2020 IEEE 5th International Conference on Computing Communication and Automation (ICCCA)
Galgotias University, Greater Noida, UP, India. Oct 30-31, 2020
A Novel Agent Based Depth First Search Algorithm
Vigneshwaran Palanisamy
Department of Information and Communication
Technology, Vavuniya Campus of the University of Jaffna,
Sri Lanka
p.vickey22@gmail.com
Abstract- Artificial intelligent techniques provide different kind
of searching methods in tree structure and those methods are
implemented sequential and parallel manner using structured
programming. Depth-first search is a tree search algorithm
which enables the traversal from source node to neighbour nodes
adjacent to source node in a graph and implemented sequentially
in this fashion. The improvement of the sequential Depth-first
search is sought in several research studies. One of the solutions
to the improvement of Depth-first search is the design of multi
agent system for the searching problem. In this research study,
the proposed multi agent system for Depth-first search divides
the entire graph into several clusters using bi-connected region
method and consigns the agents to each cluster to perform the
Depth-first search sequentially. The proposed method reveals the
significance improvement in terms of the performance measure
of the system than sequential Depth-first search.
Keywords— Depth-first search, Bi-connected clustering, Multi
Agent Systems, Tree Structure
I. INTRODUCTION
Depth-first search is a tree-based search which is the
building block for wide range of graph applications. It finds all
the vertices accessible from a given vertex or source and
shortest path from a source to all vertices in directed and
undirected graphs [1]. It is an important graph search problem
which is used to solve problems like inspecting network
structuring, topological sorting, planarity testing and
scheduling problems in computer science. Using agents, we
can expedite any problems that related to a machine, human or
software. The output of rational agent is action based on the
past and current precepts what it perceived up to date [2]. An
agent is a program or given a graph situated in an environment
starting from source node by considering its perception history
and finds the series of actions for to reach the goal node.
Autonomous agents have developed as a main paradigm for
solving different of computational problems. The agent is
performing to make change in the environment by updating the
current state. Autonomous agents have developed to perform as
a solution maker for solving various complex computational
problems. While conventional software system is to be
monolithic and operated under centralized system, the multi-
agent system entails agents that interact with each other to
attain common goal of the problem [3]. Agent technology is
one of the solutions to improve the complexity of the
sequential depth first search algorithm in terms of reaching
goal node by traversing from source node where each nodes or
group of nodes represented as agents [4]. In the multi-agent
system, all the agents should find each other to communicate.
978-1-7281-6324-6/20/$31.00 ©2020 IEEE
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Senthooran Vijayanathan
Department of Information and Communication
Technology, Vavuniya Campus of the University of Jaffna,
Sri Lanka
senthooran@vau.jfn.ac.lk
The solution to this problem is the central directory that
provides request to clients. This centrally limited solutions
restrict the autonomy of such agents regarding the partner
agent and affects the scalability of the multi-agent system. This
leads the grouping of agents based on similar objectives and it
can be viewed as clustering problem in multi-agent system.
This research proposes the multi agent system to boost the
sequential depth first search algorithm experimentally by using
bi-directed clustering technique on whole graphs. The rest of
the paper outlines the background study in section II and
related works in section III. The section IV presents the
methodology with block diagram. The experimental results and
discussion is discussed in section V and conclusion with future
direction can be expanded in the section VI.
II. BACKGROUND STUDY
The method of solving tree search problem through
artificial intelligence comprises the major process of defining
the state space, identifying start and goal state then finding the
path from source to goal via search space.
A. Depth First Search
DFS is about to start a source vertex s and travel the graph
level by level and it first visits all vertices which are adjacent to
the s [5].
Input: A graph and a starting vertex root of Graph
Output: Goal state. The parent links trace the shortest path
back to root
1: procedure DFS_iterative(G, v) is
2: let S be a stack
3: S.push(iterator of G.adjacentEdges(v))
4: while S is not empty do
5: if S.peek().hasNext() then
6: w = S.peek().next()
7: if w is not labeled as discovered then
8: label w as discovered
9: S.push(iterator of G.adjacentEdges(w))
10: else
11: S.pop()
Pseudocode 1: Pseudocode for finding DFS using sequential method [5]
The Time complexity of DFS will be O (V + E), where V is
the number of vertices, and E is the number of Edges. This
again depends on the data structure that we user to represent
the graph. If it is an adjacency matrix, it will be O (V2). If we
use an adjacency list, it will be O (V+E) [13].
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B. JADE Environment with searching problems
JADE is the one of the most object-oriented frame work
and completely distributed system with a goal to enable the
development of agent-oriented applications [6]. FIPA standards
facilitates agent communication models and enables external
behaviour of agents in the JADE platform. FIPA specification
includes agent communication, management and architecture.
JADE provides two types of agents in order to facilitate the
agentification [7]. First, Agent Management System (AMS) is
the naming service and enables each agent with unique name
and authority in the platform. It will create or eradicate agents
on remote containers by requesting AMS. Second, Directory
Facilitator which is provides a yellow page that an agent can
identify other agents providing the services it requires in order
to solve its goals [8]. Further, in JADE, Agent base class run in
the containers and automatically called by the platform
invoking the agent life cycle, for each agent behaviors are
specified by the action method and agent communication is
represented using ACL messages. JADE facilitates agent
models include communication graphs where each nodes
represent agents and edges are represented communication
between the agents with each other. an edge represents the
casual relationship and edges so as graph indicates the
transmitted message.
C. Bi-Connected clustering
Clustering is a technique assigning certain data points into
dissimilar clusters for highlighting the similarity of data points
assigned to same cluster.
Input: A graph G= (V, E)
Output: Bi-connected components of G= (V, E)
1: iÅ0
2: SÅempty stack
3: for x ‫ א‬V do num (x) Å0
4: for x ‫ א‬V do if num (x) =0 then BICON (x,0)
5: procedure BICON(v,u)
6: iÅ i+1
7: num(v)Å i
8: lowpt(v)Åi
9: for w € Adj(v) do if num(w)=0 then
10: [(v,w) is a tree edge]
11: SÍ (v,w)
12: BICON (w,v)
13: lowpt(v)Å min(lowpt(v),lowpt(w))
14: if lowpt(w) ≥ num(v) then
15: form a new biconnected component consisting all the
edges on above stack and including (v,w)
remove these edges from the stack
16: else if num(w) < num(v) and w≠u then
17: [(v,w) is a back edge]
18: SÍ (v,w)
19: lowpt(v)Å min(lowpt(v),num(w))
20: return
Algorithm 1: Finding Biconnected region clustering for a Graph [9]
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III. RELATED WORKS
Some agent-based approaches for searching algorithms
have been developed in the past. Most of the techniques uses
searching algorithms in multi-agent path finding problems
[10]. Few related studies were proposed regarding the
improvement of searching algorithms using agent technology.
A general BFS solver in Netlogo was proposed by Fernando in
[11]. The sequential BFS algorithm is simulated by Netlogo
using list data structure, turtles as agents, links to represent
transitions between the agents. Florin Lion proposed an agent-
based solution for searching problem [12]. This composes of
three main classes of agents, namely, Environment, Solver and
Requester. The Environment agent knows the structure of the
problem to be resolved. The Solver agent solves the searching
problem. The Requester agent asks the solver agent for a
solution to the searching problem. This model allows more
Solver and Environment agents. In terms of FIPA
recommendations, the Environment agents and Solver agents
first register their services via the director facilitator in JADE.
In that way, the Solver agent finds the Environment agent and
Requester agent finds the solver agent.
IV. METHODOLOGY
The proposed methodology clusters the whole graph into
several areas using bi-connected region method. This yields the
whole graphs into small pieces. The Depth-first search
operation is performed in each cluster and the visited nodes are
the input to the next cluster to perform the Depth-first search in
the next cluster. Thus, the proposed design of the agent-based
methodology enables the communication between two agents.
Typically, in the Fig.1, it can be divided into five clusters
which are assigned to five receiver agents to be performed. The
nodes belonging to each cluster are sent to the corresponding
receiver agent. The actual process of the agent-based design is
working with sender agent and receiver agent. First, the sender
agent divides the whole graph into clusters using the bi-
connected region clustering method and sends each cluster to
corresponding receiver agents that means that the sub graph
related to the particular cluster is send to the corresponding
receiver agent. The receiver agents perform the depth-first
search in clusters and get the result. Once, the receiver agent
finishes its task the results is forwarded to second receiver
agent. This is sequentially performed and until the last receiver
agent gets the results. Eventually, the sender agent will receive
the depth-first search result for the whole graph from last
receiver agent. The design of this method consists of sender
agent and number of receiver agents equivalent clusters and
communication among the agents is sequential and
broadcasting. Particularly each receiver agents will
communicate next receiver agent and transfer the accumulated
result. The block diagram of the proposed design is portrayed
in Fig 2.
 agent and find the results. Finally, it combines the whole results
to find the DFS of the whole graph.
N N
N N
Input: A graph G= (V, E)
Output: DFS result of G= (V, E)
N Cluster 3 N N N: Number of clusters
S: Sender agent
R: Receiver agent
luster 1 N Cluster 2 G= (V, E): Whole graph
1: S finds clustered Graph of G is C
N
N 2: S sends C to R(0)
3: R(0) perform the DFS to C(0)
N 4: Combine the result with C
N 5: for iÆ 1 to N
6: R(i) perform the DFS to C(i)
N N
N N N 7: Combine the result with C(N-1)
N 8: R(N-1) sends combine result to S
N N
9: S finds the DFS of G
Algorithm 2: Find the DFS of a graph using Multi agent system

