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1401.6775
Methods for Collision-Free Navigation of Multiple Mobile Robots in Unknown Cluttered Environments
math.OC cs.RO
Navigation and guidance of autonomous vehicles is a fundamental problem in robotics, which has attracted intensive research in recent decades. This report is mainly concerned with provable collision avoidance of multiple autonomous vehicles operating in unknown cluttered environments, using reactive decentralized navigation laws, where obstacle information is supplied by some sensor system. Recently, robust and decentralized variants of model predictive control based navigation systems have been applied to vehicle navigation problems. Properties such as provable collision avoidance under disturbance and provable convergence to a target have been shown; however these often require significant computational and communicative capabilities, and don't consider sensor constraints, making real time use somewhat difficult. There also seems to be opportunity to develop a better trade-off between tractability, optimality, and robustness. The main contributions of this work are as follows; firstly, the integration of the robust model predictive control concept with reactive navigation strategies based on local path planning, which is applied to both holonomic and unicycle vehicle models subjected to acceleration bounds and disturbance; secondly, the extension of model predictive control type methods to situations where the information about the obstacle is limited to a discrete ray-based sensor model, for which provably safe, convergent boundary following can be shown; and thirdly the development of novel constraints allowing decentralized coordination of multiple vehicles using a robust model predictive control type approach, where a single communication exchange is used per control update, vehicles are allowed to perform planning simultaneously, and coherency objectives are avoided.
1401.6787
On the capacity of the dither-quantized Gaussian channel
cs.IT math.IT
This paper studies the capacity of the peak-and-average-power-limited Gaussian channel when its output is quantized using a dithered, infinite-level, uniform quantizer of step size $\Delta$. It is shown that the capacity of this channel tends to that of the unquantized Gaussian channel when $\Delta$ tends to zero, and it tends to zero when $\Delta$ tends to infinity. In the low signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) regime, it is shown that, when the peak-power constraint is absent, the low-SNR asymptotic capacity is equal to that of the unquantized channel irrespective of $\Delta$. Furthermore, an expression for the low-SNR asymptotic capacity for finite peak-to-average-power ratios is given and evaluated in the low- and high-resolution limit. It is demonstrated that, in this case, the low-SNR asymptotic capacity converges to that of the unquantized channel when $\Delta$ tends to zero, and it tends to zero when $\Delta$ tends to infinity. Comparing these results with achievability results for (undithered) 1-bit quantization, it is observed that the dither reduces capacity in the low-precision limit, and it reduces the low-SNR asymptotic capacity unless the peak-to-average-power ratio is unbounded.
1401.6790
Optimal Power Allocation in Block Fading Gaussian Channels with Causal CSI and Secrecy Constraints
cs.IT cs.CR math.IT
The optimal power allocation that maximizes the secrecy capacity of block fading Gaussian (BF-Gaussian) networks with causal channel state information (CSI), M-block delay tolerance and a frame based power constraint is examined. In particular, we formulate the secrecy capacity maximization as a dynamic program. We propose suitable linear approximations of the secrecy capacity density in the low SNR, the high SNR and the intermediate SNR regimes, according to the overall available power budget. Our findings indicate that when the available power resources are very low (low SNR case) the optimal strategy is a threshold policy. On the other hand when the available power budget is infinite (high SNR case) a constant power policy maximizes the frame secrecy capacity. Finally, when the power budget is finite (medium SNR case), an approximate tractable power allocation policy is derived.
1401.6799
Slotted Aloha for Networked Base Stations
cs.IT math.IT
We study multiple base station, multi-access systems in which the user-base station adjacency is induced by geographical proximity. At each slot, each user transmits (is active) with a certain probability, independently of other users, and is heard by all base stations within the distance $r$. Both the users and base stations are placed uniformly at random over the (unit) area. We first consider a non-cooperative decoding where base stations work in isolation, but a user is decoded as soon as one of its nearby base stations reads a clean signal from it. We find the decoding probability and quantify the gains introduced by multiple base stations. Specifically, the peak throughput increases linearly with the number of base stations $m$ and is roughly $m/4$ larger than the throughput of a single-base station that uses standard slotted Aloha. Next, we propose a cooperative decoding, where the mutually close base stations inform each other whenever they decode a user inside their coverage overlap. At each base station, the messages received from the nearby stations help resolve collisions by the interference cancellation mechanism. Building from our exact formulas for the non-cooperative case, we provide a heuristic formula for the cooperative decoding probability that reflects well the actual performance. Finally, we demonstrate by simulation significant gains of cooperation with respect to the non-cooperative decoding.
1401.6810
Slotted Aloha for Networked Base Stations with Spatial and Temporal Diversity
cs.IT math.IT
We consider framed slotted Aloha where $m$ base stations cooperate to decode messages from $n$ users. Users and base stations are placed uniformly at random over an area. At each frame, each user sends multiple replicas of its packet according to a prescribed distribution, and it is heard by all base stations within the communication radius $r$. Base stations employ a decoding algorithm that utilizes the successive interference cancellation mechanism, both in space--across neighboring base stations, and in time--across different slots, locally at each base station. We show that there exists a threshold on the normalized load $G=n/(\tau m)$, where $\tau$ is the number of slots per frame, below which decoding probability converges asymptotically (as $n,m,\tau\rightarrow \infty$, $r\rightarrow 0$) to the maximal possible value--the probability that a user is heard by at least one base station, and we find a lower bound on the threshold. Further, we give a heuristic evaluation of the decoding probability based on the and-or-tree analysis. Finally, we show that the peak throughput increases linearly in the number of base stations.
1401.6846
Delayed Channel State Information: Incremental Redundancy with Backtrack Retransmission
cs.IT math.IT
In many practical wireless systems, the Signal-to-Interference-and-Noise Ratio (SINR) that is applicable to a certain transmission, referred to as Channel State Information (CSI), can only be learned after the transmission has taken place and is thereby outdated (delayed). For example, this occurs under intermittent interference. We devise the backward retransmission (BRQ) scheme, which uses the delayed CSIT to send the optimal amount of incremental redundancy (IR). BRQ uses fixed-length packets, fixed-rate R transmission codebook, and operates as Markov block coding, where the correlation between the adjacent packets depends on the amount of IR parity bits. When the delayed CSIT is full and R grows asymptotically, the average throughput of BRQ becomes equal to the value achieved with prior CSIT and a fixed-power transmitter; however, at the expense of increased delay. The second contribution is a method for employing BRQ when a limited number of feedback bits is available to report the delayed CSIT. The main novelty is the idea to assemble multiple feedback opportunities and report multiple SINRs through vector quantization. This challenges the conventional wisdom in ARQ protocols where feedback bits are used to only quantize the CSIT of the immediate previous transmission.
1401.6853
Computing the Kullback-Leibler Divergence between two Generalized Gamma Distributions
cs.IT math.IT
We derive a closed form solution for the Kullback-Leibler divergence between two generalized gamma distributions. These notes are meant as a reference and provide a guided tour towards a result of practical interest that is rarely explicated in the literature.
1401.6875
Context-based Word Acquisition for Situated Dialogue in a Virtual World
cs.CL
To tackle the vocabulary problem in conversational systems, previous work has applied unsupervised learning approaches on co-occurring speech and eye gaze during interaction to automatically acquire new words. Although these approaches have shown promise, several issues related to human language behavior and human-machine conversation have not been addressed. First, psycholinguistic studies have shown certain temporal regularities between human eye movement and language production. While these regularities can potentially guide the acquisition process, they have not been incorporated in the previous unsupervised approaches. Second, conversational systems generally have an existing knowledge base about the domain and vocabulary. While the existing knowledge can potentially help bootstrap and constrain the acquired new words, it has not been incorporated in the previous models. Third, eye gaze could serve different functions in human-machine conversation. Some gaze streams may not be closely coupled with speech stream, and thus are potentially detrimental to word acquisition. Automated recognition of closely-coupled speech-gaze streams based on conversation context is important. To address these issues, we developed new approaches that incorporate user language behavior, domain knowledge, and conversation context in word acquisition. We evaluated these approaches in the context of situated dialogue in a virtual world. Our experimental results have shown that incorporating the above three types of contextual information significantly improves word acquisition performance.
