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0808.2515
Provably efficient instanton search algorithm for LP decoding of LDPC codes over the BSC
cs.IT cond-mat.stat-mech math.IT
We consider Linear Programming (LP) decoding of a fixed Low-Density Parity-Check (LDPC) code over the Binary Symmetric Channel (BSC). The LP decoder fails when it outputs a pseudo-codeword which is not a codeword. We design an efficient algorithm termed the Instanton Search Algorithm (ISA) which, given a random input, generates a set of flips called the BSC-instanton. We prove that: (a) the LP decoder fails for any set of flips with support vector including an instanton; (b) for any input, the algorithm outputs an instanton in the number of steps upper-bounded by twice the number of flips in the input. Repeated sufficient number of times, the ISA outcomes the number of unique instantons of different sizes.
0808.2530
Fair Scheduling in Networks Through Packet Election
cs.IT math.IT
We consider the problem of designing a fair scheduling algorithm for discrete-time constrained queuing networks. Each queue has dedicated exogenous packet arrivals. There are constraints on which queues can be served simultaneously. This model effectively describes important special instances like network switches, interference in wireless networks, bandwidth sharing for congestion control and traffic scheduling in road roundabouts. Fair scheduling is required because it provides isolation to different traffic flows; isolation makes the system more robust and enables providing quality of service. Existing work on fairness for constrained networks concentrates on flow based fairness. As a main result, we describe a notion of packet based fairness by establishing an analogy with the ranked election problem: packets are voters, schedules are candidates and each packet ranks the schedules based on its priorities. We then obtain a scheduling algorithm that achieves the described notion of fairness by drawing upon the seminal work of Goodman and Markowitz (1952). This yields the familiar Maximum Weight (MW) style algorithm. As another important result we prove that algorithm obtained is throughput optimal. There is no reason a priori why this should be true, and the proof requires non-traditional methods.
0808.2548
Negative Beta Encoder
cs.IT math.IT
A new class of analog-to-digital (A/D) and digital-to-analog (D/A) converters using a flaky quantiser, called the $\beta$-encoder, has been shown to have exponential bit rate accuracy while possessing a self-correction property for fluctuations of the amplifier factor $\beta$ and the quantiser threshold $\nu$. The probabilistic behavior of such a flaky quantiser is explained as the deterministic dynamics of the multi-valued R\'enyi map. That is, a sample $x$ is always confined to a contracted subinterval while successive approximations of $x$ are performed using $\beta$-expansion even if $\nu$ may vary at each iteration. This viewpoint enables us to get the decoded sample, which is equal to the midpoint of the subinterval, and its associated characteristic equation for recovering $\beta$ which improves the quantisation error by more than $3{dB}$ when $\beta>1.5$. The invariant subinterval under the R\'enyi map shows that $\nu$ should be set to around the midpoint of its associated greedy and lazy values. %in terms of its quantisation MSE (mean square error). Furthermore, a new A/D converter is introduced called the negative $\beta$-encoder, which further improves the quantisation error of the $\beta$-encoder. A two-state Markov chain describing the $\beta$-encoder suggests that a negative eigenvalue of its associated transition probability matrix reduces the quantisation error.
0808.2562
Spectrum Sensing Algorithms for Cognitive Radio Based on Statistical Covariances
cs.IT math.IT
Spectrum sensing, i.e., detecting the presence of primary users in a licensed spectrum, is a fundamental problem in cognitive radio. Since the statistical covariances of received signal and noise are usually different, they can be used to differentiate the case where the primary user's signal is present from the case where there is only noise. In this paper, spectrum sensing algorithms are proposed based on the sample covariance matrix calculated from a limited number of received signal samples. Two test statistics are then extracted from the sample covariance matrix. A decision on the signal presence is made by comparing the two test statistics. Theoretical analysis for the proposed algorithms is given. Detection probability and associated threshold are found based on statistical theory. The methods do not need any information of the signal, the channel and noise power a priori. Also, no synchronization is needed. Simulations based on narrowband signals, captured digital television (DTV) signals and multiple antenna signals are presented to verify the methods.
0808.2659
Distributed Source Coding using Abelian Group Codes
cs.IT math.IT
In this work, we consider a distributed source coding problem with a joint distortion criterion depending on the sources and the reconstruction. This includes as a special case the problem of computing a function of the sources to within some distortion and also the classic Slepian-Wolf problem, Berger-Tung problem, Wyner-Ziv problem, Yeung-Berger problem and the Ahlswede-Korner-Wyner problem. While the prevalent trend in information theory has been to prove achievability results using Shannon's random coding arguments, using structured random codes offer rate gains over unstructured random codes for many problems. Motivated by this, we present a new achievable rate-distortion region for this problem for discrete memoryless sources based on "good" structured random nested codes built over abelian groups. We demonstrate rate gains for this problem over traditional coding schemes using random unstructured codes. For certain sources and distortion functions, the new rate region is strictly bigger than the Berger-Tung rate region, which has been the best known achievable rate region for this problem till now. Further, there is no known unstructured random coding scheme that achieves these rate gains. Achievable performance limits for single-user source coding using abelian group codes are also obtained as parts of the proof of the main coding theorem. As a corollary, we also prove that nested linear codes achieve the Shannon rate-distortion bound in the single-user setting.
0808.2670
Solving the apparent diversity-accuracy dilemma of recommender systems
cs.IR physics.soc-ph
Recommender systems use data on past user preferences to predict possible future likes and interests. A key challenge is that while the most useful individual recommendations are to be found among diverse niche objects, the most reliably accurate results are obtained by methods that recommend objects based on user or object similarity. In this paper we introduce a new algorithm specifically to address the challenge of diversity and show how it can be used to resolve this apparent dilemma when combined in an elegant hybrid with an accuracy-focused algorithm. By tuning the hybrid appropriately we are able to obtain, without relying on any semantic or context-specific information, simultaneous gains in both accuracy and diversity of recommendations.
0808.2703
Low-Signal-Energy Asymptotics of Capacity and Mutual Information for the Discrete-Time Poisson Channel
cs.IT math.IT
The first terms of the low-signal-energy asymptotics for the mutual information in the discrete-time Poisson channel are derived and compared to an asymptotic expression of the capacity. In the presence of non-zero additive noise (either Poisson or geometric), the mutual information is concave at zero signal-energy and the minimum energy per bit is not attained at zero capacity. Fixed signal constellations which scale with the signal energy do not attain the minimum energy per bit. The minimum energy per bit is zero when additive Poisson noise is present and $\ew\log 2$ when additive geometric noise of mean $\ew$ is present.
0808.2833
Efficient tests for equivalence of hidden Markov processes and quantum random walks
cs.IT math.IT
While two hidden Markov process (HMP) resp. quantum random walk (QRW) parametrizations can differ from one another, the stochastic processes arising from them can be equivalent. Here a polynomial-time algorithm is presented which can determine equivalence of two HMP parametrizations $\cM_1,\cM_2$ resp. two QRW parametrizations $\cQ_1,\cQ_2$ in time $O(|\S|\max(N_1,N_2)^{4})$, where $N_1,N_2$ are the number of hidden states in $\cM_1,\cM_2$ resp. the dimension of the state spaces associated with $\cQ_1,\cQ_2$, and $\S$ is the set of output symbols. Previously available algorithms for testing equivalence of HMPs were exponential in the number of hidden states. In case of QRWs, algorithms for testing equivalence had not yet been presented. The core subroutines of this algorithm can also be used to efficiently test hidden Markov processes and quantum random walks for ergodicity.
0808.2837
List Decoding of Burst Errors
cs.IT cs.DM math.IT
A generalization of the Reiger bound is presented for the list decoding of burst errors. It is then shown that Reed-Solomon codes attain this bound.
0808.2904
Investigation of the Zipf-plot of the extinct Meroitic language
cs.CL
The ancient and extinct language Meroitic is investigated using Zipf's Law. In particular, since Meroitic is still undeciphered, the Zipf law analysis allows us to assess the quality of current texts and possible avenues for future investigation using statistical techniques.
0808.2931
Spatial planning with constraints on translational distances between geometric objects
cs.CG cs.RO
The main constraint on relative position of geometric objects, used in spatial planning for computing the C-space maps (for example, in robotics, CAD, and packaging), is the relative non-overlapping of objects. This is the simplest constraint in which the minimum translational distance between objects is greater than zero, or more generally, than some positive value. We present a technique, based on the Minkowski operations, for generating the translational C-space maps for spatial planning with more general and more complex constraints on the relative position of geometric objects, such as constraints on various types (not only on the minimum) of the translational distances between objects. The developed technique can also be used, respectively, for spatial planning with constraints on translational distances in a given direction, and rotational distances between geometric objects, as well as for spatial planning with given dynamic geometric situation of moving objects.
0808.2964
Estimating the Lengths of Memory Words
cs.IT math.IT
For a stationary stochastic process $\{X_n\}$ with values in some set $A$, a finite word $w \in A^K$ is called a memory word if the conditional probability of $X_0$ given the past is constant on the cylinder set defined by $X_{-K}^{-1}=w$. It is a called a minimal memory word if no proper suffix of $w$ is also a memory word. For example in a $K$-step Markov processes all words of length $K$ are memory words but not necessarily minimal. We consider the problem of determining the lengths of the longest minimal memory words and the shortest memory words of an unknown process $\{X_n\}$ based on sequentially observing the outputs of a single sample $\{\xi_1,\xi_2,...\xi_n\}$. We will give a universal estimator which converges almost surely to the length of the longest minimal memory word and show that no such universal estimator exists for the length of the shortest memory word. The alphabet $A$ may be finite or countable.
0808.2984
Building an interpretable fuzzy rule base from data using Orthogonal Least Squares Application to a depollution problem
cs.LG cs.AI
In many fields where human understanding plays a crucial role, such as bioprocesses, the capacity of extracting knowledge from data is of critical importance. Within this framework, fuzzy learning methods, if properly used, can greatly help human experts. Amongst these methods, the aim of orthogonal transformations, which have been proven to be mathematically robust, is to build rules from a set of training data and to select the most important ones by linear regression or rank revealing techniques. The OLS algorithm is a good representative of those methods. However, it was originally designed so that it only cared about numerical performance. Thus, we propose some modifications of the original method to take interpretability into account. After recalling the original algorithm, this paper presents the changes made to the original method, then discusses some results obtained from benchmark problems. Finally, the algorithm is applied to a real-world fault detection depollution problem.
