Stackelberg game theoretic pricing algorithm for bandwidth allocation in cooperative access

Cooperative access among user devices by sharing wireless access bandwidth opens a new paradigm in heterogeneous networks.However,how to stimulate cooperative relay nodes forwarding service data for others and allocating corresponding bandwidth to support it are two key issues in the cooperative access.This paper proposes a Stackelberg game based framework which is benefit participants including relay nodes and client nodes.This framework generalizes the pricing based bandwidth allocation algorithm by the Stackelberg game model,which optimizes the profit of the cooperative relay nodes while guaranteeing the bandwidth requirements of client nodes.We transform the profit maximization problem into a convex problem and solve it using the convex optimization method.The simulation results demonstrate that the proposed framework and corresponding algorithms outperform the bidding weight proportional fairness and fixed value bandwidth allocation ones significantly.     

GaMe‐PLive: a new game theoretic mechanism for P2P live video streaming

GaMe‐PLive is a game theoretical framework for peer‐to‐peer live video streaming. Prevention of free‐riding and minimization of loss rate in video data transmission are the important objectives of the proposed framework. GaMe‐PLive is also extremely evasive about overhead of extra control messages exchange. At first, a static game with complete information between peers is described, which models the peer's interactive decision process for acceptance/rejection of a video chunk request. All peers repeatedly play this game during video playback periodically. Afterwards, the proposed game is analyzed to obtain a Nash equilibrium, which determines a peer's best strategic response for participation in the video chunk distribution. It will be proved that by applying some simple and feasible conditions, the desired objectives can be reached. The experimental results reveal that the proposed system has been successful in detecting free‐riders with negligible false negative and false positive rate. Also, tolerable loss chunk percentage has been satisfied in all performed tests. Besides, an interesting social norm emerges in GaMe‐PLive: Less participation leads to more missing chunks. GaMe‐PLive will be proven to be quite resistant against cheating peers. The proposed framework displays high performance even if there is not a video server with high upload bandwidth. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

基于拍卖的P2P内容分发网络带宽分配机制

为了解决P2P内容分发网络中带宽资源稀缺且分配不合理这一突出问题,抑制节点的自私性行为,设计了一种基于拍卖的带宽分配机制。该机制通过上载带宽支付方式,迫使自私请求节点选择合适的带宽需求,使得整个P2P网络中的节点良性竞争带宽资源,避免了"公共地悲剧"的发生;且带宽分配算法在资源节点和请求节点并行执行,能很好适应P2P网络的分布式特性。仿真结果表明,该机制能够有效遏制搭便车行为,从而缩短P2P内容分发的平均完成时间,降低内容源服务器的上传数据比例。     

CDNPatch: a cost‐effective failover mechanism for hybrid CDN‐P2P live streaming systems

Among the most well‐established live media distribution technologies is content delivery network (CDN), which improves user‐perceived quality of service by delivering content from proxy servers deployed at the Internet's edge. In recent years, CDN providers started to tap into their subscribers' peer‐to‐peer (P2P) capacity to alleviate their server costs. Under the inherent peer dynamics, a major challenge of these hybrid CDN‐P2P systems is to provide efficient failure recovery with good quality of service guarantees at a reduced server cost. In this work we propose a cost‐effective failover solution named CDNPatch to address the aforementioned problem. CDNPatch enables peers to periodically precompute a few backup content suppliers by efficient information exchange and maintenance algorithms, and leverages auxiliary CDN servers and an economic server provisioning algorithm to reduce the chance of playback interruption occurring to peers. Our simulation results show that CDNPatch can mask the impact of peer dynamics of 3 real P2P systems, namely, SOPCast, PPStream, and PPTV, with 100 % failure recovery success rate and a failure recovery time less than 1 second at a cost of small P2P communication overhead of less than 1 kilobits per second, while using only 10%, 21%, and 51%, respectively, of the pure CDN scheme's server consumption.     

