43 research outputs found
Stable Wireless Network Control Under Service Constraints
We consider the design of wireless queueing network control policies with
particular focus on combining stability with additional application-dependent
requirements. Thereby, we consequently pursue a cost function based approach
that provides the flexibility to incorporate constraints and requirements of
particular services or applications. As typical examples of such requirements,
we consider the reduction of buffer underflows in case of streaming traffic,
and energy efficiency in networks of battery powered nodes. Compared to the
classical throughput optimal control problem, such requirements significantly
complicate the control problem. We provide easily verifyable theoretical
conditions for stability, and, additionally, compare various candidate cost
functions applied to wireless networks with streaming media traffic. Moreover,
we demonstrate how the framework can be applied to the problem of energy
efficient routing, and we demonstrate the aplication of our framework in
cross-layer control problems for wireless multihop networks, using an advanced
power control scheme for interference mitigation, based on successive convex
approximation. In all scenarios, the performance of our control framework is
evaluated using extensive numerical simulations.Comment: Accepted for publication in IEEE Transactions on Control of Network
Systems. arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1208.297
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Resource allocation in large-scale multi-server systems
textThe focus of this dissertation is the task of resource allocation in multi- server systems arising from two applications – multi-channel wireless com- munication networks and large-scale content delivery networks. The unifying theme behind all the problems studied in this dissertation is the large-scale nature of the underlying networks, which necessitate the design of algorithms which are simple/greedy and therefore scalable, and yet, have good perfor- mance guarantees. For the multi-channel multi-hop wireless communication networks we consider, the goal is to design scalable routing and scheduling policies which stabilize the system and perform well from a queue-length and end-to-end delay perspective. We first focus on relay assisted downlink networks where it is well understood that the BackPressure algorithm is stabilizing, but, its delay performance can be poor. We propose an alternative algorithm - an iterative MaxWeight algorithm and show that it stabilizes the system and outperforms the BackPressure algorithm. Next, we focus on wireless networks which serve mobile users via a wide-area base-station and multiple densely deployed short- range access nodes (e.g., small cells). We show that traditional algorithms that forward each packet at most once, either to a single access node or a mobile user, do not have good delay performance and propose an algorithm (a distributed scheduler - DIST) and show that it can stabilize the system and performs well from a queue-length/delay perspective. In content delivery networks, each arriving job can only be served by servers storing the requested content piece. Motivated by this, we consider two settings. In the first setting, each job, on arrival, reveals a deadline and a subset of servers that can serve it and the goal is to maximize the fraction of jobs that are served before their deadlines. We propose an online load balanc- ing algorithm which uses correlated randomness and prove its optimality. In the second setting, we study content placement in a content delivery network where a large number of servers, serve a correspondingly large volume of con- tent requests arriving according to an unknown stochastic process. The main takeaway from our results for this setting is that separating the estimation of demands and the subsequent use of the estimations to design optimal content placement policies (learn-and-optimize approach) is suboptimal. In addition, we study two simple adaptive content replication policies and show that they outperform all learning-based static storage policies.Electrical and Computer Engineerin
Stability and asymptotic optimality of generalized maxweight policies
Abstract It is shown that stability of the celebrated MaxWeight or back pressure policies is a consequence of the following interpretation: either policy is myopic with respect to a surrogate value function of a very special form, in which the "marginal disutility" at a buffer vanishes for vanishingly small buffer population. This observation motivates the h-MaxWeight policy, defined for a wide class of functions h. These policies share many of the attractive properties of the MaxWeight policy: (i) Arrival rate data is not required in the policy. (ii) Under a variety of general conditions, the policy is stabilizing when h is a perturbation of a monotone linear function, a monotone quadratic, or a monotone Lyapunov function for the fluid model. (iii) A perturbation of the relative value function for a workload relaxation gives rise to a myopic policy that is approximately average-cost optimal in heavy traffic, with logarithmic regret. The first results are obtained for a general Markovian network model. Asymptotic optimality is established for a general Markovian scheduling model with a single bottleneck, and homogeneous servers
Optimal Network Control in Partially-Controllable Networks
The effectiveness of many optimal network control algorithms (e.g.,
BackPressure) relies on the premise that all of the nodes are fully
controllable. However, these algorithms may yield poor performance in a
partially-controllable network where a subset of nodes are uncontrollable and
use some unknown policy. Such a partially-controllable model is of increasing
importance in real-world networked systems such as overlay-underlay networks.
