Route Planning in Transportation Networks

We survey recent advances in algorithms for route planning in transportation networks. For road networks, we show that one can compute driving directions in milliseconds or less even at continental scale. A variety of techniques provide different trade-offs between preprocessing effort, space requirements, and query time. Some algorithms can answer queries in a fraction of a microsecond, while others can deal efficiently with real-time traffic. Journey planning on public transportation systems, although conceptually similar, is a significantly harder problem due to its inherent time-dependent and multicriteria nature. Although exact algorithms are fast enough for interactive queries on metropolitan transit systems, dealing with continent-sized instances requires simplifications or heavy preprocessing. The multimodal route planning problem, which seeks journeys combining schedule-based transportation (buses, trains) with unrestricted modes (walking, driving), is even harder, relying on approximate solutions even for metropolitan inputs.Comment: This is an updated version of the technical report MSR-TR-2014-4, previously published by Microsoft Research. This work was mostly done while the authors Daniel Delling, Andrew Goldberg, and Renato F. Werneck were at Microsoft Research Silicon Valle

Engineering Algorithms for Route Planning in Multimodal Transportation Networks

Practical algorithms for route planning in transportation networks are a showpiece of successful Algorithm Engineering. This has produced many speedup techniques, varying in preprocessing time, space, query performance, simplicity, and ease of implementation. This thesis explores solutions to more realistic scenarios, taking into account, e.g., traffic, user preferences, public transit schedules, and the options offered by the many modalities of modern transportation networks

Route Planning in Road Networks

We present various speedup techniques for route planning in road networks. After performing some preprocessing steps, we can compute accurate quickest-path lengths in a few microseconds on a 2.0 GHz machine, using real-world road networks with several million nodes. In addition to dealing with the static point-to-point problem, we also handle dynamic scenarios (like traffic jams) and many-to-many instances

Fully Dynamic Maintenance of Arc-Flags in Road Networks

International audienceThe problem of finding best routes in road networks can be solved by applying Dijkstra's shortest paths algorithm. Unfortunately, road networks deriving from real-world applications are huge yielding unsustainable times to compute shortest paths. For this reason, great research efforts have been done to accelerate Dijkstra's algorithm on road networks. These efforts have led to the development of a number of speed-up techniques, as for example Arc-Flags, whose aim is to compute additional data in a preprocessing phase in order to accelerate the shortest paths queries in an on-line phase. The main drawback of most of these techniques is that they do not work well in dynamic scenarios. In this paper we propose a new algorithm to update the Arc-Flags of a graph subject to edge weight decrease operations. To check the practical performances of the new algorithm we experimentally analyze it, along with a previously known algorithm for edge weight increase operations, on real-world road networks subject to fully dynamic sequences of operations. Our experiments show a significant speed-up in the updating phase of the Arc-Flags, at the cost of a small space and time overhead in the preprocessing phase

A Peer-to-Peer Network Framework Utilising the Public Mobile Telephone Network

P2P (Peer-to-Peer) technologies are well established and have now become accepted as a mainstream networking approach. However, the explosion of participating users has not been replicated within the mobile networking domain. Until recently the lack of suitable hardware and wireless network infrastructure to support P2P activities was perceived as contributing to the problem. This has changed with ready availability of handsets having ample processing resources utilising an almost ubiquitous mobile telephone network. Coupled with this has been a proliferation of software applications written for the more capable `smartphone' handsets. P2P systems have not naturally integrated and evolved into the mobile telephone ecosystem in a way that `client-server' operating techniques have. However as the number of clients for a particular mobile application increase, providing the `server side' data storage infrastructure becomes more onerous. P2P systems offer mobile telephone applications a way to circumvent this data storage issue by dispersing it across a network of the participating users handsets. The main goal of this work was to produce a P2P Application Framework that supports developers in creating mobile telephone applications that use distributed storage. Effort was assigned to determining appropriate design requirements for a mobile handset based P2P system. Some of these requirements are related to the limitations of the host hardware, such as power consumption. Others relate to the network upon which the handsets operate, such as connectivity. The thesis reviews current P2P technologies to assess which was viable to form the technology foundations for the framework. The aim was not to re-invent a P2P system design, rather to adopt an existing one for mobile operation. Built upon the foundations of a prototype application, the P2P framework resulting from modifications and enhancements grants access via a simple API (Applications Programmer Interface) to a subset of Nokia `smartphone' devices. Unhindered operation across all mobile telephone networks is possible through a proprietary application implementing NAT (Network Address Translation) traversal techniques. Recognising that handsets operate with limited resources, further optimisation of the P2P framework was also investigated. Energy consumption was a parameter chosen for further examination because of its impact on handset participation time. This work has proven that operating applications in conjunction with a P2P data storage framework, connected via the mobile telephone network, is technically feasible. It also shows that opportunity remains for further research to realise the full potential of this data storage technique

Distributed Algorithms for Location Based Services

Real-time localization services are some of the most challenging and interesting mobile broadband applications in the Location Based Services (LBS) world. They are gaining more and more importance for a broad range of applications, such as road/highway monitoring, emergency management, social networking, and advertising. This Ph.D. thesis focuses on the problem of defining a new category of decentralized peer-to-peer (P2P) algorithms for LBS. We aim at defining a P2P overlay where each participant can efficiently retrieve node and resource information (data or services) located near any chosen geographic position. The idea is that the responsibility and the required resources for maintaining information about position of active users are properly distributed among nodes, for which a change in the set of participants causes only a minimal amount of disruption without reducing the quality of provided services. In this thesis we will assess the validity of the proposed model through a formal analysis of the routing protocol and a detailed simulative investigation of the designed overlay. We will depict a complete picture of involved parameters, how they affect the performance and how they can be configured to adapt the protocol to the requirements of several location based applications. Furthermore we will present two application scenarios (a smartphone based Traffic Information System and a large information management system for a SmartCity) where the designed protocol has been simulated and evaluated, as well as the first prototype of a real implementation of the overlay using both traditional PC nodes and Android mobile devices

