VERTEX COVER BASED LINK MONITORING TECHNIQUES FOR WIRELESS SENSOR NETWORKS

VERTEX COVER BASED LINK MONITORING TECHNIQUES FOR WIRELESS SENSOR NETWORKSAbstractWireless sensor networks (WSNs) are generally composed of numerous battery-powered tiny nodes that can sense from the environment and send this data through wireless communication. WSNs have wide range of application areas such as military surveillance, healthcare, miner safety, and outer space exploration. Inherent security weaknesses of wireless communication may prone WSNs to various attacks such as eavesdropping, jamming and spoofing. This situation attracts researchers to study countermeasures for detection and prevention of these attacks. Graph theory provides a very useful theoretical basis for solving WSN problems related to communication and security issues. One of the important graph theoretic structures is vertex cover (VC) in which a set of nodes are selected to cover the edges of the graph where each edge is incident to at least one node in VC set. Finding VC set having the minimum cardinality for a given graph is an NP-hard problem. In this paper, we describe VC algorithms aiming link monitoring where nodes in VC are configured as secure points. We investigate variants of VC problems such as weight and capacity constrained versions on different graph types to meet the energy-efficiency and load-balancing requirements of WSNs. Moreover, we present clustering and backbone formation operations as alternative applications of different VC infrastructures. For each VC sub-problem, we propose greedy heuristic based algorithms.Keywords: Wireless Sensor Networks, Link Monitoring, Graph Theory, Vertex Cover, NP-Hard Problem.KABLOSUZ SENSÖR AĞLARI İÇİN KÖŞE ÖRTME TABANLI BAĞLANTI İZLEME TEKNİKLERİÖzetKablosuz sensor ağlar (KSAlar) genellikle ortamdan algılayabilen ve bu verileri kablosuz iletişim yoluyla gönderebilen pille çalışan çok sayıda küçük düğümden oluşur. KSAlar askeri gözetim, sağlık hizmetleri, madenci güvenliği ve uzay keşfi gibi çok çeşitli uygulama alanlarına sahiptir. Kablosuz iletişimin doğasında var olan güvenlik zayıflıkları, KSAları gizli dinleme, sinyal bozma ve sahtekarlık gibi çeşitli saldırılara eğilimli hale getirebilmektedir. Bu durum, araştırmacıları bu saldırıların tespiti ve önlenmesine yönelik karşı önlemleri incelemeye yöneltmektedir. Çizge teorisi, iletişim ve güvenlik sorunları ile ilgili KSA sorunlarını çözmek için çok yararlı bir teorik temel sağlar. Önemli çizge teorik yapılardan biri köşe örtmedir (KÖ), bu yapıda her bir kenarın KÖ kümesindeki en az bir düğüme bitişik olacak şekilde çizgenin tüm kenarlarını kapsayacak bir dizi düğüm seçilmektedir. Verilen bir çizge için en az elemana sahip KÖ kümesini bulmak NP-zor bir problemdir. Bu makalede, KÖdeki düğümlerin güvenli noktalar olarak yapılandırıldığı bağlantı izlemeyi amaçlayan KÖ algoritmaları açıklanmaktadır. KSAların enerji verimliliği ve yük dengeleme gereksinimlerini karşılamak için, farklı çizge yapılarında KÖ problemlerinin ağırlık ve kapasite kısıtlı versiyonları gibi çeşitli türleri çalışılmaktadır. Ayrıca kümeleme ve omurga oluşturma işlemlerini farklı KÖ altyapılarının alternatif uygulamaları olarak sunulmaktadır. Her KÖ alt problemi için, açgözlü sezgisel tabanlı algoritmalar önerilmektedir.Anahtar Kelimeler: Kablosuz Sensör Ağları, Bağlantı İzleme, Çizge Teorisi, Kenar Örtme, NP-Zor Problem.

Tight Approximation for Partial Vertex Cover with Hard Capacities

We consider the partial vertex cover problem with hard capacity constraints (Partial VC-HC) on hypergraphs. In this problem we are given a hypergraph G=(V,E) with a maximum edge size f and a covering requirement R. Each edge is associated with a demand, and each vertex is associated with a capacity and an (integral) available multiplicity. The objective is to compute a minimum vertex multiset such that at least R units of demand from the edges are covered by the capacities of the vertices in the multiset and the multiplicity of each vertex does not exceed its available multiplicity. In this paper we present an f-approximation for this problem, improving over a previous result of (2f+2)(1+epsilon) by Cheung et al to the tight extent possible. Our new ingredient of this work is a generalized analysis on the extreme points of the natural LP, developed from previous works, and a strengthened LP lower-bound obtained for the optimal solutions