1401.6876
Improving Statistical Machine Translation for a Resource-Poor Language Using Related Resource-Rich Languages
cs.CL
We propose a novel language-independent approach for improving machine translation for resource-poor languages by exploiting their similarity to resource-rich ones. More precisely, we improve the translation from a resource-poor source language X_1 into a resource-rich language Y given a bi-text containing a limited number of parallel sentences for X_1-Y and a larger bi-text for X_2-Y for some resource-rich language X_2 that is closely related to X_1. This is achieved by taking advantage of the opportunities that vocabulary overlap and similarities between the languages X_1 and X_2 in spelling, word order, and syntax offer: (1) we improve the word alignments for the resource-poor language, (2) we further augment it with additional translation options, and (3) we take care of potential spelling differences through appropriate transliteration. The evaluation for Indonesian- >English using Malay and for Spanish -> English using Portuguese and pretending Spanish is resource-poor shows an absolute gain of up to 1.35 and 3.37 BLEU points, respectively, which is an improvement over the best rivaling approaches, while using much less additional data. Overall, our method cuts the amount of necessary "real training data by a factor of 2--5.
1401.6887
OLAP on Structurally Significant Data in Graphs
cs.DB
Summarized data analysis of graphs using OLAP (Online Analytical Processing) is very popular these days. However due to high dimensionality and large size, it is not easy to decide which data should be aggregated for OLAP analysis. Though iceberg cubing is useful, but it is unaware of the significance of dimensional values with respect to the structure of the graph. In this paper, we propose a Structural Significance, SS, measure to identify the structurally significant dimensional values in each dimension. This leads to structure aware pruning. We then propose an algorithm, iGraphCubing, to compute the graph cube to analyze the structurally significant data using the proposed measure. We evaluated the proposed ideas on real and synthetic data sets and observed very encouraging results.
1401.6891
Unsupervised Visual and Textual Information Fusion in Multimedia Retrieval - A Graph-based Point of View
cs.IR
Multimedia collections are more than ever growing in size and diversity. Effective multimedia retrieval systems are thus critical to access these datasets from the end-user perspective and in a scalable way. We are interested in repositories of image/text multimedia objects and we study multimodal information fusion techniques in the context of content based multimedia information retrieval. We focus on graph based methods which have proven to provide state-of-the-art performances. We particularly examine two of such methods : cross-media similarities and random walk based scores. From a theoretical viewpoint, we propose a unifying graph based framework which encompasses the two aforementioned approaches. Our proposal allows us to highlight the core features one should consider when using a graph based technique for the combination of visual and textual information. We compare cross-media and random walk based results using three different real-world datasets. From a practical standpoint, our extended empirical analysis allow us to provide insights and guidelines about the use of graph based methods for multimodal information fusion in content based multimedia information retrieval.
1401.6904
Adaptive Visual Tracking for Robotic Systems Without Image-Space Velocity Measurement
cs.RO cs.SY math.OC
In this paper, we investigate the visual tracking problem for robotic systems without image-space velocity measurement, simultaneously taking into account the uncertainties of the camera model and the manipulator kinematics and dynamics. We propose a new image-space observer that exploits the image-space velocity information contained in the unknown kinematics, upon which, we design an adaptive controller without using the image-space velocity signal where the adaptations of the depth-rate-independent kinematic parameter and depth parameter are driven by both the image-space tracking errors and observation errors. The major superiority of the proposed observer-based adaptive controller lies in its simplicity and the separation of the handling of multiple uncertainties in visually servoed robotic systems, thus avoiding the overparametrization problem of the existing work. Using Lyapunov analysis, we demonstrate that the image-space tracking errors converge to zero asymptotically. The performance of the proposed adaptive control scheme is illustrated by a numerical simulation.
1401.6929
Computing support for advanced medical data analysis and imaging
physics.comp-ph cs.CV cs.DC physics.ins-det physics.med-ph
We discuss computing issues for data analysis and image reconstruction of PET-TOF medical scanner or other medical scanning devices producing large volumes of data. Service architecture based on the grid and cloud concepts for distributed processing is proposed and critically discussed.
1401.6931
How the Sando Search Tool Recommends Queries
cs.SE cs.IR
Developers spend a significant amount of time searching their local codebase. To help them search efficiently, researchers have proposed novel tools that apply state-of-the-art information retrieval algorithms to retrieve relevant code snippets from the local codebase. However, these tools still rely on the developer to craft an effective query, which requires that the developer is familiar with the terms contained in the related code snippets. Our empirical data from a state-of-the-art local code search tool, called Sando, suggests that developers are sometimes unacquainted with their local codebase. In order to bridge the gap between developers and their ever-increasing local codebase, in this paper we demonstrate the recommendation techniques integrated in Sando.
1401.6956
A continuous-time approach to online optimization
math.OC cs.LG stat.ML
We consider a family of learning strategies for online optimization problems that evolve in continuous time and we show that they lead to no regret. From a more traditional, discrete-time viewpoint, this continuous-time approach allows us to derive the no-regret properties of a large class of discrete-time algorithms including as special cases the exponential weight algorithm, online mirror descent, smooth fictitious play and vanishingly smooth fictitious play. In so doing, we obtain a unified view of many classical regret bounds, and we show that they can be decomposed into a term stemming from continuous-time considerations and a term which measures the disparity between discrete and continuous time. As a result, we obtain a general class of infinite horizon learning strategies that guarantee an $\mathcal{O}(n^{-1/2})$ regret bound without having to resort to a doubling trick.
1401.6962
Compressive Classification of a Mixture of Gaussians: Analysis, Designs and Geometrical Interpretation
cs.IT math.IT
This paper derives fundamental limits on the performance of compressive classification when the source is a mixture of Gaussians. It provides an asymptotic analysis of a Bhattacharya based upper bound on the misclassification probability for the optimal Maximum-A-Posteriori (MAP) classifier that depends on quantities that are dual to the concepts of diversity-order and coding gain in multi-antenna communications. The diversity-order of the measurement system determines the rate at which the probability of misclassification decays with signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) in the low-noise regime. The counterpart of coding gain is the measurement gain which determines the power offset of the probability of misclassification in the low-noise regime. These two quantities make it possible to quantify differences in misclassification probability between random measurement and (diversity-order) optimized measurement. Results are presented for two-class classification problems first with zero-mean Gaussians then with nonzero-mean Gaussians, and finally for multiple-class Gaussian classification problems. The behavior of misclassification probability is revealed to be intimately related to certain fundamental geometric quantities determined by the measurement system, the source and their interplay. Numerical results, representative of compressive classification of a mixture of Gaussians, demonstrate alignment of the actual misclassification probability with the Bhattacharya based upper bound. The connection between the misclassification performance and the alignment between source and measurement geometry may be used to guide the design of dictionaries for compressive classification.
1401.6964
Co-Evolution of Friendship and Publishing in Online Blogging Social Networks
cs.SI physics.soc-ph
In the past decade, blogging web sites have become more sophisticated and influential than ever. Much of this sophistication and influence follows from their network organization. Blogging social networks (BSNs) allow individual bloggers to form contact lists, subscribe to other blogs, comment on blog posts, declare interests, and participate in collective blogs. Thus, a BSN is a bimodal venue, where users can engage in publishing (post) as well as in social (make friends) activities. In this paper, we study the co-evolution of both activities. We observed a significant positive correlation between blogging and socializing. In addition, we identified a number of user archetypes that correspond to "mainly bloggers," "mainly socializers," etc. We analyzed a BSN at the level of individual posts and changes in contact lists and at the level of trajectories in the friendship-publishing space. Both approaches produced consistent results: the majority of BSN users are passive readers; publishing is the dominant active behavior in a BSN; and social activities complement blogging, rather than compete with it.
