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0809.1077
Variable Neighborhood Search for the University Lecturer-Student Assignment Problem
cs.AI
The paper presents a study of local search heuristics in general and variable neighborhood search in particular for the resolution of an assignment problem studied in the practical work of universities. Here, students have to be assigned to scientific topics which are proposed and supported by members of staff. The problem involves the optimization under given preferences of students which may be expressed when applying for certain topics. It is possible to observe that variable neighborhood search leads to superior results for the tested problem instances. One instance is taken from an actual case, while others have been generated based on the real world data to support the analysis with a deeper analysis. An extension of the problem has been formulated by integrating a second objective function that simultaneously balances the workload of the members of staff while maximizing utility of the students. The algorithmic approach has been prototypically implemented in a computer system. One important aspect in this context is the application of the research work to problems of other scientific institutions, and therefore the provision of decision support functionalities.
0809.1205
On Information-Theoretic Scaling Laws for Wireless Networks
cs.IT math.IT
With the analysis of the hierarchical scheme, the potential influence of the pre-constant in deriving scaling laws is exposed. It is found that a modified hierarchical scheme can achieve a throughput arbitrarily times higher than the original one, although it is still diminishingly small compared to the linear scaling. The study demonstrates the essential importance of the throughput formula itself, rather than the scaling laws consequently derived.
0809.1208
Bounds on the Capacity of the Relay Channel with States at the Source
cs.IT math.IT
This paper has been withdrawn by the authors
0809.1226
Applications of Universal Source Coding to Statistical Analysis of Time Series
cs.IT cs.AI math.IT math.ST stat.TH
We show how universal codes can be used for solving some of the most important statistical problems for time series. By definition, a universal code (or a universal lossless data compressor) can compress any sequence generated by a stationary and ergodic source asymptotically to the Shannon entropy, which, in turn, is the best achievable ratio for lossless data compressors. We consider finite-alphabet and real-valued time series and the following problems: estimation of the limiting probabilities for finite-alphabet time series and estimation of the density for real-valued time series, the on-line prediction, regression, classification (or problems with side information) for both types of the time series and the following problems of hypothesis testing: goodness-of-fit testing, or identity testing, and testing of serial independence. It is important to note that all problems are considered in the framework of classical mathematical statistics and, on the other hand, everyday methods of data compression (or archivers) can be used as a tool for the estimation and testing. It turns out, that quite often the suggested methods and tests are more powerful than known ones when they are applied in practice.
0809.1241
A New Framework of Multistage Estimation
math.ST cs.LG math.PR stat.ME stat.TH
In this paper, we have established a unified framework of multistage parameter estimation. We demonstrate that a wide variety of statistical problems such as fixed-sample-size interval estimation, point estimation with error control, bounded-width confidence intervals, interval estimation following hypothesis testing, construction of confidence sequences, can be cast into the general framework of constructing sequential random intervals with prescribed coverage probabilities. We have developed exact methods for the construction of such sequential random intervals in the context of multistage sampling. In particular, we have established inclusion principle and coverage tuning techniques to control and adjust the coverage probabilities of sequential random intervals. We have obtained concrete sampling schemes which are unprecedentedly efficient in terms of sampling effort as compared to existing procedures.
0809.1252
Maximum Entropy Rate of Markov Sources for Systems With Non-regular Constraints
cs.IT math.IT
Using the concept of discrete noiseless channels, it was shown by Shannon in A Mathematical Theory of Communication that the ultimate performance of an encoder for a constrained system is limited by the combinatorial capacity of the system if the constraints define a regular language. In the present work, it is shown that this is not an inherent property of regularity but holds in general. To show this, constrained systems are described by generating functions and random walks on trees.
0809.1257
The Golden Ratio Encoder
cs.IT math.IT
This paper proposes a novel Nyquist-rate analog-to-digital (A/D) conversion algorithm which achieves exponential accuracy in the bit-rate despite using imperfect components. The proposed algorithm is based on a robust implementation of a beta-encoder where the value of the base beta is equal to golden mean. It was previously shown that beta-encoders can be implemented in such a way that their exponential accuracy is robust against threshold offsets in the quantizer element. This paper extends this result by allowing for imperfect analog multipliers with imprecise gain values as well. A formal computational model for algorithmic encoders and a general test bed for evaluating their robustness is also proposed.
0809.1258
Network Protection Codes Against Link Failures Using Network Coding
cs.IT cs.NI math.IT
Protecting against link failures in communication networks is essential to increase robustness, accessibility, and reliability of data transmission. Recently, network coding has been proposed as a solution to provide agile and cost efficient network protection against link failures, which does not require data rerouting, or packet retransmission. To achieve this, separate paths have to be provisioned to carry encoded packets, hence requiring either the addition of extra links, or reserving some of the resources for this purpose. In this paper, we propose network protection codes against a single link failure using network coding, where a separate path using reserved links is not needed. In this case portions of the link capacities are used to carry the encoded packets. The scheme is extended to protect against multiple link failures and can be implemented at an overlay layer. Although this leads to reducing the network capacity, the network capacity reduction is asymptotically small in most cases of practical interest. We demonstrate that such network protection codes are equivalent to error correcting codes for erasure channels. Finally, we study the encoding and decoding operations of such codes over the binary field.
0809.1264
Tight Bounds on Minimum Maximum Pointwise Redundancy
cs.IT math.IT
This paper presents new lower and upper bounds for the optimal compression of binary prefix codes in terms of the most probable input symbol, where compression efficiency is determined by the nonlinear codeword length objective of minimizing maximum pointwise redundancy. This objective relates to both universal modeling and Shannon coding, and these bounds are tight throughout the interval. The upper bounds also apply to a related objective, that of dth exponential redundancy.
0809.1270
Predictive Hypothesis Identification
cs.LG math.ST stat.ML stat.TH
While statistics focusses on hypothesis testing and on estimating (properties of) the true sampling distribution, in machine learning the performance of learning algorithms on future data is the primary issue. In this paper we bridge the gap with a general principle (PHI) that identifies hypotheses with best predictive performance. This includes predictive point and interval estimation, simple and composite hypothesis testing, (mixture) model selection, and others as special cases. For concrete instantiations we will recover well-known methods, variations thereof, and new ones. PHI nicely justifies, reconciles, and blends (a reparametrization invariant variation of) MAP, ML, MDL, and moment estimation. One particular feature of PHI is that it can genuinely deal with nested hypotheses.
0809.1300
What makes a good role model
cs.IT math.IT
The role model strategy is introduced as a method for designing an estimator by approaching the output of a superior estimator that has better input observations. This strategy is shown to yield the optimal Bayesian estimator when a Markov condition is fulfilled. Two examples involving simple channels are given to illustrate its use. The strategy is combined with time averaging to construct a statistical model by numerically solving a convex program. The role model strategy was developed in the context of low complexity decoder design for iterative decoding. Potential applications outside the field of communications are discussed.
0809.1330
Low-Complexity Coding and Source-Optimized Clustering for Large-Scale Sensor Networks
cs.IT math.IT
We consider the distributed source coding problem in which correlated data picked up by scattered sensors has to be encoded separately and transmitted to a common receiver, subject to a rate-distortion constraint. Although near-tooptimal solutions based on Turbo and LDPC codes exist for this problem, in most cases the proposed techniques do not scale to networks of hundreds of sensors. We present a scalable solution based on the following key elements: (a) distortion-optimized index assignments for low-complexity distributed quantization, (b) source-optimized hierarchical clustering based on the Kullback-Leibler distance and (c) sum-product decoding on specific factor graphs exploiting the correlation of the data.
0809.1344
The Balanced Unicast and Multicast Capacity Regions of Large Wireless Networks
cs.IT math.IT
We consider the question of determining the scaling of the $n^2$-dimensional balanced unicast and the $n 2^n$-dimensional balanced multicast capacity regions of a wireless network with $n$ nodes placed uniformly at random in a square region of area $n$ and communicating over Gaussian fading channels. We identify this scaling of both the balanced unicast and multicast capacity regions in terms of $\Theta(n)$, out of $2^n$ total possible, cuts. These cuts only depend on the geometry of the locations of the source nodes and their destination nodes and the traffic demands between them, and thus can be readily evaluated. Our results are constructive and provide optimal (in the scaling sense) communication schemes.
0809.1348
MBBP for improved iterative channel decoding in 802.16e WiMAX systems
cs.IT math.IT
We propose the application of multiple-bases belief-propagation, an optimized iterative decoding method, to a set of rate-1/2 LDPC codes from the IEEE 802.16e WiMAX standard. The presented approach allows for improved decoding performance when signaling over the AWGN channel. As all required operations for this method can be run in parallel, the decoding delay of this method and standard belief-propagation decoding are equal. The obtained results are compared to the performance of LDPC codes optimized with the progressive edge-growth algorithm and to bounds from information theory. It will be shown that the discussed method mitigates the gap to the well-known random coding bound by about 20 percent.
0809.1366
Network Coding Security: Attacks and Countermeasures
cs.CR cs.IT cs.NI math.IT
By allowing intermediate nodes to perform non-trivial operations on packets, such as mixing data from multiple streams, network coding breaks with the ruling store and forward networking paradigm and opens a myriad of challenging security questions. Following a brief overview of emerging network coding protocols, we provide a taxonomy of their security vulnerabilities, which highlights the differences between attack scenarios in which network coding is particularly vulnerable and other relevant cases in which the intrinsic properties of network coding allow for stronger and more efficient security solutions than classical routing. Furthermore, we give practical examples where network coding can be combined with classical cryptography both for secure communication and secret key distribution. Throughout the paper we identify a number of research challenges deemed relevant towards the applicability of secure network coding in practical networks.
