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Cloud computing offers a wide range of services through a pool of heterogeneous Physical Machines (PMs) hosted on cloud data centers, where each PM can host several Virtual Machines (VMs). Resource sharing among VMs comes with major benefits, but it can create technical challenges that have a detrimental effect on the performance. To ensure a specific service level requested by the cloud-based applications, there is a need for an approach to assign adequate resources to each VM. To this end, we present our novel Multi-Loop Control approach, called MULTISCALER, to allocate resources to VMs based on the Service Level Agreement (SLA) requirements and the run-time conditions. MULTISCALER is mainly composed of three different levels working closely with each other to achieve an optimal resource allocation. We propose a set of tailor-made controllers to monitor VMs and take actions accordingly to regulate contention among collocated VMs, to reallocate resources if required, and to migrate VMs from one PM to another. The evaluation in a VMware cluster have shown that the MULTISCALER approach can meet applications performance goals and guarantee the SLA by assigning the exact resources that the applications require. Compared with sophisticated baselines, MULTISCALER produces significantly better reaction to changes in workloads even under the presence of noisy neighbors.

Short-range wireless technologies will enable vehicles to communicate and coordinate their actions, thus improving people's safety and traffic efficiency. Whereas IEEE 802.11p (and related standards) had been the only practical solution for years, in 2016 a new option was introduced with Release of 14 long-term evolution (LTE), which includes new features to enable direct vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) communications. LTE-V2V promises a more efficient use of the channel compared to IEEE 802.11p, thanks to an improved PHY layer and the use of orthogonal resources at the MAC layer. In LTE-V2V, a key role is played by the resource allocation algorithm and increasing efforts are being made to design new solutions to optimize the spatial reuse. In this context, an important aspect still little studied, is therefore that of identifying references that allow, first, to have a perception of the space in which the resource allocation algorithms move and, second, to verify the performance of new proposals. In this paper, we focus on a highway scenario and identify two algorithms to be used as a minimum and maximum reference in terms of the packet reception probability (PRP). The PRP is derived as a function of various parameters that describe the scenario and settings, from the application to the physical layer. Results, obtained both in a simplified Poisson point process scenario and with realistic traffic traces, show that the PRP varies considerably with different algorithms and that there is room for the improvement of current solutions.

Video surveillance in intelligent transportation systems (ITS) is in the rapid growth stage, where video analytics is a potential technology to improve the safety of the Internet of Autonomous Vehicles (IoAV). However, massive video data transmission and computation-intensive video analytics bring an overwhelming burden for vehicular networks. Moreover, owing to the unstable network connection, the video data are not always reliable, which makes data sharing lack of security and scalability in IoAV. In this work, we first propose a video analytics framework, where the multi-access edge computing (MEC) and blockchain technologies are integrated into IoAV to optimize the transaction throughput of the blockchain system as well as reducing the latency of the MEC system. Furthermore, based on deep reinforcement learning, the joint optimization problem is modeled as a Markov decision process (MDP), and the asynchronous advantage actor-critic (A3C) algorithm is adopted to solve this problem. Simulation results demonstrate that our approach can fast converge and significantly improve the performance of blockchain-enabled IoAV with MEC.

Edge computing has emerged as a new paradigm to bring cloud applications closer to users for increased performance. Unlike back-end cloud systems which consolidate their resources in a centralized data center location with virtually unlimited capacity, edge-clouds comprise distributed resources at various computation spots, each with very limited capacity. In this paper, we consider Function-as-a-Service (FaaS) edge-clouds where application providers deploy their latency-critical functions that process user requests with strict response time deadlines. In this setting, we investigate the problem of resource provisioning and allocation. After formulating the optimal solution, we propose resource allocation and provisioning algorithms across the spectrum of fully-centralized to fully-decentralized. We evaluate the performance of these algorithms in terms of their ability to utilize CPU resources and meet request deadlines under various system parameters. Our results indicate that practical decentralized strategies, which require no coordination among computation spots, achieve performance that is close to the optimal fully-centralized strategy with coordination overheads.

Containers are lightweight and provide the potential to reduce more energy consumption of data centers than Virtual Machines (VMs) in container-based clouds. The on-line resource allocation is the most common operation in clouds. However, the on-line Resource Allocation in Container-based clouds (RAC) is new and challenging because of its two-level architecture, i.e. the allocations of containers to VMs and the allocation of VMs to physical machines. These two allocations interact with each other, and hence cannot be made separately. Since on-line container allocation requires a real-time response, most current allocation techniques rely on heuristics (e.g. First Fit and Best Fit), which do not consider the comprehensive information such as workload patterns and VM types. As a result, resources are not used efficiently and the energy consumption is not sufficiently optimized. We first propose a novel model of the on-line RAC problem with the consideration of VM overheads, VM types and an affinity constraint. Then, we design a Cooperative Coevolution Genetic Programming (CCGP) hyper-heuristic approach to solve the RAC problem. The CCGP can learn the workload patterns and VM types from historical workload traces and generate allocation rules. The experiments show significant improvement in energy consumption compared to the state-of-the-art algorithms.

Cloud computing is a popular and powerful paradigm for leasing IT services over the Internet. It allows sharing the resources among a large number of consumers. This requires allocating and releasing resources dynamically over time. Since resources are paid as are used, ensuring a better level of service is a challenge for cloud providers. They must provide enough resources to meet user needs with maintaining the quality of service. Therefore, QoS is a serious problem that arises during the dynamic management of heterogeneous resources. This type of problem can be resolved by minimizing execution time and resource reservation prices. It is necessary to integrate a new method well enough to improve the performance of the cloud, in this area. This paper presents a dynamic resource allocation model for the cloud computing environment. In addition, we propose a meta-heuristic approach named Multi-Objectives Symbiotic Organism Search algorithm (MOSOS) for resource allocation. We specifically designed MOSOS to minimize both the makespan and cost. Simulation results revealed that MOSOS gave a better result compared to other methods. It shown significant adaptation with the dynamic change of the cloud, as well as minimizing the execution time. Hence, improving the QoS given to cloud users.

Resource allocation problems often manifest as online decision-making tasks where the proper allocation strategy depends on the understanding of the allocation environment and resource workload. Most existing resource allocation methods are based on meticulously designed heuristics which ignore the patterns of incoming tasks, so the dynamics of incoming tasks cannot be properly handled. To address this problem, we mine the task patterns from the large volume of historical allocation data and propose a reinforcement learning model termed IRDA to learn the allocation strategy in an incremental way. We observe that historical allocation data is usually generated from the daily repeated operations, which is not independent and identically distributed. Training with the partial dataset can make the strategy converged already, thereby wasting the remaining data. To improve the learning efficiency, we partition the whole historical big dataset into multi-batch datasets, which forces the agent continuously to ‘explore’ and learn on the distinct state spaces. We apply the proposed method to handle baggage carousel allocation at Hong Kong International Airport (HKIA). The experimental results show that IRDA improves the baggage carousel resource utilization by around 51.86% compared to the current baggage carousel allocation system at HKIA.

