arXiv subjects

Man Hon Cheung

Publications and source records attributed to Man Hon Cheung.

13 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2023

Integrated Sensing, Computation, and Communication for UAV-assisted Federated Edge Learning

Federated edge learning (FEEL) enables privacy-preserving model training through periodic communication between edge devices and the server. Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV)-mounted edge devices are particularly advantageous for FEEL due to their flexibility and mobility in efficient data collection. In UAV-assisted FEEL, sensing, computation, and communication are coupled and compete for limited onboard resources, and UAV deployment also affects sensing and communication performance. Therefore, the joint design of UAV deployment and resource allocation is crucial to achieving the optimal training performance. In this paper, we address the problem of joint UAV deployment design and resource allocation for FEEL via a concrete case study of human motion recognition based on wireless sensing. We first analyze the impact of UAV deployment on the sensing quality and identify a threshold value for the sensing elevation angle that guarantees a satisfactory quality of data samples. Due to the non-ideal sensing channels, we consider the probabilistic sensing model, where the successful sensing probability of each UAV is determined by its position. Then, we derive the upper bound of the FEEL training loss as a function of the sensing probability. Theoretical results suggest that the convergence rate can be improved if UAVs have a uniform successful sensing probability. Based on this analysis, we formulate a training time minimization problem by jointly optimizing UAV deployment, integrated sensing, computation, and communication (ISCC) resources under a desirable optimality gap constraint. To solve this challenging mixed-integer non-convex problem, we apply the alternating optimization technique, and propose the bandwidth, batch size, and position optimization (BBPO) scheme to optimize these three decision variables alternately.

cs.IT↗

arXiv2021

An Incentive Mechanism for Sustainable Blockchain Storage

Miners in a blockchain system are suffering from ever-increasing storage costs, which in general have not been properly compensated by the users' transaction fees. This reduces the incentives for the miners' participation and may jeopardize the blockchain security. We propose to mitigate this blockchain insufficient fee issue through a Fee and Waiting Tax (FWT) mechanism, which explicitly considers the two types of negative externalities in the system. Specifically, we model the interactions between the protocol designer, users, and miners as a three-stage Stackelberg game. By characterizing the equilibrium of the game, we find that miners neglecting the negative externality in transaction selection cause they are willing to accept insufficient-fee transactions. This leads to the insufficient storage fee issue in the existing protocol. Moreover, our proposed optimal FWT mechanism can motivate users to pay sufficient transaction fees to cover the storage costs and achieve the unconstrained social optimum. Numerical results show that the optimal FWT mechanism guarantees sufficient transaction fees and achieves an average social welfare improvement of 33.73\% or more over the existing protocol. Furthermore, the optimal FWT mechanism achieves the maximum fairness index and performs well even under heterogeneous-storage-cost miners.

cs.GT↗

arXiv2020

Economics of Mobile Data Trading Market

To exploit users' heterogeneous data demands, several mobile network operators worldwide have launched the mobile data trading markets, where users can trade mobile data quota with each other. In this paper, we aim to understand the importance of data trading market (DTM) by studying the users' operator selection and trading decisions, and analyzing the operator's profit maximizing strategy. We model the interactions between the mobile operator and the users as a three-stage Stackelberg game. In Stage I, the operator chooses the operation fee imposed on sellers to maximize its profit. In Stage II, each user chooses his operator. In Stage III, each DTM user chooses his trading decisions. We derive the closed-form expression of the unique Nash equilibrium (NE) in Stages II and III, where every user proposes the same price such that the total demand matches with the total supply. We further show that the Stage I's problem is convex and compute the optimal operation fee. Our analysis and numerical results show that an operator with a small initial market share can increase its profit by proposing a DTM, which is in line with the real-world situation in Hong Kong.