Cluster 4 Cluster 5
V. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
The proposed method is investigated using the JADE
Fig. 1. Clustered graph of an un-directed graph platform. The efficacy of the proposed method is evaluated in
terms of Total calculation time in nano seconds, Number of
Clustered graph communications among the agents and the Average
communication time. The graphs depicted in Fig.3, Fig.4, Fig.5,
Fig.6, Fig.7, and Fig.8 with various number of nodes are
considered for experimentation. The results of the experiments
SC R1 show the noteworthy improvement compared with sequential
depth-first search algorithm in terms of the above-mentioned
Result of Result of performance measures. The number of communications among
cluster 2 + rest cluster 1 + rest the agents are tested and it shows the comparison of the
of clusters of clusters proposed method with sequential method in Fig.9, Fig.10 and
Fig.11.
The time complexity of the DFS is V+E, where V is the
number of vertices and E is the number of edges. In agent based
R3 DFS, we model the time complexity as Tc+Ta*n, where Tc is
R2 the total time taken for the clustering and Ta is the calculation
Result of
cluster 3 + rest of the DFS in agent and n is the number of agents. Time
complexity of this algorithm will be as following for Tc, O
of clusters
(V+E) and for Ta, O (V+E). Therefore, total time complexity
of O (V+E) + n* O (V+E), which will be the time complexity
of O (V+E). In this comparison, it is clearly shown that the total
calculation time for agent-based implementation less than total
Result of calculation time for sequential based implementation (as shown
R4 R5 in Fig.9). For Fig.3, the number of nodes is higher than other
cluster 4 + rest
graphs. Therefore, the total calculation time for agent-based
of clusters
implementation for this graph is comparatively higher than
agent-based implementation for other graphs. For all the graphs
total calculation time for agent-based implementation based on
the number of nodes as shown in Table 1. As the result of the
Result of cluster 5 + combined results
total calculation time between both implementations show
Fig. 2. Flow diagram of implementation of the method using agent higher variation. In Fig.10, Number of communications are
technology evaluated for all the graphs. These number of communications
are depending on the number of nodes in the graphs and density
The experimental strategy of the proposed method creates of the clusters. For an example in Fig.3 and Fig.6, there are
the number of agents which are equivalent to the number of same number of nodes but the densities of each clusters are
clusters, then sends the clustered graphs to the receiver agents different, therefore Fig.3 have a greater number of
from the sender agent. The DFS is performed in each receiver communications than Fig.6. Further the comparison of average

