ENHANCED REAL-TIME GROUP AUCTION SYSTEM FOR EFFICIENT ALLOCATION OF CLOUD INTERNET APPLICATIONS

Cloud internet applications have recently attracted a large number of users in the Internet. With the invention of these cloud internet applications, it is inefficient to allocate maximum number of participants in real time group auction system. So an efficient approximation algorithm is proposed with the improved combinatorial double auction protocol. It is developed to enable different kinds of resource distribution among multiple users and providers. At the same time it includes more number of participants in an auction. Due to the NP-hardness of binary integer programming for resource distribution in a real time group auction system, the improved approximation algorithm is proposed to deal with np-hardness and to obtain the optimal solution. Participant honesty is necessary to ensure auction trustfulness

Financial Derivatives Market for Grid Computing

This Master thesis studies the feasibility and properties of a financial derivatives market on Grid computing, a service for sharing computing resources over a network such as the Internet. For the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) to perform research with the world's largest and most complex machine, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), Grid computing was developed to handle the information created. In accordance with the mandate of CERN Technology Transfer (TT) group, this thesis is a part of CERN's dissemination of the Grid technology. The thesis gives a brief overview of the use of the Grid technology and where it is heading. IT trend analysts and large-scale IT vendors see this technology as key in transforming the world of IT. They predict that in a matter of years, IT will be bought as a service, instead of a good. Commoditization of IT, delivered as a service, is a paradigm shift that will have a broad impact on all parts of the IT market, as well as on the society as a whole. Political, economic and physical factors advocate a market for standardized computing resources supplied by multiple professional providers, benefiting from economies of scale. We argue for the trade of Virtual Servers as the standardized bundle of computer resources. Continuous trade of homogeneous resources allows for scheduling market efficiency and liquidity, but may entail a risk of erratic, unpredictable prices. We therefor e construct a complete, coherent Grid economy, consisting of both a spot market and a derivatives market. While the spot market is the trading place for the computer resources, the derivatives market aims to disperse the risk among those who are willing to invest in it. Because the Virtual Servers are non-storable assets, normal arbitrage theory cannot be used to price derivatives contracts. We propose to solve this issue by creating storable swap contracts priced by an auction-based market, where we argue that the price process follows a geometric Brownian motion. Taking into account the absence of arbitrage in the swap market and the requirement for a complete market, we offer a theoretical framework for martingale pricing and hedging of derivatives written on swaps

Robust and cheating-resilient power auctioning on Resource Constrained Smart Micro-Grids

The principle of Continuous Double Auctioning (CDA) is known to provide an efficient way of matching supply and demand among distributed selfish participants with limited information. However, the literature indicates that the classic CDA algorithms developed for grid-like applications are centralised and insensitive to the processing resources capacity, which poses a hindrance for their application on resource constrained, smart micro-grids (RCSMG). A RCSMG loosely describes a micro-grid with distributed generators and demand controlled by selfish participants with limited information, power storage capacity and low literacy, communicate over an unreliable infrastructure burdened by limited bandwidth and low computational power of devices. In this thesis, we design and evaluate a CDA algorithm for power allocation in a RCSMG. Specifically, we offer the following contributions towards power auctioning on RCSMGs. First, we extend the original CDA scheme to enable decentralised auctioning. We do this by integrating a token-based, mutual-exclusion (MUTEX) distributive primitive, that ensures the CDA operates at a reasonably efficient time and message complexity of O(N) and O(logN) respectively, per critical section invocation (auction market execution). Our CDA algorithm scales better and avoids the single point of failure problem associated with centralised CDAs (which could be used to adversarially provoke a break-down of the grid marketing mechanism). In addition, the decentralised approach in our algorithm can help eliminate privacy and security concerns associated with centralised CDAs. Second, to handle CDA performance issues due to malfunctioning devices on an unreliable network (such as a lossy network), we extend our proposed CDA scheme to ensure robustness to failure. Using node redundancy, we modify the MUTEX protocol supporting our CDA algorithm to handle fail-stop and some Byzantine type faults of sites. This yields a time complexity of O(N), where N is number of cluster-head nodes; and message complexity of O((logN)+W) time, where W is the number of check-pointing messages. These results indicate that it is possible to add fault tolerance to a decentralised CDA, which guarantees continued participation in the auction while retaining reasonable performance overheads. In addition, we propose a decentralised consumption scheduling scheme that complements the auctioning scheme in guaranteeing successful power allocation within the RCSMG. Third, since grid participants are self-interested we must consider the issue of power theft that is provoked when participants cheat. We propose threat models centred on cheating attacks aimed at foiling the extended CDA scheme. More specifically, we focus on the Victim Strategy Downgrade; Collusion by Dynamic Strategy Change, Profiling with Market Prediction; and Strategy Manipulation cheating attacks, which are carried out by internal adversaries (auction participants). Internal adversaries are participants who want to get more benefits but have no interest in provoking a breakdown of the grid. However, their behaviour is dangerous because it could result in a breakdown of the grid. Fourth, to mitigate these cheating attacks, we propose an exception handling (EH) scheme, where sentinel agents use allocative efficiency and message overheads to detect and mitigate cheating forms. Sentinel agents are tasked to monitor trading agents to detect cheating and reprimand the misbehaving participant. Overall, message complexity expected in light demand is O(nLogN). The detection and resolution algorithm is expected to run in linear time complexity O(M). Overall, the main aim of our study is achieved by designing a resilient and cheating-free CDA algorithm that is scalable and performs well on resource constrained micro-grids. With the growing popularity of the CDA and its resource allocation applications, specifically to low resourced micro-grids, this thesis highlights further avenues for future research. First, we intend to extend the decentralised CDA algorithm to allow for participants’ mobile phones to connect (reconnect) at different shared smart meters. Such mobility should guarantee the desired CDA properties, the reliability and adequate security. Secondly, we seek to develop a simulation of the decentralised CDA based on the formal proofs presented in this thesis. Such a simulation platform can be used for future studies that involve decentralised CDAs. Third, we seek to find an optimal and efficient way in which the decentralised CDA and the scheduling algorithm can be integrated and deployed in a low resourced, smart micro-grid. Such an integration is important for system developers interested in exploiting the benefits of the two schemes while maintaining system efficiency. Forth, we aim to improve on the cheating detection and mitigation mechanism by developing an intrusion tolerance protocol. Such a scheme will allow continued auctioning in the presence of cheating attacks while incurring low performance overheads for applicability in a RCSMG