Arc routing problems: A review of the past, present, and future

[EN] Arc routing problems (ARPs) are defined and introduced. Following a brief history of developments in this area of research, different types of ARPs are described that are currently relevant for study. In addition, particular features of ARPs that are important from a theoretical or practical point of view are discussed. A section on applications describes some of the changes that have occurred from early applications of ARP models to the present day and points the way to emerging topics for study. A final section provides information on libraries and instance repositories for ARPs. The review concludes with some perspectives on future research developments and opportunities for emerging applicationsThis research was supported by the Ministerio de Economia y Competitividad and Fondo Europeo de Desarrollo Regional, Grant/Award Number: PGC2018-099428-B-I00. The Research Council of Norway, Grant/Award Numbers: 246825/O70 (DynamITe), 263031/O70 (AXIOM).Corberán, Á.; Eglese, R.; Hasle, G.; Plana, I.; Sanchís Llopis, JM. (2021). Arc routing problems: A review of the past, present, and future. Networks. 77(1):88-115. https://doi.org/10.1002/net.21965S8811577

Drone Base Station Trajectory Management for Optimal Scheduling in LTE-Based Sparse Delay-Sensitive M2M Networks

Providing connectivity in areas out of reach of the cellular infrastructure is a very active area of research. This connectivity is particularly needed in case of the deployment of machine type communication devices (MTCDs) for critical purposes such as homeland security. In such applications, MTCDs are deployed in areas that are hard to reach using regular communications infrastructure while the collected data is timely critical. Drone-supported communications constitute a new trend in complementing the reach of the terrestrial communication infrastructure. In this study, drones are used as base stations to provide real-time communication services to gather critical data out of a group of MTCDs that are sparsely deployed in a marine environment. Studying different communication technologies as LTE, WiFi, LPWAN and Free-Space Optical communication (FSOC) incorporated with the drone communications was important in the first phase of this research to identify the best candidate for addressing this need. We have determined the cellular technology, and particularly LTE, to be the most suitable candidate to support such applications. In this case, an LTE base station would be mounted on the drone which will help communicate with the different MTCDs to transmit their data to the network backhaul. We then formulate the problem model mathematically and devise the trajectory planning and scheduling algorithm that decides the drone path and the resulting scheduling. Based on this formulation, we decided to compare between an Ant Colony Optimization (ACO) based technique that optimizes the drone movement among the sparsely-deployed MTCDs and a Genetic Algorithm (GA) based solution that achieves the same purpose. This optimization is based on minimizing the energy cost of the drone movement while ensuring the data transmission deadline missing is minimized. We present the results of several simulation experiments that validate the different performance aspects of the technique

Application of Integer Programming for Mine Evacuation Modeling with Multiple Transportation Modes

The safe evacuation of miners during an emergency within the shortest possible time is very important for the success of a mine evacuation program. Despite developments in the field of mine evacuation, little research has been done on the use of mine vehicles during evacuation. Current research into mine evacuation has emphasized on miner evacuation by foot. Mathematical formulations such as Minimum Cost Network Flow (MCNF) models, Ant Colony algorithms, and shortest path algorithms including Dijkstra's algorithm and Floyd-Warshall algorithm have been used to achieve this. These models, which concentrate on determining the shortest escape routes during evacuation, have been found to be computationally expensive with expanding problem sizes and parameter ranges or they may not offer the best possible solutions.An ideal evacuation route for each miner must be determined considering the available mine vehicles, locations of miners, safe havens such as refuge chambers, and fresh-air bases. This research sought to minimize the total evacuation cost as a function of the evacuation time required during an emergency while simultaneously helping to reduce the risk of exposure of the miners to harmful conditions during the evacuation by leveraging the use of available mine vehicles. A case study on the Turquoise Ridge Underground Mine (Nevada Gold Mines) was conducted to validate the Integer Programming (IP) model. Statistical analysis of the IP model in comparison with a benchmark MCNF model proved that leveraging the use of mine vehicles during an emergency can further reduce the total evacuation time. A cost-savings analysis was made for the IP model, and it was found that the time saved during evacuation, by utilizing the IP model, increased linearly, with an increase in the number of miners present at the time of evacuation

Networks, Communication, and Computing Vol. 2

Networks, communications, and computing have become ubiquitous and inseparable parts of everyday life. This book is based on a Special Issue of the Algorithms journal, and it is devoted to the exploration of the many-faceted relationship of networks, communications, and computing. The included papers explore the current state-of-the-art research in these areas, with a particular interest in the interactions among the fields

ANTMANET: a novel routing protocol for mobile ad-hoc networks based on ant colony optimisation

