2,608 research outputs found
Learning and Management for Internet-of-Things: Accounting for Adaptivity and Scalability
Internet-of-Things (IoT) envisions an intelligent infrastructure of networked
smart devices offering task-specific monitoring and control services. The
unique features of IoT include extreme heterogeneity, massive number of
devices, and unpredictable dynamics partially due to human interaction. These
call for foundational innovations in network design and management. Ideally, it
should allow efficient adaptation to changing environments, and low-cost
implementation scalable to massive number of devices, subject to stringent
latency constraints. To this end, the overarching goal of this paper is to
outline a unified framework for online learning and management policies in IoT
through joint advances in communication, networking, learning, and
optimization. From the network architecture vantage point, the unified
framework leverages a promising fog architecture that enables smart devices to
have proximity access to cloud functionalities at the network edge, along the
cloud-to-things continuum. From the algorithmic perspective, key innovations
target online approaches adaptive to different degrees of nonstationarity in
IoT dynamics, and their scalable model-free implementation under limited
feedback that motivates blind or bandit approaches. The proposed framework
aspires to offer a stepping stone that leads to systematic designs and analysis
of task-specific learning and management schemes for IoT, along with a host of
new research directions to build on.Comment: Submitted on June 15 to Proceeding of IEEE Special Issue on Adaptive
and Scalable Communication Network
Edge Offloading in Smart Grid
The energy transition supports the shift towards more sustainable energy
alternatives, paving towards decentralized smart grids, where the energy is
generated closer to the point of use. The decentralized smart grids foresee
novel data-driven low latency applications for improving resilience and
responsiveness, such as peer-to-peer energy trading, microgrid control, fault
detection, or demand response. However, the traditional cloud-based smart grid
architectures are unable to meet the requirements of the new emerging
applications such as low latency and high-reliability thus alternative
architectures such as edge, fog, or hybrid need to be adopted. Moreover, edge
offloading can play a pivotal role for the next-generation smart grid AI
applications because it enables the efficient utilization of computing
resources and addresses the challenges of increasing data generated by IoT
devices, optimizing the response time, energy consumption, and network
performance. However, a comprehensive overview of the current state of research
is needed to support sound decisions regarding energy-related applications
offloading from cloud to fog or edge, focusing on smart grid open challenges
and potential impacts. In this paper, we delve into smart grid and
computational distribution architec-tures, including edge-fog-cloud models,
orchestration architecture, and serverless computing, and analyze the
decision-making variables and optimization algorithms to assess the efficiency
of edge offloading. Finally, the work contributes to a comprehensive
understanding of the edge offloading in smart grid, providing a SWOT analysis
to support decision making.Comment: to be submitted to journa
Edge Intelligence Simulator:a platform for simulating intelligent edge orchestration solutions
Abstract. To support the stringent requirements of the future intelligent and interactive applications, intelligence needs to become an essential part of the resource management in the edge environment. Developing intelligent orchestration solutions is a challenging and arduous task, where the evaluation and comparison of the proposed solution is a focal point. Simulation is commonly used to evaluate and compare proposed solutions. However, there does not currently exist openly available simulators that would have a specific focus on supporting the research on intelligent edge orchestration methods.
This thesis presents a simulation platform called Edge Intelligence Simulator (EISim), the purpose of which is to facilitate the research on intelligent edge orchestration solutions. In its current form, the platform supports simulating deep reinforcement learning based solutions and different orchestration control topologies in scenarios related to task offloading and resource pricing on edge. The platform also includes additional tools for creating simulation environments, running simulations for agent training and evaluation, and plotting results.
This thesis gives a comprehensive overview of the state of the art in edge and fog simulation, orchestration, offloading, and resource pricing, which provides a basis for the design of EISim. The methods and tools that form the foundation of the current EISim implementation are also presented, along with a detailed description of the EISim architecture, default implementations, use, and additional tools. Finally, EISim with its default implementations is validated and evaluated through a large-scale simulation study with 24 simulation scenarios.
The results of the simulation study verify the end-to-end performance of EISim and show its capability to produce sensible results. The results also illustrate how EISim can help the researcher in controlling and monitoring the training of intelligent agents, as well as in evaluating solutions against different control topologies.Reunaälysimulaattori : alusta älykkäiden reunalaskennan orkestrointiratkaisujen simulointiin. Tiivistelmä. Älykkäiden ratkaisujen täytyy tulla olennaiseksi osaksi reunaympäristön resurssien hallinnointia, jotta tulevaisuuden vuorovaikutteisten ja älykkäiden sovellusten suoritusta voidaan tukea tasolla, joka täyttää sovellusten tiukat suoritusvaatimukset. Älykkäiden orkestrointiratkaisujen kehitys on vaativa ja työläs prosessi, jonka keskiöön kuuluu olennaisesti menetelmien testaaminen ja vertailu muita menetelmiä vasten. Simulointia käytetään tyypillisesti menetelmien arviointiin ja vertailuun, mutta tällä hetkellä ei ole avoimesti saatavilla simulaattoreita, jotka eritoten keskittyisivät tukemaan älykkäiden reunaorkestrointiratkaisujen kehitystä.
