- Email: [email protected]
Nature-inspired distributed computing
Computer Communications 30 (2007) 653–655 www.elsevier.com/locate/comcom
Guest Editorial
Nature-inspired distributed computing
This special issue in the journal ‘‘Computer Communications’’ contains a set of selected works appeared in NIDISC 2005, which have been later extended and revised to configure the contents of the issue. The Nature-Inspired Distributed Computing workshop is an event held every year inside the larger IPDPS conference generically dealing with computer networks, computer communications, parallelism, new software and communication protocols. NIDISC is a forum to present theoretical and practical advances focusing either in innovative (especially nature inspired) algorithms showing high efficiency or in new applications of interest, either in engineering or in other fields of social impact. Techniques based on metaheuristics (optimization/ search/learning algorithm skeletons) and nature-inspired paradigms can provide really efficient solutions to a wide variety of problems there where other (e.g., exact) methods are unable even of being applied, or when other techniques show an unaffordable utilization of computational resources. Moreover, parallel and distributed metaheuristics can be used to provide still more powerful problem solving tools. These techniques are hence widely used to solve a variety of optimization problems that arise in operations research, parallel computing, telecommunications, data networks, and many other disciplines, and tend to excel in cases where the knowledge space is ambiguous or incomplete. Rather remarkably, many nature-inspired and metaheuristic techniques are inherently parallel, and besides they can solve problems arising in computer networks (design, parameter optimization, failures, etc.). In this sense, the mentioned techniques can both profit from networks to run more efficiently and also they can be used to solve problems intrinsic to computer communication systems. The intent of this special issue is to bring together a number of researchers to explore the connection between metaheuristics in general and a range of complex problems in communications. The topics that are explored by the papers of this special issue are by no means exhaustive, but most of the conclusions provided here can be extended to nearby research fields.
0140-3664/$ - see front matter Ó 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.comcom.2006.08.013
The papers cover an interesting range of applications that use a communication system for the development of the solution methodology; in addition, the articles included propose solutions for problems that are important for networks and communications in general. The first article summarizes the main ideas on the algorithms and their potential applications, and surveys a large number of tasks that could be performed by nature-inspired and metaheuristic algorithms in the domain of computer communications. This will hopefully help novel researchers to acquire the nomenclature and basic operations that could be used later in their own applications. The second paper addresses the field of mobile communications by defining and discussing where the opportunities for optimizing the communication system can be found. The interest of mobile communications is out of discussion, and this article will provide a quick understanding on what and how to do research in this field. The third paper directly focuses in ad hoc networks (MANETs) found in metropolitan areas; it describes a set of techniques to optimize the broadcasting strategy, a capital operation in these kinds of networks for most applications (discovery of neighbours, diffusion of messages, controlling applications, etc.). The fourth paper is a very special combination of a work dealing with designing cellular phone networks by using advanced algorithms run in a grid of computers. The reader can clearly infer the importance of such a work because of the extremely hot topics involved in it: cellular communication networks and grid computing. The article included in the fifth position of this issue solves a critical problem found in mobile communication networks: the location management. This work applies the well known simulated annealing technique to define location areas in the network, in order to optimize paging and handover costs when dealing with user terminals. The work in the sixth paper is an interesting new idea consisting in using genetic algorithms for managing quality of service attributes in a highly complex platform: distrib-
654
Guest Editorial / Computer Communications 30 (2007) 653–655
