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1306.0926
Self-Iterating Soft Equalizer
cs.IT math.IT
A self-iterating soft equalizer (SISE) consisting of a few relatively weak constituent equalizers is shown to provide robust performance even in severe intersymbol interference (ISI) channels that exhibit deep nulls and valleys within the signal band. Constituent equalizers are allowed to exchange soft information in the absence of interleavers based on the method that are designed to suppress significant correlation among their soft outputs. The resulting SISE works well as a stand-alone equalizer or as the equalizer component of a turbo equalization system. The performance advantages over existing methods are validated with bit-error-rate (BER) simulations and extrinsic information transfer (EXIT) chart analysis. It is shown that in turbo equalizer setting the SISE achieves performance closer to the maximum a posteriori probability equalizer than any other known schemes in very severe ISI channels.
1306.0940
(More) Efficient Reinforcement Learning via Posterior Sampling
stat.ML cs.LG
Most provably-efficient learning algorithms introduce optimism about poorly-understood states and actions to encourage exploration. We study an alternative approach for efficient exploration, posterior sampling for reinforcement learning (PSRL). This algorithm proceeds in repeated episodes of known duration. At the start of each episode, PSRL updates a prior distribution over Markov decision processes and takes one sample from this posterior. PSRL then follows the policy that is optimal for this sample during the episode. The algorithm is conceptually simple, computationally efficient and allows an agent to encode prior knowledge in a natural way. We establish an $\tilde{O}(\tau S \sqrt{AT})$ bound on the expected regret, where $T$ is time, $\tau$ is the episode length and $S$ and $A$ are the cardinalities of the state and action spaces. This bound is one of the first for an algorithm not based on optimism, and close to the state of the art for any reinforcement learning algorithm. We show through simulation that PSRL significantly outperforms existing algorithms with similar regret bounds.
1306.0944
An Exact Path-Loss Density Model for Mobiles in a Cellular System
cs.IT math.IT
In trying to emulate the spatial position of wireless nodes for purpose of analysis, we rely on stochastic simulation. And, it is customary, for mobile systems, to consider a base-station radiation coverage by an ideal cell shape. For cellular analysis, a hexagon contour is always preferred mainly because of its tessellating nature. Despite this fact, largely due to its intrinsic simplicity, in literature only random dispersion model for a circular shape is known. However, if considered, this will result an unfair nodes density specifically at the edges of non-circular contours. As a result, in this paper, we showed the exact random number generation technique required for nodes scattering inside a hexagon. Next, motivated from a system channel perspective, we argued the need for the exhaustive random mobile dropping process, and hence derived a generic close-form expression for the path-loss distribution density between a base-station and a mobile. Last, simulation was used to reaffirm the validity of the theoretical analysis using values from the new IEEE 802.20 standard.
1306.0946
Closed-Form Path-Loss Predictor for Gaussianly Distributed Nodes
cs.IT cs.NI math.IT
The emulation of wireless nodes spatial position is a practice used by deployment engineers and network planners to analyze the characteristics of a network. In particular, nodes geolocation will directly impact factors such as connectivity, signals fidelity, and service quality. In literature, in addition to typical homogenous scattering, normal distribution is frequently used to model mobiles concentration in a cellular system. Moreover, Gaussian dropping is often considered as an effective placement method for airborne sensor deployment. Despite the practicality of this model, getting the network channel loss distribution still relies on exhaustive Monte Carlo simulation. In this paper, we argue the need for this inefficient approach and hence derived a generic and exact closed-form expression for the path-loss distribution density between a base-station and a network of nodes. Simulation was used to reaffirm the validity of the theoretical analysis using values from the new IEEE 802.20 standard.
1306.0957
Dual codes of product semi-linear codes
cs.IT math.IT math.RA
Let $\mathbb{F}_q$ be a finite field with $q$ elements and denote by $\theta : \mathbb{F}_q\to\mathbb{F}_q$ an automorphism of $\mathbb{F}_q$. In this paper, we deal with linear codes of $\mathbb{F}_q^n$ invariant under a semi-linear map $T:\mathbb{F}_q^n\to\mathbb{F}_q^n$ for some $n\geq 2$. In particular, we study three kind of their dual codes, some relations between them and we focus on codes which are products of module skew codes in the non-commutative polynomial ring $\mathbb{F}_q[X,\theta]$ as a subcase of linear codes invariant by a semi-linear map $T$. In this setting we give also an algorithm for encoding, decoding and detecting errors and we show a method to construct codes invariant under a fixed $T$.
1306.0963
Inferring Robot Task Plans from Human Team Meetings: A Generative Modeling Approach with Logic-Based Prior
cs.AI cs.CL cs.RO stat.ML
We aim to reduce the burden of programming and deploying autonomous systems to work in concert with people in time-critical domains, such as military field operations and disaster response. Deployment plans for these operations are frequently negotiated on-the-fly by teams of human planners. A human operator then translates the agreed upon plan into machine instructions for the robots. We present an algorithm that reduces this translation burden by inferring the final plan from a processed form of the human team's planning conversation. Our approach combines probabilistic generative modeling with logical plan validation used to compute a highly structured prior over possible plans. This hybrid approach enables us to overcome the challenge of performing inference over the large solution space with only a small amount of noisy data from the team planning session. We validate the algorithm through human subject experimentation and show we are able to infer a human team's final plan with 83% accuracy on average. We also describe a robot demonstration in which two people plan and execute a first-response collaborative task with a PR2 robot. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first work that integrates a logical planning technique within a generative model to perform plan inference.
1306.0968
BER Analysis of Decision-Feedback Multiple Symbol Detection in Noncoherent MIMO Ultra-Wideband Systems
cs.IT math.IT
In this paper, we investigate noncoherent multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) ultra-wideband (UWB) systems where the signal is encoded by differential space-time block code (DSTBC). DSTBC enables noncoherent MIMO UWB systems to achieve diversity gain. However, the traditional noncoherent symbol-by-symbol differential detection (DD) for DSTBC-UWB suffers from performance degradation compared with the coherent detection. We introduce a noncoherent multiple symbol detection (MSD) scheme to enhance the performance of DSTBC-UWB system. Although the MSD scheme can boost the performance more as the observation window size gets to larger, the complexity of the exhaustive search for MSD also exponentially increases in terms of the window size. To decrease the computational complexity, the concept of decision-feedback (DF) is introduced to MSD for DSTBC-UWB in this paper. The resultant DF-MSD yields reasonable complexity and also solid performance improvement. We provide the bit error rate (BER) analysis for the proposed DF-MSD. Both theoretical analysis and simulation results validate the proposed scheme.
1306.0969
Secrecy Wireless Information and Power Transfer with MISO Beamforming
cs.IT math.IT
The dual use of radio signals for simultaneous wireless information and power transfer (SWIPT) has recently drawn significant attention. To meet the practical requirement that energy receivers (ERs) operate with much higher received power than information receivers (IRs), ERs need to be deployed closer to the transmitter than IRs. However, due to the broadcast nature of wireless channels, one critical issue is that the messages sent to IRs cannot be eavesdropped by ERs, which possess better channels from the transmitter. In this paper, we address this new secrecy communication problem in a multiuser multiple-input single-output (MISO) SWIPT system where a multi-antenna transmitter sends information and energy simultaneously to one IR and multiple ERs, each with a single antenna. By optimizing transmit beamforming vectors and their power allocation, we maximize the weighted sum-energy transferred to ERs subject to a secrecy rate constraint for the information sent to the IR. We solve this non-convex problem optimally by reformulating it into a two-stage problem. First, we fix the signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio (SINR) at the IR and obtain the optimal beamforming solution by applying the technique of semidefinite relaxation (SDR). Then the original problem is solved by a one-dimension search over the optimal SINR value for the IR. Furthermore, two suboptimal low-complexity beamforming schemes are proposed, and their achievable (secrecy) rate-energy (R-E) regions are compared against that by the optimal scheme.
1306.0974
Distributed Bayesian inference for consistent labeling of tracked objects in non-overlapping camera networks
cs.CV
One of the fundamental requirements for visual surveillance using non-overlapping camera networks is the correct labeling of tracked objects on each camera in a consistent way,in the sense that the captured tracklets, or observations in this paper, of the same object at different cameras should be assigned with the same label. In this paper, we formulate this task as a Bayesian inference problem and propose a distributed inference framework in which the posterior distribution of labeling variable corresponding to each observation, conditioned on all history appearance and spatio-temporal evidence made in the whole networks, is calculated based solely on local information processing on each camera and mutual information exchanging between neighboring cameras. In our framework, the number of objects presenting in the monitored region, i.e. the sampling space of labeling variables, does not need to be specified beforehand. Instead, it can be determined automatically on the fly. In addition, we make no assumption about the appearance distribution of a single object, but use similarity scores between appearance pairs, given by advanced object re-identification algorithm, as appearance likelihood for inference. This feature makes our method very flexible and competitive when observing condition undergoes large changes across camera views. To cope with the problem of missing detection, which is critical for distributed inference, we consider an enlarged neighborhood of each camera during inference and use a mixture model to describe the higher order spatio-temporal constraints. The robustness of the algorithm against missing detection is improved at the cost of slightly increased computation and communication burden at each camera node. Finally, we demonstrate the effectiveness of our method through experiments on an indoor Office Building dataset and an outdoor Campus Garden dataset.
1306.0992
Any network codes comes from an algebraic curve taking osculating spaces
math.AG cs.IT math.IT
In this note we prove that every network code over $\mathbb {F}_q$ may be realized taking some of the osculating spaces of a smooth projective curve.
1306.1023
Quaternion Fourier Transform on Quaternion Fields and Generalizations
math.RA cs.CV math-ph math.MP
We treat the quaternionic Fourier transform (QFT) applied to quaternion fields and investigate QFT properties useful for applications. Different forms of the QFT lead us to different Plancherel theorems. We relate the QFT computation for quaternion fields to the QFT of real signals. We research the general linear ($GL$) transformation behavior of the QFT with matrices, Clifford geometric algebra and with examples. We finally arrive at wide-ranging non-commutative multivector FT generalizations of the QFT. Examples given are new volume-time and spacetime algebra Fourier transformations.
1306.1031
LLAMA: Leveraging Learning to Automatically Manage Algorithms
cs.AI
Algorithm portfolio and selection approaches have achieved remarkable improvements over single solvers. However, the implementation of such systems is often highly customised and specific to the problem domain. This makes it difficult for researchers to explore different techniques for their specific problems. We present LLAMA, a modular and extensible toolkit implemented as an R package that facilitates the exploration of a range of different portfolio techniques on any problem domain. It implements the algorithm selection approaches most commonly used in the literature and leverages the extensive library of machine learning algorithms and techniques in R. We describe the current capabilities and limitations of the toolkit and illustrate its usage on a set of example SAT problems.