O(f) Bi-Approximation for Capacitated Covering with Hard Capacities

We consider capacitated vertex cover with hard capacity constraints (VC-HC) on hypergraphs. In this problem we are given a hypergraph G = (V, E) with a maximum edge size f. Each edge is associated with a demand and each vertex is associated with a weight (cost), a capacity, and an available multiplicity. The objective is to find a minimum-weight vertex multiset such that the demands of the edges can be covered by the capacities of the vertices and the multiplicity of each vertex does not exceed its available multiplicity. In this paper we present an O(f) bi-approximation for VC-HC that gives a trade-off on the number of augmented multiplicity and the cost of the resulting cover. In particular, we show that, by augmenting the available multiplicity by a factor of k geq 2, a cover with a cost ratio of (1+ frac{1}{k - 1})(f - 1) to the optimal cover for the original instance can be obtained. This improves over a previous result, which has a cost ratio of f^2 via augmenting the available multiplicity by a factor of f

Approximation Algorithms for Resource Allocation

This thesis is devoted to designing new techniques and algorithms for combinatorial optimization problems arising in various applications of resource allocation. Resource allocation refers to a class of problems where scarce resources must be distributed among competing agents maintaining certain optimization criteria. Examples include scheduling jobs on one/multiple machines maintaining system performance; assigning advertisements to bidders, or items to people maximizing profit/social fairness; allocating servers or channels satisfying networking requirements etc. Altogether they comprise a wide variety of combinatorial optimization problems. However, a majority of these problems are NP-hard in nature and therefore, the goal herein is to develop approximation algorithms that approximate the optimal solution as best as possible in polynomial time. The thesis addresses two main directions. First, we develop several new techniques, predominantly, a new linear programming rounding methodology and a constructive aspect of a well-known probabilistic method, the Lov\'{a}sz Local Lemma (LLL). Second, we employ these techniques to applications of resource allocation obtaining substantial improvements over known results. Our research also spurs new direction of study; we introduce new models for achieving energy efficiency in scheduling and a novel framework for assigning advertisements in cellular networks. Both of these lead to a variety of interesting questions. Our linear programming rounding methodology is a significant generalization of two major rounding approaches in the theory of approximation algorithms, namely the dependent rounding and the iterative relaxation procedure. Our constructive version of LLL leads to first algorithmic results for many combinatorial problems. In addition, it settles a major open question of obtaining a constant factor approximation algorithm for the Santa Claus problem. The Santa Claus problem is a $NP$-hard resource allocation problem that received much attention in the last several years. Through out this thesis, we study a number of applications related to scheduling jobs on unrelated parallel machines, such as provisionally shutting down machines to save energy, selectively dropping outliers to improve system performance, handling machines with hard capacity bounds on the number of jobs they can process etc. Hard capacity constraints arise naturally in many other applications and often render a hitherto simple combinatorial optimization problem difficult. In this thesis, we encounter many such instances of hard capacity constraints, namely in budgeted allocation of advertisements for cellular networks, overlay network design, and in classical problems like vertex cover, set cover and k-median

Data-Aware Scheduling in Datacenters

Datacenters have emerged as the dominant form of computing infrastructure over the last two decades. The tremendous increase in the requirements of data analysis has led to a proportional increase in power consumption and datacenters are now one of the fastest growing electricity consumers in the United States. Another rising concern is the loss of throughput due to network congestion. Scheduling models that do not explicitly account for data placement may lead to a transfer of large amounts of data over the network causing unacceptable delays. In this dissertation, we study different scheduling models that are inspired by the dual objectives of minimizing energy costs and network congestion in a datacenter. As datacenters are equipped to handle peak workloads, the average server utilization in most datacenters is very low. As a result, one can achieve huge energy savings by selectively shutting down machines when demand is low. In this dissertation, we introduce the network-aware machine activation problem to find a schedule that simultaneously minimizes the number of machines necessary and the congestion incurred in the network. Our model significantly generalizes well-studied combinatorial optimization problems such as hard-capacitated hypergraph covering and is thus strongly NP-hard. As a result, we focus on finding good approximation algorithms. Data-parallel computation frameworks such as MapReduce have popularized the design of applications that require a large amount of communication between different machines. Efficient scheduling of these communication demands is essential to guarantee efficient execution of the different applications. In the second part of the thesis, we study the approximability of the co-flow scheduling problem that has been recently introduced to capture these application-level demands. Finally, we also study the question, "In what order should one process jobs?'' Often, precedence constraints specify a partial order over the set of jobs and the objective is to find suitable schedules that satisfy the partial order. However, in the presence of hard deadline constraints, it may be impossible to find a schedule that satisfies all precedence constraints. In this thesis we formalize different variants of job scheduling with soft precedence constraints and conduct the first systematic study of these problems