0808.3003
Codes Associated with Orthogonal Groups and Power Moments of Kloosterman Sums
math.NT cs.IT math.IT
In this paper, we construct three binary linear codes $C(SO^{-}(2,q))$, $C(O^{-}(2,q))$, $C(SO^{-}(4,q))$, respectively associated with the orthogonal groups $SO^{-}(2,q)$, $O^{-}(2,q)$, $SO^{-}(4,q)$, with $q$ powers of two. Then we obtain recursive formulas for the power moments of Kloosterman and 2-dimensional Kloosterman sums in terms of the frequencies of weights in the codes. This is done via Pless power moment identity and by utilizing the explicit expressions of Gauss sums for the orthogonal groups. We emphasize that, when the recursive formulas for the power moments of Kloosterman sums are compared, the present one is computationally more effective than the previous one constructed from the special linear group $SL(2,q)$. We illustrate our results with some examples.
0808.3109
n-ary Fuzzy Logic and Neutrosophic Logic Operators
cs.AI
We extend Knuth's 16 Boolean binary logic operators to fuzzy logic and neutrosophic logic binary operators. Then we generalize them to n-ary fuzzy logic and neutrosophic logic operators using the smarandache codification of the Venn diagram and a defined vector neutrosophic law. In such way, new operators in neutrosophic logic/set/probability are built.
0808.3145
Approximate capacity of the two-way relay channel: A deterministic approach
cs.IT math.IT
We study the capacity of the full-duplex bidirectional (or two-way) relay channel with two nodes and one relay. The channels in the forward direction are assumed to be different (in general) than the channels in the backward direction, i.e. channel reciprocity is not assumed. We use the recently proposed deterministic approach to capture the essence of the problem and to determine a good transmission and relay strategy for the Gaussian channel. Depending on the ratio of the individual channel gains, we propose to use either a simple amplify-and-forward or a particular superposition coding strategy at the relay. We analyze the achievable rate region and show that the scheme achieves to within 3 bits the cut-set bound for all values of channel gains.
0808.3214
The discrete Fourier transform: A canonical basis of eigenfunctions
cs.IT cs.DM math.IT math.RT
The discrete Fourier transform (DFT) is an important operator which acts on the Hilbert space of complex valued functions on the ring Z/NZ. In the case where N=p is an odd prime number, we exhibit a canonical basis of eigenvectors for the DFT. The transition matrix from the standard basis to the canonical basis defines a novel transform which we call the "discrete oscillator transform" (DOT for short). Finally, we describe a fast algorithm for computing the DOT in certain cases.
0808.3230
Phase Transitions on Fixed Connected Graphs and Random Graphs in the Presence of Noise
math.OC cs.IT math.IT
In this paper, we study the phase transition behavior emerging from the interactions among multiple agents in the presence of noise. We propose a simple discrete-time model in which a group of non-mobile agents form either a fixed connected graph or a random graph process, and each agent, taking bipolar value either +1 or -1, updates its value according to its previous value and the noisy measurements of the values of the agents connected to it. We present proofs for the occurrence of the following phase transition behavior: At a noise level higher than some threshold, the system generates symmetric behavior (vapor or melt of magnetization) or disagreement; whereas at a noise level lower than the threshold, the system exhibits spontaneous symmetry breaking (solid or magnetization) or consensus. The threshold is found analytically. The phase transition occurs for any dimension. Finally, we demonstrate the phase transition behavior and all analytic results using simulations. This result may be found useful in the study of the collective behavior of complex systems under communication constraints.
0808.3231
Multi-Instance Multi-Label Learning
cs.LG cs.AI
In this paper, we propose the MIML (Multi-Instance Multi-Label learning) framework where an example is described by multiple instances and associated with multiple class labels. Compared to traditional learning frameworks, the MIML framework is more convenient and natural for representing complicated objects which have multiple semantic meanings. To learn from MIML examples, we propose the MimlBoost and MimlSvm algorithms based on a simple degeneration strategy, and experiments show that solving problems involving complicated objects with multiple semantic meanings in the MIML framework can lead to good performance. Considering that the degeneration process may lose information, we propose the D-MimlSvm algorithm which tackles MIML problems directly in a regularization framework. Moreover, we show that even when we do not have access to the real objects and thus cannot capture more information from real objects by using the MIML representation, MIML is still useful. We propose the InsDif and SubCod algorithms. InsDif works by transforming single-instances into the MIML representation for learning, while SubCod works by transforming single-label examples into the MIML representation for learning. Experiments show that in some tasks they are able to achieve better performance than learning the single-instances or single-label examples directly.
0808.3281
On the diagonalization of the discrete Fourier transform
cs.IT cs.DM math.IT math.RT
The discrete Fourier transform (DFT) is an important operator which acts on the Hilbert space of complex valued functions on the ring Z/NZ. In the case where N=p is an odd prime number, we exhibit a canonical basis of eigenvectors for the DFT. The transition matrix from the standard basis to the canonical basis defines a novel transform which we call the discrete oscillator transform (DOT for short). Finally, we describe a fast algorithm for computing the discrete oscillator transform in certain cases.
0808.3296
Confirmation Bias and the Open Access Advantage: Some Methodological Suggestions for the Davis Citation Study
cs.DL cs.DB
Davis (2008) analyzes citations from 2004-2007 in 11 biomedical journals. 15% of authors paid to make them Open Access (OA). The outcome is a significant OA citation Advantage, but a small one (21%). The author infers that the OA advantage has been shrinking yearly, but the data suggest the opposite. Further analyses are necessary: (1) Not just author-choice (paid) OA but Free OA self-archiving needs to be taken into account rather than being counted as non-OA. (2) proportion of OA articles per journal per year needs to be reported and taken into account. (3) The Journal Impact Factor and the relation between the size of the OA Advantage article 'citation-bracket' need to be taken into account. (4) The sample-size for the highest-impact, largest-sample journal analyzed, PNAS, is restricted and excluded from some of the analyses. The full PNAS dataset is needed. (5) The interaction between OA and time, 2004-2007, is based on retrospective data from a June 2008 total cumulative citation count. The dates of both the cited articles and the citing articles need to be taken into account. The author proposes that author self-selection bias for is the primary cause of the observed OA Advantage, but this study does not test this or of any of the other potential causal factors. The author suggests that paid OA is not worth the cost, per extra citation. But with OA self-archiving both the OA and the extra citations are free.
0808.3418
Jamming in Fixed-Rate Wireless Systems with Power Constraints - Part II: Parallel Slow Fading Channels
cs.IT cs.CR math.IT
This is the second part of a two-part paper that studies the problem of jamming in a fixed-rate transmission system with fading. In the first part, we studied the scenario with a fast fading channel, and found Nash equilibria of mixed strategies for short term power constraints, and for average power constraints with and without channel state information (CSI) feedback. We also solved the equally important maximin and minimax problems with pure strategies. Whenever we dealt with average power constraints, we decomposed the problem into two levels of power control, which we solved individually. In this second part of the paper, we study the scenario with a parallel, slow fading channel, which usually models multi-carrier transmissions, such as OFDM. Although the framework is similar as the one in Part I \cite{myself3}, dealing with the slow fading requires more intricate techniques. Unlike in the fast fading scenario, where the frames supporting the transmission of the codewords were equivalent and completely characterized by the channel statistics, in our present scenario the frames are unique, and characterized by a specific set of channel realizations. This leads to more involved inter-frame power allocation strategies, and in some cases even to the need for a third level of power control. We also show that for parallel slow fading channels, the CSI feedback helps in the battle against jamming, as evidenced by the significant degradation to system performance when CSI is not sent back. We expect this degradation to decrease as the number of parallel channels $M$ increases, until it becomes marginal for $M\to \infty$ (which can be considered as the case in Part I).
0808.3431
Jamming in Fixed-Rate Wireless Systems with Power Constraints - Part I: Fast Fading Channels
cs.IT cs.CR math.IT
This is the first part of a two-part paper that studies the problem of jamming in a fixed-rate transmission system with fading. Both transmitter and jammer are subject to power constraints which can be enforced over each codeword short-term / peak) or over all codewords (long-term / average), hence generating different scenarios. All our jamming problems are formulated as zero-sum games, having the probability of outage as pay-off function and power control functions as strategies. The paper aims at providing a comprehensive coverage of these problems, under fast and slow fading, peak and average power constraints, pure and mixed strategies, with and without channel state information (CSI) feedback. In this first part we study the fast fading scenario. We first assume full CSI to be available to all parties. For peak power constraints, a Nash equilibrium of pure strategies is found. For average power constraints, both pure and mixed strategies are investigated. With pure strategies, we derive the optimal power control functions for both intra-frame and inter-frame power allocation. Maximin and minimax solutions are found and shown to be different, which implies the non-existence of a saddle point. In addition we provide alternative perspectives in obtaining the optimal intra-frame power control functions under the long-term power constraints. With mixed strategies, the Nash equilibrium is found by solving the generalized form of an older problem dating back to Bell and Cover \cite{bell}. Finally, we derive a Nash equilibrium of the game in which no CSI is fed back from the receiver. We show that full channel state information brings only a very slight improvement in the system's performance.
0808.3453
Codes on hypergraphs
cs.IT math.IT
Codes on hypergraphs are an extension of the well-studied family of codes on bipartite graphs. Bilu and Hoory (2004) constructed an explicit family of codes on regular t-partite hypergraphs whose minimum distance improves earlier estimates of the distance of bipartite-graph codes. They also suggested a decoding algorithm for such codes and estimated its error-correcting capability. In this paper we study two aspects of hypergraph codes. First, we compute the weight enumerators of several ensembles of such codes, establishing conditions under which they attain the Gilbert-Varshamov bound and deriving estimates of their distance. In particular, we show that this bound is attained by codes constructed on a fixed bipartite graph with a large spectral gap. We also suggest a new decoding algorithm of hypergraph codes that corrects a constant fraction of errors, improving upon the algorithm of Bilu and Hoory.
