Multiple Route Generation Using Simulated Niche Based Particle Swarm Optimization

This research presents an optimization technique for multiple routes generation using simulated niche based particle swarm optimization for dynamic online route planning, optimization of the routes and proved to be an effective technique. It effectively deals with route planning in dynamic and unknown environments cluttered with obstacles and objects. A simulated niche based particle swarm optimization (SN-PSO) is proposed using modified particle swarm optimization algorithm for dealing with online route planning and is tested for randomly generated environments, obstacle ratio, grid sizes, and complex environments. The conventional techniques perform well in simple and less cluttered environments while their performance degrades with large and complex environments. The SN-PSO generates and optimizes multiple routes in complex and large environments with constraints. The traditional route optimization techniques focus on good solutions only and do not exploit the solution space completely. The SN-PSO is proved to be an efficient technique for providing safe, short, and feasible routes under dynamic constraints. The efficiency of the SN-PSO is tested in a mine field simulation with different environment configurations and successfully generates multiple feasible routes

Online Optimization in Dynamic Environments: A Regret Analysis for Sparse Problems

Time-varying systems are a challenge in many scientific and engineering areas. Usually, estimation of time-varying parameters or signals must be performed online, which calls for the development of responsive online algorithms. In this paper, we consider this problem in the context of the sparse optimization; specifically, we consider the Elastic-net model. Following the rationale in [1], we propose a novel online algorithm and we theoretically prove that it is successful in terms of dynamic regret. We then show an application to recursive identification of time-varying autoregressive models, in the case when the number of parameters to be estimated is unknown. Numerical results show the practical efficiency of the proposed method

Run Time Approximation of Non-blocking Service Rates for Streaming Systems

Stream processing is a compute paradigm that promises safe and efficient parallelism. Modern big-data problems are often well suited for stream processing's throughput-oriented nature. Realization of efficient stream processing requires monitoring and optimization of multiple communications links. Most techniques to optimize these links use queueing network models or network flow models, which require some idea of the actual execution rate of each independent compute kernel within the system. What we want to know is how fast can each kernel process data independent of other communicating kernels. This is known as the "service rate" of the kernel within the queueing literature. Current approaches to divining service rates are static. Modern workloads, however, are often dynamic. Shared cloud systems also present applications with highly dynamic execution environments (multiple users, hardware migration, etc.). It is therefore desirable to continuously re-tune an application during run time (online) in response to changing conditions. Our approach enables online service rate monitoring under most conditions, obviating the need for reliance on steady state predictions for what are probably non-steady state phenomena. First, some of the difficulties associated with online service rate determination are examined. Second, the algorithm to approximate the online non-blocking service rate is described. Lastly, the algorithm is implemented within the open source RaftLib framework for validation using a simple microbenchmark as well as two full streaming applications.Comment: technical repor

Mechanism design for decentralized online machine scheduling

Traditional optimization models assume a central decision maker who optimizes a global system performance measure. However, problem data is often distributed among several agents, and agents take autonomous decisions. This gives incentives for strategic behavior of agents, possibly leading to sub-optimal system performance. Furthermore, in dynamic environments, machines are locally dispersed and administratively independent. Examples are found both in business and engineering applications. We investigate such issues for a parallel machine scheduling model where jobs arrive online over time. Instead of centrally assigning jobs to machines, each machine implements a local sequencing rule and jobs decide for machines themselves. In this context, we introduce the concept of a myopic best response equilibrium, a concept weaker than the classical dominant strategy equilibrium, but appropriate for online problems. Our main result is a polynomial time, online mechanism that |assuming rational behavior of jobs| results in an equilibrium schedule that is 3.281-competitive with respect to the maximal social welfare. This is only lightly worse than state-of-the-art algorithms with central coordination

Online Convex Optimization and Predictive Control in Dynamic Environments

We study the performance of an online learner under a framework in which it receives partial information from a dynamic, and potentially adversarial, environment at discrete time steps. The goal of this learner is to minimize the sum of costs incurred at each time step and its performance is compared against an offline learner with perfect information of the environment. We are interested in the scenarios where, in addition to some costs at each time step, there are some penalties or constraints on the learner's successive decisions. In the first part of this thesis, we investigate a Smoothed Online Convex Optimization (SOCO) setting where the cost functions are strongly convex and the learner pays a squared ℓ₂ movement cost for changing decision between time steps. We shall present a lower bound on the competitive ratio of any online learner in this setting and show a series of algorithmic ideas that lead to an optimal algorithm matching this lower bound. And in the second part of this thesis, we investigate a predictive control problem where the costs are well-conditioned and the learner's decisions are constrained by a linear time-varying (LTV) dynamics but has exact prediction on the dynamics, costs and disturbances for the next k time steps. We shall discuss a novel reduction from this LTV control problem to the aforementioned SOCO problem and use this to achieve a dynamic regret of O(λkT) and a competitive ratio of 1 + O(λk) for some positive constant λ &#60; 1.</p

Dynamic Rate and Channel Selection in Cognitive Radio Systems

In this paper, we investigate dynamic channel and rate selection in cognitive radio systems which exploit a large number of channels free from primary users. In such systems, transmitters may rapidly change the selected (channel, rate) pair to opportunistically learn and track the pair offering the highest throughput. We formulate the problem of sequential channel and rate selection as an online optimization problem, and show its equivalence to a {\it structured} Multi-Armed Bandit problem. The structure stems from inherent properties of the achieved throughput as a function of the selected channel and rate. We derive fundamental performance limits satisfied by {\it any} channel and rate adaptation algorithm, and propose algorithms that achieve (or approach) these limits. In turn, the proposed algorithms optimally exploit the inherent structure of the throughput. We illustrate the efficiency of our algorithms using both test-bed and simulation experiments, in both stationary and non-stationary radio environments. In stationary environments, the packet successful transmission probabilities at the various channel and rate pairs do not evolve over time, whereas in non-stationary environments, they may evolve. In practical scenarios, the proposed algorithms are able to track the best channel and rate quite accurately without the need of any explicit measurement and feedback of the quality of the various channels.Comment: 19 page