Analysis of temporal consistency management protocols for resource-constrained multi-agent systems

Multi-Agent Systems (MAS) are distributed system composed of a set of connected nodes, that communicate and share data. Since nodes do not have access to a central clock, the consistency of shared data is one of the important issues raised by this type of system. Approaches to establish temporal consistency of these shared data have been designed and implemented in the past. This paper presents and analyses existing protocols for managing temporal consistency in order to identify those that are in line with the specificities of weakly adjoining MAS with limited resources and connectivity. We propose a classification and a comparative analysis of these protocols for use within this category of MAS.