Dynamic QoS/QoE-aware reliable service composition framework for edge intelligence

Edge intelligence has become popular recently since it brings smartness and copes with some shortcomings of conventional technologies such as cloud computing, Internet of Things (IoT), and centralized AI adoptions. However, although utilizing edge intelligence contributes to providing smart systems such as automated driving systems, smart cities, and connected healthcare systems, it is not free from limitations. There exist various challenges in integrating AI and edge computing, one of which is addressed in this paper. Our main focus is to handle the adoption of AI methods on resource-constrained edge devices. In this regard, we introduce the concept of Edge devices as a Service (EdaaS) and propose a quality of service (QoS) and quality of experience (QoE)-aware dynamic and reliable framework for AI subtasks composition. The proposed framework is evaluated utilizing three well-known meta-heuristics in terms of various metrics for a connected healthcare application scenario. The experimental results confirm the applicability of the proposed framework. Moreover, the results reveal that black widow optimization (BWO) can handle the issue more efficiently compared to particle swarm optimization (PSO) and simulated annealing (SA). The overall efficiency of BWO over PSO is 95%, and BWO outperforms SA with 100% efficiency. It means that BWO prevails SA and PSO in all and 95% of the experiments, respectively

Kalman filter based prediction and forecasting of cloud server KPIs

Cloud computing depends on the dynamic allocation and release of resources, on demand, to meet heterogeneous computing needs. This is challenging for cloud data centers, which process huge amounts of data characterised by its high volume, velocity, variety and veracity (4Vs model). Managing such a workload is increasingly difficult using state-of-the-art methods for monitoring and adaptation, which typically react to service failures after the fact. To address this, we seek to develop proactive methods for predicting future resource exhaustion and cloud service failures. Our work uses a realistic test bed in the cloud, which is instrumented to monitor and analyze resource usage. In this paper, we employed the optimal Kalman filtering technique to build a predictive and analytic framework for cloud server KPIs, based on historical data. Our k-step-ahead predictions on historical data yielded a prediction accuracy of 95.59%. The information generated from the framework can best be used for optimal resources provisioning, admission control and cloud SLA management

On the construction of decentralised service-oriented orchestration systems

Modern science relies on workflow technology to capture, process, and analyse data obtained from scientific instruments. Scientific workflows are precise descriptions of experiments in which multiple computational tasks are coordinated based on the dataflows between them. Orchestrating scientific workflows presents a significant research challenge: they are typically executed in a manner such that all data pass through a centralised computer server known as the engine, which causes unnecessary network traffic that leads to a performance bottleneck. These workflows are commonly composed of services that perform computation over geographically distributed resources, and involve the management of dataflows between them. Centralised orchestration is clearly not a scalable approach for coordinating services dispersed across distant geographical locations. This thesis presents a scalable decentralised service-oriented orchestration system that relies on a high-level data coordination language for the specification and execution of workflows. This system’s architecture consists of distributed engines, each of which is responsible for executing part of the overall workflow. It exploits parallelism in the workflow by decomposing it into smaller sub-workflows, and determines the most appropriate engines to execute them using computation placement analysis. This permits the workflow logic to be distributed closer to the services providing the data for execution, which reduces the overall data transfer in the workflow and improves its execution time. This thesis provides an evaluation of the presented system which concludes that decentralised orchestration provides scalability benefits over centralised orchestration, and improves the overall performance of executing a service-oriented workflow