In this paper, we present a resource allocation mechanism for the problem of incentivizing filtering among a finite number of strategic social media platforms. We consider the presence of a strategic government and private knowledge of how misinformation affects the users of the social media platforms. Our proposed mechanism incentivizes social media platforms to filter misleading information efficiently, and thus indirectly prevents the spread of fake news. In particular, we design an economically inspired mechanism that strongly implements all generalized Nash equilibria for efficient filtering of misleading information in the induced game. We show that our mechanism is individually rational, budget balanced, while it has at least one equilibrium. Finally, we show that for quasi-concave utilities and constraints, our mechanism admits a generalized Nash equilibrium and implements a Pareto efficient solution.

A huge variety of fields and industries depend upon cloud computing based microservice due to its high-performance capability. Also, the merit of container usage is enormous; it enable larger portability, easier and faster deployment and restricted overheads. However, the rapid evolution causes issues in terms of container automation and management, Till now, a number of research works has concentrated on solving the open issues in container automation and management. In fact, container resource allocation is the major key hole for cloud providers since it directly influences the resource consumption and system performance. In this manner, this paper introduces a new optimized container resource allocation model by proposing a new optimization concept. To make the possibility of optimal container resource allocation, a new hybridized algorithm is implanted; namely, Whale Random update assisted Lion Algorithm (WR-LA), which is the hybrid form of Lion Algorithm (LA) and Whale Optimization Algorithm (WOA) is introduced. Moreover, the solution of optimized resource allocation is made by considering objectives like Threshold Distance, Balanced Cluster Use, System Failure, and Total Network Distance, respectively. Finally, the performance of the proposed model is compared over other conventional models and proves its superiority.

In this work, the problem of ensuring profitability for multiple sensor-owners in sensor-cloud, while satisfying the service-requirements of end-users, is studied. In traditional sensor-cloud, Sensor-Cloud-Service-Provider (SCSP) solely dictates the service-provisioning process. However, the SCSP cannot always ensure high profits for sensor-owners, who incur significant maintenance costs for their sensor-nodes. Contrarily, it is highly essential to meet the Quality-of-Information (QoI) requirements of end-users to ensure their service-satisfaction. In the existing literature, researchers proposed few node-allocation schemes which neither consider the cost incurred by sensor-owners nor the QoI of sensed-data in sensor-cloud. To address this problem, a strategic resource-allocation scheme, named RACE, is proposed, which introduces the participation of sensor-owners in the node-allocation process. Firstly, utility theory is used to calculate the optimum number-of-nodes to be allocated for a service. Thereafter, single-leader-multiple-followers Stackelberg game is formulated to decide the number-of-nodes to be contributed by each sensor-owner and the price to be charged. Through simulations, we observed that, using RACE, the profits of the sensor-owners and those of the SCSP increase by 86.11-89.26% and 41.95-80.82%, respectively, as compared to existing benchmark schemes, while considering that each sensor-node is capable of serving multiple applications simultaneously. Moreover, service-availability in sensor-cloud increases by 31.70-96.96% using RACE.

The rapid development of wireless traffic pushed the wireless community to research different solutions towards the efficient utilization of the available radio spectrum. However, a recent study shows that most of the dynamically allocated spectrum bands, experience significant under-utilization as Cognitive Radio (CR) technology still lacks intelligence. An intelligence in CRs can be incorporated with machine learning algorithms. Further, the perfect Channel State Information (CSI) is hardly obtained and CSI imperfections play a crucial role in Spectrum Management. Thus, for efficient utilization of available spectrum, a decentralized Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning based resource allocation scheme has been proposed. A robust scheme is proposed which integrates machine learning and CR technology into a sophisticated Multi-Agent System (MAS). Moreover, assisted with cloud computing provides huge amount of storage space, reduces operating expenditures, and provides wider flexibility of cooperation. Hence, to foster the performance of the proposed scheme, a cooperative framework in MAS is introduced which enhances the performance of the proposed scheme in terms of network capacity, outage probability, and convergence speed. Numerical results verify the effectiveness of proposed scheme and show the non-negligible impact of imperfect CSI, thus highlighting the importance of robust designs that maintains users' QoS in practical wireless networks.

With time-varying workloads and service requests, cloud-based software services necessitate adaptive resource allocation for guaranteeing Quality-of-Service (QoS) and reducing resource costs. However, due to the ever-changing system states, resource allocation for cloud-based software services faces huge challenges in dynamics and complexity. The traditional approaches mostly rely on expert knowledge or numerous iterations, which might lead to weak adaptiveness and extra costs. Moreover, existing RL-based methods target the environment with the fixed workload, and thus they are unable to effectively fit in the real-world scenarios with variable workloads. To address these important challenges, we propose a Prediction-enabled feedback Control with Reinforcement learning based resource Allocation (PCRA) method. First, a novel Q-value prediction model is designed to predict the values of management operations (by Q-values) at different system states. The model uses multiple prediction learners for making accurate Q-value prediction by integrating the Q-learning algorithm. Next, the objective resource allocation plans can be found by using a new feedback-control based decision-making algorithm. Using the RUBiS benchmark, simulation results demonstrate that the PCRA chooses the management operations of resource allocation with 93.7% correctness. Moreover, the PCRA achieves optimal/near-optimal performance, and it outperforms the classic ML-based and rule-based approaches by 5~7% and 10~13%, respectively.

Flying platforms such as Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) are a promising solution for future small cell networks. UAVs can be used as aerial Base Stations (BSs) to enhance coverage, capacity and reliability of wireless networks. Also, with recent advances of Self Interference Cancellation (SIC) techniques in Full-Duplex (FD) systems, practical implementation of FD BSs is feasible. In this paper, we investigate the problem of resource allocation for multi-small cell networks with FD-UAVs as aerial BSs with imperfect SIC. We consider three different scenarios: a) maximizing the DL sum-rate, b) maximizing the UL sum-rate, and finally c) maximizing the sum of UL and DL sum-rates. The aforementioned problems result in non-convex optimization problems, therefore, successive convex approximation algorithms are developed by leveraging D.C. (Difference of Convex functions) programming to find sub-optimal solutions. Simulation results illustrated validity and effectiveness of the proposed radio resource management algorithms in comparison with ground BSs, in both FD mode and its half-duplex (HD) counterpart. The results also indicate those situations where using aerial BS is advantageous over ground BS and reveal how FD transmission enhances the network performance in comparison with HD one.