1401.6968
Fixed-rank Rayleigh Quotient Maximization by an $M$PSK Sequence
cs.IT math.CO math.IT math.OC
Certain optimization problems in communication systems, such as limited-feedback constant-envelope beamforming or noncoherent $M$-ary phase-shift keying ($M$PSK) sequence detection, result in the maximization of a fixed-rank positive semidefinite quadratic form over the $M$PSK alphabet. This form is a special case of the Rayleigh quotient of a matrix and, in general, its maximization by an $M$PSK sequence is $\mathcal{NP}$-hard. However, if the rank of the matrix is not a function of its size, then the optimal solution can be computed with polynomial complexity in the matrix size. In this work, we develop a new technique to efficiently solve this problem by utilizing auxiliary continuous-valued angles and partitioning the resulting continuous space of solutions into a polynomial-size set of regions, each of which corresponds to a distinct $M$PSK sequence. The sequence that maximizes the Rayleigh quotient is shown to belong to this polynomial-size set of sequences, thus efficiently reducing the size of the feasible set from exponential to polynomial. Based on this analysis, we also develop an algorithm that constructs this set in polynomial time and show that it is fully parallelizable, memory efficient, and rank scalable. The proposed algorithm compares favorably with other solvers for this problem that have appeared recently in the literature.
1401.6975
A decoding algorithm for CSS codes using the X/Z correlations
cs.IT math.IT quant-ph
We propose a simple decoding algorithm for CSS codes taking into account the correlations between the X part and the Z part of the error. Applying this idea to surface codes, we derive an improved version of the perfect matching decoding algorithm which uses these X/Z correlations.
1401.6984
Kaldi+PDNN: Building DNN-based ASR Systems with Kaldi and PDNN
cs.LG cs.CL
The Kaldi toolkit is becoming popular for constructing automated speech recognition (ASR) systems. Meanwhile, in recent years, deep neural networks (DNNs) have shown state-of-the-art performance on various ASR tasks. This document describes our open-source recipes to implement fully-fledged DNN acoustic modeling using Kaldi and PDNN. PDNN is a lightweight deep learning toolkit developed under the Theano environment. Using these recipes, we can build up multiple systems including DNN hybrid systems, convolutional neural network (CNN) systems and bottleneck feature systems. These recipes are directly based on the Kaldi Switchboard 110-hour setup. However, adapting them to new datasets is easy to achieve.
1401.7006
Polar Codes for Some Multi-terminal Communications Problems
cs.IT math.IT
It is shown that polar coding schemes achieve the known achievable rate regions for several multi-terminal communications problems including lossy distributed source coding, multiple access channels and multiple descriptions coding. The results are valid for arbitrary alphabet sizes (binary or nonbinary) and arbitrary distributions (symmetric or asymmetric).
1401.7020
A Stochastic Quasi-Newton Method for Large-Scale Optimization
math.OC cs.LG stat.ML
The question of how to incorporate curvature information in stochastic approximation methods is challenging. The direct application of classical quasi- Newton updating techniques for deterministic optimization leads to noisy curvature estimates that have harmful effects on the robustness of the iteration. In this paper, we propose a stochastic quasi-Newton method that is efficient, robust and scalable. It employs the classical BFGS update formula in its limited memory form, and is based on the observation that it is beneficial to collect curvature information pointwise, and at regular intervals, through (sub-sampled) Hessian-vector products. This technique differs from the classical approach that would compute differences of gradients, and where controlling the quality of the curvature estimates can be difficult. We present numerical results on problems arising in machine learning that suggest that the proposed method shows much promise.
1401.7074
Phase Precoded Compute-and-Forward with Partial Feedback
cs.IT math.IT
In this work, we propose phase precoding for the compute-and-forward (CoF) protocol. We derive the phase precoded computation rate and show that it is greater than the original computation rate of CoF protocol without precoder. To maximize the phase precoded computation rate, we need to 'jointly' find the optimum phase precoding matrix and the corresponding network equation coefficients. This is a mixed integer programming problem where the optimum precoders should be obtained at the transmitters and the network equation coefficients have to be computed at the relays. To solve this problem, we introduce phase precoded CoF with partial feedback. It is a quantized precoding system where the relay jointly computes both a quasi-optimal precoder from a finite codebook and the corresponding network equations. The index of the obtained phase precoder within the codebook will then be fedback to the transmitters. A "deep hole phase precoder" is presented as an example of such a scheme. We further simulate our scheme with a lattice code carved out of the Gosset lattice and show that significant coding gains can be obtained in terms of equation error performance.
1401.7077
Quantifying literature quality using complexity criteria
cs.CL
We measured entropy and symbolic diversity for English and Spanish texts including literature Nobel laureates and other famous authors. Entropy, symbol diversity and symbol frequency profiles were compared for these four groups. We also built a scale sensitive to the quality of writing and evaluated its relationship with the Flesch's readability index for English and the Szigriszt's perspicuity index for Spanish. Results suggest a correlation between entropy and word diversity with quality of writing. Text genre also influences the resulting entropy and diversity of the text. Results suggest the plausibility of automated quality assessment of texts.
1401.7085
Reverse Edge Cut-Set Bounds for Secure Network Coding
cs.IT math.IT
We consider the problem of secure communication over a network in the presence of wiretappers. We give a new cut-set bound on secrecy capacity which takes into account the contribution of both forward and backward edges crossing the cut, and the connectivity between their endpoints in the rest of the network. We show the bound is tight on a class of networks, which demonstrates that it is not possible to find a tighter bound by considering only cut set edges and their connectivity.
1401.7088
Cellular Downlink Performance with Base Station Sleeping, User Association, and Scheduling
cs.NI cs.IT math.IT stat.AP
Base station (BS) sleeping has emerged as a viable solution to enhance the overall network energy efficiency by inactivating the underutilized BSs. However, it affects the performance of users in sleeping cells depending on their BS association criteria, their channel conditions towards the active BSs, and scheduling criteria and traffic loads at the active BSs. This paper characterizes the performance of cellular systems with BS sleeping by developing a systematic framework to derive the spectral efficiency and outage probability of downlink transmission to the sleeping cell users taking into account the aforementioned factors. In this context, we develop a user association scheme in which a typical user in a sleeping cell selects a BS with \textbf{M}aximum best-case \textbf{M}ean channel \textbf{A}ccess \textbf{P}robability (MMAP) which is calculated by all active BSs based on their existing traffic loads. We consider both greedy and round-robin schemes at active BSs for scheduling users in a channel. Once the association is performed, the exact access probability for a typical sleeping cell user and the statistics of its received signal and interference powers are derived to evaluate the spectral and energy efficiencies of transmission. For the sleeping cell users, we also consider the conventional \textbf{M}aximum \textbf{R}eceived \textbf{S}ignal \textbf{P}ower (MRSP)-based user association scheme along with greedy and round-robin schemes at the BSs. The impact of cell-zooming is incorporated in the derivations to analyze its feasibility in reducing the coverage holes created by BS sleeping. Numerical results show the trade-offs between spectral efficiency and energy efficiency in various network scenarios. The accuracy of the analysis is verified through Monte-Carlo simulations.
1401.7114
Fundamental Limits in Correlated Fading MIMO Broadcast Channels: Benefits of Transmit Correlation Diversity
cs.IT math.IT
We investigate asymptotic capacity limits of the Gaussian MIMO broadcast channel (BC) with spatially correlated fading to understand when and how much transmit correlation helps the capacity. By imposing a structure on channel covariances (equivalently, transmit correlations at the transmitter side) of users, also referred to as \emph{transmit correlation diversity}, the impact of transmit correlation on the power gain of MIMO BCs is characterized in several regimes of system parameters, with a particular interest in the large-scale array (or massive MIMO) regime. Taking the cost for downlink training into account, we provide asymptotic capacity bounds of multiuser MIMO downlink systems to see how transmit correlation diversity affects the system multiplexing gain. We make use of the notion of joint spatial division and multiplexing (JSDM) to derive the capacity bounds. It is advocated in this paper that transmit correlation diversity may be of use to significantly increase multiplexing gain as well as power gain in multiuser MIMO systems. In particular, the new type of diversity in wireless communications is shown to improve the system multiplexing gain up to by a factor of the number of degrees of such diversity. Finally, performance limits of conventional large-scale MIMO systems not exploiting transmit correlation are also characterized.
