DTAC-ADMM: Delay-Tolerant Augmented Consensus ADMM-based Algorithm for Distributed Resource Allocation

Latency is inherent in almost all real-world networked applications. In this paper, we propose a distributed resource allocation strategy over multi-agent networks with delayed communications. The state of each agent (or node) represents its share of assigned resources out of a fixed amount (equal to the overall demand). Every node locally updates its state towards optimizing a global allocation cost function via received information of its neighbouring nodes even when the data exchange over the network is heterogeneously delayed at different links. The update is based on the alternating direction method of multipliers (ADMM) formulation subject to both sum-preserving coupling-constraint and local box-constraints. The solution is derivative-free and holds for general (not necessarily differentiable) convex cost models. We use the notion of augmented consensus over undirected networks to model delayed information-exchange for convergence analysis. We simulate our delay-tolerant algorithm for optimal energy reservation-production scheduling.