Wardrop Equilibrium in Discrete-Time Selfish Routing with Time-Varying Bounded Delays

This paper presents a multi-commodity, discrete- time, distributed and non-cooperative routing algorithm, which is proved to converge to an equilibrium in the presence of heterogeneous, unknown, time-varying but bounded delays. Under mild assumptions on the latency functions which describe the cost associated to the network paths, two algorithms are proposed: the former assumes that each commodity relies only on measurements of the latencies associated to its own paths; the latter assumes that each commodity has (at least indirectly) access to the measures of the latencies of all the network paths. Both algorithms are proven to drive the system state to an invariant set which approximates and contains the Wardrop equilibrium, defined as a network state in which no traffic flow over the network paths can improve its routing unilaterally, with the latter achieving a better reconstruction of the Wardrop equilibrium. Numerical simulations show the effectiveness of the proposed approach

Continuum Equilibria and Global Optimization for Routing in Dense Static Ad Hoc Networks

We consider massively dense ad hoc networks and study their continuum limits as the node density increases and as the graph providing the available routes becomes a continuous area with location and congestion dependent costs. We study both the global optimal solution as well as the non-cooperative routing problem among a large population of users where each user seeks a path from its origin to its destination so as to minimize its individual cost. Finally, we seek for a (continuum version of the) Wardrop equilibrium. We first show how to derive meaningful cost models as a function of the scaling properties of the capacity of the network and of the density of nodes. We present various solution methodologies for the problem: (1) the viscosity solution of the Hamilton-Jacobi-Bellman equation, for the global optimization problem, (2) a method based on Green's Theorem for the least cost problem of an individual, and (3) a solution of the Wardrop equilibrium problem using a transformation into an equivalent global optimization problem

Nash and Wardrop equilibria in aggregative games with coupling constraints

We consider the framework of aggregative games, in which the cost function of each agent depends on his own strategy and on the average population strategy. As first contribution, we investigate the relations between the concepts of Nash and Wardrop equilibrium. By exploiting a characterization of the two equilibria as solutions of variational inequalities, we bound their distance with a decreasing function of the population size. As second contribution, we propose two decentralized algorithms that converge to such equilibria and are capable of coping with constraints coupling the strategies of different agents. Finally, we study the applications of charging of electric vehicles and of route choice on a road network.Comment: IEEE Trans. on Automatic Control (Accepted without changes). The first three authors contributed equall

Quasi-variational inequality formulation of the mixed equilibrium in multiclass routing games

In the modeling of competition on networks it is usually assumed that users either behave following the Wardrop equilibrium or the Nash equilibrium concept. Nevertheless, in several equilibrium situations, for instance in urban traffic flows, intercity freight flows and telecommunication networks, a mixed behavior is observed. This paper presents a time-dependent network model shared by two types of users: group users (Nash players) and individual users (Wardrop players). A group user has a significant impact on the load of the network, whereas an individual user has a negligible impact. Both classes of users choose the paths to ship their jobs so as to minimize their costs, but they apply different optimization criteria. The source of interaction of users is represented by the travel demand, which is assumed to be elastic with respect to the equilibrium solution. Thus, the equilibrium distribution is proved to be equivalent to the solution of an appropriate time-dependent quasi variational inequality problem. A result on the existence of solutions is discussed as well as a numerical example.Nash equilibrium, Wardrop equilibrium, routing, quasi-variational inequality

Optimizing Train Stopping Patterns for Congestion Management

In this paper, we optimize train stopping patterns during morning rush hour in Japan. Since trains are extremely crowded, we need to determine stopping patterns based not only on travel time but also on congestion rates of trains. We exploit a Wardrop equilibrium model to compute passenger flows subject to congestion phenomena and present an efficient local search algorithm to optimize stopping patterns which iteratively computes a Wardrop equilibrium. We apply our algorithm to railway lines in Tokyo including Keio Line with six types of trains and succeed in relaxing congestion with a small effect on travel time

Distributed workload control for federated service discovery

The diffusion of the internet paradigm in each aspect of human life continuously fosters the widespread of new technologies and related services. In the Future Internet scenario, where 5G telecommunication facilities will interact with the internet of things world, analyzing in real time big amounts of data to feed a potential infinite set of services belonging to different administrative domains, the role of a federated service discovery will become crucial. In this paper the authors propose a distributed workload control algorithm to handle efficiently the service discovery requests, with the aim of minimizing the overall latencies experienced by the requesting user agents. The authors propose an algorithm based on the Wardrop equilibrium, which is a gametheoretical concept, applied to the federated service discovery domain. The proposed solution has been implemented and its performance has been assessed adopting different network topologies and metrics. An open source simulation environment has been created allowing other researchers to test the proposed solution

Complexity and Approximation of the Continuous Network Design Problem

We revisit a classical problem in transportation, known as the continuous (bilevel) network design problem, CNDP for short. We are given a graph for which the latency of each edge depends on the ratio of the edge flow and the capacity installed. The goal is to find an optimal investment in edge capacities so as to minimize the sum of the routing cost of the induced Wardrop equilibrium and the investment cost. While this problem is considered as challenging in the literature, its complexity status was still unknown. We close this gap showing that CNDP is strongly NP-complete and APX-hard, both on directed and undirected networks and even for instances with affine latencies. As for the approximation of the problem, we first provide a detailed analysis for a heuristic studied by Marcotte for the special case of monomial latency functions (Mathematical Programming, Vol.~34, 1986). Specifically, we derive a closed form expression of its approximation guarantee for arbitrary sets S of allowed latency functions. Second, we propose a different approximation algorithm and show that it has the same approximation guarantee. As our final -- and arguably most interesting -- result regarding approximation, we show that using the better of the two approximation algorithms results in a strictly improved approximation guarantee for which we give a closed form expression. For affine latencies, e.g., this algorithm achieves a 1.195-approximation which improves on the 5/4 that has been shown before by Marcotte. We finally discuss the case of hard budget constraints on the capacity investment.Comment: 27 page

Nonsmooth Aggregative Games with Coupling Constraints and Infinitely Many Classes of Players

After defining a pure-action profile in a nonatomic aggregative game, where players have specific compact convex pure-action sets and nonsmooth convex cost functions, as a square-integrable function, we characterize a Wardrop equilibrium as a solution to an infinite-dimensional generalized variational inequality. We show the existence of Wardrop equilibrium and variational Wardrop equilibrium, a concept of equilibrium adapted to the presence of coupling constraints, in monotone nonatomic aggregative games. The uniqueness of (variational) Wardrop equilibrium is proved for strictly or aggregatively strictly monotone nonatomic aggregative games. We then show that, for a sequence of finite-player aggregative games with aggregative constraints, if the players' pure-action sets converge to those of a strongly (resp. aggregatively strongly) monotone nonatomic aggregative game, and the aggregative constraints in the finite-player games converge to the aggregative constraint of the nonatomic game, then a sequence of so-called variational Nash equilibria in these finite-player games converge to the variational Wardrop equilibrium in pure-action profile (resp. aggregate-action profile). In particular, it allows the construction of an auxiliary sequence of games with finite-dimensional equilibria to approximate the infinite-dimensional equilibrium in such a nonatomic game. Finally, we show how to construct auxiliary finite-player games for two general classes of nonatomic games