Eitan Altman

• National Institute for Research in Computer Science and Control

Join-the-shortest queue (JSQ) and its variants have often been used in solving load balancing problems. JSQ minimizes the average system occupation, e.g., the customer's system time. In this paper, we extend the load balancing setting to include constraints that may be imposed due to the communication network. In particular, we cast the problem in...

We consider a peer-to-peer electricity market modeled as a private network game, where end users minimize their cost by computing their demand and controllable generation. Their nominal demand constitutes sensitive information that they might want to keep private. We prove that the private network game admits a unique variational equilibrium, which...

The deployment of RISs in future 6G networks is expected to substantially improve mobile network coverage. This paper introduces a new cross-layer low-complexity scheme for the online optimization of RIS-assisted communication systems. It jointly combines BS and RIS configuration and fair UEs’ scheduling which is critical for high-performance deplo...

This paper introduces constrained correlated equilibrium, a solution concept combining correlation and coupled constraints in finite non-cooperative games.In the general case of an arbitrary correlation device and coupled constraints in the extended game, we study the conditions for equilibrium. In the particular case of constraints induced by a fe...

Network slicing (NS) is a key technology in 5G networks that enables the customization and efficient sharing of network resources to support the diverse requirements of next-generation services. This paper proposes a resource allocation scheme for NS based on the Fisher-market model and the Trading-post mechanism. The scheme aims to achieve efficie...

In this paper, we consider the problem of learning a correlated equilibrium of a finite non-cooperative game and show a new learning rule, called Correlated Perturbed Regret Minimization (CPRM) for this purpose. CPRM combines regret minimization to approach the set of correlated equilibria and a simple device recommending to the players actions dra...

We consider a distributed computing setting wherein a central entity seeks power from computational providers by offering a certain reward in return. The computational providers are classified into long-term stakeholders that invest a constant amount of power over time and players that can strategize on their computational investment. In this paper...

We consider the inherent timeline structure of the appearance of content in online social networks (OSNs) while studying content propagation. We model the propagation of a post/content of interest by an appropriate multi-type branching process. The branching process allows one to predict the emergence of global macro properties (e.g., the spread of...

We study a stochastic game with a dynamic set of players, for modeling and analyzing their computational investment strategies in distributed computing. Players obtain a certain reward for solving a problem, while incurring a certain cost based on the invested time and computational power. We present our framework while considering a contemporary a...

Masks save lives. Therefore, while the culture of wearing masks is promoted, it is critical to understand the various aspects of how that culture is adopted. The main contribution of this paper is in the modeling of the mask game. Wearing a mask provides partial protection against epidemics at some cost of comfort. Players can be differentiated acc...

We consider a marketplace in the context of 5G network slicing, where Application Service Providers (ASP), i.e., slice tenants, providing heterogeneous services, are in competition for the access to the virtualized network resource owned by a Network Slice Provider (NSP), who relies on network slicing. We model the interactions between the end user...

Network Slicing is one of the essential concepts that has been introduced in 5G networks design to support demand expressed by next-generation services. Network slicing will also bring new business opportunities for service providers (SPs) and virtual network operators, allowing them to run their virtual, independent business operations on shared p...

There is a fast growing demand for mobile telephones. These rely on batteries to provide the power needed for transmission and for reception (up and downlink communications). Considering uplink, we analyse how the characteristics of the battery affect the amount of information that one can draw out from the terminal. We focus in particular on the i...

We consider a network with Massive Multiple Input Multiple Output (M-MIMO) base stations using a Grid of Beams (GoB) for data and control channels. 5G allows to establish interference relations between beams of neighboring cells. Such relations can be used to automatically generate a beam relation matrix, denoted as Automatic Neighbor Beam Relation...

We study a Medium Access game modeled as a splittable atomic routing game in a parallel link topology. Each player has to decide how to split her traffic among the links. We take the expected loss probability of a player as her cost and consider various loss scenarios: 1) the M/M/1/1 queue in which an arrival that finds another packet in service is...

A central question in routing games has been to establish conditions for the uniqueness of the equilibrium, either in terms of network topology or in terms of costs. This question is well understood in two classes of routing games. The first is the non-atomic routing introduced by Wardrop on 1952 in the context of road traffic in which each player...

Herd immunity, one of the most fundamental concepts in network epidemics, occurs when a large fraction of the population of devices is immune against a virus or malware. The few individuals who have not taken countermeasures against the threat are assumed to have very low chances of infection, as they are indirectly protected by the rest of the dev...

