004 Datenverarbeitung; Informatik
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Internet applications are becoming more and more flexible to support diverge user demands and network conditions. This is reflected by technical concepts, which provide new adaptation mechanisms to allow fine grained adjustment of the application quality and the corresponding bandwidth requirements. For the case of video streaming, the scalable video codec H.264/SVC allows the flexible adaptation of frame rate, video resolution and image quality with respect to the available network resources. In order to guarantee a good user-perceived quality (Quality of Experience, QoE) it is necessary to adjust and optimize the video quality accurately. But not only have the applications of the current Internet changed. Within network and transport, new technologies evolved during the last years providing a more flexible and efficient usage of data transport and network resources. One of the most promising technologies is Network Virtualization (NV) which is seen as an enabler to overcome the ossification of the Internet stack. It provides means to simultaneously operate multiple logical networks which allow for example application-specific addressing, naming and routing, or their individual resource management. New transport mechanisms like multipath transmission on the network and transport layer aim at an efficient usage of available transport resources. However, the simultaneous transmission of data via heterogeneous transport paths and communication technologies inevitably introduces packet reordering. Additional mechanisms and buffers are required to restore the correct packet order and thus to prevent a disturbance of the data transport. A proper buffer dimensioning as well as the classification of the impact of varying path characteristics like bandwidth and delay require appropriate evaluation methods. Additionally, for a path selection mechanism real time evaluation mechanisms are needed. A better application-network interaction and the corresponding exchange of information enable an efficient adaptation of the application to the network conditions and vice versa. This PhD thesis analyzes a video streaming architecture utilizing multipath transmission and scalable video coding and develops the following optimization possibilities and results: Analysis and dimensioning methods for multipath transmission, quantification of the adaptation possibilities to the current network conditions with respect to the QoE for H.264/SVC, and evaluation and optimization of a future video streaming architecture, which allows a better interaction of application and network.
This work is composed of three main parts: remote control of mobile systems via Internet, ad-hoc networks of mobile robots, and remote control of mobile robots via 3G telecommunication technologies. The first part gives a detailed state of the art and a discussion of the problems to be solved in order to teleoperate mobile robots via the Internet. The focus of the application to be realized is set on a distributed tele-laboratory with remote experiments on mobile robots which can be accessed world-wide via the Internet. Therefore, analyses of the communication link are used in order to realize a robust system. The developed and implemented architecture of this distributed tele-laboratory allows for a smooth access also with a variable or low link quality. The second part covers the application of ad-hoc networks for mobile robots. The networking of mobile robots via mobile ad-hoc networks is a very promising approach to realize integrated telematic systems without relying on preexisting communication infrastructure. Relevant civilian application scenarios are for example in the area of search and rescue operations where first responders are supported by multi-robot systems. Here, mobile robots, humans, and also existing stationary sensors can be connected very fast and efficient. Therefore, this work investigates and analyses the performance of different ad-hoc routing protocols for IEEE 802.11 based wireless networks in relevant scenarios. The analysis of the different protocols allows for an optimization of the parameter settings in order to use these ad-hoc routing protocols for mobile robot teleoperation. Also guidelines for the realization of such telematics systems are given. Also traffic shaping mechanisms of application layer are presented which allow for a more efficient use of the communication link. An additional application scenario, the integration of a small size helicopter into an IP based ad-hoc network, is presented. The teleoperation of mobile robots via 3G telecommunication technologies is addressed in the third part of this work. The high availability, high mobility, and the high bandwidth provide a very interesting opportunity to realize scenarios for the teleoperation of mobile robots or industrial remote maintenance. This work analyses important parameters of the UMTS communication link and investigates also the characteristics for different data streams. These analyses are used to give guidelines which are necessary for the realization of or industrial remote maintenance or mobile robot teleoperation scenarios. All the results and guidelines for the design of telematic systems in this work were derived from analyses and experiments with real hardware.
