3.1.2. Multi-Agent Systems

Multi-agent System (MAS) is a complex system that is composed by more than one distributed agents and these agents communicate to deal with problems which usually can't be solved by a single agent [14,15]. According to [16], a MAS is characterized by:


MAS is based on the divide-and-conquer mechanism [17]. In a MAS, each agent has limited knowledge about its environment, and work individually towards a certain goal based on their local knowledge and their behavioral algorithms and interact in a cooperative or competitive manner with other agents [18].

The idea of using MAS is to divide a complex system into smaller and more related objectives and construct agents for these sub-objectives [17]. MAS can simulate and control large complex decentralized systems that can cope with the dynamics of the system, reduce the complexity, and increase flexibility [19]. One of the most important benefits of MAS is its fault tolerance, based on multiple agents can provide the same services [17].