The core aim of this research is to present “ANTMANET” a novel routing protocol for Mobile Ad-Hoc networks. The proposed protocol aims to reduce the network overhead and delay introduced by node mobility in MANETs. There are two techniques embedded in this protocol, the “Local Zone” technique and the “North Neighbour” Table. They take an advantage of the fact that the nodes can obtain their location information by any means to reduce the network overhead during the route discovery phase and reduced the size of the routing table to guarantee faster convergence. ANTMANET is a hybrid Ant Colony Optimisation-based (ACO) routing protocol. ACO is a Swarm Intelligence (SI) routing algorithm that is well known for its high-quality performance compared to other distributed routing algorithms such as Link State and Distance Vector. ANTMANET has been benchmarked in various scenarios against the ACO routing protocol ANTHOCNET and several standard routing protocols including the Ad-Hoc On-Demand Distance Vector (AODV), Landmark Ad-Hoc Routing (LANMAR), and Dynamic MANET on Demand (DYMO). Performance metrics such as overhead, end-to-end delay, throughputs and jitter were used to evaluate ANTMANET performance. Experiments were performed using the QualNet simulator. A benchmark test was conducted to evaluate the performance of an ANTMANET network against an ANTHOCNET network, with both protocols benchmarked against AODV as an established MANET protocol. ANTMANET has demonstrated a notable performance edge when the core algorithm has been optimised using the novel adaptation method that is proposed in this thesis. Based on the simulation results, the proposed protocol has shown 5% less End-to-End delay than ANTHOCNET. In regard to network overhead, the proposed protocol has shown 20% less overhead than ANTHOCNET. In terms of comparative throughputs ANTMANET in its finest performance has delivered 25% more packets than ANTHOCNET. The overall validation results indicate that the proposed protocol was successful in reducing the network overhead and delay in high and low mobility speeds when compared with the AODV, DMO and LANMAR protocols. ANTMANET achieved at least a 45% less delay than AODV, 60% less delay than DYMO and 55% less delay than LANMAR. In terms of throughputs; ANTMANET in its best performance has delivered 35% more packets than AODV, 40% more than DYMO and 45% more than LANMAR. With respect to the network overhead results, ANTMANET has illustrated 65% less overhead than AODV, 70% less than DYMO and 60 % less than LANMAR. Regarding the Jitter, ANTMANET at its best has shown 60% less jitter than AODV, 55% jitter less than DYMO and 50% less jitter than LANMAR

Controlling the mobility and enhancing the performance of multiple message ferries in delay tolerant networks

