Market-based Control: A Paradigm For Distributed Resource Allocation

Book excerpt: Market-Based Control is a paradigm for controlling complex systems that would otherwise be very difficult to control, maintain, or expand. The purpose of this volume is to illustrate the utility of market-based control through a series of papers focusing on different applications. This volume, for the first time, brings together the research from a wide range of fields all using a market-based conceptual framework. The features of markets that have provided motivation for these works include decentralization, interacting agents, and some notion of a resource that needs to be allocated. The papers span a range including theoretical considerations, simulations, and implementations.