Telemetry units can be used to gauge inventory levels at customers. These readings can help prevent both stockouts and unnecessary deliveries. The research problem we address is where to place a limited number of telemetry units in order to reduce routing costs. Modeling this problem involves the consideration of both inventory theory as well as vehicle routing concepts. We model this problem with an integer program but solve with heuristics. Our results demonstrate that significant savings can be found with limited numbers of telemetry units. We then extend our results to consider the impact of correlation of customer usage on the placement of telemetry units and show even greater savings can be obtained. We also present a model that can be used for locomotive fuel planning. It decides where fuel trucks should be located as well as the volume of the fuel that should be delivered to each locomotive.

Traditionally, on-chip network communication was achieved with shared medium networks where devices shared the transmission medium with only one device driving the network at a time. To avoid performance losses, it required a fast bus arbitration logic. However, a single shared bus has serious limitations with the heterogeneous and multi-core communication requirements of today's chip designs. Point-to-point or direct networks solved some of the scalability issues, but the use of routers and of rather complex algorithms to connect nodes during each cycle caused new bottlenecks. As technology scales, the on-chip physical interconnect presents an increasingly limiting factor for performance and energy consumption. Network-on-chip, an emerging interconnect paradigm, provide solutions to these interconnect and communication challenges. Motivated by future bottom-up self-assembled fabrication techniques, which are believed to produce largely unstructured interconnect fabrics in a very inexpensive way, the goal of this thesis is to explore the design trade-offs of such irregular, heterogeneous, and unreliable networks. The important measures we care about for our complex on-chip network models are the information transfer, congestion avoidance, throughput, and latency. We use two control parameters and a network model inspired by Watts and Strogatz's small-world network model to generate a large class of different networks. We then evaluate their cost and performance and introduce a function which allows us to systematically explore the trade-offs between cost and performance depending on the designer's requirement. We further evaluate these networks under different traffic conditions and introduce an adaptive and topology-agnostic ant routing algorithm that does not require any global control and avoids network congestion.

A multi-scale Monte Carlo simulation was performed on nine streams of increasing Horton order to investigate the role that variability in hydraulic geometry and resistance play in modifying a flood hydrograph. This study attempts to determine the potential to replace actual cross-sections along a stream reach with a prismatic channel that has mean cross-sectional properties. The primary finding of this work is that the flood routing model is less sensitive to variability in the channel geometry as the Horton order of the stream increases. It was also established that even though smaller streams are more sensitive to variability in hydraulic geometry and resistance, replacing cross-sections along the channel with a characteristic reach wise average cross-section, is still a suitable approximation. Finally a case study of applying this methodology to a natural river is performed with promising results.