0809.1379
A Max-Flow Min-Cut Theorem with Applications in Small Worlds and Dual Radio Networks
cs.IT cs.DM math.IT
Intrigued by the capacity of random networks, we start by proving a max-flow min-cut theorem that is applicable to any random graph obeying a suitably defined independence-in-cut property. We then show that this property is satisfied by relevant classes, including small world topologies, which are pervasive in both man-made and natural networks, and wireless networks of dual devices, which exploit multiple radio interfaces to enhance the connectivity of the network. In both cases, we are able to apply our theorem and derive max-flow min-cut bounds for network information flow.
0809.1398
Stability of Maximum likelihood based clustering methods: exploring the backbone of classifications (Who is keeping you in that community?)
physics.soc-ph cond-mat.stat-mech cs.IT math.IT physics.comp-ph physics.data-an
Components of complex systems are often classified according to the way they interact with each other. In graph theory such groups are known as clusters or communities. Many different techniques have been recently proposed to detect them, some of which involve inference methods using either Bayesian or Maximum Likelihood approaches. In this article, we study a statistical model designed for detecting clusters based on connection similarity. The basic assumption of the model is that the graph was generated by a certain grouping of the nodes and an Expectation Maximization algorithm is employed to infer that grouping. We show that the method admits further development to yield a stability analysis of the groupings that quantifies the extent to which each node influences its neighbors group membership. Our approach naturally allows for the identification of the key elements responsible for the grouping and their resilience to changes in the network. Given the generality of the assumptions underlying the statistical model, such nodes are likely to play special roles in the original system. We illustrate this point by analyzing several empirical networks for which further information about the properties of the nodes is available. The search and identification of stabilizing nodes constitutes thus a novel technique to characterize the relevance of nodes in complex networks.
0809.1493
Exploring Large Feature Spaces with Hierarchical Multiple Kernel Learning
cs.LG stat.ML
For supervised and unsupervised learning, positive definite kernels allow to use large and potentially infinite dimensional feature spaces with a computational cost that only depends on the number of observations. This is usually done through the penalization of predictor functions by Euclidean or Hilbertian norms. In this paper, we explore penalizing by sparsity-inducing norms such as the l1-norm or the block l1-norm. We assume that the kernel decomposes into a large sum of individual basis kernels which can be embedded in a directed acyclic graph; we show that it is then possible to perform kernel selection through a hierarchical multiple kernel learning framework, in polynomial time in the number of selected kernels. This framework is naturally applied to non linear variable selection; our extensive simulations on synthetic datasets and datasets from the UCI repository show that efficiently exploring the large feature space through sparsity-inducing norms leads to state-of-the-art predictive performance.
0809.1522
On the permutation capacity of digraphs
math.CO cs.IT math.IT
We extend several results of the third author and C. Malvenuto on graph-different permutations to the case of directed graphs and introduce new open problems. Permutation capacity is a natural extension of Sperner capacity from finite directed graphs to infinite digraphs. Our subject is combinatorial in nature, but can be equally regarded as zero-error information theory.
0809.1551
Consistent Query Answers in the Presence of Universal Constraints
cs.DB
The framework of consistent query answers and repairs has been introduced to alleviate the impact of inconsistent data on the answers to a query. A repair is a minimally different consistent instance and an answer is consistent if it is present in every repair. In this article we study the complexity of consistent query answers and repair checking in the presence of universal constraints. We propose an extended version of the conflict hypergraph which allows to capture all repairs w.r.t. a set of universal constraints. We show that repair checking is in PTIME for the class of full tuple-generating dependencies and denial constraints, and we present a polynomial repair algorithm. This algorithm is sound, i.e. always produces a repair, but also complete, i.e. every repair can be constructed. Next, we present a polynomial-time algorithm computing consistent answers to ground quantifier-free queries in the presence of denial constraints, join dependencies, and acyclic full-tuple generating dependencies. Finally, we show that extending the class of constraints leads to intractability. For arbitrary full tuple-generating dependencies consistent query answering becomes coNP-complete. For arbitrary universal constraints consistent query answering is \Pi_2^p-complete and repair checking coNP-complete.
0809.1590
When is there a representer theorem? Vector versus matrix regularizers
cs.LG
We consider a general class of regularization methods which learn a vector of parameters on the basis of linear measurements. It is well known that if the regularizer is a nondecreasing function of the inner product then the learned vector is a linear combination of the input data. This result, known as the {\em representer theorem}, is at the basis of kernel-based methods in machine learning. In this paper, we prove the necessity of the above condition, thereby completing the characterization of kernel methods based on regularization. We further extend our analysis to regularization methods which learn a matrix, a problem which is motivated by the application to multi-task learning. In this context, we study a more general representer theorem, which holds for a larger class of regularizers. We provide a necessary and sufficient condition for these class of matrix regularizers and highlight them with some concrete examples of practical importance. Our analysis uses basic principles from matrix theory, especially the useful notion of matrix nondecreasing function.
0809.1593
Constructing Perfect Steganographic Systems
cs.CR cs.IT math.IT
We propose steganographic systems for the case when covertexts (containers) are generated by a finite-memory source with possibly unknown statistics. The probability distributions of covertexts with and without hidden information are the same; this means that the proposed stegosystems are perfectly secure, i.e. an observer cannot determine whether hidden information is being transmitted. The speed of transmission of hidden information can be made arbitrary close to the theoretical limit - the Shannon entropy of the source of covertexts. An interesting feature of the suggested stegosystems is that they do not require any (secret or public) key. At the same time, we outline some principled computational limitations on steganography. We show that there are such sources of covertexts, that any stegosystem that has linear (in the length of the covertext) speed of transmission of hidden text must have an exponential Kolmogorov complexity. This shows, in particular, that some assumptions on the sources of covertext are necessary.
0809.1618
ECOLANG - Communications Language for Ecological Simulations Network
cs.AI cs.MA
This document describes the communication language used in one multiagent system environment for ecological simulations, based on EcoDynamo simulator application linked with several intelligent agents and visualisation applications, and extends the initial definition of the language. The agents actions and perceptions are translated into messages exchanged with the simulator application and other agents. The concepts and definitions used follow the BNF notation (Backus et al. 1960) and is inspired in the Coach Unilang language (Reis and Lau 2002).
0809.1686
Agent-based Ecological Model Calibration - on the Edge of a New Approach
cs.AI cs.MA
The purpose of this paper is to present a new approach to ecological model calibration -- an agent-based software. This agent works on three stages: 1- It builds a matrix that synthesizes the inter-variable relationships; 2- It analyses the steady-state sensitivity of different variables to different parameters; 3- It runs the model iteratively and measures model lack of fit, adequacy and reliability. Stage 3 continues until some convergence criteria are attained. At each iteration, the agent knows from stages 1 and 2, which parameters are most likely to produce the desired shift on predicted results.
0809.1687
Incoherent dictionaries and the statistical restricted isometry property
cs.IT cs.DM math.IT math.PR
In this article we present a statistical version of the Candes-Tao restricted isometry property (SRIP for short) which holds in general for any incoherent dictionary which is a disjoint union of orthonormal bases. In addition, under appropriate normalization, the eigenvalues of the associated Gram matrix fluctuate around 1 according to the Wigner semicircle distribution. The result is then applied to various dictionaries that arise naturally in the setting of finite harmonic analysis, giving, in particular, a better understanding on a remark of Applebaum-Howard-Searle-Calderbank concerning RIP for the Heisenberg dictionary of chirp like functions.
0809.1802
Automatic Identification and Data Extraction from 2-Dimensional Plots in Digital Documents
cs.CV
Most search engines index the textual content of documents in digital libraries. However, scholarly articles frequently report important findings in figures for visual impact and the contents of these figures are not indexed. These contents are often invaluable to the researcher in various fields, for the purposes of direct comparison with their own work. Therefore, searching for figures and extracting figure data are important problems. To the best of our knowledge, there exists no tool to automatically extract data from figures in digital documents. If we can extract data from these images automatically and store them in a database, an end-user can query and combine data from multiple digital documents simultaneously and efficiently. We propose a framework based on image analysis and machine learning to extract information from 2-D plot images and store them in a database. The proposed algorithm identifies a 2-D plot and extracts the axis labels, legend and the data points from the 2-D plot. We also segregate overlapping shapes that correspond to different data points. We demonstrate performance of individual algorithms, using a combination of generated and real-life images.