Inspired by recent terrorist attacks on cereal production fields in Iraq, we introduce and study two types of Stackelberg games. In these games, the leader wants to maximize its production (e.g., cereal), while the follower tries to destroy this production as much as possible. In the first model, the leader can protect its production by spreading his production resources over multiple regions. In the second model, the leader can also decide to allocate some extra protection resources to the regions. For both games, we are interested in a follower's and leader's optimal strategy. We characterise optimal strategies for the follower and present two linear time algorithms (one for each game) that find an optimal strategy for the leader. (c) 2021 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY license ( http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ )

In this paper, we design a deep learning based resource allocation framework, in the form of an auction, for simultaneous information and power transfer from a hybrid access point (AP) to information devices and energy harvesting devices, respectively. Using Myerson’s lemma and the concept of virtual welfare maximization, we develop an optimal dominant-strategy incentive-compatible mechanism for the AP to maximize its expected revenue, based on the devices’ bid profiles, valuation distributions, demand profiles, and channel state information. In so doing, we formulate the revenue maximization problem, which is a mixed-integer non-linear program, and propose an efficient Branch-and-Bound (BnB) algorithm to solve the problem using semidefinite relaxation technique in each branch. Since the problem has exponential time complexity, using BnB algorithms can be impractical for real-time applications. To circumvent this, a deep neural network (DNN) is proposed, and trained to predict the optimal mechanism for beamforming the data and the energy towards the information and energy devices, respectively. We use the BnB algorithm to solve the problem offline and populate the training dataset. The proposed DNN architecture is indeed a multi-layer perceptron, which is trained well to map the heterogeneous input to the desired output with high accuracy. Furthermore, we propose a heuristic iterative solution whose accuracy performance is comparable to that of the DNN-based solution. The heuristic solution has polynomial time complexity whereas the DNN-based solution has linear time complexity.

A fundamental component of the game theoretic approach to distributed control is the design of local utility functions. Relative to resource allocation problems that are additive over the resources, Part I showed how to design local utilities so as to maximize the associated performance guarantees [1], which we measure by the price of anarchy. The purpose of the present manuscript is to specialize these results to the case of submodular, covering, and supermodular problems. In all these cases we obtain tight expressions for the price of anarchy that often match or improve the guarantees associated to state-of-the-art approximation algorithms. Two applications and corresponding numerics are presented: the vehicle-target assignment problem and a coverage problem arising in wireless data caching.

Transmit antenna selection (TAS) at base station has been widely studied and employed in many communication networks (such as those using massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems). Thanks to the small size of microstrip antenna elements applicable to millimeter-wave (mmWave) frequencies, the implementation of TAS in small user equipments (UEs) employing switchable directional antennas is recently becoming popular. In this paper, we consider device-to-device (D2D) communications underlaying a cellular network wherein each D2D UE is equipped with switchable transmit antennas. By employing Generalized Bender's Decomposition (GBD) algorithm, we obtained the solution to the problem of globally optimal transmit antenna selection and channel allocation to D2D UEs together with transmit powers of cellular and D2D UEs. Although we reformulated the non-convex primal subproblem of the proposed GBD-based method into convex form, we further managed to obtain the corresponding closed-form solution through analytical manipulations; this extensively increased (at least 60 times) the execution speed of the proposed method as shown in the simulation results.

This paper examines the high-dimensional dependence modelling problem in the context of project risk assessment. As the dimension of uncertain performance units (i.e., itemized costs and activity times) in a project increases, specifying a feasible correlation matrix and eliciting relevant pair-wise information, either from historical data or with expert judgement, becomes practically unattainable or simply not economical. This paper presents a factor-driven dependence elicitation and modelling framework with scalability to large-scale project risks. The multi-factor association model (MFAM) accounts for hierarchical relationships of multiple association factors and provides a closed-form solution to a complete and mathematically consistent correlation matrix. Augmented with the structured association (SA) technique for systematic identification of hierarchical association factors, the MFAM offers additional flexibility of utilizing the minimum information available in standardized, ubiquitous project plans (e.g., work breakdown structure, resource allocation, or risk register), while preserving the computational efficiency and the scalability to high dimensional project risks. Numerical applications and simulation experiments show that the MFAM, further combined with extended analytics (i.e., parameter calibration and optimization), provides credible risk assessments (with accuracy comparable to full-scale simulation) and further enhances the realism of dealing with high-dimensional project risks utilizing all relevant information.

The growing market of cloud computing resulted in increased demand for cloud resources and it will become difficult for individual service providers (SPs) to fulfill all resource requests. That leads to a situation where two or more SPs may form a group and share the resources. Now, due to the formation of more than one federations by different cloud providers, it may be difficult for users to select a suitable federation who can deliver cloud services at a fair price. In this context, it is necessary to have a framework that will efficiently allocate resources of cloud federations to the users at a fair price. In this paper, we propose a multi-unit double auction mechanism called TARA that can be used to efficiently choose cloud federations for users from which they can get resources. Here, we consider a multi-seller and multi-buyer double auction mechanism for heterogeneous resources. TARA achieves some important properties like truthfulness, individual rationality and budget balance for both buyers and sellers. TARA is also computationally efficient and possess high system efficiency. The simulation results also show that total utility of buyer is more than some existing double auction mechanisms.

We consider the setting where a seller must allocate a collection of goods to budgeted buyers, as exemplified by online advertising systems where platforms decide which impressions to serve to various advertisers. Such resource allocation problems are challenging for two reasons: (a) the seller must strike a balance between optimizing her own revenues and guaranteeing fairness to her (repeat) buyers and (b) the problem is inherently dynamic due to the uncertain, time-varying supply of goods available with the seller. We propose a stochastic approximation scheme akin to a dynamic market equilibrium. Our scheme relies on frequent re-solves of an Eisenberg-Gale convex program, and does not require the seller to have any knowledge about how goods arrival processes evolve over time. The scheme fully extracts buyer budgets (thus maximizing seller revenues), while at the same time provides a 0.47 approximation of the proportionally fair allocation of goods achievable in the offline case, as long as the supply of goods comes from a wide family of (possibly non-stationary) Gaussian processes. We then extend our results to a more general family of metrics called \alpha-fairness. Finally, we deal with a multi-objective problem where the seller is concerned with both the proportional fairness and efficiency of the allocation, and propose a hybrid algorithm which achieves a 0.27 bi-criteria guarantee against fairness and efficiency.