Game‐theoretic modeling and analysis of relay selection in cooperative wireless networks

In this paper, distributed single relay selection in cooperative wireless networks is modeled as a Chinese restaurant game (CRG). Specifically, the CRG is used to model strategic relay selection decisions of source nodes, taking into account negative network externality due to the potential sharing of relay nodes among source nodes. Two cases are studied as follows: (i) perfect relay transmit power (RTP) knowledge and (ii) imperfect RTP knowledge. Under the first case, a distributed relay selection algorithm is proposed and shown to converge to a Nash equilibrium grouping. Under the second case, a reinforcement learning algorithm is proposed and combined with the distributed relay selection algorithm to allow network nodes to select rate‐maximizing relays. Simulation results verify the efficiency of the proposed distributed relay selection algorithm when compared with other relay selection schemes and demonstrate that it yields a network sum‐rate that is comparable with that of centralized relay selection. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A distributed utility‐based scheduling for peer‐to‐peer video streaming over wireless networks

Interactive multimedia applications such as peer‐to‐peer (P2P) video services over the Internet have gained increasing popularity during the past few years. However, the adopted Internet‐based P2P overlay network architecture hides the underlying network topology, assuming that channel quality is always in perfect condition. Because of the time‐varying nature of wireless channels, this hardly meets the user‐perceived video quality requirement when used in wireless environments. Considering the tightly coupled relationship between P2P overlay networks and the underlying networks, we propose a distributed utility‐based scheduling algorithm on the basis of a quality‐driven cross‐layer design framework to jointly optimize the parameters of different network layers to achieve highly improved video quality for P2P video streaming services in wireless networks. In this paper, the quality‐driven P2P scheduling algorithm is formulated into a distributed utility‐based distortion‐delay optimization problem, where the expected video distortion is minimized under the constraint of a given packet playback deadline to select the optimal combination of system parameters residing in different network layers. Specifically, encoding behaviors, network congestion, Automatic Repeat Request/Query (ARQ), and modulation and coding are jointly considered. Then, we provide the algorithmic solution to the formulated problem. The distributed optimization running on each peer node adopted in the proposed scheduling algorithm greatly reduces the computational intensity. Extensive experimental results also demonstrate 4–14 dB quality enhancement in terms of peak signal‐to‐noise ratio by using the proposed scheduling algorithm. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

分层P2P实时流媒体系统中基于演进博弈的超级组对等节点选择算法

针对分层混合式P2P实时流媒体系统中的超级组对等节点选择问题,提出了以一种基于演进博弈论的分布式超级对等节点选择算法。首先使用演进博弈框架对P2P实时流媒体系统中的超级对等节点选择问题进行了建模,并对其演进稳定策略进行了求解分析。然后通过得到的混合策略设计了一种基于Q-Leaning的分布式SGP选择算法ESS-SGP,以达到激励对等组内的对等节点之间互相协作的目的。实验结果表明,与传统的随机选择超级对等节点方法相比,使用ESS-SGP算法所选择产生的超级组对等节点能够稳定地为系统提供更高的流媒体上传速率,使整个P2P流媒体系统的上传能力随着对等节点数目的增加而稳定增加,并为每个对等节点带来更好的收益。     

A non‐cooperative game model for reliability‐based task scheduling in cloud computing

Cloud computing is a newly emerging distributed system. Task scheduling is the core research of cloud computing which studies how to allocate the tasks among the physical nodes, so that the tasks can get a balanced allocation or each task's execution cost decreases to the minimum, or the overall system performance is optimal. Unlike task scheduling based on time or cost before, aiming at the special reliability requirements in cloud computing, we propose a non‐cooperative game model for reliability‐based task scheduling approach. This model takes the steady‐state availability that computing nodes provide as the target, takes the task slicing strategy of the schedulers as the game strategy, then finds the Nash equilibrium solution. We also design a task scheduling algorithm based on this model. It can be seen from the experiments that our task scheduling algorithm is better than the so‐called balanced scheduling algorithm.     

Access control mechanism using flexible multi‐layer structure for mesh‐based P2P live streaming systems

