Multi-dimensional networking and distributed computing services

Various types of wired and wireless networks and their applications can be seen in many places now-a-days. In the past decade, we have witnessed a significant increase in the number of Internet users and technology hunters. With the aid of wireless communications and demand of flexible anytime, anywhere networking, many types of wireless self-organizing networks have already gained huge popularity among users. For wider support of wireless connectivity and developing easy-to-use technologies, substantial efforts are underway to reduce human intervention in the configuration, formation, and maintenance processes of these networks. Furthermore, different types of distributed computing technologies are widening the scope of our thinking and research issues in networking. The multi-dimensional research issues include wireless and mobility problems, routing protocols and algorithms, resource and service location protocols, performance evaluations of networking systems, ubiquitous systems, context aware ubiquitous environment, mechanisms to improve throughput over wireless links, network management and network security, and other related areas. To meet the vast demand of networking and distributed computing knowledge in the current times, IJIDCS was launched in the year 2010. It is my pleasure to see that the second volume is coming out with some important and solid contributions. The first issue of the second volume includes some of the papers chosen from the 4th International Workshop on Internet and Distributed Computing Systems (IDCS 2011) in conjunction with ICA3PP 2011 conference, held from October 24 to October 26, 2011 in Melbourne, Australia. The selected papers have been considerably extended and revised. Other regular papers are also included to put multi-dimensional fields in one single issue. The topics range from failure detection to secure transactions, processing online documents to complex wireless system and signaling

Distributed Wireless Networked H

A new approach to solving the distributed control problem for a class of discrete-time nonlinear systems via a wireless neural control network (WNCN) is presented in this paper. A unified Lurie-type model termed delayed standard neural network model (DSNNM) is used to describe these nonlinear systems. We assume that all neuron nodes in WNCN which have limited energy, storage space, and computing ability can be regarded as a subcontroller, then the whole WNCN is characterized by a mesh-like structure with partially connected neurons distributed over a wide geographical area, which can be considered as a fully distributed nonlinear output feedback dynamic controller. The unreliable wireless communication links within WNCN are modeled by fading channels. Based on the Lyapunov functional and the S-procedure, the WNCN is solved and configured for the DSNNM to absolutely stabilize the whole closed-loop system in the sense of mean square with a H∞ disturbance attenuation index using LMI approach. A numerical example shows the effectiveness of the proposed design approaches

Deep Learning for Distributed Optimization: Applications to Wireless Resource Management

This paper studies a deep learning (DL) framework to solve distributed non-convex constrained optimizations in wireless networks where multiple computing nodes, interconnected via backhaul links, desire to determine an efficient assignment of their states based on local observations. Two different configurations are considered: First, an infinite-capacity backhaul enables nodes to communicate in a lossless way, thereby obtaining the solution by centralized computations. Second, a practical finite-capacity backhaul leads to the deployment of distributed solvers equipped along with quantizers for communication through capacity-limited backhaul. The distributed nature and the nonconvexity of the optimizations render the identification of the solution unwieldy. To handle them, deep neural networks (DNNs) are introduced to approximate an unknown computation for the solution accurately. In consequence, the original problems are transformed to training tasks of the DNNs subject to non-convex constraints where existing DL libraries fail to extend straightforwardly. A constrained training strategy is developed based on the primal-dual method. For distributed implementation, a novel binarization technique at the output layer is developed for quantization at each node. Our proposed distributed DL framework is examined in various network configurations of wireless resource management. Numerical results verify the effectiveness of our proposed approach over existing optimization techniques.Comment: to appear in IEEE J. Sel. Areas Commu

Applications of Soft Computing in Mobile and Wireless Communications

Soft computing is a synergistic combination of artificial intelligence methodologies to model and solve real world problems that are either impossible or too difficult to model mathematically. Furthermore, the use of conventional modeling techniques demands rigor, precision and certainty, which carry computational cost. On the other hand, soft computing utilizes computation, reasoning and inference to reduce computational cost by exploiting tolerance for imprecision, uncertainty, partial truth and approximation. In addition to computational cost savings, soft computing is an excellent platform for autonomic computing, owing to its roots in artificial intelligence. Wireless communication networks are associated with much uncertainty and imprecision due to a number of stochastic processes such as escalating number of access points, constantly changing propagation channels, sudden variations in network load and random mobility of users. This reality has fuelled numerous applications of soft computing techniques in mobile and wireless communications. This paper reviews various applications of the core soft computing methodologies in mobile and wireless communications

Fundamentals of Large Sensor Networks: Connectivity, Capacity, Clocks and Computation

Sensor networks potentially feature large numbers of nodes that can sense their environment over time, communicate with each other over a wireless network, and process information. They differ from data networks in that the network as a whole may be designed for a specific application. We study the theoretical foundations of such large scale sensor networks, addressing four fundamental issues- connectivity, capacity, clocks and function computation. To begin with, a sensor network must be connected so that information can indeed be exchanged between nodes. The connectivity graph of an ad-hoc network is modeled as a random graph and the critical range for asymptotic connectivity is determined, as well as the critical number of neighbors that a node needs to connect to. Next, given connectivity, we address the issue of how much data can be transported over the sensor network. We present fundamental bounds on capacity under several models, as well as architectural implications for how wireless communication should be organized. Temporal information is important both for the applications of sensor networks as well as their operation.We present fundamental bounds on the synchronizability of clocks in networks, and also present and analyze algorithms for clock synchronization. Finally we turn to the issue of gathering relevant information, that sensor networks are designed to do. One needs to study optimal strategies for in-network aggregation of data, in order to reliably compute a composite function of sensor measurements, as well as the complexity of doing so. We address the issue of how such computation can be performed efficiently in a sensor network and the algorithms for doing so, for some classes of functions.Comment: 10 pages, 3 figures, Submitted to the Proceedings of the IEE

Dynamic Packet Scheduling in Wireless Networks

We consider protocols that serve communication requests arising over time in a wireless network that is subject to interference. Unlike previous approaches, we take the geometry of the network and power control into account, both allowing to increase the network's performance significantly. We introduce a stochastic and an adversarial model to bound the packet injection. Although taken as the primary motivation, this approach is not only suitable for models based on the signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio (SINR). It also covers virtually all other common interference models, for example the multiple-access channel, the radio-network model, the protocol model, and distance-2 matching. Packet-routing networks allowing each edge or each node to transmit or receive one packet at a time can be modeled as well. Starting from algorithms for the respective scheduling problem with static transmission requests, we build distributed stable protocols. This is more involved than in previous, similar approaches because the algorithms we consider do not necessarily scale linearly when scaling the input instance. We can guarantee a throughput that is as large as the one of the original static algorithm. In particular, for SINR models the competitive ratios of the protocol in comparison to optimal ones in the respective model are between constant and O(log^2 m) for a network of size m.Comment: 23 page