1401.7116
Bayesian Properties of Normalized Maximum Likelihood and its Fast Computation
cs.IT cs.LG math.IT stat.ML
The normalized maximized likelihood (NML) provides the minimax regret solution in universal data compression, gambling, and prediction, and it plays an essential role in the minimum description length (MDL) method of statistical modeling and estimation. Here we show that the normalized maximum likelihood has a Bayes-like representation as a mixture of the component models, even in finite samples, though the weights of linear combination may be both positive and negative. This representation addresses in part the relationship between MDL and Bayes modeling. This representation has the advantage of speeding the calculation of marginals and conditionals required for coding and prediction applications.
1401.7134
Block-Fading Channels with Delayed CSIT at Finite Blocklength
cs.IT math.IT
In many wireless systems, the channel state information at the transmitter (CSIT) can not be learned until after a transmission has taken place and is thereby outdated. In this paper, we study the benefits of delayed CSIT on a block-fading channel at finite blocklength. First, the achievable rates of a family of codes that allows the number of codewords to expand during transmission, based on delayed CSIT, are characterized. A fixed-length and a variable-length characterization of the rates are provided using the dependency testing bound and the variable-length setting introduced by Polyanskiy et al. Next, a communication protocol based on codes with expandable message space is put forth, and numerically, it is shown that higher rates are achievable compared to coding strategies that do not benefit from delayed CSIT.
1401.7161
Circular Sphere Decoding: A Low Complexity Detection for MIMO Systems with General Two-dimensional Signal Constellations
cs.IT math.IT
We propose a low complexity complex valued Sphere Decoding (CV-SD) algorithm, referred to as Circular Sphere Decoding (CSD) which is applicable to multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems with arbitrary two dimensional (2D) constellations. CSD provides a new constraint test. This constraint test is carefully designed so that the element-wise dependency is removed in the metric computation for the test. As a result, the constraint test becomes simple to perform without restriction on its constellation structure. By additionally employing this simple test as a prescreening test, CSD reduces the complexity of the CV-SD search. We show that the complexity reduction is significant while its maximum-likelihood (ML) performance is not compromised. We also provide a powerful tool to estimate the pruning capacity of any particular search tree. Using this tool, we propose the Predict-And-Change strategy which leads to a further complexity reduction in CSD. Extension of the proposed methods to soft output SD is also presented.
1401.7169
On the Evaluation of the Polyanskiy-Poor-Verdu Converse Bound for Finite Blocklength Coding in AWGN
cs.IT math.IT
A tight converse bound to channel coding rate in the finite block-length regime and under AWGN conditions was recently proposed by Polyanskiy, Poor, and Verdu (PPV). The bound is a generalization of a number of other classical results, and it was also claimed to be equivalent to Shannon's 1959 cone packing bound. Unfortunately, its numerical evaluation is troublesome even for not too large values of the block-length n. In this paper we tackle the numerical evaluation by compactly expressing the PPV converse bound in terms of non-central chi-squared distributions, and by evaluating those through a an integral expression and a corresponding series expansion which exploit a method proposed by Temme. As a result, a robust evaluation method and new insights on the bound's asymptotics, as well as new approximate expressions, are given.
1401.7188
Network Connectivity: Stochastic vs. Deterministic Wireless Channels
cs.NI cs.IT math.IT
We study the effect of stochastic wireless channel models on the connectivity of ad hoc networks. Unlike in the deterministic geometric disk model where nodes connect if they are within a certain distance from each other, stochastic models attempt to capture small-scale fading effects due to shadowing and multipath received signals. Through analysis of local and global network observables, we present conclusive evidence suggesting that network behaviour is highly dependent upon whether a stochastic or deterministic connection model is employed. Specifically we show that the network mean degree is lower (higher) for stochastic wireless channels than for deterministic ones, if the path loss exponent is greater (lesser) than the spatial dimension. Similarly, the probability of forming isolated pairs of nodes in an otherwise dense random network is much less for stochastic wireless channels than for deterministic ones. The latter realisation explains why the upper bound of $k$-connectivity is tighter for stochastic wireless channels. We obtain closed form analytic results and compare to extensive numerical simulations.
1401.7216
Reconfigurable Structures for Direct Equalisation in Mobile Receivers
cs.IT math.IT
Any communication channel will usually distort the transmitted signal. This is especially true in the case of mobile systems, where multipath propagation causes the received signal to be seriously degraded. Over the years, many techniques have been proposed to combat channel effects. Two of the most popular are linear equalisation (LE) and decision feedback equalisation (DFE). These methods offer a good compromise between performance and computational complexity. LE and DFE are implemented using finite impulse response (FIR) filters whose frequency spectrum approximates the inverse of the channel spectrum plus noise. In mobile systems, the equaliser is made adaptable in order to be able to respond to the channel variations. Adaptability is achieved using adaptive FIR filters whose coefficients are iteratively updated. In principle, an infinite number of filter coefficients would be needed to achieve perfect channel inversion. In practice, the number of taps must be finite. Simulations show that, in realistic scenarios, making the equaliser longer than a certain (undetermined) number of taps will not yield any benefit. Moreover, computation and power will be wasted. In battery powered devices, like mobile terminals, it would be desirable to have the equaliser properly dimensioned. The equaliser's optimum length strongly depends on the particular scenario, and as channel conditions vary, this optimum is likely to vary. This thesis presents novel techniques to perform equaliser length adjustment. Methods for the LE and the DFE have been developed. Simulations in many different scenarios show that the proposed schemes optimise the number of taps to be used. Moreover, these techniques are able to detect changes in the channel and re-adjust the equaliser length appropriately.
1401.7229
MIMO Multiway Relaying with Pairwise Data Exchange: A Degrees of Freedom Perspective
cs.IT math.IT
In this paper, we study achievable degrees of freedom (DoF) of a multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) multiway relay channel (mRC) where $K$ users, each equipped with $M$ antennas, exchange messages in a pairwise manner via a common $N$-antenna relay node. % A novel and systematic way of joint beamforming design at the users and at the relay is proposed to align signals for efficient implementation of physical-layer network coding (PNC). It is shown that, when the user number $K=3$, the proposed beamforming design can achieve the DoF capacity of the considered mRC for any $(M,N)$ setups. % For the scenarios with $K>3$, we show that the proposed signaling scheme can be improved by disabling a portion of relay antennas so as to align signals more efficiently. Our analysis reveals that the obtained achievable DoF is always piecewise linear, and is bounded either by the number of user antennas $M$ or by the number of relay antennas $N$. Further, we show that the DoF capacity can be achieved for $\frac{M}{N} \in \left(0,\frac{K-1}{K(K-2)} \right]$ and $\frac{M}{N} \in \left[\frac{1}{K(K-1)}+\frac{1}{2},\infty \right)$, which provides a broader range of the DoF capacity than the existing results. Asymptotic DoF as $K\rightarrow \infty$ is also derived based on the proposed signaling scheme.
1401.7233
Measuring large-scale social networks with high resolution
cs.SI physics.soc-ph
This paper describes the deployment of a large-scale study designed to measure human interactions across a variety of communication channels, with high temporal resolution and spanning multiple years - the Copenhagen Networks Study. Specifically, we collect data on face-to-face interactions, telecommunication, social networks, location, and background information (personality, demographic, health, politics) for a densely connected population of 1,000 individuals, using state-of-art smartphones as social sensors. Here we provide an overview of the related work and describe the motivation and research agenda driving the study. Additionally the paper details the data-types measured, and the technical infrastructure in terms of both backend and phone software, as well as an outline of the deployment procedures. We document the participant privacy procedures and their underlying principles. The paper is concluded with early results from data analysis, illustrating the importance of multi-channel high-resolution approach to data collection.