When thousands of new peers seek to join the peer‐to‐peer (P2P) system within a very short time (i.e., the so‐called flash crowd event), most of the peers suffer a long startup delay as a result of peer over‐competition. Accordingly, recent studies have proposed a slot‐based user access control (UAC) mechanism, which periodically admits a certain number of new peers to the system, and a user batch join (UBJ) mechanism, which preconstructs the new peers into a fixed‐size tree structure before peer join process. However, in the UAC mechanism, it is difficult to determine the optimal time slot length; while in the UBJ mechanism, it is difficult to determine the optimal tree size. Accordingly, the present study proposes a structured access control (SAC) mechanism, in which the new‐arriving peers are preconstructed to a flexible multilayer structure to overcome the limitation of a fixed‐size tree structure, and the number of peers in each layer of the structure is determined based on a consideration of the remaining upload bandwidth of the P2P system. Based on the assumption of a heterogeneous upload bandwidth capability of the peers, an analytical model is derived to describe the growth behavior of a P2P system with access control. It is shown that the simulation results for the growth rate of a P2P system based on the SAC mechanism are in good agreement with those obtained from the analytical model. In addition, the simulation results show that the SAC mechanism outperforms the UAC and UBJ mechanisms in terms of a more rapid system growth and a shorter average startup delay. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Pricing and power control for energy‐efficient radio resource management in cognitive femtocell networks

Cognitive femtocell has been considered as a promising technique that can improve the capacity and the utilization of spectrum efficiency in wireless networks because of the short transmission distance and low transmit power. In this paper, we study the win–win solution of energy‐efficient radio resource management in cognitive femtocell networks, where the macrocell tries to maximize its revenue by adjusting spectrum utilization price while the femtocells try to maximize their revenues by dynamically adjusting the transmit power. When the spectrum utilization price is given by macrocell, we formulate the power control problem of standalone femtocells as an optimization problem and introduce a low‐complexity iteration algorithm based on gradient‐assisted binary search algorithm to solve it. Besides, non‐cooperative game is used to formulate the power control problem between collocated femtocells in a collocated femtocell set, and then low complexity and widely used gradient‐based iteration algorithm is applied to obtain the Nash‐equilibrium solution. Specially, asymptotic analysis is applied to find the approximate spectrum utilization price in macrocell, which can greatly reduce the computational complexity of the proposed energy‐efficient radio resource management scheme. Finally, extensive simulation results are presented to verify our theoretical analysis and demonstrate the performance of the proposed scheme. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Slack time–based scheduling scheme for live video streaming in P2P network

Nowadays, peer‐to‐peer network plays a significant role in data transfer and communication. The past few years have witnessed considerable growth in this area because of its inherent advantages. Peer‐to‐peer live streaming has a significant impact on video transmission over the Internet. Major factors that influence the performance of P2P live streaming are overlay construction and scheduling strategies. Although, a large number of scheduling schemes are developed but none of them is comprehensive enough to provide solutions to live streaming issues. These suffer from substantial delay and low video quality at the receiver side. In this paper, a new start‐up–based selection procedure and slack time–based scheduling scheme is proposed. The start‐up selection procedure defines the start‐up buffer location for new peer, and the scheduling scheme selects both the chunk and peers. The proposed scheduling scheme uses both push and pull priority–based strategies. The simulation results of the proposed approach demonstrates significant improvement in both the network performance and video quality at the receiver side. It is observed that playback delay, startup delay, and end‐to‐end delay in the network are reduced and quality of the video at receiver side is improved as the distortion and frame loss ratio is decreased.     

SeekStream: adapting to dynamic user behavior in P2P video‐on‐demand

In recent years, the users' perceived quality of experience (QoE) in streaming services has gained a lot of attention. Particularly, a number of research efforts have focused on providing live streaming and video‐on‐demand (VoD) services using peer‐to‐peer (P2P) architectures. However, in these proposed architectures, the heterogeneity of users and their dynamic behavior has not been sufficiently studied. In a real life scenario, where users have highly heterogeneous bandwidth resources (cable, DSL, 3G networks, etc) and can arbitrarily decide to perform a VCR function (stop, fast forward and seeking), ignoring this behavior can significantly deteriorate the system's efficiency and the perceived QoE. In this paper, we present SeekStream, a scalable P2P VoD architecture that ensures the stable delivery of the video stream to every participating user even in cases of high heterogeneity and frequent seeking operations. Specifically, SeekStream is a set of algorithms that optimize the P2P overlay dynamically and in a distributed fashion, making it adaptive to users dynamic behavior and bandwidth changes. The available bandwidth resources of the participating users are optimally exploited, keeping the contribution from the media server(s) to a minimal level. To illustrate the performance of the proposed algorithms, we are using a centralized overlay network manager that discovers the optimal network graph as a reference. We have developed an extensive P2P VoD simulator that shows the efficiency, scalability, and stability of our system under variant and dynamic conditions. The algorithms of our proposed system introduce less than 4% bandwidth overhead while we achieve high offloading of the media server(s). SeekStream guarantees a high block reception rate for the users, even under extreme seeking patterns. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Non‐inferior Nash strategies for routing control in parallel‐link communication networks