0808.3502
Cooperative Protocols for Random Access Networks
cs.IT math.IT
Cooperative communications have emerged as a significant concept to improve reliability and throughput in wireless systems. On the other hand, WLANs based on random access mechanism have become popular due to ease of deployment and low cost. Since cooperation introduces extra transmissions among the cooperating nodes and therefore increases the number of packet collisions, it is not clear whether there is any benefit from using physical layer cooperation under random access. In this paper, we develop new low complexity cooperative protocols for random access that outperform the conventional non cooperative scheme for a large range of signal-to-noise ratios.
0808.3504
On the Growth Rate of the Weight Distribution of Irregular Doubly-Generalized LDPC Codes
cs.IT math.IT
In this paper, an expression for the asymptotic growth rate of the number of small linear-weight codewords of irregular doubly-generalized LDPC (D-GLDPC) codes is derived. The expression is compact and generalizes existing results for LDPC and generalized LDPC (GLDPC) codes. Assuming that there exist check and variable nodes with minimum distance 2, it is shown that the growth rate depends only on these nodes. An important connection between this new result and the stability condition of D-GLDPC codes over the BEC is highlighted. Such a connection, previously observed for LDPC and GLDPC codes, is now extended to the case of D-GLDPC codes.
0808.3511
Conditional probability based significance tests for sequential patterns in multi-neuronal spike trains
q-bio.NC cond-mat.dis-nn cs.DB q-bio.QM stat.ME
In this paper we consider the problem of detecting statistically significant sequential patterns in multi-neuronal spike trains. These patterns are characterized by ordered sequences of spikes from different neurons with specific delays between spikes. We have previously proposed a data mining scheme to efficiently discover such patterns which are frequent in the sense that the count of non-overlapping occurrences of the pattern in the data stream is above a threshold. Here we propose a method to determine the statistical significance of these repeating patterns and to set the thresholds automatically. The novelty of our approach is that we use a compound null hypothesis that includes not only models of independent neurons but also models where neurons have weak dependencies. The strength of interaction among the neurons is represented in terms of certain pair-wise conditional probabilities. We specify our null hypothesis by putting an upper bound on all such conditional probabilities. We construct a probabilistic model that captures the counting process and use this to calculate the mean and variance of the count for any pattern. Using this we derive a test of significance for rejecting such a null hypothesis. This also allows us to rank-order different significant patterns. We illustrate the effectiveness of our approach using spike trains generated from a non-homogeneous Poisson model with embedded dependencies.
0808.3563
What It Feels Like To Hear Voices: Fond Memories of Julian Jaynes
cs.CL
Julian Jaynes's profound humanitarian convictions not only prevented him from going to war, but would have prevented him from ever kicking a dog. Yet according to his theory, not only are language-less dogs unconscious, but so too were the speaking/hearing Greeks in the Bicameral Era, when they heard gods' voices telling them what to do rather than thinking for themselves. I argue that to be conscious is to be able to feel, and that all mammals (and probably lower vertebrates and invertebrates too) feel, hence are conscious. Julian Jaynes's brilliant analysis of our concepts of consciousness nevertheless keeps inspiring ever more inquiry and insights into the age-old mind/body problem and its relation to cognition and language.
0808.3569
Offloading Cognition onto Cognitive Technology
cs.MA cs.CL
"Cognizing" (e.g., thinking, understanding, and knowing) is a mental state. Systems without mental states, such as cognitive technology, can sometimes contribute to human cognition, but that does not make them cognizers. Cognizers can offload some of their cognitive functions onto cognitive technology, thereby extending their performance capacity beyond the limits of their own brain power. Language itself is a form of cognitive technology that allows cognizers to offload some of their cognitive functions onto the brains of other cognizers. Language also extends cognizers' individual and joint performance powers, distributing the load through interactive and collaborative cognition. Reading, writing, print, telecommunications and computing further extend cognizers' capacities. And now the web, with its network of cognizers, digital databases and software agents, all accessible anytime, anywhere, has become our 'Cognitive Commons,' in which distributed cognizers and cognitive technology can interoperate globally with a speed, scope and degree of interactivity inconceivable through local individual cognition alone. And as with language, the cognitive tool par excellence, such technological changes are not merely instrumental and quantitative: they can have profound effects on how we think and encode information, on how we communicate with one another, on our mental states, and on our very nature.
0808.3572
Model-Based Compressive Sensing
cs.IT math.IT
Compressive sensing (CS) is an alternative to Shannon/Nyquist sampling for the acquisition of sparse or compressible signals that can be well approximated by just K << N elements from an N-dimensional basis. Instead of taking periodic samples, CS measures inner products with M < N random vectors and then recovers the signal via a sparsity-seeking optimization or greedy algorithm. Standard CS dictates that robust signal recovery is possible from M = O(K log(N/K)) measurements. It is possible to substantially decrease M without sacrificing robustness by leveraging more realistic signal models that go beyond simple sparsity and compressibility by including structural dependencies between the values and locations of the signal coefficients. This paper introduces a model-based CS theory that parallels the conventional theory and provides concrete guidelines on how to create model-based recovery algorithms with provable performance guarantees. A highlight is the introduction of a new class of structured compressible signals along with a new sufficient condition for robust structured compressible signal recovery that we dub the restricted amplification property, which is the natural counterpart to the restricted isometry property of conventional CS. Two examples integrate two relevant signal models - wavelet trees and block sparsity - into two state-of-the-art CS recovery algorithms and prove that they offer robust recovery from just M=O(K) measurements. Extensive numerical simulations demonstrate the validity and applicability of our new theory and algorithms.
0808.3616
Constructing word similarities in Meroitic as an aid to decipherment
cs.CL
Meroitic is the still undeciphered language of the ancient civilization of Kush. Over the years, various techniques for decipherment such as finding a bilingual text or cognates from modern or other ancient languages in the Sudan and surrounding areas has not been successful. Using techniques borrowed from information theory and natural language statistics, similar words are paired and attempts are made to use currently defined words to extract at least partial meaning from unknown words.
0808.3689
Optimal Power Allocation for Fading Channels in Cognitive Radio Networks: Ergodic Capacity and Outage Capacity
cs.IT math.IT
A cognitive radio network (CRN) is formed by either allowing the secondary users (SUs) in a secondary communication network (SCN) to opportunistically operate in the frequency bands originally allocated to a primary communication network (PCN) or by allowing SCN to coexist with the primary users (PUs) in PCN as long as the interference caused by SCN to each PU is properly regulated. In this paper, we consider the latter case, known as spectrum sharing, and study the optimal power allocation strategies to achieve the ergodic capacity and the outage capacity of the SU fading channel under different types of power constraints and fading channel models. In particular, besides the interference power constraint at PU, the transmit power constraint of SU is also considered. Since the transmit power and the interference power can be limited either by a peak or an average constraint, various combinations of power constraints are studied. It is shown that there is a capacity gain for SU under the average over the peak transmit/interference power constraint. It is also shown that fading for the channel between SU transmitter and PU receiver is usually a beneficial factor for enhancing the SU channel capacities.
0808.3712
Critique du rapport signal \`a bruit en communications num\'eriques -- Questioning the signal to noise ratio in digital communications
cs.IT math.IT math.PR math.RA
The signal to noise ratio, which plays such an important r\^ole in information theory, is shown to become pointless for digital communications where the demodulation is achieved via new fast estimation techniques. Operational calculus, differential algebra, noncommutative algebra and nonstandard analysis are the main mathematical tools.
0808.3726
Highly accurate recommendation algorithm based on high-order similarities
physics.data-an cs.IR
In this Letter, we introduce a modified collaborative filtering (MCF) algorithm, which has remarkably higher accuracy than the standard collaborative filtering. In the MCF, instead of the standard Pearson coefficient, the user-user similarities are obtained by a diffusion process. Furthermore, by considering the second order similarities, we design an effective algorithm that depresses the influence of mainstream preferences. The corresponding algorithmic accuracy, measured by the ranking score, is further improved by 24.9% in the optimal case. In addition, two significant criteria of algorithmic performance, diversity and popularity, are also taken into account. Numerical results show that the algorithm based on second order similarity can outperform the MCF simultaneously in all three criteria.
0808.3746
A game-theoretic version of Oakes' example for randomized forecasting
cs.LG cs.GT
Using the game-theoretic framework for probability, Vovk and Shafer. have shown that it is always possible, using randomization, to make sequential probability forecasts that pass any countable set of well-behaved statistical tests. This result generalizes work by other authors, who consider only tests of calbration. We complement this result with a lower bound. We show that Vovk and Shafer's result is valid only when the forecasts are computed with unrestrictedly increasing degree of accuracy. When some level of discreteness is fixed, we present a game-theoretic generalization of Oakes' example for randomized forecasting that is a test failing any given method of deferministic forecasting; originally, this example was presented for deterministic calibration.
0808.3756
Approaching Blokh-Zyablov Error Exponent with Linear-Time Encodable/Decodable Codes
cs.IT cs.CC math.IT
Guruswami and Indyk showed in [1] that Forney's error exponent can be achieved with linear coding complexity over binary symmetric channels. This paper extends this conclusion to general discrete-time memoryless channels and shows that Forney's and Blokh-Zyablov error exponents can be arbitrarily approached by one-level and multi-level concatenated codes with linear encoding/decoding complexity. The key result is a revision to Forney's general minimum distance decoding algorithm, which enables a low complexity integration of Guruswami-Indyk's outer codes into the concatenated coding schemes.
0808.3889
Open architecture for multilingual parallel texts
cs.CL
Multilingual parallel texts (abbreviated to parallel texts) are linguistic versions of the same content ("translations"); e.g., the Maastricht Treaty in English and Spanish are parallel texts. This document is about creating an open architecture for the whole Authoring, Translation and Publishing Chain (ATP-chain) for the processing of parallel texts.
0808.3959
A Simple Extension of the $\modulo$-$\Lambda$ Transformation
cs.IT math.IT
A simple lemma is derived that allows to transform a general scalar (non-Gaussian, non-additive) continuous-alphabet channel as well as a general multiple-access channel into a modulo-additive noise channel. While in general the transformation is information lossy, it allows to leverage linear coding techniques and capacity results derived for networks comprised of additive Gaussian nodes to more general networks.
