Lianbo Ma

Dr. Lianbo Ma

College of Software, Northeastern University, Shenyang 110819, China

Research Focus & Metrics

Academic Career Length

13Years (2014-Present)

(Calculated once Scilit publication data is synced: current year − year of first publication + 1)

Representative Publications

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21 January 2021 in IEEE Transactions on Cybernetics
Verified
Journal Article
Closed access
LMLianbo Ma
Lianbo Ma
MHMin Huang
Min Huang
Shengxiang YangShengxiang Yang
Shengxiang Yang
RWRui Wang
Rui Wang
XWXingwei Wang
Xingwei Wang
This article proposes an adaptive localized decision variable analysis approach under the decomposition-based framework to solve the large-scale multiobjective and many-objective optimization problems (MaOPs). Its main idea is to incorporate the guidance of reference vectors into the control variable analysis and optimize the decision variables using an adaptive strategy. Especially, in the control variable analysis, for each search direction, the convergence relevance degree of each decision variable is measured by a projection-based detection method. In the decision variable optimization, the grouped decision variables are optimized with an adaptive scalarization strategy, which is able to adaptively balance the convergence and diversity of the solutions in the objective space. The proposed algorithm is evaluated with a suite of test problems with 2–10 objectives and 200–1000 variables. Experimental results validate the effectiveness and efficiency of the proposed algorithm on the large-scale multiobjective and MaOPs.

22 January 2020 in IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics: Systems
Verified
Journal Article
Closed access
LMLianbo Ma
Lianbo Ma
SCShi Cheng
Shi Cheng
YSYuhui Shi
Yuhui Shi
In brain storm optimization (BSO), the convergent operation utilizes a clustering strategy to group the population into multiple clusters, and the divergent operation uses this cluster information to generate new individuals. However, this mechanism is inefficient to regulate the exploration and exploitation search. This article first analyzes the main factors that influence the performance of BSO and then proposes an orthogonal learning framework to improve its learning mechanism. In this framework, two orthogonal design (OD) engines (i.e., exploration OD engine and exploitation OD engine) are introduced to discover and utilize useful search experiences for performance improvements. In addition, a pool of auxiliary transmission vectors with different features is maintained and their biases are also balanced by the OD decision mechanism. Finally, the proposed algorithm is verified on a set of benchmarks and is adopted to resolve the quantitative association rule mining problem considering the support, confidence, comprehensibility, and netconf. The experimental results show that the proposed approach is very powerful in optimizing complex functions. It not only outperforms previous versions of the BSO algorithm but also outperforms several famous OD-based algorithms.

14 July 2021 in IEEE Transactions on Cybernetics
Verified
Journal Article
Closed access
LMLianbo Ma
Lianbo Ma
NLNan Li
Nan Li
YGYinan Guo
Yinan Guo
XWXingwei Wang
Xingwei Wang
Shengxiang YangShengxiang Yang
Shengxiang Yang
HZHao Zhang
Hao Zhang
The performance of decomposition-based algorithms is sensitive to the Pareto front shapes since their reference vectors preset in advance are not always adaptable to various problem characteristics with no a priori knowledge. For this issue, this article proposes an adaptive reference vector reinforcement learning (RVRL) approach to decomposition-based algorithms for industrial copper burdening optimization. The proposed approach involves two main operations, that is: 1) a reinforcement learning (RL) operation and 2) a reference point sampling operation. Given the fact that the states of reference vectors interact with the landscape environment (quite often), the RL operation treats the reference vector adaption process as an RL task, where each reference vector learns from the environmental feedback and selects optimal actions for gradually fitting the problem characteristics. Accordingly, the reference point sampling operation uses estimation-of-distribution learning models to sample new reference points. Finally, the resultant algorithm is applied to handle the proposed industrial copper burdening problem. For this problem, an adaptive penalty function and a soft constraint-based relaxing approach are used to handle complex constraints. Experimental results on both benchmark problems and real-world instances verify the competitiveness and effectiveness of the proposed algorithm.