0809.1900
Distributed Detection in Sensor Networks with Limited Range Multi-Modal Sensors
cs.IT math.IT
We consider a multi-object detection problem over a sensor network (SNET) with limited range multi-modal sensors. Limited range sensing environment arises in a sensing field prone to signal attenuation and path losses. The general problem complements the widely considered decentralized detection problem where all sensors observe the same object. In this paper we develop a distributed detection approach based on recent development of the false discovery rate (FDR) and the associated BH test procedure. The BH procedure is based on rank ordering of scalar test statistics. We first develop scalar test statistics for multidimensional data to handle multi-modal sensor observations and establish its optimality in terms of the BH procedure. We then propose a distributed algorithm in the ideal case of infinite attenuation for identification of sensors that are in the immediate vicinity of an object. We demonstrate communication message scalability to large SNETs by showing that the upper bound on the communication message complexity scales linearly with the number of sensors that are in the vicinity of objects and is independent of the total number of sensors in the SNET. This brings forth an important principle for evaluating the performance of an SNET, namely, the need for scalability of communications and performance with respect to the number of objects or events in an SNET irrespective of the network size. We then account for finite attenuation by modeling sensor observations as corrupted by uncertain interference arising from distant objects and developing robust extensions to our idealized distributed scheme. The robustness properties ensure that both the error performance and communication message complexity degrade gracefully with interference.
0809.1910
Reliable Communications with Asymmetric Codebooks: An Information Theoretic Analysis of Robust Signal Hashing
cs.IT math.IT
In this paper, a generalization of the traditional point-to-point to communication setup, which is named as "reliable communications with asymmetric codebooks", is proposed. Under the assumption of independent identically distributed (i.i.d) encoder codewords, it is proven that the operational capacity of the system is equal to the information capacity of the system, which is given by $\max_{p(x)} I(U;Y)$, where $X, U$ and $Y$ denote the individual random elements of encoder codewords, decoder codewords and decoder inputs. The capacity result is derived in the "binary symmetric" case (which is an analogous formulation of the traditional "binary symmetric channel" for our case), as a function of the system parameters. A conceptually insightful inference is made by attributing the difference from the classical Shannon-type capacity of binary symmetric channel to the {\em gap} due to the codebook asymmetry.
0809.1916
Randomized Distributed Configuration Management of Wireless Networks: Multi-layer Markov Random Fields and Near-Optimality
cs.DC cs.AI
Distributed configuration management is imperative for wireless infrastructureless networks where each node adjusts locally its physical and logical configuration through information exchange with neighbors. Two issues remain open. The first is the optimality. The second is the complexity. We study these issues through modeling, analysis, and randomized distributed algorithms. Modeling defines the optimality. We first derive a global probabilistic model for a network configuration which characterizes jointly the statistical spatial dependence of a physical- and a logical-configuration. We then show that a local model which approximates the global model is a two-layer Markov Random Field or a random bond model. The complexity of the local model is the communication range among nodes. The local model is near-optimal when the approximation error to the global model is within a given error bound. We analyze the trade-off between an approximation error and complexity, and derive sufficient conditions on the near-optimality of the local model. We validate the model, the analysis and the randomized distributed algorithms also through simulation.
0809.1963
Materialized View Selection by Query Clustering in XML Data Warehouses
cs.DB
XML data warehouses form an interesting basis for decision-support applications that exploit complex data. However, native XML database management systems currently bear limited performances and it is necessary to design strategies to optimize them. In this paper, we propose an automatic strategy for the selection of XML materialized views that exploits a data mining technique, more precisely the clustering of the query workload. To validate our strategy, we implemented an XML warehouse modeled along the XCube specifications. We executed a workload of XQuery decision-support queries on this warehouse, with and without using our strategy. Our experimental results demonstrate its efficiency, even when queries are complex.
0809.1965
Dynamic index selection in data warehouses
cs.DB
Analytical queries defined on data warehouses are complex and use several join operations that are very costly, especially when run on very large data volumes. To improve response times, data warehouse administrators casually use indexing techniques. This task is nevertheless complex and fastidious. In this paper, we present an automatic, dynamic index selection method for data warehouses that is based on incremental frequent itemset mining from a given query workload. The main advantage of this approach is that it helps update the set of selected indexes when workload evolves instead of recreating it from scratch. Preliminary experimental results illustrate the efficiency of this approach, both in terms of performance enhancement and overhead.
0809.1971
Knowledge and Metadata Integration for Warehousing Complex Data
cs.DB
With the ever-growing availability of so-called complex data, especially on the Web, decision-support systems such as data warehouses must store and process data that are not only numerical or symbolic. Warehousing and analyzing such data requires the joint exploitation of metadata and domain-related knowledge, which must thereby be integrated. In this paper, we survey the types of knowledge and metadata that are needed for managing complex data, discuss the issue of knowledge and metadata integration, and propose a CWM-compliant integration solution that we incorporate into an XML complex data warehousing framework we previously designed.
0809.1981
A Join Index for XML Data Warehouses
cs.DB
XML data warehouses form an interesting basis for decision-support applications that exploit complex data. However, native-XML database management systems (DBMSs) currently bear limited performances and it is necessary to research for ways to optimize them. In this paper, we propose a new join index that is specifically adapted to the multidimensional architecture of XML warehouses. It eliminates join operations while preserving the information contained in the original warehouse. A theoretical study and experimental results demonstrate the efficiency of our join index. They also show that native XML DBMSs can compete with XML-compatible, relational DBMSs when warehousing and analyzing XML data.
0809.2075
Low congestion online routing and an improved mistake bound for online prediction of graph labeling
cs.DS cs.DM cs.LG
In this paper, we show a connection between a certain online low-congestion routing problem and an online prediction of graph labeling. More specifically, we prove that if there exists a routing scheme that guarantees a congestion of $\alpha$ on any edge, there exists an online prediction algorithm with mistake bound $\alpha$ times the cut size, which is the size of the cut induced by the label partitioning of graph vertices. With previous known bound of $O(\log n)$ for $\alpha$ for the routing problem on trees with $n$ vertices, we obtain an improved prediction algorithm for graphs with high effective resistance. In contrast to previous approaches that move the graph problem into problems in vector space using graph Laplacian and rely on the analysis of the perceptron algorithm, our proof are purely combinatorial. Further more, our approach directly generalizes to the case where labels are not binary.
0809.2085
Clustered Multi-Task Learning: A Convex Formulation
cs.LG
In multi-task learning several related tasks are considered simultaneously, with the hope that by an appropriate sharing of information across tasks, each task may benefit from the others. In the context of learning linear functions for supervised classification or regression, this can be achieved by including a priori information about the weight vectors associated with the tasks, and how they are expected to be related to each other. In this paper, we assume that tasks are clustered into groups, which are unknown beforehand, and that tasks within a group have similar weight vectors. We design a new spectral norm that encodes this a priori assumption, without the prior knowledge of the partition of tasks into groups, resulting in a new convex optimization formulation for multi-task learning. We show in simulations on synthetic examples and on the IEDB MHC-I binding dataset, that our approach outperforms well-known convex methods for multi-task learning, as well as related non convex methods dedicated to the same problem.
0809.2136
The Potluck Problem
cs.GT cs.MA
This paper proposes the Potluck Problem as a model for the behavior of independent producers and consumers under standard economic assumptions, as a problem of resource allocation in a multi-agent system in which there is no explicit communication among the agents.
0809.2147
Investigation on Multiuser Diversity in Spectrum Sharing Based Cognitive Radio Networks
cs.IT math.IT
A new form of multiuser diversity, named \emph{multiuser interference diversity}, is investigated for opportunistic communications in cognitive radio (CR) networks by exploiting the mutual interference between the CR and the existing primary radio (PR) links. The multiuser diversity gain and ergodic throughput are analyzed for different types of CR networks and compared against those in the conventional networks without the PR link.
0809.2148
Cognitive Beamforming Made Practical: Effective Interference Channel and Learning-Throughput Tradeoff
cs.IT math.IT
This paper studies the transmit strategy for a secondary link or the so-called cognitive radio (CR) link under opportunistic spectrum sharing with an existing primary radio (PR) link. It is assumed that the CR transmitter is equipped with multi-antennas, whereby transmit precoding and power control can be jointly deployed to balance between avoiding interference at the PR terminals and optimizing performance of the CR link. This operation is named as cognitive beamforming (CB). Unlike prior study on CB that assumes perfect knowledge of the channels over which the CR transmitter interferes with the PR terminals, this paper proposes a practical CB scheme utilizing a new idea of effective interference channel (EIC), which can be efficiently estimated at the CR transmitter from its observed PR signals. Somehow surprisingly, this paper shows that the learning-based CB scheme with the EIC improves the CR channel capacity against the conventional scheme even with the exact CR-to-PR channel knowledge, when the PR link is equipped with multi-antennas but only communicates over a subspace of the total available spatial dimensions. Moreover, this paper presents algorithms for the CR to estimate the EIC over a finite learning time. Due to channel estimation errors, the proposed CB scheme causes leakage interference at the PR terminals, which leads to an interesting learning-throughput tradeoff phenomenon for the CR, pertinent to its time allocation between channel learning and data transmission. This paper derives the optimal channel learning time to maximize the effective throughput of the CR link, subject to the CR transmit power constraint and the interference power constraints for the PR terminals.
0809.2152
Informed Network Coding for Minimum Decoding Delay
cs.IT math.IT
Network coding is a highly efficient data dissemination mechanism for wireless networks. Since network coded information can only be recovered after delivering a sufficient number of coded packets, the resulting decoding delay can become problematic for delay-sensitive applications such as real-time media streaming. Motivated by this observation, we consider several algorithms that minimize the decoding delay and analyze their performance by means of simulation. The algorithms differ both in the required information about the state of the neighbors' buffers and in the way this knowledge is used to decide which packets to combine through coding operations. Our results show that a greedy algorithm, whose encodings maximize the number of nodes at which a coded packet is immediately decodable significantly outperforms existing network coding protocols.