1306.1034
ROTUNDE - A Smart Meeting Cinematography Initiative: Tools, Datasets, and Benchmarks for Cognitive Interpretation and Control
cs.AI cs.CV cs.HC
We construe smart meeting cinematography with a focus on professional situations such as meetings and seminars, possibly conducted in a distributed manner across socio-spatially separated groups. The basic objective in smart meeting cinematography is to interpret professional interactions involving people, and automatically produce dynamic recordings of discussions, debates, presentations etc in the presence of multiple communication modalities. Typical modalities include gestures (e.g., raising one's hand for a question, applause), voice and interruption, electronic apparatus (e.g., pressing a button), movement (e.g., standing-up, moving around) etc. ROTUNDE, an instance of smart meeting cinematography concept, aims to: (a) develop functionality-driven benchmarks with respect to the interpretation and control capabilities of human-cinematographers, real-time video editors, surveillance personnel, and typical human performance in everyday situations; (b) Develop general tools for the commonsense cognitive interpretation of dynamic scenes from the viewpoint of visuo-spatial cognition centred perceptual narrativisation. Particular emphasis is placed on declarative representations and interfacing mechanisms that seamlessly integrate within large-scale cognitive (interaction) systems and companion technologies consisting of diverse AI sub-components. For instance, the envisaged tools would provide general capabilities for high-level commonsense reasoning about space, events, actions, change, and interaction.
1306.1057
Generic Correlation Increases Noncoherent MIMO Capacity
cs.IT math.IT
We study the high-SNR capacity of MIMO Rayleigh block-fading channels in the noncoherent setting where neither transmitter nor receiver has a priori channel state information. We show that when the number of receive antennas is sufficiently large and the temporal correlation within each block is "generic" (in the sense used in the interference-alignment literature), the capacity pre-log is given by T(1-1/N) for T<N, where T denotes the number of transmit antennas and N denotes the block length. A comparison with the widely used constant block-fading channel (where the fading is constant within each block) shows that for a large block length, generic correlation increases the capacity pre-log by a factor of about four.
1306.1066
Bayesian Differential Privacy through Posterior Sampling
stat.ML cs.LG
Differential privacy formalises privacy-preserving mechanisms that provide access to a database. We pose the question of whether Bayesian inference itself can be used directly to provide private access to data, with no modification. The answer is affirmative: under certain conditions on the prior, sampling from the posterior distribution can be used to achieve a desired level of privacy and utility. To do so, we generalise differential privacy to arbitrary dataset metrics, outcome spaces and distribution families. This allows us to also deal with non-i.i.d or non-tabular datasets. We prove bounds on the sensitivity of the posterior to the data, which gives a measure of robustness. We also show how to use posterior sampling to provide differentially private responses to queries, within a decision-theoretic framework. Finally, we provide bounds on the utility and on the distinguishability of datasets. The latter are complemented by a novel use of Le Cam's method to obtain lower bounds. All our general results hold for arbitrary database metrics, including those for the common definition of differential privacy. For specific choices of the metric, we give a number of examples satisfying our assumptions.
1306.1073
Web Synchronization Simulations using the ResourceSync Framework
cs.DL cs.DB
Maintenance of multiple, distributed up-to-date copies of collections of changing Web resources is important in many application contexts and is often achieved using ad hoc or proprietary synchronization solutions. ResourceSync is a resource synchronization framework that integrates with the Web architecture and leverages XML sitemaps. We define a model for the ResourceSync framework as a basis for understanding its properties. We then describe experiments in which simulations of a variety of synchronization scenarios illustrate the effects of model configuration on consistency, latency, and data transfer efficiency. These results provide insight into which congurations are appropriate for various application scenarios.
1306.1076
CSMA using the Bethe Approximation: Scheduling and Utility Maximization
cs.NI cs.IT math.IT
CSMA (Carrier Sense Multiple Access), which resolves contentions over wireless networks in a fully distributed fashion, has recently gained a lot of attentions since it has been proved that appropriate control of CSMA parameters guarantees optimality in terms of stability (i.e., scheduling) and system- wide utility (i.e., scheduling and congestion control). Most CSMA-based algorithms rely on the popular MCMC (Markov Chain Monte Carlo) technique, which enables one to find optimal CSMA parameters through iterative loops of `simulation-and-update'. However, such a simulation-based approach often becomes a major cause of exponentially slow convergence, being poorly adaptive to flow/topology changes. In this paper, we develop distributed iterative algorithms which produce approximate solutions with convergence in polynomial time for both stability and utility maximization problems. In particular, for the stability problem, the proposed distributed algorithm requires, somewhat surprisingly, only one iteration among links. Our approach is motivated by the Bethe approximation (introduced by Yedidia, Freeman and Weiss in 2005) allowing us to express approximate solutions via a certain non-linear system with polynomial size. Our polynomial convergence guarantee comes from directly solving the non-linear system in a distributed manner, rather than multiple simulation-and-update loops in existing algorithms. We provide numerical results to show that the algorithm produces highly accurate solutions and converges much faster than the prior ones.
1306.1083
Discriminative Parameter Estimation for Random Walks Segmentation: Technical Report
cs.CV cs.LG
The Random Walks (RW) algorithm is one of the most e - cient and easy-to-use probabilistic segmentation methods. By combining contrast terms with prior terms, it provides accurate segmentations of medical images in a fully automated manner. However, one of the main drawbacks of using the RW algorithm is that its parameters have to be hand-tuned. we propose a novel discriminative learning framework that estimates the parameters using a training dataset. The main challenge we face is that the training samples are not fully supervised. Speci cally, they provide a hard segmentation of the images, instead of a proba-bilistic segmentation. We overcome this challenge by treating the optimal probabilistic segmentation that is compatible with the given hard segmentation as a latent variable. This allows us to employ the latent support vector machine formulation for parameter estimation. We show that our approach signi cantly outperforms the baseline methods on a challenging dataset consisting of real clinical 3D MRI volumes of skeletal muscles.
1306.1091
Deep Generative Stochastic Networks Trainable by Backprop
cs.LG
We introduce a novel training principle for probabilistic models that is an alternative to maximum likelihood. The proposed Generative Stochastic Networks (GSN) framework is based on learning the transition operator of a Markov chain whose stationary distribution estimates the data distribution. The transition distribution of the Markov chain is conditional on the previous state, generally involving a small move, so this conditional distribution has fewer dominant modes, being unimodal in the limit of small moves. Thus, it is easier to learn because it is easier to approximate its partition function, more like learning to perform supervised function approximation, with gradients that can be obtained by backprop. We provide theorems that generalize recent work on the probabilistic interpretation of denoising autoencoders and obtain along the way an interesting justification for dependency networks and generalized pseudolikelihood, along with a definition of an appropriate joint distribution and sampling mechanism even when the conditionals are not consistent. GSNs can be used with missing inputs and can be used to sample subsets of variables given the rest. We validate these theoretical results with experiments on two image datasets using an architecture that mimics the Deep Boltzmann Machine Gibbs sampler but allows training to proceed with simple backprop, without the need for layerwise pretraining.
1306.1097
Algebraic signal sampling, Gibbs phenomenon and Prony-type systems
math.NA cs.IT math.CA math.IT
Systems of Prony type appear in various signal reconstruction problems such as finite rate of innovation, superresolution and Fourier inversion of piecewise smooth functions. We propose a novel approach for solving Prony-type systems, which requires sampling the signal at arithmetic progressions. By keeping the number of equations small and fixed, we demonstrate that such "decimation" can lead to practical improvements in the reconstruction accuracy. As an application, we provide a solution to the so-called Eckhoff's conjecture, which asked for reconstructing jump positions and magnitudes of a piecewise-smooth function from its Fourier coefficients with maximal possible asymptotic accuracy -- thus eliminating the Gibbs phenomenon.
1306.1101
Practical Secrecy using Artificial Noise
cs.IT math.IT
In this paper, we consider the use of artificial noise for secure communications. We propose the notion of practical secrecy as a new design criterion based on the behavior of the eavesdropper's error probability $P_E$, as the signal-to-noise ratio goes to infinity. We then show that the practical secrecy can be guaranteed by the randomly distributed artificial noise with specified power. We show that it is possible to achieve practical secrecy even when the eavesdropper can afford more antennas than the transmitter.
1306.1102
Detectability of communities in heterogeneous networks
physics.soc-ph cond-mat.stat-mech cs.SI
Communities are fundamental entities for the characterization of the structure of real networks. The standard approach to the identification of communities in networks is based on the optimization of a quality function known as "modularity". Although modularity has been at the center of an intense research activity and many methods for its maximization have been proposed, not much it is yet known about the necessary conditions that communities need to satisfy in order to be detectable with modularity maximization methods. Here, we develop a simple theory to establish these conditions, and we successfully apply it to various classes of network models. Our main result is that heterogeneity in the degree distribution helps modularity to correctly recover the community structure of a network and that, in the realistic case of scale-free networks with degree exponent $\gamma < 2.5$, modularity is always able to detect the presence of communities.
1306.1110
An agent based multi-optional model for the diffusion of innovations
stat.AP cs.SI physics.soc-ph
We propose a model for the diffusion of several products competing in a common market based on the generalization of the Ising model of statiscal mechanics (Potts model). Using an agent based implementation, we analyze two problems: (i) a three options case, i.e. to adopt a product A, a product B, or non-adoption and (ii) a four options case, i.e. the adoption of product A, product B, both, or none. In the first case we analyze a launching strategy for one of the two products, which delays its launching with the objective of competing with improvements. Market shares reached by each product are then estimated at market saturation. Finally, simulations are carried out with varying degrees of social network topology, uncertainty, and population homogeneity.
1306.1144
Control Strategies for Mobile Robot With Obstacle Avoidance
cs.RO
Obstacle avoidance is an important task in the field of robotics, since the goal of autonomous robot is to reach the destination without collision. Several algorithms have been proposed for obstacle avoidance, having drawbacks and benefits. In this survey paper, we mainly discussed different algorithms for robot navigation with obstacle avoidance. We also compared all provided algorithms and mentioned their characteristics; advantages and disadvantages, so that we can select final efficient algorithm by fusing discussed algorithms. Comparison table is provided for justifying the area of interest
1306.1153
Efficient Single-Source Shortest Path and Distance Queries on Large Graphs
cs.DB cs.DS
This paper investigates two types of graph queries: {\em single source distance (SSD)} queries and {\em single source shortest path (SSSP)} queries. Given a node $v$ in a graph $G$, an SSD query from $v$ asks for the distance from $v$ to any other node in $G$, while an SSSP query retrieves the shortest path from $v$ to any other node. These two types of queries are fundamental building blocks of numerous graph algorithms, and they find important applications in graph analysis, especially in the computation of graph measures. Most of the existing solutions for SSD and SSSP queries, however, require that the input graph fits in the main memory, which renders them inapplicable for the massive disk-resident graphs commonly used in web and social applications. The only exceptions are a few techniques that are designed to be I/O efficient, but they all focus on undirected and/or unweighted graphs, and they only offer sub-optimal query efficiency. To address the deficiency of existing work, this paper presents {\em Highways-on-Disk (HoD)}, a disk-based index that supports both SSD and SSSP queries on directed and weighted graphs. The key idea of HoD is to augment the input graph with a set of auxiliary edges, and exploit them during query processing to reduce I/O and computation costs. We experimentally evaluate HoD on both directed and undirected real-world graphs with up to billions of nodes and edges, and we demonstrate that HoD significantly outperforms alternative solutions in terms of query efficiency.