The convergence of Software-Defined Networking (SDN) and Internet of Vehicular (IoV) integrated with fog computing, known as software-defined vehicle network-based fog computing (SDV-F), has recently been established to take advantage of both paradigms and efficiently control the wireless networks. SDV-F tackles numerous problems, such as scalability, load-balancing, energy consumption, and security. It lags, however, in providing a promising approach to enable ultra-reliable and delay-sensitive applications with high vehicle mobility over SDV-F. We propose ARTNet, an AI-based Vehicle-to-Everything (V2X) framework for resource distribution and optimized communication using the SDV-F architecture. ARTNet offers ultra-reliable and low-latency communications, particularly in highly dynamic environments, which is still a challenge in IoV. ARTNet is composed of intelligent agents/controllers, to make decisions intelligently about i) maximizing resource utilization at the fog layer, and ii) minimizing the average end-to-end delay of time-critical IoV applications. Moreover, ARTNet is designed to assign a task to fog nodes based on their states. Our experimental results show that considering a dynamic IoV environment, ARTNet can efficiently distribute the fog layer tasks while minimizing the delay.

Mobile edge computing (MEC) enables computing services at the network edge closer to mobile users (MUs) to reduce network transmission latency and energy consumption. Deploying edge computing servers in small base stations (SBSs), operators make profit by offering MUs with computing services, while MUs purchase services to solve their own computation tasks quickly and energy-efficiently. In this context, it is of particular importance to optimize computing resource allocation and computing service pricing in each SBS, subject to its limited computing and communication resources. To address this issue, we formulate an optimization problem of computing resource management and trading in small-cell networks and tackle this problem using a two-tier matching. Specifically, the first tier targets at the association algorithm between MUs and SBSs to achieve maximum social welfare, and the second tier focuses on the collaboration algorithm among SBSs to make efficient usage of limited computing resources. We further show that the two proposed algorithms contribute to stable matchings and achieve weak Pareto optimality. In particular, we verify that the first algorithm arrives at a competitive equilibrium. Simulation results demonstrate that our proposed algorithms can achieve a better network social welfare than baseline algorithms while retaining a close-optimal performance.

Recently, the exponential growth of the Internet of Things (IoT) services with heterogeneous requirements becomes a burden to the traditional cloud/datacenter platform. Edge computing is an emerging solution to gain business value of IoT services where real-time demands become satisfied by moving computing resources close to data sources. Nevertheless, edge resources are still limited to be able to fulfill all demands at the same time. Among new approaches, resource sharing between edge/cloud service providers has been considered as a promising mechanism to address resource scarcity and pursue cost reduction. In this paper, we propose an allocation and sharing model in the Edge Cloud network where providers team up to efficiently utilize resources, named the Share to Run IoT Services (SRIS). In particular, we formulate a resource allocation and sharing optimization model to implement IoT services of multiple edge/cloud providers that can maximize the providers’ utility while satisfying service constraints. We relax SRIS into a tractable form that can be solved efficiently using well-known distributed convex frameworks, such as the dual decomposition and alternating direction method of multipliers. Finally, we evaluate our methods by providing several simulation cases, in which our proposed mechanisms show outstanding outcomes by obtaining a faster convergence, increasing by 6.9% of utilization, and 16% of acceptance rate compared to the non-optimal approach.

A promising technique to provide mobile applications with high computation resources is to offload the processing task to the cloud. Utilizing the abundant processing capabilities of the clouds, mobile edge computing enables mobile devices with limited batteries to run resource hungry applications and to save power. However, it is not always true that edge computing consumes less power compared to device computing. It may take more power for the mobile device to transmit a file to the cloud than running the task itself. This paper investigates the power minimization problem for the mobile devices by data offloading in multi-cell multi-user OFDMA mobile edge computing networks. We consider the maximum acceptable delay as QoS metric to be satisfied in our network. We formulate the problem as a mixed integer nonlinear problem which is converted into a convex form using D.C. approximation. To solve the converted optimization problem, we have proposed centralized and distributed algorithms for joint power allocation and channel assignment together with decision-making. Simulation results illustrate that by utilizing the proposed algorithms, considerable power savings can be achieved, e.g., about 60 percent for large bit stream size compared to local computing baseline.

In this paper, we aim to make the best joint decision of device selection and computing and spectrum resource allocation for optimizing federated learning (FL) performance in distributed industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) networks. To implement efficient FL over geographically dispersed data, we introduce a three-layer collaborative FL architecture to support deep neural network (DNN) training. Specifically, using the data dispersed in IIoT devices, the industrial gateways locally train the DNN model and the local models can be aggregated by their associated edge servers every FL epoch or by a cloud server every a few FL epochs for obtaining the global model. To optimally select participating devices and allocate computing and spectrum resources for training and transmitting the model parameters, we formulate a stochastic optimization problem with the objective of minimizing FL evaluating loss while satisfying delay and long-term energy consumption requirements. Since the objective function of the FL evaluating loss is implicit and the energy consumption is temporally correlated, it is difficult to solve the problem via traditional optimization methods. Thus, we propose a “ Reinforcement on Federated ” (RoF) scheme, based on deep multi-agent reinforcement learning, to solve the problem. Specifically, the RoF scheme is executed decentralizedly at edge servers, which can cooperatively make the optimal device selection and resource allocation decisions. Moreover, a device refinement subroutine is embedded into the RoF scheme to accelerate convergence while effectively saving the on-device energy. Simulation results demonstrate that the RoF scheme can facilitate efficient FL and achieve better performance compared with state-of-the-art benchmarks.

Deep neural network (DNN) has been widely applied in many fields of artificial intelligence (AI), gaining great popularity both in industry and academia. Increasing the size of DNN models does dramatically improve the learning accuracy. However, training large-scale DNN models on a single GPU takes unacceptable waiting time. In order to speed up the training process, many distributed deep learning (DL) systems and frameworks have been published and designed for parallel DNN training with multiple GPUs. However, most of the existing studies concentrate only on improving the training speed of a single DNN model under centralized or decentralized systems with synchronous or asynchronous approaches. Few works consider the issue of multi-DNN training on the GPU cluster, which is the joint optimization problem of job scheduling and resource allocation. This paper proposes an optimizing makespan and resource utilization (OMRU) approach to minimize job completion time and improve resource utilization for multi-DNN training in a GPU cluster. Specifically, we first collect the training speed/time data of all DNN models by running a job for one epoch on a different number of GPUs. The OMRU algorithm, integrating job scheduling, resource allocation, and GPU reuse strategies, is then devised to minimize the total job completion time (also called makespan) and improve GPU cluster resource utilization. The linear scaling rule (LSR) is adopted for adjusting the learning rate when a DNN model is trained on multiple GPUs with large minibatch size, which can guarantee model accuracy without the other hyper-parameters tune-up. We implement the OMRU algorithm on the Pytorch with Ring-Allreduce communication architecture and a GPU cluster with 8 nodes, each of which has 4 NVIDIA V100 GPUs. Experimental results on image classification and action recognition show that OMRU achieves a makespan reduction of up to 30% compared to the baseline scheduling algorithms and reach an average of 98.4% and 99.2% resource utilization on image classification and action recognition, respectively, with the state-of-the-art model accuracy.