1401.7239
Contexts of diffusion: Adoption of research synthesis in Social Work and Women's Studies
cs.SI cs.DL physics.soc-ph
Texts reveal the subjects of interest in research fields, and the values, beliefs, and practices of researchers. In this study, texts are examined through bibliometric mapping and topic modeling to provide a birds eye view of the social dynamics associated with the diffusion of research synthesis methods in the contexts of Social Work and Women's Studies. Research synthesis texts are especially revealing because the methods, which include meta-analysis and systematic review, are reliant on the availability of past research and data, sometimes idealized as objective, egalitarian approaches to research evaluation, fundamentally tied to past research practices, and performed with the goal informing future research and practice. This study highlights the co-influence of past and subsequent research within research fields; illustrates dynamics of the diffusion process; and provides insight into the cultural contexts of research in Social Work and Women's Studies. This study suggests the potential to further develop bibliometric mapping and topic modeling techniques to inform research problem selection and resource allocation.
1401.7249
Fuzzy Controller Design for Assisted Omni-Directional Treadmill Therapy
cs.AI
One of the defining characteristic of human being is their ability to walk upright. Loss or restriction of such ability whether due to the accident, spine problem, stroke or other neurological injuries can cause tremendous stress on the patients and hence will contribute negatively to their quality of life. Modern research shows that physical exercise is very important for maintaining physical fitness and adopting a healthier life style. In modern days treadmill is widely used for physical exercises and training which enables the user to set up an exercise regime that can be adhered to irrespective of the weather conditions. Among the users of treadmills today are medical facilities such as hospitals, rehabilitation centres, medical and physiotherapy clinics etc. The process of assisted training or doing rehabilitation exercise through treadmill is referred to as treadmill therapy. A modern treadmill is an automated machine having built in functions and predefined features. Most of the treadmills used today are one dimensional and user can only walk in one direction. This paper presents the idea of using omnidirectional treadmills which will be more appealing to the patients as they can walk in any direction, hence encouraging them to do exercises more frequently. This paper proposes a fuzzy control design and possible implementation strategy to assist patients in treadmill therapy. By intelligently controlling the safety belt attached to the treadmill user, one can help them steering left, right or in any direction. The use of intelligent treadmill therapy can help patients to improve their walking ability without being continuously supervised by the specialists. The patients can walk freely within a limited space and the support system will provide continuous evaluation of their position and can adjust the control parameters of treadmill accordingly to provide best possible assistance.
1401.7261
On the Cooperative Communication over Cognitive Interference Channel
cs.IT math.IT
In this paper, we investigate the problem of communication over cognitive interference channel (CIC) with partially cooperating (PC) destinations (CIC-PC). This channel consists of two source nodes communicating two independent messages to their corresponding destination nodes. One of the sources, referred to as the cognitive source, has a noncausal knowledge of the message of the other source, referred to as the primary source. Each destination is assumed to decode only its intended message. In addition, the destination corresponding to the cognitive source assists the other destination by transmitting cooperative information through a relay link. We derive a new upper bound on the capacity region of discrete memoryless CI-CPC. Moreover, we characterize the capacity region for two new classes of this channel: (1) degraded CIC-PC, and (2) a class of semideterministic CIC-PC.
1401.7262
Impact of Spectrum Sharing on the Efficiency of Faster-Than-Nyquist Signaling
cs.IT math.IT
Capacity computations are presented for Faster-Than-Nyquist (FTN) signaling in the presence of interference from neighboring frequency bands. It is shown that Shannon's sinc pulses maximize the spectral efficiency for a multi-access channel, where spectral efficiency is defined as the sum rate in bits per second per Hertz. Comparisons using root raised cosine pulses show that the spectral efficiency decreases monotonically with the roll-off factor. At high signal-to-noise ratio, these pulses have an additive gap to capacity that increases monotonically with the roll-off factor.
1401.7267
Community Detection in Networks with Node Attributes
cs.SI physics.soc-ph
Community detection algorithms are fundamental tools that allow us to uncover organizational principles in networks. When detecting communities, there are two possible sources of information one can use: the network structure, and the features and attributes of nodes. Even though communities form around nodes that have common edges and common attributes, typically, algorithms have only focused on one of these two data modalities: community detection algorithms traditionally focus only on the network structure, while clustering algorithms mostly consider only node attributes. In this paper, we develop Communities from Edge Structure and Node Attributes (CESNA), an accurate and scalable algorithm for detecting overlapping communities in networks with node attributes. CESNA statistically models the interaction between the network structure and the node attributes, which leads to more accurate community detection as well as improved robustness in the presence of noise in the network structure. CESNA has a linear runtime in the network size and is able to process networks an order of magnitude larger than comparable approaches. Last, CESNA also helps with the interpretation of detected communities by finding relevant node attributes for each community.
1401.7273
On Stochastic Estimation of Partition Function
cs.IT math.IT
In this paper, we show analytically that the duality of normal factor graphs (NFG) can facilitate stochastic estimation of partition functions. In particular, our analysis suggests that for the $q-$ary two-dimensional nearest-neighbor Potts model, sampling from the primal NFG of the model and sampling from its dual exhibit opposite behaviours with respect to the temperature of the model. For high-temperature models, sampling from the primal NFG gives rise to better estimators whereas for low-temperature models, sampling from the dual gives rise to better estimators. This analysis is validated by experiments.
1401.7288
Spatially-Coupled Precoded Rateless Codes with Bounded Degree Achieve the Capacity of BEC under BP decoding
cs.IT math.IT
Raptor codes are known as precoded rateless codes that achieve the capacity of BEC. However the maximum degree of Raptor codes needs to be unbounded to achieve the capacity. In this paper, we prove that spatially-coupled precoded rateless codes achieve the capacity with bounded degree under BP decoding.
1401.7289
Spatially-Coupled MacKay-Neal Codes with No Bit Nodes of Degree Two Achieve the Capacity of BEC
cs.IT math.IT
Obata et al. proved that spatially-coupled (SC) MacKay-Neal (MN) codes achieve the capacity of BEC. However, the SC-MN codes codes have many variable nodes of degree two and have higher error floors. In this paper, we prove that SC-MN codes with no variable nodes of degree two achieve the capacity of BEC.
1401.7290
Non-Binary LDPC Codes with Large Alphabet Size
cs.IT math.IT
We study LDPC codes for the channel with input ${x}\in \mathbb{F}_q^m$ and output ${y}={x}+{z}\in \mathbb{F}_q^m$. The aim of this paper is to evaluate decoding performance of $q^m$-ary non-binary LDPC codes for large $m$. We give density evolution and decoding performance evaluation for regular non-binary LDPC codes and spatially-coupled (SC) codes. We show the regular codes do not achieve the capacity of the channel while SC codes do.
1401.7293
Polar coding for interference networks
cs.IT math.IT
A polar coding scheme for interference networks is introduced. The scheme combines Arikan's monotone chain rules for multiple-access channels and a method by Hassani and Urbanke to 'align' two incompatible polarization processes. It achieves the Han--Kobayashi inner bound for two-user interference channels and generalizes to interference networks.
1401.7344
Release of the Kraken: A Novel Money Multiplier Equation's Debut in 21st Century Banking
q-fin.GN cs.CE
Historically, the banking multiplier has been in a range of 4 to 100, with 25% to 1% reserve ratios at most layers of the banking system encompassing the majority of its range in recent centuries. Here it is shown that multipliers over 1 000 can occur from a new mechanism in banking. This new multiplier uses a default insurance note to insure an outstanding loan in order to return the value of the insured amount into capital. The economic impact of this invention is calculably greater than the original invention of reserve banking. The consequence of this lending invention is to render the existing money multiplier equations of reserve banking obsolete where it occurs. The equations describing this new multiplier do not converge. Each set of parameters for reserve percentage, nesting depth, etc. creates a unique logarithmic curve rather than approaching a limit. Thus it is necessary to show the behavior of this new equation by numerical methods. Understanding this new multiplier and associated issues is necessary for economic analyses of the Global Financial Crisis.
