Dynamic Multi-class Network Loading Problem

The dynamic network loading problem (DNLP) consists in determining on a congested network, time-dependent arc volumes, together with arc and path travel times, given the time varying path flow departure rates over a finite time horizon. The objective of this pap er is to present the formulation of an analytical dynamic multi-class network loading model. The mo del does not require the assumption of the FIFO condition. The existence of a solution to the model is shown.

The Online Assessment of Electric Distribution Network Load Capability

To improve the security and reliability of a distribution network, several issues, such as influences of operation con-strains, real-time load margin calculation, and online security level evaluation, are with great significance. In this pa-per, a mathematical model for load capability online assessment of a distribution network is established, and a repeti-tive power flow calculation algorithm is proposed to solve the problem as well. With assessment on three levels: the entire distribution network, a sub-area of the network and a load bus, the security level of current operation mode and load transfer capability during outage are thus obtained. The results can provide guidelines for prevention control, as well as restoration control. Simulation results show that the method is simple, fast and can be applied to distribution networks belonged to any voltage level while taking into account all of the operation constraints.

Review of Load Balancing Mechanisms in SDN-Based Data Centers

With the continuous expansion of the data center network scale, changing network requirements, and increasing pressure on network bandwidth, the traditional network architecture can no longer meet people’s needs. The development of software defined networks has brought new opportunities and challenges to future networks. The data and control separation characteristics of SDN improve the performance of the entire network. Researchers have integrated SDN architecture into data centers to improve network resource utilization and performance. This paper first introduces the basic concepts of SDN and data center networks. Then it discusses SDN-based load balancing mechanisms for data centers from different perspectives. Finally, it summarizes and looks forward to the study on SDN-based load balancing mechanisms and its development trend.

Spatial Load Balancing in Wide-Area Wireless Networks

Load balancing is typically used in the frequency domain of cellular wireless networks to balance paging, access, and traffic load across the available bandwidth. In this paper, we extend load balancing into the spatial domain, and we develop two approaches--network load balancing and single-carrier multilink--for spatial load balancing. Although these techniques are mostly applied to cellular wireless networks and Wi-Fi networks, we show how they can be applied to EV-DO, a 3G cellular data network. When a device has more than one candidate server, these techniques can be used to determine the quality of the channel between a server and the device and to determine the Ipad on each server. The proposed techniques leverage the advantages of existing EV-DO network architecture and are fully backward compatible. Network operators can substantially increase network capacity and improve user experience by using these techniques. Combining load balancing in the frequency and spatial domains improves connectivity within a network and allows resources to be optimally allocated according to the p-fair criterion. Combined load balancing further improves performance.

Hybrid-Traffic-Detour Based Load Balancing for Onboard Routing in LEO Satellite Networks

To deal with the dynamic and imbalanced traffic requirements in Low Earth Orbit satellite networks, several distributed load balancing routing schemes have been proposed. However, because of the lack of global view, these schemes may lead to cascading congestion in regions with high volume of traffic. To solve this problem, a Hybrid-Traffic-Detour based Load Balancing Routing(HLBR) scheme is proposed, where a Long-Distance Traffic Detour(LTD) method is devised and coordinates with distributed traffic detour method to perform self-adaptive load balancing. The forwarding path of LTD is acquired by the Circuitous Multipath Calculation(CMC) based on prior geographical information, and activated by the LTDShift-Trigger(LST) through real-time congestion perception. Simulation results show that the HLBR can mitigate cascading congestion and achieve efficient traffic distribution.

Load Balancing-Based Routing Optimization Mechanism for Power Communication Networks

In power communication networks, it is a challenge to decrease the risk of different services efficiently to improve operation reliability. One of the important factor in reflecting communication risk is service route distribution. However, existing routing algorithms do not take into account the degree of importance of services, thereby leading to load unbalancing and increasing the risks of services and networks. A routing optimization mechanism based on load balancing for power communication networks is proposed to address the abovementioned problems. First, the mechanism constructs an evaluation model to evaluate the service and network risk degree using combination of devices, service load, and service characteristics. Second, service weights are determined with modified relative entropy TOPSIS method, and a balanced service routing determination algorithm is proposed. Results of simulations on practical network topology show that the mechanism can optimize the network risk degree and load balancing degree efficiently.