Tässä opinnäytetyössä esitellään simulaatioalusta nimeltään Edge Intelligence Simulator (EISim; Reunaälysimulaattori), jonka tarkoitus on helpottaa älykkäiden reunaorkestrointiratkaisujen tutkimusta. Nykymuodossaan se tukee vahvistusoppimispohjaisten ratkaisujen sekä erityyppisten orkestroinnin kontrollitopologioiden simulointia skenaarioissa, jotka liittyvät laskennan siirtoon ja resurssien hinnoitteluun reunaympäristössä. Alustan mukana tulee myös lisätyökaluja, joita voi käyttää simulaatioympäristöjen luomiseen, simulaatioiden ajamiseen agenttien koulutusta ja arviointia varten, sekä simulaatiotulosten visualisoimiseen.
Tämä opinnäytetyö sisältää kattavan katsauksen reunaympäristön simuloinnin, reunaorkestroinnin, laskennan siirron ja resurssien hinnoittelun nykytilaan kirjallisuudessa, mikä tarjoaa kunnollisen lähtökohdan EISimin toteutukselle. Opinnäytetyö esittelee menetelmät ja työkalut, joihin EISimin tämänhetkinen toteutus perustuu, sekä antaa yksityiskohtaisen kuvauksen EISimin arkkitehtuurista, oletustoteutuksista, käytöstä ja lisätyökaluista. EISimin validointia ja arviointia varten esitellään laaja simulaatiotutkimus, jossa EISimin oletustoteutuksia simuloidaan 24 simulaatioskenaariossa.
Simulaatiotutkimuksen tulokset todentavat EISimin kokonaisvaltaisen toimintakyvyn, sekä osoittavat EISimin kyvyn tuottaa järkeviä tuloksia. Tulokset myös havainnollistavat, miten EISim voi auttaa tutkijoita älykkäiden agenttien koulutuksessa ja ratkaisujen arvioinnissa eri kontrollitopologioita vasten
Guest Editorial: Design and Analysis of Communication Interfaces for Industry 4.0
This special issue (SI) aims to present recent advances in the design and analysis of communication interfaces for Industry 4.0. The Industry 4.0 paradigm aims to integrate advanced manufacturing techniques with Industrial Internet-of-Things (IIoT) to create an agile digital manufacturing ecosystem. The main goal is to instrument production processes by embedding sensors, actuators and other control devices which autonomously communicate with each other throughout the value-chain [1]
Towards edge robotics: the progress from cloud-based robotic systems to intelligent and context-aware robotic services
Current robotic systems handle a different range of applications such as video surveillance, delivery
of goods, cleaning, material handling, assembly, painting, or pick and place services. These systems
have been embraced not only by the general population but also by the vertical industries to
help them in performing daily activities. Traditionally, the robotic systems have been deployed in
standalone robots that were exclusively dedicated to performing a specific task such as cleaning the
floor in indoor environments. In recent years, cloud providers started to offer their infrastructures
to robotic systems for offloading some of the robot’s functions. This ultimate form of the distributed
robotic system was first introduced 10 years ago as cloud robotics and nowadays a lot of robotic solutions
are appearing in this form. As a result, standalone robots became software-enhanced objects
with increased reconfigurability as well as decreased complexity and cost. Moreover, by offloading
the heavy processing from the robot to the cloud, it is easier to share services and information from
various robots or agents to achieve better cooperation and coordination.
Cloud robotics is suitable for human-scale responsive and delay-tolerant robotic functionalities
(e.g., monitoring, predictive maintenance). However, there is a whole set of real-time robotic applications
(e.g., remote control, motion planning, autonomous navigation) that can not be executed with
cloud robotics solutions, mainly because cloud facilities traditionally reside far away from the robots.
While the cloud providers can ensure certain performance in their infrastructure, very little can be
ensured in the network between the robots and the cloud, especially in the last hop where wireless
radio access networks are involved. Over the last years advances in edge computing, fog computing,
5G NR, network slicing, Network Function Virtualization (NFV), and network orchestration are stimulating
the interest of the industrial sector to satisfy the stringent and real-time requirements of their
applications. Robotic systems are a key piece in the industrial digital transformation and their benefits
are very well studied in the literature. However, designing and implementing a robotic system
that integrates all the emerging technologies and meets the connectivity requirements (e.g., latency,
reliability) is an ambitious task.