0808.3971
Networked MIMO with Clustered Linear Precoding
cs.IT math.IT
A clustered base transceiver station (BTS) coordination strategy is proposed for a large cellular MIMO network, which includes full intra-cluster coordination to enhance the sum rate and limited inter-cluster coordination to reduce interference for the cluster edge users. Multi-cell block diagonalization is used to coordinate the transmissions across multiple BTSs in the same cluster. To satisfy per-BTS power constraints, three combined precoder and power allocation algorithms are proposed with different performance and complexity tradeoffs. For inter-cluster coordination, the coordination area is chosen to balance fairness for edge users and the achievable sum rate. It is shown that a small cluster size (about 7 cells) is sufficient to obtain most of the sum rate benefits from clustered coordination while greatly relieving channel feedback requirement. Simulations show that the proposed coordination strategy efficiently reduces interference and provides a considerable sum rate gain for cellular MIMO networks.
0808.4060
TrustMAS: Trusted Communication Platform for Multi-Agent Systems
cs.CR cs.MA
The paper presents TrustMAS - Trusted Communication Platform for Multi-Agent Systems, which provides trust and anonymity for mobile agents. The platform includes anonymous technique based on random-walk algorithm for providing general purpose anonymous communication for agents. All agents, which take part in the proposed platform, benefit from trust and anonymity that is provided for their interactions. Moreover, in TrustMAS there are StegAgents (SA) that are able to perform various steganographic communication. To achieve that goal, SAs may use methods in different layers of TCP/IP model or specialized middleware enabling steganography that allows hidden communication through all layers of mentioned model. In TrustMAS steganographic channels are used to exchange routing tables between StegAgents. Thus all StegAgents in TrustMAS with their ability to exchange information by using hidden channels form distributed steganographic router (Stegrouter).
0808.4100
Codes and Noncommutative Stochastic Matrices
math.RA cs.IT math.IT
Given a matrix over a skew field fixing the column (1,...,1)^t, we give formulas for a row vector fixed by this matrix. The same techniques are applied to give noncommutative extensions of probabilistic properties of codes.
0808.4111
Relative Entropy and Statistics
cs.IT math.IT math.ST stat.TH
Formalising the confrontation of opinions (models) to observations (data) is the task of Inferential Statistics. Information Theory provides us with a basic functional, the relative entropy (or Kullback-Leibler divergence), an asymmetrical measure of dissimilarity between the empirical and the theoretical distributions. The formal properties of the relative entropy turn out to be able to capture every aspect of Inferential Statistics, as illustrated here, for simplicity, on dices (= i.i.d. process with finitely many outcomes): refutability (strict or probabilistic): the asymmetry data / models; small deviations: rejecting a single hypothesis; competition between hypotheses and model selection; maximum likelihood: model inference and its limits; maximum entropy: reconstructing partially observed data; EM-algorithm; flow data and gravity modelling; determining the order of a Markov chain.
0808.4122
Swapping Lemmas for Regular and Context-Free Languages
cs.CC cs.CL cs.FL
In formal language theory, one of the most fundamental tools, known as pumping lemmas, is extremely useful for regular and context-free languages. However, there are natural properties for which the pumping lemmas are of little use. One of such examples concerns a notion of advice, which depends only on the size of an underlying input. A standard pumping lemma encounters difficulty in proving that a given language is not regular in the presence of advice. We develop its substitution, called a swapping lemma for regular languages, to demonstrate the non-regularity of a target language with advice. For context-free languages, we also present a similar form of swapping lemma, which serves as a technical tool to show that certain languages are not context-free with advice.
0808.4133
Tableau-based decision procedure for the multi-agent epistemic logic with operators of common and distributed knowledge
cs.LO cs.MA
We develop an incremental-tableau-based decision procedure for the multi-agent epistemic logic MAEL(CD) (aka S5_n (CD)), whose language contains operators of individual knowledge for a finite set Ag of agents, as well as operators of distributed and common knowledge among all agents in Ag. Our tableau procedure works in (deterministic) exponential time, thus establishing an upper bound for MAEL(CD)-satisfiability that matches the (implicit) lower-bound known from earlier results, which implies ExpTime-completeness of MAEL(CD)-satisfiability. Therefore, our procedure provides a complexity-optimal algorithm for checking MAEL(CD)-satisfiability, which, however, in most cases is much more efficient. We prove soundness and completeness of the procedure, and illustrate it with an example.
0808.4135
Achieving the Empirical Capacity Using Feedback Part I: Memoryless Additive Models
cs.IT math.IT
We address the problem of universal communications over an unknown channel with an instantaneous noiseless feedback, and show how rates corresponding to the empirical behavior of the channel can be attained, although no rate can be guaranteed in advance. First, we consider a discrete modulo-additive channel with alphabet $\mathcal{X}$, where the noise sequence $Z^n$ is arbitrary and unknown and may causally depend on the transmitted and received sequences and on the encoder's message, possibly in an adversarial fashion. Although the classical capacity of this channel is zero, we show that rates approaching the empirical capacity $\log|\mathcal{X}|-H_{emp}(Z^n)$ can be universally attained, where $H_{emp}(Z^n)$ is the empirical entropy of $Z^n$. For the more general setting where the channel can map its input to an output in an arbitrary unknown fashion subject only to causality, we model the empirical channel actions as the modulo-addition of a realized noise sequence, and show that the same result applies if common randomness is available. The results are proved constructively, by providing a simple sequential transmission scheme approaching the empirical capacity. In part II of this work we demonstrate how even higher rates can be attained by using more elaborate models for channel actions, and by utilizing possible empirical dependencies in its behavior.
0808.4146
Dynamic Connectivity in ALOHA Ad Hoc Networks
cs.IT cs.NI math.IT math.PR
In a wireless network the set of transmitting nodes changes frequently because of the MAC scheduler and the traffic load. Previously, connectivity in wireless networks was analyzed using static geometric graphs, and as we show leads to an overly constrained design criterion. The dynamic nature of the transmitting set introduces additional randomness in a wireless system that improves the connectivity, and this additional randomness is not captured by a static connectivity graph. In this paper, we consider an ad hoc network with half-duplex radios that uses multihop routing and slotted ALOHA for the MAC contention and introduce a random dynamic multi-digraph to model its connectivity. We first provide analytical results about the degree distribution of the graph. Next, defining the path formation time as the minimum time required for a causal path to form between the source and destination on the dynamic graph, we derive the distributional properties of the connection delay using techniques from first-passage percolation and epidemic processes. We consider the giant component of the network formed when communication is noise-limited (by neglecting interference). Then, in the presence of interference, we prove that the delay scales linearly with the source-destination distance on this giant component. We also provide simulation results to support the theoretical results.
0808.4156
Rate-Distortion via Markov Chain Monte Carlo
cs.IT math.IT
We propose an approach to lossy source coding, utilizing ideas from Gibbs sampling, simulated annealing, and Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC). The idea is to sample a reconstruction sequence from a Boltzmann distribution associated with an energy function that incorporates the distortion between the source and reconstruction, the compressibility of the reconstruction, and the point sought on the rate-distortion curve. To sample from this distribution, we use a `heat bath algorithm': Starting from an initial candidate reconstruction (say the original source sequence), at every iteration, an index i is chosen and the i-th sequence component is replaced by drawing from the conditional probability distribution for that component given all the rest. At the end of this process, the encoder conveys the reconstruction to the decoder using universal lossless compression. The complexity of each iteration is independent of the sequence length and only linearly dependent on a certain context parameter (which grows sub-logarithmically with the sequence length). We show that the proposed algorithms achieve optimum rate-distortion performance in the limits of large number of iterations, and sequence length, when employed on any stationary ergodic source. Experimentation shows promising initial results. Employing our lossy compressors on noisy data, with appropriately chosen distortion measure and level, followed by a simple de-randomization operation, results in a family of denoisers that compares favorably (both theoretically and in practice) with other MCMC-based schemes, and with the Discrete Universal Denoiser (DUDE).
0808.4160
Using Relative Entropy to Find Optimal Approximations: an Application to Simple Fluids
cond-mat.stat-mech cs.IT math.IT math.PR physics.data-an
We develop a maximum relative entropy formalism to generate optimal approximations to probability distributions. The central results consist in (a) justifying the use of relative entropy as the uniquely natural criterion to select a preferred approximation from within a family of trial parameterized distributions, and (b) to obtain the optimal approximation by marginalizing over parameters using the method of maximum entropy and information geometry. As an illustration we apply our method to simple fluids. The "exact" canonical distribution is approximated by that of a fluid of hard spheres. The proposed method first determines the preferred value of the hard-sphere diameter, and then obtains an optimal hard-sphere approximation by a suitably weighed average over different hard-sphere diameters. This leads to a considerable improvement in accounting for the soft-core nature of the interatomic potential. As a numerical demonstration, the radial distribution function and the equation of state for a Lennard-Jones fluid (argon) are compared with results from molecular dynamics simulations.
0809.0009
Distributed Parameter Estimation in Sensor Networks: Nonlinear Observation Models and Imperfect Communication
cs.MA cs.IT math.IT
The paper studies distributed static parameter (vector) estimation in sensor networks with nonlinear observation models and noisy inter-sensor communication. It introduces \emph{separably estimable} observation models that generalize the observability condition in linear centralized estimation to nonlinear distributed estimation. It studies two distributed estimation algorithms in separably estimable models, the $\mathcal{NU}$ (with its linear counterpart $\mathcal{LU}$) and the $\mathcal{NLU}$. Their update rule combines a \emph{consensus} step (where each sensor updates the state by weight averaging it with its neighbors' states) and an \emph{innovation} step (where each sensor processes its local current observation.) This makes the three algorithms of the \textit{consensus + innovations} type, very different from traditional consensus. The paper proves consistency (all sensors reach consensus almost surely and converge to the true parameter value,) efficiency, and asymptotic unbiasedness. For $\mathcal{LU}$ and $\mathcal{NU}$, it proves asymptotic normality and provides convergence rate guarantees. The three algorithms are characterized by appropriately chosen decaying weight sequences. Algorithms $\mathcal{LU}$ and $\mathcal{NU}$ are analyzed in the framework of stochastic approximation theory; algorithm $\mathcal{NLU}$ exhibits mixed time-scale behavior and biased perturbations, and its analysis requires a different approach that is developed in the paper.
