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The time-critical industrial applications pose intense demands for enabling long-distance deterministic networks. However, previous priority-based and weight-based scheduling methods focus on probabilistically reducing average delay, which ignores strictly guaranteeing task-oriented on-time packet delivery with bounded worst-case delay and jitter. This paper proposes a new Programmable Cycle-Specified Queue (PCSQ) for long-distance industrial deterministic packet scheduling. By implementing the first high-precision rotation dequeuing, PCSQ enables microsecond-level time slot resource reservation (noted as T) and especially jitter control of up to 2T. Then, we propose the cycle tags computation to approximate cyclic scheduling algorithms, which allows packets to actively pick and lock their favorite queue in a sequence of nodes. Accordingly, PCSQ can precisely defer packets to any desired time. Further, the queue coordination and cycle mapping mechanisms are delicately designed to solve the cycle-queue mismatch problem. Evaluation results show that PCSQ can schedule tens of thousands of time-sensitive flows and strictly guarantee $ms$-level delay and us-level jitter.

Booming time-critical services, such as automated manufacturing and remote operations, stipulate increasing demands for facilitating large-scale Industrial Internet of Things (IoT). Recently, a cycle specified queuing and forwarding (CSQF) scheme has been advocated to enhance the Ethernet. However, CSQF only outlines a foundational equipment-level primitive, while how to attain network-wide flow scheduling is not yet determined. Prior endeavors primarily focus on the range of a local area, rendering them unsuitable for long-distance factory interconnection. This paper devises the cycle tags planning (CTP) mechanism, the first integer programming model for the CSQF, which makes the CSQF practical for efficient global flow scheduling. In the CTP model, the per-hop cycle alignment problem is solved by decoupling the long-distance link delay from cyclic queuing time. To avoid queue overflows, we discretize the underlying network resources into cycle-related queue resource blocks and detail the core constraints within multiple periods. Then, two heuristic algorithms named flow offset and cycle shift (FO-CS) and Tabu FO-CS are designed to calculate the flows' cycle tags and maximize the number of schedulable flows, respectively. Evaluation results show that FO-CS increases the number of scheduled flows by 31.2%. The Tabu FO-CS algorithm can schedule 94.45% of flows at the level of 2000 flows.

Generative Artificial Intelligence (GAI) is taking the world by storm with its unparalleled content creation ability. Large Language Models (LLMs) are at the forefront of this movement. However, the significant resource demands of LLMs often require cloud hosting, which raises issues regarding privacy, latency, and usage limitations. Although edge intelligence has long been utilized to solve these challenges by enabling real-time AI computation on ubiquitous edge resources close to data sources, most research has focused on traditional AI models and has left a gap in addressing the unique characteristics of LLM inference, such as considerable model size, auto-regressive processes, and self-attention mechanisms. In this paper, we present an edge intelligence optimization problem tailored for LLM inference. Specifically, with the deployment of the batching technique and model quantization on resource-limited edge devices, we formulate an inference model for transformer decoder-based LLMs. Furthermore, our approach aims to maximize the inference throughput via batch scheduling and joint allocation of communication and computation resources, while also considering edge resource constraints and varying user requirements of latency and accuracy. To address this NP-hard problem, we develop an optimal Depth-First Tree-Searching algorithm with online tree-Pruning (DFTSP) that operates within a feasible time complexity. Simulation results indicate that DFTSP surpasses other batching benchmarks in throughput across diverse user settings and quantization techniques, and it reduces time complexity by over 45% compared to the brute-force searching method.

The future networks pose intense demands for intelligent and customized designs to cope with the surging network scale, dynamically time-varying environments, diverse user requirements, and complicated manual configuration. However, traditional rule-based solutions heavily rely on human efforts and expertise, while data-driven intelligent algorithms still lack interpretability and generalization. In this paper, we propose the AIGN (AI-Generated Network), a novel intention-driven paradigm for network design, which allows operators to quickly generate a variety of customized network solutions and achieve expert-free problem optimization. Driven by the diffusion model-based learning approach, AIGN has great potential to learn the reward-maximizing trajectories, automatically satisfy multiple constraints, adapt to different objectives and scenarios, or even intelligently create novel designs and mechanisms unseen in existing network environments. Finally, we conduct a use case to demonstrate that AIGN can effectively guide the design of transmit power allocation in digital twin-based access networks., Comment: 7 pages, 3 figures

Mobile edge computing (MEC) is proposed to boost high-efficient and time-sensitive 5G applications. However, the "microburst" may occur even in lightly-loaded scenarios, which leads to the indeterministic service latency (i.e., unpredictable delay or delay variation), hence hindering the deployment of MEC. Deterministic IP networking (DIP) has been proposed that can provide bounds on latency, and high reliability in the large-scale networks. Nevertheless, the direct migration of DIP into the MEC network is non-trivial owing to its original design for the Ethernet with homogeneous devices. Meanwhile, DIP also faces the challenges on the network throughput and scheduling flexibility. In this paper, we delve into the adoption of DIP for the MEC networks and some of the relevant aspects. A deterministic MEC (D-MEC) network is proposed to deliver the deterministic service (i.e., providing the MEC service with bounded service latency). In the D-MEC network, two mechanisms, including the cycle mapping and cycle shifting, are designed to enable: (i) seamless and deterministic transmission with heterogeneous underlaid resources; and (ii) traffic shaping on the edges to improve the resource utilization. We also formulate a joint configuration to maximize the network throughput with deterministic QoS guarantees. Extensive simulations verify that the proposed D-MEC network can achieve a deterministic MEC service, even in the highly-loaded scenarios.