Routing is one of the most important issues in any communication network. It defines on which path packets are transmitted from the source of a connection to the destination. It allows to control the distribution of flows between different locations in the network and thereby is a means to influence the load distribution or to reach certain constraints imposed by particular applications. As failures in communication networks appear regularly and cannot be completely avoided, routing is required to be resilient against such outages, i.e., routing still has to be able to forward packets on backup paths even if primary paths are not working any more. Throughout the years, various routing technologies have been introduced that are very different in their control structure, in their way of working, and in their ability to handle certain failure cases. Each of the different routing approaches opens up their own specific questions regarding configuration, optimization, and inclusion of resilience issues. This monograph investigates, with the example of three particular routing technologies, some concrete issues regarding the analysis and optimization of resilience. It thereby contributes to a better general, technology-independent understanding of these approaches and of their diverse potential for the use in future network architectures. The first considered routing type, is decentralized intra-domain routing based on administrative IP link costs and the shortest path principle. Typical examples are common today's intra-domain routing protocols OSPF and IS-IS. This type of routing includes automatic restoration abilities in case of failures what makes it in general very robust even in the case of severe network outages including several failed components. Furthermore, special IP-Fast Reroute mechanisms allow for a faster reaction on outages. For routing based on link costs, traffic engineering, e.g. the optimization of the maximum relative link load in the network, can be done indirectly by changing the administrative link costs to adequate values. The second considered routing type, MPLS-based routing, is based on the a priori configuration of primary and backup paths, so-called Label Switched Paths. The routing layout of MPLS paths offers more freedom compared to IP-based routing as it is not restricted by any shortest path constraints but any paths can be setup. However, this in general involves a higher configuration effort. Finally, in the third considered routing type, typically centralized routing using a Software Defined Networking (SDN) architecture, simple switches only forward packets according to routing decisions made by centralized controller units. SDN-based routing layouts offer the same freedom as for explicit paths configured using MPLS. In case of a failure, new rules can be setup by the controllers to continue the routing in the reduced topology. However, new resilience issues arise caused by the centralized architecture. If controllers are not reachable anymore, the forwarding rules in the single nodes cannot be adapted anymore. This might render a rerouting in case of connection problems in severe failure scenarios infeasible. / Routing stellt eine der zentralen Aufgaben in Kommunikationsnetzen dar. Es bestimmt darüber, auf welchem Weg Verkehr von der Quelle zum Ziel transportiert wird. Durch geschicktes Routing kann dadurch eine Verteilung der Verkehrsflüsse zum Beispiel zur Lastverteilung erreicht werden. Da Fehler in Kommunikationsnetzen nicht vollständig verhindert werden können, muss Routing insbesondere ausfallsicher sein, d.h., im Falle von Fehlern im Netz muss das Routing weiterhin in der Lage sein, Pakete auf alternativen Pfaden zum Ziel zu transportieren. Es existieren verschiedene gängige Routingverfahren und Technologien, die sich hinsichtlich Ihrer Arbeitsweise, Ihrer Kontrollstrukturen und Ihrer Funktionalität in bestimmten Fehlerszenarien unterscheiden. Für diese verschiedenen Ansätze ergeben sich jeweils eigene Fragestellungen hinsichtlich der Konfiguration, der Optimierung und der Berücksichtigung von Ausfallsicherheit. Diese Doktorarbeit behandelt am Beispiel bestimmter Technologien einige konkrete Fragestellungen zur Analyse und Optimierung der Ausfallsicherheit. Sie liefert damit einen Beitrag zum besseren generellen Verständnis verschiedenartiger Routingansätze und deren unterschiedlichen Potentials für den Einsatz in zukünftigen Netzarchitekturen. Zuerst wird dezentrales Routing behandelt, basierend auf administrativen Linkgewichten und dem Prinzip der kürzesten Pfade, wie es beispielsweise in den Protokollen IS-IS und OSPF genutzt wird. Diese Routingverfahren beinhalteten automatische Rekonvergenz-Mechanismen um im Falle von Fehlern auf der verbleibenden Netzstruktur weiterhin einen Transport von Verkehr zu ermöglichen. Spezielle IP-Fast Reroute Mechanismen ermöglichen zudem eine schnelle Reaktion im Falle von Fehlern. Routing basierend auf Linkgewichten lässt sich nur indirekt durch die Wahl geeigneter Gewichte beeinflussen und optimieren. Die zweite in der Doktorarbeit behandelte Routingart ist MPLS-basiertes Routing, bei dem Labels für Pakete verwendet werden und Pakete anhand sogenannter vorkonfigurierter Label Switched Paths weitergeleitet werden. Diese Technologie bietet mehr Freiheiten bei der Wahl des Pfadlayouts, was aber wiederum im Allgemeinen einen erhöhten Konfigurationsaufwand mit sich bringt. Schließlich greift die Doktorarbeit auch das Routing in SDN Netzen auf. Dort erfolgt eine Trennung von Control Plane und Data Plane, so dass einzelne dedizierte Controller die Routingentscheidungen festlegen und ansonsten einfache Switches mit reduzierter Komplexität den Verkehr lediglich entsprechend der festgelegten Regeln weiterleiten. Dies ermöglicht die größte Freiheit bei der Konfiguration des Routing bringt aber wiederum neue Fragestellungen bedingt durch die zentralen Kontrolleinheiten mit sich.