0809.0016
An overview of the transmission capacity of wireless networks
cs.IT math.IT
This paper surveys and unifies a number of recent contributions that have collectively developed a metric for decentralized wireless network analysis known as transmission capacity. Although it is notoriously difficult to derive general end-to-end capacity results for multi-terminal or \adhoc networks, the transmission capacity (TC) framework allows for quantification of achievable single-hop rates by focusing on a simplified physical/MAC-layer model. By using stochastic geometry to quantify the multi-user interference in the network, the relationship between the optimal spatial density and success probability of transmissions in the network can be determined, and expressed -- often fairly simply -- in terms of the key network parameters. The basic model and analytical tools are first discussed and applied to a simple network with path loss only and we present tight upper and lower bounds on transmission capacity (via lower and upper bounds on outage probability). We then introduce random channels (fading/shadowing) and give TC and outage approximations for an arbitrary channel distribution, as well as exact results for the special cases of Rayleigh and Nakagami fading. We then apply these results to show how TC can be used to better understand scheduling, power control, and the deployment of multiple antennas in a decentralized network. The paper closes by discussing shortcomings in the model as well as future research directions.
0809.0032
A Variational Inference Framework for Soft-In-Soft-Out Detection in Multiple Access Channels
cs.IT cs.LG math.IT
We propose a unified framework for deriving and studying soft-in-soft-out (SISO) detection in interference channels using the concept of variational inference. The proposed framework may be used in multiple-access interference (MAI), inter-symbol interference (ISI), and multiple-input multiple-outpu (MIMO) channels. Without loss of generality, we will focus our attention on turbo multiuser detection, to facilitate a more concrete discussion. It is shown that, with some loss of optimality, variational inference avoids the exponential complexity of a posteriori probability (APP) detection by optimizing a closely-related, but much more manageable, objective function called variational free energy. In addition to its systematic appeal, there are several other advantages to this viewpoint. First of all, it provides unified and rigorous justifications for numerous detectors that were proposed on radically different grounds, and facilitates convenient joint detection and decoding (utilizing the turbo principle) when error-control codes are incorporated. Secondly, efficient joint parameter estimation and data detection is possible via the variational expectation maximization (EM) algorithm, such that the detrimental effect of inaccurate channel knowledge at the receiver may be dealt with systematically. We are also able to extend BPSK-based SISO detection schemes to arbitrary square QAM constellations in a rigorous manner using a variational argument.
0809.0070
Underwater Acoustic Networks: Channel Models and Network Coding based Lower Bound to Transmission Power for Multicast
cs.IT math.IT
The goal of this paper is two-fold. First, to establish a tractable model for the underwater acoustic channel useful for network optimization in terms of convexity. Second, to propose a network coding based lower bound for transmission power in underwater acoustic networks, and compare this bound to the performance of several network layer schemes. The underwater acoustic channel is characterized by a path loss that depends strongly on transmission distance and signal frequency. The exact relationship among power, transmission band, distance and capacity for the Gaussian noise scenario is a complicated one. We provide a closed-form approximate model for 1) transmission power and 2) optimal frequency band to use, as functions of distance and capacity. The model is obtained through numerical evaluation of analytical results that take into account physical models of acoustic propagation loss and ambient noise. Network coding is applied to determine a lower bound to transmission power for a multicast scenario, for a variety of multicast data rates and transmission distances of interest for practical systems, exploiting physical properties of the underwater acoustic channel. The results quantify the performance gap in transmission power between a variety of routing and network coding schemes and the network coding based lower bound. We illustrate results numerically for different network scenarios.
0809.0091
A functional view of upper bounds on codes
cs.IT math.IT
Functional and linear-algebraic approaches to the Delsarte problem of upper bounds on codes are discussed. We show that Christoffel-Darboux kernels and Levenshtein polynomials related to them arise as stationary points of the moment functionals of some distributions. We also show that they can be derived as eigenfunctions of the Jacobi operator. This motivates the choice of polynomials used to derive linear programming upper bounds on codes in homogeneous spaces.
0809.0099
Degrees of Freedom of the $K$ User $M \times N$ MIMO Interference Channel
cs.IT math.IT
We provide innerbound and outerbound for the total number of degrees of freedom of the $K$ user multiple input multiple output (MIMO) Gaussian interference channel with $M$ antennas at each transmitter and $N$ antennas at each receiver if the channel coefficients are time-varying and drawn from a continuous distribution. The bounds are tight when the ratio $\frac{\max(M,N)}{\min(M,N)}=R$ is equal to an integer. For this case, we show that the total number of degrees of freedom is equal to $\min(M,N)K$ if $K \leq R$ and $\min(M,N)\frac{R}{R+1}K$ if $K > R$. Achievability is based on interference alignment. We also provide examples where using interference alignment combined with zero forcing can achieve more degrees of freedom than merely zero forcing for some MIMO interference channels with constant channel coefficients.
0809.0103
On the nature of long-range letter correlations in texts
cs.CL cs.IT math.IT
The origin of long-range letter correlations in natural texts is studied using random walk analysis and Jensen-Shannon divergence. It is concluded that they result from slow variations in letter frequency distribution, which are a consequence of slow variations in lexical composition within the text. These correlations are preserved by random letter shuffling within a moving window. As such, they do reflect structural properties of the text, but in a very indirect manner.
0809.0116
Toward Expressive and Scalable Sponsored Search Auctions
cs.DB
Internet search results are a growing and highly profitable advertising platform. Search providers auction advertising slots to advertisers on their search result pages. Due to the high volume of searches and the users' low tolerance for search result latency, it is imperative to resolve these auctions fast. Current approaches restrict the expressiveness of bids in order to achieve fast winner determination, which is the problem of allocating slots to advertisers so as to maximize the expected revenue given the advertisers' bids. The goal of our work is to permit more expressive bidding, thus allowing advertisers to achieve complex advertising goals, while still providing fast and scalable techniques for winner determination.
0809.0124
A Uniform Approach to Analogies, Synonyms, Antonyms, and Associations
cs.CL cs.IR cs.LG
Recognizing analogies, synonyms, antonyms, and associations appear to be four distinct tasks, requiring distinct NLP algorithms. In the past, the four tasks have been treated independently, using a wide variety of algorithms. These four semantic classes, however, are a tiny sample of the full range of semantic phenomena, and we cannot afford to create ad hoc algorithms for each semantic phenomenon; we need to seek a unified approach. We propose to subsume a broad range of phenomena under analogies. To limit the scope of this paper, we restrict our attention to the subsumption of synonyms, antonyms, and associations. We introduce a supervised corpus-based machine learning algorithm for classifying analogous word pairs, and we show that it can solve multiple-choice SAT analogy questions, TOEFL synonym questions, ESL synonym-antonym questions, and similar-associated-both questions from cognitive psychology.
0809.0158
Network Tomography Based on Additive Metrics
cs.NI cs.IT math.IT
Inference of the network structure (e.g., routing topology) and dynamics (e.g., link performance) is an essential component in many network design and management tasks. In this paper we propose a new, general framework for analyzing and designing routing topology and link performance inference algorithms using ideas and tools from phylogenetic inference in evolutionary biology. The framework is applicable to a variety of measurement techniques. Based on the framework we introduce and develop several polynomial-time distance-based inference algorithms with provable performance. We provide sufficient conditions for the correctness of the algorithms. We show that the algorithms are consistent (return correct topology and link performance with an increasing sample size) and robust (can tolerate a certain level of measurement errors). In addition, we establish certain optimality properties of the algorithms (i.e., they achieve the optimal $l_\infty$-radius) and demonstrate their effectiveness via model simulation.
0809.0199
Dense Error Correction via L1-Minimization
cs.IT math.IT
This paper studies the problem of recovering a non-negative sparse signal $\x \in \Re^n$ from highly corrupted linear measurements $\y = A\x + \e \in \Re^m$, where $\e$ is an unknown error vector whose nonzero entries may be unbounded. Motivated by an observation from face recognition in computer vision, this paper proves that for highly correlated (and possibly overcomplete) dictionaries $A$, any non-negative, sufficiently sparse signal $\x$ can be recovered by solving an $\ell^1$-minimization problem: $\min \|\x\|_1 + \|\e\|_1 \quad {subject to} \quad \y = A\x + \e.$ More precisely, if the fraction $\rho$ of errors is bounded away from one and the support of $\x$ grows sublinearly in the dimension $m$ of the observation, then as $m$ goes to infinity, the above $\ell^1$-minimization succeeds for all signals $\x$ and almost all sign-and-support patterns of $\e$. This result suggests that accurate recovery of sparse signals is possible and computationally feasible even with nearly 100% of the observations corrupted. The proof relies on a careful characterization of the faces of a convex polytope spanned together by the standard crosspolytope and a set of iid Gaussian vectors with nonzero mean and small variance, which we call the ``cross-and-bouquet'' model. Simulations and experimental results corroborate the findings, and suggest extensions to the result.
0809.0271
Randomised Variable Neighbourhood Search for Multi Objective Optimisation
cs.AI
Various local search approaches have recently been applied to machine scheduling problems under multiple objectives. Their foremost consideration is the identification of the set of Pareto optimal alternatives. An important aspect of successfully solving these problems lies in the definition of an appropriate neighbourhood structure. Unclear in this context remains, how interdependencies within the fitness landscape affect the resolution of the problem. The paper presents a study of neighbourhood search operators for multiple objective flow shop scheduling. Experiments have been carried out with twelve different combinations of criteria. To derive exact conclusions, small problem instances, for which the optimal solutions are known, have been chosen. Statistical tests show that no single neighbourhood operator is able to equally identify all Pareto optimal alternatives. Significant improvements however have been obtained by hybridising the solution algorithm using a randomised variable neighbourhood search technique.
