Maximizing quality of experience through context‐aware mobile application scheduling in cloudlet infrastructure

Application software execution requests, from mobile devices to cloud service providers, are often heterogeneous in terms of device, network, and application runtime contexts. These heterogeneous contexts include the remaining battery level of a mobile device, network signal strength it receives and quality‐of‐service (QoS) requirement of an application software submitted from that device. Scheduling such application software execution requests (from many mobile devices) on competent virtual machines to enhance user quality of experience (QoE) is a multi‐constrained optimization problem. However, existing solutions in the literature either address utility maximization problem for service providers or optimize the application QoS levels, bypassing device‐level and network‐level contextual information. In this paper, a multi‐objective nonlinear programming solution to the context‐aware application software scheduling problem has been developed, namely, QoE and context‐aware scheduling (QCASH) method, which minimizes the application execution times (i.e., maximizes the QoE) and maximizes the application execution success rate. To the best of our knowledge, QCASH is the first work in this domain that inscribes the optimal scheduling problem for mobile application software execution requests with three‐dimensional context parameters. In QCASH, the context priority of each application is measured by applying min–max normalization and multiple linear regression models on three context parameters—battery level, network signal strength, and application QoS. Experimental results, found from simulation runs on CloudSim toolkit, demonstrate that the QCASH outperforms the state‐of‐the‐art works well across the success rate, waiting time, and QoE. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

边缘计算中协作计算卸载与动态任务调度

在边缘计算场景中,通过将部分待执行任务卸载到边缘服务器执行能够达到降低移动设备的负载、提升移动应用性能和减少设备开销的目的.对于时延敏感任务,只有在截止期限内完成才具有实际意义.但是边缘服务器的资源往往有限,当同时接收来自多个设备的数据传输及处理任务时,可能造成任务长时间的排队等待,导致部分任务因超时而执行失败,因此无法兼顾多个设备的性能目标.鉴于此,在计算卸载的基础上优化边缘服务器端的任务调度顺序.一方面,将时延感知的任务调度建模为一个长期优化问题,并使用基于组合多臂赌博机的在线学习方法动态调整服务器的调度顺序.另一方面,由于不同的任务执行顺序会改变任务卸载性能提升程度,因而影响任务卸载决策的有效性.为了增加卸载策略的鲁棒性,采用了带有扰动回报的深度Q学习方法决定任务执行位置.仿真算例证明了该策略可在平衡多个用户目标的同时减少系统的整体开销.     

Multi-level scheduling for global optimization in grid computing

The paper presents a multi-level scheduling algorithm for global optimization in grid computing. This algorithm provides a global optimization through a cross-layer optimization realized by decomposing the optimization problem in different sub-problems each of them corresponding to one among the grid layers such as application layer, collective layer and fabric layer. The QoS of an abstraction level is a utility function that assigns at every level a different value and that depends on the kind of task that is executed on the grid. The global QoS is given by processing of the utility function values of the three different levels, using the Lagrangian method. Multi-level QoS scheduling algorithm is evaluated in terms of system efficiency and their economic efficiency, respectively. Economic efficiency includes user utility, service provider’s revenue and grid global utility. System efficiency includes execution success ratio and resource allocation ratio.     

异构网络中贪婪资源分配策略的研究

针对当前异构网络中多种业务并存的现状,提出了一种可应用于由移动微波存取全球互通和通用移动通信系统组成的异构网络中考虑切换业务优先的贪婪资源分配策略,并通过网络中的呼损率验证了该策略的可行性;接着,在NS2环境下将该策略与公平资源分配策略在资源利用率、分组丢失率方面进行了比较.仿真结果显示,新策略可以提供良好的服务质量,前者的资源利用率和分组丢失率比后者分别改善了13％和14％左右.     

边缘环境下计算密集型任务调度研究综述

随着移动设备数量的急剧增长及计算密集型应用如人脸识别、车联网以及虚拟现实等的广泛使用,为了实现满足用户QoS请求的任务和协同资源的最优匹配,使用合理的计算密集型应用的任务调度方案,从而解决边缘云中心时延长、成本高、负载不均衡和资源利用率低等问题。阐述了边缘计算环境下计算密集型应用的任务调度框架、执行过程、应用场景及性能指标。从时间和成本、能耗和资源利用率以及负载均衡和吞吐量为优化目标的边缘计算环境下计算密集型应用的任务调度策略进行了对比和分析,并归纳出目前这些策略的优缺点及适用场景。通过分析5G环境下基于SDN的边缘计算架构,提出了基于SDN环境下的边缘计算密集型数据包任务调度策略、基于深度强化学习的计算密集型应用的任务调度策略和5G IoV网络中多目标跨层任务调度策略。从容错调度、动态微服务调度、人群感知调度以及安全和隐私等几个方面总结和归纳了目前边缘计算环境中任务调度所面临的挑战。     

