Sharif Digital Repository

Supply chain management integrates planning and controlling of materials, information, and finances in a process which begins from suppliers and ends with customers. Optimal planning decisions made in such a distribution network usually include transportation, facilities location, and inventory. This study presents a new approach for considering customers’ differentiation in an integrated location-allocation and inventory control model using transfer recurrent neural network (RNN). In this study, a location and allocation problem is integrated with inventory control decisions considering two classes of strategic and non-strategic customers. For the first time, a novel transfer RNN is applied... 

After a natural disaster, there is an urgent need to supply critical loads such as hospitals as soon as possible. Microgrid (MG) formation is one of the quickest ways to achieve this goal. However, in MG formation studies, there is a trade-off between maximizing the amount of restored loads and minimizing their risk of interruption due to the following aftershocks. For the former objective, the minimum number of MGs should be formed, whereas, for the latter objective, the maximum number of MGs should be configured. This paper tackles this contradictory situation by considering the failure risk of distribution feeders in its proposed optimization framework. In this paper, at first, a novel... 

Existing load balancing solutions rely on direct or indirect measurement of rates (or congestion) averaged over short periods of time. Sudden fluctuations in flow rates can lead to significant undershooting/overshooting of target link loads. In this paper, we make the case for taking variations and correlations of flows into account in load balancing. We propose correlation-aware flow consolidation, i.e. aggregating inversely correlated (or uncorrelated) flows into superflows and using them as building blocks for load balancing. Superflows are smoother than individual flows, and thus are easier to estimate with a higher confidence, and can reduce overshooting/undershooting of link... 

An economic-statistical design with multiple assignable causes following exponential distribution is presented in this paper for linear profiles. For this purpose, a tri-objective optimization model is proposed to minimize the cost with desired statistical performances. Average Run Length (ARL) as the primary statistical measure is employed for the appraisal of the designed linear profiles. The first objective to be minimized is a cost function that models the implementation cost in different states. The second objective is to maximize ARL or the in-control average run-length of the monitoring scheme. The third objective to be minimized is ARL 1 or the out-of-control average run-length of... 

In modern multicore mixed-criticality (MC) systems, a rise in peak power consumption due to parallel execution of tasks with maximum frequency, specially in the overload situation, may lead to thermal issues, which may affect the reliability and timeliness of MC systems. Therefore, managing peak power consumption has become imperative in multicore MC systems. In this regard, we propose an online peak power and thermal management heuristic for multicore MC systems. This heuristic reduces the peak power consumption of the system as much as possible during runtime by exploiting dynamic slack and per-cluster dynamic voltage and frequency scaling (DVFS). Specifically, our approach examines... 

Purpose: Motivated by the high cost of material movements in road construction projects, past studies have used analytical methods to optimize materials logistics plans. A key shortcoming of these methods is their inability to capture the uncertain, dynamic and complex characteristics of the road construction material logistics. Failure to incorporate these characteristics can lead to sub-optimal results. The purpose of this study is to propose the use of discrete event simulation (DES) to address the existing shortfall. Design/methodology/approach: Despite the powerful capabilities of DES models in capturing the operational complexities of construction projects, they have not been... 

Fused CPU-GPU architectures that utilize the powerful features of both processors are common nowadays. Using homogeneous interconnect for such heterogeneous processors can result in performance degradation and power increase. This paper explores the optimization of heterogeneous NoC design to connect heterogeneous CPU-GPU architecture in terms of NoC performance and power. This involves solving four different NoC design sub-problems simultaneously; processing elements (PEs) mapping, buffer size and virtual channel assignments, and links' bandwidth determination. Heuristic-based optimization methods were proposed to obtain a near-optimal heterogeneous NoC design, and formal models were used... 

In this study, a new mathematical programming approach for solving the joint timetabling and train stop planning problem in a railway line with double-track segments is proposed. This research aims to design an optimized train timetable subject to the station- capacity and time-dependent dwell time constraints. The objective function is to maximize the railway infrastructure capacity by minimizing the schedule makespan. The problem is formulated as a particular case of blocking permutation flexible flow shop scheduling model with dynamic time window constraints. Due to the combinatorial nature of the problem, heuristic algorithm and bound tightening methods are proposed that generate... 

MapReduce framework is an effective method for big data parallel processing. Enhancing the performance of MapReduce clusters, along with reducing their job execution time, is a fundamental challenge to this approach. In fact, one is faced with two challenges here: how to maximize the execution overlap between jobs and how to create an optimum job scheduling. Accordingly, one of the most critical challenges to achieving these goals is developing a precise model to estimate the job execution time due to the large number and high volume of the submitted jobs, limited consumable resources, and the need for proper Hadoop configuration. This paper presents a model based on MapReduce phases for... 

Continuity of supply plays a significant role in modern distribution system planning and operational studies. Accordingly, various techniques have been developed for reliability assessment of distribution networks. However, owing to the complexities and restrictions of these methods, many researchers have resorted to several heuristic optimization algorithms for solving reliability-constrained optimization problems. Therefore, solution quality and convergence to global optimality cannot be guaranteed. Aiming to address this issue, two salient mathematical models are introduced in this paper for topology-variable-based reliability evaluation of both radial and radially-operated meshed... 

