19,621 research outputs found
A Bicriteria Approximation for the Reordering Buffer Problem
In the reordering buffer problem (RBP), a server is asked to process a
sequence of requests lying in a metric space. To process a request the server
must move to the corresponding point in the metric. The requests can be
processed slightly out of order; in particular, the server has a buffer of
capacity k which can store up to k requests as it reads in the sequence. The
goal is to reorder the requests in such a manner that the buffer constraint is
satisfied and the total travel cost of the server is minimized. The RBP arises
in many applications that require scheduling with a limited buffer capacity,
such as scheduling a disk arm in storage systems, switching colors in paint
shops of a car manufacturing plant, and rendering 3D images in computer
graphics.
We study the offline version of RBP and develop bicriteria approximations.
When the underlying metric is a tree, we obtain a solution of cost no more than
9OPT using a buffer of capacity 4k + 1 where OPT is the cost of an optimal
solution with buffer capacity k. Constant factor approximations were known
previously only for the uniform metric (Avigdor-Elgrabli et al., 2012). Via
randomized tree embeddings, this implies an O(log n) approximation to cost and
O(1) approximation to buffer size for general metrics. Previously the best
known algorithm for arbitrary metrics by Englert et al. (2007) provided an
O(log^2 k log n) approximation without violating the buffer constraint.Comment: 13 page
Sensor Scheduling for Energy-Efficient Target Tracking in Sensor Networks
In this paper we study the problem of tracking an object moving randomly
through a network of wireless sensors. Our objective is to devise strategies
for scheduling the sensors to optimize the tradeoff between tracking
performance and energy consumption. We cast the scheduling problem as a
Partially Observable Markov Decision Process (POMDP), where the control actions
correspond to the set of sensors to activate at each time step. Using a
bottom-up approach, we consider different sensing, motion and cost models with
increasing levels of difficulty. At the first level, the sensing regions of the
different sensors do not overlap and the target is only observed within the
sensing range of an active sensor. Then, we consider sensors with overlapping
sensing range such that the tracking error, and hence the actions of the
different sensors, are tightly coupled. Finally, we consider scenarios wherein
the target locations and sensors' observations assume values on continuous
spaces. Exact solutions are generally intractable even for the simplest models
due to the dimensionality of the information and action spaces. Hence, we
devise approximate solution techniques, and in some cases derive lower bounds
on the optimal tradeoff curves. The generated scheduling policies, albeit
suboptimal, often provide close-to-optimal energy-tracking tradeoffs
Comparison of Methods of Pump Scheduling in Water Supply Systems
In the domestic water supply industry, the reduction of pumping costs is a continuing objective. With the efficient scheduling of pumping operations, it is considered that 10% of the annual expenditure on energy and related costs may be saved. A typical cost function will include all of the expenditure caused by the pumping process and also consider the electrical cost of pumping taking into account the various electrical tariffs, as well as peak demand and pump switching costs. Using only fixed speed pumps, it is possible to use an efficient dynamic programming based method, provided that the storage reservoir levels are known. Other techniques that are showing fruitful results in optimisation are genetic programming and simulated annealing. This paper compares these methods and discusses which is more appropriate in this type of pump scheduling problem
Wireless Scheduling with Power Control
We consider the scheduling of arbitrary wireless links in the physical model
of interference to minimize the time for satisfying all requests. We study here
the combined problem of scheduling and power control, where we seek both an
assignment of power settings and a partition of the links so that each set
satisfies the signal-to-interference-plus-noise (SINR) constraints.
We give an algorithm that attains an approximation ratio of , where is the number of links and is the ratio
between the longest and the shortest link length. Under the natural assumption
that lengths are represented in binary, this gives the first approximation
ratio that is polylogarithmic in the size of the input. The algorithm has the
desirable property of using an oblivious power assignment, where the power
assigned to a sender depends only on the length of the link. We give evidence
that this dependence on is unavoidable, showing that any
reasonably-behaving oblivious power assignment results in a -approximation.
These results hold also for the (weighted) capacity problem of finding a
maximum (weighted) subset of links that can be scheduled in a single time slot.
In addition, we obtain improved approximation for a bidirectional variant of
the scheduling problem, give partial answers to questions about the utility of
graphs for modeling physical interference, and generalize the setting from the
standard 2-dimensional Euclidean plane to doubling metrics. Finally, we explore
the utility of graph models in capturing wireless interference.Comment: Revised full versio
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