Multi-Agent Deep Reinforcement Learning for Request Dispatching in Distributed-Controller Software-Defined Networking

Recently, distributed controller architectures have been quickly gaining popularity in Software-Defined Networking (SDN). However, the use of distributed controllers introduces a new and important Request Dispatching (RD) problem with the goal for every SDN switch to properly dispatch their requests among all controllers so as to optimize network performance. This goal can be fulfilled by designing an RD policy to guide distribution of requests at each switch. In this paper, we propose a Multi-Agent Deep Reinforcement Learning (MA-DRL) approach to automatically design RD policies with high adaptability and performance. This is achieved through a new problem formulation in the form of a Multi-Agent Markov Decision Process (MA-MDP), a new adaptive RD policy design and a new MA-DRL algorithm called MA-PPO. Extensive simulation studies show that our MA-DRL technique can effectively train RD policies to significantly outperform man-made policies, model-based policies, as well as RD policies learned via single-agent DRL algorithms

CURRICULUM LEADERSIHP: STRATEGIES FOR LINKING THE WRITTEN AND DELIVERED CURRICULIM

The focus will be put on teachers as curriculum leaders, being challenged on a daily basis by how to attend to the delivered curriculum(the practice) without neglecting the written curriculum(the theory), and vice versa, all the while analyzing strategies that will link both curricula and implement these conclusions in their further teaching practice.Curricula present written guides identifying the content and material that should be covered, and are given to teachers (sometimes) as a detailed guide to follow religiously. However, as opposed to theory, practice is a different and delicate matter, as the teachers tries not to overstep the boundaries of the curriculum already include as much of their own creative energy as possible. These points will be expanded through analysis of the results of a qualitative research on the understanding of the content of leadership, done on pre-school and primary school teachers, whose everyday contact with their pupils will illustrate the reality of leadership in schools in the local context of R. Macedonia.Furthermore, the “how” of overcoming the challenges on the path of successful school leadership, however tricky they might be will be analyzed from firsthand experiences and compared through the matrix of what is considered able to “correct”. As educators, we successfully bridge the gap between theory and practice, to apply the theoretical know-how in a realistic classroom setting, and to convert the written paradigms into practice, thus only through educational leadership can we overcome the pedagogical challenges and effectively transfer the knowledge to the students, bringing about positive outcomes.&nbsp

Wireless Communication Solution for Distributed Structural Health Monitoring

This paper describes a design of wireless distributed SHM (Structure Health Monitoring) system with a particular emphasis on comparison of wireless communication standards. The presented solution is being deployed in the TULCOEMPA project. Several wireless communication standards are compared, with their benefits, disadvantages and typical areas of application. A choice of proper ISM (Industrial Scientific Medical) band and reasons for use of Wireless Sensor Networks are also discussed. The last part of this paper presents the proposed structure and designed prototype. The chosen architecture of the system and the program algorithm used for communication and measurements are described

Traffic Optimization for Multimodal Cooperative Networks

Resource allocation and traffic optimization are crucial problems in multi-traffic wireless networks as resources are scarce and the traffic is shared by multiple users. When application performance is the key concern in a network, utility is considered as a reliable metric. A lot of research has been done on capacity limits of wireless networks under some assumptions on the physics of propagation and some restrictions on the communication strategy employed by the nodes. It has been proved that due to the physical limitation that holds for any communication system, the decrease in throughput problem as wireless nodes increase in a fixed area cannot be overcome. In this thesis, multimodal networks, where other modes of communication like wires, infrared links may operate in addition to wireless nodes to improve the performance of the wireless network are studied and rate and power optimization problems are considered.;In this thesis, rate and power optimizations for heterogeneous traffic multimodal networks are proposed by solving them separately. First, the total rate is divided between delay-sensitive data and voice to achieve maximum utility in the network and in the next step, we divide transmit power between the wireless channel and the wired channel for a source-destination pair multimodal network and a diamond cooperative multimodal network implemented with Lanemann protocol. We consider a utility function for delay-sensitive data as a function of rate, reliability and delay and, the utility function of voice is a function of rate and delay. Traffic optimization problem is then solved by maximizing the sum of utilities of all voice and data users in the network and optimal rates that can be allocated to data and voice are calculated. Power allocation for a source-destination pair multimodal networks is done by optimizing instantaneous rate and outage probability in the network. For implementing a cooperative wireless relay network, we consider two cases: wire place between source and relay and wire placed between relay and destination. Optimal power allocation to wired and wireless channels is done by analytically minimizing the high-SNR outage probability expressions