Network planning has come to great importance during the past decades. Today's telecommunication, traffic systems, and logistics would not have been evolved to the current state without careful analysis of the underlying network problems and precise implementation of the results obtained from those examinations. Graphs with node and arc attributes are a very useful tool to model realistic applications, while on the other hand they are well understood in theory. We investigate network design problems which are motivated particularly from applications in communication networks and logistics. Those problems include the search for homogeneous subgraphs in edge labeled graphs where either the total number of labels or the reload cost are subject to optimize. Further, we investigate some variants of the dial a ride problem. On the other hand, we use node and edge upgrade models to deal with the fact that in many cases one prefers to change existing networks rather than implementing a newly computed solution from scratch. We investigate the construction of bottleneck constrained forests under a node upgrade model, as well as several flow cost problems under a edge based upgrade model. All problems are examined within a framework of multi-criteria optimization. Many of the problems can be shown to be NP-hard, with the consequence that, under the widely accepted assumption that P is not equal to NP, there cannot exist efficient algorithms for solving the problems. This motivates the development of approximation algorithms which compute near-optimal solutions with provable performance guarantee in polynomial time.
This thesis is devoted to the study of computational complexity theory, a branch of theoretical computer science. Computational complexity theory investigates the inherent difficulty in designing efficient algorithms for computational problems. By doing so, it analyses the scalability of computational problems and algorithms and places practical limits on what computers can actually accomplish. Computational problems are categorised into complexity classes. Among the most important complexity classes are the class NP and the subclass of NP-complete problems, which comprises many important optimisation problems in the field of operations research. Moreover, with the P-NP-problem, the class NP represents the most important unsolved question in computer science. The first part of this thesis is devoted to the study of NP-complete-, and more generally, NP-hard problems. It aims at improving our understanding of this important complexity class by systematically studying how altering NP-hard sets affects their NP-hardness. This research is related to longstanding open questions concerning the complexity of unions of disjoint NP-complete sets, and the existence of sparse NP-hard sets. The second part of the thesis is also dedicated to complexity classes but takes a different perspective: In a sense, after investigating the interior of complexity classes in the first part, the focus shifts to the description of complexity classes and thereby to the exterior in the second part. It deals with the description of complexity classes through leaf languages, a uniform framework which allows us to characterise a great variety of important complexity classes. The known concepts are complemented by a new leaf-language model. To a certain extent, this new approach combines the advantages of the known models. The presented results give evidence that the connection between the theory of formal languages and computational complexity theory might be closer than formerly known.
Parametric weighted finite automata (PWFA) are a multi-dimensional generalization of weighted finite automata. The expressiveness of PWFA contains the expressiveness of weighted finite automata as well as the expressiveness of affine iterated function system. The thesis discusses theory and applications of PWFA. The properties of PWFA definable sets are studied and it is shown that some fractal generator systems can be simulated using PWFA and that various real and complex functions can be represented by PWFA. Furthermore, the decoding of PWFA and the interpretation of PWFA definable sets is discussed.
Object six Degrees of Freedom (6DOF) pose estimation is a fundamental problem in many practical robotic applications, where the target or an obstacle with a simple or complex shape can move fast in cluttered environments. In this thesis, a 6DOF pose estimation algorithm is developed based on the fused data from a time-of-flight camera and a color camera. The algorithm is divided into two stages, an annealed particle filter based coarse pose estimation stage and a gradient decent based accurate pose optimization stage. In the first stage, each particle is evaluated with sparse representation. In this stage, the large inter-frame motion of the target can be well handled. In the second stage, the range data based conventional Iterative Closest Point is extended by incorporating the target appearance information and used for calculating the accurate pose by refining the coarse estimate from the first stage. For dealing with significant illumination variations during the tracking, spherical harmonic illumination modeling is investigated and integrated into both stages. The robustness and accuracy of the proposed algorithm are demonstrated through experiments on various objects in both indoor and outdoor environments. Moreover, real-time performance can be achieved with graphics processing unit acceleration.