1401.7360
A Shannon Approach to Secure Multi-party Computations
cs.IT cs.CR math.IT
In secure multi-party computations (SMC), parties wish to compute a function on their private data without revealing more information about their data than what the function reveals. In this paper, we investigate two Shannon-type questions on this problem. We first consider the traditional one-shot model for SMC which does not assume a probabilistic prior on the data. In this model, private communication and randomness are the key enablers to secure computing, and we investigate a notion of randomness cost and capacity. We then move to a probabilistic model for the data, and propose a Shannon model for discrete memoryless SMC. In this model, correlations among data are the key enablers for secure computing, and we investigate a notion of dependency which permits the secure computation of a function. While the models and questions are general, this paper focuses on summation functions, and relies on polar code constructions.
1401.7369
Linear Codes are Optimal for Index-Coding Instances with Five or Fewer Receivers
cs.IT math.IT
We study zero-error unicast index-coding instances, where each receiver must perfectly decode its requested message set, and the message sets requested by any two receivers do not overlap. We show that for all these instances with up to five receivers, linear index codes are optimal. Although this class contains 9847 non-isomorphic instances, by using our recent results and by properly categorizing the instances based on their graphical representations, we need to consider only 13 non-trivial instances to solve the entire class. This work complements the result by Arbabjolfaei et al. (ISIT 2013), who derived the capacity region of all unicast index-coding problems with up to five receivers in the diminishing-error setup. They employed random-coding arguments, which require infinitely-long messages. We consider the zero-error setup; our approach uses graph theory and combinatorics, and does not require long messages.
1401.7374
A Message-Passing Approach to Combating Hidden Terminals in Wireless Networks
cs.NI cs.IT math.IT
Collisions with hidden terminals is a major cause of performance degradation in 802.11 and likewise wireless networks. Carrier sense multiple access with collision avoidance (CSMA/CA) is utilized to avoid collisions at the cost of spatial reuse. This report studies receiver design to mitigate interference from hidden terminals. A wireless channel model with correlated fading in time is assumed. A message-passing approach is proposed, in which a receiver can successfully receive and decode partially overlapping transmissions from two sources rather than treating undesired one as thermal noise. Numerical results of both coded and uncoded systems show the advantage of the receiver over conventional receivers.
1401.7375
Detecting Cohesive and 2-mode Communities in Directed and Undirected Networks
cs.SI physics.soc-ph
Networks are a general language for representing relational information among objects. An effective way to model, reason about, and summarize networks, is to discover sets of nodes with common connectivity patterns. Such sets are commonly referred to as network communities. Research on network community detection has predominantly focused on identifying communities of densely connected nodes in undirected networks. In this paper we develop a novel overlapping community detection method that scales to networks of millions of nodes and edges and advances research along two dimensions: the connectivity structure of communities, and the use of edge directedness for community detection. First, we extend traditional definitions of network communities by building on the observation that nodes can be densely interlinked in two different ways: In cohesive communities nodes link to each other, while in 2-mode communities nodes link in a bipartite fashion, where links predominate between the two partitions rather than inside them. Our method successfully detects both 2-mode as well as cohesive communities, that may also overlap or be hierarchically nested. Second, while most existing community detection methods treat directed edges as though they were undirected, our method accounts for edge directions and is able to identify novel and meaningful community structures in both directed and undirected networks, using data from social, biological, and ecological domains.
1401.7377
Improved Robust Node Position Estimation in Wireless Sensor Networks
cs.NI cs.IT math.IT
A new method for estimating the relative positions of location-unaware nodes from the location-aware nodes and the received signal strength (RSS) between the nodes, in a wireless sensor network (WSN), is proposed. In the method, a regularization term is incorporated in the optimization problem leading to significant improvement in the estimation accuracy even in the presence of position errors of the location-aware nodes and distance errors between the nodes. The regularization term is appropriated weighted on the basis of the degree of connectivity between the nodes in the network. The method is formulated as a convex optimization problem using the semidefinite relaxation approach. Experimental comparisons with state-of-the-art competing methods show that the proposed method yields node positions that are much more accurate even in the presence of measurement errors.
1401.7388
Bounding Embeddings of VC Classes into Maximum Classes
cs.LG math.CO stat.ML
One of the earliest conjectures in computational learning theory-the Sample Compression conjecture-asserts that concept classes (equivalently set systems) admit compression schemes of size linear in their VC dimension. To-date this statement is known to be true for maximum classes---those that possess maximum cardinality for their VC dimension. The most promising approach to positively resolving the conjecture is by embedding general VC classes into maximum classes without super-linear increase to their VC dimensions, as such embeddings would extend the known compression schemes to all VC classes. We show that maximum classes can be characterised by a local-connectivity property of the graph obtained by viewing the class as a cubical complex. This geometric characterisation of maximum VC classes is applied to prove a negative embedding result which demonstrates VC-d classes that cannot be embedded in any maximum class of VC dimension lower than 2d. On the other hand, we show that every VC-d class C embeds in a VC-(d+D) maximum class where D is the deficiency of C, i.e., the difference between the cardinalities of a maximum VC-d class and of C. For VC-2 classes in binary n-cubes for 4 <= n <= 6, we give best possible results on embedding into maximum classes. For some special classes of Boolean functions, relationships with maximum classes are investigated. Finally we give a general recursive procedure for embedding VC-d classes into VC-(d+k) maximum classes for smallest k.
1401.7404
On Index Coding in Noisy Broadcast Channels with Receiver Message Side Information
cs.IT math.IT
This letter investigates the role of index coding in the capacity of AWGN broadcast channels with receiver message side information. We first show that index coding is unnecessary where there are two receivers; multiplexing coding and superposition coding are sufficient to achieve the capacity region. We next show that, for more than two receivers, multiplexing coding and superposition coding alone can be suboptimal. We give an example where these two coding schemes alone cannot achieve the capacity region, but adding index coding can. This demonstrates that, in contrast to the two-receiver case, multiplexing coding cannot fulfill the function of index coding where there are three or more receivers.
1401.7406
The parametrized probabilistic finite-state transducer probe game player fingerprint model
cs.GT cs.NE
Fingerprinting operators generate functional signatures of game players and are useful for their automated analysis independent of representation or encoding. The theory for a fingerprinting operator which returns the length-weighted probability of a given move pair occurring from playing the investigated agent against a general parametrized probabilistic finite-state transducer (PFT) is developed, applicable to arbitrary iterated games. Results for the distinguishing power of the 1-state opponent model, uniform approximability of fingerprints of arbitrary players, analyticity and Lipschitz continuity of fingerprints for logically possible players, and equicontinuity of the fingerprints of bounded-state probabilistic transducers are derived. Algorithms for the efficient computation of special instances are given; the shortcomings of a previous model, strictly generalized here from a simple projection of the new model, are explained in terms of regularity condition violations, and the extra power and functional niceness of the new fingerprints demonstrated. The 2-state deterministic finite-state transducers (DFTs) are fingerprinted and pairwise distances computed; using this the structure of DFTs in strategy space is elucidated.