De nos jours, le transport joue un rôle clé dans la vie des pays modernes, en particulier pour les flux de marchandises. La logistique des flux entre régions, pays et continents a bénéficié d’innovations technologiques et organisationnelles assurant efficacité et efficience. Il n’en a pas été de même à l’échelle urbaine, plus particulièrement dans les centres-villes : la gestion des flux dans un environnement caractérisé par une forte densité démographique n’a pas encore véritablement trouvé son modèle d’organisation. Aujourd’hui, la logistique urbaine ou encore la gestion "du dernier kilomètre" constitue donc un enjeu de premier plan, tant socio politique et environnemental qu’économique. La logistique urbaine est caractérisée par la présence de plusieurs acteurs (chargeurs ou propriétaires de marchandises, clients, transporteurs, autorités publiques, …) ayant chacun des priorités différentes (réduction de la pollution, amélioration de la qualité de service, minimisation de la distance totale parcourue, …). Pour relever ces défis, un des leviers possibles consiste à optimiser les tournées de distribution et/ou collecte de marchandises, dans le contexte et sous les contraintes de la ville.Le but de ce travail de thèse réside alors dans la planification de la distribution des marchandises dans un réseau logistique, abordée sous un angle de collaboration entre les chargeurs. Cette collaboration consiste à regrouper les demandes de divers chargeurs pour optimiser le taux de chargement des camions et obtenir de meilleurs prix de transport. Ici, la gestion du « dernier kilomètre » s’apparente à ce que l’on identifie dans la littérature comme le Pickup and Delivery Problem (PDP). Dans le cadre de cette thèse, nous nous intéressons à des variantes de ce problème plus adaptées au contexte urbain. Après avoir réalisé un état de l’art sur les problèmes d’optimisation combinatoire autour du transport et les méthodes utilisées pour leur résolution, nous étudions deux nouvelles variantes du problème de collecte et de livraison : le Selective PDP with Time Windows and Paired Demands et le Multi-periods PDP with Time Windows and Paired Demands. La première permet aux transporteurs de livrer le maximum de clients dans une journée par exemple ; avec la seconde, et en cas d’impossibilité de livraison dans cette période, on détermine la meilleure date de livraison en minimisant la distance parcourue. Chacune d’elles fait l’objet d’une description formelle, d’une modélisation mathématique sous forme de programme linéaire, puis d’une résolution par des méthodes exacte, heuristiques et métaheuristiques, dans des cas mono-objectif et multi-objectifs. La performance de chaque approche a été évaluée par un nombre substantiel de tests sur des instances de différentes tailles issues de la littérature et/ou que nous avons générées. Les avantages et les inconvénients de chaque approche sont analysés, notamment dans le cadre de la collaboration entre chargeurs. / Nowadays, transportation plays a key role in our modern countries’life, in particular for the goods flows. The logistics of flows between regions, countries and continents have benefited from technological and organizational innovations ensuring efficiency and effectiveness. It has not been the same at the urban scale, especially in city centers: the management of flows in a high population density environment has not yet found its organizational model. Today, urban logistics or "last mile" management is therefore a major issue, both socio-political and environmental as well as economic. Urban logistics is characterized by several actors (shippers or owners of goods, customers, carriers, public authorities, ...) each with different priorities (reduction of pollution, improvement of service quality, minimization of total distance traveled, ...). To overcome these challenges, one possible lever is to optimize the distribution and/or collection of goods in the context and under the constraints of the city.The goal of this PhD work is then to plan the distribution of goods in a logistics network, approached from a collaboration angle between shippers. This collaboration consists in grouping the demands of several shippers to optimize the loading rate of the trucks and to obtain better transport prices. Here, managing the "last mile" is similar to what is known in the literature as the Pickup and Delivery Problem (PDP). In this thesis, we are interested in variants of this problem more adapted to the urban context. After having realized a state of the art on the combinatorial optimization problems around the transport and the methods used for their resolution, we study two new variants of the problem of collection and delivery: the Selective PDP with Windows and Paired Demands and the Multi-period PDP with Windows and Paired Demands. The first allows carriers to deliver the maximum number of customers in a day for example; with the second, and in case of impossibility of delivery in this period, we determine the best delivery date by minimizing the distance traveled. Each of them is the subject of a formal description, of a mathematical modeling in the form of a linear program, then of a resolution by exact methods, heuristics and metaheuristics, in single-objective and multi-objective cases. The performance of each approach was evaluated by a substantial number of tests on instances of different sizes from the literature and / or that we generated. The advantages and drawbacks of each approach are analyzed, in particular in the context of collaboration between shippers.