Given the limited transmission power of smart devices in Internet of Remote Things (IoRT), unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) aided space-air-ground (SAG) networks become a beneficial remedy for uplink data transmission in IoRT networks. In this article, we propose a SAG–IoRT framework, where drones act as relays to upload the data from smart devices to low earth orbit satellites. Considering the large number of smart devices, we maximize the system capacity by jointly optimizing smart devices connection scheduling, power control, and UAV trajectory, where the joint optimization is a nonconvex optimization problem. The formulated problem is a mixed integer nonconvex optimization problem, which is challenging to solve directly. Hence, an efficient iterative algorithm is proposed for solving the above-mentioned nonconvex optimization problem by applying variable substitution, successive convex optimization techniques, and the block coordinate decent algorithm. In particular, we alternately iterate smart device connection scheduling, power control, and UAV trajectory design to obtain the maximum system capacity. Numerical simulation results show that our proposed algorithm substantially improves the system capacity in comparison to the static UAV scheme, and achieves a gain of at least 22.3% in terms of the capacity against dynamic UAV scheme with a circular trajectory.

In this article, a distributed multiobjective optimization problem is formulated for the resource allocation of network-connected multiagent systems. The framework encompasses a group of distributed decision makers in the subagents, where each of them possesses a local preference index. Novel distributed algorithms are proposed to solve such a problem in a distributed manner. The weighted Lp preference index is utilized in each agent since it can provide a robust Pareto solution to the problem. By using distributed fixed-time optimization methods, the Lp preference index is constructed online without specifying the unknown parameters. Then, it is proved that the problem admits a unique Pareto solution. By exploiting consensus and gradient descent techniques, asymptotic convergence to the optimal solution is established via Lyapunov theories. Distinct from most of the current works, the proposed framework does not require any prior information in the formulation process, and private data can be well protected using this distributed approach. Numerical examples are included to validate the effectiveness of the proposed algorithms.

Communication between nanomachines is still an important topic in the construction of the Internet of Bio-Nano Things (IoBNT). Currently, molecular communication (MC) is expected to be a promising technology to realize IoBNT. To effectively serve the IoBNT composed of multiple nanomachine clusters, it is imperative to study multiple-access MC. In this article, based on the molecular division multiple access technology, we propose a novel multiuser MC system, where information molecules with different diffusion coefficients are first employed. Aiming at the user fairness in the considered system, we investigate the optimization of molecular resource allocation, including the assignment of the types of molecules and the number of molecules of a type. Specifically, three performance metrics are considered, namely, min-max fairness for error probability, max-min fairness for achievable rate, and weighted sum-rate maximization. Moreover, we propose two assignment strategies for types of molecules, i.e., best-to-best (BTB) and best-to-worst (BTW). Subsequently, for a two-user scenario, we analytically derive the optimal allocation for the number of molecules when types of molecules are fixed for all users. In contrast, for a three-user scenario, we prove that the BTB and BTW schemes with the optimal allocation for the number of molecules can provide the lower and upper bounds on system performance, respectively. Finally, numerical results show that the combination of BTW and the optimal allocation for the number of molecules yields better performance than the benchmarks.

Video transcoding is to create multiple representations of a video for content adaptation. It is deemed as a core technique in Adaptive BitRate (ABR) streaming. How to manage video transcoding affects the performance of ABR streaming in various aspects, including operational cost, streaming delays, Quality of Experience (QoE), etc. Therefore, the problems of implementing video transcoding in ABR streaming must be systematically studied for improving the overall performance of the streaming services. These problems become more worthy of investigation with the emergence of the edge-cloud continuum, which makes the resource allocation for video transcoding more complicated. To this end, this paper provides an investigation of the main technical problems related to video transcoding in ABR streaming, including designing a rate profile for video transcoding, providing resources for video transcoding in clouds, and caching multi-bitrate video contents in networks, etc. We analyze these problems from the perspective of resource allocation in the edge-cloud continuum and cast them into resource and Quality of Service (QoS) optimization problems. The goal is to minimize resource consumption while guaranteeing the QoS for ABR streaming. We also discuss some promising research directions for the ABR streaming services.

With the advance of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and low earth orbit (LEO) satellites, the integration of space, air and ground networks has become a potential solution to the beyond fifth generation (B5G) Internet of remote things (IoRT) networks. However, due to the network heterogeneity and the high mobility of UAVs and LEOs, how to design an efficient UAV-LEO integrated data collection scheme without infrastructure support is very challenging. In this paper, we investigate the resource allocation problem for a two-hop uplink UAV-LEO integrated data collection for the B5G IoRT networks, where numerous UAVs gather data from IoT devices and transmit the IoT data to LEO satellites. In order to maximize the data gathering efficiency in the IoT-UAV data gathering process, we study the bandwidth allocation of IoT devices and the 3-dimensional (3D) trajectory design of UAVs. In the UAV-LEO data transmission process, we jointly optimize the transmit powers of UAVs and the selections of LEO satellites for the total uploaded data amount and the energy consumption of UAVs. Considering the relay role and the cache capacity limitations of UAVs, we merge the optimizations of IoT-UAV data gathering and UAV-LEO data transmission into an integrated optimization problem, which is solved with the aid of the successive convex approximation (SCA) and the block coordinate descent (BCD) techniques. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed scheme achieves better performance than the benchmark algorithms in terms of both energy consumption and total upload data amount.

Serverless computing has seen a myriad of work exploring its potential. Some systems tackle Function-as-a-Service (FaaS) properties on automatic elasticity and scale to run highly-parallel computing jobs. However, they focus on specific platforms and convey that their ideas can be extrapolated to any FaaS runtime. An important question arises: do all FaaS platforms fit parallel computations? In this paper, we argue that not all of them provide the necessary means to host highly-parallel applications. To validate our hypothesis, we create a comparative framework and categorize the architectures of four cloud FaaS offerings, emphasizing parallel performance. We attest and extend this description with an empirical experiment that consists in plotting in deep detail the evolution of a parallel computing job on each service. The analysis of our results evinces that FaaS is not inherently good for parallel computations and architectural differences across platforms are decisive to categorize their performance. A key insight is the importance of virtualization technologies and the scheduling approach of FaaS platforms. Parallelism improves with lighter virtualization and proactive scheduling due to finer resource allocation and faster elasticity. This causes some platforms like AWS and IBM to perform well for highly-parallel computations, while others such as Azure present difficulties to achieve the required parallelism degree. Consequently, the information in this paper becomes of special interest to help users choose the most adequate infrastructure for their parallel applications., Comment: 19 pages, 15 figures, submitted to FGCS, revised