In the future Internet, the people-centric communication paradigm will be complemented by a ubiquitous communication among people and devices, or even a communication between devices. This comes along with the need for a more flexible, cheap, widely available Internet access. Two types of wireless networks are considered most appropriate for attaining those goals. While wireless sensor networks (WSNs) enhance the Internet’s reach by providing data about the properties of the environment, wireless mesh networks (WMNs) extend the Internet access possibilities beyond the wired backbone. This monograph contains four chapters which present modeling and optimization methods for WSNs and WMNs. Minimizing energy consumptions is the most important goal of WSN optimization and the literature consequently provides countless energy consumption models. The first part of the monograph studies to what extent the used energy consumption model influences the outcome of analytical WSN optimizations. These considerations enable the second contribution, namely overcoming the problems on the way to a standardized energy-efficient WSN communication stack based on IEEE 802.15.4 and ZigBee. For WMNs both problems are of minor interest whereas the network performance has a higher weight. The third part of the work, therefore, presents algorithms for calculating the max-min fair network throughput in WMNs with multiple link rates and Internet gateway. The last contribution of the monograph investigates the impact of the LRA concept which proposes to systematically assign more robust link rates than actually necessary, thereby allowing to exploit the trade-off between spatial reuse and per-link throughput. A systematical study shows that a network-wide slightly more conservative LRA than necessary increases the throughput of a WMN where max-min fairness is guaranteed. It moreover turns out that LRA is suitable for increasing the performance of a contention-based WMN and is a valuable optimization tool.
We consider competitive location problems where two competing providers place their facilities sequentially and users can decide between the competitors. We assume that both competitors act non-cooperatively and aim at maximizing their own benefits. We investigate the complexity and approximability of such problems on graphs, in particular on simple graph classes such as trees and paths. We also develop fast algorithms for single competitive location problems where each provider places a single facilty. Voting location, in contrast, aims at identifying locations that meet social criteria. The provider wants to satisfy the users (customers) of the facility to be opened. In general, there is no location that is favored by all users. Therefore, a satisfactory compromise has to be found. To this end, criteria arising from voting theory are considered. The solution of the location problem is understood as the winner of a virtual election among the users of the facilities, in which the potential locations play the role of the candidates and the users represent the voters. Competitive and voting location problems turn out to be closely related.
The thesis looks at the question asking for the computability of the dot-depth of star-free regular languages. Here one has to determine for a given star-free regular language the minimal number of alternations between concatenation on one hand, and intersection, union, complement on the other hand. This question was first raised in 1971 (Brzozowski/Cohen) and besides the extended star-heights problem usually refered to as one of the most difficult open questions on regular languages. The dot-depth problem can be captured formally by hierarchies of classes of star-free regular languages B(0), B(1/2), B(1), B(3/2),... and L(0), L(1/2), L(1), L(3/2),.... which are defined via alternating the closure under concatenation and Boolean operations, beginning with single alphabet letters. Now the question of dot-depth is the question whether these hierarchy classes have decidable membership problems. The thesis makes progress on this question using the so-called forbidden pattern approach: Classes of regular languages are characterized in terms of patterns in finite automata (subgraphs in the transition graph) that are not allowed. Such a characterization immediately implies the decidability of the respective class, since the absence of a certain pattern in a given automaton can be effectively verified. Before this work, the decidability of B(0), B(1/2), B(1) and L(0), L(1/2), L(1), L(3/2) were known. Here a detailed study of these classes with help of forbidden patterns is given which leads to new insights into their inner structure. Furthermore, the decidability of B(3/2) is proven. Based on these results a theory of pattern iteration is developed which leads to the introduction of two new hierarchies of star-free regular languages. These hierarchies are decidable on one hand, on the other hand they are in close connection to the classes B(n) and L(n). It remains an open question here whether they may in fact coincide. Some evidence is given in favour of this conjecture which opens a new way to attack the dot-depth problem. Moreover, it is shown that the class L(5/2) is decidable in the restricted case of a two-letter alphabet.
The field of small satellite formations and constellations attracted growing attention, based on recent advances in small satellite engineering. The utilization of distributed space systems allows the realization of innovative applications and will enable improved temporal and spatial resolution in observation scenarios. On the other side, this new paradigm imposes a variety of research challenges. In this monograph new networking concepts for space missions are presented, using networks of ground stations. The developed approaches combine ground station resources in a coordinated way to achieve more robust and efficient communication links. Within this thesis, the following topics were elaborated to improve the performance in distributed space missions: Appropriate scheduling of contact windows in a distributed ground system is a necessary process to avoid low utilization of ground stations. The theoretical basis for the novel concept of redundant scheduling was elaborated in detail. Additionally to the presented algorithm was a scheduling system implemented, its performance was tested extensively with real world scheduling problems. In the scope of data management, a system was developed which autonomously synchronizes data frames in ground station networks and uses this information to detect and correct transmission errors. The system was validated with hardware in the loop experiments, demonstrating the benefits of the developed approach.