0809.0360
The Complexity of Enriched Mu-Calculi
cs.LO cs.CL
The fully enriched &mu;-calculus is the extension of the propositional &mu;-calculus with inverse programs, graded modalities, and nominals. While satisfiability in several expressive fragments of the fully enriched &mu;-calculus is known to be decidable and ExpTime-complete, it has recently been proved that the full calculus is undecidable. In this paper, we study the fragments of the fully enriched &mu;-calculus that are obtained by dropping at least one of the additional constructs. We show that, in all fragments obtained in this way, satisfiability is decidable and ExpTime-complete. Thus, we identify a family of decidable logics that are maximal (and incomparable) in expressive power. Our results are obtained by introducing two new automata models, showing that their emptiness problems are ExpTime-complete, and then reducing satisfiability in the relevant logics to these problems. The automata models we introduce are two-way graded alternating parity automata over infinite trees (2GAPTs) and fully enriched automata (FEAs) over infinite forests. The former are a common generalization of two incomparable automata models from the literature. The latter extend alternating automata in a similar way as the fully enriched &mu;-calculus extends the standard &mu;-calculus.
0809.0406
Foundations of the Pareto Iterated Local Search Metaheuristic
cs.AI
The paper describes the proposition and application of a local search metaheuristic for multi-objective optimization problems. It is based on two main principles of heuristic search, intensification through variable neighborhoods, and diversification through perturbations and successive iterations in favorable regions of the search space. The concept is successfully tested on permutation flow shop scheduling problems under multiple objectives. While the obtained results are encouraging in terms of their quality, another positive attribute of the approach is its' simplicity as it does require the setting of only very few parameters. The implementation of the Pareto Iterated Local Search metaheuristic is based on the MOOPPS computer system of local search heuristics for multi-objective scheduling which has been awarded the European Academic Software Award 2002 in Ronneby, Sweden (http://www.easa-award.net/, http://www.bth.se/llab/easa_2002.nsf)
0809.0410
A Computational Study of Genetic Crossover Operators for Multi-Objective Vehicle Routing Problem with Soft Time Windows
cs.AI
The article describes an investigation of the effectiveness of genetic algorithms for multi-objective combinatorial optimization (MOCO) by presenting an application for the vehicle routing problem with soft time windows. The work is motivated by the question, if and how the problem structure influences the effectiveness of different configurations of the genetic algorithm. Computational results are presented for different classes of vehicle routing problems, varying in their coverage with time windows, time window size, distribution and number of customers. The results are compared with a simple, but effective local search approach for multi-objective combinatorial optimization problems.
0809.0416
Genetic Algorithms for multiple objective vehicle routing
cs.AI
The talk describes a general approach of a genetic algorithm for multiple objective optimization problems. A particular dominance relation between the individuals of the population is used to define a fitness operator, enabling the genetic algorithm to adress even problems with efficient, but convex-dominated alternatives. The algorithm is implemented in a multilingual computer program, solving vehicle routing problems with time windows under multiple objectives. The graphical user interface of the program shows the progress of the genetic algorithm and the main parameters of the approach can be easily modified. In addition to that, the program provides powerful decision support to the decision maker. The software has proved it's excellence at the finals of the European Academic Software Award EASA, held at the Keble college/ University of Oxford/ Great Britain.
0809.0444
Quantum classification
quant-ph cs.LG
Quantum classification is defined as the task of predicting the associated class of an unknown quantum state drawn from an ensemble of pure states given a finite number of copies of this state. By recasting the state discrimination problem within the framework of Machine Learning (ML), we can use the notion of learning reduction coming from classical ML to solve different variants of the classification task, such as the weighted binary and the multiclass versions.
0809.0448
The Stock Market as a Game: An Agent Based Approach to Trading in Stocks
q-fin.TR cs.AI cs.GT
Just as war is sometimes fallaciously represented as a zero sum game -- when in fact war is a negative sum game - stock market trading, a positive sum game over time, is often erroneously represented as a zero sum game. This is called the "zero sum fallacy" -- the erroneous belief that one trader in a stock market exchange can only improve their position provided some other trader's position deteriorates. However, a positive sum game in absolute terms can be recast as a zero sum game in relative terms. Similarly it appears that negative sum games in absolute terms have been recast as zero sum games in relative terms: otherwise, why would zero sum games be used to represent situations of war? Such recasting may have heuristic or pedagogic interest but recasting must be clearly explicited or risks generating confusion. Keywords: Game theory, stock trading and agent based AI.
0809.0458
Agent Models of Political Interactions
cs.AI cs.GT
Looks at state interactions from an agent based AI perspective to see state interactions as an example of emergent intelligent behavior. Exposes basic principles of game theory.
0809.0490
Principal Graphs and Manifolds
cs.LG cs.NE stat.ML
In many physical, statistical, biological and other investigations it is desirable to approximate a system of points by objects of lower dimension and/or complexity. For this purpose, Karl Pearson invented principal component analysis in 1901 and found 'lines and planes of closest fit to system of points'. The famous k-means algorithm solves the approximation problem too, but by finite sets instead of lines and planes. This chapter gives a brief practical introduction into the methods of construction of general principal objects, i.e. objects embedded in the 'middle' of the multidimensional data set. As a basis, the unifying framework of mean squared distance approximation of finite datasets is selected. Principal graphs and manifolds are constructed as generalisations of principal components and k-means principal points. For this purpose, the family of expectation/maximisation algorithms with nearest generalisations is presented. Construction of principal graphs with controlled complexity is based on the graph grammar approach.
0809.0522
The first-mover advantage in scientific publication
physics.soc-ph cs.DL cs.SI
Mathematical models of the scientific citation process predict a strong "first-mover" effect under which the first papers in a field will, essentially regardless of content, receive citations at a rate enormously higher than papers published later. Moreover papers are expected to retain this advantage in perpetuity -- they should receive more citations indefinitely, no matter how many other papers are published after them. We test this conjecture against data from a selection of fields and in several cases find a first-mover effect of a magnitude similar to that predicted by the theory. Were we wearing our cynical hat today, we might say that the scientist who wants to become famous is better off -- by a wide margin -- writing a modest paper in next year's hottest field than an outstanding paper in this year's. On the other hand, there are some papers, albeit only a small fraction, that buck the trend and attract significantly more citations than theory predicts despite having relatively late publication dates. We suggest that papers of this kind, though they often receive comparatively few citations overall, are probably worthy of our attention.
0809.0536
How to Fully Exploit the Degrees of Freedom in the Downlink of MISO Systems With Opportunistic Beamforming
cs.IT math.IT
The opportunistic beamforming in the downlink of multiple-input single-output (MISO) systems forms $N$ transmit beams, usually, no more than the number of transmit antennas $N_t$. However, the degrees of freedom in this downlink is as large as $N_t^2$. That is, at most $N_t^2$ rather than only $N_t$ users can be simultaneously transmitted and thus the scheduling latency can be significantly reduced. In this paper, we focus on the opportunistic beamforming schemes with $N_t<N\le N_t^2$ transmit beams in the downlink of MISO systems over Rayleigh fading channels. We first show how to design the beamforming matrices with maximum number of transmit beams as well as least correlation between any pair of them as possible, through Fourier, Grassmannian, and mutually unbiased bases (MUB) based constructions in practice. Then, we analyze their system throughput by exploiting the asymptotic theory of extreme order statistics. Finally, our simulation results show the Grassmannian-based beamforming achieves the maximum throughput in all cases with $N_t=2$, 3, 4. However, if we want to exploit overall $N_t^2$ degrees of freedom, we shall resort to the Fourier and MUB-based constructions in the cases with $N_t=3$, 4, respectively.
0809.0539
Signature Quantization in Fading CDMA With Limited Feedback
cs.IT math.IT
In this work, we analyze the performance of a signature quantization scheme for reverse-link Direct Sequence (DS)- Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA). Assuming perfect estimates of the channel and interference covariance, the receiver selects the signature that minimizes interference power or maximizes signal-to-interference plus noise ratio (SINR) for a desired user from a signature codebook. The codebook index corresponding to the optimal signature is then relayed to the user with a finite number of bits via a feedback channel. Here we are interested in the performance of a Random Vector Quantization (RVQ) codebook, which contains independent isotropically distributed vectors. Assuming arbitrary transmit power allocation, we consider additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN) channel first with no fading and subsequently, with multipath fading. We derive the corresponding SINR in a large system limit at the output of matched filter and linear minimum mean squared error (MMSE) receiver. Numerical examples show that the derived large system results give a good approximation to the performance of finite-size system and that the MMSE receiver achieves close to a single-user performance with only one feedback bit per signature element.
0809.0545
Frequency Locking of an Optical Cavity using LQG Integral Control
quant-ph cs.SY
This paper considers the application of integral Linear Quadratic Gaussian (LQG) optimal control theory to a problem of cavity locking in quantum optics. The cavity locking problem involves controlling the error between the laser frequency and the resonant frequency of the cavity. A model for the cavity system, which comprises a piezo-electric actuator and an optical cavity is experimentally determined using a subspace identification method. An LQG controller which includes integral action is synthesized to stabilize the frequency of the cavity to the laser frequency and to reject low frequency noise. The controller is successfully implemented in the laboratory using a dSpace DSP board.
0809.0610
A framework for the interactive resolution of multi-objective vehicle routing problems
cs.AI
The article presents a framework for the resolution of rich vehicle routing problems which are difficult to address with standard optimization techniques. We use local search on the basis on variable neighborhood search for the construction of the solutions, but embed the techniques in a flexible framework that allows the consideration of complex side constraints of the problem such as time windows, multiple depots, heterogeneous fleets, and, in particular, multiple optimization criteria. In order to identify a compromise alternative that meets the requirements of the decision maker, an interactive procedure is integrated in the resolution of the problem, allowing the modification of the preference information articulated by the decision maker. The framework is prototypically implemented in a computer system. First results of test runs on multiple depot vehicle routing problems with time windows are reported.
