Institutionalised Consensus in Vehicular Networks: Executable Specification and Empirical Validation

We propose to manage consensus formation in open, decentralised and resource-constrained systems like vehicular networks using self-organising electronic institutions. This requires the institution members (agents) to maintain institutional facts in the face of inadvertent failure, non-compliant behaviour, and environmental change. To do this, we extend and adapt the well-known Paxos algorithm, for fault-tolerant consensus in distributed databases, to the IPCon algorithm, for robust collective-choice in electronic institutions. We address issues of developing an executable specification of IPCon and provide an empirical validation of its correctness that complements a previously-presented formal proof of the theoretical properties.