In this paper, we design optimal network control algorithms that can stabilize
a partially-controllable network. We first study the scenario where
uncontrollable nodes use a queue-agnostic policy, and propose a low-complexity
throughput-optimal algorithm, called Tracking-MaxWeight (TMW), which enhances
the original MaxWeight algorithm with an explicit learning of the policy used
by uncontrollable nodes. Next, we investigate the scenario where uncontrollable
nodes use a queue-dependent policy and the problem is formulated as an MDP with
unknown queueing dynamics. We propose a new reinforcement learning algorithm,
called Truncated Upper Confidence Reinforcement Learning (TUCRL), and prove
that TUCRL achieves tunable three-way tradeoffs between throughput, delay and
convergence rate
Optimal resource allocation algorithms for cloud computing
Cloud computing is emerging as an important platform for business, personal and mobile computing applications. We consider a stochastic model of a cloud computing cluster, where jobs arrive according to a random process and request virtual machines (VMs), which are specified in terms of resources
such as CPU, memory and storage space. The jobs are first routed to one of the servers when they arrive and are queued at the servers. Each server then
chooses a set of jobs from its queues so that it has enough resources to serve all of them simultaneously.
There are many design issues associated with such systems. One important issue is the resource allocation problem, i.e., the design of algorithms for load
balancing among servers, and algorithms for scheduling VM configurations. Given our model of a cloud, we define its capacity, i.e., the maximum rates at which jobs can be processed in such a system. An algorithm is said
to be throughput-optimal if it can stabilize the system whenever the load is within the capacity region. We show that the widely-used Best-Fit scheduling
algorithm is not throughput-optimal.
We first consider the problem where the jobs need to be scheduled nonpreemptively on servers. Under the assumptions that the job sizes are known
and bounded, we present algorithms that achieve any arbitrary fraction of the capacity region of the cloud. We then relax these assumptions and present
a load balancing and scheduling algorithm that is throughput optimal when job sizes are unknown. In this case, job sizes (durations) are modeled as
random variables with possibly unbounded support.
Delay is a more important metric then throughput optimality in practice. However, analysis of delay of resource allocation algorithms is difficult, so we
study the system in the asymptotic limit as the load approaches the boundary of the capacity region. This limit is called the heavy traffic regime. Assuming
that the jobs can be preempted once after several time slots, we present delay optimal resource allocation algorithms in the heavy traffic regime. We study
delay performance of our algorithms through simulations
Concurrent Channel Probing and Data Transmission in Full-duplex MIMO Systems
An essential step for achieving multiplexing gain in MIMO downlink systems is
to collect accurate channel state information (CSI) from the users.
Traditionally, CSIs have to be collected before any data can be transmitted.
Such a sequential scheme incurs a large feedback overhead, which substantially
limits the multiplexing gain especially in a network with a large number of
users. In this paper, we propose a novel approach to mitigate the feedback
overhead by leveraging the recently developed Full-duplex radios. Our approach
is based on the key observation that using Full-duplex radios, when the
base-station (BS) is collecting CSI of one user through the uplink channel, it
can use the downlink channel to simultaneously transmit data to other
(non-interfering) users for which CSIs are already known. By allowing
concurrent channel probing and data transmission, our scheme can potentially
achieve a higher throughput compared to traditional schemes using Half-duplex
radios. The new flexibility introduced by our scheme, however, also leads to
fundamental challenges in achieving throughout optimal scheduling. In this
paper, we make an initial effort to this important problem by considering a
simplified group interference model. We develop a throughput optimal scheduling
policy with complexity , where is the number of users and
is the number of user groups. To further reduce the complexity, we propose a
greedy policy with complexity that not only achieves at least 2/3
of the optimal throughput region, but also outperforms any feasible Half-duplex
solutions. We derive the throughput gain offered by Full-duplex under different
system parameters and show the advantage of our algorithms through numerical
studies.Comment: Technical repor