Experiments in selective overhearing of hierarchical organizations

Lately, overhearing has gained interest in monitoring multi-agent settings. Previous investigations provided an extensive set of techniques using overhearing. However, most previous investigations rely on a problematic assumption that all inter-agent communications can be overheard. In the real-world settings, it is reasonable to assume that the available overhearing resources will be essentially limited. Thus, overhearing targets should be carefully chosen. We provide a theoretical and empirical study of selective overhearing. In particular, we focus on overhearing hierarchical organizations that are highly popular in the real-world settings. This paper first presents a theoretical approach for modelling overhearing in hierarchical organizations. Then, based on the proposed model, we present experiments in simulating conversations in hierarchical organizations, and empirically examine a set of overhearing strategies particularly suited for such organizations. Based on these extensive experiments, we are able to determine efficient overhearing strategies and isolate the parameters influencing their behavior.