We consider a routing control problem of two‐node parallel‐link communication network shared by competitive teams of users. Each team has various types of entities (traffics or jobs) to be routed on the network. The users in each team cooperate for the benefit of their team so as to achieve optimal routing over network links. The teams, on the other hand, compete among themselves for the network resources and each has an objective function that relates to the overall performance of the network. For each team, there is a centralized decision‐maker, called the team leader or manager, who coordinates the routing strategies among all entities in his team. A game theoretic approach to deal with both cooperation within each team and competition among the teams, called the Non‐inferior Nash strategy, is introduced. Considering the roles of a group manager in this context, the concept of a Non‐inferior Nash strategy with a team leader is introduced. This multi‐team solution provides a new framework for analysing hierarchically controlled systems so as to address complicated coordination problems among the various users. This strategy is applied to derive the optimal routing policies for all users in the network. It is shown that Non‐inferior Nash strategies with a team leader is effective in improving the overall network performance. Various types of other strategies such as team optimization and Nash strategies are also discussed for the purpose of comparison. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

P2P Ranging‐Based Cooperative Localization Method for a Cluster of Mobile Nodes Containing IR‐UWB PHY

The problem of pedestrian localization using mobile nodes containing impulse radio ultra wideband (IR‐UWB) is considered. IEEE 802.15.4a‐based IR‐UWB can achieve accurate ranging. However, the coverage is as short as 30 m, owing to the restricted transmit power. This factor may cause a poor geometric relationship among the mobile nodes and anchor nodes in certain environments. To localize a group of pedestrians accurately, an enhanced cooperative localization method is proposed. We describe a sequential algorithm and define problems that may occur in the implementation of the algorithm. To solve these problems, a batch algorithm is proposed. The batch algorithm can be carried out after performing the sequential algorithm to linearize the nonlinear range equation. When a sequential algorithm cannot be performed due to a poor geometric relationship among nodes, a batch algorithm can be carried out directly. Herein, Monte Carlo simulations are presented to illustrate the proposed method and verify its performance.     

Mitigating file‐sharing misbehavior with movement synchronization to increase end‐to‐end availability for delay sensitive streams in vehicular P2P devices

When dealing with wireless connectivity in a mobile peer‐to‐peer (MP2P) environment, there are many concerns about the offered efficiency and availability of the requested resources and concerns about practicality considerations. These considerations deal with the movement and deployment of continuous connectivity. The intermittent connectivity is a major factor for object sharing misbehavior because it aggravates the connectivity and reliability. MP2P environments are in need of specialized placement algorithms where structured index‐centric solutions will be able to provide efficiency and object location determination over intermittent connectivity and communication. Replication of any requested object and redundancy face the requests' failures because they create severe duplications, and aggravate the capacity of the end‐to‐end path. This work proposes a framework that enables mitigation between the file sharing misbehavior in contrast to the movement synchronization, and it quantifies the parameters that affect the end‐to‐end efficient transmission by taking into consideration the synchronization between moving peers to assign the requested resources in the end‐to‐end path. Resilience metrics are introduced to enable reliability in cooperative file sharing procedure. The proposed scheme considers synchronization and assignment of the moving mobile Infostation peer with certain object indices to a certain vehicle via a synchronized cooperative scheme where the file sharing process is performed through the message ferry mobile peer. In addition, a resource assignment cooperation engine is developed taking into consideration the social cooperation model and the end‐to‐end capacity of the relay path. The proposed resource exchange apparatus for file chunks' migration is performed to enable delay sensitive streaming. The proposed model is evaluated through experimental simulation taking measures for the throughput and the reliability offered and for the robustness for sharing resources of any capacity in dynamically changing MP2P wireless environments under synchronized movements. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

3D Self‐Supported Fe‐Doped Ni2P Nanosheet Arrays as Bifunctional Catalysts for Overall Water Splitting