0809.2168
Fairness in Combinatorial Auctioning Systems
cs.GT cs.MA
One of the Multi-Agent Systems that is widely used by various government agencies, buyers and sellers in a market economy, in such a manner so as to attain optimized resource allocation, is the Combinatorial Auctioning System (CAS). We study another important aspect of resource allocations in CAS, namely fairness. We present two important notions of fairness in CAS, extended fairness and basic fairness. We give an algorithm that works by incorporating a metric to ensure fairness in a CAS that uses the Vickrey-Clark-Groves (VCG) mechanism, and uses an algorithm of Sandholm to achieve optimality. Mathematical formulations are given to represent measures of extended fairness and basic fairness.
0809.2226
Relay vs. User Cooperation in Time-Duplexed Multiaccess Networks
cs.IT math.IT
The performance of user-cooperation in a multi-access network is compared to that of using a wireless relay. Using the total transmit and processing power consumed at all nodes as a cost metric, the outage probabilities achieved by dynamic decode-and-forward (DDF) and amplify-and-forward (AF) are compared for the two networks. A geometry-inclusive high signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) outage analysis in conjunction with area-averaged numerical simulations shows that user and relay cooperation achieve a maximum diversity of K and 2 respectively for a K-user multiaccess network under both DDF and AF. However, when accounting for energy costs of processing and communication, relay cooperation can be more energy efficient than user cooperation, i.e., relay cooperation achieves coding (SNR) gains, particularly in the low SNR regime, that override the diversity advantage of user cooperation.
0809.2315
On the Construction of Skew Quasi-Cyclic Codes
cs.IT cs.DM math.IT math.RA
In this paper we study a special type of quasi-cyclic (QC) codes called skew QC codes. This set of codes is constructed using a non-commutative ring called the skew polynomial rings $F[x;\theta ]$. After a brief description of the skew polynomial ring $F[x;\theta ]$ it is shown that skew QC codes are left submodules of the ring $R_{s}^{l}=(F[x;\theta ]/(x^{s}-1))^{l}.$ The notions of generator and parity-check polynomials are given. We also introduce the notion of similar polynomials in the ring $F[x;\theta ]$ and show that parity-check polynomials for skew QC codes are unique up to similarity. Our search results lead to the construction of several new codes with Hamming distances exceeding the Hamming distances of the previously best known linear codes with comparable parameters.
0809.2350
Random Linear Network Coding For Time Division Duplexing: When To Stop Talking And Start Listening
cs.IT math.IT
A new random linear network coding scheme for reliable communications for time division duplexing channels is proposed. The setup assumes a packet erasure channel and that nodes cannot transmit and receive information simultaneously. The sender transmits coded data packets back-to-back before stopping to wait for the receiver to acknowledge (ACK) the number of degrees of freedom, if any, that are required to decode correctly the information. We provide an analysis of this problem to show that there is an optimal number of coded data packets, in terms of mean completion time, to be sent before stopping to listen. This number depends on the latency, probabilities of packet erasure and ACK erasure, and the number of degrees of freedom that the receiver requires to decode the data. This scheme is optimal in terms of the mean time to complete the transmission of a fixed number of data packets. We show that its performance is very close to that of a full duplex system, while transmitting a different number of coded packets can cause large degradation in performance, especially if latency is high. Also, we study the throughput performance of our scheme and compare it to existing half-duplex Go-back-N and Selective Repeat ARQ schemes. Numerical results, obtained for different latencies, show that our scheme has similar performance to the Selective Repeat in most cases and considerable performance gain when latency and packet error probability is high.
0809.2421
Electricity Demand and Energy Consumption Management System
cs.AI cs.CE
This project describes the electricity demand and energy consumption management system and its application to Southern Peru smelter. It is composed of an hourly demand-forecasting module and of a simulation component for a plant electrical system. The first module was done using dynamic neural networks with backpropagation training algorithm; it is used to predict the electric power demanded every hour, with an error percentage below of 1%. This information allows efficient management of energy peak demands before this happen, distributing the raise of electric load to other hours or improving those equipments that increase the demand. The simulation module is based in advanced estimation techniques, such as: parametric estimation, neural network modeling, statistic regression and previously developed models, which simulates the electric behavior of the smelter plant. These modules facilitate electricity demand and consumption proper planning, because they allow knowing the behavior of the hourly demand and the consumption patterns of the plant, including the bill components, but also energy deficiencies and opportunities for improvement, based on analysis of information about equipments, processes and production plans, as well as maintenance programs. Finally the results of its application in Southern Peru smelter are presented.
0809.2446
High-Rate Space-Time Coded Large MIMO Systems: Low-Complexity Detection and Channel Estimation
cs.IT math.IT
In this paper, we present a low-complexity algorithm for detection in high-rate, non-orthogonal space-time block coded (STBC) large-MIMO systems that achieve high spectral efficiencies of the order of tens of bps/Hz. We also present a training-based iterative detection/channel estimation scheme for such large STBC MIMO systems. Our simulation results show that excellent bit error rate and nearness-to-capacity performance are achieved by the proposed multistage likelihood ascent search (M-LAS) detector in conjunction with the proposed iterative detection/channel estimation scheme at low complexities. The fact that we could show such good results for large STBCs like 16x16 and 32x32 STBCs from Cyclic Division Algebras (CDA) operating at spectral efficiencies in excess of 20 bps/Hz (even after accounting for the overheads meant for pilot based training for channel estimation and turbo coding) establishes the effectiveness of the proposed detector and channel estimator. We decode perfect codes of large dimensions using the proposed detector. With the feasibility of such a low-complexity detection/channel estimation scheme, large-MIMO systems with tens of antennas operating at several tens of bps/Hz spectral efficiencies can become practical, enabling interesting high data rate wireless applications.
0809.2508
A fast approach for overcomplete sparse decomposition based on smoothed L0 norm
cs.IT math.IT
In this paper, a fast algorithm for overcomplete sparse decomposition, called SL0, is proposed. The algorithm is essentially a method for obtaining sparse solutions of underdetermined systems of linear equations, and its applications include underdetermined Sparse Component Analysis (SCA), atomic decomposition on overcomplete dictionaries, compressed sensing, and decoding real field codes. Contrary to previous methods, which usually solve this problem by minimizing the L1 norm using Linear Programming (LP) techniques, our algorithm tries to directly minimize the L0 norm. It is experimentally shown that the proposed algorithm is about two to three orders of magnitude faster than the state-of-the-art interior-point LP solvers, while providing the same (or better) accuracy.
0809.2532
Multidimensional Visualization of Oracle Performance Using Barry007
cs.PF cs.DB
Most generic performance tools display only system-level performance data using 2-dimensional plots or diagrams and this limits the informational detail that can be displayed. Moreover, a modern relational database system, like Oracle, can concurrently serve thousands of client processes with different workload characteristics, so that generic performance-data displays inevitably hide important information. Drawing on our previous work, this paper demonstrates the application of Barry007 multidimensional visualization to the analysis of Oracle end-user, session-level, performance data, showing both collective trends and individual performance anomalies.
0809.2546
Depth as Randomness Deficiency
cs.CC cs.IT math.IT
Depth of an object concerns a tradeoff between computation time and excess of program length over the shortest program length required to obtain the object. It gives an unconditional lower bound on the computation time from a given program in absence of auxiliary information. Variants known as logical depth and computational depth are expressed in Kolmogorov complexity theory. We derive quantitative relation between logical depth and computational depth and unify the different depth notions by relating them to A. Kolmogorov and L. Levin's fruitful notion of randomness deficiency. Subsequently, we revisit the computational depth of infinite strings, introducing the notion of super deep sequences and relate it with other approaches.
0809.2553
Normalized Information Distance
cs.IR cs.AI
The normalized information distance is a universal distance measure for objects of all kinds. It is based on Kolmogorov complexity and thus uncomputable, but there are ways to utilize it. First, compression algorithms can be used to approximate the Kolmogorov complexity if the objects have a string representation. Second, for names and abstract concepts, page count statistics from the World Wide Web can be used. These practical realizations of the normalized information distance can then be applied to machine learning tasks, expecially clustering, to perform feature-free and parameter-free data mining. This chapter discusses the theoretical foundations of the normalized information distance and both practical realizations. It presents numerous examples of successful real-world applications based on these distance measures, ranging from bioinformatics to music clustering to machine translation.
0809.2639
Code diversity in multiple antenna wireless communication
cs.IT math.IT
The standard approach to the design of individual space-time codes is based on optimizing diversity and coding gains. This geometric approach leads to remarkable examples, such as perfect space-time block codes, for which the complexity of Maximum Likelihood (ML) decoding is considerable. Code diversity is an alternative and complementary approach where a small number of feedback bits are used to select from a family of space-time codes. Different codes lead to different induced channels at the receiver, where Channel State Information (CSI) is used to instruct the transmitter how to choose the code. This method of feedback provides gains associated with beamforming while minimizing the number of feedback bits. It complements the standard approach to code design by taking advantage of different (possibly equivalent) realizations of a particular code design. Feedback can be combined with sub-optimal low complexity decoding of the component codes to match ML decoding performance of any individual code in the family. It can also be combined with ML decoding of the component codes to improve performance beyond ML decoding performance of any individual code. One method of implementing code diversity is the use of feedback to adapt the phase of a transmitted signal as shown for 4 by 4 Quasi-Orthogonal Space-Time Block Code (QOSTBC) and multi-user detection using the Alamouti code. Code diversity implemented by selecting from equivalent variants is used to improve ML decoding performance of the Golden code. This paper introduces a family of full rate circulant codes which can be linearly decoded by fourier decomposition of circulant matrices within the code diversity framework. A 3 by 3 circulant code is shown to outperform the Alamouti code at the same transmission rate.