The CSIW Resonator Sensor for Microfluidic Characterization Using Defected Ground Structure

This paper presents a miniaturized circular substrate integrated waveguide (CSIW) resonator sensor with the integration of defected ground structure (DGS) to characterize the dielectric properties of the aqueous solvent. The sensor is developed based on the resonant perturbation method for high sensitivity and accurate measurement. The proposed structure is employed using a substrate integrated waveguide topology at 4.4 GHz with microliter ( ) volume of sample at a time. The integration of DGS structure significantly reduces the overall size of the sensor with more than 50% geometrical reduction. The changes in resonant frequency shows an identical performance based on the relative permittivity of the sample. Implications of the results and future research directions are also presented. Finally, a comparison between the proposed sensors are performed in order to identify the best sensing approach for an advancement of material characterization industry

RNN-Based Radio Resource Management on Multicore RISC-V Accelerator Architectures

Radio resource management (RRM) is critical in 5G mobile communications due to its ubiquity on every radio device and its low latency constraints. The rapidly evolving RRM algorithms with low latency requirements combined with the dense and massive 5G base station deployment ask for an on-the-edge RRM acceleration system with a tradeoff between flexibility, efficiency, and cost-making application-specific instruction-set processors (ASIPs) an optimal choice. In this work, we start from a baseline, simple RISC-V core and introduce instruction extensions coupled with software optimizations for maximizing the throughput of a selected set of recently proposed RRM algorithms based on models using multilayer perceptrons (MLPs) and recurrent neural networks (RNNs). Furthermore, we scale from a single-ASIP to a multi-ASIP acceleration system to further improve RRM throughput. For the single-ASIP system, we demonstrate an energy efficiency of 218 GMAC/s/W and a throughput of 566 MMAC/s corresponding to an improvement of 10x and 10.6x, respectively, over the single-core system with a baseline RV32IMC core. For the multi-ASIP system, we analyze the parallel speedup dependency on the input and output feature map (FM) size for fully connected and LSTM layers, achieving up to 10.2x speedup with 16 cores over a single extended RI5CY core for single LSTM layers and a speedup of 13.8x for a single fully connected layer. On the full RRM benchmark suite, we achieve an average overall speedup of 16.4x, 25.2x, 31.9x, and 38.8x on two, four, eight, and 16 cores, respectively, compared to our single-core RV32IMC baseline implementation

Foundation Fieldbus Interoperability Testing On Project

Since Fieldbus was introduced in 1980s, leading process control suppliers started to implement their own proprietary protocols and none of them could talk together. The Foundation Fieldbus was implemented in 1994 to achieve an internationally fieldbus standard. A test need to be conducted to proved the interoperability of Foundation Fieldbus. This report will discuss about the Fieldbus and the work that done during the Foundation Fieldbus Interoperability Testing. The main objective of this project is to perform technical verification and interoperability of Foundation Fieldbus host and devices from various manufacturers. For the industry to adapt to the Fieldbus system, a comprehensive understanding on the operability of the system is required. This project aims to provide a familiarization to the Fieldbus system for scientific researchers and engineers for further development intended for laboratory or industrial application and testing. The laboratory testing will cover three main tests which are basic interoperability test, stress test and diagnostics capability test. For the first phase, the test is focused on basic test. The test will be conduct using the Yokogawa Centum CS3000 system as hosts. The outcome of this test will be implemented in PETRONAS Groupwide in the form of guidelines, procedures and standards on Foundation Fieldbus