93,397 research outputs found
A synthesis of logic and bio-inspired techniques in the design of dependable systems
Much of the development of model-based design and dependability analysis in the design of dependable systems, including software intensive systems, can be attributed to the application of advances in formal logic and its application to fault forecasting and verification of systems. In parallel, work on bio-inspired technologies has shown potential for the evolutionary design of engineering systems via automated exploration of potentially large design spaces. We have not yet seen the emergence of a design paradigm that effectively combines these two techniques, schematically founded on the two pillars of formal logic and biology, from the early stages of, and throughout, the design lifecycle. Such a design paradigm would apply these techniques synergistically and systematically to enable optimal refinement of new designs which can be driven effectively by dependability requirements. The paper sketches such a model-centric paradigm for the design of dependable systems, presented in the scope of the HiP-HOPS tool and technique, that brings these technologies together to realise their combined potential benefits. The paper begins by identifying current challenges in model-based safety assessment and then overviews the use of meta-heuristics at various stages of the design lifecycle covering topics that span from allocation of dependability requirements, through dependability analysis, to multi-objective optimisation of system architectures and maintenance schedules
A synthesis of logic and biology in the design of dependable systems
The technologies of model-based design and dependability analysis in the design of dependable systems, including software intensive systems, have advanced in recent years. Much of this development can be attributed to the application of advances in formal logic and its application to fault forecasting and verification of systems. In parallel, work on bio-inspired technologies has shown potential for the evolutionary design of engineering systems via automated exploration of potentially large design spaces. We have not yet seen the emergence of a design paradigm that combines effectively and throughout the design lifecycle these two techniques which are schematically founded on the two pillars of formal logic and biology. Such a design paradigm would apply these techniques synergistically and systematically from the early stages of design to enable optimal refinement of new designs which can be driven effectively by dependability requirements. The paper sketches such a model-centric paradigm for the design of dependable systems that brings these technologies together to realise their combined potential benefits
Learning and Management for Internet-of-Things: Accounting for Adaptivity and Scalability
Internet-of-Things (IoT) envisions an intelligent infrastructure of networked
smart devices offering task-specific monitoring and control services. The
unique features of IoT include extreme heterogeneity, massive number of
devices, and unpredictable dynamics partially due to human interaction. These
call for foundational innovations in network design and management. Ideally, it
should allow efficient adaptation to changing environments, and low-cost
implementation scalable to massive number of devices, subject to stringent
latency constraints. To this end, the overarching goal of this paper is to
outline a unified framework for online learning and management policies in IoT
through joint advances in communication, networking, learning, and
optimization. From the network architecture vantage point, the unified
framework leverages a promising fog architecture that enables smart devices to
have proximity access to cloud functionalities at the network edge, along the
cloud-to-things continuum. From the algorithmic perspective, key innovations
target online approaches adaptive to different degrees of nonstationarity in
IoT dynamics, and their scalable model-free implementation under limited
feedback that motivates blind or bandit approaches. The proposed framework
aspires to offer a stepping stone that leads to systematic designs and analysis
of task-specific learning and management schemes for IoT, along with a host of
new research directions to build on.Comment: Submitted on June 15 to Proceeding of IEEE Special Issue on Adaptive
and Scalable Communication Network
Reinforcement Learning Scheduler for Vehicle-to-Vehicle Communications Outside Coverage
Radio resources in vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) communication can be scheduled
either by a centralized scheduler residing in the network (e.g., a base station
in case of cellular systems) or a distributed scheduler, where the resources
are autonomously selected by the vehicles. The former approach yields a
considerably higher resource utilization in case the network coverage is
uninterrupted. However, in case of intermittent or out-of-coverage, due to not
having input from centralized scheduler, vehicles need to revert to distributed
scheduling. Motivated by recent advances in reinforcement learning (RL), we
investigate whether a centralized learning scheduler can be taught to
efficiently pre-assign the resources to vehicles for out-of-coverage V2V
communication. Specifically, we use the actor-critic RL algorithm to train the
centralized scheduler to provide non-interfering resources to vehicles before
they enter the out-of-coverage area. Our initial results show that a RL-based
scheduler can achieve performance as good as or better than the state-of-art
distributed scheduler, often outperforming it. Furthermore, the learning
process completes within a reasonable time (ranging from a few hundred to a few
thousand epochs), thus making the RL-based scheduler a promising solution for
V2V communications with intermittent network coverage.Comment: Article published in IEEE VNC 201
Bandit-Based Task Assignment for Heterogeneous Crowdsourcing
We consider a task assignment problem in crowdsourcing, which is aimed at
collecting as many reliable labels as possible within a limited budget. A
challenge in this scenario is how to cope with the diversity of tasks and the
task-dependent reliability of workers, e.g., a worker may be good at
recognizing the name of sports teams, but not be familiar with cosmetics
brands. We refer to this practical setting as heterogeneous crowdsourcing. In
this paper, we propose a contextual bandit formulation for task assignment in
heterogeneous crowdsourcing, which is able to deal with the
exploration-exploitation trade-off in worker selection. We also theoretically
investigate the regret bounds for the proposed method, and demonstrate its
practical usefulness experimentally
A Hierarchical Framework of Cloud Resource Allocation and Power Management Using Deep Reinforcement Learning
Automatic decision-making approaches, such as reinforcement learning (RL),
have been applied to (partially) solve the resource allocation problem
adaptively in the cloud computing system. However, a complete cloud resource
allocation framework exhibits high dimensions in state and action spaces, which
prohibit the usefulness of traditional RL techniques. In addition, high power
consumption has become one of the critical concerns in design and control of
cloud computing systems, which degrades system reliability and increases
cooling cost. An effective dynamic power management (DPM) policy should
minimize power consumption while maintaining performance degradation within an
acceptable level. Thus, a joint virtual machine (VM) resource allocation and
power management framework is critical to the overall cloud computing system.
Moreover, novel solution framework is necessary to address the even higher
dimensions in state and action spaces. In this paper, we propose a novel
hierarchical framework for solving the overall resource allocation and power
management problem in cloud computing systems. The proposed hierarchical
framework comprises a global tier for VM resource allocation to the servers and
a local tier for distributed power management of local servers. The emerging
deep reinforcement learning (DRL) technique, which can deal with complicated
control problems with large state space, is adopted to solve the global tier
problem. Furthermore, an autoencoder and a novel weight sharing structure are
adopted to handle the high-dimensional state space and accelerate the
convergence speed. On the other hand, the local tier of distributed server
power managements comprises an LSTM based workload predictor and a model-free
RL based power manager, operating in a distributed manner.Comment: accepted by 37th IEEE International Conference on Distributed
Computing (ICDCS 2017
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