An efficient metric-based (EM-B) location management scheme for wireless cellular networks

In the current era, the wireless cellular network is gaining much attention in the network mobility for qualitative service. Towards enhancing the QoS and narrowing the dilemma of network management (location management) an efficient metric-based location management technique is introduced in this paper to capture the current location of mobile subscribers. The attributes of this technique are based on metrics calculation and location management message routing path determination. First, the current mobile switching center will calculate the shortest metric-based path between current and master (previous) location of mobile terminals (user), thereafter it performs the location management procedure through the optimal suggested path by the mobile switching center. This proposed technique will reduce the signaling cost, registration delay, call setup delay, network overheads and total location management cost. The proposed analytical model checks the scalability and effectiveness of proposed system over certain attributes and a comparison is made with the existing available techniques.     

Co-scheduling algorithms for high-throughput workload execution

This paper investigates co-scheduling algorithms for processing a set of parallel applications. Instead of executing each application one by one, using a maximum degree of parallelism for each of them, we aim at scheduling several applications concurrently. We partition the original application set into a series of packs, which are executed one by one. A pack comprises several applications, each of them with an assigned number of processors, with the constraint that the total number of processors assigned within a pack does not exceed the maximum number of available processors. The objective is to determine a partition into packs, and an assignment of processors to applications, that minimize the sum of the execution times of the packs. We thoroughly study the complexity of this optimization problem, and propose several heuristics that exhibit very good performance on a variety of workloads, whose application execution times model profiles of parallel scientific codes. We show that co-scheduling leads to faster workload completion time (40 % improvement on average over traditional scheduling) and to faster response times (50 % improvement). Hence, co-scheduling increases system throughput and saves energy, leading to significant benefits from both the user and system perspectives.     

Fault tolerant and prioritized scheduling in OGSA‐based mobile Grids

Grids and mobile Grids can form the basis and the enabling technology for pervasive and utility computing due to their ability to being open, highly heterogeneous and scalable. In this paper we present a scheme for advancing quality of service (QoS) attributes, such as fault tolerance and prioritized scheduling, in OGSA‐based mobile Grids. The fault tolerance is achieved by producing and managing sufficient replicas of tasks submitted for execution on the mobile Grid resources. We design a simple and efficient prioritization scheme, which allows the scheduling of the tasks submitted by the Grid users as distinguished priorities that can be managed and exploited as a QoS parameter by the Grid infrastructure operator. The results that are presented show the efficiency of the proposed scheme in being simple and additionally enriching with reliability and QoS features the applications that are built on the concept of mobile Grids. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

BULLET: Particle Swarm Optimization Based Scheduling Technique for Provisioned Cloud Resources

Cloud resource scheduling requires mapping of cloud resources to cloud workloads. Scheduling results can be optimized by considering Quality of Service (QoS) parameters as inherent requirements of scheduling. In existing literature, only a few resource scheduling algorithms have considered cost and execution time constraints but efficient scheduling requires better optimization of QoS parameters. The main aim of this research paper is to present an efficient strategy for execution of workloads on cloud resources. A particle swarm optimization based resource scheduling technique has been designed named as BULLET which is used to execute workloads effectively on available resources. Performance of the proposed technique has been evaluated in cloud environment. The experimental results show that the proposed technique efficiently reduces execution cost, time and energy consumption along with other QoS parameters.     

A bargaining-driven global QoS adjustment approach for optimizing service composition execution path

In service-based workflow area, service composition is emerging as a promising technology providing more flexible integration means across a variety of distributed heterogeneous applications. A critical research issue in service composition is how to achieve an optimized overall end-to-end quality of service (QoS) composition’s requirements by effectively coordinating QoS constraints of individual service. However, few of existing representative works have well considered economic strategies closely related to competitive market scenarios to address overall QoS issues in service composition. In this paper, we propose a novel global QoS adjustment approach by employing a recursive bargaining strategy to gradually remove QoS constraint violations for optimizing service composition execution path. Our approach mainly exploits the hidden marketplace competitive techniques from economics for developing a novel bargaining strategy. Based on this strategy, a user agent can simultaneously negotiate with more than one provider for driving them into competition. As a result, concessions may be made by service providers depending on their own economic equilibrium theories to offer better QoS values than their initial proposals and thus a user can win more profits. Through recursively using bargaining strategy, critical nodes of an initially built optimal service composition execution path by local optimization policy can be continuously updated to minimize QoS constraint violations by reselecting better service providers. Eventually, a near-optimal service composition execution path can be reconstructed meeting user’s overall QoS requirements. Meanwhile, an experiment and evaluation have been conducted for the sake of demonstrating the feasibility and effectiveness of our proposed approach.     