1306.1154
Sparse Representation of a Polytope and Recovery of Sparse Signals and Low-rank Matrices
cs.IT math.IT math.ST stat.ML stat.TH
This paper considers compressed sensing and affine rank minimization in both noiseless and noisy cases and establishes sharp restricted isometry conditions for sparse signal and low-rank matrix recovery. The analysis relies on a key technical tool which represents points in a polytope by convex combinations of sparse vectors. The technique is elementary while leads to sharp results. It is shown that for any given constant $t\ge {4/3}$, in compressed sensing $\delta_{tk}^A < \sqrt{(t-1)/t}$ guarantees the exact recovery of all $k$ sparse signals in the noiseless case through the constrained $\ell_1$ minimization, and similarly in affine rank minimization $\delta_{tr}^\mathcal{M}< \sqrt{(t-1)/t}$ ensures the exact reconstruction of all matrices with rank at most $r$ in the noiseless case via the constrained nuclear norm minimization. Moreover, for any $\epsilon>0$, $\delta_{tk}^A<\sqrt{\frac{t-1}{t}}+\epsilon$ is not sufficient to guarantee the exact recovery of all $k$-sparse signals for large $k$. Similar result also holds for matrix recovery. In addition, the conditions $\delta_{tk}^A < \sqrt{(t-1)/t}$ and $\delta_{tr}^\mathcal{M}< \sqrt{(t-1)/t}$ are also shown to be sufficient respectively for stable recovery of approximately sparse signals and low-rank matrices in the noisy case.
1306.1157
Linear Network Coding, Linear Index Coding and Representable Discrete Polymatroids
cs.IT math.IT
Discrete polymatroids are the multi-set analogue of matroids. In this paper, we explore the connections among linear network coding, linear index coding and representable discrete polymatroids. We consider vector linear solutions of networks over a field $\mathbb{F}_q,$ with possibly different message and edge vector dimensions, which are referred to as linear fractional solutions. We define a \textit{discrete polymatroidal} network and show that a linear fractional solution over a field $\mathbb{F}_q,$ exists for a network if and only if the network is discrete polymatroidal with respect to a discrete polymatroid representable over $\mathbb{F}_q.$ An algorithm to construct networks starting from certain class of discrete polymatroids is provided. Every representation over $\mathbb{F}_q$ for the discrete polymatroid, results in a linear fractional solution over $\mathbb{F}_q$ for the constructed network. Next, we consider the index coding problem and show that a linear solution to an index coding problem exists if and only if there exists a representable discrete polymatroid satisfying certain conditions which are determined by the index coding problem considered. El Rouayheb et. al. showed that the problem of finding a multi-linear representation for a matroid can be reduced to finding a \textit{perfect linear index coding solution} for an index coding problem obtained from that matroid. We generalize the result of El Rouayheb et. al. by showing that the problem of finding a representation for a discrete polymatroid can be reduced to finding a perfect linear index coding solution for an index coding problem obtained from that discrete polymatroid.
1306.1185
Multiclass Total Variation Clustering
stat.ML cs.LG math.OC
Ideas from the image processing literature have recently motivated a new set of clustering algorithms that rely on the concept of total variation. While these algorithms perform well for bi-partitioning tasks, their recursive extensions yield unimpressive results for multiclass clustering tasks. This paper presents a general framework for multiclass total variation clustering that does not rely on recursion. The results greatly outperform previous total variation algorithms and compare well with state-of-the-art NMF approaches.
1306.1187
Decentralized Data Reduction with Quantization Constraints
cs.IT math.IT
A guiding principle for data reduction in statistical inference is the sufficiency principle. This paper extends the classical sufficiency principle to decentralized inference, i.e., data reduction needs to be achieved in a decentralized manner. We examine the notions of local and global sufficient statistics and the relationship between the two for decentralized inference under different observation models. We then consider the impacts of quantization on decentralized data reduction which is often needed when communications among sensors are subject to finite capacity constraints. The central question we intend to ask is: if each node in a decentralized inference system has to summarize its data using a finite number of bits, is it still optimal to implement data reduction using global sufficient statistics prior to quantization? We show that the answer is negative using a simple example and proceed to identify conditions under which sufficiency based data reduction followed by quantization is indeed optimal. They include the well known case when the data at decentralized nodes are conditionally independent as well as a class of problems with conditionally dependent observations that admit conditional independence structure through the introduction of an appropriately chosen hidden variable.
1306.1267
Loop Calculus and Bootstrap-Belief Propagation for Perfect Matchings on Arbitrary Graphs
cond-mat.stat-mech cs.AI math.PR
This manuscript discusses computation of the Partition Function (PF) and the Minimum Weight Perfect Matching (MWPM) on arbitrary, non-bipartite graphs. We present two novel problem formulations - one for computing the PF of a Perfect Matching (PM) and one for finding MWPMs - that build upon the inter-related Bethe Free Energy, Belief Propagation (BP), Loop Calculus (LC), Integer Linear Programming (ILP) and Linear Programming (LP) frameworks. First, we describe an extension of the LC framework to the PM problem. The resulting formulas, coined (fractional) Bootstrap-BP, express the PF of the original model via the BFE of an alternative PM problem. We then study the zero-temperature version of this Bootstrap-BP formula for approximately solving the MWPM problem. We do so by leveraging the Bootstrap-BP formula to construct a sequence of MWPM problems, where each new problem in the sequence is formed by contracting odd-sized cycles (or blossoms) from the previous problem. This Bootstrap-and-Contract procedure converges reliably and generates an empirically tight upper bound for the MWPM. We conclude by discussing the relationship between our iterative procedure and the famous Blossom Algorithm of Edmonds '65 and demonstrate the performance of the Bootstrap-and-Contract approach on a variety of weighted PM problems.
1306.1271
Predictability of social interactions
cs.SI cs.CY physics.soc-ph stat.AP
The ability to predict social interactions between people has profound applications including targeted marketing and prediction of information diffusion and disease propagation. Previous work has shown that the location of an individual at any given time is highly predictable. This study examines the predictability of social interactions between people to determine whether interaction patterns are similarly predictable. I find that the locations and times of interactions for an individual are highly predictable; however, the other person the individual interacts with is less predictable. Furthermore, I show that knowledge of the locations and times of interactions has almost no effect on the predictability of the other person. Finally I demonstrate that a simple Markov chain model is able to achieve close to the upper bound in terms of predicting the next person with whom a given individual will interact.
1306.1298
Multiclass Semi-Supervised Learning on Graphs using Ginzburg-Landau Functional Minimization
stat.ML cs.LG math.ST physics.data-an stat.TH
We present a graph-based variational algorithm for classification of high-dimensional data, generalizing the binary diffuse interface model to the case of multiple classes. Motivated by total variation techniques, the method involves minimizing an energy functional made up of three terms. The first two terms promote a stepwise continuous classification function with sharp transitions between classes, while preserving symmetry among the class labels. The third term is a data fidelity term, allowing us to incorporate prior information into the model in a semi-supervised framework. The performance of the algorithm on synthetic data, as well as on the COIL and MNIST benchmark datasets, is competitive with state-of-the-art graph-based multiclass segmentation methods.
1306.1300
Personalized Email Community Detection using Collaborative Similarity Measure
cs.SI physics.soc-ph
Email service providers have employed many email classification and prioritization systems over the last decade to improve their services. In order to assist email services, we propose a personalized email community detection method to discover the groupings of email users based on their structural and semantic intimacy. We extract the personalized social graph from a set of emails by uniquely leveraging each node with communication behavior. Subsequently, collaborative similarity measure (CSM) based intra-graph clustering approach detects personalized communities. The empirical analysis shows effectiveness of the resultant communities in terms of evaluation measures, i.e. density, entropy and f-measure. Moreover, email strainer, dynamic group prediction, and fraudulent account detection are suggested as the potential applications from both the service provider and user's point of view.
1306.1301
Recognition of Indian Sign Language in Live Video
cs.CV
Sign Language Recognition has emerged as one of the important area of research in Computer Vision. The difficulty faced by the researchers is that the instances of signs vary with both motion and appearance. Thus, in this paper a novel approach for recognizing various alphabets of Indian Sign Language is proposed where continuous video sequences of the signs have been considered. The proposed system comprises of three stages: Preprocessing stage, Feature Extraction and Classification. Preprocessing stage includes skin filtering, histogram matching. Eigen values and Eigen Vectors were considered for feature extraction stage and finally Eigen value weighted Euclidean distance is used to recognize the sign. It deals with bare hands, thus allowing the user to interact with the system in natural way. We have considered 24 different alphabets in the video sequences and attained a success rate of 96.25%.
1306.1304
Towards a Simple Relationship to Estimate the Capacity of Static and Mobile Wireless Networks
cs.NI cs.IT cs.SY math.IT
Extensive research has been done on studying the capacity of wireless multi-hop networks. These efforts have led to many sophisticated and customized analytical studies on the capacity of particular networks. While most of the analyses are intellectually challenging, they lack universal properties that can be extended to study the capacity of a different network. In this paper, we sift through various capacity-impacting parameters and present a simple relationship that can be used to estimate the capacity of both static and mobile networks. Specifically, we show that the network capacity is determined by the average number of simultaneous transmissions, the link capacity and the average number of transmissions required to deliver a packet to its destination. Our result is valid for both finite networks and asymptotically infinite networks. We then use this result to explain and better understand the insights of some existing results on the capacity of static networks, mobile networks and hybrid networks and the multicast capacity. The capacity analysis using the aforementioned relationship often becomes simpler. The relationship can be used as a powerful tool to estimate the capacity of different networks. Our work makes important contributions towards developing a generic methodology for network capacity analysis that is applicable to a variety of different scenarios.
1306.1310
Electromagnetic Lens-focusing Antenna Enabled Massive MIMO
cs.IT math.IT
Massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) techniques have been recently advanced to tremendously improve the performance of wireless networks. However, the use of very large antenna arrays brings new issues, such as the significantly increased hardware cost and signal processing cost and complexity. In order to reap the enormous gain of massive MIMO and yet reduce its cost to an affordable level, this paper proposes a novel system design by integrating an electromagnetic (EM) lens with the large antenna array, termed \emph{electromagnetic lens antenna} (ELA). An ELA has the capability of focusing the power of any incident plane wave passing through the EM lens to a small subset of the antenna array, while the location of focal area is dependent on the angle of arrival (AoA) of the wave. As compared to conventional antenna arrays without the EM lens, the proposed system can substantially reduce the number of required radio frequency (RF) chains at the receiver and hence, the implementation costs. In this paper, we investigate the proposed system under a simplified single-user uplink transmission setup, by characterizing the power distribution of the ELA as well as the resulting channel model. Furthermore, by assuming antenna selection used at the receiver, we show the throughput gains of the proposed system over conventional antenna arrays given the same number of selected antennas.
