29,833 research outputs found
Push & Pull: autonomous deployment of mobile sensors for a complete coverage
Mobile sensor networks are important for several strategic applications
devoted to monitoring critical areas. In such hostile scenarios, sensors cannot
be deployed manually and are either sent from a safe location or dropped from
an aircraft. Mobile devices permit a dynamic deployment reconfiguration that
improves the coverage in terms of completeness and uniformity.
In this paper we propose a distributed algorithm for the autonomous
deployment of mobile sensors called Push&Pull. According to our proposal,
movement decisions are made by each sensor on the basis of locally available
information and do not require any prior knowledge of the operating conditions
or any manual tuning of key parameters.
We formally prove that, when a sufficient number of sensors are available,
our approach guarantees a complete and uniform coverage. Furthermore, we
demonstrate that the algorithm execution always terminates preventing movement
oscillations.
Numerous simulations show that our algorithm reaches a complete coverage
within reasonable time with moderate energy consumption, even when the target
area has irregular shapes. Performance comparisons between Push&Pull and one of
the most acknowledged algorithms show how the former one can efficiently reach
a more uniform and complete coverage under a wide range of working scenarios.Comment: Technical Report. This paper has been published on Wireless Networks,
Springer. Animations and the complete code of the proposed algorithm are
available for download at the address:
http://www.dsi.uniroma1.it/~novella/mobile_sensors
An algorithmic definition of the axial map
The fewest-line axial map, often simply referred to as the 'axial map, is one of the primary tools of space syntax. Its natural language definition has allowed researchers to draw consistent maps that present a concise description of architectural space; it has been established that graph measures obtained from the map are useful for the analysis of pedestrian movement patterns and activities related to such movement: for example, the location of services or of crime. However, the definition has proved difficult to translate into formal language by mathematicians and algorithmic implementers alike. This has meant that space syntax has been criticised for a lack of rigour in the definition of one of its fundamental representations. Here we clarify the original definition of the fewest-line axial map and show that it can be implemented algorithmically. We show that the original definition leads to maps similar to those currently drawn by hand, and we demonstrate that the differences between the two may be accounted for in terms of the detail of the algorithm used. We propose that the analytical power of the axial map in empirical studies derives from the efficient representation of key properties of the spatial configuration that it captures
Differential Inequalities in Multi-Agent Coordination and Opinion Dynamics Modeling
Distributed algorithms of multi-agent coordination have attracted substantial
attention from the research community; the simplest and most thoroughly studied
of them are consensus protocols in the form of differential or difference
equations over general time-varying weighted graphs. These graphs are usually
characterized algebraically by their associated Laplacian matrices. Network
algorithms with similar algebraic graph theoretic structures, called being of
Laplacian-type in this paper, also arise in other related multi-agent control
problems, such as aggregation and containment control, target surrounding,
distributed optimization and modeling of opinion evolution in social groups. In
spite of their similarities, each of such algorithms has often been studied
using separate mathematical techniques. In this paper, a novel approach is
offered, allowing a unified and elegant way to examine many Laplacian-type
algorithms for multi-agent coordination. This approach is based on the analysis
of some differential or difference inequalities that have to be satisfied by
the some "outputs" of the agents (e.g. the distances to the desired set in
aggregation problems). Although such inequalities may have many unbounded
solutions, under natural graphic connectivity conditions all their bounded
solutions converge (and even reach consensus), entailing the convergence of the
corresponding distributed algorithms. In the theory of differential equations
the absence of bounded non-convergent solutions is referred to as the
equation's dichotomy. In this paper, we establish the dichotomy criteria of
Laplacian-type differential and difference inequalities and show that these
criteria enable one to extend a number of recent results, concerned with
Laplacian-type algorithms for multi-agent coordination and modeling opinion
formation in social groups.Comment: accepted to Automatic
Pseudo-random graphs
Random graphs have proven to be one of the most important and fruitful
concepts in modern Combinatorics and Theoretical Computer Science. Besides