0809.0635
Low ML-Decoding Complexity, Large Coding Gain, Full-Rate, Full-Diversity STBCs for 2 X 2 and 4 X 2 MIMO Systems
cs.IT math.IT
This paper (Part of the content of this manuscript has been accepted for presentation in IEEE Globecom 2008, to be held in New Orleans) deals with low maximum likelihood (ML) decoding complexity, full-rate and full-diversity space-time block codes (STBCs), which also offer large coding gain, for the 2 transmit antenna, 2 receive antenna ($2\times 2$) and the 4 transmit antenna, 2 receive antenna ($4\times 2$) MIMO systems. Presently, the best known STBC for the $2\times2$ system is the Golden code and that for the $4\times2$ system is the DjABBA code. Following the approach by Biglieri, Hong and Viterbo, a new STBC is presented in this paper for the $2\times 2$ system. This code matches the Golden code in performance and ML-decoding complexity for square QAM constellations while it has lower ML-decoding complexity with the same performance for non-rectangular QAM constellations. This code is also shown to be \emph{information-lossless} and \emph{diversity-multiplexing gain} (DMG) tradeoff optimal. This design procedure is then extended to the $4\times 2$ system and a code, which outperforms the DjABBA code for QAM constellations with lower ML-decoding complexity, is presented. So far, the Golden code has been reported to have an ML-decoding complexity of the order of $M^4$ for square QAM of size $M$. In this paper, a scheme that reduces its ML-decoding complexity to $M^2\sqrt{M}$ is presented.
0809.0662
Improving Local Search for Fuzzy Scheduling Problems
cs.AI
The integration of fuzzy set theory and fuzzy logic into scheduling is a rather new aspect with growing importance for manufacturing applications, resulting in various unsolved aspects. In the current paper, we investigate an improved local search technique for fuzzy scheduling problems with fitness plateaus, using a multi criteria formulation of the problem. We especially address the problem of changing job priorities over time as studied at the Sherwood Press Ltd, a Nottingham based printing company, who is a collaborator on the project.
0809.0680
The Prolog Interface to the Unstructured Information Management Architecture
cs.SE cs.IR
In this paper we describe the design and implementation of the Prolog interface to the Unstructured Information Management Architecture (UIMA) and some of its applications in natural language processing. The UIMA Prolog interface translates unstructured data and the UIMA Common Analysis Structure (CAS) into a Prolog knowledge base, over which, the developers write rules and use resolution theorem proving to search and generate new annotations over the unstructured data. These rules can explore all the previous UIMA annotations (such as, the syntactic structure, parsing statistics) and external Prolog knowledge bases (such as, Prolog WordNet and Extended WordNet) to implement a variety of tasks for the natural language analysis. We also describe applications of this logic programming interface in question analysis (such as, focus detection, answer-type and other constraints detection), shallow parsing (such as, relations in the syntactic structure), and answer selection.
0809.0686
Energy Scaling Laws for Distributed Inference in Random Fusion Networks
cs.IT cs.NI math.IT math.ST stat.TH
The energy scaling laws of multihop data fusion networks for distributed inference are considered. The fusion network consists of randomly located sensors distributed i.i.d. according to a general spatial distribution in an expanding region. Among the class of data fusion schemes that enable optimal inference at the fusion center for Markov random field (MRF) hypotheses, the scheme with minimum average energy consumption is bounded below by average energy of fusion along the minimum spanning tree, and above by a suboptimal scheme, referred to as Data Fusion for Markov Random Fields (DFMRF). Scaling laws are derived for the optimal and suboptimal fusion policies. It is shown that the average asymptotic energy of the DFMRF scheme is finite for a class of MRF models.
0809.0723
A Simple Mechanism for Focused Web-harvesting
cs.IR cs.CY
The focused web-harvesting is deployed to realize an automated and comprehensive index databases as an alternative way for virtual topical data integration. The web-harvesting has been implemented and extended by not only specifying the targeted URLs, but also predefining human-edited harvesting parameters to improve the speed and accuracy. The harvesting parameter set comprises three main components. First, the depth-scale of being harvested final pages containing desired information counted from the first page at the targeted URLs. Secondly, the focus-point number to determine the exact box containing relevant information. Lastly, the combination of keywords to recognize encountered hyperlinks of relevant images or full-texts embedded in those final pages. All parameters are accessible and fully customizable for each target by the administrators of participating institutions over an integrated web interface. A real implementation to the Indonesian Scientific Index which covers all scientific information across Indonesia is also briefly introduced.
0809.0727
Microcontroller-based System for Modular Networked Robot
cs.RO cs.CY
A prototype of modular networked robot for autonomous monitoring works with full control over web through wireless connection has been developed. The robot is equipped with a particular set of built-in analyzing tools and appropriate censors, depending on its main purposes, to enable self-independent and real-time data acquisition and processing. The paper is focused on the microcontroller-based system to realize the modularity. The whole system is divided into three modules : main unit, data acquisition and data processing, while the analyzed results and all aspects of control and monitoring systems are fully accessible over an integrated web-interface. This concept leads to some unique features : enhancing flexibility due to enabling partial replacement of the modules according to user needs, easy access over web for remote users, and low development and maintenance cost due to software dominated components.
0809.0728
A Spectrum-Shaping Perspective on Cognitive Radio
cs.IT math.IT
A new perspective on cognitive radio is presented, where the pre-existent legacy service is either uncoded or coded and a pair of cognitive transceivers need be appropriately deployed to coexist with the legacy service. The basic idea underlying the new perspective is to exploit the fact that, typically, the legacy channel is not fully loaded by the legacy service, thus leaving a non-negligible margin to accommodate the cognitive transmission. The exploitation of such a load margin is optimized by shaping the spectrum of the transmitted cognitive signal. It is shown that non-trivial coexistence of legacy and cognitive systems is possible even without sharing the legacy message with the cognitive transmitter. Surprisingly, the optimized cognitive transmitter is no longer limited by its interference power at the legacy receiver, and can always transmit at its full available device power. Analytical development and numerical illustration are presented, in particular focusing on the logarithmic growth rate, {\it i.e.}, the prelog coefficient, of cognitive transmission in the high-power regime.
0809.0733
There exists no self-dual [24,12,10] code over F5
math.CO cs.IT math.IT
Self-dual codes over F5 exist for all even lengths. The smallest length for which the largest minimum weight among self-dual codes has not been determined is 24, and the largest minimum weight is either 9 or 10. In this note, we show that there exists no self-dual [24,12,10] code over F5, using the classification of 24-dimensional odd unimodular lattices due to Borcherds.
0809.0737
Malleable Coding with Fixed Reuse
cs.IT math.IT
In cloud computing, storage area networks, remote backup storage, and similar settings, stored data is modified with updates from new versions. Representing information and modifying the representation are both expensive. Therefore it is desirable for the data to not only be compressed but to also be easily modified during updates. A malleable coding scheme considers both compression efficiency and ease of alteration, promoting codeword reuse. We examine the trade-off between compression efficiency and malleability cost-the difficulty of synchronizing compressed versions-measured as the length of a reused prefix portion. Through a coding theorem, the region of achievable rates and malleability is expressed as a single-letter optimization. Relationships to common information problems are also described.
0809.0745
Sparse Recovery by Non-convex Optimization -- Instance Optimality
cs.IT math.IT
In this note, we address the theoretical properties of $\Delta_p$, a class of compressed sensing decoders that rely on $\ell^p$ minimization with 0<p<1 to recover estimates of sparse and compressible signals from incomplete and inaccurate measurements. In particular, we extend the results of Candes, Romberg and Tao, and Wojtaszczyk regarding the decoder $\Delta_1$, based on $\ell^1$ minimization, to $\Delta_p$ with 0<p<1. Our results are two-fold. First, we show that under certain sufficient conditions that are weaker than the analogous sufficient conditions for $\Delta_1$ the decoders $\Delta_p$ are robust to noise and stable in the sense that they are (2,p) instance optimal for a large class of encoders. Second, we extend the results of Wojtaszczyk to show that, like $\Delta_1$, the decoders $\Delta_p$ are (2,2) instance optimal in probability provided the measurement matrix is drawn from an appropriate distribution.
0809.0753
Proposition of the Interactive Pareto Iterated Local Search Procedure - Elements and Initial Experiments
cs.AI cs.HC
The article presents an approach to interactively solve multi-objective optimization problems. While the identification of efficient solutions is supported by computational intelligence techniques on the basis of local search, the search is directed by partial preference information obtained from the decision maker. An application of the approach to biobjective portfolio optimization, modeled as the well-known knapsack problem, is reported, and experimental results are reported for benchmark instances taken from the literature. In brief, we obtain encouraging results that show the applicability of the approach to the described problem.
0809.0755
Bin Packing Under Multiple Objectives - a Heuristic Approximation Approach
cs.AI
The article proposes a heuristic approximation approach to the bin packing problem under multiple objectives. In addition to the traditional objective of minimizing the number of bins, the heterogeneousness of the elements in each bin is minimized, leading to a biobjective formulation of the problem with a tradeoff between the number of bins and their heterogeneousness. An extension of the Best-Fit approximation algorithm is presented to solve the problem. Experimental investigations have been carried out on benchmark instances of different size, ranging from 100 to 1000 items. Encouraging results have been obtained, showing the applicability of the heuristic approach to the described problem.
0809.0757
An application of the Threshold Accepting metaheuristic for curriculum based course timetabling
cs.AI
The article presents a local search approach for the solution of timetabling problems in general, with a particular implementation for competition track 3 of the International Timetabling Competition 2007 (ITC 2007). The heuristic search procedure is based on Threshold Accepting to overcome local optima. A stochastic neighborhood is proposed and implemented, randomly removing and reassigning events from the current solution. The overall concept has been incrementally obtained from a series of experiments, which we describe in each (sub)section of the paper. In result, we successfully derived a potential candidate solution approach for the finals of track 3 of the ITC 2007.
0809.0788
Peek Arc Consistency
cs.AI cs.CC cs.LO
This paper studies peek arc consistency, a reasoning technique that extends the well-known arc consistency technique for constraint satisfaction. In contrast to other more costly extensions of arc consistency that have been studied in the literature, peek arc consistency requires only linear space and quadratic time and can be parallelized in a straightforward way such that it runs in linear time with a linear number of processors. We demonstrate that for various constraint languages, peek arc consistency gives a polynomial-time decision procedure for the constraint satisfaction problem. We also present an algebraic characterization of those constraint languages that can be solved by peek arc consistency, and study the robustness of the algorithm.
