12,501 research outputs found
Transforming Energy Networks via Peer to Peer Energy Trading: Potential of Game Theoretic Approaches
Peer-to-peer (P2P) energy trading has emerged as a next-generation energy
management mechanism for the smart grid that enables each prosumer of the
network to participate in energy trading with one another and the grid. This
poses a significant challenge in terms of modeling the decision-making process
of each participant with conflicting interest and motivating prosumers to
participate in energy trading and to cooperate, if necessary, for achieving
different energy management goals. Therefore, such decision-making process
needs to be built on solid mathematical and signal processing tools that can
ensure an efficient operation of the smart grid. This paper provides an
overview of the use of game theoretic approaches for P2P energy trading as a
feasible and effective means of energy management. As such, we discuss various
games and auction theoretic approaches by following a systematic classification
to provide information on the importance of game theory for smart energy
research. Then, the paper focuses on the P2P energy trading describing its key
features and giving an introduction to an existing P2P testbed. Further, the
paper zooms into the detail of some specific game and auction theoretic models
that have recently been used in P2P energy trading and discusses some important
finding of these schemes.Comment: 38 pages, single column, double spac
The river sharing problem: A review of the technical literature for policy economists
Water is essential for life. However, the basic problem of water resource allocation has been that water tends to be over-allocated. Demand for water exceeds the available supply. Essentially, the water economy is bankrupt. Bankruptcy problems have been almost exhaustively studied in the literature on economic theory-primarily from the perspective of cooperative game theory. The main concern of this literature has been how to fairly divide up the assets of a bankrupt entity. In water resource economics cooperative game theory has often been employed as a means of analyzing water resource allocation. It was only recently that the problem of directional flow was incorporated into such analyses. This has come to be known as the “river sharing problem” in the theoretical literature. Accounting for the direction of flow in water resource allocation problems has profound implications for policies that wish to facilitate both fair and efficient water allocations. This is the case whether proposed policies are interventionist or market based in nature. There is now a considerable literature on the allocation and distribution of water resources characterized by unidirectional flow. In this paper I critically review and appraise this literature with a view to making it more accessible to applied and policy economists. A key feature of the paper is that the connection between the bankruptcy literature, which has recently also realized the importance of flow, and the river sharing literature is discussed. The current state of the art in game theoretic models of water resource allocation with directional flow is discussed and implications and consequences for water resource policy highlightedRiver sharing problem, Bankruptcy, Cooperative game theory, Water resouyrce allocation, distributive justice
On Money as a Means of Coordination between Network Packets
In this work, we apply a common economic tool, namely money, to coordinate
network packets. In particular, we present a network economy, called
PacketEconomy, where each flow is modeled as a population of rational network
packets, and these packets can self-regulate their access to network resources
by mutually trading their positions in router queues. Every packet of the
economy has its price, and this price determines if and when the packet will
agree to buy or sell a better position. We consider a corresponding Markov
model of trade and show that there are Nash equilibria (NE) where queue
positions and money are exchanged directly between the network packets. This
simple approach, interestingly, delivers improvements even when fiat money is
used. We present theoretical arguments and experimental results to support our
claims
Fair non-monetary scheduling in federated clouds
In a hybrid cloud, individual cloud service providers (CSPs) often have
incentive to use each other's resources to off-load peak loads or place load
closer to the end user. However, CSPs have to keep track of contributions and
gains in order to disincentivize long-term free-riding. We show CloudShare, a
distributed version of a load balancing algorithm DirectCloud based on the
Shapley value---a powerful fairness concept from game theory. CloudShare
coordinates CSPs by a ZooKeeper-based coordination layer; each CSP runs a
broker that interacts with local resources (such as Kubernetes-managed
clusters). We quantitatively evaluate our implementation by simulation. The
results confirm that CloudShare generates on the average more fair schedules
than the popular FairShare algorithm. We believe our results show an viable
alternative to monetary methods based on, e.g., spot markets.Comment: Accepted to CrossCloud'18: 5th Workshop on CrossCloud Infrastructures
& Platform
Co-primary inter-operator spectrum sharing over a limited spectrum pool using repeated games
We consider two small cell operators deployed in the same geographical area,
sharing spectrum resources from a common pool. A method is investigated to
coordinate the utilization of the spectrum pool without monetary transactions
and without revealing operator-specific information to other parties. For this,
we construct a protocol based on asking and receiving spectrum usage favors by
the operators, and keeping a book of the favors. A spectrum usage favor is
exchanged between the operators if one is asking for a permission to use some
of the resources from the pool on an exclusive basis, and the other is willing
to accept that. As a result, the proposed method does not force an operator to
take action. An operator with a high load may take spectrum usage favors from
an operator that has few users to serve, and it is likely to return these
favors in the future to show a cooperative spirit and maintain reciprocity. We
formulate the interactions between the operators as a repeated game and
determine rules to decide whether to ask or grant a favor at each stage game.
We illustrate that under frequent network load variations, which are expected
to be prominent in small cell deployments, both operators can attain higher
user rates as compared to the case of no coordination of the resource
utilization.Comment: To be published in proceedings of IEEE International Conference on
Communications (ICC) at London, Jun. 201
On Scheduling Fees to Prevent Merging, Splitting and Transferring of Jobs
A deterministic server is shared by users with identical linear waiting costs, requesting jobs of arbitrary lengths. Shortest jobs are served first for efficiency. The server can monitor the length of a job, but not the identity of its user, thus merging, splitting or partially transferring jobs offer cooperative strategic opportunities. Can we design cash transfers to neutralize such manipulations? We prove that merge-proofness and split-proofness are not compatible, and that it is similarly impossible to prevent all transfers of jobs involving three agents or more. On the other hand, robustness against pair-wise transfers is feasible, and essentially characterize a one-dimensional set of scheduling methods. This line is borne by two outstanding methods, the merge-proof S+ and the split-proof S?. Splitproofness, unlike Mergeproofness, is not compatible with several simple tests of equity. Thus the two properties are far from equally demanding.
Considering Human Aspects on Strategies for Designing and Managing Distributed Human Computation
A human computation system can be viewed as a distributed system in which the
processors are humans, called workers. Such systems harness the cognitive power
of a group of workers connected to the Internet to execute relatively simple
tasks, whose solutions, once grouped, solve a problem that systems equipped
with only machines could not solve satisfactorily. Examples of such systems are
Amazon Mechanical Turk and the Zooniverse platform. A human computation
application comprises a group of tasks, each of them can be performed by one
worker. Tasks might have dependencies among each other. In this study, we
propose a theoretical framework to analyze such type of application from a
distributed systems point of view. Our framework is established on three
dimensions that represent different perspectives in which human computation
applications can be approached: quality-of-service requirements, design and
management strategies, and human aspects. By using this framework, we review
human computation in the perspective of programmers seeking to improve the
design of human computation applications and managers seeking to increase the
effectiveness of human computation infrastructures in running such
applications. In doing so, besides integrating and organizing what has been
done in this direction, we also put into perspective the fact that the human
aspects of the workers in such systems introduce new challenges in terms of,
for example, task assignment, dependency management, and fault prevention and
tolerance. We discuss how they are related to distributed systems and other
areas of knowledge.Comment: 3 figures, 1 tabl
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