3,463 research outputs found

    Performance analysis with network-enhanced complexities: On fading measurements, event-triggered mechanisms, and cyber attacks

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    Copyright © 2014 Derui Ding et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.Nowadays, the real-world systems are usually subject to various complexities such as parameter uncertainties, time-delays, and nonlinear disturbances. For networked systems, especially large-scale systems such as multiagent systems and systems over sensor networks, the complexities are inevitably enhanced in terms of their degrees or intensities because of the usage of the communication networks. Therefore, it would be interesting to (1) examine how this kind of network-enhanced complexities affects the control or filtering performance; and (2) develop some suitable approaches for controller/filter design problems. In this paper, we aim to survey some recent advances on the performance analysis and synthesis with three sorts of fashionable network-enhanced complexities, namely, fading measurements, event-triggered mechanisms, and attack behaviors of adversaries. First, these three kinds of complexities are introduced in detail according to their engineering backgrounds, dynamical characteristic, and modelling techniques. Then, the developments of the performance analysis and synthesis issues for various networked systems are systematically reviewed. Furthermore, some challenges are illustrated by using a thorough literature review and some possible future research directions are highlighted.This work was supported in part by the National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grants 61134009, 61329301, 61203139, 61374127, and 61374010, the Royal Society of the UK, and the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation of Germany

    A System for Distributed Mechanisms: Design, Implementation and Applications

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    We describe here a structured system for distributed mechanism design appropriate for both Intranet and Internet applications. In our approach the players dynamically form a network in which they know neither their neighbours nor the size of the network and interact to jointly take decisions. The only assumption concerning the underlying communication layer is that for each pair of processes there is a path of neighbours connecting them. This allows us to deal with arbitrary network topologies. We also discuss the implementation of this system which consists of a sequence of layers. The lower layers deal with the operations that implement the basic primitives of distributed computing, namely low level communication and distributed termination, while the upper layers use these primitives to implement high level communication among players, including broadcasting and multicasting, and distributed decision making. This yields a highly flexible distributed system whose specific applications are realized as instances of its top layer. This design is implemented in Java. The system supports at various levels fault-tolerance and includes a provision for distributed policing the purpose of which is to exclude `dishonest' players. Also, it can be used for repeated creation of dynamically formed networks of players interested in a joint decision making implemented by means of a tax-based mechanism. We illustrate its flexibility by discussing a number of implemented examples.Comment: 36 pages; revised and expanded versio

    A system-theoretic framework for privacy preservation in continuous-time multiagent dynamics

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    In multiagent dynamical systems, privacy protection corresponds to avoid disclosing the initial states of the agents while accomplishing a distributed task. The system-theoretic framework described in this paper for this scope, denoted dynamical privacy, relies on introducing output maps which act as masks, rendering the internal states of an agent indiscernible by the other agents as well as by external agents monitoring all communications. Our output masks are local (i.e., decided independently by each agent), time-varying functions asymptotically converging to the true states. The resulting masked system is also time-varying, and has the original unmasked system as its limit system. When the unmasked system has a globally exponentially stable equilibrium point, it is shown in the paper that the masked system has the same point as a global attractor. It is also shown that existence of equilibrium points in the masked system is not compatible with dynamical privacy. Application of dynamical privacy to popular examples of multiagent dynamics, such as models of social opinions, average consensus and synchronization, is investigated in detail.Comment: 38 pages, 4 figures, extended version of arXiv preprint arXiv:1808.0808

    Allocating Limited Resources to Protect a Massive Number of Targets using a Game Theoretic Model

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    Resource allocation is the process of optimizing the rare resources. In the area of security, how to allocate limited resources to protect a massive number of targets is especially challenging. This paper addresses this resource allocation issue by constructing a game theoretic model. A defender and an attacker are players and the interaction is formulated as a trade-off between protecting targets and consuming resources. The action cost which is a necessary role of consuming resource, is considered in the proposed model. Additionally, a bounded rational behavior model (Quantal Response, QR), which simulates a human attacker of the adversarial nature, is introduced to improve the proposed model. To validate the proposed model, we compare the different utility functions and resource allocation strategies. The comparison results suggest that the proposed resource allocation strategy performs better than others in the perspective of utility and resource effectiveness.Comment: 14 pages, 12 figures, 41 reference

    Locating Agents in RFID Architectures

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    The use of software agents can create an “intelligent” interface between users’ preferences and the back‐end systems. Agents are now able to interact and communicate with each other, forming a virtual community and feeding back the user with suggestions. Innovative systems related to Asset Tracking, Inventory and Shelving architectures are more often involving advanced communication techniques (e.g., RFID); these systems are responsible for user authentication and objects verification. RFID systems could have jamming situations where many objects are moving at the same time and in the same direction. Moreover, other disadvantages have also been observed, such as hindering further implementations, privacy and security issues problems, in addition to the system’s disruptive behavior in case of crowd checkouts (e.g., Supermarket and Airports). Addressing these disadvantages, this paper proposes a possible integration between a Multi‐Agent framework and an RFID‐based application (back‐end). This integration would allow objects (such as passports or goods) with RFID tags to better check‐out through airports or supermarket gates that contain RFID‐readers

    PADS: Practical Attestation for Highly Dynamic Swarm Topologies

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    Remote attestation protocols are widely used to detect device configuration (e.g., software and/or data) compromise in Internet of Things (IoT) scenarios. Unfortunately, the performances of such protocols are unsatisfactory when dealing with thousands of smart devices. Recently, researchers are focusing on addressing this limitation. The approach is to run attestation in a collective way, with the goal of reducing computation and communication. Despite these advances, current solutions for attestation are still unsatisfactory because of their complex management and strict assumptions concerning the topology (e.g., being time invariant or maintaining a fixed topology). In this paper, we propose PADS, a secure, efficient, and practical protocol for attesting potentially large networks of smart devices with unstructured or dynamic topologies. PADS builds upon the recent concept of non-interactive attestation, by reducing the collective attestation problem into a minimum consensus one. We compare PADS with a state-of-the art collective attestation protocol and validate it by using realistic simulations that show practicality and efficiency. The results confirm the suitability of PADS for low-end devices, and highly unstructured networks.Comment: Submitted to ESORICS 201
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