Smart Sustainable Manufacturing Systems

With the advent of disruptive digital technologies, companies are facing unprecedented challenges and opportunities. Advanced manufacturing systems are of paramount importance in making key enabling technologies and new products more competitive, affordable, and accessible, as well as for fostering their economic and social impact. The manufacturing industry also serves as an innovator for sustainability since automation coupled with advanced manufacturing technologies have helped manufacturing practices transition into the circular economy. To that end, this Special Issue of the journal Applied Sciences, devoted to the broad field of Smart Sustainable Manufacturing Systems, explores recent research into the concepts, methods, tools, and applications for smart sustainable manufacturing, in order to advance and promote the development of modern and intelligent manufacturing systems. In light of the above, this Special Issue is a collection of the latest research on relevant topics and addresses the current challenging issues associated with the introduction of smart sustainable manufacturing systems. Various topics have been addressed in this Special Issue, which focuses on the design of sustainable production systems and factories; industrial big data analytics and cyberphysical systems; intelligent maintenance approaches and technologies for increased operating life of production systems; zero-defect manufacturing strategies, tools and methods towards online production management; and connected smart factories

Model-Driven Online Capacity Management for Component-Based Software Systems

Capacity management is a core activity when designing and operating distributed software systems. It comprises the provisioning of data center resources and the deployment of software components to these resources. The goal is to continuously provide adequate capacity, i.e., service level agreements should be satisfied while keeping investment and operating costs reasonably low. Traditional capacity management strategies are rather static and pessimistic: resources are provisioned for anticipated peak workload levels. Particularly, enterprise application systems are exposed to highly varying workloads, leading to unnecessarily high total cost of ownership due to poor resource usage efficiency caused by the aforementioned static capacity management approach. During the past years, technologies emerged that enable dynamic data center infrastructures, e. g., leveraged by cloud computing products. These technologies build the foundation for elastic online capacity management, i.e., adapting the provided capacity to workload demands based on a short-term horizon. Because manual online capacity management is not an option, automatic control approaches have been proposed. However, most of these approaches focus on coarse-grained adaptation actions and adaptation decisions are based on aggregated system-level measures. Architectural information about the controlled software system is rarely considered. This thesis introduces a model-driven online capacity management approach for distributed component-based software systems, called SLAstic. The core contributions of this approach are a) modeling languages to capture relevant architectural information about a controlled software system, b) an architecture-based online capacity management framework based on the common MAPE-K control loop architecture, c) model-driven techniques supporting the automation of the approach, d) architectural runtime reconfiguration operations for controlling a system’s capacity, e) as well as an integration of the Palladio Component Model. A qualitative and quantitative evaluation of the approach is performed by case studies, lab experiments, and simulation

Antenna Systems

This book offers an up-to-date and comprehensive review of modern antenna systems and their applications in the fields of contemporary wireless systems. It constitutes a useful resource of new material, including stochastic versus ray tracing wireless channel modeling for 5G and V2X applications and implantable devices. Chapters discuss modern metalens antennas in microwaves, terahertz, and optical domain. Moreover, the book presents new material on antenna arrays for 5G massive MIMO beamforming. Finally, it discusses new methods, devices, and technologies to enhance the performance of antenna systems

Optimisation, Optimal Control and Nonlinear Dynamics in Electrical Power, Energy Storage and Renewable Energy Systems

The electrical power system is undergoing a revolution enabled by advances in telecommunications, computer hardware and software, measurement, metering systems, IoT, and power electronics. Furthermore, the increasing integration of intermittent renewable energy sources, energy storage devices, and electric vehicles and the drive for energy efficiency have pushed power systems to modernise and adopt new technologies. The resulting smart grid is characterised, in part, by a bi-directional flow of energy and information. The evolution of the power grid, as well as its interconnection with energy storage systems and renewable energy sources, has created new opportunities for optimising not only their techno-economic aspects at the planning stages but also their control and operation. However, new challenges emerge in the optimization of these systems due to their complexity and nonlinear dynamic behaviour as well as the uncertainties involved.This volume is a selection of 20 papers carefully made by the editors from the MDPI topic “Optimisation, Optimal Control and Nonlinear Dynamics in Electrical Power, Energy Storage and Renewable Energy Systems”, which was closed in April 2022. The selected papers address the above challenges and exemplify the significant benefits that optimisation and nonlinear control techniques can bring to modern power and energy systems