1401.7413
Smoothed Low Rank and Sparse Matrix Recovery by Iteratively Reweighted Least Squares Minimization
cs.LG cs.CV stat.ML
This work presents a general framework for solving the low rank and/or sparse matrix minimization problems, which may involve multiple non-smooth terms. The Iteratively Reweighted Least Squares (IRLS) method is a fast solver, which smooths the objective function and minimizes it by alternately updating the variables and their weights. However, the traditional IRLS can only solve a sparse only or low rank only minimization problem with squared loss or an affine constraint. This work generalizes IRLS to solve joint/mixed low rank and sparse minimization problems, which are essential formulations for many tasks. As a concrete example, we solve the Schatten-$p$ norm and $\ell_{2,q}$-norm regularized Low-Rank Representation (LRR) problem by IRLS, and theoretically prove that the derived solution is a stationary point (globally optimal if $p,q\geq1$). Our convergence proof of IRLS is more general than previous one which depends on the special properties of the Schatten-$p$ norm and $\ell_{2,q}$-norm. Extensive experiments on both synthetic and real data sets demonstrate that our IRLS is much more efficient.
1401.7416
A Comparative Study on String Matching Algorithm of Biological Sequences
cs.DS cs.CE
String matching algorithm plays the vital role in the Computational Biology. The functional and structural relationship of the biological sequence is determined by similarities on that sequence. For that, the researcher is supposed to aware of similarities on the biological sequences. Pursuing of similarity among biological sequences is an important research area of that can bring insight into the evolutionary and genetic relationships among the genes. In this paper, we have studied different kinds of string matching algorithms and observed their time and space complexities. For this study, we have assessed the performance of algorithms tested with biological sequences.
1401.7425
A novel method of generating tunable underlying network topologies for social simulation
cs.SI physics.soc-ph
We propose a method of generating different scale-free networks, which has several input parameters in order to adjust the structure, so that they can serve as a basis for computer simulation of real-world phenomena. The topological structure of these networks was studied to determine what kind of networks can be produced and how can we give the appropriate values of parameters to get a desired structure.
1401.7426
Channel Estimation and Hybrid Precoding for Millimeter Wave Cellular Systems
cs.IT math.IT
Millimeter wave (mmWave) cellular systems will enable gigabit-per-second data rates thanks to the large bandwidth available at mmWave frequencies. To realize sufficient link margin, mmWave systems will employ directional beamforming with large antenna arrays at both the transmitter and receiver. Due to the high cost and power consumption of gigasample mixed-signal devices, mmWave precoding will likely be divided among the analog and digital domains. The large number of antennas and the presence of analog beamforming requires the development of mmWave-specific channel estimation and precoding algorithms. This paper develops an adaptive algorithm to estimate the mmWave channel parameters that exploits the poor scattering nature of the channel. To enable the efficient operation of this algorithm, a novel hierarchical multi-resolution codebook is designed to construct training beamforming vectors with different beamwidths. For single-path channels, an upper bound on the estimation error probability using the proposed algorithm is derived, and some insights into the efficient allocation of the training power among the adaptive stages of the algorithm are obtained. The adaptive channel estimation algorithm is then extended to the multi-path case relying on the sparse nature of the channel. Using the estimated channel, this paper proposes a new hybrid analog/digital precoding algorithm that overcomes the hardware constraints on the analog-only beamforming, and approaches the performance of digital solutions. Simulation results show that the proposed low-complexity channel estimation algorithm achieves comparable precoding gains compared to exhaustive channel training algorithms. The results also illustrate that the proposed algorithms can approach the coverage probability achieved by perfect channel knowledge even in the presence of interference.
1401.7463
Propagators and Violation Functions for Geometric and Workload Constraints Arising in Airspace Sectorisation
cs.AI
Airspace sectorisation provides a partition of a given airspace into sectors, subject to geometric constraints and workload constraints, so that some cost metric is minimised. We make a study of the constraints that arise in airspace sectorisation. For each constraint, we give an analysis of what algorithms and properties are required under systematic search and stochastic local search.
1401.7474
The phenotypic expansion and its boundaries
stat.OT cs.MA nlin.AO
The development of sport performances in the future is a subject of myth and disagreement among experts. As arguments favoring and opposing such methodology were discussed, other publications empirically showed that the past development of performances followed a non linear trend. Other works, while deeply exploring the conditions leading to world records, highlighted that performance is tied to the economical and geopolitical context. Here we investigated the following human boundaries: development of performances with time in Olympic and non-Olympic events, development of sport performances with aging among humans and others species (greyhounds, thoroughbreds, mice). Development of performances from a broader point of view (demography & lifespan) in a specific sub-system centered on primary energy was also investigated. We show that the physiological developments are limited with time. Three major and direct determinants of sport performance are age, technology and climatic conditions (temperature). However, all observed developments are related to the international context including the efficient use of primary energies. This last parameter is a major indirect propeller of performance development. We show that when physiological and societal performance indicators such as lifespan and population density depend on primary energies, the energy source, competition and mobility are key parameters for achieving long term sustainable trajectories. Otherwise, the vast majority (98.7%) of the studied trajectories reaches 0 before 15 generations, due to the consumption of fossil energy and a low mobility rate. This led us to consider that in the present turbulent economical context and given the upcoming energy crisis, societal and physical performances are not expected to grow continuously.
1401.7485
Superimposed Codes and Threshold Group Testing
cs.IT math.IT
We will discuss superimposed codes and non-adaptive group testing designs arising from the potentialities of compressed genotyping models in molecular biology. The given paper was motivated by the 30th anniversary of D'yachkov-Rykov recurrent upper bound on the rate of superimposed codes published in 1982. We were also inspired by recent results obtained for non-adaptive threshold group testing which develop the theory of superimposed codes
1401.7486
Use HMM and KNN for classifying corneal data
cs.CV
These days to gain classification system with high accuracy that can classify complicated pattern are so useful in medicine and industry. In this article a process for getting the best classifier for Lasik data is suggested. However at first it's been tried to find the best line and curve by this classifier in order to gain classifier fitting, and in the end by using the Markov method a classifier for topographies is gained.
1401.7492
Lectures on DNA Codes
cs.IT math.IT q-bio.QM
For $q$-ary $n$-sequences, we develop the concept of similarity functions that can be used (for $q=4$) to model a thermodynamic similarity on DNA sequences. A similarity function is identified by the length of a longest common subsequence between two $q$-ary $n$-sequences. Codes based on similarity functions are called DNA codes. DNA codes are important components in biomolecular computing and other biotechnical applications that employ DNA hybridization assays. The main aim of the given lecture notes -- to discuss lower bounds on the rate of optimal DNA codes for a biologically motivated similarity function called a block similarity and for the conventional deletion similarity function used in the theory of error-correcting codes. We also present constructions of suboptimal DNA codes based on the parity-check code detecting one error in the Hamming metric.
1401.7505
Lectures on Designing Screening Experiments
cs.IT math.IT
Designing Screening Experiments (DSE) is a class of information - theoretical models for multiple - access channels (MAC). We discuss the combinatorial model of DSE called a disjunct channel model. This model is the most important for applications and closely connected with the superimposed code concept. We give a detailed survey of lower and upper bounds on the rate of superimposed codes. The best known constructions of superimposed codes are considered in paper. We also discuss the development of these codes (non-adaptive pooling designs) intended for the clone - library screening problem. We obtain lower and upper bounds on the rate of binary codes for the combinatorial model of DSE called an adder channel model. We also consider the concept of universal decoding for the probabilistic DSE model called a symmetric model of DSE.
1401.7508
Two Models of Nonadaptive Group Testing for Designing Screening Experiments
cs.IT math.IT
We discuss two non-standard models of nonadaptive combinatorial search which develop the conventional disjunct search model for a small number of defective elements contained in a finite ground set or a population. The first model is called a search of defective supersets. The second model is called a search of defective subsets in the presence of inhibitors. For these models, we study the constructive search methods based on the known constructions for the disjunct model.
1401.7517
Information quantity in a pixel of digital image
cs.CV cs.IT math.IT
The paper is devoted to the problem of integer-valued estimating of information quantity in a pixel of digital image. The definition of an integer estimation of information quantity based on constructing of the certain binary hierarchy of pixel clusters is proposed. The methods for constructing hierarchies of clusters and generating of hierarchical sequences of image approximations that minimally differ from the image by a standard deviation are developed. Experimental results on integer-valued estimation of information quantity are compared with the results obtained by utilizing of the classical formulas.