网格环境下一种可调目标的启发式调度策略

针对网格环境下不同类型的任务执行时间相差较大的问题,提出了基于任务平均执行时间的忍耐度的概念,重新构造了启发式规则,体现了任务QoS的要求;并将这种服务质量的需求与任务完成时间相结合,给出了一个可调节的局部目标函数,实现了一种基于任务完成时间和任务服务质量的启发式调度算法OA-Sufferage;最后,给出了服务率(service ratio)的概念和定义,定量地衡量任务得到的服务质量.实验结果表明,该策略优先调度那些等待时间相对于执行时间较大的任务,提高了任务的服务率;而且可以通过调节局部目标函数中的偏好因子(preference factor),追求任务完成时间和QoS的不同目标,更加适合开放复杂的网格环境.     

Upper-level scheduling supporting multimedia traffic in cellular data networks

Wireless data networks such as cdma2000 1x EV-DO and UMTS HSDPA use downlink scheduling that exploits channel fading to increase the system throughput. As future wireless networks will eventually support multimedia and data traffic together, we need a proper criterion for scheduling that can count various service requirements such as delay and packet loss. Although some previous approaches proposed opportunistic schedulers at the lower layer, it has not been investigated well whether they are able to meet explicit QoS defined at the upper layer. Hence, in this paper, we develop a hierarchical scheduling model that considers QoS provisioning and the time-varying channel feature separately. We focus on the upper-level QoS scheduling that supports various traffic classes in a unified manner. Supposing that a user gets some satisfaction or utility when served, we introduce a novel concept of opportunity cost, which is defined as the maximum utility loss among users incurred by serving a particular user at the current turn. We obtain each user’s net profit by subtracting the opportunity cost from its expected utility, and then select a user with the maximum profit for service. Simulation results reveal that our scheme supports various QoS classes well that are represented by delay and packet loss under various traffic loadings.     

A fault‐tolerant dynamic scheduling method on hierarchical mobile edge cloud computing

Mobile edge cloud computing has been a promising computing paradigm, where mobile users could offload their application workloads to low‐latency local edge cloud resources. However, compared with remote public cloud resources, conventional local edge cloud resources are limited in computation capacity, especially when serve large number of mobile applications. To deal with this problem, we present a hierarchical edge cloud architecture to integrate the local edge clouds and public clouds so as to improve the performance and scalability of scheduling problem for mobile applications. Besides, to achieve a trade‐off between the cost and system delay, a fault‐tolerant dynamic resource scheduling method is proposed to address the scheduling problem in mobile edge cloud computing. The optimization problem could be formulated to minimize the application cost with the user‐defined deadline satisfied. Specifically, firstly, a game‐theoretic scheduling mechanism is adopted for resource provisioning and scheduling for multiprovider mobile applications. Then, a mobility‐aware dynamic scheduling strategy is presented to update the scheduling with the consideration of mobility of mobile users. Moreover, a failure recovery mechanism is proposed to deal with the uncertainties during the execution of mobile applications. Finally, experiments are designed and conducted to validate the effectiveness of our proposal. The experimental results show that our method could achieve a trade‐off between the cost and system delay.     

基于UMTS的QoS结构及管理策略的研究

Along with the high speed development of mobile systems communications, the research of third generation of mobile systems are in progress rapidly, UMTS is one of the much representative schemes in the global.The paper discusses the architecture and server function of the UMTS and UMTS QoS. Based on this, the paper studies emphatically UMTS QoS architecture, Structure Components, mechanism and Management scheme of each part and arithmetic.     

A distributed multiple dimensional QoS constrained resource scheduling optimization policy in computational grid

This paper is to solve efficient QoS based resource scheduling in computational grid. It defines a set of QoS dimensions with utility function for each dimensions, uses a market model for distributed optimization to maximize the global utility. The user specifies its requirement by a utility function. A utility function can be specified for each QoS dimension. In the grid, grid task agent acted as consumer pay for the grid resource and resource providers get profits from task agents. The task agent' utility can then be defined as a weighted sum of single-dimensional QoS utility function. QoS based grid resource scheduling optimization is decomposed to two subproblems: joint optimization of resource user and resource provider in grid market. An iterative multiple QoS scheduling algorithm that is used to perform optimal multiple QoS based resource scheduling. The grid users propose payment for the resource providers, while the resource providers set a price for each resource. The experiments show that optimal QoS based resource scheduling involves less overhead and leads to more efficient resource allocation than no optimal resource allocation.     

