Knowledge in Multi-Agent Systems: Initial Configurations and Broadcast

Abstract

The semantic framework for the modal logic of knowledge due to Halpern and Moses provides a way to ascribe knowledge to agents in distributed and multi-agent systems. In this paper we study two special cases of this framework: full systems and hypercubes. Both model static situations in which no agent has any information about another agent's state. Full systems and hypercubes are an appropriate model for the initial configurations of many systems of interest. We establish a correspondence between full systems and hypercube systems and certain classes of Kripke frames. We show that these classes of systems correspond to the same logic. Moreover, this logic is also the same as that generated by the larger class of weakly directed frames. We provide a sound and complete axiomatization, S5WDn, of this logic. Finally, we show that under certain natural assumptions, in a model where knowledge evolves over time, S5WDn characterizes the properties of knowledge not just at the initial configuration, but also at all later configurations. In particular, this holds for homogeneous broadcast systems, which capture settings in which agents are initially ignorant of each others local states, operate synchronously, have perfect recall and can communicate only by broadcasting.