Modelling and Optimisation of UHF band EW Based WTA Problem within the Scope of Threat Assessment

The classical weapon target allocation (WTA) problem has been evaluated within the scope of electronic warfare (EW) threat assessment with an electromagnetic effect-based jammer- tactical radio engagement approach. As different from the literature, optimum allocation of non-directional jammers operating at different operating UHF frequencies under constraints to RF emitters is aimed in this study. The values of the targets are modelled using an original threat assessment algorithm developed that takes into account operating frequencies, jamming distance, and weather conditions. The computed jammer-target effect matrix has been solved under different scenarios according to the efficiency and cost constraints. It is seen at the end of the simulations that the allocation results for EW applications largely depend on the effect ratio used. The better results are taken in the case of under 0.5 effect ratio. Finally, jammer-radio allocation problem specified at the suggested model is solved successfully and effectively.

On a Reduction for a Class of Resource Allocation Problems

In the resource allocation problem (RAP), the goal is to divide a given amount of a resource over a set of activities while minimizing the cost of this allocation and possibly satisfying constraints on allocations to subsets of the activities. Most solution approaches for the RAP and its extensions allow each activity to have its own cost function. However, in many applications, often the structure of the objective function is the same for each activity, and the difference between the cost functions lies in different parameter choices, such as, for example, the multiplicative factors. In this article, we introduce a new class of objective functions that captures a significant number of the objectives occurring in studied applications. These objectives are characterized by a shared structure of the cost function depending on two input parameters. We show that, given the two input parameters, there exists a solution to the RAP that is optimal for any choice of the shared structure. As a consequence, this problem reduces to the quadratic RAP, making available the vast amount of solution approaches and algorithms for the latter problem. We show the impact of our reduction result on several applications, and in particular, we improve the best-known worst-case complexity bound of two problems in vessel routing and processor scheduling from [Formula: see text] to [Formula: see text]. Summary of Contribution: The resource allocation problem (RAP) with submodular constraints and its special cases are classic problems in operations research. Because these problems are studied in many different scientific disciplines, many conceptual insights, structural properties, and solution approaches have been reinvented and rediscovered many times. The goal of this article is to reduce the amount of future reinventions and rediscoveries by bringing together these different perspectives on RAPs in a way that is accessible to researchers with different backgrounds. The article serves as an exposition on RAPs and on their wide applicability in many areas, including telecommunications, energy, and logistics. In particular, we provide tools and examples that can be used to formulate and solve problems in these areas as RAPs. To accomplish this, we make three concrete contributions. First, we provide a survey on algorithms and complexity results for RAPs and discuss several recent advances in these areas. Second, we show that many objectives for RAPs can be reduced to a (simpler) quadratic objective function, which makes available the extensive collection of fast and efficient algorithms for quadratic RAPs to solve these problems. Third, we discuss the impact that RAPs and the aforementioned reduction result can make in several application areas.

Emotions as Abstract Evaluation Criteria in Biological and Artificial Intelligences

Biological as well as advanced artificial intelligences (AIs) need to decide which goals to pursue. We review nature's solution to the time allocation problem, which is based on a continuously readjusted categorical weighting mechanism we experience introspectively as emotions. One observes phylogenetically that the available number of emotional states increases hand in hand with the cognitive capabilities of animals and that raising levels of intelligence entail ever larger sets of behavioral options. Our ability to experience a multitude of potentially conflicting feelings is in this view not a leftover of a more primitive heritage, but a generic mechanism for attributing values to behavioral options that can not be specified at birth. In this view, emotions are essential for understanding the mind. For concreteness, we propose and discuss a framework which mimics emotions on a functional level. Based on time allocation via emotional stationarity (TAES), emotions are implemented as abstract criteria, such as satisfaction, challenge and boredom, which serve to evaluate activities that have been carried out. The resulting timeline of experienced emotions is compared with the “character” of the agent, which is defined in terms of a preferred distribution of emotional states. The long-term goal of the agent, to align experience with character, is achieved by optimizing the frequency for selecting individual tasks. Upon optimization, the statistics of emotion experience becomes stationary.

A Model-Driven Approach for Solving the Software Component Allocation Problem

The underlying infrastructure paradigms behind the novel usage scenarios and services are becoming increasingly complex—from everyday life in smart cities to industrial environments. Both the number of devices involved and their heterogeneity make the allocation of software components quite challenging. Despite the enormous flexibility enabled by component-based software engineering, finding the optimal allocation of software artifacts to the pool of available devices and computation units could bring many benefits, such as improved quality of service (QoS), reduced energy consumption, reduction of costs, and many others. Therefore, in this paper, we introduce a model-based framework that aims to solve the software component allocation problem (CAP). We formulate it as an optimization problem with either single or multiple objective functions and cover both cases in the proposed framework. Additionally, our framework also provides visualization and comparison of the optimal solutions in the case of multi-objective component allocation. The main contributions introduced in this paper are: (1) a novel methodology for tackling CAP-alike problems based on the usage of model-driven engineering (MDE) for both problem definition and solution representation; (2) a set of Python tools that enable the workflow starting from the CAP model interpretation, after that the generation of optimal allocations and, finally, result visualization. The proposed framework is compared to other similar works using either linear optimization, genetic algorithm (GA), and ant colony optimization (ACO) algorithm within the experiments based on notable papers on this topic, covering various usage scenarios—from Cloud and Fog computing infrastructure management to embedded systems, robotics, and telecommunications. According to the achieved results, our framework performs much faster than GA and ACO-based solutions. Apart from various benefits of adopting a multi-objective approach in many cases, it also shows significant speedup compared to frameworks leveraging single-objective linear optimization, especially in the case of larger problem models.

Allocation Mechanisms without Reduction

We study a simple variant of the house allocation problem (one-sided matching). We demonstrate that agents with recursive preferences may systematically prefer one allocation mechanism to the other, even among mechanisms that are considered to be the same in standard models, in the sense that they induce the same probability distribution over successful matchings. Using this, we propose a new priority groups mechanism and provide conditions under which it is preferred to two popular mechanisms, random top cycle and random serial dictatorship. (JEL C78, D44, D82)