cs.GT↗

arXiv2019

Trajectory Design for Multiple-UAV Assisted Wireless Networks

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) can enhance the performance of cellular networks, due to their high mobility and efficient deployment. In this paper, we present a first study on how the user mobility affects the UAVs' trajectories of a multiple-UAV assisted wireless communication system. Specifically, we consider the UAVs are deployed as aerial base stations to serve ground users who move between different regions. We maximize the throughput of ground users in the downlink communication by optimizing the UAVs' trajectories, while taking into account the impact of the user mobility, propulsion energy consumption, and UAVs' mutual interference. We formulate the problem as a route selection problem in an acyclic directed graph. Each vertex represents a task associated with a reward on the average user throughput in a region-time point, while each edge is associated with a cost on the energy propulsion consumption during flying and hovering. For the centralized trajectory design, we first propose the shortest path scheme that determines the optimal trajectory for the single UAV case. We also propose the centralized route selection (CRS) scheme to systematically compute the optimal trajectories for the more general multiple-UAV case. Due to the NP-hardness of the centralized problem, we consider the distributed trajectory design that each UAV selects its trajectory autonomously and propose the distributed route selection (DRS) scheme, which will converge to a pure strategy Nash equilibrium within a finite number of iterations.

cs.IT↗

arXiv2019

Multimedia Crowdsourcing with Bounded Rationality: A Cognitive Hierarchy Perspective

In multimedia crowdsourcing, the requester's quality requirements and reward decisions will affect the workers' task selection strategies and the quality of their multimedia contributions. In this paper, we present a first study on how the workers' bounded cognitive rationality interacts with and affects the decisions and performance of a multimedia crowdsourcing system. Specifically, we consider a two-stage model, where a requester first determines the reward and the quality requirement for each task, and the workers select the tasks to accomplish accordingly. First, we consider the benchmark case where users are fully rational, and derive the requester's optimal rewards and quality requirements for the tasks. Next, we focus on the more practical bounded rational case by modeling the workers' task selection behaviors using the cognitive hierarchy theory. Comparing with the fully rational benchmark, we show that the requester can increase her profit by taking advantage of the workers' bounded cognitive rationality, especially when the workers' population is large or the workers' average cognitive level is low. When the workers' average cognitive level is very high, however, the equilibrium under the practical bounded rational model converges to that under the benchmark fully rational model. It is because workers at different levels make decisions sequentially and high cognitive level workers can accurately predict other users' strategies. Under both the fully and bounded rational models, we show that if workers are heterogeneous but one type of workers (either the high or the low quality) dominates the platform, the requester cannot make a higher profit by setting different quality requirements for different tasks.

cs.GT↗

arXiv2017

Congestion-Aware Distributed Network Selection for Integrated Cellular and Wi-Fi Networks

Intelligent network selection plays an important role in achieving an effective data offloading in the integrated cellular and Wi-Fi networks. However, previously proposed network selection schemes mainly focused on offloading as much data traffic to Wi-Fi as possible, without systematically considering the Wi-Fi network congestion and the ping-pong effect, both of which may lead to a poor overall user quality of experience. Thus, in this paper, we study a more practical network selection problem by considering both the impacts of the network congestion and switching penalties. More specifically, we formulate the users' interactions as a Bayesian network selection game (NSG) under the incomplete information of the users' mobilities. We prove that it is a Bayesian potential game and show the existence of a pure Bayesian Nash equilibrium that can be easily reached. We then propose a distributed network selection (DNS) algorithm based on the network congestion statistics obtained from the operator. Furthermore, we show that computing the optimal centralized network allocation is an NP-hard problem, which further justifies our distributed approach. Simulation results show that the DNS algorithm achieves the highest user utility and a good fairness among users, as compared with the on-the-spot offloading and cellular-only benchmark schemes.

cs.NI↗

arXiv2017

Public Wi-Fi Monetization via Advertising

The proliferation of public Wi-Fi hotspots has brought new business potentials for Wi-Fi networks, which carry a significant amount of global mobile data traffic today. In this paper, we propose a novel Wi-Fi monetization model for venue owners (VOs) deploying public Wi-Fi hotspots, where the VOs can generate revenue by providing two different Wi-Fi access schemes for mobile users (MUs): (i) the premium access, in which MUs directly pay VOs for their Wi-Fi usage, and (ii) the advertising sponsored access, in which MUs watch advertisements in exchange of the free usage of Wi-Fi. VOs sell their ad spaces to advertisers (ADs) via an ad platform, and share the ADs' payments with the ad platform. We formulate the economic interactions among the ad platform, VOs, MUs, and ADs as a three-stage Stackelberg game. In Stage I, the ad platform announces its advertising revenue sharing policy. In Stage II, VOs determine the Wi-Fi prices (for MUs) and advertising prices (for ADs). In Stage III, MUs make access choices and ADs purchase advertising spaces. We analyze the sub-game perfect equilibrium (SPE) of the proposed game systematically, and our analysis shows the following useful observations. First, the ad platform's advertising revenue sharing policy in Stage I will affect only the VOs' Wi-Fi prices but not the VOs' advertising prices in Stage II. Second, both the VOs' Wi-Fi prices and advertising prices are non-decreasing in the advertising concentration level and non-increasing in the MU visiting frequency. Numerical results further show that the VOs are capable of generating large revenues through mainly providing one type of Wi-Fi access (the premium access or advertising sponsored access), depending on their advertising concentration levels and MU visiting frequencies.

