15504838
Utilization-based heuristics for statically mapping real-time applications onto the HiPer-D heterogeneous computing system
Real-time applications continue to increase in importance as they are employed in various critical areas, such as command and control systems. These applications have traditionally required custom-made systems to execute them. Recently, with the widespread use of increasingly powerful commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) products, some real-time system designers have started a shift from custom development to COTS-based systems to achieve lower costs and more flexible systems. This research investigates the problem of allocating real-time applications to a set of COTS heterogeneous machines connected together by a COTS high-speed network. The heuristics were implemented on the High Performance Distributed Computing Program's (HiPer-D) Naval Surface Warfare Center (NSWC) testbed. At the specification of NSWC, the goal of this study is to design static resource allocation heuristics that balance the utilization of the computation and network resources in the HiPer-D system based on the system information provided. The broader goal is to maximize the time before dynamic reallocation is required for managing an increased workload at runtime.
39238334
Information Processing and Routing in Wireless Sensor Networks
Introduction of Wireless Sensor Networks Background Energy Models Information Processing within a Collocated Cluster Information Transportation over a Tree Substrate Information Routing with Tunable Compression.
17009533
Utility-Driven Spatiotemporal Sampling Using Mobile Sensors
Many real-world applications for sensor networks require event sampling with sufficient resolution over both spatial and temporal dimensions. When the deployed nodes are insufficient to fully cover the sensor field to satisfy this spatiotemporal sampling requirements of all events, nodes with intelligent mobility are crucial to improve the sampling quality. We measure the sampling quality using a utility function that incorporates both the importance and spatiotemporal properties of events. We then describe a Utility Driven Mobility (UDM) scheme, which enables autonomous mobility scheduling of nodes in a distributed fashion. We evaluate the performance of UDM via extensive simulation studies. Our work provides a practical framework for spatiotemporal sampling using mobile sensor networks.
15352374
Network-Aware State Update For Large Scale Mobile Games
In large scale mobile gaming environments, efficient mechanisms for state update is crucial to allow graceful real-time interaction of a large number of players, under limited wireless network bandwidth. By using the state updating threshold as a key parameter that bridges the resulting state inconsistency (or distortion) and the network traffic, we are able to model the fundamental traffic-distortion tradeoffs. Given the tradeoffs for all users, an optimal bandwidth allocation can be derived using well-known convex programming techniques. By exploring the temporal locality of gaming behavior, we also propose a prediction method to realize on-line bandwidth adaptation. Using real data trace from a multi-player driving game, the proposed network aware bandwidth allocation method, NABA, is able to achieve significant reduction in state distortion compared to two baselines: Uniform and Proportional policies. NABA is also adaptable to variations in system parameters, including bandwidth constraint and network delay.
2701730
Data Gathering with Tunable Compression in Sensor Networks
We study the problem of constructing a data gathering tree over a wireless sensor network in order to minimize the total energy for compressing and transporting information from a set of source nodes to the sink. This problem is crucial for advanced computationally intensive applications, where traditional "maximum" in-network compression may result in significant computation energy. We investigate a tunable data compression technique that enables effective trade-offs between the computation and communication costs. We derive the optimal compression strategy for a given data gathering tree and then investigate the performance of different tree structures for networks deployed on a grid topology, as well as general graphs. Our analytical results pertaining to the grid topology and simulation results pertaining to the general graphs indicate that the performance of a simple greedy approximation to the Minimal Steiner Tree (MST) provides a constant-factor approximation for the grid topology and good average performance on the general graphs. Although, theoretically, a more complicated randomized algorithm offers a polylogarithmic performance bound, the simple greedy approximation of MST is attractive for practical implementation.
6083994
On communication models for algorithm design in networked sensor systems: A case study,
Towards building a systematic methodology of algorithm design for applications of networked sensor systems, we formally define two link-wise communication models, the Collision Free Model (CFM) and the Collision Aware Model (CAM). While CFM provides ease of programming and analysis for high level application functionality, CAM enables more accurate performance analysis and hence more efficient algorithms through cross-layer optimization, at the expense of increased programming and analysis complexity. These communication models are part of an abstract network model, above which algorithm design and performance optimization is performed. We use the example of optimizing a probability based broadcasting scheme under CAM to illustrate algorithm optimization based on the defined models. Specifically, we present an analytical framework that facilitates an accurate modeling and analysis for the probability based broadcasting in CAM (PB_CAM). Our analytical results indicate that (1) the optimal broadcast probability for either maximizing the reachability within a given latency constraint or minimizing the latency for a given reachability constraint decreases rapidly with node density, and (2) the optimal probability for either maximizing the reachability with a given energy constraint or minimizing the energy cost for a given reachability constraint varies slowly between 0 and 0.1 over the entire range of the variations in node density. Our analysis is also confirmed by extensive simulation results.
