Mechanical degradation of coating systems in high temperature cyclic oxidation

Cyclic oxidation tests were performed on a large variety of commercially available overlay coatings. The results of cyclic oxidation tests confirmed that the composition of the coating as well as the processing method of the coating can affect the life of the system. Coating life was determined by the time to coating penetration and initiation of substrate attack. As this work was part of a effort to evaluate the relative protectiveness of available coating systems for Industrial Gas Turbine applications at relatively high temperature, an extensive testing programme was undertaken. The different coatings were tested to visual failure. The results presented in this paper concentrate on the surface instability of the coating. Apart from usual oxidation of the coating an additional degradation mechanism was observed. A mechanical effect caused by the instability of the coating as a result of the difference in the thermal coefficient of expansion and mechanical properties between the substrate and coating. This effect, the so-called “rumpling” effect, resulted in a significant reduction in time to penetration and was in some systems the life controlling factor.     

GMAC: An overlay multicast network for mobile agent platforms

The lack of proper support for multicast services in the Internet has hindered the widespread use of applications that rely on group communication services such as mobile software agents. Although they do not require high bandwidth or heavy traffic, these types of applications need to cooperate in a scalable, fair and decentralized way. This paper presents GMAC, an overlay network that implements all multicast related functionality–including membership management and packet forwarding–in the end systems. GMAC introduces a new approach for providing multicast services for mobile agent platforms in a decentralized way, where group members cooperate in a fair way, minimize the protocol overhead, thus achieving great scalability. Simulations comparing GMAC with other approaches, in aspects such as end-to-end group propagation delay, group latency, group bandwidth, protocol overhead, resource utilization and failure recovery, show that GMAC is a scalable and robust solution to provide multicast services in a decentralized way to mobile software agent platforms with requirements similar to MoviLog.     

Degree-Optimal Routing for P2P Systems

We define a family of Distributed Hash Table systems whose aim is to combine the routing efficiency of randomized networks—e.g. optimal average path length O(log ² n/δlog δ) with δ degree—with the programmability and startup efficiency of a uniform overlay—that is, a deterministic system in which the overlay network is transitive and greedy routing is optimal. It is known that Ω(log n) is a lower bound on the average path length for uniform overlays with O(log n) degree (Xu et al., IEEE J. Sel. Areas Commun. 22(1), 151–163, 2004). Our work is inspired by neighbor-of-neighbor (NoN) routing, a recently introduced variation of greedy routing that allows us to achieve optimal average path length in randomized networks. The advantage of our proposal is that of allowing the NoN technique to be implemented without adding any overhead to the corresponding deterministic network. We propose a family of networks parameterized with a positive integer c which measures the amount of randomness that is used. By varying the value c, the system goes from the deterministic case (c=1) to an “almost uniform” system. Increasing c to relatively low values allows for routing with asymptotically optimal average path length while retaining most of the advantages of a uniform system, such as easy programmability and quick bootstrap of the nodes entering the system. We also provide a matching lower bound for the average path length of the routing schemes for any c. This work was partially supported by the Italian FIRB project “WEB-MINDS” (Wide-scalE, Broadband MIddleware for Network Distributed Services), .     

An adaptive overlay network inspired by social behaviour

Nature is a great source of inspiration for scientists, because natural systems seem to be able to find the best way to solve a given problem by using simple and robust mechanisms. Studying complex natural systems, scientists usually find that simple local dynamics lead to sophisticated macroscopic structures and behaviour. It seems that some kind of local interaction rules naturally allow the system to auto-organize itself as an efficient and robust structure, which can easily solve different tasks. Examples of such complex systems are social networks, where a small set of basic interaction rules leads to a relatively robust and efficient communication structure. In this paper, we present PROSA, a semantic peer-to-peer (P2P) overlay network inspired by social dynamics. The way queries are forwarded and links among peers are established in PROSA resemble the way people ask other people for collaboration, help or information. Behaving as a social network of peers, PROSA naturally evolves to a small world, where all peers can be reached in a fast and efficient way. The underlying algorithm used for query forwarding, based only on local choices, is both reliable and effective: peers sharing similar resources are eventually connected with each other, allowing queries to be successfully answered in a really small amount of time. The resulting emergent structure can guarantee fast responses and good query recall.     

