18,694 research outputs found
Markov Decision Processes with Applications in Wireless Sensor Networks: A Survey
Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) consist of autonomous and resource-limited
devices. The devices cooperate to monitor one or more physical phenomena within
an area of interest. WSNs operate as stochastic systems because of randomness
in the monitored environments. For long service time and low maintenance cost,
WSNs require adaptive and robust methods to address data exchange, topology
formulation, resource and power optimization, sensing coverage and object
detection, and security challenges. In these problems, sensor nodes are to make
optimized decisions from a set of accessible strategies to achieve design
goals. This survey reviews numerous applications of the Markov decision process
(MDP) framework, a powerful decision-making tool to develop adaptive algorithms
and protocols for WSNs. Furthermore, various solution methods are discussed and
compared to serve as a guide for using MDPs in WSNs
A comprehensive literature classification of simulation optimisation methods
Simulation Optimization (SO) provides a structured approach to the system design and configuration when analytical expressions for input/output relationships are unavailable. Several excellent surveys have been written on this topic. Each survey concentrates on only few classification criteria. This paper presents a literature survey with all classification criteria on techniques for SO according to the problem of characteristics such as shape of the response surface (global as compared to local optimization), objective functions (single or multiple objectives) and parameter spaces (discrete or continuous parameters). The survey focuses specifically on the SO problem that involves single per-formance measureSimulation Optimization, classification methods, literature survey
Simulating the Software Development Lifecycle: The Waterfall Model
(1) Background: This study employs a simulation-based approach, adapting the
waterfall model, to provides estimates for projects and individual phase
completion times. Additionally, it pin-points potential efficiency issues
stemming from a suboptimal resource level. It further demonstrates how one can
go on to identify a resource level that effectively eliminates bottlenecks and
curtails the idle time of resources. (2) Methods: We implement our software
development lifecycle using SimPy, a discrete-event simulation framework
written in Python. Our model is executed on 100 projects of varying sizes over
three stages. The first, pre-optimization, provides insight based on the
initial set of resources. This is followed by the optimization stage, which
serves to identify the optimal number of resources to eliminate bottlenecks and
minimize idle time. The third stage, post-optimization, evaluates the resource
optimized model. (3) Results: The analysis of the simulation-generated data
reveals the presence of resource bottlenecks during the pre-optimization stage,
particularly in the implementation phase. These dissipate after optimization.
(4) Conclusions: The findings emphasize the advantage of using simulation as a
safe and effective way to experiment and plan for software development
projects. Such simulations also allow those man-aging software development
projects to make accurate, evidence-based projections as to phase and project
completion times and identify optimal resource levels and their interplay. In
particular, understanding the tradeoffs between experiencing delayed completion
times and procuring additional resources to alleviate any bottlenecks
Project scheduling under undertainty – survey and research potentials.
The vast majority of the research efforts in project scheduling assume complete information about the scheduling problem to be solved and a static deterministic environment within which the pre-computed baseline schedule will be executed. However, in the real world, project activities are subject to considerable uncertainty, that is gradually resolved during project execution. In this survey we review the fundamental approaches for scheduling under uncertainty: reactive scheduling, stochastic project scheduling, stochastic GERT network scheduling, fuzzy project scheduling, robust (proactive) scheduling and sensitivity analysis. We discuss the potentials of these approaches for scheduling projects under uncertainty.Management; Project management; Robustness; Scheduling; Stability;
Libra: An Economy driven Job Scheduling System for Clusters
Clusters of computers have emerged as mainstream parallel and distributed
platforms for high-performance, high-throughput and high-availability
computing. To enable effective resource management on clusters, numerous
cluster managements systems and schedulers have been designed. However, their
focus has essentially been on maximizing CPU performance, but not on improving
the value of utility delivered to the user and quality of services. This paper
presents a new computational economy driven scheduling system called Libra,
which has been designed to support allocation of resources based on the users?
quality of service (QoS) requirements. It is intended to work as an add-on to
the existing queuing and resource management system. The first version has been
implemented as a plugin scheduler to the PBS (Portable Batch System) system.
The scheduler offers market-based economy driven service for managing batch
jobs on clusters by scheduling CPU time according to user utility as determined
by their budget and deadline rather than system performance considerations. The
Libra scheduler ensures that both these constraints are met within an O(n)
run-time. The Libra scheduler has been simulated using the GridSim toolkit to
carry out a detailed performance analysis. Results show that the deadline and
budget based proportional resource allocation strategy improves the utility of
the system and user satisfaction as compared to system-centric scheduling
strategies.Comment: 13 page
Self-Evaluation Applied Mathematics 2003-2008 University of Twente
This report contains the self-study for the research assessment of the Department of Applied Mathematics (AM) of the Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science (EEMCS) at the University of Twente (UT). The report provides the information for the Research Assessment Committee for Applied Mathematics, dealing with mathematical sciences at the three universities of technology in the Netherlands. It describes the state of affairs pertaining to the period 1 January 2003 to 31 December 2008
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