For unforeseen natural disasters, such as earthquakes, hurricanes, and floods, etc., the traditional communication infrastructure is unavailable or seriously disrupted along with persistent secondary disasters. Under such circumstances, it is highly demanded to deploy emergency wireless communication (EWC) networks to restore connectivity in accident/ incident areas. The emerging fifth-generation (5G)/beyond-5G (B5G) wireless communication system, like unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) assisted networks and intelligent reflecting surface (IRS) based communication systems, are expected to be designed or re-farmed for supporting temporary high quality communications in post-disaster areas. However, the channel characteristics of post-disaster areas quickly change as the secondary disaster resulted topographical changes, imposing new but critical challenges for EWC networks. In this paper, we propose a novel heterogeneous $\mathcal {F}$ composite fading channel model for EWC networks which accurately models and characterizes the composite fading channel with reflectors, path-loss exponent, fading, and shadowing parameters in 5G-UAV based EWC networks. Based on the model, we develop the optimal power allocation scheme with the simple closed-form expression and the numerical results based optimal joint bandwidth-power allocation scheme. We derive the corresponding capacities and compare the energy efficiency between IRS and traditional relay based 5G-UAVs. Numerical results show that the new heterogeneous Fisher-Snedecor $\mathcal {F}$ composite fading channel adapted resource allocation schemes can achieve higher capacity and energy efficiency than those of traditional channel model adapted resource allocation schemes, thus providing better communications service for post-disaster areas.

Sixth generation (6G)-enabled Internet of Things (IoT) needs sufficient spectrum resources to provide spectrum access for massive IoT’s terminals. However, traditional orthogonal multiple access restricts the full use of limited spectrum resources. In this article, a nonorthogonal multiple access (NOMA)-based hybrid spectrum access scheme is proposed for 6G-enabled cognitive IoT (CIoT), where the CIoT may access both the idle and busy spectrum via NOMA regardless of the primary user’s (PU) state. The uplink resource allocations for the CIoT are optimized in the decoding-PU-last and decoding-PU-first schemes, respectively, which seek to maximize the average total transmission rate of CIoT while ensuring the minimum transmission rates for PU and each CIoT node. Then, a clustering NOMA-based CIoT is presented to decrease the interuser interference, where the nodes in each cluster use NOMA to transmit in the allocated subchannel. The simulation results have shown the performance advantages for the NOMA-based hybrid spectrum access and better rate guarantee for the clustering NOMA-based CIoT.

The sixth-generation (6G) communication requires supporting massive Internet of Things (IoT) devices and extremely differentiated IoT applications for the air–space–ground integrated network. Relying on the aerial superiority, unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) is capable of acting as an aerial base station (BS) and supporting IoT deployment in remote and disaster areas. A UAV-supported clustered nonorthogonal multiple access (C-NOMA) system is put forward in this article. Specifically, the UAV provides services to IoT terminals as an aerial BS based on the wireless-powered communication (WPC) technique. According to this system, we propose a synergetic scheme for UAV trajectory planning and subslot allocation. Our goal is to maximize the uplink average achievable sum rate of IoT terminals by synergistically planning UAV trajectory and subslot duration, while guaranteeing the uplink achievable sum rate and the UAV mobility constraints. As the formulated problem suffers nonconvexity and complication, an efficient iterative algorithm is proposed to address it. First, for fixed UAV trajectory, all the terminals are clustered and a subslot allocation algorithm based on the Lagrange multiplier and bisection method is proposed. Then, for a fixed clustering state and subslot duration, we optimize the UAV trajectory. Finally, we solve these two subproblems alternatively until the objective function converges. The effectiveness of the proposed scheme in the UAV-supported C-NOMA system is verified by the numerical results.

In task offloading systems, it is imperative to guarantee that an offloaded task is completed within a pre-specified deadline. In this paper, we propose a distributed device-to-device (D2D) offloading system (DDOS) in which a task owner opportunistically broadcasts an offloading request that includes its mobility level and task completion deadline. After receiving the request, mobile devices in the vicinity of the task owner employ a constraint stochastic game to decide, in a distributed manner, whether to accept the request or not. We devise a best response dynamics-based algorithm (BRDA) to obtain a multi-policy constrained Nash equilibrium. Evaluation results demonstrate that DDOS can guarantee a high on-time task completion probability, as well as a low energy consumption.

Modern 5G services with stringent reliability and latency requirements such as smart healthcare and industrial automation have become possible through the advancement of Multi-access Edge Computing (MEC). However, the rigidity of ground MEC and its susceptibility to infrastructure failure would prevent satisfying the resiliency and strict requirements of those services. Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) have been proposed for providing flexible edge computing capability through UAV-mounted cloudlets, harnessing their advantages such as mobility, low-cost, and line-of-sight communication. However, UAV-mounted cloudlets may have failure rates that would impact mission-critical applications, necessitating a novel study for the provisioned reliability considering UAV node reliability and task redundancy. In this paper, we investigate the novel problem of UAV-aided ultra-reliable low-latency computation offloading which would enable future IoT services with strict requirements. We aim at maximizing the rate of served requests, by optimizing the UAVs’ positions, the offloading decisions, and the allocated resources while respecting the stringent latency and reliability requirements. To do so, the problem is divided into two phases, the first being a planning problem to optimize the placement of UAVs and the second an operational problem to make optimized offloading and resource allocation decisions with constrained UAVs’ energy. We formulate both problems associated with each phase as non-convex mixed-integer programs, and due to their non-convexity, we propose a two-stage approximate algorithm where the two problems are transformed into approximate convex programs. Further, we approach the problem considering the task partitioning model which will be prevalent in 5G networks. Through numerical analysis, we demonstrate the efficiency of our solution considering various scenarios, and compare it to other baseline approaches.

IoT-based network systems use a modern architecture called fog computing, In which data providing data services is economical with low latency. This paper tends to solve the challenge of resource allocation in fog computing. Solving the resource allocation challenge leads to increased profits, economic savings, and optimal computing systems use. Here resource allocation is improved by making use of the combined algorithm Nash equilibrium and auction. In the proposed method, each player is assigned a matrix. Each player matrix includes fog nodes (FNs), data service subscribers (DSSs), and data service operators (DSOs). Each player generates the best strategy based on the other players strategy in all stages of the algorithm. The simulation results show that FNs profit in the combined Nash and Auction equilibrium algorithms is superior to the Stackelberg game algorithm.

