A Game-Theoretic Approach to Strategic Resource Allocation Mechanisms in Edge and Fog Computing

With the rapid growth of Internet of Things (IoT), cloud-centric application management raises questions related to quality of service for real-time applications. Fog and edge computing (FEC) provide a complement to the cloud by filling the gap between cloud and IoT. Resource management on multiple resources from distributed and administrative FEC nodes is a key challenge to ensure the quality of end-user’s experience. To improve resource utilisation and system performance, researchers have been proposed many fair allocation mechanisms for resource management. Dominant Resource Fairness (DRF), a resource allocation policy for multiple resource types, meets most of the required fair allocation characteristics. However, DRF is suitable for centralised resource allocation without considering the effects (or feedbacks) of large-scale distributed environments like multi-controller software defined networking (SDN). Nash bargaining from micro-economic theory or competitive equilibrium equal incomes (CEEI) are well suited to solving dynamic optimisation problems proposing to ‘proportionately’ share resources among distributed participants. Although CEEI’s decentralised policy guarantees load balancing for performance isolation, they are not faultproof for computation offloading. The thesis aims to propose a hybrid and fair allocation mechanism for rejuvenation of decentralised SDN controller deployment. We apply multi-agent reinforcement learning (MARL) with robustness against adversarial controllers to enable efficient priority scheduling for FEC. Motivated by software cybernetics and homeostasis, weighted DRF is generalised by applying the principles of feedback (positive or/and negative network effects) in reverse game theory (GT) to design hybrid scheduling schemes for joint multi-resource and multitask offloading/forwarding in FEC environments. In the first piece of study, monotonic scheduling for joint offloading at the federated edge is addressed by proposing truthful mechanism (algorithmic) to neutralise harmful negative and positive distributive bargain externalities respectively. The IP-DRF scheme is a MARL approach applying partition form game (PFG) to guarantee second-best Pareto optimality viii | P a g e (SBPO) in allocation of multi-resources from deterministic policy in both population and resource non-monotonicity settings. In the second study, we propose DFog-DRF scheme to address truthful fog scheduling with bottleneck fairness in fault-probable wireless hierarchical networks by applying constrained coalition formation (CCF) games to implement MARL. The multi-objective optimisation problem for fog throughput maximisation is solved via a constraint dimensionality reduction methodology using fairness constraints for efficient gateway and low-level controller’s placement. For evaluation, we develop an agent-based framework to implement fair allocation policies in distributed data centre environments. In empirical results, the deterministic policy of IP-DRF scheme provides SBPO and reduces the average execution and turnaround time by 19% and 11.52% as compared to the Nash bargaining or CEEI deterministic policy for 57,445 cloudlets in population non-monotonic settings. The processing cost of tasks shows significant improvement (6.89% and 9.03% for fixed and variable pricing) for the resource non-monotonic setting - using 38,000 cloudlets. The DFog-DRF scheme when benchmarked against asset fair (MIP) policy shows superior performance (less than 1% in time complexity) for up to 30 FEC nodes. Furthermore, empirical results using 210 mobiles and 420 applications prove the efficacy of our hybrid scheduling scheme for hierarchical clustering considering latency and network usage for throughput maximisation.Abubakar Tafawa Balewa University, Bauchi (Tetfund, Nigeria

Mobile Ad-Hoc Networks

Being infrastructure-less and without central administration control, wireless ad-hoc networking is playing a more and more important role in extending the coverage of traditional wireless infrastructure (cellular networks, wireless LAN, etc). This book includes state-of-the-art techniques and solutions for wireless ad-hoc networks. It focuses on the following topics in ad-hoc networks: quality-of-service and video communication, routing protocol and cross-layer design. A few interesting problems about security and delay-tolerant networks are also discussed. This book is targeted to provide network engineers and researchers with design guidelines for large scale wireless ad hoc networks

A Framework for Risk-Energy Aware Service-Level Agreement Provisioning (RESP) for Computing the Quickest Path

