With the advance of high-speed network technologies, availability and popularity of streaming media contents over the Internet has grown rapidly in recent years. Because of their distinct statistical properties and user viewing patterns, traditional delivery and caching schemes for normal web objects such as HTML files or images can not be efficiently applied to streaming media such as audio and video. In this paper, we therefore propose an integrated caching scheme for streaming media with segment-based caching and hierarchically distributed proxies. Firstly, each stream is divided into segments and their caching algorithms are considered to determine how to distribute the segments into different level proxies efficiently. Secondly, by introducing two kinds of segment priorities, segment replacing algorithms are proposed to determine which stream and which segments should be replaced when the cache is full. Finally, a Web-friendly caching scheme is proposed to integrate the streaming caching with the conventional caching of normal web objects. Performance of the proposed algorithms is verified by carrying out simulations.

This paper focuses on RTT-fairness of multiple TCP flows over the Internet, and proposes a new TCP congestion control named “HRF (Hybrid RTT-Fair)-TCP”. Today, it is a serious problem that the flows having smaller RTT utilize more bandwidth than others when multiple flows having different RTT values compete in the same network. This means that a user with longer RTT may not be able to obtain sufficient bandwidth by the current methods. This RTT fairness issue has been discussed in many TCP papers. An example is CR (Constant Rate) algorithm, which achieves RTT-fairness by multiplying the square of RTT value in its window increment phase against TCP-Reno. However, the method halves its windows size same as TCP-Reno when a packet loss is detected. This makes worse its efficiency in certain network cases. On the other hand, recent proposed TCP versions essentially require throughput efficiency and TCP-friendliness with TCP-Reno. Therefore, we try to keep these advantages in our TCP design in addition to RTT-fairness. In this paper, we make intuitive analytical models in which we separate resource utilization processes into two cases: utilization of bottleneck link capacity and that of buffer space at the bottleneck link router. These models take into account three characteristic algorithms (Reno, Constant Rate, Constant Increase) in window increment phase where a sender receives an acknowledgement successfully. Their validity is proved by both simulations and implementations. From these analyses, we propose HRF-TCP which switches two modes according to observed RTT values and achieves RTT fairness. Experiments are carried out to validate the proposed method. Finally, HRF-TCP outperforms conventional methods in RTT-fairness, efficiency and friendliness with TCP-Reno.

Modern GPUs have evolved to become a more general processor capable of executing scientific and engineering computations. It provides a highly parallel computing environment due to its large number of computing cores, which are suitable for numerous data parallel arithmetic computations, particularly linear algebra operations. The matrix-vector multiplication is one of the most important dense linear algebraic operations. It is applied to a diverse set of applications in many fields and must therefore be fully optimized to achieve a high-performance. In this paper, we proposed a novel auto-tuning method for matrix-vector multiplication on GPUs, where the number of assigned threads that are used to compute one element of the result vector can be auto-tuned according to the size of matrix. On the Nvidia's GPU GTX 650 with the most recent Kepler architecture, we developed an auto-tuner that can automatically select the optimal number of assigned threads for calculation. Based on the auto-tuner's result, we developed a versatile generic matrix-vector multiplication kernel with the CUDA programming model. A series of experiments on different shapes and sizes of matrices were conducted for comparing the performance of our kernel with that of the kernels from CUBLAS 5.0, MAGMA 1.3 and a warp method. The experiments results show that the performance of our matrix-vector multiplication kernel is close to the optimal behavior with increasing of the size of the matrix and has very little dependency on the shape of the matrix, which is a significant improvement compared to the other three kernels that exhibit unstable performance behavior for different shapes of matrices.

Dynamic spectrum allocation (DSA) based on secondary spectrum market is considered a promising technology to improve spectrum utilization efficiency and to relieve the wireless spectrum shortage problem. We propose a dynamic spectrum allocation algorithm named market equilibrium and game (MEG), and construct a complete secondary spectrum market. The market based on the MEG algorithm consists of two submarkets: multiple primary services providers (PSPs) and a dynamic spectrum allocation server (DSAS) form the high submarket, while the low submarket is composed of the DSAS and a number of secondary users. In the low submarket, the MEG algorithm provides a game type selection strategy. By this strategy, the DSAS can win more payoffs with lower unit spectrum price, which encourages secondary users to use more spectrum. A secondary user can also choose its preferable game type between dynamic game and Nash bargaining flexibly. On the other hand, a bargaining procedure in the high submarket is designed in the MEG algorithm to ensure that market equilibrium is quickly reached. A performance analysis shows that the strategy of game type selection is fair and feasible for both the DSAS and the secondary users. Moreover, the bargaining procedure is better than the existing algorithm which adjusts price step by step in the high submarket. Simulation results also demonstrate that the market fluctuation in the low submarket is passed to the high submarket by way of the DSAS. The MEG algorithm can effectively satisfy the highly-fluctuating demands from the secondary users. In addition, the MEG algorithm can improve the payoffs of all players and increase spectrum utilization efficiency.

