We develop an analytical framework for distribution of popular content in an information centric network (ICN) that is comprised of access ICNs, a transit ICN, and a content provider. Using a generalized Zipf distribution to model content popularity, we devise a game theoretic approach to jointly determine caching and pricing strategies in such an ICN. Under the assumption that the caching cost of the access and transit ICNs is inversely proportional to popularity, we show that the Nash caching strategies in the ICN are 0-1 (all or nothing) strategies. Further, for the case of symmetric access ICNs, we show that the Nash equilibrium is unique and the caching policy (0 or 1) is determined by a threshold on the popularity of the content (reflected by the Zipf probability metric), i.e., all content more popular than the threshold value is cached. We also show that the resulting threshold of the Access and Transit ICNs, as well as all prices can be obtained by a decomposition of the joint caching and pricing problem into two independent caching only and pricing only problems.

Advanced Persistent Threat (APT) attackers apply multiple sophisticated methods to continuously and stealthily steal information from the targeted cloud storage systems and can even induce the storage system to apply a specific defense strategy and attack it accordingly. In this paper, the interactions between an APT attacker and a defender allocating their Central Processing Units (CPUs) over multiple storage devices in a cloud storage system are formulated as a Colonel Blotto game. The Nash equilibria (NEs) of the CPU allocation game are derived for both symmetric and asymmetric CPUs between the APT attacker and the defender to evaluate how the limited CPU resources, the data storage size and the number of storage devices impact the expected data protection level and the utility of the cloud storage system. A CPU allocation scheme based on “hotbooting” policy hill-climbing (PHC) that exploits the experiences in similar scenarios to initialize the quality values to accelerate the learning speed is proposed for the defender to achieve the optimal APT defense performance in the dynamic game without being aware of the APT attack model and the data storage model. A hotbooting deep Q-network (DQN)-based CPU allocation scheme further improves the APT detection performance for the case with a large number of CPUs and storage devices. Simulation results show that our proposed reinforcement learning based CPU allocation can improve both the data protection level and the utility of the cloud storage system compared with the Q-learning based CPU allocation against APTs.

Learning the topology of a graph from available data is of great interest in many emerging applications. Some examples are social networks, internet of things networks (intelligent IoT and industrial IoT), biological connection networks, sensor networks and traffic network patterns. In this paper, a graph topology inference approach is proposed to learn the underlying graph structure from a given set of noisy multi-variate observations, which are modeled as graph signals generated from a Gaussian Markov Random Field (GMRF) process. A factor analysis model is applied to represent the graph signals in a latent space where the basis is related to the underlying graph structure. An optimal graph filter is also developed to recover the graph signals from noisy observations. In the final step, an optimization problem is proposed to learn the underlying graph topology from the recovered signals. Moreover, a fast algorithm employing the proximal point method has been proposed to solve the problem efficiently. Experimental results employing both synthetic and real data show the effectiveness of the proposed method in recovering the signals and inferring the underlying graph.

A correction to this paper has been published: https://doi.org/10.1007/s43926-021-00013-8

We study the impact of end-user behavior on user/network association in a HetNet with multiple service providers (SPs). Specifically, we consider the uncertainty in the service guarantees offered by SPs in a HetNet, and use Prospect Theory (PT) to model end-user decision making. We formulate user association with SPs as a multiple leader Stackelberg game where each SP offers a data rate to each user with a certain service guarantee and at a certain price, while the user chooses the best offer among multiple such bids. Using the specific example of a HetNet with one cellular base station and one WiFi access point, we show that when the end users underestimate the advertised service guarantees, then some of the Nash Equilibrium strategies under the Expected Utility Theory (EUT) model become infeasible under PT, and for those Nash Equilibria that are feasible under both EUT and PT, the resulting user utilities are less under PT. We propose resource allocation and bidding mechanisms for the SPs to mitigate these effects.

We develop an analytical framework for distribution of popular content in an Information Centric Network (ICN) that comprises of Access ICNs, a Transit ICN and a Content Provider. Using a generalized Zipf distribution to model content popularity, we devise a game theoretic approach to jointly determine caching and pricing strategies in such an ICN. Under the assumption that the caching cost of the access and transit ICNs is inversely proportional to popularity, we show that the Nash caching strategies in the ICN are 0-1 (all or nothing) strategies. Further, for the case of symmetric Access ICNs, we show that the Nash equilibrium is unique and the caching policy (0 or 1) is determined by a threshold on the popularity of the content (reflected by the Zipf probability metric), i.e., all content more popular than the threshold value is cached. We also show that the resulting threshold of the Access and Transit ICNs, as well as all prices can be obtained by a decomposition of the joint caching and pricing problem into two independent caching only and pricing only problems.