uted virtual environments. The interest of such systems in nowadays research is really high, and the described approach can be generalized to similar systems other than the ones included in the article. The last paper included in this issue is also targeted to a widely interesting hot topic: intrusion detection and security in computer communications. In particular, the immune system paradigm is applied to detect weird behaviours in TCP/IP networks that can be later labelled as dangerous to preserve the integrity of the system. In short, we hope this issue could foster future research in optimization of real-world applications with efficient techniques in the continuously growing domain of computer communications. Final list of papers 1. Metaheuristics for optimization problems in computer communications. C.C. Ribeiro, S.L. Martins, I. Rosseti. 2. Mobile computing: opportunities for optimization research. C. Boonthum, I.B. Levinstein, S. Olariu, E. Pigli, E. Shurkova, A.Y. Zomaya. 3. A cellular multi-objective genetic algorithm for optimal broadcasting strategy in metropolitan MANETs. E. Alba, B. Dorronsoro, F. Luna, A.J. Nebro, P. Bouvry, L. Hogie. 4. Designing cellular networks using a parallel hybrid metaheuristic on the computational grid. E.-G. Talbi, S. Cahon, N. Melab. 5. A simulated annealing approach for mobile location management. J. Taheri, A.Y. Zomaya. 6. A genetic approach for adding QoS to distributed virtual environments. S. Rueda, P. Morillo, J.M. Ordun˜a, J. Duato. 7. Anomaly detection in TCP/IP networks using immune systems paradigm. F. Seredynski, P. Bouvry. Enrique Alba * University of Ma´laga, E.T.S.I. Informa´tica, 29071 Ma´laga, Spain E-mail address: [email protected] El-ghazali Talbi University of Lille, 59655, Villeneuve D’Ascq Cedex, France E-mail address: talbi@lifl.fr Albert Y. Zomaya School of Information Technologies, The University of Sydney, Sydney, NSW 2006, Australia E-mail address: [email protected] Available online 12 September 2006
*
Corresponding author.
Enrique Alba is a Professor of Computer Science at the University of Ma´laga, Spain. He got his Ph.D. degree on designing and analyzing parallel and distributed genetic algorithms. His current research interests involve the design and application of evolutionary algorithms, neural networks, and other bio-inspired systems to real problems including telecommunications, combinatorial optimization, and bioinformatics. The main focus of all his work is on parallelism. Part of his ongoing research lies in the fields of ad hoc metropolitan network optimization, optimal design of GSM networks, logistics, vehicle routing, natural language tagging, software engineering for optimization tools, DNA fragment assembly, gene microarrays, cutting/ packing, software testing and validation, and in general combinatorial problems lying in the base of real world problems. New fields like multiobjective techniques, grid/P2P/Internet platforms, dynamic optimization of problems whose definition change in time, and heterogeneous algorithms are dealt with as part both of basic and applied research. As to the techniques, Dr. Alba and his group are dealing mainly with metaheuristics, either bio-inspired or not, and also hybridization with other (maybe exact) methods. In concrete, genetic algorithms, particle swarm, ant colonies, simulated annealing, branch and bound, and related solvers are used. Dr. Alba has published three books on metaheuristics and bio-inspired techniques, more than 30 papers in impact journals, and around 80 conference papers. He has coordinated several national and international research projects in the past. Some of the active projects are OPLINK (http://oplink.lcc.uma.es), INRIAPERFOM, and an European CELTIC project (CARLINK). Dr. Alba holds collaborations (join publications, visits and exchanges) with more than 20 international universities and labs, and his research in Ma´laga is also provoking industrial transferences to several companies. Finally, Dr. Alba works in the program committee of well known important conferences in several fields, like GECCO, IEEE CEC, PPSN, EvoCOP, IPDPS and many more, as well has he organizes international events like NIDISC or IEEE/ACM MSWiM. He also works as reviewer for IEE Transactions (on EC, PDS, Education, SMC), JPDC, PARCO, Journal of Heuristics, JMMA, EJOR, Computer Communications, etc. Besides, Dr. Alba works in the editorial board of several international journals related to optimization, telecommunications and parallel systems. El-ghazali Talbi received the Master and PhD degrees in Computer Science, both from the Institut National Polytechnique de Grenoble, France. Then he became an Associate Professor in Computer Sciences at the University of Lille (France). Since 2001, he is now a full Professor at the University of Lille and at the head of the optimization group of the Computer Science laboratory (L.I.F.L). His current research interests are in the field of parallel algorithms, metaheuristics, combinatorial optimization, cluster and grid computing, hybrid and cooperative optimization, and application to bioinformatics and telecommunications. Professor Talbi has to his credit more than 100 publications in journals, chapters in books, and conferences. He is the co-editor of two books. He was a guest editor of more than 10 special issues in different journals (Journal of Heuristics, Journal of Parallel and Distributed Computing, European Journal of Operational Research, RAIRO Operations Research). He is the head of the INRIA Dolphin project and the bioinformatics platform of the Genopole of Lille. He has many collaborative national and European projects. He is the co-founder and the coordinator of the French group dedicated to Metaheuristics: Theory and Applications (META). He is the founding co-chair of the NIDISC workshop (IEEE/ACM IPDPS). He
Guest Editorial / Computer Communications 30 (2007) 653–655 served in different capacities on the programs of more than 100 national and international conferences. He is the organizer of the many conferences (EA ‘2005, ROADEF ’2006).
