Markov games with frequent actions and incomplete information

We study a two-player, zero-sum, stochastic game with incomplete information on one side in which the players are allowed to play more and more frequently. The informed player observes the realization of a Markov chain on which the payoffs depend, while the non-informed player only observes his opponent's actions. We show the existence of a limit value as the time span between two consecutive stages vanishes; this value is characterized through an auxiliary optimization problem and as the solution of an Hamilton-Jacobi equation

Using Personal Environmental Comfort Systems to Mitigate the Impact of Occupancy Prediction Errors on HVAC Performance

Heating, Ventilation and Air Conditioning (HVAC) consumes a significant fraction of energy in commercial buildings. Hence, the use of optimization techniques to reduce HVAC energy consumption has been widely studied. Model predictive control (MPC) is one state of the art optimization technique for HVAC control which converts the control problem to a sequence of optimization problems, each over a finite time horizon. In a typical MPC, future system state is estimated from a model using predictions of model inputs, such as building occupancy and outside air temperature. Consequently, as prediction accuracy deteriorates, MPC performance--in terms of occupant comfort and building energy use--degrades. In this work, we use a custom-built building thermal simulator to systematically investigate the impact of occupancy prediction errors on occupant comfort and energy consumption. Our analysis shows that in our test building, as occupancy prediction error increases from 5\% to 20\% the performance of an MPC-based HVAC controller becomes worse than that of even a simple static schedule. However, when combined with a personal environmental control (PEC) system, HVAC controllers are considerably more robust to prediction errors. Thus, we quantify the effectiveness of PECs in mitigating the impact of forecast errors on MPC control for HVAC systems.Comment: 21 pages, 13 figure

Does Compressed Sensing Improve the Throughput of Wireless Sensor Networks?

Although compressed sensing (CS) has been envisioned as a useful technique to improve the performance of wireless sensor networks (WSNs), it is still not very clear how exactly it will be applied and how big the improvements will be. In this paper, we propose two different ways (plain-CS and hybrid-CS) of applying CS to WSNs at the networking layer, in the form of a particular data aggregation mechanism. We formulate three flow-based optimization problems to compute the throughput of the non-CS, plain-CS, and hybrid-CS schemes. We provide the exact solution to the first problem corresponding to the non-CS case and lower bounds for the cases with CS. Our preliminary numerical results are only for a low-power regime. They illustrate two crucial insights: first, applying CS naively may not bring any improvement, and secondly, our hybrid-CS can achieve significant improvement in throughput.Published versio

On the capacity and scheduling of a multi-sector cell with co-channel interference knowledge

We study the capacity of a single-hop wireless cell comprised of M fixed directional antennas concentrically arranged around a common axis and each reusing the same channel. The premise for this architecture is that co-channel interference between the fixed directional beams can be identified and reported, allowing joint conflict-free scheduling, i.e., it becomes possible to compute the schedule over all the M sectors together. We are primarily interested in studying the capacity gains that can be realized as a function of the number of sectors, the parameters of the directional antennas and other system parameters. Our analytical and numerical results yield several useful engineering insights on the selection of antenna parameters, the impact of node placement, and the impact of physical layer parameters. This study demonstrates how Space Division Multiple Access (SDMA) can yield excellent capacity provided inter-cell co-channel coexistence is achieved. Such coexistence techniques are now being considered for cognitive radio TV White Space systems and by evolving standards such as the IEEE 802.16h.Accepted versio

SERVICE LEVEL AGREEMENT ENFORCEMENT AND MEASUREMENT OF NETWORK SLICES

The embodiments presented herein disclose a method to predict, score, and ultimately select networks such as radio access networks, as well as heterogeneous network layers such as macro, piccolo, and the like. Technologies that are optimally able to meet service level agreements for different types of network slices, such as enterprise Wi-Fi and SP 3GPP, may also be selected