移动边缘计算中资源受限的串行任务卸载策略

云计算和移动互联网的不断融合，促进了移动云计算的产生和发展，但是其难以满足终端应用对带宽和延迟的需求.移动边缘计算在靠近用户的网络边缘提供计算和存储能力，通过计算卸载，将终端任务迁移至边缘服务器上面执行，能够有效降低应用延迟和节约终端能耗.然而，目前针对移动边缘环境任务卸载的主要工作大多考虑单个移动终端和边缘服务器资源无限的场景，这在实际应用中存在一定的局限性.因此，针对边缘服务器资源受限下的任务卸载问题，提出了一种面向多用户的串行任务动态卸载策略（multi-user serial task dynamic offloading strategy，简称MSTDOS）.该策略以应用的完成时间和移动终端的能量消耗作为评价指标，遵循先来先服务的原则，采用化学反应优化算法求解，充分考虑多用户请求对服务器资源的竞争关系，动态调整选择策略，为应用做出近似最优的卸载决策.仿真结果表明，MSTDOS策略比已有算法能够取得更好的应用性能.     

Analysis of Skype VoIP traffic in UMTS: End-to-end QoS and QoE measurements

In the future Internet, multi-network services will follow a new paradigm in which the intelligence of the network control is gradually moved to the edge of the network. This impacts both the objective Quality of Service (QoS) of the end-to-end connection as well as the subjective Quality of Experience (QoE) as perceived by the end user. Skype already offers such a multi-network Voice-over-IP (VoIP) telephony service today. Due to its ease of use and a high sound quality, it becomes increasingly popular in the wired Internet.UMTS operators promise to offer large data rates which should suffice to support VoIP calls in a mobile environment. However, the success of those applications strongly depends on the corresponding QoE. In this work, we analyze the theoretically achievable as well as the actually achieved quality of IP-based voice calls using Skype. This is done performing measurements in both a real UMTS network and a testbed environment. The latter is used to emulate rate control mechanisms and changing system conditions of UMTS networks. The results show in how far Skype over UMTS is able to keep pace with existing mobile telephony systems and how it reacts to different network characteristics. The investigated performance measures comprise the QoE in terms of the MOS value and the QoS in terms of network-based factors like throughput, packet interarrival times, or packet loss.     

Tradeoffs between energy consumption and QoS in mobile grid

Mobile grid, which combines grid and mobile computing, supports mobile users and resources in a seamless and transparent way. However, mobility, QoS support, energy management, and service provisioning pose challenges to mobile grid. The paper presents a tradeoff policy between energy consumption and QoS in the mobile grid environment. Utility function is used to specify each QoS dimension; we formulate the problem of energy and QoS tradeoff by utility optimization. The work is different from the classical energy aware scheduling, which usually takes the consumed energy as the constraints; our utility model regards consumed energy as one of the components of measure of the utility values, which indicates the tradeoff of application satisfaction and consumed energy. It is a more accurate utility model for abstracting the energy characteristics and QoS requirement for mobile users and resources in mobile grid. The paper also proposes a distributed energy–QoS tradeoff algorithm. The performance evaluation of our energy–QoS tradeoff algorithm is evaluated and compared with other energy and deadline constrained scheduling algorithm.     

移动云计算中基于延时传输的多目标工作流调度

云计算和移动互联网的不断融合,促进了移动云计算的产生与发展.在移动云计算环境下,用户可将工作流的任务迁移到云端执行,这样不但能够提升移动设备的计算能力,而且可以减少电池能源消耗.但是不合理的任务迁移会引起大量的数据传输,这不仅损害工作流的服务质量,而且会增加移动设备的能耗.基于此,本文提出了基于延时传输机制的多目标工作流调度算法MOWS-DTM.该算法基于遗传算法,结合工作流的调度过程,在编码策略中考虑了工作流任务的调度位置和执行排序.由于用户在不断移动的过程中,移动设备的无线网络信号也在不断变化.当传输一定大小的数据时,网络信号越强则需要的时间越少,从而移动设备的能耗也越少.而且工作流结构中存在许多非关键任务,延长非关键任务的执行时间并不会对工作流的完工时间造成影响.因此,本文在工作流调度过程中融入了延时传输机制DTM,该机制能够同时有效地优化移动设备的能耗和工作流的完工时间.仿真结果表明,相比MOHEFT算法和RANDOM算法,MOWS-DTM算法在多目标性能上更优.