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ABSTRACT

Due to the growing complexity and dynamism of many embedded application domains (including consumer electronics, robotics, automotive and telecommunications), it is increasingly difficult to react to load variations and adapt the system's performance in a controlled fashion within an useful and bounded time. This is particularly noticeable when intending to benefit from the full potential of an open distributed cooperating environment, where service characteristics are not known beforehand and tasks may exhibit unrestricted QoS inter-dependencies.

This paper proposes a novel anytime adaptive QoS control policy in which the online search for the best set of QoS levels is combined with each user's personal preferences on their services' adaptation behaviour. Extensive simulations demonstrate that the proposed anytime algorithms are able to quickly find a good initial solution and effectively optimise the rate at which the quality of the current solution improves as the algorithms are given more time to run, with a minimum overhead when compared against their traditional versions.

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INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  J. Computer Applications
  J.7 COMPUTERS IN OTHER SYSTEMS

Additional Classification:
  D. Software
  D.1 PROGRAMMING TECHNIQUES
      D.1.3 Concurrent Programming
          Subjects: Distributed programming

General Terms:
Algorithms, Management, Performance

Keywords:
QoS optimisation and adaptation, anytime algorithms, open real-time systems, service stability