In this paper, with the aid of the mathematical tool of stochastic geometry, we introduce analytical and computational frameworks for the distribution of three different definitions of delay, i.e., the time that it takes for a user to successfully receive a data packet, in large-scale cellular networks. We also provide an asymptotic analysis of one of the delay distributions, which can be regarded as the packet loss probability of a given network. To mitigate the inherent computational difficulties of the obtained analytical formulations in some cases, we propose efficient numerical approximations based on the numerical inversion method, the Riemann sum, and the Beta distribution. Finally, we demonstrate the accuracy of the obtained analytical formulations and the corresponding approximations against Monte Carlo simulation results, and unveil insights on the delay performance with respect to several design parameters, such as the decoding threshold, the transmit power, and the deployment density of the base stations. The proposed methods can facilitate the analysis and optimization of cellular networks subject to reliability constraints on the network packet delay that are not restricted to the local (average) delay, e.g., in the context of delay sensitive applications.
We study a new two-time-scale stochastic gradient method for solving optimization problems, where the gradients are computed with the aid of an auxiliary variable under samples generated by time-varying Markov random processes parameterized by the underlying optimization variable. These time-varying samples make gradient directions in our update biased and dependent, which can potentially lead to the divergence of the iterates. In our two-time-scale approach, one scale is to estimate the true gradient from these samples, which is then used to update the estimate of the optimal solution. While these two iterates are implemented simultaneously, the former is updated "faster" (using bigger step sizes) than the latter (using smaller step sizes). Our first contribution is to characterize the finite-time complexity of the proposed two-time-scale stochastic gradient method. In particular, we provide explicit formulas for the convergence rates of this method under different structural assumptions, namely, strong convexity, convexity, the Polyak-Lojasiewicz condition, and general non-convexity. We apply our framework to two problems in control and reinforcement learning. First, we look at the standard online actor-critic algorithm over finite state and action spaces and derive a convergence rate of O(k^(-2/5)), which recovers the best known rate derived specifically for this problem. Second, we study an online actor-critic algorithm for the linear-quadratic regulator and show that a convergence rate of O(k^(-2/3)) is achieved. This is the first time such a result is known in the literature. Finally, we support our theoretical analysis with numerical simulations where the convergence rates are visualized.
Emerging distributed cloud architectures, e.g., fog and mobile edge computing, are playing an increasingly important role in the efficient delivery of real-time stream-processing applications such as augmented reality, multiplayer gaming, and industrial automation. While such applications require processed streams to be shared and simultaneously consumed by multiple users/devices, existing technologies lack efficient mechanisms to deal with their inherent multicast nature, leading to unnecessary traffic redundancy and network congestion. In this paper, we establish a unified framework for distributed cloud network control with generalized (mixed-cast) traffic flows that allows optimizing the distributed execution of the required packet processing, forwarding, and replication operations. We first characterize the enlarged multicast network stability region under the new control framework (with respect to its unicast counterpart). We then design a novel queuing system that allows scheduling data packets according to their current destination sets, and leverage Lyapunov drift-plus-penalty theory to develop the first fully decentralized, throughput- and cost-optimal algorithm for multicast cloud network flow control. Numerical experiments validate analytical results and demonstrate the performance gain of the proposed design over existing cloud network control techniques.
Covariance estimation for matrix-valued data has received an increasing interest in applications. Unlike previous works that rely heavily on matrix normal distribution assumption and the requirement of fixed matrix size, we propose a class of distribution-free regularized covariance estimation methods for high-dimensional matrix data under a separability condition and a bandable covariance structure. Under these conditions, the original covariance matrix is decomposed into a Kronecker product of two bandable small covariance matrices representing the variability over row and column directions. We formulate a unified framework for estimating bandable covariance, and introduce an efficient algorithm based on rank one unconstrained Kronecker product approximation. The convergence rates of the proposed estimators are established, and the derived minimax lower bound shows our proposed estimator is rate-optimal under certain divergence regimes of matrix size. We further introduce a class of robust covariance estimators and provide theoretical guarantees to deal with heavy-tailed data. We demonstrate the superior finite-sample performance of our methods using simulations and real applications from a gridded temperature anomalies dataset and a S&P 500 stock data analysis.
We investigate the feature compression of high-dimensional ridge regression using the optimal subsampling technique. Specifically, based on the basic framework of random sampling algorithm on feature for ridge regression and the A-optimal design criterion, we first obtain a set of optimal subsampling probabilities. Considering that the obtained probabilities are uneconomical, we then propose the nearly optimal ones. With these probabilities, a two step iterative algorithm is established which has lower computational cost and higher accuracy. We provide theoretical analysis and numerical experiments to support the proposed methods. Numerical results demonstrate the decent performance of our methods.
