13,410 research outputs found
An approximate approach for the joint problem of level of repair analysis and spare parts stocking
For the spare parts stocking problem, generally METRIC type methods are used
in the context of capital goods. A decision is assumed on which components to discard and which to repair upon failure, and where to perform repairs. In the military world, this decision is taken explicitly using the level of repair analysis (LORA). Since the LORA does not consider the availability of the capital goods, solving the LORA and spare parts stocking problems sequentially may lead to suboptimal solutions. Therefore, we propose an iterative algorithm. We compare its performance with that of the sequential approach and a recently proposed, so-called integrated algorithm that finds optimal solutions for twoechelon, single-indenture problems. On a set of such problems, the iterative algorithm turns out to be close to optimal. On a set of multi-echelon, multi-indenture problems, the iterative approach achieves a cost reduction of 3%on average (35%at maximum) as compared to the sequential approach. Its costs are only 0.6 % more than those of the integrated algorithm on average (5 % at maximum). Considering that the integrated algorithm may take a long time without guaranteeing optimality, we believe that the iterative algorithm is a good approach. This result is further strengthened in a case study, which has convinced Thales Nederland to start using the principles behind our algorithm
Enabling Work-conserving Bandwidth Guarantees for Multi-tenant Datacenters via Dynamic Tenant-Queue Binding
Today's cloud networks are shared among many tenants. Bandwidth guarantees
and work conservation are two key properties to ensure predictable performance
for tenant applications and high network utilization for providers. Despite
significant efforts, very little prior work can really achieve both properties
simultaneously even some of them claimed so.
In this paper, we present QShare, an in-network based solution to achieve
bandwidth guarantees and work conservation simultaneously. QShare leverages
weighted fair queuing on commodity switches to slice network bandwidth for
tenants, and solves the challenge of queue scarcity through balanced tenant
placement and dynamic tenant-queue binding. QShare is readily implementable
with existing switching chips. We have implemented a QShare prototype and
evaluated it via both testbed experiments and simulations. Our results show
that QShare ensures bandwidth guarantees while driving network utilization to
over 91% even under unpredictable traffic demands.Comment: The initial work is published in IEEE INFOCOM 201
Aggregate constrained inventory systems with independent multi-product demand: control practices and theoretical limitations
In practice, inventory managers are often confronted with a need to consider one or more aggregate constraints. These aggregate constraints result from available workspace, workforce, maximum investment or target service level. We consider independent multi-item inventory problems with aggregate constraints and one of the following characteristics: deterministic leadtime demand, newsvendor, basestock policy, rQ policy and sS policy. We analyze some recent relevant references and investigate the considered versions of the problem, the proposed model formulations and the algorithmic approaches. Finally we highlight the limitations from a practical viewpoint for these models and point out some possible direction for future improvements
Optimisation of stochastic networks with blocking: a functional-form approach
This paper introduces a class of stochastic networks with blocking, motivated
by applications arising in cellular network planning, mobile cloud computing,
and spare parts supply chains. Blocking results in lost revenue due to
customers or jobs being permanently removed from the system. We are interested
in striking a balance between mitigating blocking by increasing service
capacity, and maintaining low costs for service capacity. This problem is
further complicated by the stochastic nature of the system. Owing to the
complexity of the system there are no analytical results available that
formulate and solve the relevant optimization problem in closed form.
Traditional simulation-based methods may work well for small instances, but the
associated computational costs are prohibitive for networks of realistic size.
