Parallel algorithms for Bayesian indoor positioning systems

We present two parallel algorithms and their Unified Parallel C implementations for Bayesian indoor positioning systems. Our approaches are founded on Markov Chain Monte Carlo simulations. We evaluated two basic partitioning schemes: inter-chain partitioning which distributes entire Markov chains to different processors, and intra-chain which distributes a single chain across processors. Evaluations on a 16-node symmetric multiprocessor, a 4-node cluster comprising of quad processors, and a 16 single-processor-node cluster, suggest that for short chains intra-chain scales well on the first two platforms with speedups of up to 12. On the other hand, inter-chain gives speedups of 12 only for very long chains, sometimes of up to 60,000 iterations, on all three platforms. We used the LogGP model to analyze our algorithms and predict their performance. Model predictions for inter-chain are within 5% of the actual execution time, while for intra-chain they are 7%-25% less due to load imbalance not captured in the model.