Placement and Scheduling of Network Traffic on Virtual Network Functions

Hardware MiddleBoxes represent a vital part in today's networks. Despite their important roles, they are accompanied by several problems, namely, their lack of flexibility, high capital and operational expenditures, and power consumption. Network Function Virtualization is one promising solution to address these problems. This trend replaces the MiddleBoxes by software-based entities. Indeed, these Virtual Network Functions promise to alleviate the numerous disadvantages brought by their hardware counterparts. One of these most serious issues is the steadily increasing power consumption. Studies suggest that the Virtual Network Functions will reduce the electricity costs needed to turn on and operate the hardware functions. In order to further optimize the power consumption of the network, an efficient framework, capable of placing and scheduling traffic on these VNFs, is needed. Such a framework allows to optimally map and schedule the flows to be serviced, and place the unused servers in energy saving modes. In this thesis, we assume VNFs are already placed on physical machines. We consider traffic flows with deadlines. We aim at assigning and scheduling flows to VNFs in the most energy efficient manner. We formulate this problem mathematically and, owing to its complexity, present an efficient algorithmic method for solving the problem. We compare our heuristic with two other approaches, one of which aims to minimize the makespan, and the other to minimize number of servers used. We show that our heuristic combines the advantages of both approaches and generates better results by consuming up to 31.3% and 46.1% energy less than other two approaches respectively. Further, we extend the existing work in the literature, and solve the problem of placement of traffic flows on VNFs while taking into account the transmission delay between pairs of VNFs, and the routing of the virtual links on the underlying physical network

An Application of the Mobile Transient Internet Architecture to IP Mobility and Inter-Operability

We introduce an application of a mobile transient network architecture on top of the current Internet. This paper is an application extension to a conceptual mobile network architecture. It attempts to specifically reinforce some of the powerful notions exposed by the architecture from an application perspective. Of these notions, we explore the network expansion layer, an overlay of components and services, that enables a persistent identification network and other required services. The overlay abstraction introduces several benefits of which mobility and communication across heterogenous network structures are of interest to this paper. We present implementations of several components and protocols including gateways, Agents and the Open Device Access Protocol. Our present identification network implementation exploits the current implementation of the Handle System through the use of distributed, global and persistent identifiers called handles. Handles are used to identify and locate devices and services abstracting any physical location or network association from the communicating ends. A communication framework is finally demonstrated that would allow for mobile devices on the public Internet to have persistent identifiers and thus be persistently accessible either directly or indirectly. This application expands IP inter-operability beyond its current boundaries

Optimal Observability-based Modelling, Design and Characterization of Piezoelectric Microactuators.

International audienceThis paper deals with the optimal design of monolithic piezoelectric microactuators with integrated proprioceptive sensors. Dedicated to the microrobotic and micromechatronic fields, these works detail the modelling and the characterization of compliant structures with integrated actuating and sensing elements. The proposed optimal design procedure adresses not only static criteria but also dynamic ones. This leads to microdevices which are more performant with regards to mechanical (displacement, force...) and control (dynamics, stability, precision) characteristics. Efficient design of such devices is achieved using a flexible building block method. A topological optimization method combined with an evolutionary algorithm is used to optimize the design of truss-like planar structure. This method chooses the best location among the different piezoelectric elements. Different mechanical, actuation or sensing elements are accordingly chosen from a data bank. From the control point of view, optimisation criteria are considered to enforce the observability of the vibrational dominant modes of the structure. Therefore, control and observation Gramians are exploited in the optimal design to shape the open loop frequency response of both, actuation and sensing functions of the integrated device. In the last part of the paper, based on these results, the optimal design and manufacturing of an innovative piezoelectric flexible microgripper is proposed. The prototype is manufactured from a monolithic piezoelectric material (PIC 151). Its reduced size (15 mm x 18 mm) fits the requirement of both microrobotics and micromechatronics applications, which is suitable for micromanipulation tasks. The characterization and the performance of this integrated microactuator finally close the paper and the efficiency of the optimal design procedure for micromechatronics applications are shown

Observation-Oriented design of a Monolithic Piezoelectric Microactuator with Optimally integrated Sensor.

International audienceThis paper presents an evolution in an optimization method, called FlexIn, developed for the optimal design of piezoelectric compliant smart structures. FlexIn is based on a flexible building block method that uses a genetic algorithm approach, to optimize a truss-like planar structure made of piezoelectric passive, active and, with the work reported in this paper, sensitive building blocks. The model of these blocks is established by means of a finite-element electromechanical formulation. The main contribution of this paper is to present a new observation-oriented criterion, along with a static electromechanical one, considered in the optimization procedure for the optimal placement of piezoactuating and piezosensing parts in the compliant micro-structure. In order to underline the interests of such a criterion, performances of three pseudo-optimal piezoelectric smart structures are drawn. Their analysis and comparison illustrate the role of the optimization method and the observation-oriented criterion, in the design of smart structures and in simplifying their control afterwards

Optimal design and control simulation of a monolithic piezoelectric microactuator with integrated sensor.