0809.0835
Approximating the volume of unions and intersections of high-dimensional geometric objects
cs.CG cs.NE
We consider the computation of the volume of the union of high-dimensional geometric objects. While showing that this problem is #P-hard already for very simple bodies (i.e., axis-parallel boxes), we give a fast FPRAS for all objects where one can: (1) test whether a given point lies inside the object, (2) sample a point uniformly, (3) calculate the volume of the object in polynomial time. All three oracles can be weak, that is, just approximate. This implies that Klee's measure problem and the hypervolume indicator can be approximated efficiently even though they are #P-hard and hence cannot be solved exactly in time polynomial in the number of dimensions unless P=NP. Our algorithm also allows to approximate efficiently the volume of the union of convex bodies given by weak membership oracles. For the analogous problem of the intersection of high-dimensional geometric objects we prove #P-hardness for boxes and show that there is no multiplicative polynomial-time $2^{d^{1-\epsilon}}$-approximation for certain boxes unless NP=BPP, but give a simple additive polynomial-time $\epsilon$-approximation.
0809.0840
HEP data analysis using jHepWork and Java
cs.CE hep-ex hep-ph
A role of Java in high-energy physics and recent progress in development of a platform-independent data-analysis framework, jHepWork, is discussed. The framework produces professional graphics and has many libraries for data manipulation.
0809.0853
Estimating divergence functionals and the likelihood ratio by convex risk minimization
math.ST cs.IT math.IT stat.TH
We develop and analyze $M$-estimation methods for divergence functionals and the likelihood ratios of two probability distributions. Our method is based on a non-asymptotic variational characterization of $f$-divergences, which allows the problem of estimating divergences to be tackled via convex empirical risk optimization. The resulting estimators are simple to implement, requiring only the solution of standard convex programs. We present an analysis of consistency and convergence for these estimators. Given conditions only on the ratios of densities, we show that our estimators can achieve optimal minimax rates for the likelihood ratio and the divergence functionals in certain regimes. We derive an efficient optimization algorithm for computing our estimates, and illustrate their convergence behavior and practical viability by simulations.
0809.0908
Reduced Complexity Demodulation and Equalization Scheme for Differential Impulse Radio UWB Systems with ISI
cs.IT math.IT
In this paper, we consider the demodulation and equalization problem of differential Impulse Radio (IR) Ultra-WideBand (UWB) Systems with Inter-Symbol-Interference (ISI). The differential IR UWB systems have been extensively discussed recently. The advantage of differential IR UWB systems include simple receiver frontend structure. One challenge in the demodulation and equalization of such systems with ISI is that the systems have a rather complex model. The input and output signals of the systems follow a second-order Volterra model. Furthermore, the noise at the output is data dependent. In this paper, we propose a reduced-complexity joint demodulation and equalization algorithm. The algorithm is based on reformulating the nearest neighborhood decoding problem into a mixed quadratic programming and utilizing a semi-definite relaxation. The numerical results show that the proposed demodulation and equalization algorithm has low computational complexity, and at the same time, has almost the same error probability performance compared with the maximal likelihood decoding algorithm.
0809.0916
Irreversible Monte Carlo Algorithms for Efficient Sampling
cond-mat.stat-mech cs.IT math.IT math.PR stat.AP
Equilibrium systems evolve according to Detailed Balance (DB). This principe guided development of the Monte-Carlo sampling techniques, of which Metropolis-Hastings (MH) algorithm is the famous representative. It is also known that DB is sufficient but not necessary. We construct irreversible deformation of a given reversible algorithm capable of dramatic improvement of sampling from known distribution. Our transformation modifies transition rates keeping the structure of transitions intact. To illustrate the general scheme we design an Irreversible version of Metropolis-Hastings (IMH) and test it on example of a spin cluster. Standard MH for the model suffers from the critical slowdown, while IMH is free from critical slowdown.
0809.0918
Intersecting random graphs and networks with multiple adjacency constraints: A simple example
cs.IT math.IT math.PR
When studying networks using random graph models, one is sometimes faced with situations where the notion of adjacency between nodes reflects multiple constraints. Traditional random graph models are insufficient to handle such situations. A simple idea to account for multiple constraints consists in taking the intersection of random graphs. In this paper we initiate the study of random graphs so obtained through a simple example. We examine the intersection of an Erdos-Renyi graph and of one-dimensional geometric random graphs. We investigate the zero-one laws for the property that there are no isolated nodes. When the geometric component is defined on the unit circle, a full zero-one law is established and we determine its critical scaling. When the geometric component lies in the unit interval, there is a gap in that the obtained zero and one laws are found to express deviations from different critical scalings. In particular, the first moment method requires a larger critical scaling than in the unit circle case in order to obtain the one law. This discrepancy is somewhat surprising given that the zero-one laws for the absence of isolated nodes are identical in the geometric random graphs on both the unit interval and unit circle.
0809.0922
Superposition for Fixed Domains
cs.AI cs.LO
Superposition is an established decision procedure for a variety of first-order logic theories represented by sets of clauses. A satisfiable theory, saturated by superposition, implicitly defines a minimal term-generated model for the theory. Proving universal properties with respect to a saturated theory directly leads to a modification of the minimal model's term-generated domain, as new Skolem functions are introduced. For many applications, this is not desired. Therefore, we propose the first superposition calculus that can explicitly represent existentially quantified variables and can thus compute with respect to a given domain. This calculus is sound and refutationally complete in the limit for a first-order fixed domain semantics. For saturated Horn theories and classes of positive formulas, we can even employ the calculus to prove properties of the minimal model itself, going beyond the scope of known superposition-based approaches.
0809.0949
Efficient Implementation of the Generalized Tunstall Code Generation Algorithm
cs.IT cs.DS math.IT
A method is presented for constructing a Tunstall code that is linear time in the number of output items. This is an improvement on the state of the art for non-Bernoulli sources, including Markov sources, which require a (suboptimal) generalization of Tunstall's algorithm proposed by Savari and analytically examined by Tabus and Rissanen. In general, if n is the total number of output leaves across all Tunstall trees, s is the number of trees (states), and D is the number of leaves of each internal node, then this method takes O((1+(log s)/D) n) time and O(n) space.
0809.0961
MOOPPS: An Optimization System for Multi Objective Scheduling
cs.AI cs.HC
In the current paper, we present an optimization system solving multi objective production scheduling problems (MOOPPS). The identification of Pareto optimal alternatives or at least a close approximation of them is possible by a set of implemented metaheuristics. Necessary control parameters can easily be adjusted by the decision maker as the whole software is fully menu driven. This allows the comparison of different metaheuristic algorithms for the considered problem instances. Results are visualized by a graphical user interface showing the distribution of solutions in outcome space as well as their corresponding Gantt chart representation. The identification of a most preferred solution from the set of efficient solutions is supported by a module based on the aspiration interactive method (AIM). The decision maker successively defines aspiration levels until a single solution is chosen. After successfully competing in the finals in Ronneby, Sweden, the MOOPPS software has been awarded the European Academic Software Award 2002 (http://www.bth.se/llab/easa_2002.nsf)
0809.1017
Entropy Concentration and the Empirical Coding Game
cs.IT cs.LG math.IT math.ST stat.ME stat.TH
We give a characterization of Maximum Entropy/Minimum Relative Entropy inference by providing two `strong entropy concentration' theorems. These theorems unify and generalize Jaynes' `concentration phenomenon' and Van Campenhout and Cover's `conditional limit theorem'. The theorems characterize exactly in what sense a prior distribution Q conditioned on a given constraint, and the distribution P, minimizing the relative entropy D(P ||Q) over all distributions satisfying the constraint, are `close' to each other. We then apply our theorems to establish the relationship between entropy concentration and a game-theoretic characterization of Maximum Entropy Inference due to Topsoe and others.
0809.1039
High-SNR Analysis of Outage-Limited Communications with Bursty and Delay-Limited Information
cs.IT math.IT
This work analyzes the high-SNR asymptotic error performance of outage-limited communications with fading, where the number of bits that arrive at the transmitter during any time slot is random but the delivery of bits at the receiver must adhere to a strict delay limitation. Specifically, bit errors are caused by erroneous decoding at the receiver or violation of the strict delay constraint. Under certain scaling of the statistics of the bit-arrival process with SNR, this paper shows that the optimal decay behavior of the asymptotic total probability of bit error depends on how fast the burstiness of the source scales down with SNR. If the source burstiness scales down too slowly, the total probability of error is asymptotically dominated by delay-violation events. On the other hand, if the source burstiness scales down too quickly, the total probability of error is asymptotically dominated by channel-error events. However, at the proper scaling, where the burstiness scales linearly with 1/sqrt(log SNR) and at the optimal coding duration and transmission rate, the occurrences of channel errors and delay-violation errors are asymptotically balanced. In this latter case, the optimal exponent of the total probability of error reveals a tradeoff that addresses the question of how much of the allowable time and rate should be used for gaining reliability over the channel and how much for accommodating the burstiness with delay constraints.
0809.1043
On Unique Decodability
cs.IT math.IT
In this paper we propose a revisitation of the topic of unique decodability and of some fundamental theorems of lossless coding. It is widely believed that, for any discrete source X, every "uniquely decodable" block code satisfies E[l(X_1 X_2 ... X_n)]>= H(X_1,X_2,...,X_n), where X_1, X_2,...,X_n are the first n symbols of the source, E[l(X_1 X_2 ... X_n)] is the expected length of the code for those symbols and H(X_1,X_2,...,X_n) is their joint entropy. We show that, for certain sources with memory, the above inequality only holds when a limiting definition of "uniquely decodable code" is considered. In particular, the above inequality is usually assumed to hold for any "practical code" due to a debatable application of McMillan's theorem to sources with memory. We thus propose a clarification of the topic, also providing an extended version of McMillan's theorem to be used for Markovian sources.
0809.1053
An impossibility result for process discrimination
math.PR cs.IT math.IT math.ST stat.TH
Two series of binary observations $x_1,x_1,...$ and $y_1,y_2,...$ are presented: at each time $n\in\N$ we are given $x_n$ and $y_n$. It is assumed that the sequences are generated independently of each other by two B-processes. We are interested in the question of whether the sequences represent a typical realization of two different processes or of the same one. We demonstrate that this is impossible to decide, in the sense that every discrimination procedure is bound to err with non-negligible frequency when presented with sequences from some B-processes. This contrasts earlier positive results on B-processes, in particular those showing that there are consistent $\bar d$-distance estimates for this class of processes.