Online Resource Allocation with Stochastic Resource Consumption

Understand

We consider an online resource allocation problem where multiple resources, each with an individual initial capacity, are available to serve random requests arriving sequentially over multiple discrete time periods.

• At each time period, one request arrives and its associated reward and size are drawn independently from a known distribution that could be resource-dependent.
• Upon its arrival and revealing itself, an online decision has to be made on whether or not to accept the request.
• If accepted, another online decision should also be made to specify on assigning which resource to serve the request, then a certain amount of the resource equal to the size of the request will be consumed and a reward will be collected.