0809.2680
Mathematical Tool of Discrete Dynamic Modeling of Complex Systems in Control Loop
cs.MA cs.CE
In this paper we present a method of discrete modeling and analysis of multi-level dynamics of complex large-scale hierarchical dynamic systems subject to external dynamic control mechanism. In a model each state describes parallel dynamics and simultaneous trends of changes in system parameters. The essence of the approach is in analysis of system state dynamics while it is in the control loop.
0809.2686
An MAS-Based ETL Approach for Complex Data
cs.DB
In a data warehousing process, the phase of data integration is crucial. Many methods for data integration have been published in the literature. However, with the development of the Internet, the availability of various types of data (images, texts, sounds, videos, databases...) has increased, and structuring such data is a difficult task. We name these data, which may be structured or unstructured, "complex data". In this paper, we propose a new approach for complex data integration, based on a Multi-Agent System (MAS), in association to a data warehousing approach. Our objective is to take advantage of the MAS to perform the integration phase for complex data. We indeed consider the different tasks of the data integration process as services offered by agents. To validate this approach, we have actually developed an MAS for complex data integration.
0809.2687
Frequent itemsets mining for database auto-administration
cs.DB
With the wide development of databases in general and data warehouses in particular, it is important to reduce the tasks that a database administrator must perform manually. The aim of auto-administrative systems is to administrate and adapt themselves automatically without loss (or even with a gain) in performance. The idea of using data mining techniques to extract useful knowledge for administration from the data themselves has existed for some years. However, little research has been achieved. This idea nevertheless remains a very promising approach, notably in the field of data warehousing, where queries are very heterogeneous and cannot be interpreted easily. The aim of this study is to search for a way of extracting useful knowledge from stored data themselves to automatically apply performance optimization techniques, and more particularly indexing techniques. We have designed a tool that extracts frequent itemsets from a given workload to compute an index configuration that helps optimizing data access time. The experiments we performed showed that the index configurations generated by our tool allowed performance gains of 15% to 25% on a test database and a test data warehouse.
0809.2688
A Complex Data Warehouse for Personalized, Anticipative Medicine
cs.DB
With the growing use of new technologies, healthcare is nowadays undergoing significant changes. Information-based medicine has to exploit medical decision-support systems and requires the analysis of various, heterogeneous data, such as patient records, medical images, biological analysis results, etc. In this paper, we present the design of the complex data warehouse relating to high-level athletes. It is original in two ways. First, it is aimed at storing complex medical data. Second, it is designed to allow innovative and quite different kinds of analyses to support: (1) personalized and anticipative medicine (in opposition to curative medicine) for well-identified patients; (2) broad-band statistical studies over a given population of patients. Furthermore, the system includes data relating to several medical fields. It is also designed to be evolutionary to take into account future advances in medical research.
0809.2691
Expressing OLAP operators with the TAX XML algebra
cs.DB
With the rise of XML as a standard for representing business data, XML data warehouses appear as suitable solutions for Web-based decision-support applications. In this context, it is necessary to allow OLAP analyses over XML data cubes (XOLAP). Thus, XQuery extensions are needed. To help define a formal framework and allow much-needed performance optimizations on analytical queries expressed in XQuery, having an algebra at one's disposal is desirable. However, XOLAP approaches and algebras from the literature still largely rely on the relational model and/or only feature a small number of OLAP operators. In opposition, we propose in this paper to express a broad set of OLAP operators with the TAX XML algebra.
0809.2754
Algorithmic information theory
cs.IT cs.LG math.IT math.ST stat.TH
We introduce algorithmic information theory, also known as the theory of Kolmogorov complexity. We explain the main concepts of this quantitative approach to defining `information'. We discuss the extent to which Kolmogorov's and Shannon's information theory have a common purpose, and where they are fundamentally different. We indicate how recent developments within the theory allow one to formally distinguish between `structural' (meaningful) and `random' information as measured by the Kolmogorov structure function, which leads to a mathematical formalization of Occam's razor in inductive inference. We end by discussing some of the philosophical implications of the theory.
0809.2768
Hubs and Clusters in the Evolving U. S. Internal Migration Network
physics.soc-ph cs.SI physics.data-an stat.AP
Most nations of the world periodically publish N x N origin-destination tables, recording the number of people who lived in geographic subdivision i at time t and j at t+1. We have developed and widely applied to such national tables and other analogous (weighted, directed) socioeconomic networks, a two-stage--double-standardization and (strong component) hierarchical clustering--procedure. Previous applications of this methodology and related analytical issues are discussed. Its use is illustrated in a large-scale study, employing recorded United States internal migration flows between the 3,000+ county-level units of the nation for the periods 1965-1970 and 1995-2000. Prominent, important features--such as ''cosmopolitan hubs'' and ``functional regions''--are extracted from master dendrograms. The extent to which such characteristics have varied over the intervening thirty years is evaluated.
0809.2792
Predicting Abnormal Returns From News Using Text Classification
cs.LG cs.AI
We show how text from news articles can be used to predict intraday price movements of financial assets using support vector machines. Multiple kernel learning is used to combine equity returns with text as predictive features to increase classification performance and we develop an analytic center cutting plane method to solve the kernel learning problem efficiently. We observe that while the direction of returns is not predictable using either text or returns, their size is, with text features producing significantly better performance than historical returns alone.
0809.2835
Fundamental Constraints on Multicast Capacity Regions
cs.IT math.IT
Much of the existing work on the broadcast channel focuses only on the sending of private messages. In this work we examine the scenario where the sender also wishes to transmit common messages to subsets of receivers. For an L user broadcast channel there are 2L - 1 subsets of receivers and correspondingly 2L - 1 independent messages. The set of achievable rates for this channel is a 2L - 1 dimensional region. There are fundamental constraints on the geometry of this region. For example, observe that if the transmitter is able to simultaneously send L rate-one private messages, error-free to all receivers, then by sending the same information in each message, it must be able to send a single rate-one common message, error-free to all receivers. This swapping of private and common messages illustrates that for any broadcast channel, the inclusion of a point R* in the achievable rate region implies the achievability of a set of other points that are not merely component-wise less than R*. We formerly define this set and characterize it for L = 2 and L = 3. Whereas for L = 2 all the points in the set arise only from operations relating to swapping private and common messages, for L = 3 a form of network coding is required.
0809.2840
Spectrum Sharing between Wireless Networks
cs.IT math.IT
We consider the problem of two wireless networks operating on the same (presumably unlicensed) frequency band. Pairs within a given network cooperate to schedule transmissions, but between networks there is competition for spectrum. To make the problem tractable, we assume transmissions are scheduled according to a random access protocol where each network chooses an access probability for its users. A game between the two networks is defined. We characterize the Nash Equilibrium behavior of the system. Three regimes are identified; one in which both networks simultaneously schedule all transmissions; one in which the denser network schedules all transmissions and the sparser only schedules a fraction; and one in which both networks schedule only a fraction of their transmissions. The regime of operation depends on the pathloss exponent $\alpha$, the latter regime being desirable, but attainable only for $\alpha>4$. This suggests that in certain environments, rival wireless networks may end up naturally cooperating. To substantiate our analytical results, we simulate a system where networks iteratively optimize their access probabilities in a greedy manner. We also discuss a distributed scheduling protocol that employs carrier sensing, and demonstrate via simulations, that again a near cooperative equilibrium exists for sufficiently large $\alpha$.
0809.2931
An Efficient Algorithm for Cooperative Spectrum Sensing in Cognitive Radio Networks
cs.IT math.IT
We consider the problem of Spectrum Sensing in Cognitive Radio Systems. We have developed a distributed algorithm that the Secondary users can run to sense the channel cooperatively. It is based on sequential detection algorithms which optimally use the past observations. We use the algorithm on secondary users with energy detectors although it can be used with matched filter and other spectrum sensing algorithms also. The algorithm provides very low detection delays and also consumes little energy. Furthermore it causes low interference to the primary users. We compare this algorithm to several recently proposed algorithms and show that it detects changes in spectrum faster than these algorithms and uses significantly less energy.
0809.2965
On Time-Bounded Incompressibility of Compressible Strings and Sequences
cs.CC cs.IT math.IT
For every total recursive time bound $t$, a constant fraction of all compressible (low Kolmogorov complexity) strings is $t$-bounded incompressible (high time-bounded Kolmogorov complexity); there are uncountably many infinite sequences of which every initial segment of length $n$ is compressible to $\log n$ yet $t$-bounded incompressible below ${1/4}n - \log n$; and there are countable infinitely many recursive infinite sequence of which every initial segment is similarly $t$-bounded incompressible. These results are related to, but different from, Barzdins's lemma.
0809.2968
Bounds on Covering Codes with the Rank Metric
cs.IT math.IT
In this paper, we investigate geometrical properties of the rank metric space and covering properties of rank metric codes. We first establish an analytical expression for the intersection of two balls with rank radii, and then derive an upper bound on the volume of the union of multiple balls with rank radii. Using these geometrical properties, we derive both upper and lower bounds on the minimum cardinality of a code with a given rank covering radius. The geometrical properties and bounds proposed in this paper are significant to the design, decoding, and performance analysis of rank metric codes.
