@InProceedings{zhang02a,
  author =	 {Weixiong Zhang and Lars Wittenburg},
  title =	 {Distributed Breakout Revisited},
  googleid =	 {oLkQnsNY838J:scholar.google.com/},
  booktitle =	 {Proceedings of the 18th National Conference on
                  Artificial Intelligence},
  pages =	 {352--357},
  year =	 2002,
  abstract =	 {Distributed breakout algorithm (DBA) is an effi-
                  cient method for solving distributed constraint
                  satisfaction problems (CSP). Inspired by its
                  potential of being an efficient, low-overhead agent
                  coordination method for problems in distributed
                  sensor networks, we study DBA s properties in this
                  paper. We specifically show that on an acyclic graph
                  of nodes, DBA can find a solution in synchronized
                  distributed steps. This completeness result reveals
                  DBA s superiority over conventional local search on
                  acyclic graphs and implies its potential as a simple
                  self-stabilization method for tree-structured
                  distributed systems. We also show a worst case of
                  DBA in a cyclic graph where it never terminates. To
                  overcome this problem on cyclic graphs, we propose
                  two stochastic variations to DBA. Our experimental
                  analysis shows that stochastic DBAs are able to
                  avoid DBA s worstcase scenarios and has similar
                  performance as that of DBA.},
  keywords =     {multiagent dcsp},
  url =		 {http://jmvidal.cse.sc.edu/library/zhang02a.pdf},
  cluster = 	 {9219810459351300512}
}