Multiple antenna is introduced into spectrum sensing in cognitive radios recently. However, conventional multiple antenna spectrum sensing schemes exploited only space diversity. In this paper, we propose a new multiple antenna sensing scheme based on space and time diversity (MASS-BSTD). First, the primary user signal to be sensed is over-sampled at each antenna, and signal samples collected at the same time instant from different antennas are stacked into a column vector. Second, each column vector is utilized to estimate space correlation matrix that exploits space diversity, and two consecutive column vectors are utilized to estimate time correlation matrix that exploits time diversity. Third, the estimated space correlation matrix and time correlation matrix are combined and analyzed using eigenvalue decomposition to reduce information redundancy of signals from multiple antennas. Lastly, the derived eigenvalues are utilized to construct the test statistic and sense the presence of the primary user signal. Since the proposed MASS-BSTD exploits both space diversity and time diversity, it achieves performance gain over the counterparts that only exploit space diversity. Furthermore, the proposed MASS-BSTD requires no prior information on the primary user, the channel between primary user transmitter and secondary user receiver, and is robust to noise uncertainty. Theoretical analysis and simulation results show that the proposed MASS-BSTD can sense the presence of primary user signal reliably.

The efficient distribution of stored information has become a major concern in the Internet. Since the web workload characteristics show that more than 60% of network traffic is caused by image documents, how to efficiently distribute image documents from servers to end clients is an important issue. Proxy cache is an efficient solution to reduce network traffic. And it has been shown that an image caching method (Graceful Caching) based on hierarchical coding format performs better than conventional caching schemes in recent years. However, as the capacity of the cache is limited, how to efficiently allocate the cache memory to achieve a minimum expected delay time is still a problem to be resolved. This paper presents an integrated caching algorithm to deal with the above problem for image databases, web browsers, proxies and other similar applications in the Internet. By analyzing the web request distribution of the Graceful Caching, both replacing and pre-fetching algorithms are proposed. We also show that our proposal can be carried out based on information readily available in the proxy server; it flexibly adapts its parameters to the hit rates and access pattern of users' requesting documents in the Graceful Caching. Finally we verify the performance of this algorithm by simulations.

In this work, we consider a remote estimation system where a remote controller estimates the status of heterogeneous sensing devices with the information delivered over wireless channels. Status of heterogeneous devices changes at different speeds. With limited wireless resources, estimating as accurately as possible requires careful design of status update schemes. Status update schemes can be divided into two classes: centralized and decentralized. In centralized schemes, a central scheduler coordinates devices to avoid potential collisions. However, in decentralized schemes where each device updates on its own, update decisions can be made by using the current status which is unavailable in centralized schemes. The relation between these two schemes under the heterogeneous devices case is unclear, and thus we study these two schemes in terms of the mean square error (MSE) of the estimation. For centralized schemes, since the scheduler does not have the current status of each device, we study policies where the scheduling decisions are based on age of information (AoI), which measures the staleness of the status information held in the controller. The optimal scheduling policy is provided, along with the corresponding MSE. For decentralized schemes, we consider deviation-based policies with which only devices with estimation deviations larger than prescribed thresholds may update, and the others stay idle. We derive an approximation of the minimum MSE under the deviation-based policies and show that it is e/3 of the minimum MSE under the AoI-based policies. Simulation results further show that the actual minimum MSEs of these two policies are even closer than that shown by the approximation, which indicates that the cost of collision in the deviation-based policy cancels out the gain from exploiting status deviations.