1306.1323
Verdict Accuracy of Quick Reduct Algorithm using Clustering and Classification Techniques for Gene Expression Data
cs.LG cs.CE stat.ML
In most gene expression data, the number of training samples is very small compared to the large number of genes involved in the experiments. However, among the large amount of genes, only a small fraction is effective for performing a certain task. Furthermore, a small subset of genes is desirable in developing gene expression based diagnostic tools for delivering reliable and understandable results. With the gene selection results, the cost of biological experiment and decision can be greatly reduced by analyzing only the marker genes. An important application of gene expression data in functional genomics is to classify samples according to their gene expression profiles. Feature selection (FS) is a process which attempts to select more informative features. It is one of the important steps in knowledge discovery. Conventional supervised FS methods evaluate various feature subsets using an evaluation function or metric to select only those features which are related to the decision classes of the data under consideration. This paper studies a feature selection method based on rough set theory. Further K-Means, Fuzzy C-Means (FCM) algorithm have implemented for the reduced feature set without considering class labels. Then the obtained results are compared with the original class labels. Back Propagation Network (BPN) has also been used for classification. Then the performance of K-Means, FCM, and BPN are analyzed through the confusion matrix. It is found that the BPN is performing well comparatively.
1306.1326
Performance analysis of unsupervised feature selection methods
cs.LG
Feature selection (FS) is a process which attempts to select more informative features. In some cases, too many redundant or irrelevant features may overpower main features for classification. Feature selection can remedy this problem and therefore improve the prediction accuracy and reduce the computational overhead of classification algorithms. The main aim of feature selection is to determine a minimal feature subset from a problem domain while retaining a suitably high accuracy in representing the original features. In this paper, Principal Component Analysis (PCA), Rough PCA, Unsupervised Quick Reduct (USQR) algorithm and Empirical Distribution Ranking (EDR) approaches are applied to discover discriminative features that will be the most adequate ones for classification. Efficiency of the approaches is evaluated using standard classification metrics.
1306.1334
Tuple Value Based Multiplicative Data Perturbation Approach To Preserve Privacy In Data Stream Mining
cs.DB
Huge volume of data from domain specific applications such as medical, financial, library, telephone, shopping records and individual are regularly generated. Sharing of these data is proved to be beneficial for data mining application. On one hand such data is an important asset to business decision making by analyzing it. On the other hand data privacy concerns may prevent data owners from sharing information for data analysis. In order to share data while preserving privacy, data owner must come up with a solution which achieves the dual goal of privacy preservation as well as an accuracy of data mining task - clustering and classification. An efficient and effective approach has been proposed that aims to protect privacy of sensitive information and obtaining data clustering with minimum information loss.
1306.1343
The User Feedback on SentiWordNet
cs.CL cs.IR
With the release of SentiWordNet 3.0 the related Web interface has been restyled and improved in order to allow users to submit feedback on the SentiWordNet entries, in the form of the suggestion of alternative triplets of values for an entry. This paper reports on the release of the user feedback collected so far and on the plans for the future.
1306.1346
Rethinking the Secrecy Outage Formulation: A Secure Transmission Design Perspective
cs.IT math.IT
This letter studies information-theoretic security without knowing the eavesdropper's channel fading state. We present an alternative secrecy outage formulation to measure the probability that message transmissions fail to achieve perfect secrecy. Using this formulation, we design two transmission schemes that satisfy the given security requirement while achieving good throughput performance.
1306.1350
Diffusion map for clustering fMRI spatial maps extracted by independent component analysis
cs.CE cs.LG stat.ML
Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) produces data about activity inside the brain, from which spatial maps can be extracted by independent component analysis (ICA). In datasets, there are n spatial maps that contain p voxels. The number of voxels is very high compared to the number of analyzed spatial maps. Clustering of the spatial maps is usually based on correlation matrices. This usually works well, although such a similarity matrix inherently can explain only a certain amount of the total variance contained in the high-dimensional data where n is relatively small but p is large. For high-dimensional space, it is reasonable to perform dimensionality reduction before clustering. In this research, we used the recently developed diffusion map for dimensionality reduction in conjunction with spectral clustering. This research revealed that the diffusion map based clustering worked as well as the more traditional methods, and produced more compact clusters when needed.
1306.1356
Analysis $\ell_1$-recovery with frames and Gaussian measurements
cs.IT math.IT
This paper provides novel results for the recovery of signals from undersampled measurements based on analysis $\ell_1$-minimization, when the analysis operator is given by a frame. We both provide so-called uniform and nonuniform recovery guarantees for cosparse (analysis-sparse) signals using Gaussian random measurement matrices. The nonuniform result relies on a recovery condition via tangent cones and the uniform recovery guarantee is based on an analysis version of the null space property. Examining these conditions for Gaussian random matrices leads to precise bounds on the number of measurements required for successful recovery. In the special case of standard sparsity, our result improves a bound due to Rudelson and Vershynin concerning the exact reconstruction of sparse signals from Gaussian measurements with respect to the constant and extends it to stability under passing to approximately sparse signals and to robustness under noise on the measurements.
1306.1358
Geometric operations implemented by conformal geometric algebra neural nodes
cs.CV cs.NE math.RA
Geometric algebra is an optimal frame work for calculating with vectors. The geometric algebra of a space includes elements that represent all the its subspaces (lines, planes, volumes, ...). Conformal geometric algebra expands this approach to elementary representations of arbitrary points, point pairs, lines, circles, planes and spheres. Apart from including curved objects, conformal geometric algebra has an elegant unified quaternion like representation for all proper and improper Euclidean transformations, including reflections at spheres, general screw transformations and scaling. Expanding the concepts of real and complex neurons we arrive at the new powerful concept of conformal geometric algebra neurons. These neurons can easily take the above mentioned geometric objects or sets of these objects as inputs and apply a wide range of geometric transformations via the geometric algebra valued weights.
1306.1365
The verification of virtual community members socio-demographic profile
cs.CY cs.SI physics.soc-ph
This article considers the current problem of investigation and development of the method of web-members' socio-demographic characteristics' profile validation based on analysis of socio-demographic characteristics. The topicality of the paper is determined by the necessity to identify the web-community member by means of computer-linguistic analysis of their information track (all information about web-community members, which posted on the Internet). The formal model of basic socio-demographic characteristics of virtual communities' member is formed. The algorithm of these characteristics verification is developed.
1306.1392
PyHST2: an hybrid distributed code for high speed tomographic reconstruction with iterative reconstruction and a priori knowledge capabilities
math.NA cs.CV
We present the PyHST2 code which is in service at ESRF for phase-contrast and absorption tomography. This code has been engineered to sustain the high data flow typical of the third generation synchrotron facilities (10 terabytes per experiment) by adopting a distributed and pipelined architecture. The code implements, beside a default filtered backprojection reconstruction, iterative reconstruction techniques with a-priori knowledge. These latter are used to improve the reconstruction quality or in order to reduce the required data volume and reach a given quality goal. The implemented a-priori knowledge techniques are based on the total variation penalisation and a new recently found convex functional which is based on overlapping patches. We give details of the different methods and their implementations while the code is distributed under free license. We provide methods for estimating, in the absence of ground-truth data, the optimal parameters values for a-priori techniques.
1306.1421
Bayesian Inference of Natural Rankings in Incomplete Competition Networks
physics.soc-ph cs.AI cs.SI physics.data-an
Competition between a complex system's constituents and a corresponding reward mechanism based on it have profound influence on the functioning, stability, and evolution of the system. But determining the dominance hierarchy or ranking among the constituent parts from the strongest to the weakest -- essential in determining reward or penalty -- is almost always an ambiguous task due to the incomplete nature of competition networks. Here we introduce ``Natural Ranking," a desirably unambiguous ranking method applicable to a complete (full) competition network, and formulate an analytical model based on the Bayesian formula inferring the expected mean and error of the natural ranking of nodes from an incomplete network. We investigate its potential and uses in solving issues in ranking by applying to a real-world competition network of economic and social importance.
1306.1433
Tight Lower Bound on the Probability of a Binomial Exceeding its Expectation
cs.LG stat.ML
We give the proof of a tight lower bound on the probability that a binomial random variable exceeds its expected value. The inequality plays an important role in a variety of contexts, including the analysis of relative deviation bounds in learning theory and generalization bounds for unbounded loss functions.
1306.1462
K-Algorithm A Modified Technique for Noise Removal in Handwritten Documents
cs.CV
OCR has been an active research area since last few decades. OCR performs the recognition of the text in the scanned document image and converts it into editable form. The OCR process can have several stages like pre-processing, segmentation, recognition and post processing. The pre-processing stage is a crucial stage for the success of OCR, which mainly deals with noise removal. In the present paper, a modified technique for noise removal named as K-Algorithm has been proposed, which has two stages as filtering and binarization. The proposed technique shows improvised results in comparison to median filtering technique.
1306.1467
Highly Scalable, Parallel and Distributed AdaBoost Algorithm using Light Weight Threads and Web Services on a Network of Multi-Core Machines
cs.DC cs.LG
AdaBoost is an important algorithm in machine learning and is being widely used in object detection. AdaBoost works by iteratively selecting the best amongst weak classifiers, and then combines several weak classifiers to obtain a strong classifier. Even though AdaBoost has proven to be very effective, its learning execution time can be quite large depending upon the application e.g., in face detection, the learning time can be several days. Due to its increasing use in computer vision applications, the learning time needs to be drastically reduced so that an adaptive near real time object detection system can be incorporated. In this paper, we develop a hybrid parallel and distributed AdaBoost algorithm that exploits the multiple cores in a CPU via light weight threads, and also uses multiple machines via a web service software architecture to achieve high scalability. We present a novel hierarchical web services based distributed architecture and achieve nearly linear speedup up to the number of processors available to us. In comparison with the previously published work, which used a single level master-slave parallel and distributed implementation [1] and only achieved a speedup of 2.66 on four nodes, we achieve a speedup of 95.1 on 31 workstations each having a quad-core processor, resulting in a learning time of only 4.8 seconds per feature.
1306.1478
Agents and owl-s based semantic web service discovery with user preference support
cs.IR cs.SE
Service-oriented computing (SOC) is an interdisciplinary paradigm that revolutionizes the very fabric of distributed software development applications that adopt service-oriented architectures (SOA) can evolve during their lifespan and adapt to changing or unpredictable environments more easily. SOA is built around the concept of Web Services. Although the Web services constitute a revolution in Word Wide Web, they are always regarded as non-autonomous entities and can be exploited only after their discovery. With the help of software agents, Web services are becoming more efficient and more dynamic. The topic of this paper is the development of an agent based approach for Web services discovery and selection in witch, OWL-S is used to describe Web services, QoS and service customer request. We develop an efficient semantic service matching which takes into account concepts properties to match concepts in Web service and service customer request descriptions. Our approach is based on an architecture composed of four layers: Web service and Request description layer, Functional match layer, QoS computing layer and Reputation computing layer.
1306.1486
Strong Structural Controllability and Observability of Linear Time-Varying Systems
math.OC cs.SY math.CO
In this note we consider continuous-time systems x'(t) = A(t) x(t) + B(t) u(t), y(t) = C(t) x(t) + D(t) u(t), as well as discrete-time systems x(t+1) = A(t) x(t) + B(t) u(t), y(t) = C(t) x(t) + D(t) u(t) whose coefficient matrices A, B, C and D are not exactly known. More precisely, all that is known about the systems is their nonzero pattern, i.e., the locations of the nonzero entries in the coefficient matrices. We characterize the patterns that guarantee controllability and observability, respectively, for all choices of nonzero time functions at the matrix positions defined by the pattern, which extends a result by Mayeda and Yamada for time-invariant systems. As it turns out, the conditions on the patterns for time-invariant and for time-varying discrete-time systems coincide, provided that the underlying time interval is sufficiently long. In contrast, the conditions for time-varying continuous-time systems are more restrictive than in the time-invariant case.
