5867346
Feedback utilization control in distributed real-time systems with end-to-end tasks
An increasing number of distributed real-time systems face the critical challenge of providing quality of service guarantees in open and unpredictable environments. In particular, such systems often need to enforce utilization bounds on multiple processors in order to avoid overload and meet end-to-end deadlines even when task execution times are unpredictable. While recent feedback control real-time scheduling algorithms have shown promise, they cannot handle the common end-to-end task model where each task is comprised of a chain of subtasks distributed on multiple processors. This paper presents the end-to-end utilization control (EUCON) algorithm that adaptively maintains desired CPU utilization through performance feedbacks loops. EUCON is based on a model predictive control approach that models utilization control on a distributed platform as a multivariable constrained optimization problem. A multi-input-multi-output model predictive controller is designed based on a difference equation model that describes the dynamic behavior of distributed real-time systems. Both control theoretic analysis and simulations demonstrate that EUCON can provide robust utilization guarantees when task execution times deviate from estimation or vary significantly at runtime.
15273314
Feedback control real-time scheduling in ORB middleware
Existing real-time ORB middleware standards such as RT-CORBA do not adequately address the challenges of 1) providing robust performance guarantees portably across different platforms, and 2) managing unpredictable workload. To overcome this limitation, we have developed software called FCS/nORB that integrates a Feedback Control real-lime Scheduling (FCS) service with the nORB small-footprint real-time ORB designed for networked embedded systems. FCS/nORB features feedback control loops that provide real-time performance guarantees by automatically adjusting the rate of remote method invocations transparently to an application. FCS/nORB thus enables real-time applications to be truly portable in terms of real-time performance as well as functionality, without the need for hand tuning. This paper presents the design, implementation, and evaluation of FCS/nORB. Our extensive experiments on a Linux testbed demonstrate that FCS can provide deadline miss ratio and utilization guarantees in face of changes in the platform and task execution times, while introducing a small amount of overhead.
5719252
End-to-end utilization control in distributed real-time systems
An increasing number of distributed real-time systems face the critical challenge of providing end-to-end quality of service (QoS) guarantees in open and unpredictable environments. In particular, such systems often need to guarantee the CPU utilization on multiple processors in order to achieve overload protection and meet end-to-end deadlines while task execution times are unpredictable. While the recently developed feedback control real-time scheduling algorithms have shown promise, they cannot handle the common end-to-end task model in distributed systems where each task is comprised of a chain of subtasks distributed on multiple processors. We present the end-to-end utilization control (EUCON) algorithm that features a distributed feedback loop that dynamically enforces desired CPU utilization bounds on multiple processors based on online performance measurements EUCON is based on a model predictive control approach that models the utilization control problem on a distributed platform as a multivariable constrained optimization problem. A multiinput-multioutput model predictive controller is designed based on a difference equation model that describes the dynamic behavior of distributed real-time systems. Both control theoretic analysis and simulations demonstrate that EUCON can provide robust utilization guarantees even when task execution times deviate from the estimation or vary significantly at run-time.
1347401
Decentralized utilization control in distributed real-time systems
Many real-time systems must control their CPU utilizations in order to meet end-to-end deadlines and prevent overload. Utilization control is particularly challenging in distributed real-time systems with highly unpredictable workloads and a large number of end-to-end tasks and processors. This paper presents the decentralized end-to-end utilization control (DEUCON) algorithm that can dynamically enforce desired utilizations on multiple processors in such systems. In contrast to centralized control schemes adopted in earlier work, DEUCON features a novel decentralized control structure that only requires localized coordination among neighbor processors. DEUCON is systematically designed based on recent advances in distributed model predictive control theory. Both control-theoretic analysis and simulations show that DEUCON can provide robust utilization guarantees and maintain global system stability despite severe variations in task execution times. Furthermore, DEUCON can effectively distribute the computation and communication cost to different processors and tolerate considerable communication delay between local controllers. Our results indicate that DEUCON can provide scalable and robust utilization control for large-scale distributed real-time systems executing in unpredictable environments
269391
Integrated coverage and connectivity configuration in wireless sensor networks
An effective approach for energy conservation in wireless sensor networks is scheduling sleep intervals for extraneous nodes, while the remaining nodes stay active to provide continuous service. For the sensor network to operate successfully, the active nodes must maintain both sensing coverage and network connectivity. Furthermore, the network must be able to configure itself to any feasible degrees of coverage and connectivity in order to support different applications and environments with diverse requirements. This paper presents the design and analysis of novel protocols that can dynamically configure a network to achieve guaranteed degrees of coverage and connectivity. This work differs from existing connectivity or coverage maintenance protocols in several key ways: 1) We present a Coverage Configuration Protocol (CCP) that can provide different degrees of coverage requested by applications. This flexibility allows the network to self-configure for a wide range of applications and (possibly dynamic) environments. 2) We provide a geometric analysis of the relationship between coverage and connectivity. This analysis yields key insights for treating coverage and connectivity in a unified framework: this is in sharp contrast to several existing approaches that address the two problems in isolation. 3) Finally, we integrate CCP with SPAN to provide both coverage and connectivity guarantees. We demonstrate the capability of our protocols to provide guaranteed coverage and connectivity configurations, through both geometric analysis and extensive simulations.
