracking.

Explore related subjects

Keep this discovery

Explore connections, maps & timelines

BibTeXRIS

Su-Jin Lee, Young-Jin Park, Han-Lim Choi. 2017-07-04. Efficient sensor network planning method using approximate potential game. https://arxiv.org/abs/1707.00796

Cite the original work for its findings. Save a collection to share your selection of sources.

KEEP EXPLORING

Related papers

MMS Allocation for Chores with Online Agent Arrivals

We study the fair allocation of $m$ indivisible chores to $n$ agents with subadditive cost functions arriving online in an arbitrary order. Upon an agent's arrival, we are informed of her cost function and must irrevocably assign her a set of chores. We focus on the Maximin Share (MMS) fairness notion and aim to compute an allocation in which all items are assigned, and no agent incurs a cost more than $\alpha$ times her MMS. Without any prior information about the instance (other than $n$ and $m$), we design an algorithm with a competitive ratio of $O(\min\{n, k\log^{1+\epsilon}k, \log m\})$ for any constant $\epsilon > 0$, where $k$ denotes the number of cost function types. Our bound matches the best known offline approximation guarantees for MMS under subadditive costs and is nearly optimal with respect to all three parameters: we show that even for binary additive cost functions, no online algorithm can achieve a competitive ratio of $o(\min\{n, k\log k, \log m\})$. We then consider the setting in which the $k$ cost function types are known in advance (though the realized types of arriving agents are not). For additive cost functions, we provide an algorithm with a competitive ratio of $O(\min\{\log k, \log(kn)/\log\log(kn)\})$, and show that constant-competitive algorithms do not exist for general $k$, even for the binary additive setting. For binary additive functions when $k \le n$, we propose a $3$-competitive algorithm and establish a lower bound of $2$.

cs.GT

Truncated Noisy Best-Response Algorithms: Toward Game Theoretic Learning with Safety Guarantees

We consider a game theoretic approach to solve multi-agent coordination problems with submodular maximization objectives. It is known for such problems that the Nash equilibria for the corresponding game are always within 50% of the optimal, but that the equilibria which achieve this worst-case bound are not stable. To exploit this instability, we propose a family of algorithms which we call Truncated Noisy Best-Response (TNBR) Algorithms. These algorithms are flexibly characterized by agents asynchronously and stochastically selecting actions from a neighbourhood of their best response payoffs. We compute bounds on the recurrent classes of TNBR algorithms' associated Markov chains. Our bounds fall into two categories: first, "Performance" bounds ensure that TNBR algorithms always have a high-value recurrent state; second, "Safety" bounds ensure that TNBR algorithms never have arbitrarily-bad recurrent states. Furthermore, these two types of bounds are linked by a waterbed-like effect: every game with a poor Safety guarantee necessarily has a favorable Performance guarantee.

cs.GT

Existence of the Core in Approval-Based Committee Elections

We settle the main open question in the theory of approval-based multi-winner elections: we show that there always exists a committee in the core. The core is a stability and group fairness concept. The proof introduces a new voting rule that optimizes an entropy-like objective function over committees and payment systems. All local optima of this objective function lie in the core, which implies that a core committee can be found in polynomial time.

cs.GT