cs.GT↗

arXiv2017

Mobile Data Trading: Behavioral Economics Analysis and Algorithm Design

Motivated by the recently launched mobile data trading markets (e.g., China Mobile Hong Kong's 2nd exChange Market), in this paper we study the mobile data trading problem under the future data demand uncertainty. We introduce a brokerage-based market, where sellers and buyers propose their selling and buying quantities, respectively, to the trading platform that matches the market supply and demand. To understand the users' realistic trading behaviors, a prospect theory (PT) model from behavioral economics is proposed, which includes the widely adopted expected utility theory (EUT) as a special case. Although the PT modeling leads to a challenging non-convex optimization problem, the optimal solution can be characterized by exploiting the unimodal structure of the objective function. Building upon our analysis, we design an algorithm to help estimate the user's risk preference and provide trading recommendations dynamically, considering the latest market and usage information. It is shown in our simulation that the risk preferences have a significant impact on the user's decision and outcome: a risk-averse dominant user can guarantee a higher minimum profit in the trading, while a risk-seeking dominant user can achieve a higher maximum profit. By comparing with the EUT benchmark, it is shown that a PT user with a low reference point is more willing to buy mobile data. Moreover, when the probability of high future data demand is low, a PT user is more willing to buy mobile data due to the probability distortion comparing with an EUT user.

cs.GT↗

arXiv2016

Spectrum Investment under Uncertainty: A Behavioral Economics Perspective

In this paper, we study a virtual wireless operator's spectrum investment problem under spectrum supply uncertainty. To obtain enough spectrum resources to meet its customer demands, the virtual operator can either sense for the temporarily unused spectrum in a licensed band, or lease spectrum from a spectrum owner. Sensing is usually cheaper than leasing, but the amount of available spectrum obtained by sensing is uncertain due to the primary users' activities in the licensed band. Previous studies on spectrum investment problems mainly considered the expected profit maximization problem of a risk-neutral operator based on the expected utility theory (EUT). In reality, however, an operator's decision is influenced by not only the consideration of expected profit maximization, but also the level of its risk preference. To capture this tradeoff between these two considerations, we analyze the operator's optimal decision problem using the prospect theory from behavioral economics, which includes EUT as a special case. The sensing and leasing optimal problem under prospect theory is non-convex and challenging to solve. Nevertheless, by exploiting the unimodal structure of the problem, we are able to compute the unique global optimal solution. We show that comparing to an EUT operator, both the risk-averse and risk-seeking operator achieve a smaller expected profit. On the other hand, a risk-averse operator can guarantee a larger minimum possible profit, while a risk-seeking operator can achieve a larger maximum possible profit. Furthermore, the tradeoff between the expected profit and the minimum possible profit for a risk-averse operator is better when the sensing cost increases, while the tradeoff between the expected profit and the maximum possible profit for a risk-seeking operator is better when the sensing cost decreases.

cs.NI↗

arXiv2016

Cooperative Wi-Fi Deployment: A One-to-Many Bargaining Framework

We study the cooperation of the mobile network operator (MNO) and the venue owners (VOs) on the public Wi-Fi deployment. We consider a one-to-many bargaining framework, where the MNO bargains with VOs sequentially to determine where to deploy Wi-Fi and how much to pay. Taking into account the negative externalities among different steps of bargaining, we analyze the following two cases: for the exogenous bargaining sequence case, we compute the optimal bargaining solution on the cooperation decisions and payments under a predetermined bargaining sequence; for the endogenous bargaining sequence case, the MNO decides the bargaining sequence to maximize its payoff. Through exploring the structural property of the optimal bargaining sequence, we design a low-complexity Optimal VO Bargaining Sequencing (OVBS) algorithm to search the optimal sequence. More specifically, we categorize the VOs into three types based on the impact of the Wi-Fi deployment at their venues, and show that it is optimal for the MNO to bargain with these three types of VOs sequentially. Numerical results show that compared with the random and worst bargaining sequences, the optimal bargaining sequence improves the MNO's payoff by up to 14.8% and 45.3%, respectively.