1306.1491
Gaussian Process-Based Decentralized Data Fusion and Active Sensing for Mobility-on-Demand System
cs.RO cs.DC cs.LG cs.MA
Mobility-on-demand (MoD) systems have recently emerged as a promising paradigm of one-way vehicle sharing for sustainable personal urban mobility in densely populated cities. In this paper, we enhance the capability of a MoD system by deploying robotic shared vehicles that can autonomously cruise the streets to be hailed by users. A key challenge to managing the MoD system effectively is that of real-time, fine-grained mobility demand sensing and prediction. This paper presents a novel decentralized data fusion and active sensing algorithm for real-time, fine-grained mobility demand sensing and prediction with a fleet of autonomous robotic vehicles in a MoD system. Our Gaussian process (GP)-based decentralized data fusion algorithm can achieve a fine balance between predictive power and time efficiency. We theoretically guarantee its predictive performance to be equivalent to that of a sophisticated centralized sparse approximation for the GP model: The computation of such a sparse approximate GP model can thus be distributed among the MoD vehicles, hence achieving efficient and scalable demand prediction. Though our decentralized active sensing strategy is devised to gather the most informative demand data for demand prediction, it can achieve a dual effect of fleet rebalancing to service the mobility demands. Empirical evaluation on real-world mobility demand data shows that our proposed algorithm can achieve a better balance between predictive accuracy and time efficiency than state-of-the-art algorithms.
1306.1511
SPATA: A Seeding and Patching Algorithm for Hybrid Transcriptome Assembly
cs.CE q-bio.GN
Transcriptome assembly from RNA-Seq reads is an active area of bioinformatics research. The ever-declining cost and the increasing depth of RNA-Seq have provided unprecedented opportunities to better identify expressed transcripts. However, the nonlinear transcript structures and the ultra-high throughput of RNA-Seq reads pose significant algorithmic and computational challenges to the existing transcriptome assembly approaches, either reference-guided or de novo. While reference-guided approaches offer good sensitivity, they rely on alignment results of the splice-aware aligners and are thus unsuitable for species with incomplete reference genomes. In contrast, de novo approaches do not depend on the reference genome but face a computational daunting task derived from the complexity of the graph built for the whole transcriptome. In response to these challenges, we present a hybrid approach to exploit an incomplete reference genome without relying on splice-aware aligners. We have designed a split-and-align procedure to efficiently localize the reads to individual genomic loci, which is followed by an accurate de novo assembly to assemble reads falling into each locus. Using extensive simulation data, we demonstrate a high accuracy and precision in transcriptome reconstruction by comparing to selected transcriptome assembly tools. Our method is implemented in assemblySAM, a GUI software freely available at http://sammate.sourceforge.net.
1306.1520
Policy Search: Any Local Optimum Enjoys a Global Performance Guarantee
cs.LG cs.AI cs.RO math.OC
Local Policy Search is a popular reinforcement learning approach for handling large state spaces. Formally, it searches locally in a paramet erized policy space in order to maximize the associated value function averaged over some predefined distribution. It is probably commonly b elieved that the best one can hope in general from such an approach is to get a local optimum of this criterion. In this article, we show th e following surprising result: \emph{any} (approximate) \emph{local optimum} enjoys a \emph{global performance guarantee}. We compare this g uarantee with the one that is satisfied by Direct Policy Iteration, an approximate dynamic programming algorithm that does some form of Poli cy Search: if the approximation error of Local Policy Search may generally be bigger (because local search requires to consider a space of s tochastic policies), we argue that the concentrability coefficient that appears in the performance bound is much nicer. Finally, we discuss several practical and theoretical consequences of our analysis.
1306.1553
Direct Uncertainty Estimation in Reinforcement Learning
cs.AI
Optimal probabilistic approach in reinforcement learning is computationally infeasible. Its simplification consisting in neglecting difference between true environment and its model estimated using limited number of observations causes exploration vs exploitation problem. Uncertainty can be expressed in terms of a probability distribution over the space of environment models, and this uncertainty can be propagated to the action-value function via Bellman iterations, which are computationally insufficiently efficient though. We consider possibility of directly measuring uncertainty of the action-value function, and analyze sufficiency of this facilitated approach.
1306.1556
Diversity Polynomials for the Analysis of Temporal Correlations in Wireless Networks
cs.IT cs.NI math.IT math.PR
The interference in wireless networks is temporally correlated, since the node or user locations are correlated over time and the interfering transmitters are a subset of these nodes. For a wireless network where (potential) interferers form a Poisson point process and use ALOHA for channel access, we calculate the joint success and outage probabilities of n transmissions over a reference link. The results are based on the diversity polynomial, which captures the temporal interference correlation. The joint outage probability is used to determine the diversity gain (as the SIR goes to infinity), and it turns out that there is no diversity gain in simple retransmission schemes, even with independent Rayleigh fading over all links. We also determine the complete joint SIR distribution for two transmissions and the distribution of the local delay, which is the time until a repeated transmission over the reference link succeeds.
1306.1557
Extending Universal Intelligence Models with Formal Notion of Representation
cs.AI
Solomonoff induction is known to be universal, but incomputable. Its approximations, namely, the Minimum Description (or Message) Length (MDL) principles, are adopted in practice in the efficient, but non-universal form. Recent attempts to bridge this gap leaded to development of the Representational MDL principle that originates from formal decomposition of the task of induction. In this paper, possible extension of the RMDL principle in the context of universal intelligence agents is considered, for which introduction of representations is shown to be an unavoidable meta-heuristic and a step toward efficient general intelligence. Hierarchical representations and model optimization with the use of information-theoretic interpretation of the adaptive resonance are also discussed.
1306.1586
Strong converse for the classical capacity of entanglement-breaking and Hadamard channels via a sandwiched Renyi relative entropy
quant-ph cs.IT math-ph math.IT math.MP
A strong converse theorem for the classical capacity of a quantum channel states that the probability of correctly decoding a classical message converges exponentially fast to zero in the limit of many channel uses if the rate of communication exceeds the classical capacity of the channel. Along with a corresponding achievability statement for rates below the capacity, such a strong converse theorem enhances our understanding of the capacity as a very sharp dividing line between achievable and unachievable rates of communication. Here, we show that such a strong converse theorem holds for the classical capacity of all entanglement-breaking channels and all Hadamard channels (the complementary channels of the former). These results follow by bounding the success probability in terms of a "sandwiched" Renyi relative entropy, by showing that this quantity is subadditive for all entanglement-breaking and Hadamard channels, and by relating this quantity to the Holevo capacity. Prior results regarding strong converse theorems for particular covariant channels emerge as a special case of our results.
1306.1591
Autonomous search for a diffusive source in an unknown environment
cs.AI cs.RO q-bio.NC
The paper presents an approach to olfactory search for a diffusive emitting source of tracer (e.g. aerosol, gas) in an environment with unknown map of randomly placed and shaped obstacles. The measurements of tracer concentration are sporadic, noisy and without directional information. The search domain is discretised and modelled by a finite two-dimensional lattice. The links is the lattice represent the traversable paths for emitted particles and for the searcher. A missing link in the lattice indicates a blocked paths, due to the walls or obstacles. The searcher must simultaneously estimate the source parameters, the map of the search domain and its own location within the map. The solution is formulated in the sequential Bayesian framework and implemented as a Rao-Blackwellised particle filter with information-driven motion control. The numerical results demonstrate the concept and its performance.
1306.1603
Infrared face recognition: a literature review
cs.CV
Automatic face recognition (AFR) is an area with immense practical potential which includes a wide range of commercial and law enforcement applications, and it continues to be one of the most active research areas of computer vision. Even after over three decades of intense research, the state-of-the-art in AFR continues to improve, benefiting from advances in a range of different fields including image processing, pattern recognition, computer graphics and physiology. However, systems based on visible spectrum images continue to face challenges in the presence of illumination, pose and expression changes, as well as facial disguises, all of which can significantly decrease their accuracy. Amongst various approaches which have been proposed in an attempt to overcome these limitations, the use of infrared (IR) imaging has emerged as a particularly promising research direction. This paper presents a comprehensive and timely review of the literature on this subject.
1306.1609
Vesselness features and the inverse compositional AAM for robust face recognition using thermal IR
cs.CV
Over the course of the last decade, infrared (IR) and particularly thermal IR imaging based face recognition has emerged as a promising complement to conventional, visible spectrum based approaches which continue to struggle when applied in the real world. While inherently insensitive to visible spectrum illumination changes, IR images introduce specific challenges of their own, most notably sensitivity to factors which affect facial heat emission patterns, e.g. emotional state, ambient temperature, and alcohol intake. In addition, facial expression and pose changes are more difficult to correct in IR images because they are less rich in high frequency detail which is an important cue for fitting any deformable model. We describe a novel method which addresses these challenges. To normalize for pose and facial expression changes we generate a synthetic frontal image of a face in a canonical, neutral facial expression from an image of the face in an arbitrary pose and facial expression. This is achieved by piecewise affine warping which follows active appearance model (AAM) fitting. This is the first publication which explores the use of an AAM on thermal IR images; we propose a pre-processing step which enhances detail in thermal images, making AAM convergence faster and more accurate. To overcome the problem of thermal IR image sensitivity to the pattern of facial temperature emissions we describe a representation based on reliable anatomical features. In contrast to previous approaches, our representation is not binary; rather, our method accounts for the reliability of the extracted features. This makes the proposed representation much more robust both to pose and scale changes. The effectiveness of the proposed approach is demonstrated on the largest public database of thermal IR images of faces on which it achieved 100% identification, significantly outperforming previous methods.
1306.1619
Statistical Denoising for single molecule fluorescence microscopic images
cs.CV
Single molecule fluorescence microscopy is a powerful technique for uncovering detailed information about biological systems, both in vitro and in vivo. In such experiments, the inherently low signal to noise ratios mean that accurate algorithms to separate true signal and background noise are essential to generate meaningful results. To this end, we have developed a new and robust method to reduce noise in single molecule fluorescence images by using a Gaussian Markov Random Field (GMRF) prior in a Bayesian framework. Two different strategies are proposed to build the prior - an intrinsic GMRF, with a stationary relationship between pixels and a heterogeneous intrinsic GMRF, with a differently weighted relationship between pixels classified as molecules and background. Testing with synthetic and real experimental fluorescence images demonstrates that the heterogeneous intrinsic GMRF is superior to other conventional de-noising approaches.
1306.1632
A Generalized Channel Coding Theory for Distributed Communication
cs.IT math.IT
This paper presents generalized channel coding theorems for a time-slotted distributed communication system where a transmitter-receiver pair is communicating in parallel with other transmitters. Assume that the channel code of each transmitter is chosen arbitrarily in each time slot. The coding choice of a transmitter is denoted by a code index parameter, which is known neither to other transmitters nor to the receiver. Fundamental performance limitation of the system is characterized using an achievable region defined in the space of the code index vectors. As the codeword length is taken to infinity, for all code index vectors inside the region, the receiver will decode the message reliably, while for all code index vectors outside the region, the receiver will report a collision reliably. A generalized system error performance measure is defined as the weighted sum of probabilities of different types of communication error events. Assume that the receiver chooses an "operation region" and intends to decode the message if the code index vector is inside the operation region. Achievable bounds on the tradeoff between the operation region and the generalize error performance measure are obtained under the assumption of a finite codeword length.
