Benchmarking of AQM methods of network congestion control based on extension of interval type-2 trapezoidal fuzzy decision by opinion score method

Abstract

This study presents a benchmarking and evaluation approach for active queue management (AQM) network congestion control methods, which are considered as a problem of multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM). In recent years, the development of MCDM methods has been studied from various perspectives. The latest one called fuzzy decision by opinion score method (FDOSM) has proved its efficiency in solving the concerns faced by other methods. However, the approach of FDOSM and its extension is based on fuzzy type-1, which suffers from issues, especially minimising the effect of data uncertainties. Therefore, this study extended FDOSM into a fuzzy type-2 environment that utilises interval type-2 trapezoidal (IT2T) membership, and then discusses the effectiveness of such membership on AQM method benchmarking. The methodology of this study involves two consecutive phases. The first phase is the construction of a decision matrix utilised in AQM method benchmarking based on a list of AQM methods and multiple evaluation criteria. The second phase is regarding the new method (IT2T-FDOSM), which illustrated two main stages, namely, data transformation unit and data processing. The findings of this study are the following: (1) Individual results of benchmarking which used six decision-makers are almost similar, with the AQM fuzzy GRED method ranked as the best. (2) The group benchmarking results show that a relatively similar order and fuzzy GRED method is the best as well. (3) IT2T-FDOSM can deal with the uncertainty problem properly. (4) The results show significant differences amongst the groups’ scores, which indicate the validity of the IT2T-FDOSM results.