Abstract
We provide a new perspective into the structural properties of the max-weight policy, a much studied centerpiece within the field of stochastic network scheduling. We argue that the deterministic max-weight dynamics have a key property: the effects of input (arrival) fluctuations on state trajectories are bounded by a constant multiple of the fluctuations of the cumulative arrival process. This fact, in conjunction with concentration assumptions on the arrival process, provides a new machinery for deriving old and new limiting results, e.g., on fluid limits or state space collapse. (Joint work with A. Sharifnassab and S. J. Golestani)
Bio
John N. Tsitsiklis received the B.S. degree in mathematics and the B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Cambridge, MA, USA, in 1980, 1980, 1981, and 1984, respectively. His research interests are in systems, optimization, communications, control, and operations research. He has coauthored four books and several journal papers in these areas.
He is currently a Clarence J. Lebel Professor with the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, MIT, where he serves as the director of the Laboratory for Information and Decision Systems. He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and holds honorary doctorates from the Université catholique de Louvain, Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium, and the Athens University of Economics and Business, Athens, Greece. Among other distinctions, he is a recipient of the ACM SIGMETRICS Achievement Award (2016) and the IEEE Control Systems Award (2018).