Distributed control methods

The distributed system is becoming increasingly popular, and this produces the need for more sophisticated distributed control techniques. The authors present a method for distributed control using simple finite state automata. Each of the distributed entities is `controlled´ by its associated automaton, in the sense that the entity examines the state of the automaton to determine its behavior. The result of the collective behavior of all of the entities is fed back to the automata, which change their state as a result of this feedback. They give a new method of analysis which derives the steady state behavior of this system as a whole, by decomposing it into two parts: describing and solving an imbedding auxiliary Markov chain, and analyzing the behavior of the system within each of the states of this auxiliary chain