6854477
Confining windows inter-process communications for OS-level virtual machine
As OS-level virtualization technology usually imposes little overhead on virtual machine start-up and running, it provides an excellent choice for building intrusion/fault tolerant applications that require redundancy and frequent invocation. When developing Windows OS-level virtual machine, however, people will inevitably face the challenge of confining Windows Inter-Process Communications (IPC). As IPC on Windows platform is more complex than UNIX style OS and most of the programs on Windows are not open-source, it is difficult to discover all of the performed IPCs and confine them. In this paper, we propose three general principles to confine IPC on Windows OS and a novel IPC confinement mechanism based on the principles. With the mechanism, for the first time from the literature, we successfully virtualized RPC System Service (RPCSS) and Internet Information Server (IIS) on Feather-weight Virtual Machine (FVM). Experimental results demonstrate that multiple IIS web server instances can simultaneously run on single Windows OS with much less performance overhead than other popular VM technology, offering a good basis for constructing dependable system.
2088482
Cotton Variety Selection Model and Application Design
Choosing a  cotton variety  involves  making comparisons over many trials and across an increasingly large  number of available  varieties. To aid in this process, a computerized tool has been developed at the Texas Tech University. This tool, called COTWIZ, based on the cotton variety selection model, allows  multiple comparisons  of varieties across a number of trial locations. COTWIZ based on the cotton variety selection model and uses cotton OVT data to make  comparisons that are imported by the user.
9176644
Automated and safe vulnerability assessment
As the number of system vulnerabilities multiplies in recent years, vulnerability assessment has emerged as a powerful system security administration tool that can identify vulnerabilities in existing systems before they are exploited. Although there are many commercial vulnerability assessment tools in the market, none of them can formally guarantee that the assessment process never compromises the computer systems being tested. This paper proposes a featherweight virtual machine (FVM) technology to address the safety issue associated with vulnerability testing. Compared with other virtual machine technologies, FVM is designed to facilitate sharing between virtual machines but still provides strong protection between them. The FVM technology allows a vulnerability assessment tool to test an exact replica of a production-mode network service, including both hardware and system software components, while guaranteeing that the production-mode network service is fully isolated from the testing process. In addition to safety, the vulnerability assessment support system described in this paper can also automate the entire process of vulnerability testing and thus for the first time makes it feasible to run vulnerability testing autonomously and frequently. Experiments on a Windows-based prototype show that Nessus assessment results against an FVM virtual machine are identical to those against a real machine. Furthermore, modifications to the file system and registry state made by vulnerability assessment runs are completely isolated from the host machine. Finally, the performance impact of vulnerability assessment runs on production network services is as low as 3%
8259100
Adapt Bagging to Nearest Neighbor Classifiers
It is well-known that in order to build a strong ensemble, the component learners should be with high diversity as well as high accuracy. If perturbing the training set can cause significant changes in the component learners constructed, then Bagging can effectively improve accuracy. However, for stable learners such as nearest neighbor classifiers, perturbing the training set can hardly produce diverse component learners, therefore Bagging does not work well. This paper adapts Bagging to nearest neighbor classifiers through injecting randomness to distance metrics. In constructing the component learners, both the training set and the distance metric employed for identifying the neighbors are perturbed. A large scale empirical study reported in this paper shows that the proposed BagInRand algorithm can effectively improve the accuracy of nearest neighbor classifiers.
14448098
Research on Dynamic Task Assignment in Grid Workflow System
Task assignment in grid workflow system should be designed to adapt well with the grid which allow people from different organizations to work together in the same workflow process. To ensure grid workflow systems could assign the task to the most suitable person, a novel solution is proposed firstly. Then two description languages GHRSL and HRRL are defined. GHRSL (grid human resource specification language) describes people as grid resources. HRRL (human resources requirement language) describes human resources requirement of workflow tasks. Finally, the evaluation method and the algorithm of dynamic task assignment are also proposed. Based on these, the grid workflow system could assign tasks dynamically to the correct person(s)