cs.GT↗

arXiv2015

Power-Delay Tradeoff with Predictive Scheduling in Integrated Cellular and Wi-Fi Networks

The explosive growth of global mobile traffic has lead to a rapid growth in the energy consumption in communication networks. In this paper, we focus on the energy-aware design of the network selection, subchannel, and power allocation in cellular and Wi-Fi networks, while taking into account the traffic delay of mobile users. The problem is particularly challenging due to the two-timescale operations for the network selection (large timescale) and subchannel and power allocation (small timescale). Based on the two-timescale Lyapunov optimization technique, we first design an online Energy-Aware Network Selection and Resource Allocation (ENSRA) algorithm. The ENSRA algorithm yields a power consumption within O(1/V) bound of the optimal value, and guarantees an O(V) traffic delay for any positive control parameter V. Motivated by the recent advancement in the accurate estimation and prediction of user mobility, channel conditions, and traffic demands, we further develop a novel predictive Lyapunov optimization technique to utilize the predictive information, and propose a Predictive Energy-Aware Network Selection and Resource Allocation (P-ENSRA) algorithm. We characterize the performance bounds of P-ENSRA in terms of the power-delay tradeoff theoretically. To reduce the computational complexity, we finally propose a Greedy Predictive Energy-Aware Network Selection and Resource Allocation (GP-ENSRA) algorithm, where the operator solves the problem in P-ENSRA approximately and iteratively. Numerical results show that GP-ENSRA significantly improves the power-delay performance over ENSRA in the large delay regime. For a wide range of system parameters, GP-ENSRA reduces the traffic delay over ENSRA by 20~30% under the same power consumption.

cs.NI↗

arXiv2015

Distributed Time-Sensitive Task Selection in Mobile Crowdsensing

With the rich set of embedded sensors installed in smartphones and the large number of mobile users, we witness the emergence of many innovative commercial mobile crowdsensing applications that combine the power of mobile technology with crowdsourcing to deliver time-sensitive and location-dependent information to their customers. Motivated by these real-world applications, we consider the task selection problem for heterogeneous users with different initial locations, movement costs, movement speeds, and reputation levels. Computing the social surplus maximization task allocation turns out to be an NP-hard problem. Hence we focus on the distributed case, and propose an asynchronous and distributed task selection (ADTS) algorithm to help the users plan their task selections on their own. We prove the convergence of the algorithm, and further characterize the computation time for users' updates in the algorithm. Simulation results suggest that the ADTS scheme achieves the highest Jain's fairness index and coverage comparing with several benchmark algorithms, while yielding similar user payoff to a greedy centralized benchmark. Finally, we illustrate how mobile users coordinate under the ADTS scheme based on some practical movement time data derived from Google Maps.

cs.GT↗

arXiv2015

DAWN: Delay-Aware Wi-Fi Offloading and Network Selection

To accommodate the explosive growth in mobile data traffic, both mobile cellular operators and mobile users are increasingly interested in offloading the traffic from cellular networks to Wi-Fi networks. However, previously proposed offloading schemes mainly focus on reducing the cellular data usage, without paying too much attention on the quality of service (QoS) requirements of the applications. In this paper, we study the Wi-Fi offloading problem with delay-tolerant applications under usage-based pricing. We aim to achieve a good tradeoff between the user's payment and its QoS characterized by the file transfer deadline. We first propose a general Delay-Aware Wi-Fi Offloading and Network Selection (DAWN) algorithm for a general single-user decision scenario. We then analytically establish the sufficient conditions, under which the optimal policy exhibits a threshold structure in terms of both the time and file size. As a result, we propose a monotone DAWN algorithm that approximately solves the general offloading problem, and has a much lower computational complexity comparing to the optimal algorithm. Simulation results show that both the general and monotone DAWN schemes achieve a high probability of completing file transfer under a stringent deadline, and require the lowest payment under a non-stringent deadline as compared with three heuristic schemes.

cs.NI↗