Robust and cheating-resilient power auctioning on Resource Constrained Smart Micro-Grids

The principle of Continuous Double Auctioning (CDA) is known to provide an efficient way of matching supply and demand among distributed selfish participants with limited information. However, the literature indicates that the classic CDA algorithms developed for grid-like applications are centralised and insensitive to the processing resources capacity, which poses a hindrance for their application on resource constrained, smart micro-grids (RCSMG). A RCSMG loosely describes a micro-grid with distributed generators and demand controlled by selfish participants with limited information, power storage capacity and low literacy, communicate over an unreliable infrastructure burdened by limited bandwidth and low computational power of devices. In this thesis, we design and evaluate a CDA algorithm for power allocation in a RCSMG. Specifically, we offer the following contributions towards power auctioning on RCSMGs. First, we extend the original CDA scheme to enable decentralised auctioning. We do this by integrating a token-based, mutual-exclusion (MUTEX) distributive primitive, that ensures the CDA operates at a reasonably efficient time and message complexity of O(N) and O(logN) respectively, per critical section invocation (auction market execution). Our CDA algorithm scales better and avoids the single point of failure problem associated with centralised CDAs (which could be used to adversarially provoke a break-down of the grid marketing mechanism). In addition, the decentralised approach in our algorithm can help eliminate privacy and security concerns associated with centralised CDAs. Second, to handle CDA performance issues due to malfunctioning devices on an unreliable network (such as a lossy network), we extend our proposed CDA scheme to ensure robustness to failure. Using node redundancy, we modify the MUTEX protocol supporting our CDA algorithm to handle fail-stop and some Byzantine type faults of sites. This yields a time complexity of O(N), where N is number of cluster-head nodes; and message complexity of O((logN)+W) time, where W is the number of check-pointing messages. These results indicate that it is possible to add fault tolerance to a decentralised CDA, which guarantees continued participation in the auction while retaining reasonable performance overheads. In addition, we propose a decentralised consumption scheduling scheme that complements the auctioning scheme in guaranteeing successful power allocation within the RCSMG. Third, since grid participants are self-interested we must consider the issue of power theft that is provoked when participants cheat. We propose threat models centred on cheating attacks aimed at foiling the extended CDA scheme. More specifically, we focus on the Victim Strategy Downgrade; Collusion by Dynamic Strategy Change, Profiling with Market Prediction; and Strategy Manipulation cheating attacks, which are carried out by internal adversaries (auction participants). Internal adversaries are participants who want to get more benefits but have no interest in provoking a breakdown of the grid. However, their behaviour is dangerous because it could result in a breakdown of the grid. Fourth, to mitigate these cheating attacks, we propose an exception handling (EH) scheme, where sentinel agents use allocative efficiency and message overheads to detect and mitigate cheating forms. Sentinel agents are tasked to monitor trading agents to detect cheating and reprimand the misbehaving participant. Overall, message complexity expected in light demand is O(nLogN). The detection and resolution algorithm is expected to run in linear time complexity O(M). Overall, the main aim of our study is achieved by designing a resilient and cheating-free CDA algorithm that is scalable and performs well on resource constrained micro-grids. With the growing popularity of the CDA and its resource allocation applications, specifically to low resourced micro-grids, this thesis highlights further avenues for future research. First, we intend to extend the decentralised CDA algorithm to allow for participants’ mobile phones to connect (reconnect) at different shared smart meters. Such mobility should guarantee the desired CDA properties, the reliability and adequate security. Secondly, we seek to develop a simulation of the decentralised CDA based on the formal proofs presented in this thesis. Such a simulation platform can be used for future studies that involve decentralised CDAs. Third, we seek to find an optimal and efficient way in which the decentralised CDA and the scheduling algorithm can be integrated and deployed in a low resourced, smart micro-grid. Such an integration is important for system developers interested in exploiting the benefits of the two schemes while maintaining system efficiency. Forth, we aim to improve on the cheating detection and mitigation mechanism by developing an intrusion tolerance protocol. Such a scheme will allow continued auctioning in the presence of cheating attacks while incurring low performance overheads for applicability in a RCSMG

After subjectivity: a study of knowledge, ethics and art in Shia Islam

The Shia Muslim sits on the carpet in a darkened room bent over a pamphlet, carefully following the lines of a Ramadan supplication. He rocks to the pattern of the recitation. Tears flow, and later he will beat his breast in a communal lament to his martyred leaders. In a black designer sweatshirt, and with his hair styled like a football star, this seems the quintessential posture of a 'pious modernity'. Alongside the trappings of consumerism, this man forms himself as a pious subject whose bodily rectitude is as integral to his character as the dogma that he whispers. This focus on what Dietrich Jung and others have called 'Muslim subjectivities' has offered new insight into the plurality of forms of life in late modernity, and serves as this thesis' point of departure. But this thesis questions the descriptive power of subjectivity and its corollary, the idea that contemporary religious life is characterised by objectification. Through an ethnographic study of the transnational Shia community between Qom, Iran and Sydney, Australia, I explore the putative objects of contemporary Muslim life, and the utility of thinking of my interlocutors' form of life in terms of subjectivity. I do this by examining my interlocutors' relationships with a range of 'things'. Exploring Shia knowledge production in the Qom seminary and in Sydney's Saturday Islamic schools, I interrogate the putative object-ness of textbooks and curricula. I then examine the much-neglected Shia Muslim khums or 20 per cent tithe on yearly profit. I explore about the concrete operation of this money, the quintessential object of modern bureaucratic administration, in the hands of its givers, administrators and beneficiaries between Qom and Sydney. Finally, I consider the Iranian mural arts, and the photographic portfolio of a Sydney based artist. Through this broad range of things, and through a mixed methodology attentive to the materiality of Muslim practice, I find connections between persons and things that destabilise the subject and object ontology. Across this thesis, I ask three questions to parse out the particularity of person and thing relationships in the Shia community. I ask, firstly, is this thing indeed an object? Is this person a subject in relation to these things? Is this book, or this money, consumed by the Shia as an object? Secondly, I ask how else these persons and things might be described. I argue that even the most prosaic of things are more fruitfully understood as wasa'il or "means" (singular. wasila) for participation in a reality characterised by the spatial question of closeness to God. I show how an analysis oriented by subjectivity would miss my interlocutors' orientation, of both themselves and of things, towards closeness to God, where closeness is understood quite literally. A textbook, for example, is not simply available as a cognitive instrument because the text itself participates in that unfolding reality. And the khums is not a mere instrument: it is a means for achieving an ethical proximity to God already embodied in the money itself. Thirdly, I explore some of the methodological and broader theoretical implications of this discussion for the study of contemporary Islam

LIPIcs, Volume 251, ITCS 2023, Complete Volume

LIPIcs, Volume 251, ITCS 2023, Complete Volum