research-article

The Mobile Server Problem

Authors:

Björn Feldkord,

Friedhelm Meyer Auf Der HeideAuthors Info & Claims

ACM Transactions on Parallel Computing (TOPC), Volume 6, Issue 3

Article No.: 14, Pages 1 - 17

https://doi.org/10.1145/3364204

Published: 15 October 2019 Publication History

Abstract

We introduce the Mobile Server problem, inspired by current trends to move computational tasks from cloud structures to multiple devices close to the end user. An example of this is embedded systems in autonomous cars that communicate to coordinate their actions.

Our model is a variant of the classical Page Migration problem. More formally, we consider a mobile server holding a data page. The server can move in the Euclidean space (of arbitrary dimension). In every round, requests for data items from the page pop up at arbitrary points in the space. The requests are served, each at a cost of the distance from the requesting point and the server, and the mobile server may move, at a cost D times the distance traveled for some constant D. We assume a maximum distance m that the server is allowed to move per round.

We show that no online algorithm can achieve a competitive ratio independent of the length of the input sequence in this setting. Hence, we augment the maximum movement distance of the online algorithms to (1+&delta) times the maximum distance of the offline solution. We provide a deterministic algorithm that is simple to describe and works for multiple variants of our problem. The algorithm achieves almost tight competitive ratios independent of the length of the input sequence.

Our algorithm also achieves a constant competitive ratio without resource augmentation in a variant where the movement of clients is also restricted.

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Cited By

Ghodselahi AKuhn F(2023)Toward Online Mobile Facility Location on General MetricsTheory of Computing Systems10.1007/s00224-023-10145-967:6(1268-1306)Online publication date: 1-Dec-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1007/s00224-023-10145-9
Feldkord BKnollmann TMeyer auf der Heide F(2022)Online facility location with mobile facilitiesTheoretical Computer Science10.1016/j.tcs.2022.01.019Online publication date: Jan-2022
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tcs.2022.01.019
Zhou ZZhao TLi WZomaya A(2021)Distributed Online Resource Scheduling for Mobile Edge Servers2021 IEEE International Conference on Edge Computing (EDGE)10.1109/EDGE53862.2021.00013(86-93)Online publication date: Sep-2021
https://doi.org/10.1109/EDGE53862.2021.00013
Show More Cited By

Index Terms

The Mobile Server Problem
1. Networks
  1. Network services
    1. Cloud computing
2. Theory of computation
  1. Design and analysis of algorithms
    1. Online algorithms
      1. Caching and paging algorithms

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Published In

cover image ACM Transactions on Parallel Computing

ACM Transactions on Parallel Computing Volume 6, Issue 3

Special Issue on SPAA 2017

September 2019

185 pages

ISSN:2329-4949

EISSN:2329-4957

DOI:10.1145/3366783

Editor:
David A. Bader
Georgia Institute of Technology, USA

Issue’s Table of Contents

Copyright © 2019 ACM.

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Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 15 October 2019

Accepted: 01 June 2019

Revised: 01 May 2019

Received: 01 October 2017

Published in TOPC Volume 6, Issue 3

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German Research Foundation (DFG) within the Collaborative Research Centre ”On-The-Fly Computing„

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Cited By

Ghodselahi AKuhn F(2023)Toward Online Mobile Facility Location on General MetricsTheory of Computing Systems10.1007/s00224-023-10145-967:6(1268-1306)Online publication date: 1-Dec-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1007/s00224-023-10145-9
Feldkord BKnollmann TMeyer auf der Heide F(2022)Online facility location with mobile facilitiesTheoretical Computer Science10.1016/j.tcs.2022.01.019Online publication date: Jan-2022
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tcs.2022.01.019
Zhou ZZhao TLi WZomaya A(2021)Distributed Online Resource Scheduling for Mobile Edge Servers2021 IEEE International Conference on Edge Computing (EDGE)10.1109/EDGE53862.2021.00013(86-93)Online publication date: Sep-2021
https://doi.org/10.1109/EDGE53862.2021.00013
Feldkord BKnollmann TMalatyali MHeide F(2021)Managing Multiple Mobile ResourcesTheory of Computing Systems10.1007/s00224-020-10023-865:6(943-984)Online publication date: 1-Aug-2021
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1007/s00224-020-10023-8

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