A Novel Load Balancing Strategy of Software-Defined Cloud/Fog Networking in the Internet of Vehicles

The Internet of Vehicles(IoV)has been widely researched in recent years,and cloud computing has been one of the key technologies in the IoV.Although cloud computing provides high performance compute,storage and networking services,the IoV still suffers with high processing latency,less mobility support and location awareness.In this paper,we integrate fog computing and software defined networking(SDN) to address those problems.Fog computing extends computing and storing to the edge of the network,which could decrease latency remarkably in addition to enable mobility support and location awareness.Meanwhile,SDN provides flexible centralized control and global knowledge to the network.In order to apply the software defined cloud/fog networking(SDCFN) architecture in the IoV effectively,we propose a novel SDN-based modified constrained optimization particle swarm optimization(MPSO-CO) algorithm which uses the reverse of the flight of mutation particles and linear decrease inertia weight to enhance the performance of constrained optimization particle swarm optimization(PSO-CO).The simulation results indicate that the SDN-based MPSO-CO algorithm could effectively decrease the latency and improve the quality of service(QoS) in the SDCFN architecture.

Earth slope reliability analysis under seismic loadings using neural network

A new method was proposed to cope with the earth slope reliability problem under seismic loadings. The algorithm integrates the concepts of artificial neural network, the first order second moment reliability method and the deterministic stability analysis method of earth slope. The performance function and its derivatives in slope stability analysis under seismic loadings were approximated by a trained multi-layer feed-forward neural network with differentiable transfer functions. The statistical moments calculated from the performance function values and the corresponding gradients using neural network were then used in the first order second moment method for the calculation of the reliability index in slope safety analysis. Two earth slope examples were presented for illustrating the applicability of the proposed approach. The new method is effective in slope reliability analysis. And it has potential application to other reliability problems of complicated engineering structure with a considerably large number of random variables.

A load-balanced minimum energy routing algorithm for Wireless Ad Hoc Sensor Networks

Wireless Ad Hoc Sensor Networks (WSNs) have received considerable academia research attention at present. The energy-constraint sensor nodes in WSNs operate on limited batteries, so it is a very important issue to use energy efficiently and reduce power consumption. To maximize the network lifetime, it is essential to prolong each individual node’s lifetime through minimizing the transmission energy consumption, so that many minimum energy routing schemes for traditional mobile ad hoc network have been developed for this reason. This paper presents a novel minimum energy routing algorithm named Load-Balanced Minimum Energy Routing (LBMER) for WSNs considering both sensor nodes’ energy consumption status and the sensor nodes’ hierarchical congestion levels, which uses mixture of energy balance and traffic balance to solve the problem of “hot spots” of WSNs and avoid the situation of “hot spots” sensor nodes using their energy at much higher rate and die much faster than the other nodes. The path router established by LBMER will not be very congested and the traffic will be distributed evenly in the WSNs. Simulation results verified that the LBMER performance is better than that of Min-Hop routing and the existing minimum energy routing scheme MTPR (Total Transmission Power Routing).

Load-Aware Offloading Strategy in Two-Tier Heterogeneous Network

Although small cell offloading technology can alleviate the congestion in macrocell, aggressively offloading data traffic from macrocell to small cell can also degrade the performance of small cell due to the heavy load. Because of collision and backoff, the degradation is significant especially in network with contention-based channel access, and finally decreases throughput of the whole network. To find an optimal fraction of traffic to be offloaded in heterogeneous network, we combine Markov chain with the Poisson point process model to analyze contention-based throughput in irregularly deployment networks. Then we derive the close-form solution of the throughput and find that it is a function of the transmit power and density of base stations.Based on this, we propose the load-aware offloading strategies via power control and base station density adjustment. The numerical results verify our analysis and show a great performance gain compared with non-load-aware offloading.

A Coverage-Aware Unequal Clustering Protocol with Load Separation for Ambient Assisted Living Based on Wireless Sensor Networks

Ambient Assisted Living(AAL) is becoming an important research field. Many technologies have emerged related with pervasive computing vision, which can give support for AAL. One of the most reliable approaches is based on wireless sensor networks(WSNs). In this paper, we propose a coverage-aware unequal clustering protocol with load separation(CUCPLS) for data gathering of AAL applications based on WSNs. Firstly, the coverage overlap factor for nodes is introduced that accounts for the degree of target nodes covered. In addition, to balance the intra-cluster and inter-cluster energy consumptions, different competition radiuses of CHs are computed theoretically in different rings, and smaller clusters are formed near the sink. Moreover, two CHs are selected in each cluster for load separation to alleviate the substantial energy consumption difference between a single CH and its member nodes. Furthermore, a backoff waiting time is adopted during the selection of the two CHs to reduce the number of control messages employed. Simulation results demonstrate that the CUCPLS not only can achieve better coverage performance, but also balance the energy consumption of a network and prolong network lifetime.