A distributed data clustering algorithm in P2P networks

Clustering is one of the important data mining issues, especially for large and distributed data analysis. Distributed computing environments such as Peer-to-Peer (P2P) networks involve separated/scattered data sources, distributed among the peers. According to unpredictable growth and dynamic nature of P2P networks, data of peers are constantly changing. Due to the high volume of computing and communications and privacy concerns, processing of these types of data should be applied in a distributed way and without central management. Today, most applications of P2P systems focus on unstructured P2P systems. In unstructured P2P networks, spreading gossip is a simple and efficient method of communication, which can adapt to dynamic conditions in these networks. Recently, some algorithms with different pros and cons have been proposed for data clustering in P2P networks. In this paper, by combining a novel method for extracting the representative data, a gossip-based protocol and a new centralized clustering method, a Gossip Based Distributed Clustering algorithm for P2P networks called GBDC-P2P is proposed. The GBDC-P2P algorithm is suitable for data clustering in unstructured P2P networks and it adapts to the dynamic conditions of these networks. In the GBDC-P2P algorithm, peers perform data clustering operation with a distributed approach only through communications with their neighbours. The GBDC-P2P does not need to rely on a central server and it performs asynchronously. Evaluation results demonstrate the superior performance of the GBDC-P2P algorithm. Also, a comparative analysis with other well-established methods illustrates the efficiency of the proposed method.     

Predictable service overlay networks: Predictability through adaptive monitoring and efficient overlay construction and management

Providing bounded communication among participating nodes is significant for distributed systems. Internet-based applications suffer with lower performance due to absence of bounded latency. We describe PSON, an overlay network solution to this challenging problem. PSON has two components. The monitoring component, SyncProbe, utilizes efficient and adaptive monitoring techniques to measure latency, detect packet loss, and provide real-time estimates of maximum expected latency along paths of an Internet substrate. The QoSMap component constructs and manages overlay such that it yields application-level QoS and provides resilience against network failures. A distinctive feature of QoSMap is construction of QoS-compliant backup paths which facilitate in overlay management and operation during the period when primary overlay paths violate QoS. We evaluate PSON on PlanetLab to provide predictable communication for applications with different topology and QoS requirement. Our experiments confirm the effectiveness of PSON in providing an inexpensive and efficient application-layer solution to Internet’s unpredictable behavior.     

适用于覆盖移动自组网的队列调度机制

为提高移动自组网(MANET)控制系统的稳定性,建立基于覆盖技术的MANET。考虑到不同业务类型的数据对时延、丢包率的服务质量(QoS)要求不同,基于服务权重指标,提出一种适用于覆盖移动自组网的公平队列调度机制。实验结果证明,该机制部署方便,可在一定程度上保证不同业务流的QoS要求。     

基于VxWorks系统的二维硬件加速显示驱动技术

针对当前VxWorks系统图形显示驱动已无法满足用户需求的问题,提出了一种基于二维(2D)硬件加速引擎的图形显示驱动技术,实现了UGL的二维硬件加速、硬件光标、硬件双缓冲、Overlay覆盖等功能,提高了VxWorks系统的图形显示性能,满足了实时系统的应用需求.目前该设计已在多型海军装备中得到应用验证.     

Hierarchical multicast techniques and scalability in mobile Ad Hoc networks

Many potential applications of Mobile Ad Hoc Networks (MANETs) involve group communications among the nodes. Multicasting is an useful operation that facilitates group communications. Efficient and scalable multicast routing in MANETs is a difficult issue. In addition to the conventional multicast routing algorithms, recent protocols have adopted the following new approaches: overlays, backbone-based, and stateless. In this paper, we study these approaches from the protocol state management point of view, and compare their scalability behaviors.To enhance performance and enable scalability, we have proposed a framework for hierarchical multicasting in MANET environments. Two classes of hierarchical multicasting approaches, termed as domain-based and overlay-driven, are proposed. We have considered a variety of approaches that are suitable for different scenarios such as multicast group sizes and number of groups. Results obtained through simulations demonstrate enhanced performance and scalability of the proposed techniques.