CDN (Content Delivery Networks) improves end-user performance by replicating web contents on a group of geographically distributed servers. However, repeatedly keeping the entire replica of the original objects into many content servers consumes too much server resource. This problem becomes more serious for the large-sized objects such as streaming media, e.g. high quality video. In this paper, we therefore propose an efficient replication method for layered video streams in CDN, which can reduce user response delays and storage costs simultaneously. Based on an analytical formulation of the cooperative replication of layers and segments of each video stream, we derive a replication algorithm which solves next three problems quantitatively. (1) How many servers should be selected to replicate a given video stream? (2) For a single video stream, how many layers and segments should be stored in a given server? (3) After selecting a group of servers for each video stream, how do we allocate the replication priority (i.e. order) to each server? Simulation results verify that the proposed algorithm efficiently resolves the above problems and provides much better performance than conventional methods.

Utilizing available channels to improve the network performance is one of the most important targets for the cognitive MAC protocol design. Using antenna technologies is an efficient way to reach this target. Therefore, in this paper, we propose a novel cognitive MAC protocol, called Polarization-based Long-range Communication Directional MAC Protocol (PLRC-DMAC), for Cognitive Ad Hoc Networks (CAHNs). The proposed protocol uses directional antennas to acquire better spatial reuse and establish long-range communication links, which can support more nodes to access the same channel simultaneously. Moreover, the PLRC-DMAC also uses polarization diversity to allow nodes in the CAHN to share the same channel with Primary Users (PUs). Furthermore, we also propose a Long-range Orientation (LRO) algorithm to orient the long-range nodes. Simulation results show that the LRO algorithm can accurately orient the long-range nodes, and the PLRC-DMAC can significantly increase the network throughput as well as reduce the end-to-end delay.

In this letter, we propose a Partially Observable Markov Decision Process (POMDP) based Distributed Adaptive Opportunistic Spectrum Access (DA-OSA) Strategy for Cognitive Ad Hoc Networks (CAHNs). In each slot, the source and destination choose a set of channels to sense and then decide the transmission channels based on the sensing results. In order to maximize the throughput for each link, we use the theories of sequential decision and optimal stopping to determine the optimal sensing channel set. Moreover, we also establish the myopic policy and exploit the monotonicity of the reward function that we use, which can be used to reduce the complexity of the sequential decision.

Content delivery network improves end-user performance by replicating Web contents on a group of geographically distributed sites interconnected over the Internet. However, with the development whereby content distribution systems can manage dynamically changing files, an important issue to be resolved is consistency management, which means the cached replicas on different sites must be updated if the originals change. In this paper, based on the analytical formulation of object freshness, web access distribution and network topology, we derive a novel algorithm as follows: (1) For a given content which has been changed on its original server, only a limited number of its replicas instead of all replicas are updated. (2) After a replica has been selected for update, the latest version will be sent from an algorithm-decided site instead of from its original server. Simulation results verify that the proposed algorithm provides better consistency management than conventional methods with the reduced the old hit ratio and network traffic.

Aircraft Landing Scheduling (ALS) attempts to determine the landing time for each aircraft. The objective of ALS is to minimise the deviations of the landing time of each aircraft from its target landing time. In this paper, we propose a dynamic hyper-heuristic algorithm for the ALS problem. In our approach, the Scatter Search algorithm is chosen as the high level heuristic to build a chain of intensification and diversification priority rules, which are applied to generate the landing sequence by different priority rules, which are low level heuristics in the hyper-heuristic framework. The landing time for each aircraft can be calculated efficiently based on the landing sequence. Simulation studies demonstrate that the proposed algorithm can obtain high quality solutions for ALS.

Multi-agent based simulation has been widely used in behavior finance, and several single-processed simulation platforms with Agent-Based Modeling (ABM) have been proposed. However, traditional simulations of stock markets on single processed computers are limited by the computing capability since financial researchers need larger and larger number of agents and more and more rounds to evolve agents' intelligence and get more efficient data. This paper introduces a distributed multi-agent simulation platform, named PSSPAM, for stock market simulation focusing on large scale of parallel agents, communication system and simulation scheduling. A logical architecture for distributed artificial stock market simulation is proposed, containing four loosely coupled modules: agent module, market module, communication system and user interface. With the customizable trading strategies inside, agents are deployed to multiple computing nodes. Agents exchange messages with each other and with the market based on a customizable network topology through a uniform communication system. With a large number of agent threads, the round scheduling strategy is used during the simulation, and a worker pool is applied in the market module. Financial researchers can design their own financial models and run the simulation through the user interface, without caring about the complexity of parallelization and related problems. Two groups of experiments are conducted, one with internal communication between agents and the other without communication between agents, to verify PSSPAM to be compatible with the data from Euronext-NYSE. And the platform shows fair scalability and performance under different parallelism configurations.