As the next-generation wireless networks thrive, full-duplex and relaying techniques are combined to improve the network performance. Random linear network coding (RLNC) is another popular technique to enhance the efficiency and reliability in wireless communications. In this paper, in order to explore the potential of RLNC in full-duplex relay networks, we investigate two fundamental perfect RLNC schemes and theoretically analyze their completion delay performance. The first scheme is a straightforward application of conventional perfect RLNC studied in wireless broadcast, so it involves no additional process at the relay. Its performance serves as an upper bound among all perfect RLNC schemes. The other scheme allows sufficiently large buffer and unconstrained linear coding at the relay. It attains the optimal performance and serves as a lower bound among all RLNC schemes. For both schemes, closed-form formulae to characterize the expected completion delay at a single receiver as well as for the whole system are derived. Numerical results are also demonstrated to justify the theoretical characterizations, and compare the two new schemes with the existing one.
We study the decentralized consensus and stochastic optimization problems with compressed communications over static directed graphs. We propose an iterative gradient-based algorithm that compresses messages according to a desired compression ratio. The proposed method provably reduces the communication overhead on the network at every communication round. Contrary to existing literature, we allow for arbitrary compression ratios in the communicated messages. We show a linear convergence rate for the proposed method on the consensus problem. Moreover, we provide explicit convergence rates for decentralized stochastic optimization problems on smooth functions that are either (i) strongly convex, (ii) convex, or (iii) non-convex. Finally, we provide numerical experiments to illustrate convergence under arbitrary compression ratios and the communication efficiency of our algorithm.
Federated learning (FL) has been recognized as a viable distributed learning paradigm which trains a machine learning model collaboratively with massive mobile devices in the wireless edge while protecting user privacy. Although various communication schemes have been proposed to expedite the FL process, most of them have assumed ideal wireless channels which provide reliable and lossless communication links between the server and mobile clients. Unfortunately, in practical systems with limited radio resources such as constraint on the training latency and constraints on the transmission power and bandwidth, transmission of a large number of model parameters inevitably suffers from quantization errors (QE) and transmission outage (TO). In this paper, we consider such non-ideal wireless channels, and carry out the first analysis showing that the FL convergence can be severely jeopardized by TO and QE, but intriguingly can be alleviated if the clients have uniform outage probabilities. These insightful results motivate us to propose a robust FL scheme, named FedTOE, which performs joint allocation of wireless resources and quantization bits across the clients to minimize the QE while making the clients have the same TO probability. Extensive experimental results are presented to show the superior performance of FedTOE for deep learning-based classification tasks with transmission latency constraints.
We introduce a novel methodology for particle filtering in dynamical systems where the evolution of the signal of interest is described by a SDE and observations are collected instantaneously at prescribed time instants. The new approach includes the discretisation of the SDE and the design of efficient particle filters for the resulting discrete-time state-space model. The discretisation scheme converges with weak order 1 and it is devised to create a sequential dependence structure along the coordinates of the discrete-time state vector. We introduce a class of space-sequential particle filters that exploits this structure to improve performance when the system dimension is large. This is numerically illustrated by a set of computer simulations for a stochastic Lorenz 96 system with additive noise. The new space-sequential particle filters attain approximately constant estimation errors as the dimension of the Lorenz 96 system is increased, with a computational cost that increases polynomially, rather than exponentially, with the system dimension. Besides the new numerical scheme and particle filters, we provide in this paper a general framework for discrete-time filtering in continuous-time dynamical systems described by a SDE and instantaneous observations. Provided that the SDE is discretised using a weakly-convergent scheme, we prove that the marginal posterior laws of the resulting discrete-time state-space model converge to the posterior marginal posterior laws of the original continuous-time state-space model under a suitably defined metric. This result is general and not restricted to the numerical scheme or particle filters specifically studied in this manuscript.
We demonstrate that merely analog transmissions and match filtering can realize the function of an edge server in federated learning (FL). Therefore, a network with massively distributed user equipments (UEs) can achieve large-scale FL without an edge server. We also develop a training algorithm that allows UEs to continuously perform local computing without being interrupted by the global parameter uploading, which exploits the full potential of UEs' processing power. We derive convergence rates for the proposed schemes to quantify their training efficiency. The analyses reveal that when the interference obeys a Gaussian distribution, the proposed algorithm retrieves the convergence rate of a server-based FL. But if the interference distribution is heavy-tailed, then the heavier the tail, the slower the algorithm converges. Nonetheless, the system run time can be largely reduced by enabling computation in parallel with communication, whereas the gain is particularly pronounced when communication latency is high. These findings are corroborated via excessive simulations.
We prove linear convergence of gradient descent to a global minimum for the training of deep residual networks with constant layer width and smooth activation function. We further show that the trained weights, as a function of the layer index, admits a scaling limit which is H\"older continuous as the depth of the network tends to infinity. The proofs are based on non-asymptotic estimates of the loss function and of norms of the network weights along the gradient descent path. We illustrate the relevance of our theoretical results to practical settings using detailed numerical experiments on supervised learning problems.