New Generation Computing, 19(2001)173-191
Ohmsha, Ltd. and Springer-Verlag

An Agent Architecture for Strategy-centric Adaptive QoS Control in Flexible Videoconference System

Takuo SUGANUMA, SungDoke LEE, Tetsuo KINOSHITA and Norio SHIRATORI
Research Institute of Electrical Communication,
Tohoku University
2-1-1 Katahira, Aoba-ku, Sendai 980-8577 Japan
{suganuma,sdlee,kino,norio}@shiratori.riec.tohoku.ac.jp

Received 18 July 2000
Revised manuscript received 20 November 2000

Abstract

In this paper, we propose an agent architecture to improve flexibility of a videoconference system with strategy-centric adaptive QoS (Quality of Service) control mechanism. The proposed architecture realizes more flexibility by changing their QoS Control strategies dynamically. To switch the strategies, system considers the properties of problems occurred on QoS and status of problem solving process. This architecture is introduced as a part of knowledge base of agent that deals with cooperation between software module of videoconference systems. We have implemented the mechanism, and our prototype system shows its capability of flexible problem solving against the QoS degradation, along with other possible problems within the given time limitation. Thus we confirmed that the proposed architecture can improve its flexibility of a videoconference system compared to traditional systems.

Keywords: Flexible Videoconference System, Multiagent System, ADIPS Framework, Adaptive QoS Control, Cooperation Protocol.

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