810413
Enhancing the robustness of distributed real-time middleware via end-to-end utilization control
A key challenge for distributed real-time and embedded (DRE) middleware is maintaining both system reliability and desired real-time performance in unpredictable environments where system workload and resources may fluctuate significantly. This paper presents FC-ORB, a realtime object request broker (ORB) middleware that employs end-to-end utilization control to handle fluctuations in application workload and system resources. The contributions of this paper are three-fold. First, we present a novel utilization control service that enforces desired CPU utilization bounds on multiple processors by adapting the rates of end-to-end tasks within user-specified ranges. Second, we describe a set of middleware-level mechanisms designed to support end-to-end tasks and distributed multi-processor utilization control in a real-time ORB. Finally, we present extensive experimental results on a Linux testbed. Our results demonstrate that our middleware can maintain desired utilizations in face of uncertainties and variations in task execution times, resource contentions from external workloads, and permanent processor failure. FC-ORB demonstrates that the integration of utilization control, end-to-end scheduling and fault-tolerance mechanisms in DRE middleware is a promising approach for enhancing the robustness of DRE applications in unpredictable environments
2802999
Indistinguishability: The Other Aspect of Privacy
Uncertainty and indistinguishability are two independent aspects of privacy. Uncertainty refers to the property that the attacker cannot tell which private value, among a group of values, an individual actually has, and indistinguishability refers to the property that the attacker cannot see the difference among a group of individuals. While uncertainty has been well studied and applied to many scenarios, to date, the only effort in providing indistinguishability has been the well-known notion of k-anonymity. However, k-anonymity only applies to anonymized tables. This paper defines indistinguishability for general situations based on the symmetry among the possible private values associated with individuals. The paper then discusses computational complexities of and provides practical algorithms for checking whether a set of database views provides enough indistinguishability.
826404
On the effectiveness of secure overlay forwarding systems under intelligent distributed DoS attacks
In the framework of a set of clients communicating with a critical server over the Internet, a recent approach to protect communication from distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks involves the usage of overlay systems. SOS, MAYDAY, and I3 are such systems. The architecture of these systems consists of a set of overlay nodes that serve as intermediate forwarders between the clients and the server, thereby controlling access to the server. Although such systems perform well under random DDoS attacks, it is questionable whether they are resilient to intelligent DDoS attacks which aim to infer architectures of the systems to launch more efficient attacks. In this paper, we define several intelligent DDoS attack models and develop analytical/simulation approaches to study the impacts of architectural design features of such, overlay systems on the system performance in terms of path availability between clients and the server under attacks. Our data clearly demonstrate that the system performance is indeed sensitive to the architectural features and the different features interact with each other to impact overall system performance under intelligent DDoS attacks. Our observations provide important guidelines in the design of such secure overlay forwarding systems
1446823
An FDD wideband CDMA MAC protocol for wireless multimedia networks
A medium access control (MAC) protocol is developed for wireless multimedia networks based on frequency division duplex (FDD) wideband code division multiple access (CDMA). In this protocol, the received power levels of simultaneously transmitting users are controlled by a minimum-power allocation algorithm such that the heterogeneous bit error rates (BERs) of multimedia traffic are guaranteed. With minimum-power allocation, a multimedia wideband CDMA generalized processor sharing (GPS) scheduling scheme is proposed. It provides fair queueing to multimedia traffic with different QoS constraints. It also takes into account the limited number of code channels for each user and the variable system capacity due to interference experienced by users in a CDMA network. The admission of real-time connections is determined by a new effective bandwidth connection admission control (CAC) algorithm in which the minimum-power allocation is also considered. Simulation results show that the new MAC protocol guarantees QoS requirements of both real-time and nonreal-time traffic in an FDD wideband CDMA network.
26169252
Multicast Internet protocol
In this paper, we first review the existing IPv4 based multicast protocols and identify their shortcomings. We then proposed a new multicast protocol, called Multicast Internet Protocol (MIP), which is both scalable and flexible. The design principle of MIP is fundamentally different from the existing IPv4 based multicast protocols. The issues related to MIP routing and implementations are also studied in this paper.
34312633
Research on Reliable Communication in Real-Time Collaborative Designing Systems
Real-time collaborative designing systems allow users to view and design the same document from geographically distributed sites connected by web. In these systems, each action should be transferred to other sites correctly, timely and orderly. While a lot of researches focus mainly on providing reliable network environment to support collaborative works, we propose a new kind of reliable communication architecture for collaborative group. This architecture is based on UDP protocol for end-to-end transmission, and adopts a new Site-based Reliable Communication Protocol (SRCP) that depends on collaborative site itself to choose reliable communication channel and provide reliable transmission. Each site checks the connection status and chooses reliable path to transfer actions dynamically. Lost actions can be detected and retransferred faster when comparing to other architectures. The protocol and algorithms are given in detail in this paper.