Experiments in Selective Overhearing of Hierarchical Organizations

Abstract

Lately, overhearing has gained interest in monitoring multi-agent settings. Previous investigations provided an extensive set of techniques using overhearing. However, most previous investigations rely on a problematic assumption that all inter-agent communications can be overheard. In the real-world settings, it is reasonable to assume that the available overhearing resources will be essentially limited. Thus, overhearing targets should be carefully chosen. We provide a theoretical and empirical study of selective overhearing. In particular, we focus on overhearing hierarchical organizations that are highly popular in the real-world settings. This paper first presents a theoretical approach for modelling overhearing in hierarchical organizations . Then, based on the proposed model, we present experiments in simulating conversations in hierarchical organizations, and empirically examine a set of overhearing strategies particularly suited for such organizations. Based on these extensive experiments, we are able to determine efficient overhearing strategies and isolate the parameters influencing their behavior.

This research was supported in part by BSF Grant #2002401.