Sparse Distributed Memory Approach for Reinforcement Learning Driven Efficient Routing in Mobile Wireless Network System

In recent years, researchers have explored the applicability of Q-learning, a model-free reinforcement learning technology towards designing QoS-aware, resource-efficiency, and reliable routing techniquesin a dynamically changing network environment. However, Q-learning is based on tabular representation to characterize learned policies that frequently encounter a dimension disaster problem when introduced to the uncertain and dynamically changing network environment. In addition, the time required for agent learning in the training phase is too long, which makes it difficult for the agent to generalize the observation state efficiently. To this end, this paper attempts to overcome the overhead memory problems encountered in Q-learning-based routing techniques. In this paper, the study presents a novel memory-efficient intelligent routing mechanism based on adaptive Kanerva coding, which minimizes the storage cost required for storing large action and a state value. Unlike existing schemes, the proposed method optimizes memory requirements. Also, it enables better generalization by storing the learnable parameters of the function approximator present in the agent in a Kanerva-coding data structure. The Kanerva-coding is a sparse memory with distributed reading and writing mechanism which enables optimal compression and state abstractions for learning with fewer parameterized components making it highly memory efficient. The design and implementation of the proposed technique are done on the Anaconda tool. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed technique can adaptively adjust the routing policy according to the varying network environment to meet the transmission requirements of different services with low memory requirements.

@article{Vidyadhar2021,
  title     = {Sparse Distributed Memory Approach for Reinforcement Learning Driven Efficient Routing in Mobile Wireless Network System},
  journal   = {International Journal of Advanced Computer Science and Applications},
  volume    = {12},
  number    = {11},
  year      = {2021},
  publisher = {The Science and Information Organization},
  author    = {Varshini Vidyadhar and Nagaraj R and G Sudha},
  doi       = {10.14569/IJACSA.2021.0121117},
  url       = {https://doi.org/10.14569/IJACSA.2021.0121117}
}