being a fascinating study subject for their own sake, they serve as essential
instruments in proving an enormous number of combinatorial statements, making
their role quite hard to overestimate. Their tremendous success serves as a
natural motivation for the following very general and deep informal questions:
what are the essential properties of random graphs? How can one tell when a
given graph behaves like a random graph? How to create deterministically graphs
that look random-like? This leads us to a concept of pseudo-random graphs and
the aim of this survey is to provide a systematic treatment of this concept.Comment: 50 page
Overlapping Multi-hop Clustering for Wireless Sensor Networks
Clustering is a standard approach for achieving efficient and scalable
performance in wireless sensor networks. Traditionally, clustering algorithms
aim at generating a number of disjoint clusters that satisfy some criteria. In
this paper, we formulate a novel clustering problem that aims at generating
overlapping multi-hop clusters. Overlapping clusters are useful in many sensor
network applications, including inter-cluster routing, node localization, and
time synchronization protocols. We also propose a randomized, distributed
multi-hop clustering algorithm (KOCA) for solving the overlapping clustering
problem. KOCA aims at generating connected overlapping clusters that cover the
entire sensor network with a specific average overlapping degree. Through
analysis and simulation experiments we show how to select the different values
of the parameters to achieve the clustering process objectives. Moreover, the
results show that KOCA produces approximately equal-sized clusters, which
allows distributing the load evenly over different clusters. In addition, KOCA
is scalable; the clustering formation terminates in a constant time regardless
of the network size
Directionally Convex Ordering of Random Measures, Shot Noise Fields and Some Applications to Wireless Communications
Directionally convex () ordering is a tool for comparison of dependence
structure of random vectors that also takes into account the variability of the
marginal distributions. When extended to random fields it concerns comparison
of all finite dimensional distributions. Viewing locally finite measures as
non-negative fields of measure-values indexed by the bounded Borel subsets of
the space, in this paper we formulate and study the ordering of random
measures on locally compact spaces. We show that the order is preserved
under some of the natural operations considered on random measures and point
processes, such as deterministic displacement of points, independent
superposition and thinning as well as independent, identically distributed
marking. Further operations such as position dependent marking and displacement
of points though do not preserve the order on all point processes, are
shown to preserve the order on Cox point processes. We also examine the impact
of order on the second moment properties, in particular on clustering and
on Palm distributions. Comparisons of Ripley's functions, pair correlation
functions as well as examples seem to indicate that point processes higher in
order cluster more. As the main result, we show that non-negative
integral shot-noise fields with respect to ordered random measures
inherit this ordering from the measures. Numerous applications of this result
are shown, in particular to comparison of various Cox processes and some
performance measures of wireless networks, in both of which shot-noise fields
appear as key ingredients. We also mention a few pertinent open questions.Comment: Accepted in Advances in Applied Probability. Propn. 3.2 strengthened
and as a consequence Cor 6.1,6.2,6.
Equivalence Classes and Conditional Hardness in Massively Parallel Computations
The Massively Parallel Computation (MPC) model serves as a common abstraction of many modern large-scale data processing frameworks, and has been receiving increasingly more attention over the past few years, especially in the context of classical graph problems. So far, the only way to argue lower bounds for this model is to condition on conjectures about the hardness of some specific problems, such as graph connectivity on promise graphs that are either one cycle or two cycles, usually called the one cycle vs. two cycles problem. This is unlike the traditional arguments based on conjectures about complexity classes (e.g., P ? NP), which are often more robust in the sense that refuting them would lead to groundbreaking algorithms for a whole bunch of problems.
In this paper we present connections between problems and classes of problems that allow the latter type of arguments. These connections concern the class of problems solvable in a sublogarithmic amount of rounds in the MPC model, denoted by MPC(o(log N)), and some standard classes concerning space complexity, namely L and NL, and suggest conjectures that are robust in the sense that refuting them would lead to many surprisingly fast new algorithms in the MPC model. We also obtain new conditional lower bounds, and prove new reductions and equivalences between problems in the MPC model
- …