0809.3010
Improved Upper Bounds for the Information Rates of the Secret Sharing Schemes Induced by the Vamos Matroid
cs.CR cs.IT math.IT
An access structure specifying the qualified sets of a secret sharing scheme must have information rate less than or equal to one. The Vamos matroid induces two non-isomorphic access structures V1 and V6, which were shown by Marti-Farre and Padro to have information rates of at least 3/4. Beimel, Livne, and Padro showed that the information rates of V1 and V6 are bounded above by 10/11 and 9/10 respectively. Here we improve those upper bounds to 19/21 for V1 and 17/19 for V6.
0809.3023
Graph-based Logic and Sketches
math.CT cs.IT math.IT math.LO
We present the basic ideas of forms (a generalization of Ehresmann's sketches) and their theories and models, more explicitly than in previous expositions. Forms provide the ability to specify mathematical structures and data types in any appropriate category, including many types of structures (e.g. function spaces) that cannot be specified by sketches. We also outline a new kind of formal logic (based on graphs instead of strings of symbols) that gives an intrinsically categorial definition of assertion and proof for each type of form. This formal logic is new to this monograph. The relationship between multisorted equational logic and finite product theories is worked out in detail.
0809.3027
Finding links and initiators: a graph reconstruction problem
cs.AI cs.DB physics.soc-ph
Consider a 0-1 observation matrix M, where rows correspond to entities and columns correspond to signals; a value of 1 (or 0) in cell (i,j) of M indicates that signal j has been observed (or not observed) in entity i. Given such a matrix we study the problem of inferring the underlying directed links between entities (rows) and finding which entries in the matrix are initiators. We formally define this problem and propose an MCMC framework for estimating the links and the initiators given the matrix of observations M. We also show how this framework can be extended to incorporate a temporal aspect; instead of considering a single observation matrix M we consider a sequence of observation matrices M1,..., Mt over time. We show the connection between our problem and several problems studied in the field of social-network analysis. We apply our method to paleontological and ecological data and show that our algorithms work well in practice and give reasonable results.
0809.3035
Interference Alignment for Line-of-Sight Channels
cs.IT math.IT
The fully connected K-user interference channel is studied in a multipath environment with bandwidth W. We show that when each link consists of D physical paths, the total spectral efficiency can grow {\it linearly} with K. This result holds not merely in the limit of large transmit power P, but for any fixed P, and is therefore a stronger characterization than degrees of freedom. It is achieved via a form of interference alignment in the time domain. A caveat of this result is that W must grow with K, a phenomenon we refer to as {\it bandwidth scaling}. Our insight comes from examining channels with single path links (D=1), which we refer to as line-of-sight (LOS) links. For such channels we build a time-indexed interference graph and associate the communication problem with finding its maximal independent set. This graph has a stationarity property that we exploit to solve the problem efficiently via dynamic programming. Additionally, the interference graph enables us to demonstrate the necessity of bandwidth scaling for any scheme operating over LOS interference channels. Bandwidth scaling is then shown to also be a necessary ingredient for interference alignment in the K-user interference channel.
0809.3044
Kinetostatic Performance of a Planar Parallel Mechanism with Variable Actuation
cs.RO
This paper deals with a new planar parallel mechanism with variable actuation and its kinetostatic performance. A drawback of parallel mechanisms is the non homogeneity of kinetostatic performance within their workspace. The common approach to solve this problem is the introduction of actuation redundancy, that involves force control algorithms. Another approach, highlighted in this paper, is to select the actuated joint in each limb with regard to the pose of the end-effector. First, the architecture of the mechanism and two kinetostatic performance indices are described. Then, the actuating modes of the mechanism are compared.
0809.3083
Supervised Dictionary Learning
cs.CV
It is now well established that sparse signal models are well suited to restoration tasks and can effectively be learned from audio, image, and video data. Recent research has been aimed at learning discriminative sparse models instead of purely reconstructive ones. This paper proposes a new step in that direction, with a novel sparse representation for signals belonging to different classes in terms of a shared dictionary and multiple class-decision functions. The linear variant of the proposed model admits a simple probabilistic interpretation, while its most general variant admits an interpretation in terms of kernels. An optimization framework for learning all the components of the proposed model is presented, along with experimental results on standard handwritten digit and texture classification tasks.
0809.3140
Monadic Datalog over Finite Structures with Bounded Treewidth
cs.DB cs.CC cs.LO
Bounded treewidth and Monadic Second Order (MSO) logic have proved to be key concepts in establishing fixed-parameter tractability results. Indeed, by Courcelle's Theorem we know: Any property of finite structures, which is expressible by an MSO sentence, can be decided in linear time (data complexity) if the structures have bounded treewidth. In principle, Courcelle's Theorem can be applied directly to construct concrete algorithms by transforming the MSO evaluation problem into a tree language recognition problem. The latter can then be solved via a finite tree automaton (FTA). However, this approach has turned out to be problematical, since even relatively simple MSO formulae may lead to a ``state explosion'' of the FTA. In this work we propose monadic datalog (i.e., datalog where all intentional predicate symbols are unary) as an alternative method to tackle this class of fixed-parameter tractable problems. We show that if some property of finite structures is expressible in MSO then this property can also be expressed by means of a monadic datalog program over the structure plus the tree decomposition. Moreover, we show that the resulting fragment of datalog can be evaluated in linear time (both w.r.t. the program size and w.r.t. the data size). This new approach is put to work by devising new algorithms for the 3-Colorability problem of graphs and for the PRIMALITY problem of relational schemas (i.e., testing if some attribute in a relational schema is part of a key). We also report on experimental results with a prototype implementation.
0809.3159
A Geometrical Description of the SINR Region of the Gaussian Interference Channel: the two and three-user case
cs.IT math.IT
This paper addresses the problem of computing the achievable rates for two (and three) users sharing a same frequency band without coordination and thus interfering with each other. It is thus primarily related to the field of cognitive radio studies as we look for the achievable increase in the spectrum use efficiency. It is also strongly related to the long standing problem of the capacity region of a Gaussian interference channel (GIC) because of the assumption of no user coordination (and the underlying assumption that all signals and interferences are Gaussian). We give a geometrical description of the SINR region for the two-user and three-user channels. This geometric approach provides a closed-form expression of the capacity region of the two-user interference channel and an insightful of known optimal power allocation scheme.
0809.3170
A New Framework of Multistage Hypothesis Tests
math.ST cs.LG math.PR stat.ME stat.TH
In this paper, we have established a general framework of multistage hypothesis tests which applies to arbitrarily many mutually exclusive and exhaustive composite hypotheses. Within the new framework, we have constructed specific multistage tests which rigorously control the risk of committing decision errors and are more efficient than previous tests in terms of average sample number and the number of sampling operations. Without truncation, the sample numbers of our testing plans are absolutely bounded.
0809.3179
Kinematic and Dynamic Analyses of the Orthoglide 5-axis
cs.RO
This paper deals with the kinematic and dynamic analyses of the Orthoglide 5-axis, a five-degree-of-freedom manipulator. It is derived from two manipulators: i) the Orthoglide 3-axis; a three dof translational manipulator and ii) the Agile eye; a parallel spherical wrist. First, the kinematic and dynamic models of the Orthoglide 5-axis are developed. The geometric and inertial parameters of the manipulator are determined by means of a CAD software. Then, the required motors performances are evaluated for some test trajectories. Finally, the motors are selected in the catalogue from the previous results.
0809.3180
Singularity Analysis of Limited-dof Parallel Manipulators using Grassmann-Cayley Algebra
cs.RO
This paper characterizes geometrically the singularities of limited DOF parallel manipulators. The geometric conditions associated with the dependency of six Pl\"ucker vector of lines (finite and infinite) constituting the rows of the inverse Jacobian matrix are formulated using Grassmann-Cayley algebra. Manipulators under consideration do not need to have a passive spherical joint somewhere in each leg. This study is illustrated with three example robots
0809.3181
Framework for Dynamic Evaluation of Muscle Fatigue in Manual Handling Work
cs.RO
Muscle fatigue is defined as the point at which the muscle is no longer able to sustain the required force or work output level. The overexertion of muscle force and muscle fatigue can induce acute pain and chronic pain in human body. When muscle fatigue is accumulated, the functional disability can be resulted as musculoskeletal disorders (MSD). There are several posture exposure analysis methods useful for rating the MSD risks, but they are mainly based on static postures. Even in some fatigue evaluation methods, muscle fatigue evaluation is only available for static postures, but not suitable for dynamic working process. Meanwhile, some existing muscle fatigue models based on physiological models cannot be easily used in industrial ergonomic evaluations. The external dynamic load is definitely the most important factor resulting muscle fatigue, thus we propose a new fatigue model under a framework for evaluating fatigue in dynamic working processes. Under this framework, virtual reality system is taken to generate virtual working environment, which can be interacted with the work with haptic interfaces and optical motion capture system. The motion information and load information are collected and further processed to evaluate the overall work load of the worker based on dynamic muscle fatigue models and other work evaluation criterions and to give new information to characterize the penibility of the task in design process.