In modern multi-core Mixed-Criticality (MC) systems, a rise in peak power consumption due to parallel execution of tasks with maximum frequency, specially in the overload situation, may lead to thermal issues, which may affect the reliability and timeliness of MC systems. Therefore, managing peak power consumption has become imperative in multi-core MC systems. In this regard, we propose an online peak power and thermal management heuristic for multi-core MC systems. This heuristic reduces the peak power consumption of the system as much as possible during runtime by exploiting dynamic slack and per-cluster Dynamic Voltage and Frequency Scaling (DVFS). Specifically, our approach examines... 

In this study, an impulsive state feedback controller has been proposed for the treatment of hepatitis-C-infected patients under Pegylated-Interferon (PEG-IFN-α2b) therapy. The Neumann model has been utilized as the representative of the hepatitis C virus (HCV) dynamics. In order to consider the drug efficacy variation between injections, the pharmacokinetics/pharmacodynamics (PK/PD) equations have been included in the model. The impulsive nature of the drug injection also has been considered in the disease dynamics. In the proposed treatment method, the drug dose limitation has been addressed as an input nonlinearity. The asymptotical stability of the control method under the impulsive... 

This paper proposes a multi-item economic order quantity model with imperfect items in supply deliveries. The inspection process to classify the items is not perfect and involves two types of error: Type-I and Type-II. To cope with the uncertainty involved in real-world applications and to bring the problem closer to reality, operational constraints are assumed stochastic. The aim is to determine the optimal order and back order sizes of the items in order to achieve maximum total profit. As the proposed mathematical model is a constrained nonlinear programming, three different solution methods including an exact method named the interior-point and two novel meta-heuristics named grey wolf... 

Isolated, high-density DC-DC converters play a crucial role in the power supply unit of information technology industries. By virtue of high efficiency and high power density, LLC resonant converters-among the rest of DC-DC converters-are suitable candidates for this application. The magnetic structure of this converter, however, is a bulky, dissipative part, which has a considerable portion of power loss. Improvement in the size and efficiency of the LLC transformer will lead to an overall enhancement of power density and efficiency of the converter. Nevertheless, the optimization of planar transformers for the LLC converter has not been studied enough. This paper proposes a... 

A new shape-based geometric method (SBGM) is proposed for generation of multi-impulse transfer trajectories between arbitrary coplanar oblique orbits via a heuristic algorithm. The key advantage of the proposed SBGM includes a significant reduction in the number of design variables for an N-impulse orbital maneuver leading to a lower computational effort and energy requirement. The SBGM generates a smooth transfer trajectory by joining a number of confocal elliptic arcs such that the intersections share common tangent directions. It is proven that the well-known classic Hohmann transfer and its bi-elliptic counterpart between circular orbits are special cases of the proposed SBGM. The... 

In this work, we address peak power and maximum temperature in multi-core Mixed-Criticality (MC) systems. In these systems, a rise in peak power consumption may generate more heat beyond the cooling capacity. Additionally, the reliability and timeliness of MC systems may be affected due to excessive temperature. Therefore, managing peak power consumption has become imperative in multi-core MC systems. In this regard, we propose an online peak power management heuristic for multi-core MC systems. This heuristic reduces the peak power consumption of the system as much as possible during runtime by exploiting dynamic slack and Dynamic Voltage and Frequency Scaling (DVFS). Specifically, our... 

One of the main questions in cloud computing environments is how to efficiently distribute user requests or Virtual Machines (VMs) based on their resource needs over time. This question is also an important one when dealing with a cloud federation environment where rational cloud service providers are collaborating together by sharing customer requests. By considering intrinsic aspects of the cloud computing model one can propose request distribution methods that play on the strengths of this computing paradigm. In this paper we look at statistical multiplexing and server consolidation as such a strength and examine the use of the coefficient of variation and other related statistical... 

One of the main questions in cloud computing environments is how to efficiently distribute user requests or Virtual Machines (VMs) based on their resource needs over time. This question is also an important one when dealing with a cloud federation environment where rational cloud service providers are collaborating together by sharing customer requests. By considering intrinsic aspects of the cloud computing model one can propose request distribution methods that play on the strengths of this computing paradigm. In this paper we look at statistical multiplexing and server consolidation as such a strength and examine the use of the coefficient of variation and other related statistical... 

As elastic optical networks (EONs) are expected to convey high bitrate connections, a failure in these networks causes vast data losses. Thus, addressing the problem of survivability in EONs is of great importance. In this paper, survivability of an EON with multiclass traffic is investigated, where each traffic type needs specific protection mechanism and scheduling strategy. In particular, a connection request may demand for dedicated path protection, shared backup path protection, or restoration mechanism. Besides, it can tolerate a pre-determined delay and be scheduled at future time slots, referred to as advance reservation, or must be served immediately without any delay, referred to... 

The facility location problem and its related financial issues have a significant impact on the configuration of a supply chain structure (SCS). Although affording the setup cost of facilities requires a huge financial investment, a meticulous planning to recoup it has been neglected by an overwhelming majority of previous studies. To fill this gap, an economical investment plan of facilities is determined by striking a trade-off between the contribution of the stockholders’ capital and the loan arrangement. In the context of a multiperiod three-echelon SCS, the model also determines the optimum location of plants and the best supply and distribution patterns. The model maximizes the fill...