Using Artificial Neural Network to Estimate Sediment Load in Ungauged Catchments of the Tonle Sap River Basin, Cambodia

Concern on alteration of sediment natural flow caused by developments of water resources system, has been addressed in many river basins around the world especially in developing and remote regions where sediment data are poorly gauged or ungauged. Since suspended sediment load (SSL) is predominant, the objectives of this research are to: 1) simulate monthly average SSL (SSLm) of four catchments using artificial neural network (ANN);2) assess the application of the calibrated ANN (Cal-ANN) models in three ungauged catchment representatives (UCR) before using them to predict SSLm of three actual ungauged catchments (AUC) in the Tonle Sap River Basin;and 3) estimate annual SSL (SSLA) of each AUC for the case of with and without dam-reservoirs. The model performance for total load (SSLT) prediction was also investigated because it is important for dam-reservoir management. For model simulation, ANN yielded very satisfactory results with determination coefficient (R2) ranging from 0.81 to 0.94 in calibration stage and 0.63 to 0.87 in validation stage. The Cal-ANN models also performed well in UCRs with R2 ranging from 0.59 to 0.64. From the result of this study, one can estimate SSLm and SSLT of ungauged catchments with an accuracy of 0.61 in term of R2 and 34.06% in term of absolute percentage bias, respectively. SSLA of the AUCs was found between 159,281 and 723,580 t/year. In combination with Brune’s method, the impact of dam-reservoirs could reduce SSLA between 47% and 68%. This result is key information for sustainable development of such infrastructures.

Energy-balanced clustering protocol for data gathering in wireless sensor networks with unbalanced traffic load

Energy-efficient data gathering in multi-hop wireless sensor networks was studied,considering that different node produces different amounts of data in realistic environments.A novel dominating set based clustering protocol (DSCP) was proposed to solve the data gathering problem in this scenario.In DSCP,a node evaluates the potential lifetime of the network (from its local point of view) assuming that it acts as the cluster head,and claims to be a tentative cluster head if it maximizes the potential lifetime.When evaluating the potential lifetime of the network,a node considers not only its remaining energy,but also other factors including its traffic load,the number of its neighbors,and the traffic loads of its neighbors.A tentative cluster head becomes a final cluster head with a probability inversely proportional to the number of tentative cluster heads that cover its neighbors.The protocol can terminate in O(n/lg n) steps,and its total message complexity is O(n2/lg n).Simulation results show that DSCP can effectively prolong the lifetime of the network in multi-hop networks with unbalanced traffic load.Compared with EECT,the network lifetime is prolonged by 56.6% in average.

Load Reduction Test Method of Similarity Theory and BP Neural Networks of Large Cranes

Static load tests are an important means of supervising and detecting a crane＇s lift capacity. Due to space restrictions, however, there are difficulties and potential danger when testing large bridge cranes. To solve the loading problems of large-tonnage cranes during testing, an equivalency test is proposed based on the similarity theory and BP neural networks. The maximum stress and displacement of a large bridge crane is tested in small loads, combined with the training neural network of a similar structure crane through stress and displacement data which is collected by a physics simulation progressively loaded to a static load test load within the material scope of work. The maximum stress and displacement of a crane under a static load test load can be predicted through the relationship of stress, displacement, and load. By measuring the stress and displacement of small tonnage weights, the stress and displacement of large loads can be predicted, such as the maximum load capacity, which is 1.25 times the rated capacity. Experimental study shows that the load reduction test method can reflect the lift capacity of large bridge cranes. The load shedding predictive analysis for Sanxia 1200 t bridge crane test data indicates that when the load is 1.25 times the rated lifting capacity, the predicted displacement and actual displacement error is zero. The method solves the problem that lifting capacities are difficult to obtain and testing accidents are easily possible when 1.25 times related weight loads are tested for large tonnage cranes.

Comparison between Multi-Layer Perceptron and Radial Basis Function Networks for Sediment Load Estimation in a Tropical Watershed

Prediction of highly non-linear behavior of suspended sediment flow in rivers has prime importance in environmental studies and watershed management. In this study, the predictive performance of two Artificial Neural Networks (ANNs), namely Radial Basis Function (RBF) and Multi-Layer Perceptron (MLP) were compared. Time series data of daily suspended sediment discharge and water discharge at the Langat River, Malaysia were used for training and testing the networks. Mean Square Error (MSE), Normalized Mean Square Error (NMSE) and correlation coefficient (r) were used for performance evaluation of the models. Using the testing data set, both models produced a similar level of robustness in sediment load simulation. The MLP network model showed a slightly better output than the RBF network model in predicting suspended sediment discharge, especially in the training process. However, both ANNs showed a weak robustness in estimating large magnitudes of sediment load.