Elastic Optical Networks (EONs) enable finer-grained resource allocation and tuning of transmission configurations for right-sized resource allocation. These features make EONs excellent choice for 5G transport networks supporting highly dynamic traffic with diverse Quality-of-Service (QoS) requirements. 5G network slices are expected to host applications with a dynamic nature ( e.g. , augmented/virtual reality broadcasting), which will result in slice resource requirement changing over time. The initial resource allocation to network slices has to be adapted to accommodate such changes without causing significant disruption to existing traffic and using minimal additional resources. In this paper, we address the problem of scaling bandwidth demand of network slices on an EON-enabled 5G transport network. In contrast to the state-of-the-art, we do not assume any specific technologies for minimizing disruption when accommodating the scaling request. Rather, we propose an Integer Linear Program (ILP) and a heuristic algorithm for accommodating scaling requests by choosing from a comprehensive set of reconfiguration actions. We carefully design a novel cost model for capturing traffic disruptions and additional resource usage by these different actions. Our extensive simulations using realistic network topologies shed light on the trade-off between additional resource usage and disruption while accommodating slice scaling requests by employing a comprehensive set of reconfiguration actions. Simulation results also show that our heuristic algorithm can find solutions that remain within 10% of ILP-based solutions, while executing several orders of magnitude faster than ILP.

BACKGROUND: Automatic modulation classification (AMC) plays a crucial role in cognitive radio, such as industrial automation, transmitter identification, and spectrum resource allocation. Recently, deep learning (DL) as a new machine learning (ML) methodology has achieved considerable implementation in AMC missions. However, few studies have examined the robustness of DL models under varying signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) environments. OBJECTIVE: The primary objective of this paper is to design a robust DL-based AMC model to adapt to noise changes. METHODS: The AMC task is divided into two sub-problems: SNR environment perception and modulation classification in sub-environments. A deep cascading network architecture (DCNA) is proposed to solve these two problems. DCNA is composed of an SNR estimator network (SEN) and a modulation recognition cluster network (MRCN). SEN is designed to identify the SNR levels of samples, and MRCN is composed of several subnetworks for further modulation recognition under diverse SNR settings. In addition, a label-smoothing method is proposed to promote the integration between SEN and MRCN. An auxiliary data-segmenting method is also presented to deal with the contrasting data requirements of DCNA. Note that DCNA does not utilize a specific network structure and can be generalized to various deep learning models with advanced improvements. RESULTS: Experimental results on dataset RML2016.10b show that our proposed DCNA can enhance the recognition performance of different network structures on AMC tasks. In particular, a combination of DCNA and convolutional long short-term deep neural network (CLDNN) can achieve a classification accuracy of 91.0 % , outperforming the previous research. CONCLUSION: The performance of the cascading network demonstrates the significant performance advantage and application feasibility of DCNA.

Under-allocating or over-allocating computation resources (e.g., CPU cores) can prolong the completion time of data-parallel jobs in a distributed system. We present a predictor, ReLocag, to find the near-optimal number of CPU cores to minimize job completion time (JCT). ReLocag includes a graph convolutional network (GCN) and a fully-connected network (FCNN). The GCN learns the dependency between operations from the workflow of a job, and then the FCNN takes the workflow dependency together with other features (e.g., the input size, the number of CPU cores, the amount of memory, and the number of computation tasks) as input for JCT prediction. The prediction result can guide the user to determine the near-optimal number of CPU cores. Besides, we propose two effective strategies to overcome the time-consuming issue of training sample collection in big data applications. First, we develop an adaptive sampling method to collect essential samples judiciously. Second, we further design a cross-application transfer learning model to exploit the training samples collected from other applications. We conduct extensive experiments in a Spark cluster for 7 types of exemplary Spark applications. Results show that ReLocag improves the JCT prediction accuracy by 4—14 percent. Moreover, the CPU core consumption decreases by 58.2 percent.

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) enabled Aerial Base Stations (UABSs) have been studied widely in future communications. However, there are a series of challenges such as interference management, trajectory design and resource allocation in the scenarios of multi-UAV networks. Besides, different performances among UABSs increase complexity and bring many challenges. In this paper, the joint downlink transmission power control and trajectory design problem in multi-type UABSs communication network is investigated. In order to satisfy the signal to interference plus noise power ratio of users, each UABS needs to adjust its position and transmission power. Based on the interactions among multiple communication links, a non-cooperative Mean-Field-Type Game (MFTG) is proposed to model the joint optimization problem. Then, a Nash equilibrium solution is solved by two steps: first, the users in the given area are clustered to get the initial deployment of the UABSs; second, the Mean-Field Q (MFQ)-learning algorithm is proposed to solve the discrete MFTG problem. Finally, the effectiveness of the approach is verified through the simulations, which simplifies the solution process and effectively reduces the energy consumption of each UABS.

Consistent hashing has played an indispensable role in cloud infrastructure, although its load balancing performance is not necessarily perfect. Consistent hashing has long remained the most widely used method despite many methods being proposed to improve load balancing because these methods trade off load balancing against consistency, memory usage, lookup performance, and/or fault-tolerance. This article presents Structured Allocation-based Consistent Hashing (SACH), a cloud-optimized consistent hashing algorithm that overcomes the trade-offs by taking advantage of the characteristics of cloud environments: scaling management and auto-healing. Since scaling can be distinguished from failures, SACH applies two different algorithms to update hashing functions: a fast-update algorithm for unmanaged backend failures to satisfy fault-tolerance with quick response and a slow-update algorithm for managed scaling. Hashing functions are initialized or slow-updated considering the characteristics of the fast-update algorithm to satisfy load balancing and the other properties as far as the number of failed backends is kept small by auto-healing. The experimental results show that SACH outperforms existing algorithms in each aspect. SACH will improve the load balancing of cloud infrastructure components, where the trade-offs have prevented the renewal of hashing functions.

Multi-access Edge Computing (MEC) has significant advantages in improving resource efficiency of Internet of Things (IoT) and 5G networks, however its limited resources cannot meet the demand of data communication and computation capability during off-peak time. Incentivizing intelligent vehicles with idle computation resources as vehicle edge nodes (VENs) to provide computation offloading for nearby user equipments (UEs) is an appealing idea. Thus, we propose a vehicle-assisted MEC (VMEC) paradigm, where tasks can be offloaded to MEC server and VENs. In this paper, we first establish a differentiated pricing model based on different states of resources and a dynamic incentive model according to the demands of UEs. Then, we formulate a Stackelberg game between UEs and MEC service provider (MEC SP) to obtain the optimal offloading strategy and pricing scheme. A gradient-based resource allocation iteration algorithm (GRAIA) is designed for the Nash equilibrium solution. Finally, considering the matching between UEs and vehicles, we present a reverse auction-based task scheduling algorithm (RATSA) to choose VENs. The simulation results demonstrate that the proposed scheme can achieve significant performance improvement and is superior to the existing schemes in improving system utility.

