Decentralized Stochastic Control with a Word-of-Mouth Communication

Aditya Dave, Andreas Malikopoulos

Published 2018-09-24Version 1

In this paper, we analyze a network of agents that communicate with a word of mouth. This information structure is characterized by agents communicating only with their neighbors in the network. The link between two neighboring agents determines their corresponding communication delay. This is a non-classical information structure where the topological and temporal restrictions in communication mean that information propagates slowly through the network. We present a result about the optimal control strategy for systems with such information structures. The solution methodology generalizes a common information based approach in analyzing decentralized problems.