A model for optimal service allocation in a smart environment

Abstract Ambient Intelligence (AmI) is a user-centric paradigm offering self-adaptive environments and tailor-made services. A fundamental component of an AmI environment is a service allocation system. In this paper, we present a mathematical model for service allocation in a multiagent-based AmI environment that exhibits heterogeneous resources and energy constraints. We also propose a heuristic, probabilistic search algorithm for efficiently solving the provisioning problem. Results show that our model achieves optimal service allocations that trade-off the number of services offered by the agents and their energy consumption, thereby reducing the overall response time of the AmI environment and its energy use.