This thesis studies the integration of modern Information andCommunication Technologies (ICTs)
in robotic systems and proposes some robotic enhancements that tackle the real-time constraints of
robotic services. To evaluate the performance of the proposed enhancements, this thesis departs
from the design and prototype implementation of an edge native robotic system that embodies the concepts of edge computing, fog computing, orchestration, and virtualization. The proposed edge
robotics system serves to represent two exemplary robotic applications. In particular, autonomous
navigation of mobile robots and remote-control of robot manipulator where the end-to-end robotic
system is distributed between the robots and the edge server. The open-source prototype implementation
of the designed edge native robotic system resulted in the creation of two real-world testbeds
that are used in this thesis as a baseline scenario for the evaluation of new innovative solutions in
robotic systems.
After detailing the design and prototype implementation of the end-to-end edge native robotic
system, this thesis proposes several enhancements that can be offered to robotic systems by adapting
the concept of edge computing via the Multi-Access Edge Computing (MEC) framework. First, it
proposes exemplary network context-aware enhancements in which the real-time information about
robot connectivity and location can be used to dynamically adapt the end-to-end system behavior to
the actual status of the communication (e.g., radio channel). Three different exemplary context-aware
enhancements are proposed that aim to optimize the end-to-end edge native robotic system. Later,
the thesis studies the capability of the edge native robotic system to offer potential savings by means of
computation offloading for robot manipulators in different deployment configurations. Further, the
impact of different wireless channels (e.g., 5G, 4G andWi-Fi) to support the data exchange between a
robot manipulator and its remote controller are assessed.
In the following part of the thesis, the focus is set on how orchestration solutions can support
mobile robot systems to make high quality decisions. The application of OKpi as an orchestration algorithm
and DLT-based federation are studied to meet the KPIs that autonomously controlledmobile
robots have in order to provide uninterrupted connectivity over the radio access network. The elaborated
solutions present high compatibility with the designed edge robotics system where the robot
driving range is extended without any interruption of the end-to-end edge robotics service. While the
DLT-based federation extends the robot driving range by deploying access point extension on top of
external domain infrastructure, OKpi selects the most suitable access point and computing resource
in the cloud-to-thing continuum in order to fulfill the latency requirements of autonomously controlled
mobile robots.
To conclude the thesis the focus is set on how robotic systems can improve their performance by
leveraging Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) algorithms to generate smart decisions.
To do so, the edge native robotic system is presented as a true embodiment of a Cyber-Physical
System (CPS) in Industry 4.0, showing the mission of AI in such concept. It presents the key enabling
technologies of the edge robotic system such as edge, fog, and 5G, where the physical processes are
integrated with computing and network domains. The role of AI in each technology domain is identified
by analyzing a set of AI agents at the application and infrastructure level. In the last part of the
thesis, the movement prediction is selected to study the feasibility of applying a forecast-based recovery
mechanism for real-time remote control of robotic manipulators (FoReCo) that uses ML to infer
lost commands caused by interference in the wireless channel. The obtained results are showcasing
the its potential in simulation and real-world experimentation.Programa de Doctorado en Ingeniería Telemática por la Universidad Carlos III de MadridPresidente: Karl Holger.- Secretario: Joerg Widmer.- Vocal: Claudio Cicconett
Uberization of telecom networks for cost-efficient communication and computing
This paper discusses the uberization of telecommunication and computing
network services. The Uber-like platform business model is discussed for
application in future networks together with interesting analogies of
communication and computing (2C) resource-sharing models. The economy of this
sharing is discussed, and some recommendations for network uberization are
provided.Comment: 7 pages, 4 figures, 1 tabl
A Survey on UAV-enabled Edge Computing: Resource Management Perspective
Edge computing facilitates low-latency services at the network's edge by
distributing computation, communication, and storage resources within the
geographic proximity of mobile and Internet-of-Things (IoT) devices. The recent
advancement in Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) technologies has opened new
opportunities for edge computing in military operations, disaster response, or
remote areas where traditional terrestrial networks are limited or unavailable.
In such environments, UAVs can be deployed as aerial edge servers or relays to
facilitate edge computing services. This form of computing is also known as
UAV-enabled Edge Computing (UEC), which offers several unique benefits such as
mobility, line-of-sight, flexibility, computational capability, and
cost-efficiency. However, the resources on UAVs, edge servers, and IoT devices
are typically very limited in the context of UEC. Efficient resource management
is, therefore, a critical research challenge in UEC. In this article, we
present a survey on the existing research in UEC from the resource management
perspective. We identify a conceptual architecture, different types of
collaborations, wireless communication models, research directions, key
techniques and performance indicators for resource management in UEC. We also
present a taxonomy of resource management in UEC. Finally, we identify and
discuss some open research challenges that can stimulate future research
directions for resource management in UEC.Comment: 36 pages, Accepted to ACM CSU
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