International audienceThis paper presents an important evolution in an optimization method, called FlexIn, developed for the optimal design of piezoelectric compliant micromechanisms. It is based on a flexible building block method that uses an evolutionary approach, to optimize a truss-like planar structure made of piezoelectric passive, active and now sensitive building blocks. The model of these blocks is established by means of a finiteelement electromechanical formulation. The main contribution of this paper is to present an new control-observation-oriented criterion considered in the optimization procedure, among other conventional mechanical criteria, to optimize modal observability of the structure, for the placement of piezoactuating and piezosensing parts. In order to point out the underlying interests of this method for the design of smart structures with integrated actuators and sensors, a planar piezoelectric compliant smart micro-mechanism is optimally synthesized. Simulations of the device are finally performed illustrating the role of the observation-oriented criterion in simplifying the control of such smart structures

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE (AI) BASED METHODS AND SYSTEMS FOR MAXIMIZING CREDIT CARD REVENUE

The present disclosure is related to field of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and finance that provides AI based methods and systems for maximizing credit card revenue. The objective of the methods and systems disclosed in the present disclosure is to induce spending by personalizing offers and communications that are tailored towards customer need, identifying potential revolvers in the credit card portfolio to give them right line of credit and treatment to enrich their revolving experience, build portfolio balance through installment loan sell and proactively, identifying potential attritors and stop the portfolio leakage. To achieve the aforementioned objectives, the claimed invention provides a hybrid market recommender for personalizing offers and communications, revolve prediction model for identifying revolving behaviour, instalment prediction model for identifying installment loan takers, balance attrition model for identifying potential customer leakage, and heavy machine learning models for predictive model development. Further, the present disclosure also provides an all in one robust and comprehensive solution that is a combination of all the aforementioned models and provide targeted recommendations to a group of similar customers

Méthode des blocs sensitifs pour la synthèse optimale de mécanismes flexibles à mesure piézoélectrique intégrée.

National audienceCet article présente une méthode de synthèse optimale pour la conception préliminaire de mécanismes flexibles monolithiques piézoélectriques. La construction d'un tel mécanisme, selon cette méthode baptisée FlexIn, est basée sur l'agencement de blocs flexibles piézoélectriques élémentaires qui peuvent être structurels, actionneurs et/ou capteurs, sélectionnés respectivement dans trois bibliothèques. Cet article décrit plus particulièrement l'approche utilisée pour établir le modèle aux éléments finis multi-physiques des blocs capteurs piézoélectriques, de type treillis de poutre, en vue de son intégration dans le logiciel de synthèse optimale. Les résultats obtenus présentent un écart de quelques pourcents avec ceux issus d'un code aux éléments finis commercial. A titre d'exemple, le modèle capteur est appliqué à une micropince monolithique existante ; le résultat de mesure est d'un ordre de grandeur satisfaisant. Ces résultats permettent de dresser les perspectives de la méthode de synthèse optimale proposée dans le cadre général de la conception de structures intelligentes pour la microrobotique

Isolation, selection, and characterization of highly ethanol-tolerant strains of Oenococcus oeni from south Catalonia

Twenty-one strains of Oenococcus oeni were isolated during the malolactic fermentation of wines from south Catalonia. Due to their high ethanol tolerance (14 %, or more), these strains may serve as promising starters. The strains were screened by assays in a wine-like medium and by their co-inoculation in wine, resulting in the selection of well-performing strains, subsequently shown not to produce the main biogenic amines and lacking the genes involved in their synthesis. The genetic diversity of the isolates was studied by multilocus sequence typing (MLST), in which seven housekeeping genes were sequenced. Although the concatenated allelic profi le of some strains was the same, the profi les obtained by random amplifi cation of polymorphic DNA together with the variable number of tandem repeats at several loci showed that none of the strains were identical. A phylogenetic tree was constructed based on MLST with the seven genes and clearly showed two phylogroups, in accordance with previous studies. The best-performing strains occurred in members of both subgroups, suggesting that the grouping of housekeeping genes is not directly related to adaptation and ethanol tolerance. [Int Microbiol 2013; 16(2):113-123]Keywords: Oenococcus oeni; malolactic fermentation; wine production; multilocus sequence typing (MLST);strain selectio