Virtual Time System Research Articles

VT-IO: A Virtual Time System Enabling High-fidelity Container-based Network Emulation for I/O Intensive Applications

Network emulation allows unmodified code execution on lightweight containers to enable accurate and scalable networked application testing. However, such testbeds cannot guarantee fidelity under high workloads, especially when many processes concurrently request resources (e.g., CPU, disk I/O, GPU, and network bandwidth) that are more than the underlying physical machine can offer. A virtual time system enables the emulated hosts to maintain their own notion of virtual time. A container can stop advancing its time when not running (e.g., in an idle or suspended state). The existing virtual time systems focus on precise time management for CPU-intensive applications but are not designed to handle other operations, such as disk I/O, network I/O, and GPU computation. In this paper, we develop a lightweight virtual time system that integrates precise I/O time for container-based network emulation. We model and analyze the temporal error during I/O operations and develop a barrier-based time compensation mechanism in the Linux kernel. We also design and implement Dynamic Load Monitor (DLM) to mitigate the temporal error during I/O resource contention. VT-IO enables accurate virtual time advancement with precise I/O time measurement and compensation. The experimental results demonstrate a significant improvement in temporal error with the introduction of DLM. The temporal error is reduced from 7.889 seconds to 0.074 seconds when utilizing the DLM in the virtual time system. Remarkably, this improvement is achieved with an overall overhead of only 1.36% of the total execution time.

Distributed Virtual Time-Based Synchronization for Simulation of Cyber-Physical Systems

Our world today increasingly relies on the orchestration of digital and physical systems to ensure the successful operations of many complex and critical infrastructures. Simulation-based testbeds are useful tools for engineering those cyber-physical systems and evaluating their efficiency, security, and resilience. In this article, we present a cyber-physical system testing platform combining distributed physical computing and networking hardware and simulation models. A core component is the distributed virtual time system that enables the efficient synchronization of virtual clocks among distributed embedded Linux devices. Virtual clocks also enable high-fidelity experimentation by interrupting real and emulated cyber-physical applications to inject offline simulation data. We design and implement two modes of the distributed virtual time: periodic mode for scheduling repetitive events like sensor device measurements, and dynamic mode for on-demand interrupt-based synchronization. We also analyze the performance of both approaches to synchronization including overhead, accuracy, and error introduced from each approach. By interconnecting the embedded devices’ general purpose IO pins, they can coordinate and synchronize with low overhead, under 50 microseconds for eight processes across four embedded Linux devices. Finally, we demonstrate the usability of our testbed and the differences between both approaches in a power grid control application.

Closed-Form Delay-Optimal Computation Offloading in Mobile Edge Computing Systems

Mobile edge computing (MEC) has recently emerged as a promising technology to release the tension between computation-intensive applications and resource-limited mobile terminals (MTs). In this paper, we study the delay-optimal computation offloading in computation-constrained MEC systems. We consider the computation task queue at the MEC server due to its constrained computation capability. In this case, the task queue at the MT and that at the MEC server are strongly coupled in a cascade manner, which creates complex interdependences and brings new technical challenges. We model the computation offloading problem as an infinite horizon average cost Markov decision process (MDP) and approximate it to a virtual continuous time system (VCTS) with reflections. Different from most of the existing works, we develop the dynamic instantaneous rate estimation for deriving the closed-form approximate priority functions in different scenarios. Based on the approximate priority functions, we propose a closed-form multi-level water-filling computation offloading solution to characterize the influence of not only the local queue state information (LQSI) but also the remote queue state information (RQSI). Furthermore, we discuss the extension of our proposed scheme to multi-MT multi-server scenarios. Finally, the simulation results show that the proposed scheme outperforms the conventional schemes.

Combining Simulation and Emulation Systems for Smart Grid Planning and Evaluation

Software-defined networking (SDN) enables efficient network management. As the technology matures, utilities are looking to integrate those benefits to their operations technology (OT) networks. To help the community to better understand and evaluate the effects of such integration, we develop DSSnet, a testing platform that combines a power distribution system simulator and an SDN-based network emulator for smart grid planning and evaluation. DSSnet relies on a container-based virtual time system to achieve efficient synchronization between the simulation and emulation systems. To enhance the system scalability and usability, we extend DSSnet to support a distributed controller environment. To enhance system fidelity, we extend the virtual time system to support kernel-based switches. We also evaluate the system performance of DSSnet and demonstrate the usability of DSSnet with a resilient demand response application case study.

A lightweight container-based virtual time system for software-defined network emulation

Container-based network emulation offers high fidelity and a scalable testing environment to bridge the gap between research ideas and real-world network applications. However, containers take their notions of time from the physical system clock, and thus the time-stamped events from different containers are multiplexed to reflect the scheduling serialization by the Linux operating system. Conjoining the emulator and other simulators is also challenging due to the difficulties of synchronizing the virtual simulation clock with the physical system clock. Virtual time systems for network emulation shed light on both issues. In this paper, we develop a lightweight container-based virtual time system in Linux Kernel. We use time dilation to trade time with system resources by precisely scaling the time of interactions between containers and physical devices. We develop a time freezer to enable the precise pause and resume of an emulation experiment, which offers the virtual time support to interface with simulators for close synchronization. We integrate the virtual time system into a software-defined networking emulator, Mininet, and evaluate the system accuracy, scalability, and overhead. Finally, we use the virtual-time-enabled emulation testbed to conduct a case study of equal-cost multi-path routing protocol analysis in a data center network.

