Sharif Digital Repository

In a proportional task allocation problem, it is desired for robotic agents to have equal duty to capability ratios. Here, this problem is addressed as a combination of deployment and consensus problems. Tasks occur in a convex region and each task is assigned to its nearest agent. Agents are deployed on this area in order to reach consensus over the value of their duty to capability ratio. A distributed, asynchronous, and scalable algorithm is presented for solving this problem in continuous time domain  

Peer-to-peer (P2P) networks are beginning to form the infrastructure of future applications. Computers are organized in P2P overlay networks to facilitate search queries with reasonable cost. So, scalability is a major aim in design of P2P networks. In this paper, to obtain a high factor of scalability, we partition network search space using a consistent static shared upper ontology. We name our approach semantic partition tree (SPT). All resources and queries are annotated using the upper ontology and queries are semantically routed in the overlay network. Also, each node indexes addresses of other nodes that possess contents expressible by the concept it maintains. So, our approach can be... 

In this paper joint optimization of layers in the layered video coding is investigated. Through theoretical analysis and simulations, it is shown that, due to higher interactions between the layers in a SNR scalable codec, this type of layering technique benefits most from joint optimization of the layers. A method for joint optimization is then proposed, and its compression efficiency is contrasted against the separate optimization and an optimized single layer coder. It is shown that, in joint optimization of SNR scalable coders when the quantization step size of the enhancement layer is larger than half the step size of the base layer, an additional improvement is gained by not sending... 

This paper investigates the performance of epidemic routing, in mobile social networks (MSNs), which makes use of the store-carry-forward paradigm for communication. Real-life mobility traces show that people have skewed location visiting preferences, with some places visited frequently and some others infrequently. In order to model epidemic routing in MSNs, we first analyze the time taken for a node to meet the first node belonging to a set of nodes restricted to move in a specific subarea. Afterwards, a monolithic stochastic reward net (SRN) is proposed to evaluate the delivery delay and the average number of transmissions under epidemic routing by considering skewed location visiting... 

In some applicable scenarios, such as community patrolling, mobile nodes are restricted to move only in their own communities. Exploiting the meetings of the nodes within the same community and the nodes within the neighboring communities, a delay tolerant network (DTN) can provide communication between any two nodes. In this paper, two analytical models based on stochastic reward nets (SRNs) are proposed to evaluate the performance of the epidemic content retrieval in such multi-community DTNs. Performance measures computed by the proposed models are the average retrieval delay and the average number of transmissions. The monolithic SRN model proposed in the first step is not scalable, in... 

This paper investigates the performance of epidemic routing in mobile social networks considering several communities which are frequently visited by nodes. To this end, a monolithic Stochastic Reward Net (SRN) is proposed to evaluate the delivery delay and the average number of transmissions under epidemic routing by considering skewed location visiting preferences. This model is not scalable enough, in terms of the number of nodes and frequently visited locations. In order to achieve higher scalability, the folding technique is applied to the monolithic model, and an approximate folded SRN is proposed to evaluate performance of epidemic routing. Discrete-event simulation is used to... 

Cloud Computing has become popular nowadays. Cloud providers with scalable infrastructures can offer cloud-based services which reduce investment of organizations and diminish most of their operational costs. Therefore, traditional services need to be renovated in the spirit of cloud environments. In this paper, Decision Support-as-a-Service (DSaaS) which is a cloud-based decision support system is introduced. The DSaaS can help managers to make fast and precise decisions. Also, the important challenges of such a system are discussed and a proper energy-aware resource allocation policy is proposed as the solution for the main challenge. A wide range of simulation results show that the policy... 

The sequential deposition method is introduced for suppressing the leakage current in silicone rubber insulators. Room temperature vulcanizing silicone and TiO2/silica nanocomposites are sequentially deposited on silicone insulators surface. TEM results showed that TiO2 nanoparticles size is about 20–30 nm, and the structural study revealed their anatase crystalline structure. Silica nanoparticles are deposited on the surface of insulators by spray deposition. The contact angle was enhanced from 104° to 149° after nanoparticles deposition, which confirms the hydrophobicity improvement. Results show that leakage current for nanocomposite samples in a contaminated environment reduced to about... 

Harmony search (HS) is a new meta-heuristic optimization method imitating the music improvisation process where musicians improvise their instruments' pitches searching for a perfect state of harmony. A new variant of HS, called global-best harmony search (GHS), is proposed in this paper where concepts from swarm intelligence are borrowed to enhance the performance of HS. The performance of the GHS is investigated and compared with HS and a recently developed variation of HS. The experiments conducted show that the GHS generally outperformed the other approaches when applied to ten benchmark problems. The effect of noise on the performance of the three HS variants is investigated and a... 

Network function virtualization (NFV) and software-defined networking (SDN) are two promising technologies to enable 5G and 6G services and achieve cost reduction, network scalability, and deployment flexibility. However, migration to full SDN/NFV networks in order to serve these services is a time-consuming process and costly for mobile operators. This paper focuses on energy efficiency during the transition of mobile core networks (MCN) to full SDN/NFV networks and explores how energy efficiency can be addressed during such migration. We propose a general system model containing a combination of legacy nodes and links, in addition to newly introduced NFV and SDN nodes. We refer to this... 

