Algorithmic Channel Design

Payment networks, also known as channels, are a most promising solution to the throughput problem of cryptocurrencies. In this paper we study the design of capital-efficient payment networks, offline as well as online variants. We want to know how to compute an efficient payment network topology, how capital should be assigned to the individual edges, and how to decide which transactions to accept. Towards this end, we present a flurry of interesting results, basic but generally applicable insights on the one hand, and hardness results and approximation algorithms on the other hand

Stabilizing Scheduling Policies for Networked Control Systems

This paper deals with the problem of allocating communication resources for Networked Control Systems (NCSs). We consider an NCS consisting of a set of discrete-time LTI plants whose stabilizing feedback loops are closed through a shared communication channel. Due to a limited communication capacity of the channel, not all plants can exchange information with their controllers at any instant of time. We propose a method to find periodic scheduling policies under which global asymptotic stability of each plant in the NCS is preserved. The individual plants are represented as switched systems, and the NCS is expressed as a weighted directed graph. We construct stabilizing scheduling policies by employing cycles on the underlying weighted directed graph of the NCS that satisfy appropriate contractivity conditions. We also discuss algorithmic design of these cycles

On Complexity, Energy- and Implementation-Efficiency of Channel Decoders

Future wireless communication systems require efficient and flexible baseband receivers. Meaningful efficiency metrics are key for design space exploration to quantify the algorithmic and the implementation complexity of a receiver. Most of the current established efficiency metrics are based on counting operations, thus neglecting important issues like data and storage complexity. In this paper we introduce suitable energy and area efficiency metrics which resolve the afore-mentioned disadvantages. These are decoded information bit per energy and throughput per area unit. Efficiency metrics are assessed by various implementations of turbo decoders, LDPC decoders and convolutional decoders. New exploration methodologies are presented, which permit an appropriate benchmarking of implementation efficiency, communications performance, and flexibility trade-offs. These exploration methodologies are based on efficiency trajectories rather than a single snapshot metric as done in state-of-the-art approaches.Comment: Submitted to IEEE Transactions on Communication

Sub-Stream Fairness and Numerical Correctness in MIMO Interference Channels

Signal-to-interference plus noise ratio (SINR) and rate fairness in a system are substantial quality-of-service (QoS) metrics. The acclaimed SINR maximization (max-SINR) algorithm does not achieve fairness between user's streams, i.e., sub-stream fairness is not achieved. To this end, we propose a distributed power control algorithm to render sub-stream fairness in the system. Sub-stream fairness is a less restrictive design metric than stream fairness (i.e., fairness between all streams) thus sum-rate degradation is milder. Algorithmic parameters can significantly differentiate the results of numerical algorithms. A complete picture for comparison of algorithms can only be depicted by varying these parameters. For example, a predetermined iteration number or a negligible increment in the sum-rate can be the stopping criteria of an algorithm. While the distributed interference alignment (DIA) can reasonably achieve sub-stream fairness for the later, the imbalance between sub-streams increases as the preset iteration number decreases. Thus comparison of max-SINR and DIA with a low preset iteration number can only depict a part of the picture. We analyze such important parameters and their effects on SINR and rate metrics to exhibit numerical correctness in executing the benchmarks. Finally, we propose group filtering schemes that jointly design the streams of a user in contrast to max-SINR scheme that designs each stream of a user separately.Comment: To be presented at IEEE ISWTA'1