We propose a hybrid functional-form based approach for finding the optimal
resource allocation, combining the speed of an analytical approach with the
accuracy of simulation-based optimisation. The key insight is to replace the
computationally expensive gradient estimation in simulation optimisation with a
closed-form analytical approximation that is calibrated using a single
simulation run. We develop two implementations of this approach and conduct
extensive computational experiments on complex examples to show that it is
capable of substantially improving system performance. We also provide evidence
that our approach has substantially lower computational costs compared to
stochastic approximation
On the Optimality of Virtualized Security Function Placement in Multi-Tenant Data Centers
Security and service protection against cyber attacks remain among the primary challenges for virtualized, multi-tenant Data Centres (DCs), for reasons that vary from lack of resource isolation to the monolithic nature of legacy middleboxes. Although security is currently considered a property of the underlying infrastructure, diverse services require protection against different threats and at timescales which are on par with those of service deployment and elastic resource provisioning. We address the resource allocation problem of deploying customised security services over a virtualized, multi-tenant DC. We formulate the problem in Integral Linear Programming (ILP) as an instance of the NP-hard variable size variable cost bin packing problem with the objective of maximising the residual resources after allocation. We propose a modified version of the Best Fit Decreasing algorithm (BFD) to solve the problem in polynomial time and we show that BFD optimises the objective function up to 80% more than other algorithms
Exploiting Non-Causal CPU-State Information for Energy-Efficient Mobile Cooperative Computing
Scavenging the idling computation resources at the enormous number of mobile
devices can provide a powerful platform for local mobile cloud computing. The
vision can be realized by peer-to-peer cooperative computing between edge
devices, referred to as co-computing. This paper considers a co-computing
system where a user offloads computation of input-data to a helper. The helper
controls the offloading process for the objective of minimizing the user's
energy consumption based on a predicted helper's CPU-idling profile that
specifies the amount of available computation resource for co-computing.
Consider the scenario that the user has one-shot input-data arrival and the
helper buffers offloaded bits. The problem for energy-efficient co-computing is
formulated as two sub-problems: the slave problem corresponding to adaptive
offloading and the master one to data partitioning. Given a fixed offloaded
data size, the adaptive offloading aims at minimizing the energy consumption
for offloading by controlling the offloading rate under the deadline and buffer
constraints. By deriving the necessary and sufficient conditions for the
optimal solution, we characterize the structure of the optimal policies and
propose algorithms for computing the policies. Furthermore, we show that the
problem of optimal data partitioning for offloading and local computing at the
user is convex, admitting a simple solution using the sub-gradient method.
Last, the developed design approach for co-computing is extended to the
scenario of bursty data arrivals at the user accounting for data causality
constraints. Simulation results verify the effectiveness of the proposed
algorithms.Comment: Submitted to possible journa
Optimized Design of Survivable MPLS over Optical Transport Networks. Optical Switching and Networking
In this paper we study different options for the survivability implementation
in MPLS over Optical Transport Networks in terms of network resource usage and
configuration cost. We investigate two approaches to the survivability
deployment: single layer and multilayer survivability and present various
methods for spare capacity allocation (SCA) to reroute disrupted traffic. The
comparative analysis shows the influence of the traffic granularity on the
survivability cost: for high bandwidth LSPs, close to the optical channel
capacity, the multilayer survivability outperforms the single layer one,
whereas for low bandwidth LSPs the single layer survivability is more
cost-efficient. For the multilayer survivability we demonstrate that by mapping
efficiently the spare capacity of the MPLS layer onto the resources of the
optical layer one can achieve up to 22% savings in the total configuration cost
and up to 37% in the optical layer cost. Further savings (up to 9 %) in the
wavelength use can be obtained with the integrated approach to network
configuration over the sequential one, however, at the increase in the
optimization problem complexity. These results are based on a cost model with
actual technology pricing and were obtained for networks targeted to a
nationwide coverage
Resource Allocation for Energy-Efficient Device-to-Device Communication in 4G Networks
Device-to-device (D2D) communications as an underlay of a LTE-A (4G) network
can reduce the traffic load as well as power consumption in cellular networks
by way of utilizing peer-to-peer links for users in proximity of each other.
This would enable other cellular users to increment their traffic, and the
aggregate traffic for all users can be significantly increased without
requiring additional spectrum. However, D2D communications may increase
interference to cellular users (CUs) and force CUs to increase their transmit
power levels in order to maintain their required quality-of-service (QoS). This
paper proposes an energy-efficient resource allocation scheme for D2D
communications as an underlay of a fully loaded LTE-A (4G) cellular network.
Simulations show that the proposed scheme allocates cellular uplink resources
(transmit power and channel) to D2D pairs while maintaining the required QoS
for D2D and cellular users and minimizing the total uplink transmit power for
all users.Comment: 2014 7th International Symposium on Telecommunications (IST'2014
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