In einem drahtlosen Netzwerk mit isolierten und stationären Knoten können Adhoc und verzögerungstolerante Netzwerk Routing-Protokolle nicht verwendet werden. Message Ferry Netzwerke sind die Lösung für diese Fälle, in denen ein (oder mehrere) Message Ferry Knoten den store-carry-forward Mechanismus verwendet und zwischen den Knoten reist, um Nachrichten auszutauschen. In diesem Fall erfahren die Nachrichten für gewöhnlich eine lange Verzögerung. Um die Performance der Message Ferry Netzwerke zu verbessern, kann die Mobilität der Message Ferry Knoten gesteuert werden. In dieser Doktorarbeit werden zwei Strategien zur Steuerung der Mobilität der Message Ferry Knoten studiert. Die Strategien sind das on-the-fly Entscheidungsverfahren in Ferry Knoten und die offline Wegplanung für Ferry Knoten. Für die on-the-fly Strategie untersucht diese Arbeit Decision-maker in Ferry Knoten, der die Entscheidung auf Grundlage der lokalen Observation eines Ferry Knoten trifft. Zur Koordinierung mehrerer Ferry Knoten, die keine globale Kenntnis über das Netzwerk haben, wird eine indirekte Signalisierung zwischen Ferry Knoten vorgeschlagen. Zur Kooperation der Ferry Knoten für die Zustellung der Nachrichten werden einige Ansätze zum Nachrichtenaustausch zwischen Ferry Knoten vorgeschlagen, in denen der Decision-maker eines Ferry Knotens seine Information mit dem verzögerungstoleranten Router des Ferry Knoten teilt, um die Effizienz des Nachrichtenaustauschs zwischen Ferry Knoten zu verbessern. Umfangreiche Simulationsstudien werden zur Untersuchung der vorgeschlagenen Ansätze und des Einflusses verschiedener Nachrichtenverkehrsszenarien vorgenommen. Außerdem werden verschiedene Szenarien mit unterschiedlicher Anzahl von Ferry Knoten, verschiedener Geschwindigkeit der Ferry Knoten und verschiedener Ansätze zum Nachrichtenaustausch zwischen Ferry Knoten studiert. Zur Evaluierung der offline Wegplanungsstrategie wird das Problem als Multiple Traveling Salesmen Problem (mTSP) modelliert und ein genetischer Algorithmus zur Approximation der Lösung verwendet. Es werden verschiedene Netzwerkarchitekturen zur Pfadplanung der Ferry Knoten vorgestellt und studiert. Schließlich werden die Strategien zur Steuerung der Mobilität der Ferry Knoten verglichen. Die Ergebnisse zeigen, dass die Performance der Strategien in Bezug auf die Ende-zu-Ende-Verzögerung von dem Szenario des Nachrichtenverkehrs abhängt. In Szenarien, wie Nachrichtenverkehr in Sensor-Netzwerken, in denen ein Knoten die Nachrichten zu allen anderen Knoten sendet oder von allen anderen Knoten empfängt, zeigt die offline Wegplanung, basierend auf der mTSP Lösung, bessere Performance als die on-the-fly Strategie. Andererseits ist die on-the-fly Stratgie eine bessere Wahl in Szenarien wie Nachrichtenaustausch zwischen Rettungskräften während einer Katastrophe, in denen alle drahtlose Knoten die Nachrichten austauschen müssen. Zudem ist die on-the-fly Strategie flexibler, robuster als offline Wegplanung und benötigt keine Initialisierungszeit.In a wireless network with isolated and stationary nodes, ad hoc and delay tolerant routing approaches fail to deliver messages. Message ferry networks are the solution for such networks where one or multiple mobile nodes, i.e. message ferry, apply the store-carry-forward mechanism and travel between nodes to exchange their messages. Messages usually experience a long delivery delay in this type of network. To improve the performance of message ferry networks, the mobility of ferries can be controlled. In this thesis, two main strategies to control mobility of multiple message ferries are studied. The strategies are the on-the-fly mobility decision making in ferries and the offline path planning for ferries. To apply the on-the-fly strategy, this work proposes a decision maker in ferries which makes mobility decisions based on the local observations of ferries. To coordinate multiple ferries, which have no global view from the network, an indirect signaling of ferries is proposed. For cooperation of ferries in message delivery, message forwarding and replication schemes are proposed where the mobility decision maker shares its information with the delay tolerant router of ferries to improve the efficiency of message exchange between ferries. An extensive simulation study is performed to investigate the performance of the proposed schemes and the impact of different traffic scenarios in a network. Moreover, different scenarios with different number of ferries, different speed of ferries and different message exchange approaches between ferries are studied. To study the offline path planning strategy, the problem is modeled as multiple traveling salesmen problem (mTSP) and a genetic algorithm is applied to approximate the solution. Different network architectures are proposed and studied where the path of ferries are planned in advance. Finally, the strategies to control the mobility of ferries are compared. The results show that the performance of each strategy, in terms of the average end-to-end delay of messages, depends on the traffic scenario in a network. In traffic scenarios same as the traffic in sensor networks, where only a single node generates messages to all nodes or receives messages from all node, the offline path planning based on mTSP solution performs better than the on-the-fly decision making. On the other hand, in traffic scenarios same as the traffic in disaster scenarios, where all nodes in a network may send and receive messages, the on-the-fly decision making provides a better performance. Moreover, the on-thy-fly decision making is always more flexible, more robust and does not need any initialization time

Recent Trends in Communication Networks

In recent years there has been many developments in communication technology. This has greatly enhanced the computing power of small handheld resource-constrained mobile devices. Different generations of communication technology have evolved. This had led to new research for communication of large volumes of data in different transmission media and the design of different communication protocols. Another direction of research concerns the secure and error-free communication between the sender and receiver despite the risk of the presence of an eavesdropper. For the communication requirement of a huge amount of multimedia streaming data, a lot of research has been carried out in the design of proper overlay networks. The book addresses new research techniques that have evolved to handle these challenges

Mobile Ad-Hoc Networks

Being infrastructure-less and without central administration control, wireless ad-hoc networking is playing a more and more important role in extending the coverage of traditional wireless infrastructure (cellular networks, wireless LAN, etc). This book includes state-of the-art techniques and solutions for wireless ad-hoc networks. It focuses on the following topics in ad-hoc networks: vehicular ad-hoc networks, security and caching, TCP in ad-hoc networks and emerging applications. It is targeted to provide network engineers and researchers with design guidelines for large scale wireless ad hoc networks

Advanced Signal Processing Techniques Applied to Power Systems Control and Analysis

The work published in this book is related to the application of advanced signal processing in smart grids, including power quality, data management, stability and economic management in presence of renewable energy sources, energy storage systems, and electric vehicles. The distinct architecture of smart grids has prompted investigations into the use of advanced algorithms combined with signal processing methods to provide optimal results. The presented applications are focused on data management with cloud computing, power quality assessment, photovoltaic power plant control, and electrical vehicle charge stations, all supported by modern AI-based optimization methods