We model the competition over mining resources and over several cryptocurrencies as a non-cooperative game. Leveraging results about congestion games, we establish conditions for the existence of pure Nash equilibria and provide efficient algorithms for finding such equilibria. We account for multiple system models, varying according to the way tha...

We study a stochastic game framework with dynamic set of players, for modeling and analyzing their computational investment strategies in distributed computing. Players obtain a certain reward for solving the problem or for providing their computational resources, while incur a certain cost based on the invested time and computational power. We fir...

In this work we want to extend the EGT models by introducing the concept of individual state. We analyze a particular simple case, in which we associate a state to each player, and we suppose that this state determines the set of available actions. We consider deterministic stationary policies and we suppose that the choice of a policy determines t...

We propose a model for network optimization in a non-cooperative game setting with specific reference to the Internet connectivity. The model describes the decisions taken by an Autonomous System (AS) when joining the Internet. We first define a realistic model for the interconnection costs incurred; then we use this cost model to perform a game th...

This chapter presents a new formulation which not only covers the fully non- cooperative behavior and the fully cooperative behavior, but also the fully altruistic behaviour. To do so, we make use of the evolutionary game theory which we extend to cover this kind of behavior. The major focus of this work is to study how the level of cooperation imp...

Evolutionary Game Theory has been originally developed and formalized by Smith and Price (Nature 246(5427): 15–18, 1973, [245]), in order to model the evolution of animal species and it has soon become an important mathematical tool to predict and even design evolution in many fields, others than biology.

The Network Neutrality issue has been at the center of debate worldwide lately. Some countries have established laws so that principles of network neutrality are respected. Among the questions that have been discussed in these debates there is whether to allow agreements between service and content providers, i.e. to allow some preferential treatme...

We study the problem of optimally investing in nodes of a social network in a competitive setting, wherein two camps aim to drive the average opinion of the population in their own favor. Using a well-established model of opinion dynamics, we formulate the problem as a zero-sum game with its players being the two camps. We derive optimal investment...

We study in this paper optimal control strategy for Advanced Sleep Modes (ASM) in 5G networks. ASM correspond to different levels of sleep modes ranging from deactivation of some components of the base station for several micro-seconds to switching off of almost all of them for one second or more. ASMs are made possible in 5G networks thanks to the...

Video streaming over cellular network has become extremely popular in 4G and will be an integral part of future cellular networks. While most modern-day video clients continually adapt quality of video streams, they neither coordinate with network elements nor among each other. Consequently, a streaming client may quickly overload the cellular netw...

The price-anticipating Kelly mechanism (PAKM) is one of the most extensively used strategies to allocate divisible resources for strategic users in communication networks and computing systems. The users are deemed as selfish and also benign, each of which maximizes his individual utility of the allocated resources minus his payment to the network...

The demand for Internet services that require frequent updates through small messages, also known as microblogging, has tremendously grown in the past few years. Although the use of such applications by domestic users is usually free, their access from mobile devices is subject to fees and consumes energy from limited batteries. If a user activates...

We propose a setting for two-phase opinion dynamics in social networks, where a node's final opinion in the first phase acts as its initial biased opinion in the second phase. In this setting, we study the problem of two camps aiming to maximize adoption of their respective opinions, by strategically investing on nodes in the two phases. A node's i...

In this paper, we develop an analytical framework to compute the Quality-of-Experience (QoE) metrics of video streaming in wireless networks. Our framework takes into account the system dynamics that arise due to the arrival and departure of flows. We also consider the possibility of users abandoning the system on account of poor QoE. Considering t...

Future electricity distribution grids will host a considerable share of the renewable energy sources needed for enforcing the energy transition. Demand side management mechanisms play a key role in the integration of such renewable energy resources by exploiting the flexibility of elastic loads, generation or electricity storage technologies. In pa...

Games with Common Coupled Constraints represent many real-life situations. In these games, if one player fails to satisfy its constraints common to other players, then the other players are also penalized. Therefore these games can be viewed as being cooperative in goals related to meeting the common constraints, and non-cooperative in terms of the...

We study in this paper a multiobjective dynamic programmming where all the criteria are in the form of total expected sum of costs till absorption in some set of states M. We assume that instantaneous costs are strictly positive and make no assumption on the ergodic structure of the Markov Decision Process. Our main result is to extend the linear p...