Collaborative geographic visualization

Dissertação apresentada na Faculdade de Ciências e Tecnologia da Universidade Nova de Lisboa para a obtenção do grau de Mestre em Engenharia do Ambiente, perfil Gestão e Sistemas AmbientaisThe present document is a revision of essential references to take into account when developing ubiquitous Geographical Information Systems (GIS) with collaborative visualization purposes. Its chapters focus, respectively, on general principles of GIS, its multimedia components and ubiquitous practices; geo-referenced information visualization and its graphical components of virtual and augmented reality; collaborative environments, its technological requirements, architectural specificities, and models for collective information management; and some final considerations about the future and challenges of collaborative visualization of GIS in ubiquitous environment

A study of mobile phone ad hoc networks via bluetooth with different routing protocols

The growth of mobile computing is changing the way people communicate. Mobile devices, especially mobile phones, have become cheaper and more powerful, and are able to run more applications and provide networking services. Mobile phones use fixed cellular infrastructure such as base stations and transmission towers to enable users to share multimedia content and access the internet at any time or place. However, using the internet is costly. Therefore, one of the solutions is to create impromptu ad hoc networks to share information among users. Such networks are infrastructureless and self-organising, much like mobile ad hoc networks. This dissertation therefore investigates how mobile phones with low-power Bluetooth technology can be used to create ad hoc networks that connect mobile phones and allow them to share information. The mobile phones should be able organise themselves for multi-hop communication. Routing becomes important in order to achieve effciency in data communication. Several existing routing protocols were developed and evaluated for this network to determine how effciently they deliver data and deal with network disruptions such as a device moving out of transmission range. Representative routing protocols in mobile ad hoc networking, peer-to-peer networks and publish/subscribe systems were evaluated according to performance metrics defidened in the research, namely total traffc, data traffc, control traffc, delay, convergence time, and positive response. Prototypes for Nokia phones were developed and tested in a small ad hoc network. For practical networking setup, a simple routing protocol that uses the limited mobile phone resources effciently would be better than a sophisticated routing protocol that keeps routing information about the network participants

Design and Evaluation of Distributed Algorithms for Placement of Network Services

Network services play an important role in the Internet today. They serve as data caches for websites, servers for multiplayer games and relay nodes for Voice over IP: VoIP) conversations. While much research has focused on the design of such services, little attention has been focused on their actual placement. This placement can impact the quality of the service, especially if low latency is a requirement. These services can be located on nodes in the network itself, making these nodes supernodes. Typically supernodes are selected in either a proprietary or ad hoc fashion, where a study of this placement is either unavailable or unnecessary. Previous research dealt with the only pieces of the problem, such as finding the location of caches for a static topology, or selecting better routes for relays in VoIP. However, a comprehensive solution is needed for dynamic applications such as multiplayer games or P2P VoIP services. These applications adapt quickly and need solutions based on the immediate demands of the network. In this thesis we develop distributed algorithms to assign nodes the role of a supernode. This research first builds off of prior work by modifying an existing assignment algorithm and implementing it in a distributed system called Supernode Placement in Overlay Topologies: SPOT). New algorithms are developed to assign nodes the supernode role. These algorithms are then evaluated in SPOT to demonstrate improved SN assignment and scalability. Through a series of simulation, emulation, and experimentation insight is gained into the critical issues associated with allocating resources to perform the role of supernodes. Our contributions include distributed algorithms to assign nodes as supernodes, an open source fully functional distributed supernode allocation system, an evaluation of the system in diverse networking environments, and a simulator called SPOTsim which demonstrates the scalability of the system to thousands of nodes. An example of an application deploying such a system is also presented along with the empirical results

SecConNet:Smart and secure container networks for trusted big data sharing

There are many organizations interested in sharing data with others. However, they can do this only if a secure platform is available. Digital Data Marketplaces (DDMs) are emerging as a framework for organizations to share their data. To increase trust among participating organizations multiple agreements should be established to determine policies about who has access to what. Translating these high-level sharing policies to actionable code and setting up an infrastructure that implements and enforces the policies is still a big challenge.In SecConNet, we research novel container network architectures, which utilize programmable infrastructures and virtualization technologies across multiple administrative domains whilst maintaining the security and quality requirements of requesting parties for both private sector and scientific use cases. Containers are lightweight alternatives to full-fledged virtual machines. A container can operate as a secure, isolated, and individual entity that on behalf of its owner manages and processes the data it is given. However, for multi-organization (chain) applications groups of containers need access to the same data and/or need to exchange data among them. Technologies to connect containers are developed with primary attention to their performance, but the greatest challenge is the creation of secure and reliable multi-domain container networks. We first investigate different technologies to evaluate their capabilities to support the network infrastructure requirements in secure data sharing. We then proposed a P4-based network to be able to build a multi-domain DDM. Finally, we use the capabilities of the P4-based network to monitor the transactions in the DDM