G-NETWORKS AND THEIR APPLICATIONS TO MACHINE LEARNING, ENERGY PACKET NETWORKS AND ROUTING: INTRODUCTION TO THE SPECIAL ISSUE

This paper introduces a special issue of this journal (Probability in the Engineering and Informational Sciences) that is devoted to G(elenbe)-Networks and their Applications. The special issue is based on revised versions of some of the papers that were presented at a workshop held in early January 2017 at the Seminaire Saint-Paul in Nice (France). It includes contributions in several research directions that followed from the introduction of the G-Network in the late 1980s. The papers present original theoretical developments, as well as applications of G-Networks to Machine Learning, to the performance optimization of energy systems via the novel Energy Packet Networks formalism for systems that operate with renewable and intermittent energy sources, and to packet network routing and Cloud management over the Internet. We introduce these contributions from the perspective of an overview of recent work based on G-Networks.