Abstract
In distributed problems where consensus between agents is required but average consensus is not desired, it can be necessary for each agent to know not only the data of each other agent in the network, but also the origin of each piece of data before consensus can be reached. However, transmitting large tables of data with IDs can cause the size of an agent's message to increase dramatically, while truncating down to fewer pieces of data to keep the message size small can lead to problems with the speed of achieving consensus. Also, many existing consensus protocols are not robust against agents leaving and entering. We introduce PRIMETIME, a novel communication protocol that exploits the properties of prime numbers to quickly and efficiently share integer data across a dynamically changing network. For sufficiently small networks or small integer data, we show that messages formed by PRIMETIME require fewer bits than messages formed by simply tabularizing the data and IDs to be transmitted. Finally, we analyze a simple example motivated by autonomous vehicle intersection management.
Biography
Ermin Wei is currently an Assistant Professor at the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department and Industrial Engineering and Management Sciences Department of Northwestern University. She completed her PhD studies in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at MIT in 2014, advised by Professor Asu Ozdaglar, where she also obtained her M.S. She received her undergraduate triple degree in Computer Engineering, Finance and Mathematics with a minor in German, from University of Maryland, College Park. She has received many awards, including the Graduate Women of Excellence Award, second place prize in Ernst A. Guillemen Thesis Award. Her team won the 2nd place in the GO-competition Challenge 1, an electricity grid optimization competition organized by Department of Energy. Wei's research interests include distributed optimization methods, convex optimization and analysis, smart grid, communication systems and energy networks and market economic analysis.