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communication time for agent-based implementation and
average communication time for sequential based
implementation are shown in Fig.11. From this investigation,
the agent-based method is comparatively good rather than the
sequential DFS algorithm. The existing sequential DFS
algorithm consumes more time than the proposed agent
method. The agent-based DFS method can be real world
applications like Broadcasting, Peer to Peer Networking, GPS
Navigation System, Web Crawlers and Path finding.

Fig. 5. Undirected graph with 10 nodes

Fig. 6. Undirected graph with 20 nodes

Fig. 3. Undirected graph with 20 nodes

Fig. 7. Directed graph with 6 nodes

Fig. 4. Undirected graph with 11 nodes

Fig. 8. Undirected graph with 10 nodes

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 VI. CONCLUSION
This research study addresses a new method for finding
Depth-first search using agent-based technology with the proof
of experimental results compared with sequential DFS
algorithm. The performance measure of the proposed method
has been evaluated in terms of various aspects such as total
calculation time, number of communications between agents
and average communication time. The experimental results
show the significant improvement in the calculation time and
the average communication time with respect sequential
algorithm.
Fig. 11. Evaluation for the implementation of sequential based algorithm and
agent-based algorithm in terms of Average communication time

Eventually, it is clearly seeming that the agent-based

implementation of the Depth-first search is more efficient than
the sequential based implementation and the proposed cluster
based multi agent method will be used for real worlds
applications occupied with Depth-first search.

TABLE I. TOTAL CALCULATION TIME FOR AGENT BASED

IMPLEMENTATION
Fig. 9. Evaluation for the implementation of sequential based algorithm and
Number of
agent-based algorithm in terms of Total calculation time Graphs Total calculation time (x109 ns)
nodes
Fig.3 20 0.4808953

Fig.4 11 0.3063890

Fig.5 10 0.3761059

Fig.6 20 0.4143355

Fig.7 6 0.2504957

Fig.8 10 0.2997649

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Fig. 10. Evaluation for the implementation of agent-based algorithm in terms
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