Albert Y. Zomaya is currently the Head of School and CISCO Systems Chair Professor of Internetworking in the School of Information Technologies, The University of Sydney. Prior to that he was a Full Professor in the Electrical and Electronic Engineering Department at the University of Western Australia, where he also led the Parallel Computing Research Laboratory during the period 1990–2002. He served as Associate-, Deputy-, and Acting-Head in the same department, and held visiting positions at Waterloo University and the University of Missouri-Rolla. He is the
655
author/co-author of 6 books, more than 200 publications in technical journals and conferences, and the editor of 7 books and 7 conference volumes. He is currently an associate editor for 15 journals, the Founding Editor of the Wiley Book Series on Parallel and Distributed Computing and the Co-Editor of the Wiley Book Series on Bioinformatics. Professor Zomaya was the Chair the IEEE Technical Committee on Parallel Processing (1999–2003) and currently serves on its executive committee. He has been actively involved in the organization of national and international conferences. He received the 1997 Edgeworth David Medal from the Royal Society of New South Wales for outstanding contributions to Australian Science. In September 2000 he was awarded the IEEE Computer Society’s Meritorious Service Award. Professor Zomaya is a chartered engineer (CEng), a Fellow of the IEEE, a Fellow of the Institution of Electrical Engineers (UK), and member of the ACM. His research interests are in the areas of high performance computing, parallel algorithms, networking, and bioinformatics.
Guest Editorial
Nature-inspired distributed computing
This special issue in the journal ‘‘Computer Communications’’ contains a set of selected works appeared in NIDISC 2005, which have been later extended and revised to configure the contents of the issue. The Nature-Inspired Distributed Computing workshop is an event held every year inside the larger IPDPS conference generically dealing with computer networks, computer communications, parallelism, new software and communication protocols. NIDISC is a forum to present theoretical and practical advances focusing either in innovative (especially nature inspired) algorithms showing high efficiency or in new applications of interest, either in engineering or in other fields of social impact. Techniques based on metaheuristics (optimization/ search/learning algorithm skeletons) and nature-inspired paradigms can provide really efficient solutions to a wide variety of problems there where other (e.g., exact) methods are unable even of being applied, or when other techniques show an unaffordable utilization of computational resources. Moreover, parallel and distributed metaheuristics can be used to provide still more powerful problem solving tools. These techniques are hence widely used to solve a variety of optimization problems that arise in operations research, parallel computing, telecommunications, data networks, and many other disciplines, and tend to excel in cases where the knowledge space is ambiguous or incomplete. Rather remarkably, many nature-inspired and metaheuristic techniques are inherently parallel, and besides they can solve problems arising in computer networks (design, parameter optimization, failures, etc.). In this sense, the mentioned techniques can both profit from networks to run more efficiently and also they can be used to solve problems intrinsic to computer communication systems. The intent of this special issue is to bring together a number of researchers to explore the connection between metaheuristics in general and a range of complex problems in communications. The topics that are explored by the papers of this special issue are by no means exhaustive, but most of the conclusions provided here can be extended to nearby research fields.