We consider in this paper competition of content creators in routing their content through various media. The routing decisions may correspond to the selection of a social network (e.g., Twitter versus Facebook or Linkedin) or of a group within a given social network. The utility for a player to send its content to some medium is given as the diffe...

We model the competition over several blockchains characterizing multiple cryptocurrencies as a non-cooperative game. Then, we specialize our results to two instances of the general game, showing properties of the Nash equilibrium. In particular, leveraging results about congestion games, we establish the existence of pure Nash equilibria and provi...

Facebook News Feed personalization algorithm has a significant impact, on a daily basis, on the lifestyle, mood and opinion of millions of Internet users. Nonetheless, the behavior of such algorithm lacks transparency, motivating measurements, modeling and analysis in order to understand and improve its properties. In this paper, we propose a repro...

We propose a setting for two-phase opinion dynamics in social networks, where a node's final opinion in the first phase acts as its initial biased opinion in the second phase. In this setting, we study the problem of two camps aiming to maximize adoption of their respective opinions, by strategically investing on nodes in the two phases. A node's i...

This book provides a state-of-the-art overview on the dynamics and coevolution in multi-level strategic interaction games. As such it summarizes the results of the European CONGAS project, which developed new mathematical models and tools for the analysis, prediction and control of dynamical processes in systems possessing a rich multi-level struct...

Facebook News Feed personalization algorithm has a significant impact, on a daily basis, on the lifestyle, mood and opinion of millions of Internet users. Nonetheless, the behavior of such algorithm lacks transparency, motivating measurements, modeling and analysis in order to understand and improve its properties. In this paper, we propose a repro...

Facebook News Feed personalization algorithm has a significant impact, on a daily basis, on the lifestyle, mood and opinion of millions of Internet users. Nonetheless, the behavior of such algorithm lacks transparency, motivating measurements, modeling and analysis in order to understand and improve its properties. In this paper, we propose a repro...

Advanced Sleep Modes (ASMs) correspond to a gradual deactivation of the Base Station (BS)’s components in order to reduce its Energy Consumption (EC). Different levels of Sleep Modes (SMs) can be considered according to the transition time (deactivation and activation durations) of each component. We propose in this paper a management solution for...

Facebook News Feed personalization algorithm has a significant impact, on a daily basis, on the lifestyle, mood and opinion of millions of Internet users. Nonetheless, the behavior of such algorithms usually lacks transparency, motivating measurements, modeling and analysis in order to understand and improve its properties. In this paper, we propos...

Many systems require frequent and regular updates of a certain information. These updates have to be transferred regularly from the source to the destination. We consider scenarios in which an old packet becomes completely obsolete, in the presence of a new packet. In this context, if a new packet arrives at the source while it is transferring a pa...

We propose a setting for two-phase opinion dynamics in social networks, where the final opinion of a node in the first phase acts as its initial biased opinion in the second phase. In this setting, we study the problem of two camps aiming to maximize adoption of their respective opinions by strategically investing on nodes, where the effectiveness...

We study the problem of two competing camps aiming to maximize the adoption of their respective opinions, by optimally investing in nodes of a social network in multiple phases. The final opinion of a node in a phase acts as its biased opinion in the following phase. Using an extension of Friedkin-Johnsen model, we formulate the camps' utility func...

We consider a two-player resource allocation polytope game, in which the strategy of a player is restricted by the strategy of the other player, with common coupled constraints. With respect to such a game, we formally introduce the notions of independent optimal strategy profile, which is the profile when players play optimally in the absence of t...

We study the problem of optimally investing in nodes of a social network in a competitive setting, where two camps aim to maximize adoption of their opinions by the population. In particular, we consider the possibility of campaigning in multiple phases, where the final opinion of a node in a phase acts as its initial biased opinion for the followi...

Standard evolutionary game theory framework is a useful tool to study large interacting systems and to understand the strategic behavior of individuals in such complex systems. Adding an individual state to model local feature of each player in this context allows one to study a wider range of problems in various application areas as networking, bi...

We consider a two-player resource allocation polytope game, in which the strategy of a player is restricted by the strategy of the other player, with common coupled constraints. With respect to such a game, we formally introduce the notions of independent optimal strategy profile, which is the profile when players play optimally in the absence of t...

In this paper, we tackle the problem of a sequential routing game where multiple users coexist and competitively send their traffic to a destination over a line. The users arrive at time epoch with a given capacity. Then, they ship their demands over time on a shared resource. The state of players evolve according to whether they decide to transmit...