1306.1650
OPS-QFTs: A new type of quaternion Fourier transforms based on the orthogonal planes split with one or two general pure quaternions
math.RA cs.CV
We explain the orthogonal planes split (OPS) of quaternions based on the arbitrary choice of one or two linearly independent pure unit quaternions $f,g$. Next we systematically generalize the quaternionic Fourier transform (QFT) applied to quaternion fields to conform with the OPS determined by $f,g$, or by only one pure unit quaternion $f$, comment on their geometric meaning, and establish inverse transformations. Keywords: Clifford geometric algebra, quaternion geometry, quaternion Fourier transform, inverse Fourier transform, orthogonal planes split
1306.1653
Non-constant bounded holomorphic functions of hyperbolic numbers - Candidates for hyperbolic activation functions
cs.NE cs.CV math.RA
The Liouville theorem states that bounded holomorphic complex functions are necessarily constant. Holomorphic functions fulfill the socalled Cauchy-Riemann (CR) conditions. The CR conditions mean that a complex $z$-derivative is independent of the direction. Holomorphic functions are ideal for activation functions of complex neural networks, but the Liouville theorem makes them useless. Yet recently the use of hyperbolic numbers, lead to the construction of hyperbolic number neural networks. We will describe the Cauchy-Riemann conditions for hyperbolic numbers and show that there exists a new interesting type of bounded holomorphic functions of hyperbolic numbers, which are not constant. We give examples of such functions. They therefore substantially expand the available candidates for holomorphic activation functions for hyperbolic number neural networks. Keywords: Hyperbolic numbers, Liouville theorem, Cauchy-Riemann conditions, bounded holomorphic functions
1306.1662
Receiver Concepts and Resource Allocation for OSC Downlink Transmission
cs.IT math.IT
Voice services over Adaptive Multi-user channels on One Slot (VAMOS) has been standardized as an extension to the Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM). The aim of VAMOS is to increase the capacity of GSM, while maintaining backward compatibility with the legacy system. To this end, the Orthogonal Sub-channels (OSC) concept is employed, where two Gaussian minimum-shift keying (GMSK) signals are transmitted in the same time slot and with the same carrier frequency. To fully exploit the possible capacity gain of OSC, new receiver concepts are necessary. In contrast to the base station, where multiple antennas can be employed, the mobile station is typically equipped with only one receive antenna. Therefore, the downlink receiver design is a very challenging task. Different concepts for channel estimation, user separation, and equalization at the receiver of an OSC downlink transmission are introduced in this paper. Furthermore, the system capacity must be improved by suitable downlink power and resource allocation algorithms. Making realistic assumptions on the information available at the base station, an algorithm for joint power and radio resource allocation is proposed. Simulation results show the excellent performance of the proposed channel estimation algorithms, equalization schemes, and joint radio resource and power allocation algorithms in realistic VAMOS environments.
1306.1665
Single Bit and Reduced Dimension Diffusion Strategies Over Distributed Networks
cs.SY
We introduce novel diffusion based adaptive estimation strategies for distributed networks that have significantly less communication load and achieve comparable performance to the full information exchange configurations. After local estimates of the desired data is produced in each node, a single bit of information (or a reduced dimensional data vector) is generated using certain random projections of the local estimates. This newly generated data is diffused and then used in neighboring nodes to recover the original full information. We provide the complete state-space description and the mean stability analysis of our algorithms.
1306.1669
Quaternionic Fourier-Mellin Transform
math.RA cs.CV
In this contribution we generalize the classical Fourier Mellin transform [S. Dorrode and F. Ghorbel, Robust and efficient Fourier-Mellin transform approximations for gray-level image reconstruction and complete invariant description, Computer Vision and Image Understanding, 83(1) (2001), 57-78, DOI 10.1006/cviu.2001.0922.], which transforms functions $f$ representing, e.g., a gray level image defined over a compact set of $\mathbb{R}^2$. The quaternionic Fourier Mellin transform (QFMT) applies to functions $f: \mathbb{R}^2 \rightarrow \mathbb{H}$, for which $|f|$ is summable over $\mathbb{R}_+^* \times \mathbb{S}^1$ under the measure $d\theta \frac{dr}{r}$. $\mathbb{R}_+^*$ is the multiplicative group of positive and non-zero real numbers. We investigate the properties of the QFMT similar to the investigation of the quaternionic Fourier Transform (QFT) in [E. Hitzer, Quaternion Fourier Transform on Quaternion Fields and Generalizations, Advances in Applied Clifford Algebras, 17(3) (2007), 497-517.; E. Hitzer, Directional Uncertainty Principle for Quaternion Fourier Transforms, Advances in Applied Clifford Algebras, 20(2) (2010), 271-284, online since 08 July 2009.].
1306.1676
Algebraic foundations of split hypercomplex nonlinear adaptive filtering
cs.CV math.RA
A split hypercomplex learning algorithm for the training of nonlinear finite impulse response adaptive filters for the processing of hypercomplex signals of any dimension is proposed. The derivation strictly takes into account the laws of hypercomplex algebra and hypercomplex calculus, some of which have been neglected in existing learning approaches (e.g. for quaternions). Already in the case of quaternions we can predict improvements in performance of hypercomplex processes. The convergence of the proposed algorithms is rigorously analyzed. Keywords: Quaternionic adaptive filtering, Hypercomplex adaptive filtering, Nonlinear adaptive filtering, Hypercomplex Multilayer Perceptron, Clifford geometric algebra
1306.1679
Clifford Fourier-Mellin transform with two real square roots of -1 in Cl(p,q), p+q=2
math.RA cs.CV
We describe a non-commutative generalization of the complex Fourier-Mellin transform to Clifford algebra valued signal functions over the domain $\R^{p,q}$ taking values in Cl(p,q), p+q=2. Keywords: algebra, Fourier transforms; Logic, set theory, and algebra, Fourier analysis, Integral transforms
1306.1689
Verification of Query Completeness over Processes [Extended Version]
cs.DB
Data completeness is an essential aspect of data quality, and has in turn a huge impact on the effective management of companies. For example, statistics are computed and audits are conducted in companies by implicitly placing the strong assumption that the analysed data are complete. In this work, we are interested in studying the problem of completeness of data produced by business processes, to the aim of automatically assessing whether a given database query can be answered with complete information in a certain state of the process. We formalize so-called quality-aware processes that create data in the real world and store it in the company's information system possibly at a later point.
1306.1704
Geo-Spotting: Mining Online Location-based Services for Optimal Retail Store Placement
cs.SI cs.CE physics.soc-ph
The problem of identifying the optimal location for a new retail store has been the focus of past research, especially in the field of land economy, due to its importance in the success of a business. Traditional approaches to the problem have factored in demographics, revenue and aggregated human flow statistics from nearby or remote areas. However, the acquisition of relevant data is usually expensive. With the growth of location-based social networks, fine grained data describing user mobility and popularity of places has recently become attainable. In this paper we study the predictive power of various machine learning features on the popularity of retail stores in the city through the use of a dataset collected from Foursquare in New York. The features we mine are based on two general signals: geographic, where features are formulated according to the types and density of nearby places, and user mobility, which includes transitions between venues or the incoming flow of mobile users from distant areas. Our evaluation suggests that the best performing features are common across the three different commercial chains considered in the analysis, although variations may exist too, as explained by heterogeneities in the way retail facilities attract users. We also show that performance improves significantly when combining multiple features in supervised learning algorithms, suggesting that the retail success of a business may depend on multiple factors.
1306.1716
Fast greedy algorithm for subspace clustering from corrupted and incomplete data
cs.LG cs.DS math.NA stat.ML
We describe the Fast Greedy Sparse Subspace Clustering (FGSSC) algorithm providing an efficient method for clustering data belonging to a few low-dimensional linear or affine subspaces. The main difference of our algorithm from predecessors is its ability to work with noisy data having a high rate of erasures (missed entries with the known coordinates) and errors (corrupted entries with unknown coordinates). We discuss here how to implement the fast version of the greedy algorithm with the maximum efficiency whose greedy strategy is incorporated into iterations of the basic algorithm. We provide numerical evidences that, in the subspace clustering capability, the fast greedy algorithm outperforms not only the existing state-of-the art SSC algorithm taken by the authors as a basic algorithm but also the recent GSSC algorithm. At the same time, its computational cost is only slightly higher than the cost of SSC. The numerical evidence of the algorithm significant advantage is presented for a few synthetic models as well as for the Extended Yale B dataset of facial images. In particular, the face recognition misclassification rate turned out to be 6-20 times lower than for the SSC algorithm. We provide also the numerical evidence that the FGSSC algorithm is able to perform clustering of corrupted data efficiently even when the sum of subspace dimensions significantly exceeds the dimension of the ambient space.
1306.1723
Querying over Federated SPARQL Endpoints ---A State of the Art Survey
cs.DB cs.DC
The increasing amount of Linked Data and its inherent distributed nature have attracted significant attention throughout the research community and amongst practitioners to search data, in the past years. Inspired by research results from traditional distributed databases, different approaches for managing federation over SPARQL Endpoints have been introduced. SPARQL is the standardised query language for RDF, the default data model used in Linked Data deployments and SPARQL Endpoints are a popular access mechanism provided by many Linked Open Data (LOD) repositories. In this paper, we initially give an overview of the federation framework infrastructure and then proceed with a comparison of existing SPARQL federation frameworks. Finally, we highlight shortcomings in existing frameworks, which we hope helps spawning new research directions.
1306.1730
A Conceptual Metadata Framework for Spatial Data Warehouse
cs.DB
Metadata represents the information about data to be stored in Data Warehouses.It is a mandatory element of Data Warehouse to build an efficient Data Warehouse.Metadata helps in data integration,lineage,data quality and populating transformed data into data warehouse.Spatial data warehouses are based on spatial data mostly collected from Geographical Information Systems(GIS)and the transactional systems that are specific to an application or enterprise.Metadata design and deployment is the most critical phase in building of data warehouse where it is mandatory to bring the spatial information and data modeling together.In this paper,we present a holistic metadata framework that drives metadata creation for spatial data warehouse. Theoretically, the proposed metadata framework improves the efficiency of accessing of data in response to frequent queries on SDWs.In other words, the proposed framework decreases the response time of the query and accurate information is fetched from Data Warehouse including the spatial information.
1306.1743
Performing Informetric Analysis on Information Retrieval Test Collections: Preliminary Experiments in the Physics Domain
cs.IR cs.DL
The combination of informetric analysis and information retrieval allows a twofold application. (1) While in-formetrics analysis is primarily used to gain insights into a scientific domain, it can be used to build recommen-dation or alternative ranking services. They are usually based on methods like co-occurrence or citation analyses. (2) Information retrieval and its decades-long tradition of rigorous evaluation using standard document corpora, predefined topics and relevance judgements can be used as a test bed for informetric analyses. We show a preliminary experiment on how both domains can be connected using the iSearch test collection, a standard information retrieval test collection derived from the open access arXiv.org preprint server. In this paper the aim is to draw a conclusion about the appropriateness of iSearch as a test bed for the evaluation of a retrieval or recommendation system that applies informetric methods to improve retrieval results for the user. Based on an interview study with physicists, bibliographic coupling and author-co-citation analysis, important authors for ten different research questions are identified. The results show that the analysed corpus includes these authors and their corresponding documents. This study is a first step towards a combination of retrieval evaluations and the evaluation of informetric analyses methods.
