A Survey on Modeling and Optimizing Multi-Objective Systems

Abstract

Many systems or applications have been developed for distributed environments with the goal of attaining multiple objectives in the face of environmental challenges such as high dynamics/hostility or severe resource constraints (e.g., energy or communications bandwidth). Often the multiple objectives are conflicting with each other, requiring optimal tradeoff analyses between the objectives. This paper is mainly concerned with how to model multiple objectives of a system and how to optimize their performance. We first conduct a comprehensive survey of the state-of-the-art modeling and solution techniques to solve multi-objective optimization problems. In addition, we discuss pros and cons of each modeling and optimization technique for in-depth understanding. Further, we classify existing approaches based on the types of objectives and investigate main problem domains, critical tradeoffs, and key techniques used in each class. We discuss the overall trends of the existing techniques in terms of application domains, objectives, and techniques. Further, we discuss challenging issues based on the inherent nature of multi-objective optimization problems. Finally, we suggest future work directions in terms of what critical design factors should be considered to design and analyze a system with multiple objectives.