0809.3182
SINGULAB - A Graphical user Interface for the Singularity Analysis of Parallel Robots based on Grassmann-Cayley Algebra
cs.RO
This paper presents SinguLab, a graphical user interface for the singularity analysis of parallel robots. The algorithm is based on Grassmann-Cayley algebra. The proposed tool is interactive and introduces the designer to the singularity analysis performed by this method, showing all the stages along the procedure and eventually showing the solution algebraically and graphically, allowing as well the singularity verification of different robot poses.
0809.3187
A Control Variate Approach for Improving Efficiency of Ensemble Monte Carlo
cs.CE cond-mat.stat-mech stat.CO
In this paper we present a new approach to control variates for improving computational efficiency of Ensemble Monte Carlo. We present the approach using simulation of paths of a time-dependent nonlinear stochastic equation. The core idea is to extract information at one or more nominal model parameters and use this information to gain estimation efficiency at neighboring parameters. This idea is the basis of a general strategy, called DataBase Monte Carlo (DBMC), for improving efficiency of Monte Carlo. In this paper we describe how this strategy can be implemented using the variance reduction technique of Control Variates (CV). We show that, once an initial setup cost for extracting information is incurred, this approach can lead to significant gains in computational efficiency. The initial setup cost is justified in projects that require a large number of estimations or in those that are to be performed under real-time constraints.
0809.3204
Extended ASP tableaux and rule redundancy in normal logic programs
cs.AI
We introduce an extended tableau calculus for answer set programming (ASP). The proof system is based on the ASP tableaux defined in [Gebser&Schaub, ICLP 2006], with an added extension rule. We investigate the power of Extended ASP Tableaux both theoretically and empirically. We study the relationship of Extended ASP Tableaux with the Extended Resolution proof system defined by Tseitin for sets of clauses, and separate Extended ASP Tableaux from ASP Tableaux by giving a polynomial-length proof for a family of normal logic programs P_n for which ASP Tableaux has exponential-length minimal proofs with respect to n. Additionally, Extended ASP Tableaux imply interesting insight into the effect of program simplification on the lengths of proofs in ASP. Closely related to Extended ASP Tableaux, we empirically investigate the effect of redundant rules on the efficiency of ASP solving. To appear in Theory and Practice of Logic Programming (TPLP).
0809.3250
Using descriptive mark-up to formalize translation quality assessment
cs.CL
The paper deals with using descriptive mark-up to emphasize translation mistakes. The author postulates the necessity to develop a standard and formal XML-based way of describing translation mistakes. It is considered to be important for achieving impersonal translation quality assessment. Marked-up translations can be used in corpus translation studies; moreover, automatic translation assessment based on marked-up mistakes is possible. The paper concludes with setting up guidelines for further activity within the described field.
0809.3273
Direct and Reverse Secret-Key Capacities of a Quantum Channel
quant-ph cs.CR cs.IT math.IT physics.optics
We define the direct and reverse secret-key capacities of a memoryless quantum channel as the optimal rates that entanglement-based quantum key distribution protocols can reach by using a single forward classical communication (direct reconciliation) or a single feedback classical communication (reverse reconciliation). In particular, the reverse secret-key capacity can be positive for antidegradable channels, where no forward strategy is known to be secure. This property is explicitly shown in the continuous variable framework by considering arbitrary one-mode Gaussian channels.
0809.3352
Generalized Prediction Intervals for Arbitrary Distributed High-Dimensional Data
cs.CV cs.AI cs.LG
This paper generalizes the traditional statistical concept of prediction intervals for arbitrary probability density functions in high-dimensional feature spaces by introducing significance level distributions, which provides interval-independent probabilities for continuous random variables. The advantage of the transformation of a probability density function into a significance level distribution is that it enables one-class classification or outlier detection in a direct manner.
0809.3365
Algebraic reduction for space-time codes based on quaternion algebras
cs.IT math.IT
In this paper we introduce a new right preprocessing method for the decoding of 2x2 algebraic STBCs, called algebraic reduction, which exploits the multiplicative structure of the code. The principle of the new reduction is to absorb part of the channel into the code, by approximating the channel matrix with an element of the maximal order of the algebra. We prove that algebraic reduction attains the receive diversity when followed by a simple ZF detection. Simulation results for the Golden Code show that using MMSE-GDFE left preprocessing, algebraic reduction with simple ZF detection has a loss of only $3 \dB$ with respect to ML decoding.
0809.3370
Achievability of the Rate ${1/2}\log(1+\es)$ in the Discrete-Time Poisson Channel
cs.IT math.IT
A simple lower bound to the capacity of the discrete-time Poisson channel with average energy $\es$ is derived. The rate ${1/2}\log(1+\es)$ is shown to be the generalized mutual information of a modified minimum-distance decoder, when the input follows a gamma distribution of parameter 1/2 and mean $\es$.
0809.3384
Changing Assembly Modes without Passing Parallel Singularities in Non-Cuspidal 3-R\underline{P}R Planar Parallel Robots
cs.RO
This paper demonstrates that any general 3-DOF three-legged planar parallel robot with extensible legs can change assembly modes without passing through parallel singularities (configurations where the mobile platform loses its stiffness). While the results are purely theoretical, this paper questions the very definition of parallel singularities.
0809.3447
An Exploratory Study of Calendar Use
cs.HC cs.IR
In this paper, we report on findings from an ethnographic study of how people use their calendars for personal information management (PIM). Our participants were faculty, staff and students who were not required to use or contribute to any specific calendaring solution, but chose to do so anyway. The study was conducted in three parts: first, an initial survey provided broad insights into how calendars were used; second, this was followed up with personal interviews of a few participants which were transcribed and content-analyzed; and third, examples of calendar artifacts were collected to inform our analysis. Findings from our study include the use of multiple reminder alarms, the reliance on paper calendars even among regular users of electronic calendars, and wide use of calendars for reporting and life-archival purposes. We conclude the paper with a discussion of what these imply for designers of interactive calendar systems and future work in PIM research.
0809.3479
Fermions and Loops on Graphs. I. Loop Calculus for Determinant
cond-mat.stat-mech cond-mat.dis-nn cs.CC cs.IT hep-th math.IT
This paper is the first in the series devoted to evaluation of the partition function in statistical models on graphs with loops in terms of the Berezin/fermion integrals. The paper focuses on a representation of the determinant of a square matrix in terms of a finite series, where each term corresponds to a loop on the graph. The representation is based on a fermion version of the Loop Calculus, previously introduced by the authors for graphical models with finite alphabets. Our construction contains two levels. First, we represent the determinant in terms of an integral over anti-commuting Grassman variables, with some reparametrization/gauge freedom hidden in the formulation. Second, we show that a special choice of the gauge, called BP (Bethe-Peierls or Belief Propagation) gauge, yields the desired loop representation. The set of gauge-fixing BP conditions is equivalent to the Gaussian BP equations, discussed in the past as efficient (linear scaling) heuristics for estimating the covariance of a sparse positive matrix.
0809.3481
Fermions and Loops on Graphs. II. Monomer-Dimer Model as Series of Determinants
cond-mat.stat-mech cond-mat.dis-nn cs.CC cs.IT hep-th math.IT
We continue the discussion of the fermion models on graphs that started in the first paper of the series. Here we introduce a Graphical Gauge Model (GGM) and show that : (a) it can be stated as an average/sum of a determinant defined on the graph over $\mathbb{Z}_{2}$ (binary) gauge field; (b) it is equivalent to the Monomer-Dimer (MD) model on the graph; (c) the partition function of the model allows an explicit expression in terms of a series over disjoint directed cycles, where each term is a product of local contributions along the cycle and the determinant of a matrix defined on the remainder of the graph (excluding the cycle). We also establish a relation between the MD model on the graph and the determinant series, discussed in the first paper, however, considered using simple non-Belief-Propagation choice of the gauge. We conclude with a discussion of possible analytic and algorithmic consequences of these results, as well as related questions and challenges.
0809.3540
A Note on the Equivalence of Gibbs Free Energy and Information Theoretic Capacity
cond-mat.stat-mech cs.IT math.IT
The minimization of Gibbs free energy is based on the changes in work and free energy that occur in a physical or chemical system. The maximization of mutual information, the capacity, of a noisy channel is determined based on the marginal probabilities and conditional entropies associated with a communications system. As different as the procedures might first appear, through the exploration of a simple, "dual use" Ising model, it is seen that the two concepts are in fact the same. In particular, the case of a binary symmetric channel is calculated in detail.
0809.3546
Universal Secure Network Coding via Rank-Metric Codes
cs.IT cs.CR math.IT
The problem of securing a network coding communication system against an eavesdropper adversary is considered. The network implements linear network coding to deliver n packets from source to each receiver, and the adversary can eavesdrop on \mu arbitrarily chosen links. The objective is to provide reliable communication to all receivers, while guaranteeing that the source information remains information-theoretically secure from the adversary. A coding scheme is proposed that can achieve the maximum possible rate of n-\mu packets. The scheme, which is based on rank-metric codes, has the distinctive property of being universal: it can be applied on top of any communication network without requiring knowledge of or any modifications on the underlying network code. The only requirement of the scheme is that the packet length be at least n, which is shown to be strictly necessary for universal communication at the maximum rate. A further scenario is considered where the adversary is allowed not only to eavesdrop but also to inject up to t erroneous packets into the network, and the network may suffer from a rank deficiency of at most \rho. In this case, the proposed scheme can be extended to achieve the rate of n-\rho-2t-\mu packets. This rate is shown to be optimal under the assumption of zero-error communication.