The development of highly efficient bifunctional electrocatalysts for both hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) and oxygen evolution reaction (OER) is crucial for improving the efficiency of overall water splitting, but still remains challenging issue. Herein, 3D self‐supported Fe‐doped Ni₂P nanosheet arrays are synthesized on Ni foam by hydrothermal method followed by in situ phosphorization, which serve as bifunctional electrocatalysts for overall water splitting. The as‐synthesized (Ni_0.33Fe_0.67)₂P with moderate Fe doping shows an outstanding OER performance, which only requires an overpotential of ≈230 mV to reach 50 mA cm^?2 and is more efficient than the other Fe incorporated Ni₂P electrodes. In addition, the (Ni_0.33Fe_0.67)₂P exhibits excellent activity toward HER with a small overpotential of ≈214 mV to reach 50 mA cm^?2. Furthermore, an alkaline electrolyzer is measured using (Ni_0.33Fe_0.67)₂P electrodes as cathode and anode, respectively, which requires cell voltage of 1.49 V to reach 10 mA cm^?2 as well as shows excellent stability with good nanoarray construction. Such good performance is attributed to the high intrinsic activity and superaerophobic surface property.     

High Tap Density Co and Ni Containing P2‐Na0.66MnO2 Buckyballs: A Promising High Voltage Cathode for Stable Sodium‐Ion Batteries

Constructing high voltage (>4.5 V) cathode materials for sodium‐ion batteries has emerged in recent years to replace lithium batteries for large scale energy storage applications. Herein, an electrochemically stable Na_0.66(Ni_0.13Mn_0.54Co_0.13)O₂ (Na‐NMC) buckyballs with an uniform size of 5 µm and a high tap density of 2.34 g cm^?3, which exhibit excellent cyclability even at the high current with a cut‐off voltage of 4.7 V, is demonstrated. The Na‐NMC buckyballs are prepared from (Ni_0.13Mn_0.54Co_0.13)CO₃ (NMC) precursor synthesized using a facile hydrothermal method. The Na‐NMC delivers a reversible capacity of around 120 mAh g^?1 between 4.7 and 2 V at 1 C rate along with an excellent cyclic stability (90%) until 150 cycles, which is one of the best outcomes among the reported P2‐type cathodes tested at the high operating voltage range. Furthermore, Na‐NMC‐180 buckyballs with a high tap density is offering an enhanced volumetric energy density, a superior rate performance and an outstanding cyclic stability. The X‐ray adsorption fine structure analysis is used to study the local electronic structure changes around the Co, Mn, and Ni after cycling process at 1 C rate. The findings open opportunities for tailoring high‐performance and high‐energy cathode materials for sodium‐ion batteries.     

Enhanced Performance of P2‐Na0.66(Mn0.54Co0.13Ni0.13)O2 Cathode for Sodium‐Ion Batteries by Ultrathin Metal Oxide Coatings via Atomic Layer Deposition

Sodium‐ion batteries are widely considered as promising energy storage systems for large‐scale applications, but their relatively low energy density hinders further practical applications. Developing high‐voltage cathode materials is an effective approach to increase the overall energy density of sodium‐ion batteries. When cut‐off voltage is elevated over 4.3 V, however, the cathode becomes extremely unstable due to structural transformations as well as metal dissolution into the electrolytes. In this work, the cyclic stability of P2‐Na_0.66(Mn_0.54Co_0.13Ni_0.13)O₂ (MCN) electrode at a cut‐off voltage of 4.5 V is successfully improved by using ultrathin metal oxide surface coatings (Al₂O₃, ZrO₂, and TiO₂) deposited by an atomic layer deposition technique. The MCN electrode coated with the Al₂O₃ layer exhibits higher capacity retention among the MCN electrodes. Moreover, the rate performance of the MCN electrode is greatly improved by the metal oxide coatings in the order of TiO₂ < Al₂O₃ < ZrO₂, due to increased fracture toughness and electrical conductivity of the metal oxide coating layers. A ZrO₂‐coated MCN electrode shows a discharge capacity of 83 mAh g^?1 at 2.4 A g^?1, in comparison to 61 mAh g^?1 for a pristine MCN electrode. Cyclic voltammetry and electrochemical impedance analysis disclose the reduced charge transfer resistance from 1421 to 760.2 Ω after cycles, suggesting that the metal oxide coating layer can effectively minimize the undesirable phase transition, buffer inherent stress and strain between the binder, cathode, and current collector, and avoid volumetric changes, thus increasing the cyclic stability of the MCN electrode.