Related papers: Whittle Index Learning Algorithms for Restless Ban…
We study the Whittle index learning algorithm for restless multi-armed bandits (RMAB). We first present Q-learning algorithm and its variants -- speedy Q-learning (SQL), generalized speedy Q-learning (GSQL) and phase Q-learning (PhaseQL).…
A novel reinforcement learning algorithm is introduced for multiarmed restless bandits with average reward, using the paradigms of Q-learning and Whittle index. Specifically, we leverage the structure of the Whittle index policy to reduce…
Whittle index policy is a heuristic to the intractable restless multi-armed bandits (RMAB) problem. Although it is provably asymptotically optimal, finding Whittle indices remains difficult. In this paper, we present Neural-Q-Whittle, a…
The Whittle index for restless bandits (two-action semi-Markov decision processes) provides an intuitively appealing optimal policy for controlling a single generic project that can be active (engaged) or passive (rested) at each decision…
The Whittle index policy is a heuristic that has shown remarkably good performance (with guaranteed asymptotic optimality) when applied to the class of problems known as Restless Multi-Armed Bandit Problems (RMABPs). In this paper we…
Restless bandits are a class of sequential resource allocation problems concerned with allocating one or more resources among several alternative processes where the evolution of the process depends on the resource allocated to them. Such…
We consider the restless bandits with general state space under partial observability with two observational models: first, the state of each bandit is not observable at all, and second, the state of each bandit is observable only if it is…
The restless multi-armed bandit (RMAB) framework is a popular model with applications across a wide variety of fields. However, its solution is hindered by the exponentially growing state space (with respect to the number of arms) and the…
Whittle index is a generalization of Gittins index that provides very efficient allocation rules for restless multi-armed bandits. In this work, we develop an algorithm to test the indexability and compute the Whittle indices of any…
Multi-action restless multi-armed bandits (RMABs) are a powerful framework for constrained resource allocation in which $N$ independent processes are managed. However, previous work only study the offline setting where problem dynamics are…
We consider a class of restless bandit problems that finds a broad application area in reinforcement learning and stochastic optimization. We consider $N$ independent discrete-time Markov processes, each of which had two possible states: 1…
We consider finite state restless multi-armed bandit problem. The decision maker can act on M bandits out of N bandits in each time step. The play of arm (active arm) yields state dependent rewards based on action and when the arm is not…
This work presents the first finite-time analysis for the last-iterate convergence of average-reward $Q$-learning with an asynchronous implementation. A key feature of the algorithm we study is the use of adaptive stepsizes, which serve as…
We propose a reinforcement learning based scheduling framework for Restless Multi-Armed Bandit (RMAB) problems, centred on a Whittle Index Q-Learning policy with Upper Confidence Bound (UCB) exploration, referred to as WIQL-UCB. Unlike…
Whittle index policy is a powerful tool to obtain asymptotically optimal solutions for the notoriously intractable problem of restless bandits. However, finding the Whittle indices remains a difficult problem for many practical restless…
We consider a class of restless multi-armed bandit problems (RMBP) that arises in dynamic multichannel access, user/server scheduling, and optimal activation in multi-agent systems. For this class of RMBP, we establish the indexability and…
We study the asymptotic optimal control of multi-class restless bandits. A restless bandit is a controllable stochastic process whose state evolution depends on whether or not the bandit is made active. Since finding the optimal control is…
Restless multi-armed bandits (RMABs) extend multi-armed bandits to allow for stateful arms, where the state of each arm evolves restlessly with different transitions depending on whether that arm is pulled. Solving RMABs requires…
Q-learning has long been one of the most popular reinforcement learning algorithms, and theoretical analysis of Q-learning has been an active research topic for decades. Although researches on asymptotic convergence analysis of Q-learning…
This paper develops a novel control-theoretic framework to analyze the non-asymptotic convergence of Q-learning. We show that the dynamics of asynchronous Q-learning with a constant step-size can be naturally formulated as a discrete-time…