Physics-inspired methods for networking and communications

Abstract

Advances in statistical physics relating to our understanding of large-scale complex systems have recently been successfully applied in the context of communication networks. Statistical mechanics methods can be used to decompose global system behavior into simple local interactions. Thus, large-scale problems can be solved or approximated in a distributed manner with iterative lightweight local messaging. This survey discusses how statistical physics methodology can provide efficient solutions to hard network problems that are intractable by classical methods. We highlight three typical examples in the realm of networking and communications. In each case we show how a fundamental idea of statistical physics helps solve the problem in an efficient manner. In particular, we discuss how to perform multicast scheduling with message passing methods, how to improve coding using the crystallization process, and how to compute optimal routing by representing routes as interacting polymers.

Publication DOI: https://doi.org/10.1109/MCOM.2014.6957155
Divisions: College of Engineering & Physical Sciences > Systems analytics research institute (SARI)
Additional Information: © 2014 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other uses, in any current or future media, including reprinting/republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes, creating new collective works, for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted component of this work in other works. Funding: EU FP7-265496 project STAMINA
Uncontrolled Keywords: decoding,network architecture,optimization,physics,computers ports,routing protocols,statistical analysis,Electrical and Electronic Engineering,Computer Science Applications,Computer Networks and Communications
Publication ISSN: 1558-1896
Last Modified: 12 Feb 2024 08:07
Date Deposited: 17 Dec 2014 14:15
Full Text Link: http://ieeexplo ... rnumber=6957155
Related URLs: http://www.scop ... tnerID=8YFLogxK (Scopus URL)
PURE Output Type: Article
Published Date: 2014-11
Authors: Saad, David (ORCID Profile 0000-0001-9821-2623)
Yeung, Chi Ho
Rodolakis, Georgios
Syrivelis, Dimitris
Koutsopoulos, Iordanis
Tassiulas, Leandros
Urbanke, Rüdiger
Giaccone, Paolo
Leonardi, Emilio

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