Hydrogen evolution through photoelectrochemical (PEC) water splitting by tungsten oxide-based photoanodes, as a stable and environmental-friendly material with moderate band gap, has attracted significant interest in recent years. The performance of WO3 photoanode could be hindered by its poor oxygen evolution reaction kinetics and high charge carrier recombination rate. Additionally, scalable and cost-effective commercial procedure to prepare nanostructured electrodes is still challenging. We present, for the first time, a novel and scalable method to fabricate highly efficient self-supported WO3/W nanostructured photoanodes from commercial W–Cu powder metallurgy (P/M) parts for water... 

A facility location problem deals with locating the best place for a group of facilities, among distinct demand points, minimizing a certain locational optimization function. In this paper, distributed, asynchronous, and scalable algorithms are presented for solving a facility location problem known as continuous n-median problem (generalized Fermat-Weber problem) via multi-agent robotic systems. The algorithms are discussed both in continuous and discrete time domain, and their validity is proved. It is also shown that the solution of this facility location problem is the set of points that are the geometric medians of their corresponding Voronoi cells  

Three-dimensional reduced graphene oxide (3D-rGO) structures decorated with CuO particles (GCu) are synthesized through a simple and scalable method for detection of hydrogen sulfide (H2S) gas. For characterization and investigation of porous structure various techniques were employed. Decorated 3D structures demonstrated higher sensitivity and selectivity in comparison to pure structure. Optimized structure for sensing was obtained through introducing different amounts of CuO. The GCu heterostructures containing 35 μmol of CuO powder demonstrated reproducible response of about 30% to the concentration of 10 ppm at room temperature, while complete recovery was obtained through heating to 150... 

BGP/MPLS IP VPN and VPLS services are considered to be widely used in IP/MPLS networks for connecting customers' remote sites. However, service providers struggle with many challenges to provide these services. Management complexity, equipment costs, and last but not least, scalability issues emerging as the customers increase in number, are just some of these problems. Software-defined networking (SDN) is an emerging paradigm that can solve aforementioned issues using a logically centralized controller for network devices. In this paper, we propose a SDN-based solution called SDxVPN which considerably lowers the complexity of VPN service definition and management. Our method eliminates... 

Identifying clusters is an important aspect of analyzing large datasets. Clustering algorithms classically require access to the complete dataset. However, as huge amounts of data are increasingly originating from multiple, dispersed sources in distributed systems, alternative solutions are required. Furthermore, data and network dynamicity in a distributed setting demand adaptable clustering solutions that offer accurate clustering models at a reasonable pace. In this paper, we propose GoScan, a fully decentralized density-based clustering algorithm which is capable of clustering dynamic and distributed datasets without requiring central control or message flooding. We identify two major... 

Electrochemical exfoliation of graphite has recently attracted a big attention as a simple, fast and scalable method for the preparation of high quality graphene, but there are some drawbacks that hinder its application. Direct deposition is one of the most critical challenges that makes it difficult to deposit uniform, compact and large scale graphene thin films. This work develops a facile electrophoretic deposition route to fabricate exfoliated graphene (EG) film on Ag nanowires (NWs) networks with a controllable film thickness in nanometers scale. EG thin films are deposited with different applied potentials and times from an EG dispersion in N, N-dimethylformamide solvent. Since... 

The plausibility of embedding cycles of different lengths in the graphs of a network (known as the pancyclicity property) has important applications in interconnection networks, parallel processing systems, and the implementation of a number of either computational or graph problems such as those used for finding storage schemes of logical data structures, layout of circuits in VLSI, etc. In this paper, we present the sufficient condition of the pancyclicity property of OTIS networks. The OTIS network (also referred to as two-level swapped network) is composed of n clones of an n-node original network constituting its clusters. It has received much attention due to its many favorable... 

The plausibility of embedding cycles of different lengths in the graphs of a network (known as the pancyclicity property) has important applications in interconnection networks, parallel processing systems, and the implementation of a number of either computational or graph problems such as those used for finding storage schemes of logical data structures, layout of circuits in VLSI, etc. In this paper, we present the sufficient condition of the pancyclicity property of OTIS networks. The OTIS network (also referred to as two-level swapped network) is composed of n clones of an n-node original network constituting its clusters. It has received much attention due to its many favorable... 

We consider a wireless distributed computing system, in which multiple mobile users, connected wirelessly through an access point, collaborate to perform a computation task. In particular, users communicate with each other via the access point to exchange their locally computed intermediate computation results, which is known as data shuffling. We propose a scalable framework for this system, in which the required communication bandwidth for data shuffling does not increase with the number of users in the network. The key idea is to utilize a particular repetitive pattern of placing the data set (thus a particular repetitive pattern of intermediate computations), in order to provide the... 

This paper proposes CoNoC (Contention-free optical NoC) as a new architecture for on-chip routing of optical packets. CoNoC is built upon all-optical switches (AOSs) which passively route optical data streams based on their wavelengths. The key idea of the proposed architecture is the utilization of per-receiver wavelength in the data network to prevent optical contention at the intermediate nodes. Routing optical packets according to their wavelength eliminates the need for resource reservation at the intermediate nodes and the corresponding latency, power, and area overheads. Since passive architecture of the AOS confines the optical contention to the end-points, we propose an electrical...