8 March 2021 in IEEE Transactions on Mobile Computing
Verified
Journal Article
Closed access
LMLianbo Ma
Lianbo Ma
XWXueyi Wang
Xueyi Wang
XWXingwei Wang
Xingwei Wang
LWLiang Wang
Liang Wang
YSYing Shi
Ying Shi
MHMin Huang
Min Huang
Mobile edge computing (MEC) emerges as an appealing paradigm to provide time-sensitive computing services for industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) applications. How to guarantee truthfulness and budget-balance under locality constraints is an important issue to the allocation and pricing design of the MEC system. In this paper, we propose a truthful combinatorial double auction mechanism, which integrates the padding concept and the efficient pricing strategy to guarantee desirable properties in constrained MEC environments. This mechanism takes into account the locality characteristics of the MEC systems, where mobile devices (MDs) only offload tasks to edge servers (ESs) in the proximity with various requirements, and ESs only serve their neighboring MDs with limited resources. To be specific, for allocation, a linear programming (LP)-based padding method is used to obtain the near-optimal solution in the polynomial time. For pricing, a critical-value-based pricing strategy and a VCG-based pricing strategy are designed for MDs and ESs to achieve truthfulness and budget-balance. Our theoretical analysis confirms that TCDA is able to hold a set of desirable economic properties, including truthfulness, individual rationality, and budget-balance. Furthermore, simulation results validate the theoretical analysis, and verify the effectiveness and efficiency of TCDA.

15 September 2023 in ACM Computing Surveys
Verified
Journal Article
Open access
NLNan Li
Nan Li
LMLianbo Ma
Lianbo Ma
YGYu Guo
Yu Guo
Bing XueBing Xue
Bing Xue
MZMengjie Zhang
Mengjie Zhang
YJYaochu Jin
Yaochu Jin
Over recent years, there has been a rapid development of deep learning (DL) in both industry and academia fields. However, finding the optimal hyperparameters of a DL model often needs high computational cost and human expertise. To mitigate the above issue, evolutionary computation (EC) as a powerful heuristic search approach has shown significant merits in the automated design of DL models, so-called evolutionary deep learning (EDL). This article aims to analyze EDL from the perspective of automated machine learning (AutoML). Specifically, we first illuminate EDL from DL and EC and regard EDL as an optimization problem. According to the DL pipeline, we systematically introduce EDL methods ranging from data preparation, model generation, to model deployment with a new taxonomy (i.e., what and how to evolve/optimize), and focus on the discussions of solution representation and search paradigm in handling the optimization problem by EC. Finally, key applications, open issues, and potentially promising lines of future research are suggested. This survey has reviewed recent developments of EDL and offers insightful guidelines for the development of EDL.

9 January 2023 in IEEE Transactions on Mobile Computing
Verified
Journal Article
Closed access
WWWenliang Wu
Wenliang Wu
YWYu Wang
Yu Wang
XWXingwei Wang
Xingwei Wang
WXWeiqiang Xu
Weiqiang Xu
FLFuliang Li
Fuliang Li
LMLianbo Ma
Lianbo Ma
Traditional routing algorithms cannot dynamically change network environments due to the limited information for routing decisions. Meanwhile, they are prone to performance bottlenecks in the face of increasingly complex business requirements. Some approaches, such as deep reinforcement learning (DRL) have been proposed to address the routing problems. However, they hardly utilize the information about the network environment fully. The Knowledge Defined Networking (KDN) architecture inspires us to develop new learning mechanisms adapted to the dynamic characteristics of the network topology. In this paper, we propose an effective scheme to solve the routing optimization problem by adding a graph neural network (GNN) structure to DRL, called Message Passing Deep Reinforcement Learning (MPDRL). MPDRL uses the characteristics of GNN to interact with the network topology environment and extracts exploitable knowledge through the message passing process of information between links in the topology. The goal is to achieve the load balance of network traffic and improve network performance. We have conducted experiments on three Internet Service Provider (ISP) network topologies. The evaluation results show that MPDRL obtains better network performance than the baseline algorithms.