17,512 research outputs found
Exchange of Services in Networks: Competition, Cooperation, and Fairness
Exchange of services and resources in, or over, networks is attracting
nowadays renewed interest. However, despite the broad applicability and the
extensive study of such models, e.g., in the context of P2P networks, many
fundamental questions regarding their properties and efficiency remain
unanswered. We consider such a service exchange model and analyze the users'
interactions under three different approaches. First, we study a centrally
designed service allocation policy that yields the fair total service each user
should receive based on the service it others to the others. Accordingly, we
consider a competitive market where each user determines selfishly its
allocation policy so as to maximize the service it receives in return, and a
coalitional game model where users are allowed to coordinate their policies. We
prove that there is a unique equilibrium exchange allocation for both game
theoretic formulations, which also coincides with the central fair service
allocation. Furthermore, we characterize its properties in terms of the
coalitions that emerge and the equilibrium allocations, and analyze its
dependency on the underlying network graph. That servicing policy is the
natural reference point to the various mechanisms that are currently proposed
to incentivize user participation and improve the efficiency of such networked
service (or, resource) exchange markets.Comment: to appear in ACM Sigmetrics 201
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Exploring continuous organisational transformation as a form of network interdependence
In this paper we examine the problematic area of continuous transformation. We conduct our analysis from three theoretical perspectives: the resource based view, social network theory, and stakeholder theory. We found that the continuous transformation can be explained through the concept of Network Interdependence. This paper describes Network Interdependence and develops theoretical propositions from a synthesis of the three theories. Our contribution of Network Interdependence offers fresh insights into managing complex change and offers new ways of looking at organisational transformation
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A survey of simulation techniques in commerce and defence
Despite the developments in Modelling and Simulation (M&S) tools and techniques over the past years, there has been a gap in the M&S research and practice in healthcare on developing a toolkit to assist the modellers and simulation practitioners with selecting an appropriate set of techniques. This study is a preliminary step towards this goal. This paper presents some results from a systematic literature survey on applications of M&S in the commerce and defence domains that could inspire some improvements in the healthcare. Interim results show that in the commercial sector Discrete-Event Simulation (DES) has been the most widely used technique with System Dynamics (SD) in second place. However in the defence sector, SD has gained relatively more attention. SD has been found quite useful for qualitative and soft factors analysis. From both the surveys it becomes clear that there is a growing trend towards using hybrid M&S approaches
Mean-Field-Type Games in Engineering
A mean-field-type game is a game in which the instantaneous payoffs and/or
the state dynamics functions involve not only the state and the action profile
but also the joint distributions of state-action pairs. This article presents
some engineering applications of mean-field-type games including road traffic
networks, multi-level building evacuation, millimeter wave wireless
communications, distributed power networks, virus spread over networks, virtual
machine resource management in cloud networks, synchronization of oscillators,
energy-efficient buildings, online meeting and mobile crowdsensing.Comment: 84 pages, 24 figures, 183 references. to appear in AIMS 201
Elastic Multi-resource Network Slicing: Can Protection Lead to Improved Performance?
In order to meet the performance/privacy requirements of future
data-intensive mobile applications, e.g., self-driving cars, mobile data
analytics, and AR/VR, service providers are expected to draw on shared
storage/computation/connectivity resources at the network "edge". To be
cost-effective, a key functional requirement for such infrastructure is
enabling the sharing of heterogeneous resources amongst tenants/service
providers supporting spatially varying and dynamic user demands. This paper
proposes a resource allocation criterion, namely, Share Constrained Slicing
(SCS), for slices allocated predefined shares of the network's resources, which
extends the traditional alpha-fairness criterion, by striking a balance among
inter- and intra-slice fairness vs. overall efficiency. We show that SCS has
several desirable properties including slice-level protection, envyfreeness,
and load driven elasticity. In practice, mobile users' dynamics could make the
cost of implementing SCS high, so we discuss the feasibility of using a simpler
(dynamically) weighted max-min as a surrogate resource allocation scheme. For a
setting with stochastic loads and elastic user requirements, we establish a
sufficient condition for the stability of the associated coupled network
system. Finally, and perhaps surprisingly, we show via extensive simulations
that while SCS (and/or the surrogate weighted max-min allocation) provides
inter-slice protection, they can achieve improved job delay and/or perceived
throughput, as compared to other weighted max-min based allocation schemes
whose intra-slice weight allocation is not share-constrained, e.g., traditional
max-min or discriminatory processor sharing
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