In this paper, we consider a routing game in a network that contains lossy links. We consider a multi-objective problem where the players have each a weighted sum of a delay cost and a cost for losses. We compute the equilibrium and optimal solution (which are unique). We discover here in addition to the classical Kameda type paradox another parado...

We consider in this paper the Hawk-Dove game in which each of infinitely many individuals, involved with pairwise encounters with other individuals, can decide whether to act aggressively (Hawk) or peacefully (Dove). Each individual is characterized by its strength. The strength distribution among the population is assumed to be fixed and not to va...

We study a non-zero sum game considered on the solutions of a hybrid dynamical system that evolves in continuous time and that is subjected to abrupt changes of parameters. The changes of the parameters are synchronized with (and determined by) the changes of the states/actions of two Markov decision processes, each of which is controlled by a play...

Designing an optimal network topology while balancing multiple, possibly conflicting objectives like cost, performance, and resiliency to viruses is a challenging endeavor, let alone in the case of decentralized network formation. We therefore propose a game-formation technique where each player aims to minimize its cost in installing links, the pr...

Designing an optimal network topology while balancing multiple, possibly conflicting objectives like cost, performance, and resiliency to viruses is a challenging endeavor, let alone in the case of decentralized network formation. We therefore propose a game-formation technique where each player aims to minimize its cost in installing links, the pr...

We study the problem of optimally investing in nodes of a social network in a competitive setting, wherein two camps aim to drive the average opinion of the population in their own favor. Using a well-established model of opinion dynamics, we formulate the problem as a zero-sum game with its players being the two camps. We derive optimal investment...

As the demand for higher data rates is growing exponentially, homogeneous cellular networks have been facing limitations when handling data traffic. These limitations are related to the available spectrum and the capacity of the network. Heterogeneous networks (HetNets), composed of macro cells (MCs) and small cells (SCs), are seen as the key solut...

Bio-inspired paradigms are proving to be useful in analyzing propagation and dissemination of information in networks. In this paper we explore the use of multi-type branching processes to analyse viral properties of content in a social network, with and without competition from other sources. We derive and compute various virality measures, e.g.,...

We consider a scenario where an Internet Service Provider (ISP) serves users that choose digital content among M Content Providers (CP). In the status quo, these users pay both access fees to the ISP and content fees to each chosen CP; however, neither the ISP nor the CPs share their profit. We revisit this model by introducing a different business...

In this paper, we have two objectives: first we model the posting behaviour of publishers in Social Networks which have externalities, and the second objective is to propose content active filtering in order to increase content diversity from different publishers. By externalities, we mean that when the quantity of posted contents from a specific p...

In multi-rate IEEE 802.11 WLANs, the traditional user association based on the strongest received signal and the well known anomaly of the MAC protocol can lead to overloaded Access Points (APs), and poor or heterogeneous performance. Our goal is to propose an alternative game-theoretic approach for association. We model the joint resource allocati...

SIS epidemic non-zero sum games have been recently used to analyse virus protection in networks. A potential game approach was proposed for solving the game for the case of a fully connected network. In this paper we manage to extend this result to an arbitrary topology by showing that the general topology game has an ordinal potential game. We app...

A central question in routing games has been to establish conditions for the uniqueness of the equilibrium, either in terms of network topology or in terms of costs. This question is well understood in two classes of routing games. The first is the non-atomic routing introduced by Wardrop on 1952 in the context of road traffic in which each player...

This paper is a follow-up of (Eitan Altman, Dynamic Games and Applications, Springer Verlag, Vol. 3, No. 2 (2013) 313–323). It considers the same stochastic game that describes competition through advertisement over the popularity of their content. We show that the equilibrium may or may not be unique, depending on the system’s parameters. We furth...

The global Internet has enabled a massive access of internauts to content. At the same time it allowed individuals to use the Internet in order to distribute content. This introduced new types of competition between content over popularity, visibility, influence, reputation and user attention. The rules of these competitions are new with respect to...

Cache networks are one of the building blocks of information centric networks (ICNs). Most of the recent work on cache networks has focused on networks of request driven caches, which are populated based on users requests for content gen- erated by publishers. However, user generated content still poses the most pressing challenges. For such conten...

We revisit in this paper the resilience problem of routing traffic in a parallel link network model with a malicious player using a game theoretic framework. Consider that there are two players in the network: the first player wishes to split its traffic so as to minimize its average delay, which the second player, i.e., the malicious player, tries...