615,398 research outputs found
Fair task allocation in transportation
Task allocation problems have traditionally focused on cost optimization.
However, more and more attention is being given to cases in which cost should
not always be the sole or major consideration. In this paper we study a fair
task allocation problem in transportation where an optimal allocation not only
has low cost but more importantly, it distributes tasks as even as possible
among heterogeneous participants who have different capacities and costs to
execute tasks. To tackle this fair minimum cost allocation problem we analyze
and solve it in two parts using two novel polynomial-time algorithms. We show
that despite the new fairness criterion, the proposed algorithms can solve the
fair minimum cost allocation problem optimally in polynomial time. In addition,
we conduct an extensive set of experiments to investigate the trade-off between
cost minimization and fairness. Our experimental results demonstrate the
benefit of factoring fairness into task allocation. Among the majority of test
instances, fairness comes with a very small price in terms of cost
Optimal flow through the disordered lattice
Consider routing traffic on the N x N torus, simultaneously between all
source-destination pairs, to minimize the cost , where f(e)
is the volume of flow across edge e and the c(e) form an i.i.d. random
environment. We prove existence of a rescaled limit constant for
minimum cost, by comparison with an appropriate analogous problem about
minimum-cost flows across a M x M subsquare of the lattice.Comment: Published at http://dx.doi.org/10.1214/009117906000000719 in the
Annals of Probability (http://www.imstat.org/aop/) by the Institute of
Mathematical Statistics (http://www.imstat.org
Distributed Flow Scheduling in an Unknown Environment
Flow scheduling tends to be one of the oldest and most stubborn problems in
networking. It becomes more crucial in the next generation network, due to fast
changing link states and tremendous cost to explore the global structure. In
such situation, distributed algorithms often dominate. In this paper, we design
a distributed virtual game to solve the flow scheduling problem and then
generalize it to situations of unknown environment, where online learning
schemes are utilized. In the virtual game, we use incentives to stimulate
selfish users to reach a Nash Equilibrium Point which is valid based on the
analysis of the `Price of Anarchy'. In the unknown-environment generalization,
our ultimate goal is the minimization of cost in the long run. In order to
achieve balance between exploration of routing cost and exploitation based on
limited information, we model this problem based on Multi-armed Bandit Scenario
and combined newly proposed DSEE with the virtual game design. Armed with these
powerful tools, we find a totally distributed algorithm to ensure the
logarithmic growing of regret with time, which is optimum in classic
Multi-armed Bandit Problem. Theoretical proof and simulation results both
affirm this claim. To our knowledge, this is the first research to combine
multi-armed bandit with distributed flow scheduling.Comment: 10 pages, 3 figures, conferenc
A Linear Network Code Construction for General Integer Connections Based on the Constraint Satisfaction Problem
The problem of finding network codes for general connections is inherently
difficult in capacity constrained networks. Resource minimization for general
connections with network coding is further complicated. Existing methods for
identifying solutions mainly rely on highly restricted classes of network
codes, and are almost all centralized. In this paper, we introduce linear
network mixing coefficients for code constructions of general connections that
generalize random linear network coding (RLNC) for multicast connections. For
such code constructions, we pose the problem of cost minimization for the
subgraph involved in the coding solution and relate this minimization to a
path-based Constraint Satisfaction Problem (CSP) and an edge-based CSP. While
CSPs are NP-complete in general, we present a path-based probabilistic
distributed algorithm and an edge-based probabilistic distributed algorithm
with almost sure convergence in finite time by applying Communication Free
Learning (CFL). Our approach allows fairly general coding across flows,
guarantees no greater cost than routing, and shows a possible distributed
implementation. Numerical results illustrate the performance improvement of our
approach over existing methods.Comment: submitted to TON (conference version published at IEEE GLOBECOM 2015
Optimal design of water distribution systems based on entropy and topology
A new multi-objective evolutionary optimization approach for joint topology and pipe size design of water distribution systems is presented. The algorithm proposed considers simultaneously the adequacy of flow and pressure at the demand nodes; the initial construction cost; the network topology; and a measure of hydraulic capacity reliability. The optimization procedure is based on a general measure of hydraulic performance that combines statistical entropy, network connectivity and hydraulic feasibility. The topological properties of the solutions are accounted for and arbitrary assumptions regarding the quality of infeasible solutions are not applied. In other words, both feasible and infeasible solutions participate in the evolutionary processes; solutions survive and reproduce or perish strictly according to their Pareto-optimality. Removing artificial barriers in this way frees the algorithm to evolve optimal solutions quickly. Furthermore, any redundant binary codes that result from crossover or mutation are eliminated gradually in a seamless and generic way that avoids the arbitrary loss of potentially useful genetic material and preserves the quality of the information that is transmitted from one generation to the next. The approach proposed is entirely generic: we have not introduced any additional parameters that require calibration on a case-by-case basis. Detailed and extensive results for two test problems are included that suggest the approach is highly effective. In general, the frontier-optimal solutions achieved include topologies that are fully branched, partially- and fully-looped and, for networks with multiple sources, completely separate sub-networks
Synchronization in Weighted Uncorrelated Complex Networks in a Noisy Environment: Optimization and Connections with Transport Efficiency
Motivated by synchronization problems in noisy environments, we study the
Edwards-Wilkinson process on weighted uncorrelated scale-free networks. We
consider a specific form of the weights, where the strength (and the associated
cost) of a link is proportional to with and
being the degrees of the nodes connected by the link. Subject to the
constraint that the total network cost is fixed, we find that in the mean-field
approximation on uncorrelated scale-free graphs, synchronization is optimal at
-1. Numerical results, based on exact numerical diagonalization
of the corresponding network Laplacian, confirm the mean-field results, with
small corrections to the optimal value of . Employing our recent
connections between the Edwards-Wilkinson process and resistor networks, and
some well-known connections between random walks and resistor networks, we also
pursue a naturally related problem of optimizing performance in queue-limited
communication networks utilizing local weighted routing schemes.Comment: Papers on related research can be found at
http://www.rpi.edu/~korniss/Research
Graphical Models for Optimal Power Flow
Optimal power flow (OPF) is the central optimization problem in electric
power grids. Although solved routinely in the course of power grid operations,
it is known to be strongly NP-hard in general, and weakly NP-hard over tree
networks. In this paper, we formulate the optimal power flow problem over tree
networks as an inference problem over a tree-structured graphical model where
the nodal variables are low-dimensional vectors. We adapt the standard dynamic
programming algorithm for inference over a tree-structured graphical model to
the OPF problem. Combining this with an interval discretization of the nodal
variables, we develop an approximation algorithm for the OPF problem. Further,
we use techniques from constraint programming (CP) to perform interval
computations and adaptive bound propagation to obtain practically efficient
algorithms. Compared to previous algorithms that solve OPF with optimality
guarantees using convex relaxations, our approach is able to work for arbitrary
distribution networks and handle mixed-integer optimization problems. Further,
it can be implemented in a distributed message-passing fashion that is scalable
and is suitable for "smart grid" applications like control of distributed
energy resources. We evaluate our technique numerically on several benchmark
networks and show that practical OPF problems can be solved effectively using
this approach.Comment: To appear in Proceedings of the 22nd International Conference on
Principles and Practice of Constraint Programming (CP 2016
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