Delay optimality in switched networks

We consider a switched (queueing) network in which there are constraints on which queues may be served simultaneously; such networks have been used to effectively model input-queued switches and wireless networks. The scheduling policy for such a network specifies which queues to serve at any point in time, based on the current state or past history of the system. In the main result, we provide a new class of online scheduling policies that achieve optimal average queue-size scaling for a class of switched networks including input-queued switches. In particular, it establishes the validity of a conjecture about optimal queue-size scaling for input-queued switches.

Speaker Bio: Yuan Zhong is a doctoral candidate in the Operations Research Center at MIT, under the supervision of Devavrat Shah and John Tsitsiklis. He has a BA degree in Mathematics from University of Cambridge, and a MA degree in Mathematics from California Institute of Technology. He is broadly interested in stochastic modeling and analysis, as well as their applications in various business and engineering domains.