THE DISTRIBUTED NONLINEAR STOCHASTIC WORLD OF NETWORKS

摘要

Currently there is much interest in networks. This includes queueing network models of manufacturing systems, as well as wired and wireless networks used for communication. At their heart, networks too are just dynamical systems, often stochastic, nonlinear, and distributed. Many of the issues of interest for such systems can be said to be what they have always been for dynamical and controlled dynamical systems - stability, stabilizability, performance analysis, and optimal control. We illustrate this with respect to problems of much contemporary attention, by examining the stability problem for re-entrant lines, and the determination of the information theoretic capacity of wireless networks. We illustrate how the modern emphasis in the former area is on computational proofs of stability, and in the latter area is in the establishment of scaling laws.