Single machine scheduling with a generalized job-dependent cumulative effect

We consider a single machine scheduling problem with changing processing times. The processing conditions are subject to a general cumulative effect, in which the processing time of a job depends on the sum of certain parameters associated with previously scheduled jobs. In previous papers, these parameters are assumed to be equal to the normal processing times of jobs, which seriously limits the practical application of this model. We further generalize this model by allowing every job to respond differently to these cumulative effects. For the introduced model, we solve the problem of minimizing the makespan, with and without precedence constraints. For the problem without precedence constraints, we also consider a situation in which a maintenance activity is included in the schedule, which can improve the processing conditions of the machine, not necessarily to its original state. The resulting problem is reformulated as a variant of a Boolean programming problem with a quadratic objective, known as a half-product, which allows us to develop a fully polynomial-time approximation scheme with the best possible running time

Playing with Duality: An Overview of Recent Primal-Dual Approaches for Solving Large-Scale Optimization Problems

Optimization methods are at the core of many problems in signal/image processing, computer vision, and machine learning. For a long time, it has been recognized that looking at the dual of an optimization problem may drastically simplify its solution. Deriving efficient strategies which jointly brings into play the primal and the dual problems is however a more recent idea which has generated many important new contributions in the last years. These novel developments are grounded on recent advances in convex analysis, discrete optimization, parallel processing, and non-smooth optimization with emphasis on sparsity issues. In this paper, we aim at presenting the principles of primal-dual approaches, while giving an overview of numerical methods which have been proposed in different contexts. We show the benefits which can be drawn from primal-dual algorithms both for solving large-scale convex optimization problems and discrete ones, and we provide various application examples to illustrate their usefulness

Invariant Generation through Strategy Iteration in Succinctly Represented Control Flow Graphs

We consider the problem of computing numerical invariants of programs, for instance bounds on the values of numerical program variables. More specifically, we study the problem of performing static analysis by abstract interpretation using template linear constraint domains. Such invariants can be obtained by Kleene iterations that are, in order to guarantee termination, accelerated by widening operators. In many cases, however, applying this form of extrapolation leads to invariants that are weaker than the strongest inductive invariant that can be expressed within the abstract domain in use. Another well-known source of imprecision of traditional abstract interpretation techniques stems from their use of join operators at merge nodes in the control flow graph. The mentioned weaknesses may prevent these methods from proving safety properties. The technique we develop in this article addresses both of these issues: contrary to Kleene iterations accelerated by widening operators, it is guaranteed to yield the strongest inductive invariant that can be expressed within the template linear constraint domain in use. It also eschews join operators by distinguishing all paths of loop-free code segments. Formally speaking, our technique computes the least fixpoint within a given template linear constraint domain of a transition relation that is succinctly expressed as an existentially quantified linear real arithmetic formula. In contrast to previously published techniques that rely on quantifier elimination, our algorithm is proved to have optimal complexity: we prove that the decision problem associated with our fixpoint problem is in the second level of the polynomial-time hierarchy.Comment: 35 pages, conference version published at ESOP 2011, this version is a CoRR version of our submission to Logical Methods in Computer Scienc

Design methods for optimal resource allocation in wireless networks

Wireless communications have seen remarkable progress over the past two decades and perceived tremendous success due to their agile nature and capability to provide fast and ubiquitous internet access. Maturation of 3G wireless network services, development of smart-phones and other broadband mobile computing devices however have motivated researchers to design wireless networks with increased capacity and coverage, therefore un-leaching the wireless broadband capabilities. In this thesis, we address two very important design aspects of wireless networks, namely, interference management and control through optimal cross-layer design and channel fading mitigation through relay-assisted cooperative communications. For the former, we address, in the context of wireless network design, the problem of optimally partitioning the spectrum into a set of non-overlapping channels with non uniform spectrum widths and we model the combinatorially complex problem of joint routing, link scheduling, and spectrum allocation as an optimization problem. We use column generation decomposition technique (which decomposes the original problem into a master and a pricing subproblem) for solving the problem optimally. We also propose several sub-optimal methods for efficiently solving the pricing subproblems. For the latter problem, we study the joint problem of relay selection and power allocation in both wireless unicast and multicast cooperative cellular networks. We employ convex optimization technique to model this complex optimization problem and use branch and bound technique to solve it optimally. We also present sub-optimal methods to reduce the problem complexity and solve it more efficiently