The progress which has been made in semiconductor chip production in recent years enables a multitude of cores on a single die. However, due to further decreasing structure sizes, fault tolerance and energy consumption will represent key challenges. Furthermore, an efficient communication infrastructure is indispensable due to the high parallelism at those systems. The predominant communication system at such highly parallel systems is a Network on Chip (NoC). The focus of this thesis is on NoCs which are based on deflection routing. In this context, contributions are made to two domains, fault tolerance and dimensioning of the optimal link width. Both aspects are essential for the application of reliable, energy efficient, and deflection routing based NoCs. It is expected that future semiconductor systems have to cope with high fault probabilities. The inherently given high connectivity of most NoC topologies can be exploited to tolerate the breakdown of links and other components. In this thesis, a fault-tolerant router architecture has been developed, which stands out for the deployed interconnection architecture and the method to overcome complex fault situations. The presented simulation results show, all data packets arrive at their destination, even at high fault probabilities. In contrast to routing table based architectures, the hardware costs of the herein presented architecture are lower and, in particular, independent of the number of components in the network. Besides fault tolerance, hardware costs and energy efficiency are of great importance. The utilized link width has a decisive influence on these aspects. In particular, at deflection routing based NoCs, over- and under-sizing of the link width leads to unnecessary high hardware costs and bad performance, respectively. In the second part of this thesis, the optimal link width at deflection routing based NoCs is investigated. Additionally, a method to reduce the link width is introduced. Simulation and synthesis results show, the herein presented method allows a significant reduction of hardware costs at comparable performance. / Die Fortschritte der letzten Jahre bei der Fertigung von Halbleiterchips ermöglichen eine Vielzahl an Rechenkernen auf einem einzelnen Chip. Die in diesem Zusammenhang immer weiter sinkenden Strukturgrößen führen jedoch dazu, dass Fehlertoleranz und Energieverbrauch zentrale Herausforderungen darstellen werden. Aufgrund der hohen Parallelität in solchen Systemen, ist außerdem eine leistungsfähige Kommunikationsinfrastruktur unabdingbar. Das in diesen hochgradig parallelen Systemen überwiegend eingesetzte System zur Datenübertragung ist ein Netzwerk auf einem Chip (engl. Network on Chip (NoC)). Der Fokus dieser Dissertation liegt auf NoCs, die auf dem Prinzip des sog. Deflection Routing basieren. In diesem Kontext wurden Beiträge zu zwei Bereichen geleistet, der Fehlertoleranz und der Dimensionierung der optimalen Breite von Verbindungen. Beide Aspekte sind für den Einsatz zuverlässiger, energieeffizienter, Deflection Routing basierter NoCs essentiell. Es ist davon auszugehen, dass zukünftige Halbleiter-Systeme mit einer hohen Fehlerwahrscheinlichkeit zurecht kommen müssen. Die hohe Konnektivität, die in den meisten NoC Topologien inhärent gegeben ist, kann ausgenutzt werden, um den Ausfall von Verbindungen und anderen Komponenten zu tolerieren. Im Rahmen dieser Arbeit wurde vor diesem Hintergrund eine fehlertolerante Router-Architektur entwickelt, die sich durch das eingesetzte Verbindungsnetzwerk und das Verfahren zur Überwindung komplexer Fehlersituationen auszeichnet. Die präsentierten Simulations-Ergebnisse zeigen, dass selbst bei sehr hohen Fehlerwahrscheinlichkeiten alle Datenpakete ihr Ziel erreichen. Im Vergleich zu Router-Architekturen die auf Routing-Tabellen basieren, sind die Hardware-Kosten der hier vorgestellten Router-Architektur gering und insbesondere unabhängig von der Anzahl an Komponenten im Netzwerk, was den Einsatz in sehr großen Netzen ermöglicht. Neben der Fehlertoleranz sind die Hardware-Kosten sowie die Energieeffizienz von NoCs von großer Bedeutung. Einen entscheidenden Einfluss auf diese Aspekte hat die verwendete Breite der Verbindungen des NoCs. Insbesondere bei Deflection Routing basierten NoCs führt eine Über- bzw. Unterdimensionierung der Breite der Verbindungen zu unnötig hohen Hardware-Kosten bzw. schlechter Performanz. Im zweiten Teil dieser Arbeit wird die optimale Breite der Verbindungen eines Deflection Routing basierten NoCs untersucht. Außerdem wird ein Verfahren zur Reduzierung der Breite dieser Verbindungen vorgestellt. Simulations- und Synthese-Ergebnisse zeigen, dass dieses Verfahren eine erhebliche Reduzierung der Hardware-Kosten bei ähnlicher Performanz ermöglicht.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Hong Kong, 2006. / Title proper from title frame. Also available in printed format.

Thesis (M.S.)--State University of New York at Binghamton, Dept. of Electrical & Computer Engineering, 2006. / Includes bibliographical references.

Zugl.: Zürich, Techn. Hochsch., Diss., 2007

<p>Routing techniques for plain ’flat’ microchips have been developed extensively and will soon reach its limitations. One natural step would be to develop chips which are manufactured in a more cubic type of volume, as oppose to the classical flat design. </p><p>This thesis proposes a method for routing two-point nets across a three- dimensional channel. The height required by this algorithm is of the order <i>O(n</i> ^(3/2)), where n is the number of terminals on a square top-layer with the side <i>2 (n</i>^(1/2)). </p><p>The algorithm proposed here is based on"On Routing Two-Point Nets Across a Channel", by Ron Y. Pinter [9], and the concepts from this paper are explainedin this thesis to familiarise the reader these. </p><p>It is also shown that the proposed algorithm is more effective in its volume than the two-dimensional counterpart. The algorithm here is of the order <i>O(n</i>^(3/2)) with the two-dimensional algorithm of the order <i>O</i>(<i>n</i>²).</p>