Section: Research Program

Methodology of telecommunication algorithm evaluation

We develop our performance evaluation tools towards deterministic performance and probabilistic performance. Our tools range from mathematical analysis to simulation and real life experiment of telecommunication algorithms.

One cannot design good algorithms without good evaluation models. Hipercom project team has an historically strong experience in performance evaluation of telecommunication systems, notably when they have multiple access media. We consider two main methodologies:

• Deterministic performance analysis,

• Probabilistic performance analysis

In the deterministic analysis, the evaluation consists in identifying and quantifying the worst case scenario for an algorithm in a given context. For example to evaluate an end-to-end delay. Mathematically it consists into handling a (max,+) algebra. Since such algebra is not commutative, the complexity of the evaluation of an end-to-end delay frequently grows exponentially with the number of constraints. Therefore the main issue in the deterministic evaluation of performance is to find bounds easier to compute in order to have practical results in realistic situations.

In the probabilistic analysis of performance, one evaluate the behavior of an algorithm under a set of parameters that follows a stochastic model. For example traffic may be randomly generated, nodes may move randomly on a map. The pionneer works in this area come from Knuth (1973) who has systematized this branch. In the domain of telecommunication, the domain has started a significant rise with the appearance of the problematic of collision resolution in a multiple access medium. With the rise of wireless communication, new interesting problems have been investigated.

The analysis of algorithm can rely on analytical methodology which provides the better insight but is practical in very simplistic models. Simulation tools can be used to refine results in more complicated models. At the end of the line, we proceed with real life experiments. To simplify, experiments check the algorithms with 10 nodes in maximum, simulations with 100 nodes maximum, analytical tools with more 1,000 nodes, so that the full range of applicability of the algorithms is investigated.