0809.3554
The Approximate Capacity of the Many-to-One and One-to-Many Gaussian Interference Channels
cs.IT math.IT
Recently, Etkin, Tse, and Wang found the capacity region of the two-user Gaussian interference channel to within one bit/s/Hz. A natural goal is to apply this approach to the Gaussian interference channel with an arbitrary number of users. We make progress towards this goal by finding the capacity region of the many-to-one and one-to-many Gaussian interference channels to within a constant number of bits. The result makes use of a deterministic model to provide insight into the Gaussian channel. The deterministic model makes explicit the dimension of signal scale. A central theme emerges: the use of lattice codes for alignment of interfering signals on the signal scale.
0809.3600
On the Capacity Improvement of Multicast Traffic with Network Coding
cs.IT math.IT
In this paper, we study the contribution of network coding (NC) in improving the multicast capacity of random wireless ad hoc networks when nodes are endowed with multi-packet transmission (MPT) and multi-packet reception (MPR) capabilities. We show that a per session throughput capacity of $\Theta(nT^{3}(n))$, where $n$ is the total number of nodes and T(n) is the communication range, can be achieved as a tight bound when each session contains a constant number of sinks. Surprisingly, an identical order capacity can be achieved when nodes have only MPR and MPT capabilities. This result proves that NC does not contribute to the order capacity of multicast traffic in wireless ad hoc networks when MPR and MPT are used in the network. The result is in sharp contrast to the general belief (conjecture) that NC improves the order capacity of multicast. Furthermore, if the communication range is selected to guarantee the connectivity in the network, i.e., $T(n)\ge \Theta(\sqrt{\log n/n})$, then the combination of MPR and MPT achieves a throughput capacity of $\Theta(\frac{\log^{{3/2}} n}{\sqrt{n}})$ which provides an order capacity gain of $\Theta(\log^2 n)$ compared to the point-to-point multicast capacity with the same number of destinations.
0809.3618
Robust Near-Isometric Matching via Structured Learning of Graphical Models
cs.CV cs.LG
Models for near-rigid shape matching are typically based on distance-related features, in order to infer matches that are consistent with the isometric assumption. However, real shapes from image datasets, even when expected to be related by "almost isometric" transformations, are actually subject not only to noise but also, to some limited degree, to variations in appearance and scale. In this paper, we introduce a graphical model that parameterises appearance, distance, and angle features and we learn all of the involved parameters via structured prediction. The outcome is a model for near-rigid shape matching which is robust in the sense that it is able to capture the possibly limited but still important scale and appearance variations. Our experimental results reveal substantial improvements upon recent successful models, while maintaining similar running times.
0809.3650
Hierarchical Bayesian sparse image reconstruction with application to MRFM
physics.data-an cs.IT math.IT stat.ME
This paper presents a hierarchical Bayesian model to reconstruct sparse images when the observations are obtained from linear transformations and corrupted by an additive white Gaussian noise. Our hierarchical Bayes model is well suited to such naturally sparse image applications as it seamlessly accounts for properties such as sparsity and positivity of the image via appropriate Bayes priors. We propose a prior that is based on a weighted mixture of a positive exponential distribution and a mass at zero. The prior has hyperparameters that are tuned automatically by marginalization over the hierarchical Bayesian model. To overcome the complexity of the posterior distribution, a Gibbs sampling strategy is proposed. The Gibbs samples can be used to estimate the image to be recovered, e.g. by maximizing the estimated posterior distribution. In our fully Bayesian approach the posteriors of all the parameters are available. Thus our algorithm provides more information than other previously proposed sparse reconstruction methods that only give a point estimate. The performance of our hierarchical Bayesian sparse reconstruction method is illustrated on synthetic and real data collected from a tobacco virus sample using a prototype MRFM instrument.
0809.3688
Mathematical and computer tools of discrete dynamic modeling and analysis of complex systems in control loop
cs.CE cs.MA
We present a method of discrete modeling and analysis of multilevel dynamics of complex large-scale hierarchical dynamic systems subject to external dynamic control mechanism. Architectural model of information system supporting simulation and analysis of dynamic processes and development scenarios (strategies) of complex large-scale hierarchical systems is also proposed.
0809.3690
Modeling and Control with Local Linearizing Nadaraya Watson Regression
cs.CV
Black box models of technical systems are purely descriptive. They do not explain why a system works the way it does. Thus, black box models are insufficient for some problems. But there are numerous applications, for example, in control engineering, for which a black box model is absolutely sufficient. In this article, we describe a general stochastic framework with which such models can be built easily and fully automated by observation. Furthermore, we give a practical example and show how this framework can be used to model and control a motorcar powertrain.
0809.3731
Uncertainty Relations for Shift-Invariant Analog Signals
cs.IT math.IT
The past several years have witnessed a surge of research investigating various aspects of sparse representations and compressed sensing. Most of this work has focused on the finite-dimensional setting in which the goal is to decompose a finite-length vector into a given finite dictionary. Underlying many of these results is the conceptual notion of an uncertainty principle: a signal cannot be sparsely represented in two different bases. Here, we extend these ideas and results to the analog, infinite-dimensional setting by considering signals that lie in a finitely-generated shift-invariant (SI) space. This class of signals is rich enough to include many interesting special cases such as multiband signals and splines. By adapting the notion of coherence defined for finite dictionaries to infinite SI representations, we develop an uncertainty principle similar in spirit to its finite counterpart. We demonstrate tightness of our bound by considering a bandlimited lowpass train that achieves the uncertainty principle. Building upon these results and similar work in the finite setting, we show how to find a sparse decomposition in an overcomplete dictionary by solving a convex optimization problem. The distinguishing feature of our approach is the fact that even though the problem is defined over an infinite domain with infinitely many variables and constraints, under certain conditions on the dictionary spectrum our algorithm can find the sparsest representation by solving a finite-dimensional problem.
0809.4019
Throughput Scaling of Wireless Networks With Random Connections
cs.IT math.IT
This work studies the throughput scaling laws of ad hoc wireless networks in the limit of a large number of nodes. A random connections model is assumed in which the channel connections between the nodes are drawn independently from a common distribution. Transmitting nodes are subject to an on-off strategy, and receiving nodes employ conventional single-user decoding. The following results are proven: 1) For a class of connection models with finite mean and variance, the throughput scaling is upper-bounded by $O(n^{1/3})$ for single-hop schemes, and $O(n^{1/2})$ for two-hop (and multihop) schemes. 2) The $\Theta (n^{1/2})$ throughput scaling is achievable for a specific connection model by a two-hop opportunistic relaying scheme, which employs full, but only local channel state information (CSI) at the receivers, and partial CSI at the transmitters. 3) By relaxing the constraints of finite mean and variance of the connection model, linear throughput scaling $\Theta (n)$ is achievable with Pareto-type fading models.
0809.4058
Target Localization Accuracy Gain in MIMO Radar Based Systems
cs.IT math.IT
This paper presents an analysis of target localization accuracy, attainable by the use of MIMO (Multiple-Input Multiple-Output) radar systems, configured with multiple transmit and receive sensors, widely distributed over a given area. The Cramer-Rao lower bound (CRLB) for target localization accuracy is developed for both coherent and non-coherent processing. Coherent processing requires a common phase reference for all transmit and receive sensors. The CRLB is shown to be inversely proportional to the signal effective bandwidth in the non-coherent case, but is approximately inversely proportional to the carrier frequency in the coherent case. We further prove that optimization over the sensors' positions lowers the CRLB by a factor equal to the product of the number of transmitting and receiving sensors. The best linear unbiased estimator (BLUE) is derived for the MIMO target localization problem. The BLUE's utility is in providing a closed form localization estimate that facilitates the analysis of the relations between sensors locations, target location, and localization accuracy. Geometric dilution of precision (GDOP) contours are used to map the relative performance accuracy for a given layout of radars over a given geographic area.
0809.4059
Information transmission in oscillatory neural activity
q-bio.NC cs.IT math.IT q-bio.QM
Periodic neural activity not locked to the stimulus or to motor responses is usually ignored. Here, we present new tools for modeling and quantifying the information transmission based on periodic neural activity that occurs with quasi-random phase relative to the stimulus. We propose a model to reproduce characteristic features of oscillatory spike trains, such as histograms of inter-spike intervals and phase locking of spikes to an oscillatory influence. The proposed model is based on an inhomogeneous Gamma process governed by a density function that is a product of the usual stimulus-dependent rate and a quasi-periodic function. Further, we present an analysis method generalizing the direct method (Rieke et al, 1999; Brenner et al, 2000) to assess the information content in such data. We demonstrate these tools on recordings from relay cells in the lateral geniculate nucleus of the cat.
0809.4086
Learning Hidden Markov Models using Non-Negative Matrix Factorization
cs.LG cs.AI cs.IT math.IT
The Baum-Welsh algorithm together with its derivatives and variations has been the main technique for learning Hidden Markov Models (HMM) from observational data. We present an HMM learning algorithm based on the non-negative matrix factorization (NMF) of higher order Markovian statistics that is structurally different from the Baum-Welsh and its associated approaches. The described algorithm supports estimation of the number of recurrent states of an HMM and iterates the non-negative matrix factorization (NMF) algorithm to improve the learned HMM parameters. Numerical examples are provided as well.