Channel-independent throughput-based fair queueing in wireless packet networks

We propose a new fair queueing scheme which we call Channel-Independent Throughput-based Fair Queueing (CITFQ) without using virtual time system. In our CITFQ scheme, each flow is equipped with a counter that measures the weighted throughput achievement if it has a backlog of packets. Our CITFQ scheme achieves fairness guarantees, short term fairness for error-free flows, long term fairness for error flows, and graceful degradation for flows which have received extra service.

Delay Optimal Buffered Decode-and-Forward for Two-Hop Networks With Random Link Connectivity

Delay optimal control of multi-hop networks remains a challenging problem even in the simplest scenarios. In this paper, we consider delay optimal control of a two-hop half-duplex network with independent identically distributed ON-OFF fading. Both the source node and the relay node are equipped with infinite buffers and have exogenous bit arrivals. We focus on delay optimal link selection to minimize the average sum queue length over a finite horizon subject to a half-duplex constraint. To solve the problem, we introduce a new approach, whereby an actual discrete time system (ADTS) is approximated using a virtual continuous time system (VCTS). We obtain an asymptotically delay optimal policy in the VCTS. Using the relationship between the VCTS and the ADTS, we obtain an asymptotically delay optimal policy in the ADTS. The obtained policy has both a priority feature and a safety stock feature. It offers good design insights for wireless relay networks. In addition, the obtained policy has a closed-form expression, does not require knowledge of arrival statistics, and can be implemented online. Finally, using renewal theory and the theory of random walks, we analyze the average delay resulting from the asymptotically delay optimal policy.

Closed-Form Delay-Optimal Power Control for Energy Harvesting Wireless System With Finite Energy Storage

In this paper, we consider delay-optimal power control for an energy harvesting wireless system with finite energy storage. The wireless system is powered solely by a renewable energy source with bursty data arrivals, and is characterized by a data queue and an energy queue. We consider a delay-optimal power control problem and formulate an infinite horizon average cost Markov Decision Process (MDP). To deal with the curse of dimensionality, we introduce a virtual continuous time system and derive closed-form approximate priority functions for the discrete time MDP at various operating regimes. Based on the approximation, we obtain an online power control solution which is adaptive to the channel state information as well as the data and energy queue state information. The derived power control solution has a multi-level water-filling structure, where the water level is determined jointly by the data and energy queue lengths. We show through simulations that the proposed scheme has significant performance gain compared with various baselines.

Low Complexity Delay-Constrained Beamforming for Multi-User MIMO Systems With Imperfect CSIT

In this paper, we consider the delay-constrained beamforming control for downlink multi-user MIMO (MU- MIMO) systems with imperfect channel state information at the transmitter (CSIT). The delay-constrained control problem is formulated as an infinite horizon average cost partially observed Markov decision process. To deal with the curse of dimensionality, we introduce a virtual continuous time system and derive a closed-form approximate value function using perturbation analysis w.r.t. the CSIT errors. To deal with the challenge of the conditional packet error rate (PER), we build a tractable closed- form approximation using a Bernstein-type inequality. Based on the closed-form approximations of the relative value function and the conditional PER, we propose a conservative formulation of the original beamforming control problem. The conservative problem is non-convex and we transform it into a convex problem using the semidefinite relaxation (SDR) technique. We then propose an alternating iterative algorithm to solve the SDR problem. Finally, the proposed scheme is compared with various baselines through simulations and it is shown that significant performance gain can be achieved.

A virtual time system for virtualization-based network emulations and simulations

Simulation and emulation are commonly used to study the behaviour of communication networks, owing to the cost and complexity of exploring new ideas on actual networks. Emulations executing real code have high functional fidelity, but may not have high temporal fidelity because virtual machines usually use their host's clock. To enhance temporal fidelity, we designed a virtual time system for virtualization-based network emulations and simulations, such that virtual machines perceive time as if they were running concurrently in physical world. Our time virtualization is not exact: there exist temporal errors primarily due to scheduler timeslice, which is tunable in our system. We then study the tradeoff between temporal fidelity and execution speed under different lengths of timeslices, both experimentally and analytically. We demonstrate that our virtual time system is flexible such that it can achieve different level of temporal accuracy at the cost of different execution speed.

A Fair Scheduling Algorithm for Multiple-Antenna Cellular Networks with Dynamic Traffic Load

Multiple-antenna wireless systems, also known as multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) cellular networks, can improve the capacity and reliability of communications. To realize these advantages, a packet scheduler should effectively allocate radio resources to users in a fair way. The previously proposed MIMO schedulers have problems such as ignoring traffic arrival process or complexity. We propose a load adaptive multi-output fair queueing (LA-MO-FQ) scheduler, which is based on a fair queueing algorithm with mechanisms for rate selection, compensation of lagging users, and virtual time system. Since some of the scheduler's system parameters are sensitive to the traffic load, it dynamically adjusts them in a way with low complexity so the system performs better. Intensive simulation studies considering the mobility of users and the traffic arrival demonstrate the good performance of LA-MO-FQ. Furthermore, we also propose in this paper some formulae for the time and service fairness comparisons of MIMO schedulers and we use them for comparison with some famous existing schedulers.