1306.1751
Toward the Performance vs. Feedback Tradeoff for the Two-User MISO Broadcast Channel
cs.IT math.IT
For the two-user MISO broadcast channel with imperfect and delayed channel state information at the transmitter (CSIT), the work explores the tradeoff between performance on the one hand, and CSIT timeliness and accuracy on the other hand. The work considers a broad setting where communication takes place in the presence of a random fading process, and in the presence of a feedback process that, at any point in time, may provide CSIT estimates - of some arbitrary accuracy - for any past, current or future channel realization. This feedback quality may fluctuate in time across all ranges of CSIT accuracy and timeliness, ranging from perfectly accurate and instantaneously available estimates, to delayed estimates of minimal accuracy. Under standard assumptions, the work derives the degrees-of-freedom (DoF) region, which is tight for a large range of CSIT quality. This derived DoF region concisely captures the effect of channel correlations, the accuracy of predicted, current, and delayed-CSIT, and generally captures the effect of the quality of CSIT offered at any time, about any channel. The work also introduces novel schemes which - in the context of imperfect and delayed CSIT - employ encoding and decoding with a phase-Markov structure. The results hold for a large class of block and non-block fading channel models, and they unify and extend many prior attempts to capture the effect of imperfect and delayed feedback. This generality also allows for consideration of novel pertinent settings, such as the new periodically evolving feedback setting, where a gradual accumulation of feedback bits progressively improves CSIT as time progresses across a finite coherence period.
1306.1822
Illumination-invariant face recognition from a single image across extreme pose using a dual dimension AAM ensemble in the thermal infrared spectrum
cs.CV
Over the course of the last decade, infrared (IR) and particularly thermal IR imaging based face recognition has emerged as a promising complement to conventional, visible spectrum based approaches which continue to struggle when applied in practice. While inherently insensitive to visible spectrum illumination changes, IR data introduces specific challenges of its own, most notably sensitivity to factors which affect facial heat emission patterns, e.g. emotional state, ambient temperature, and alcohol intake. In addition, facial expression and pose changes are more difficult to correct in IR images because they are less rich in high frequency detail which is an important cue for fitting any deformable model. In this paper we describe a novel method which addresses these major challenges. Specifically, when comparing two thermal IR images of faces, we mutually normalize their poses and facial expressions by using an active appearance model (AAM) to generate synthetic images of the two faces with a neutral facial expression and in the same view (the average of the two input views). This is achieved by piecewise affine warping which follows AAM fitting. A major contribution of our work is the use of an AAM ensemble in which each AAM is specialized to a particular range of poses and a particular region of the thermal IR face space. Combined with the contributions from our previous work which addressed the problem of reliable AAM fitting in the thermal IR spectrum, and the development of a person-specific representation robust to transient changes in the pattern of facial temperature emissions, the proposed ensemble framework accurately matches faces across the full range of yaw from frontal to profile, even in the presence of scale variation (e.g. due to the varying distance of a subject from the camera).
1306.1840
Loss-Proportional Subsampling for Subsequent ERM
cs.LG stat.ML
We propose a sampling scheme suitable for reducing a data set prior to selecting a hypothesis with minimum empirical risk. The sampling only considers a subset of the ultimate (unknown) hypothesis set, but can nonetheless guarantee that the final excess risk will compare favorably with utilizing the entire original data set. We demonstrate the practical benefits of our approach on a large dataset which we subsample and subsequently fit with boosted trees.
1306.1849
New Results on Equilibria in Strategic Candidacy
cs.GT cs.AI cs.MA
We consider a voting setting where candidates have preferences about the outcome of the election and are free to join or leave the election. The corresponding candidacy game, where candidates choose strategically to participate or not, has been studied %initially by Dutta et al., who showed that no non-dictatorial voting procedure satisfying unanimity is candidacy-strategyproof, that is, is such that the joint action where all candidates enter the election is always a pure strategy Nash equilibrium. Dutta et al. also showed that for some voting tree procedures, there are candidacy games with no pure Nash equilibria, and that for the rule that outputs the sophisticated winner of voting by successive elimination, all games have a pure Nash equilibrium. No results were known about other voting rules. Here we prove several such results. For four candidates, the message is, roughly, that most scoring rules (with the exception of Borda) do not guarantee the existence of a pure Nash equilibrium but that Condorcet-consistent rules, for an odd number of voters, do. For five candidates, most rules we study no longer have this guarantee. Finally, we identify one prominent rule that guarantees the existence of a pure Nash equilibrium for any number of candidates (and for an odd number of voters): the Copeland rule. We also show that under mild assumptions on the voting rule, the existence of strong equilibria cannot be guaranteed.
1306.1850
Enhancement of a Novel Method for Mutational Disease Prediction using Bioinformatics Techniques and Backpropagation Algorithm
cs.CE q-bio.QM
The noval method for mutational disease prediction using bioinformatics tools and datasets for diagnosis the malignant mutations with powerful Artificial Neural Network (Backpropagation Network) for classifying these malignant mutations are related to gene(s) (like BRCA1 and BRCA2) cause a disease (breast cancer). This noval method did not take in consideration just like adopted for dealing, analyzing and treat the gene sequences for extracting useful information from the sequence, also exceeded the environment factors which play important roles in deciding and calculating some of genes features in order to view its functional parts and relations to diseases. This paper is proposed an enhancement of a novel method as a first way for diagnosis and prediction the disease by mutations considering and introducing multi other features show the alternations, changes in the environment as well as genes, comparing sequences to gain information about the structure or function of a query sequence, also proposing optimal and more accurate system for classification and dealing with specific disorder using backpropagation with mean square rate 0.000000001. Index Terms (Homology sequence, GC content and AT content, Bioinformatics, Backpropagation Network, BLAST, DNA Sequence, Protein Sequence)
1306.1851
A Factor Graph Approach to Joint OFDM Channel Estimation and Decoding in Impulsive Noise Environments
cs.IT math.IT stat.ML
We propose a novel receiver for orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) transmissions in impulsive noise environments. Impulsive noise arises in many modern wireless and wireline communication systems, such as Wi-Fi and powerline communications, due to uncoordinated interference that is much stronger than thermal noise. We first show that the bit-error-rate optimal receiver jointly estimates the propagation channel coefficients, the noise impulses, the finite-alphabet symbols, and the unknown bits. We then propose a near-optimal yet computationally tractable approach to this joint estimation problem using loopy belief propagation. In particular, we merge the recently proposed "generalized approximate message passing" (GAMP) algorithm with the forward-backward algorithm and soft-input soft-output decoding using a "turbo" approach. Numerical results indicate that the proposed receiver drastically outperforms existing receivers under impulsive noise and comes within 1 dB of the matched-filter bound. Meanwhile, with N tones, the proposed factor-graph-based receiver has only O(N log N) complexity, and it can be parallelized.
1306.1881
Artificial Ant Species on Solving Optimization Problems
cs.MA
During the last years several ant-based techniques were involved to solve hard and complex optimization problems. The current paper is a short study about the influence of artificial ant species in solving optimization problems. There are studied the artificial Pharaoh Ants, Lasius Niger and also artificial ants with no special specificity used commonly in Ant Colony Optimization.
1306.1894
Speckle Reduction with Adaptive Stack Filters
cs.CV
Stack filters are a special case of non-linear filters. They have a good performance for filtering images with different types of noise while preserving edges and details. A stack filter decomposes an input image into stacks of binary images according to a set of thresholds. Each binary image is then filtered by a Boolean function, which characterizes the filter. Adaptive stack filters can be computed by training using a prototype (ideal) image and its corrupted version, leading to optimized filters with respect to a loss function. In this work we propose the use of training with selected samples for the estimation of the optimal Boolean function. We study the performance of adaptive stack filters when they are applied to speckled imagery, in particular to Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) images. This is done by evaluating the quality of the filtered images through the use of suitable image quality indexes and by measuring the classification accuracy of the resulting images. We used SAR images as input, since they are affected by speckle noise that makes classification a difficult task.
1306.1907
Analytical Coexistence Benchmark for Assessing the Utmost Interference Tolerated by IEEE 802.20
cs.IT math.IT
Whether it is crosstalk, harmonics, or in-band operation of wireless technologies, interference between a reference system and a host of offenders is virtually unavoidable. In past contributions, a benchmark has been established and considered for coexistence analysis with a number of technologies including FWA, UMTS, and WiMAX. However, the previously presented model does not take into account the mobility factor of the reference node in addition to a number of interdependent requirements regarding the link direction, channel state, data rate and system factors; hence limiting its applicability for the MBWA (IEEE 802.20) standard. Thus, over diverse modes, in this correspondence we analytically derived the greatest aggregate interference level tolerated for high-fidelity transmission tailored specifically for the MBWA standard. Our results, in the form of benchmark indicators, should be of particular interest to peers analyzing and researching RF coexistence scenarios with this new protocol.
1306.1913
Emotional Expression Classification using Time-Series Kernels
cs.CV cs.LG stat.ML
Estimation of facial expressions, as spatio-temporal processes, can take advantage of kernel methods if one considers facial landmark positions and their motion in 3D space. We applied support vector classification with kernels derived from dynamic time-warping similarity measures. We achieved over 99% accuracy - measured by area under ROC curve - using only the 'motion pattern' of the PCA compressed representation of the marker point vector, the so-called shape parameters. Beyond the classification of full motion patterns, several expressions were recognized with over 90% accuracy in as few as 5-6 frames from their onset, about 200 milliseconds.
1306.1922
Collaborative 20 Questions for Target Localization
cs.IT math.IT
We consider the problem of 20 questions with noise for multiple players under the minimum entropy criterion in the setting of stochastic search, with application to target localization. Each player yields a noisy response to a binary query governed by a certain error probability. First, we propose a sequential policy for constructing questions that queries each player in sequence and refines the posterior of the target location. Second, we consider a joint policy that asks all players questions in parallel at each time instant and characterize the structure of the optimal policy for constructing the sequence of questions. This generalizes the single player probabilistic bisection method for stochastic search problems. Third, we prove an equivalence between the two schemes showing that, despite the fact that the sequential scheme has access to a more refined filtration, the joint scheme performs just as well on average. Fourth, we establish convergence rates of the mean-square error (MSE) and derive error exponents. Lastly, we obtain an extension to the case of unknown error probabilities. This framework provides a mathematical model for incorporating a human in the loop for active machine learning systems.
1306.1927
Learning About Meetings
stat.AP cs.CL
Most people participate in meetings almost every day, multiple times a day. The study of meetings is important, but also challenging, as it requires an understanding of social signals and complex interpersonal dynamics. Our aim this work is to use a data-driven approach to the science of meetings. We provide tentative evidence that: i) it is possible to automatically detect when during the meeting a key decision is taking place, from analyzing only the local dialogue acts, ii) there are common patterns in the way social dialogue acts are interspersed throughout a meeting, iii) at the time key decisions are made, the amount of time left in the meeting can be predicted from the amount of time that has passed, iv) it is often possible to predict whether a proposal during a meeting will be accepted or rejected based entirely on the language (the set of persuasive words) used by the speaker.
