arXiv subjects

Roberto Tempo

Publications and source records attributed to Roberto Tempo.

26 records · Page 2Linked to original sources

arXiv2013

The PageRank Problem, Multi-Agent Consensus and Web Aggregation -- A Systems and Control Viewpoint

PageRank is an algorithm introduced in 1998 and used by the Google Internet search engine. It assigns a numerical value to each element of a set of hyperlinked documents (that is, web pages) within the World Wide Web with the purpose of measuring the relative importance of the page. The key idea in the algorithm is to give a higher PageRank value to web pages which are visited often by web surfers. On its website, Google describes PageRank as follows: ``PageRank reflects our view of the importance of web pages by considering more than 500 million variables and 2 billion terms. Pages that are considered important receive a higher PageRank and are more likely to appear at the top of the search results." Today PageRank is a paradigmatic problem of great interest in various areas, such as information technology, bibliometrics, biology, and e-commerce, where objects are often ranked in order of importance. This article considers a distributed randomized approach based on techniques from the area of Markov chains using a graph representation consisting of nodes and links. We also outline connections with other problems of current interest to the systems and control community, which include ranking of control journals, consensus of multi-agent systems, and aggregation-based techniques.

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arXiv2013

Probabilistic Optimal Estimation and Filtering under Uncertainty

The classical approach to system identification is based on stochastic assumptions about the measurement error, and provides estimates that have random nature. Worst-case identification, on the other hand, only assumes the knowledge of deterministic error bounds, and establishes guaranteed estimates, thus being in principle better suited for the use in control design. However, a main limitation of such deterministic bounds lies on their potential conservatism, thus leading to estimates of restricted use. In this paper, we propose a rapprochement between the stochastic and worst-case paradigms. In particular, based on a probabilistic framework for linear estimation problems, we derive new computational results. These results combine elements from information-based complexity with recent developments in the theory of randomized algorithms. The main idea in this line of research is to "discard" sets of measure at most ε, where εis a probabilistic accuracy, from the set of deterministic estimates. Therefore, we are decreasing the so-called worst-case radius of information at the expense of a given probabilistic ``risk." In this setting, we compute a trade-off curve, called violation function, which shows how the radius of information decreases as a function of the accuracy. To this end, we construct randomized and deterministic algorithms which provide approximations of this function. We report extensive simulations showing numerical comparisons between the stochastic, worst-case and probabilistic approaches, thus demonstrating the efficacy of the methods proposed in this paper.

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arXiv2013

Gossips and Prejudices: Ergodic Randomized Dynamics in Social Networks

In this paper we study a novel model of opinion dynamics in social networks, which has two main features. First, agents asynchronously interact in pairs, and these pairs are chosen according to a random process. We refer to this communication model as "gossiping". Second, agents are not completely open-minded, but instead take into account their initial opinions, which may be thought of as their "prejudices". In the literature, such agents are often called "stubborn". We show that the opinions of the agents fail to converge, but persistently undergo ergodic oscillations, which asymptotically concentrate around a mean distribution of opinions. This mean value is exactly the limit of the synchronous dynamics of the expected opinions.

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arXiv2013

Almost sure convergence of a randomized algorithm for relative localization in sensor networks

This paper regards the relative localization problem in sensor networks. We study a randomized algorithm, which is based on input-driven consensus dynamics and involves pairwise "gossip" communications and updates. Due to the randomness of the updates, the state of this algorithm ergodically oscillates around a limit value. Exploiting the ergodicity of the dynamics, we show that the time-average of the state almost surely converges to the least-squares solution of the localization problem. Remarkably, the computation of the time-average does not require the sensors to share any common clock. Hence, the proposed algorithm is fully distributed and asynchronous.

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arXiv2013

Anytime Reliable LDPC Convolutional Codes for Networked Control over Wireless Channel

This paper deals with the problem of stabilizing an unstable system through networked control over the wireless medium. In such a situation a remote sensor communicates the measurements to the system controller through a noisy channel. In particular, in the AWGN scenario, we show that protograph-based LDPC convolutional codes achieve anytime reliability and we also derive a lower bound to the signal-to-noise ratio required to stabilize the system. Moreover, on the Rayleigh-fading channel, we show by simulations that resorting to multiple sensors allows to achieve a diversity gain.

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arXiv2012

Distributed Randomized Algorithms for the PageRank Computation

In the search engine of Google, the PageRank algorithm plays a crucial role in ranking the search results. The algorithm quantifies the importance of each web page based on the link structure of the web. We first provide an overview of the original problem setup. Then, we propose several distributed randomized schemes for the computation of the PageRank, where the pages can locally update their values by communicating to those connected by links. The main objective of the paper is to show that these schemes asymptotically converge in the mean-square sense to the true PageRank values. A detailed discussion on the close relations to the multi-agent consensus problems is also given.

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arXiv2012

A Web Aggregation Approach for Distributed Randomized PageRank Algorithms

The PageRank algorithm employed at Google assigns a measure of importance to each web page for rankings in search results. In our recent papers, we have proposed a distributed randomized approach for this algorithm, where web pages are treated as agents computing their own PageRank by communicating with linked pages. This paper builds upon this approach to reduce the computation and communication loads for the algorithms. In particular, we develop a method to systematically aggregate the web pages into groups by exploiting the sparsity inherent in the web. For each group, an aggregated PageRank value is computed, which can then be distributed among the group members. We provide a distributed update scheme for the aggregated PageRank along with an analysis on its convergence properties. The method is especially motivated by results on singular perturbation techniques for large-scale Markov chains and multi-agent consensus.

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arXiv2002

Gradient algorithms for finding common Lyapunov functions

This paper is concerned with the problem of finding a quadratic common Lyapunov function for a family of stable linear systems. We present gradient iteration algorithms which give deterministic convergence for finite system families and probabilistic convergence for infinite families.

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