A promising cost-effective approach to realizing RT ADS's is to use the emerging technology for RT distributed component/object structuring. One such technology being explored by the author and his research collaborators is the the Time-Triggered MessageTriggered Object (TMO) structuring scheme [Kim94, Kim97b]. The TMO scheme is intended to facilitate RT distributed software engineering in a fo...

Despite their tremendous success, centrally controlled cloud-based Online Social Networks (OSNs) have inherent issues related to user privacy and control. These issues have motivated researchers to make a paradigm shift in the OSN architecture by proposing to replace centrally controlled OSNs with Decentralized OSNs (DOSNs) in a peer-to-peer setting. DOSNs give users more autonomy and the chanc...

NuCypher KMS is a decentralized Key Management System (KMS) that addresses the limitations of using consensus networks to securely store and manipulate private, encrypted data [1]. It provides encryption and cryptographic access control, performed by a decentralized network, leveraging proxy re-encryption [2]. Unlike centralized KMS as a service solutions, it doesn’t require trusting a service ...

We present a model for decentralized Process Centered Environments (PCEs), which support concerted eeorts among geographically-dispersed teams | each local team with its own autonomous process | and emphasize exibility in the tradeoo between collaboration vs. autonomy. We consider both decentralized process modeling and decentralized process enaction. We describe a realization in the Oz decentr...

Built on the combined strength of decentralized control and the recently introduced virtual structure approach, a decentralized formation scheme for spacecraft formation flying is presented in this paper. Following a decentralized coordination architecture via the virtual structure approach, decentralized formation control strategies are introduced, which are appropriate when a large number of ...

We consider a network of devices, such as generators, fixed loads, deferrable loads, and storage devices, each with its own dynamic constraints and objective, connected by AC and DC lines. The problem is to minimize the total network objective subject to the device and line constraints over a time horizon. This is a large optimization problem with variables for consumption or generation for eac...

The autonomy of various subsystems in complex real-time distributed computer systems (DCS's) is a highly desired attribute. Highly autonomous subsystems enable concurrent and largely independent testing/verification and maintenance of the subsystems. In recent years, we formulated two system structuring techniques which could be used as fundamental tools for enhancing the subsystem autonomy: (1...

The promise of the grid is that it will enable public access and sharing of immense amounts of computational and data resources among a large number of individuals and institutions. However, the current grid solutions make several limiting assumptions that curtail their widespread adoption in the emerging decentralized, resource constrained, embedded, autonomic, and mobile (DREAM) environments:...

This paper addresses the challenge of multi-policy optimization in decentralized autonomic systems. We evaluate several multi-policy reinforcement learning-based optimization techniques in an urban traffic control simulation, a canonical example of a decentralized autonomic system. Our results indicate that W-learning, which learns separately for each policy and then selects between nominated a...

Multi-agent systems are autonomous decentralized platform software on which application programs such as business transactions, network provisioning and manufacturing control are deployed. In order for the applications to be truly autonomous and decentralized, however, heterogeneous multi-agent systems themselves must communicate and interoperate with each other. To solve the problem, we take a...