Adaptive load balancing scheme in ad hoc networks

An adaptive load balancing scheme is proposed to balance the load in ad hoc networks. The new scheme can be applied in most on-demand routing protocols resulting in significant performance improvement. The proposed scheme is applied to the ad hoc on-demand distance vector （AODV） routing protocol. Simulation results show that the network load is balanced on the whole, and performance in packet loss rate, routing overhead and average end-to-end delay is also improved.

Load Balancing Fat-Tree on Long-Lived Flows:Avoiding Congestion in a Data Center Network

In a data center network （DCN）, load balancing is required when servers transfer data on the same path. This is necessary to avoid congestion. Load balancing is challenged by the dynamic transferral of demands and complex routing control. Because of the distributed nature of a traditional network, previous research on load balancing has mostly focused on improving the performance of the local network; thus, the load has not been optimally balanced across the entire network. In this paper, we propose a novel dynamic load-balancing algorithm for fat-tree. This algorithm avoids congestions to the great possible extent by searching for non-conflicting paths in a centralized way. We implement the algorithm in the popular software-defined networking architecture and evaluate the algorithm＇ s performance on the Mininet platform. The results show that our algorithm has higher bisection band- width than the traditional equal-cost multi-path load-balancing algorithm and thus more effectively avoids congestion.

Load-redistribution strategy based on time-varying load against cascading failure of complex network

Cascading failure can cause great damage to complex networks, so it is of great significance to improve the network robustness against cascading failure. Many previous existing works on load-redistribution strategies require global information, which is not suitable for large scale networks, and some strategies based on local information assume that the load of a node is always its initial load before the network is attacked, and the load of the failure node is redistributed to its neighbors according to their initial load or initial residual capacity. This paper proposes a new load-redistribution strategy based on local information considering an ever-changing load. It redistributes the loads of the failure node to its nearest neighbors according to their current residual capacity, which makes full use of the residual capacity of the network. Experiments are conducted on two typical networks and two real networks, and the experimental results show that the new load-redistribution strategy can reduce the size of cascading failure efficiently.

Prediction of Rolling Load in Hot Strip Mill byInnovations Feedback Neural Networks

Because the structure of the classical mathematical model of rolling load is simple, even with the self-adapting technology, it is difficult to accommodate the increasing dimensional accuracy. Motivated by this fact, an Innovations Feedback Neural Networks （IFNN） was presented based on the idea of Kalman prediction. The neural networks used the Back Propagation （BP） algorithm and applied it to the prediction of rolling load in hot strip mill. The theoretical results and the off-line simulation show that the prediction capability of IFNN is better than that of normal BP networks, namely, for the prediction of the rolling load in hot strip mill, the prediction precision of IFNN is higher than that of normal BP networks. Finally, a relative complete rolling load prediction system was developed on Windows 2003/XP platform using the OOP programming method and the SQL server2000 database. With this sys- tem, the rolling load of a 1700 strip mill was calculated, and the prediction results obtained correspond well with the field data. It shows that IFNN is valid for rolling load prediction.

Application of artificial neural networks in optimal tuning of tuned mass dampers implemented in high-rise buildings subjected to wind load

High-rise buildings are usually considered as flexible structures with low inherent damping. Therefore, these kinds of buildings are susceptible to wind-induced vibration. Tuned Mass Damper（TMD） can be used as an effective device to mitigate excessive vibrations. In this study, Artificial Neural Networks is used to find optimal mechanical properties of TMD for high-rise buildings subjected to wind load. The patterns obtained from structural analysis of different multi degree of freedom（MDF） systems are used for training neural networks. In order to obtain these patterns, structural models of some systems with 10 to 80 degrees-of-freedoms are built in MATLAB/SIMULINK program. Finally, the optimal properties of TMD are determined based on the objective of maximum displacement response reduction. The Auto-Regressive model is used to simulate the wind load. In this way, the uncertainties related to wind loading can be taken into account in neural network’s outputs. After training the neural network, it becomes possible to set the frequency and TMD mass ratio as inputs and get the optimal TMD frequency and damping ratio as outputs. As a case study, a benchmark 76-story office building is considered and the presented procedure is used to obtain optimal characteristics of the TMD for the building.