1306.1956
Rendezvous of Two Robots with Constant Memory
cs.MA cs.CG cs.RO
We study the impact that persistent memory has on the classical rendezvous problem of two mobile computational entities, called robots, in the plane. It is well known that, without additional assumptions, rendezvous is impossible if the entities are oblivious (i.e., have no persistent memory) even if the system is semi-synchronous (SSynch). It has been recently shown that rendezvous is possible even if the system is asynchronous (ASynch) if each robot is endowed with O(1) bits of persistent memory, can transmit O(1) bits in each cycle, and can remember (i.e., can persistently store) the last received transmission. This setting is overly powerful. In this paper we weaken that setting in two different ways: (1) by maintaining the O(1) bits of persistent memory but removing the communication capabilities; and (2) by maintaining the O(1) transmission capability and the ability to remember the last received transmission, but removing the ability of an agent to remember its previous activities. We call the former setting finite-state (FState) and the latter finite-communication (FComm). Note that, even though its use is very different, in both settings, the amount of persistent memory of a robot is constant. We investigate the rendezvous problem in these two weaker settings. We model both settings as a system of robots endowed with visible lights: in FState, a robot can only see its own light, while in FComm a robot can only see the other robot's light. We prove, among other things, that finite-state robots can rendezvous in SSynch, and that finite-communication robots are able to rendezvous even in ASynch. All proofs are constructive: in each setting, we present a protocol that allows the two robots to rendezvous in finite time.
1306.2003
Comparing Edge Detection Methods based on Stochastic Entropies and Distances for PolSAR Imagery
math.ST cs.CV eess.IV stat.TH
Polarimetric synthetic aperture radar (PolSAR) has achieved a prominent position as a remote imaging method. However, PolSAR images are contaminated by speckle noise due to the coherent illumination employed during the data acquisition. This noise provides a granular aspect to the image, making its processing and analysis (such as in edge detection) hard tasks. This paper discusses seven methods for edge detection in multilook PolSAR images. In all methods, the basic idea consists in detecting transition points in the finest possible strip of data which spans two regions. The edge is contoured using the transitions points and a B-spline curve. Four stochastic distances, two differences of entropies, and the maximum likelihood criterion were used under the scaled complex Wishart distribution; the first six stem from the h-phi class of measures. The performance of the discussed detection methods was quantified and analyzed by the computational time and probability of correct edge detection, with respect to the number of looks, the backscatter matrix as a whole, the SPAN, the covariance an the spatial resolution. The detection procedures were applied to three real PolSAR images. Results provide evidence that the methods based on the Bhattacharyya distance and the difference of Shannon entropies outperform the other techniques.
1306.2009
CSMA over Time-varying Channels: Optimality, Uniqueness and Limited Backoff Rate
cs.NI cs.IT math.IT
Recent studies on MAC scheduling have shown that carrier sense multiple access (CSMA) algo- rithms can be throughput optimal for arbitrary wireless network topology. However, these results are highly sensitive to the underlying assumption on 'static' or 'fixed' system conditions. For example, if channel conditions are time-varying, it is unclear how each node can adjust its CSMA parameters, so-called backoff and channel holding times, using its local channel information for the desired high performance. In this paper, we study 'channel-aware' CSMA (A-CSMA) algorithms in time-varying channels, where they adjust their parameters as some function of the current channel capacity. First, we show that the achievable rate region of A-CSMA equals to the maximum rate region if and only if the function is exponential. Furthermore, given an exponential function in A-CSMA, we design updating rules for their parameters, which achieve throughput optimality for an arbitrary wireless network topology. They are the first CSMA algorithms in the literature which are proved to be throughput optimal under time-varying channels. Moreover, we also consider the case when back-off rates of A- CSMA are highly restricted compared to the speed of channel variations, and characterize the throughput performance of A-CSMA in terms of the underlying wireless network topology. Our results not only guide a high-performance design on MAC scheduling under highly time-varying scenarios, but also provide new insights on the performance of CSMA algorithms in relation to their backoff rates and the network topology.
1306.2015
CSI Feedback Reduction for MIMO Interference Alignment
cs.IT math.IT
Interference alignment (IA) is a linear precoding strategy that can achieve optimal capacity scaling at high SNR in interference networks. Most of the existing IA designs require full channel state information (CSI) at the transmitters, which induces a huge CSI signaling cost. Hence it is desirable to improve the feedback efficiency for IA and in this paper, we propose a novel IA scheme with a significantly reduced CSI feedback. To quantify the CSI feedback cost, we introduce a novel metric, namely the feedback dimension. This metric serves as a first-order measurement of CSI feedback overhead. Due to the partial CSI feedback constraint, conventional IA schemes can not be applied and hence, we develop a novel IA precoder / decorrelator design and establish new IA feasibility conditions. Via dynamic feedback profile design, the proposed IA scheme can also achieve a flexible tradeoff between the degree of freedom (DoF) requirements for data streams, the antenna resources and the CSI feedback cost. We show by analysis and simulations that the proposed scheme achieves substantial reductions of CSI feedback overhead under the same DoF requirement in MIMO interference networks.
1306.2019
Proceedings Fourth International Workshop on Computational Models for Cell Processes
cs.CE
The fourth international workshop on Computational Models for Cell Processes (CompMod 2013) took place on June 11, 2013 at the {\AA}bo Akademi University, Turku, Finland, in conjunction with iFM 2013. The first edition of the workshop (2008) took place in Turku, Finland, in conjunction with Formal Methods 2008, the second edition (2009) took place in Eindhoven, the Netherlands, as well in conjunction with Formal Methods 2009, and the third one took place in Aachen, Germany, in conjunction with CONCUR 2013. This volume contains the final versions of all contributions accepted for presentation at the workshop. The goal of the CompMod workshop series is to bring together researchers in Computer Science and Mathematics (both discrete and continuous), interested in the opportunities and the challenges of Systems Biology. The Program Committee of CompMod 2013 selected 3 papers for presentation at the workshop. In addition, we had two invited talks and five informal presentations. The scientific program of the workshop spans an interesting mix of approaches to systems and even synthetic biology, encompassing several different modeling approaches, ranging from quantitative to qualitative techniques, from continuous to discrete mathematics, and from deterministic to stochastic methods. We thank our invited speakers Daniela Besozzi (Universita degli Studi di Milano, Milano, Italy) and Juho Rousu (Aalto University, Finland) for accepting our invitation and for presenting some of their recent results at CompMod 2013. The technical contributions address the mathematical modeling of the PDGF signalling pathway, the canonical labelling of site graphs, rule-based modeling of polymerization reactions, rule-based modeling as a platform for the analysis of synthetic self-assembled nano-systems, robustness analysis of stochastic systems, an algebraic approach to gene assembly in ciliates, and large-scale text mining of biomedical literature.
1306.2025
Flexibly-bounded Rationality and Marginalization of Irrationality Theories for Decision Making
cs.AI
In this paper the theory of flexibly-bounded rationality which is an extension to the theory of bounded rationality is revisited. Rational decision making involves using information which is almost always imperfect and incomplete together with some intelligent machine which if it is a human being is inconsistent to make decisions. In bounded rationality, this decision is made irrespective of the fact that the information to be used is incomplete and imperfect and that the human brain is inconsistent and thus this decision that is to be made is taken within the bounds of these limitations. In the theory of flexibly-bounded rationality, advanced information analysis is used, the correlation machine is applied to complete missing information and artificial intelligence is used to make more consistent decisions. Therefore flexibly-bounded rationality expands the bounds within which rationality is exercised. Because human decision making is essentially irrational, this paper proposes the theory of marginalization of irrationality in decision making to deal with the problem of satisficing in the presence of irrationality.
1306.2035
Minimax Theory for High-dimensional Gaussian Mixtures with Sparse Mean Separation
stat.ML cs.LG math.ST stat.TH
While several papers have investigated computationally and statistically efficient methods for learning Gaussian mixtures, precise minimax bounds for their statistical performance as well as fundamental limits in high-dimensional settings are not well-understood. In this paper, we provide precise information theoretic bounds on the clustering accuracy and sample complexity of learning a mixture of two isotropic Gaussians in high dimensions under small mean separation. If there is a sparse subset of relevant dimensions that determine the mean separation, then the sample complexity only depends on the number of relevant dimensions and mean separation, and can be achieved by a simple computationally efficient procedure. Our results provide the first step of a theoretical basis for recent methods that combine feature selection and clustering.
1306.2040
A Numerical Example about the Geometric Approach to the Output Regulation Problem with Stability for Linear Switching Systems
cs.SY math.OC
This note presents a numerical example worked out in order to illustrate the solution to the output regulation problem with quadratic stability for linear switching systems derived in [1].
1306.2081
3D model retrieval using global and local radial distances
cs.GR cs.CV cs.IR
3D model retrieval techniques can be classified as histogram-based, view-based and graph-based approaches. We propose a hybrid shape descriptor which combines the global and local radial distance features by utilizing the histogram-based and view-based approaches respectively. We define an area-weighted global radial distance with respect to the center of the bounding sphere of the model and encode its distribution into a 2D histogram as the global radial distance shape descriptor. We then uniformly divide the bounding cube of a 3D model into a set of small cubes and define their centers as local centers. Then, we compute the local radial distance of a point based on the nearest local center. By sparsely sampling a set of views and encoding the local radial distance feature on the rendered views by color coding, we extract the local radial distance shape descriptor. Based on these two shape descriptors, we develop a hybrid radial distance shape descriptor for 3D model retrieval. Experiment results show that our hybrid shape descriptor outperforms several typical histogram-based and view-based approaches.
1306.2084
Logistic Tensor Factorization for Multi-Relational Data
stat.ML cs.LG
Tensor factorizations have become increasingly popular approaches for various learning tasks on structured data. In this work, we extend the RESCAL tensor factorization, which has shown state-of-the-art results for multi-relational learning, to account for the binary nature of adjacency tensors. We study the improvements that can be gained via this approach on various benchmark datasets and show that the logistic extension can improve the prediction results significantly.
1306.2086
Byzantine Fault Tolerant Distributed Quickest Change Detection
math.PR cs.IT cs.SY math.IT math.OC
We introduce and solve the problem of Byzantine fault tolerant distributed quickest change detection in both continuous and discrete time setups. In this problem, multiple sensors sequentially observe random signals from the environment and send their observations to a control center that will determine whether there is a change in the statistical behavior of the observations. We assume that the signals are independent and identically distributed across sensors. An unknown subset of sensors are compromised and will send arbitrarily modified and even artificially generated signals to the control center. It is shown that the performance of the the so-called CUSUM statistic, which is optimal when all sensors are honest, will be significantly degraded in the presence of even a single dishonest sensor. In particular, instead of in a logarithmically the detection delay grows linearly with the average run length (ARL) to false alarm. To mitigate such a performance degradation, we propose a fully distributed low complexity detection scheme. We show that the proposed scheme can recover the log scaling. We also propose a centralized group-wise scheme that can further reduce the detection delay.