This paper studies an uplink nonorthogonal multiple access (NOMA)-enabled mobile-edge computing network. Specifically, we focus on the practical design of secure offloading without knowing the eavesdropper's channel state information. The aim is to maximize the minimum antieavesdropping ability (AEA) for uplink NOMA users subject to the worst-case secrecy rate requirements and limited transmission power budgets. The formulated problem is nonconvex and difficult to be solved directly. In order to tackle this issue, we propose an efficient iterative algorithm by jointly designing the secrecy rate, local computing bits, and power allocation. The local computing bits and the power allocation are derived in closed form. Numerical results are provided to demonstrate the efficiency of our proposed scheme in terms of AEA.

Directed Acyclic Graph (DAG) workflows are widely used for large-scale data analytics in cluster-based distributed computing systems. The performance model for a DAG on data-parallel frameworks (e.g., MapReduce) is a research challenge because the allocation of preemptable system resources among parallel jobs may dynamically vary during execution. This resource allocation variation during execution makes it difficult to accurately estimate the execution time. In this paper, we tackle this challenge by proposing a new cost model, called Bottleneck Oriented Estimation (BOE), to estimate the allocation of preemptable resources by identifying the bottleneck to accurately predict task execution time. For a DAG workflow, we propose a state-based approach to iteratively use the resource allocation property among stages to estimate the overall execution plan. Furthermore, to handle the skewness of various jobs, we refine the model with the order statistics theory to improve estimation accuracy. Extensive experiments were performed to validate these cost models with HiBench and TPC-H workloads. The BOE model outperforms the state-of-the-art models by a factor of five for task execution time estimation. For the refined skew-aware model, the average prediction error is under $$3\%$$ 3 % when estimating the execution time of 51 hybrid analytics (HiBench) and query (TPC-H) DAG workflows.

5G cellular networks will heavily rely on the use of techniques that increase the spectral efficiency (SE) to meet the stringent capacity requirements of the envisioned services. To this end, the use of coordinated multi-point (CoMP) as an enabler of underlay spectrum sharing promises substantial SE gains. In this work, we propose novel low-complexity coordinated resource allocation methods based on standard linear precoding schemes that not only maximize the sum-SE and protect the primary users from harmful interference, but they also satisfy the quality-of-service demands of the mobile users. Furthermore, we devise coordinated caching strategies that create joint transmission (JT) opportunities, thus overcoming the mobile backhaul/fronthaul throughput and latency constraints associated with the application of this CoMP variant. Additionally, we present a family of caching schemes that outperform significantly the “de facto standard” least recently used (LRU) technique in terms of the achieved cache hit rate while presenting smaller computational complexity. Numerical simulations indicate that the proposed resource allocation methods perform close to their interference-unconstrained counterparts, illustrate that the considered caching strategies facilitate JT, highlight the performance gains of the presented caching schemes over LRU, and shed light on the effect of various parameters on the performance.

Typical cloud systems are often prone to inherent wide area network (WAN) latency. To address this issue fog computing is proposed that enables resource-constrained Internet-of-Things (IoT) devices, to execute deadline-sensitive tasks at the edge of the network. These devices can extend their battery lifespan by intelligently offloading computations as tasks to fog nodes (FNs) in their vicinity. However, finding an optimal offloading plan in a densely connected IoT-fog network is proven to be $\mathcal {NP}$ -Hard. Hence, in this article, we propose a matching theory-based efficient task offloading strategy called METO that aims to reduce the total system energy and number of outages (number of tasks exceeding the deadline) in an IoT-fog interconnection network. As resource allocation involves multiple criteria, their weights are derived using criteria importance though inter criteria correlation (CRITIC). Furthermore, to rank the alternatives we use the technique for order of preference by similarity to ideal solution (TOPSIS). Based on this ranking, we formulate the overall offloading problem as a one-to-many matching game and utilize the deferred acceptance algorithm (DAA) to produce a stable assignment. Simulation is performed in two different settings comprising offloading of homogeneous and heterogeneous tasks. Extensive simulations across both environments confirm that the proposed algorithm outperforms the existing schemes with respect to improved energy consumption, completion time, and execution time. Moreover, METO also shows the reduced number of outages across baselines used for comparison.

This paper studies the multi-agent resource allocation problem in vehicular networks using non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) and network slicing. Vehicles want to broadcast multiple packets with heterogeneous quality-of-service (QoS) requirements, such as safety-related packets (e.g., accident reports) that require very low latency communication, while raw sensor data sharing (e.g., high-definition map sharing) requires high-speed communication. To ensure heterogeneous service requirements for different packets, we propose a network slicing architecture. We focus on a non-cellular network scenario where vehicles communicate by the broadcast approach via the direct device-to-device interface (i.e., sidelink communication). In such a vehicular network, resource allocation among vehicles is very difficult, mainly due to (i) the rapid variation of wireless channels among highly mobile vehicles and (ii) the lack of a central coordination point. Thus, the possibility of acquiring instantaneous channel state information to perform centralized resource allocation is precluded. The resource allocation problem considered is therefore very complex. It includes not only the usual spectrum and power allocation, but also coverage selection (which target vehicles to broadcast to) and packet selection (which network slice to use). This problem must be solved jointly since selected packets can be overlaid using NOMA and therefore spectrum and power must be carefully allocated for better vehicle coverage. To do so, we first provide a mathematical programming formulation and a thorough NP-hardness analysis of the problem. Then, we model it as a multi-agent Markov decision process. Finally, to solve it efficiently, we use a deep reinforcement learning (DRL) approach and specifically propose a deep Q learning (DQL) algorithm. The proposed DQL algorithm is practical because it can be implemented in an online and distributed manner. It is based on a cooperative learning strategy in which all agents perceive a common reward and thus learn cooperatively and distributively to improve the resource allocation solution through offline training. We show that our approach is robust and efficient when faced with different variations of the network parameters and compared to centralized benchmarks.

Under the green building policy, the recycling of construction waste has become an important issue. However, many obstructions in the industrial chain of construction waste recycling, slow integration of production elements in the chain, and inefficient resource allocation hinder the development of the construction waste recycling industry. In this study, a co-evolution model of the industrial chain of construction waste recycling is constructed based on the Lotka–Volterra model, and the Jacobian matrix is used for stability analysis. Finally, a numerical simulation is performed. The simulation results indicate that: (1) There is a high product correlation between upstream and downstream enterprises in the industrial chain of construction waste recycling; (2) The conversion coefficient of supply and demand of upstream and downstream enterprises has a higher impact on and is more sensitive to the evolution of this industrial chain; (3) The co-evolution of upstream and downstream enterprises promotes the added value of products and maximizes the overall benefits of the industrial chain, which provides reference value and theoretical basis for the development of the industrial chain of construction waste recycling.