0140-3664/$ - see front matter Ó 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.comcom.2006.08.013
The papers cover an interesting range of applications that use a communication system for the development of the solution methodology; in addition, the articles included propose solutions for problems that are important for networks and communications in general. The first article summarizes the main ideas on the algorithms and their potential applications, and surveys a large number of tasks that could be performed by nature-inspired and metaheuristic algorithms in the domain of computer communications. This will hopefully help novel researchers to acquire the nomenclature and basic operations that could be used later in their own applications. The second paper addresses the field of mobile communications by defining and discussing where the opportunities for optimizing the communication system can be found. The interest of mobile communications is out of discussion, and this article will provide a quick understanding on what and how to do research in this field. The third paper directly focuses in ad hoc networks (MANETs) found in metropolitan areas; it describes a set of techniques to optimize the broadcasting strategy, a capital operation in these kinds of networks for most applications (discovery of neighbours, diffusion of messages, controlling applications, etc.). The fourth paper is a very special combination of a work dealing with designing cellular phone networks by using advanced algorithms run in a grid of computers. The reader can clearly infer the importance of such a work because of the extremely hot topics involved in it: cellular communication networks and grid computing. The article included in the fifth position of this issue solves a critical problem found in mobile communication networks: the location management. This work applies the well known simulated annealing technique to define location areas in the network, in order to optimize paging and handover costs when dealing with user terminals. The work in the sixth paper is an interesting new idea consisting in using genetic algorithms for managing quality of service attributes in a highly complex platform: distrib-
654
Guest Editorial / Computer Communications 30 (2007) 653–655
uted virtual environments. The interest of such systems in nowadays research is really high, and the described approach can be generalized to similar systems other than the ones included in the article. The last paper included in this issue is also targeted to a widely interesting hot topic: intrusion detection and security in computer communications. In particular, the immune system paradigm is applied to detect weird behaviours in TCP/IP networks that can be later labelled as dangerous to preserve the integrity of the system. In short, we hope this issue could foster future research in optimization of real-world applications with efficient techniques in the continuously growing domain of computer communications. Final list of papers 1. Metaheuristics for optimization problems in computer communications. C.C. Ribeiro, S.L. Martins, I. Rosseti. 2. Mobile computing: opportunities for optimization research. C. Boonthum, I.B. Levinstein, S. Olariu, E. Pigli, E. Shurkova, A.Y. Zomaya. 3. A cellular multi-objective genetic algorithm for optimal broadcasting strategy in metropolitan MANETs. E. Alba, B. Dorronsoro, F. Luna, A.J. Nebro, P. Bouvry, L. Hogie. 4. Designing cellular networks using a parallel hybrid metaheuristic on the computational grid. E.-G. Talbi, S. Cahon, N. Melab. 5. A simulated annealing approach for mobile location management. J. Taheri, A.Y. Zomaya. 6. A genetic approach for adding QoS to distributed virtual environments. S. Rueda, P. Morillo, J.M. Ordun˜a, J. Duato. 7. Anomaly detection in TCP/IP networks using immune systems paradigm. F. Seredynski, P. Bouvry. Enrique Alba * University of Ma´laga, E.T.S.I. Informa´tica, 29071 Ma´laga, Spain E-mail address: [email protected] El-ghazali Talbi University of Lille, 59655, Villeneuve D’Ascq Cedex, France E-mail address: talbi@lifl.fr Albert Y. Zomaya School of Information Technologies, The University of Sydney, Sydney, NSW 2006, Australia E-mail address: [email protected] Available online 12 September 2006
*
Corresponding author.
