Decentralized system

A decentralised system in systems theory is a system in which lower level components operate on local information to accomplish global goals. The global pattern of behaviour is an emergent property of dynamical mechanisms that act upon local components, such as indirect communication, rather than the result of a central ordering influence (see centralised system).

A centralised system is one in which a central controller exercises control over the lower-level components of the system directly or through the use of a power hierarchy (such as instructing a middle level component to instruct a lower level component). The complex behaviour exhibited by this system is thus the result of the central controller's "control" over lower level components in the system, including the active supervision of the lower level components.

A decentralised system, on the other hand, is one in which complex behaviour emerges through the work of lower level components operating on local information, not the instructions of any commanding influence. This form of control is known as distributed control, or control in which each component of the system is equally responsible for contributing to the global, complex behaviour by acting on local information in the appropriate manner. The lower level components are implicitly aware of these appropriate responses through mechanisms that are based on the component's interaction with the environment, including other components in that environment.

Decentralised systems are intricately linked to the idea of self-organisation—a phenomenon in which local interactions between components of a system establish order and coordination to achieve global goals without a central commanding influence. The rules specifying these interactions emerge from local information and in the case of biological (or biologically-inspired) agents, from the closely linked perception and action system of the agents. These interactions continually form and depend on spatio-temporal patterns, which are created through the positive and negative feedback that the interactions provide. For example, recruitment in the foraging behaviour of ants relies on the positive feedback of the ant finding food at the end of a pheromone trail while ants' task-switching behaviour relies on the negative feedback of making antennal contact with a certain number of ants (for example, a sufficiently low encounter rate with successful foragers can cause a midden worker to switch to foraging, although other factors like food availability can affect the threshold for switching).

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