Distributed Equilibrium-Seeking in Target Coverage Games via Self-Configurable Networks under Limited Communication

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Bhargav, Jayanth, Xu, Zirui, Tzoumas, Vasileios, Ghasemi, Mahsa, Sundaram, Shreyas
Format: Preprint
Published: 2026
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author Bhargav, Jayanth
Xu, Zirui
Tzoumas, Vasileios
Ghasemi, Mahsa
Sundaram, Shreyas
author_facet Bhargav, Jayanth
Xu, Zirui
Tzoumas, Vasileios
Ghasemi, Mahsa
Sundaram, Shreyas
contents We study a target coverage problem in which a team of sensing agents, operating under limited communication, must collaboratively monitor targets that may be adaptively repositioned by an attacker. We model this interaction as a zero-sum game between the sensing team (known as the defender) and the attacker. However, computing an exact Nash equilibrium (NE) for this game is computationally prohibitive as the action space of the defender grows exponentially with the number of sensors and their possible orientations. Exploiting the submodularity property of the game's utility function, we propose a distributed framework that enables agents to self-configure their communication neighborhoods under bandwidth constraints and collaboratively maximize the target coverage. We establish theoretical guarantees showing that the resulting sensing strategies converge to an approximate NE of the game. To our knowledge, this is the first distributed, communication-aware approach that scales effectively for games with combinatorial action spaces while explicitly incorporating communication constraints. To this end, we leverage the distributed bandit-submodular optimization framework and the notion of Value of Coordination that were introduced in [1]. Through simulations, we show that our approach attains near-optimal game value and higher target coverage compared to baselines.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2603_17335
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Distributed Equilibrium-Seeking in Target Coverage Games via Self-Configurable Networks under Limited Communication
Bhargav, Jayanth
Xu, Zirui
Tzoumas, Vasileios
Ghasemi, Mahsa
Sundaram, Shreyas
Systems and Control
Computer Science and Game Theory
Multiagent Systems
Optimization and Control
We study a target coverage problem in which a team of sensing agents, operating under limited communication, must collaboratively monitor targets that may be adaptively repositioned by an attacker. We model this interaction as a zero-sum game between the sensing team (known as the defender) and the attacker. However, computing an exact Nash equilibrium (NE) for this game is computationally prohibitive as the action space of the defender grows exponentially with the number of sensors and their possible orientations. Exploiting the submodularity property of the game's utility function, we propose a distributed framework that enables agents to self-configure their communication neighborhoods under bandwidth constraints and collaboratively maximize the target coverage. We establish theoretical guarantees showing that the resulting sensing strategies converge to an approximate NE of the game. To our knowledge, this is the first distributed, communication-aware approach that scales effectively for games with combinatorial action spaces while explicitly incorporating communication constraints. To this end, we leverage the distributed bandit-submodular optimization framework and the notion of Value of Coordination that were introduced in [1]. Through simulations, we show that our approach attains near-optimal game value and higher target coverage compared to baselines.
title Distributed Equilibrium-Seeking in Target Coverage Games via Self-Configurable Networks under Limited Communication
topic Systems and Control
Computer Science and Game Theory
Multiagent Systems
Optimization and Control
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.17335