Enrique Alba is a Professor of Computer Science at the University of Ma´laga, Spain. He got his Ph.D. degree on designing and analyzing parallel and distributed genetic algorithms. His current research interests involve the design and application of evolutionary algorithms, neural networks, and other bio-inspired systems to real problems including telecommunications, combinatorial optimization, and bioinformatics. The main focus of all his work is on parallelism. Part of his ongoing research lies in the fields of ad hoc metropolitan network optimization, optimal design of GSM networks, logistics, vehicle routing, natural language tagging, software engineering for optimization tools, DNA fragment assembly, gene microarrays, cutting/ packing, software testing and validation, and in general combinatorial problems lying in the base of real world problems. New fields like multiobjective techniques, grid/P2P/Internet platforms, dynamic optimization of problems whose definition change in time, and heterogeneous algorithms are dealt with as part both of basic and applied research. As to the techniques, Dr. Alba and his group are dealing mainly with metaheuristics, either bio-inspired or not, and also hybridization with other (maybe exact) methods. In concrete, genetic algorithms, particle swarm, ant colonies, simulated annealing, branch and bound, and related solvers are used. Dr. Alba has published three books on metaheuristics and bio-inspired techniques, more than 30 papers in impact journals, and around 80 conference papers. He has coordinated several national and international research projects in the past. Some of the active projects are OPLINK (http://oplink.lcc.uma.es), INRIAPERFOM, and an European CELTIC project (CARLINK). Dr. Alba holds collaborations (join publications, visits and exchanges) with more than 20 international universities and labs, and his research in Ma´laga is also provoking industrial transferences to several companies. Finally, Dr. Alba works in the program committee of well known important conferences in several fields, like GECCO, IEEE CEC, PPSN, EvoCOP, IPDPS and many more, as well has he organizes international events like NIDISC or IEEE/ACM MSWiM. He also works as reviewer for IEE Transactions (on EC, PDS, Education, SMC), JPDC, PARCO, Journal of Heuristics, JMMA, EJOR, Computer Communications, etc. Besides, Dr. Alba works in the editorial board of several international journals related to optimization, telecommunications and parallel systems. El-ghazali Talbi received the Master and PhD degrees in Computer Science, both from the Institut National Polytechnique de Grenoble, France. Then he became an Associate Professor in Computer Sciences at the University of Lille (France). Since 2001, he is now a full Professor at the University of Lille and at the head of the optimization group of the Computer Science laboratory (L.I.F.L). His current research interests are in the field of parallel algorithms, metaheuristics, combinatorial optimization, cluster and grid computing, hybrid and cooperative optimization, and application to bioinformatics and telecommunications. Professor Talbi has to his credit more than 100 publications in journals, chapters in books, and conferences. He is the co-editor of two books. He was a guest editor of more than 10 special issues in different journals (Journal of Heuristics, Journal of Parallel and Distributed Computing, European Journal of Operational Research, RAIRO Operations Research). He is the head of the INRIA Dolphin project and the bioinformatics platform of the Genopole of Lille. He has many collaborative national and European projects. He is the co-founder and the coordinator of the French group dedicated to Metaheuristics: Theory and Applications (META). He is the founding co-chair of the NIDISC workshop (IEEE/ACM IPDPS). He
Guest Editorial / Computer Communications 30 (2007) 653–655 served in different capacities on the programs of more than 100 national and international conferences. He is the organizer of the many conferences (EA ‘2005, ROADEF ’2006).
Albert Y. Zomaya is currently the Head of School and CISCO Systems Chair Professor of Internetworking in the School of Information Technologies, The University of Sydney. Prior to that he was a Full Professor in the Electrical and Electronic Engineering Department at the University of Western Australia, where he also led the Parallel Computing Research Laboratory during the period 1990–2002. He served as Associate-, Deputy-, and Acting-Head in the same department, and held visiting positions at Waterloo University and the University of Missouri-Rolla. He is the
655
author/co-author of 6 books, more than 200 publications in technical journals and conferences, and the editor of 7 books and 7 conference volumes. He is currently an associate editor for 15 journals, the Founding Editor of the Wiley Book Series on Parallel and Distributed Computing and the Co-Editor of the Wiley Book Series on Bioinformatics. Professor Zomaya was the Chair the IEEE Technical Committee on Parallel Processing (1999–2003) and currently serves on its executive committee. He has been actively involved in the organization of national and international conferences. He received the 1997 Edgeworth David Medal from the Royal Society of New South Wales for outstanding contributions to Australian Science. In September 2000 he was awarded the IEEE Computer Society’s Meritorious Service Award. Professor Zomaya is a chartered engineer (CEng), a Fellow of the IEEE, a Fellow of the Institution of Electrical Engineers (UK), and member of the ACM. His research interests are in the areas of high performance computing, parallel algorithms, networking, and bioinformatics.