This paper involved the computation of quickest paths with the help of service-level agreement (SLA) and energy constraints. The consideration of these constraints helps to propose a novel system model which computes the path to strengthen the continuity and criticality of the data transmission. The proposed risk-energy aware SLA provisioning (RESP) system model incorporates the research gaps of the existing risk assessment models in the literature without any increase in time complexity. The formulation of RESP shows the usefulness in the critical applications. The results show that the computation of risk-provisioned path gives the SLA satisfied paths and has a great impact of variations in the data traffic. The performance of the proposed algorithm has been indicated in terms of different performance parameters such as mean s−t paths, average hop counts, and average energy efficiency. Simulation result implies that as data traffic increases, the number of the risk‐provisioned s−t paths decreases whereas corresponding average hop counts and average energy efficiency increases

The Economics of Biodiversity The Dasgupta Review Full Report

In 2019, Her Majesty’s Treasury (UK) commissioned Sir Partha Dasgupta, an economist and Professor Emeritus at Cambridge University to produce an independent, global review on the Economics of Biodiversity. Sir Partha was assisted by a multi-disciplinary Advisory Panel that included representatives of public policy, science, economics and business. The Review argues that countries should de-emphasize GDP as an index of progress and instead should focus on a national Wealth measure that includes an accounting for Natural Capital. After World War II, when the world was very different from what it is now, Sir Partha argues the economic questions being faced could be studied most productively by excluding Natural Capital and focusing on Produced Capital (e.g. infrastructure) and Human Capital. But today, as economists have begun to devise methods to value and to track Natural Capital, it is becoming apparent that while Produced and Human Capital may be increasing, Natural Capital is declining. The Review analyzes what we know about Natural capital and begins to address how Natural Capital might be incorporated into a valid assessment of national wealth and long-term sustainability

Semantic discovery and reuse of business process patterns

Patterns currently play an important role in modern information systems (IS) development and their use has mainly been restricted to the design and implementation phases of the development lifecycle. Given the increasing significance of business modelling in IS development, patterns have the potential of providing a viable solution for promoting reusability of recurrent generalized models in the very early stages of development. As a statement of research-in-progress this paper focuses on business process patterns and proposes an initial methodological framework for the discovery and reuse of business process patterns within the IS development lifecycle. The framework borrows ideas from the domain engineering literature and proposes the use of semantics to drive both the discovery of patterns as well as their reuse

Access and Usage Control in Grid

Grid is a computational environment where heterogeneous resources are virtualized and outsourced to multiple users across the Internet. The increasing popularity of the resources visualization is explained by the emerging suitability of such technology for automated execution of heavy parts of business and research processes. Efficient and flexible framework for the access and usage control over Grid resources is a prominent challenge. The primary objective of this thesis is to design the novel access and usage control model providing the fine-grained and continuous control over computational Grid resources. The approach takes into account peculiarities of Grid: service-oriented architecture, long-lived interactions, heterogeneity and distribution of resources, openness and high dynamics. We tackle the access and usage control problem in Grid by Usage CONtrol (UCON) model, which presents the continuity of control and mutability of authorization information used to make access decisions. Authorization information is formed by attributes of the resource requestor, the resource provider and the environment where the system operates. Our access and usage control model is considered on three levels of abstraction: policy, enforcement and implementation. The policy level introduces security policies designed to specify the desired granularity of control: coarse-grained policies that manages access and usage of Grid services, and fine-grained policies that monitor the usage of underlying resources allocated for a particular Grid service instance. We introduce U-XACML and exploit POLPA policy languages to specify and formalize security policies. Next, the policy level presents attribute management models. Trust negotiations are applied to collect a set of attributes needed to produce access decisions. In case of mutable attributes, a risk-aware access and usage control model is given to approximate the continuous control and timely acquisition of fresh attribute values. The enforcement level presents the architecture of the state-full reference monitor designed to enforce security policies on coarse- and fine-grained levels of control. The implementation level presents a proof-of-concept realization of our access and usage control model in Globus Toolkit, the most widely used middleware to setup computational Grids