RSRG Group Meeting

Complex large-scale networks are all around us: wireless networks and cloud services, power grids and electricity markets, transportation systems and the newly introduced ride-sharing mechanisms, etc. I will give an overview of my current research, which aims to develop new mathematical tools to analyze complex networks and their performance in the presence of uncertainty. I will focus on rare events analysis and large deviations techniques, which in many instances are crucial to correctly assess the network performance and the risk of failures.

During the talk, I will touch upon two main application areas: random-access protocols for wireless networks and power grids with high penetration of renewables. I will first prove, combining results from statistical physics, graph theory, and queueing theory, that rare transitions between transmitting configurations are the root cause for poor delay performance of these wireless networks and propose strategies to solve this issue. Then, I will present some novel insights about the interplay between renewable energy sources and power grid reliability. Rare stochastic fluctuations of the power injections, amplified by correlations and network effects, can cause failures and I will discuss various solutions we devised to mitigate their impact and non-local propagation.