1401.7533
Relaxed Recovery Conditions for OMP/OLS by Exploiting both Coherence and Decay
cs.IT math.IT
We propose extended coherence-based conditions for exact sparse support recovery using orthogonal matching pursuit (OMP) and orthogonal least squares (OLS). Unlike standard uniform guarantees, we embed some information about the decay of the sparse vector coefficients in our conditions. As a result, the standard condition $\mu<1/(2k-1)$ (where $\mu$ denotes the mutual coherence and $k$ the sparsity level) can be weakened as soon as the non-zero coefficients obey some decay, both in the noiseless and the bounded-noise scenarios. Furthermore, the resulting condition is approaching $\mu<1/k$ for strongly decaying sparse signals. Finally, in the noiseless setting, we prove that the proposed conditions, in particular the bound $\mu<1/k$, are the tightest achievable guarantees based on mutual coherence.
1401.7535
Online Social Media in the Syria Conflict: Encompassing the Extremes and the In-Betweens
cs.SI cs.CY physics.soc-ph
The Syria conflict has been described as the most socially mediated in history, with online social media playing a particularly important role. At the same time, the ever-changing landscape of the conflict leads to difficulties in applying analytical approaches taken by other studies of online political activism. Therefore, in this paper, we use an approach that does not require strong prior assumptions or the proposal of an advance hypothesis to analyze Twitter and YouTube activity of a range of protagonists to the conflict, in an attempt to reveal additional insights into the relationships between them. By means of a network representation that combines multiple data views, we uncover communities of accounts falling into four categories that broadly reflect the situation on the ground in Syria. A detailed analysis of selected communities within the anti-regime categories is provided, focusing on their central actors, preferred online platforms, and activity surrounding "real world" events. Our findings indicate that social media activity in Syria is considerably more convoluted than reported in many other studies of online political activism, suggesting that alternative analytical approaches can play an important role in this type of scenario.
1401.7538
Bayesian Pursuit Algorithms
cs.IT math.IT
This paper addresses the sparse representation (SR) problem within a general Bayesian framework. We show that the Lagrangian formulation of the standard SR problem, i.e., $\mathbf{x}^\star=\arg\min_\mathbf{x} \lbrace \| \mathbf{y}-\mathbf{D}\mathbf{x} \|_2^2+\lambda\| \mathbf{x}\|_0 \rbrace$, can be regarded as a limit case of a general maximum a posteriori (MAP) problem involving Bernoulli-Gaussian variables. We then propose different tractable implementations of this MAP problem that we refer to as "Bayesian pursuit algorithms". The Bayesian algorithms are shown to have strong connections with several well-known pursuit algorithms of the literature (e.g., MP, OMP, StOMP, CoSaMP, SP) and generalize them in several respects. In particular, i) they allow for atom deselection; ii) they can include any prior information about the probability of occurrence of each atom within the selection process; iii) they can encompass the estimation of unkown model parameters into their recursions.
1401.7574
Causal Network Inference by Optimal Causation Entropy
cs.IT math.IT
The broad abundance of time series data, which is in sharp contrast to limited knowledge of the underlying network dynamic processes that produce such observations, calls for a rigorous and efficient method of causal network inference. Here we develop mathematical theory of causation entropy, an information-theoretic statistic designed for model-free causality inference. For stationary Markov processes, we prove that for a given node in the network, its causal parents forms the minimal set of nodes that maximizes causation entropy, a result we refer to as the optimal causation entropy principle. Furthermore, this principle guides us to develop computational and data efficient algorithms for causal network inference based on a two-step discovery and removal algorithm for time series data for a network-couple dynamical system. Validation in terms of analytical and numerical results for Gaussian processes on large random networks highlight that inference by our algorithm outperforms previous leading methods including conditioned Granger causality and transfer entropy. Interestingly, our numerical results suggest that the number of samples required for accurate inference depends strongly on network characteristics such as the density of links and information diffusion rate and not necessarily on the number of nodes.
1401.7584
XLSearch: A Search Engine for Spreadsheets
cs.DB
Spreadsheets are end-user programs and domain models that are heavily employed in administration, financial forecasting, education, and science because of their intuitive, flexible, and direct approach to computation. As a result, institutions are swamped by millions of spreadsheets that are becoming increasingly difficult to manage, access, and control. This note presents the XLSearch system, a novel search engine for spreadsheets. It indexes spreadsheet formulae and efficiently answers formula queries via unification (a complex query language that allows metavariables in both the query as well as the index). But a web-based search engine is only one application of the underlying technology: Spreadsheet formula export to web standards like MathML combined with formula indexing can be used to find similar spreadsheets or common formula errors.
1401.7612
Mathematical Modelling of Turning Delays in Swarm Robotics
cs.RO cs.SY
We investigate the effect of turning delays on the behaviour of groups of differential wheeled robots and show that the group-level behaviour can be described by a transport equation with a suitably incorporated delay. The results of our mathematical analysis are supported by numerical simulations and experiments with e-puck robots. The experimental quantity we compare to our revised model is the mean time for robots to find the target area in an unknown environment. The transport equation with delay better predicts the mean time to find the target than the standard transport equation without delay.
1401.7620
Bayesian nonparametric comorbidity analysis of psychiatric disorders
stat.ML cs.LG
The analysis of comorbidity is an open and complex research field in the branch of psychiatry, where clinical experience and several studies suggest that the relation among the psychiatric disorders may have etiological and treatment implications. In this paper, we are interested in applying latent feature modeling to find the latent structure behind the psychiatric disorders that can help to examine and explain the relationships among them. To this end, we use the large amount of information collected in the National Epidemiologic Survey on Alcohol and Related Conditions (NESARC) database and propose to model these data using a nonparametric latent model based on the Indian Buffet Process (IBP). Due to the discrete nature of the data, we first need to adapt the observation model for discrete random variables. We propose a generative model in which the observations are drawn from a multinomial-logit distribution given the IBP matrix. The implementation of an efficient Gibbs sampler is accomplished using the Laplace approximation, which allows integrating out the weighting factors of the multinomial-logit likelihood model. We also provide a variational inference algorithm for this model, which provides a complementary (and less expensive in terms of computational complexity) alternative to the Gibbs sampler allowing us to deal with a larger number of data. Finally, we use the model to analyze comorbidity among the psychiatric disorders diagnosed by experts from the NESARC database.
1401.7623
Graph matching: relax or not?
cs.DS cs.CG cs.CV math.OC
We consider the problem of exact and inexact matching of weighted undirected graphs, in which a bijective correspondence is sought to minimize a quadratic weight disagreement. This computationally challenging problem is often relaxed as a convex quadratic program, in which the space of permutations is replaced by the space of doubly-stochastic matrices. However, the applicability of such a relaxation is poorly understood. We define a broad class of friendly graphs characterized by an easily verifiable spectral property. We prove that for friendly graphs, the convex relaxation is guaranteed to find the exact isomorphism or certify its inexistence. This result is further extended to approximately isomorphic graphs, for which we develop an explicit bound on the amount of weight disagreement under which the relaxation is guaranteed to find the globally optimal approximate isomorphism. We also show that in many cases, the graph matching problem can be further harmlessly relaxed to a convex quadratic program with only n separable linear equality constraints, which is substantially more efficient than the standard relaxation involving 2n equality and n^2 inequality constraints. Finally, we show that our results are still valid for unfriendly graphs if additional information in the form of seeds or attributes is allowed, with the latter satisfying an easy to verify spectral characteristic.
1401.7625
RES: Regularized Stochastic BFGS Algorithm
cs.LG math.OC stat.ML
RES, a regularized stochastic version of the Broyden-Fletcher-Goldfarb-Shanno (BFGS) quasi-Newton method is proposed to solve convex optimization problems with stochastic objectives. The use of stochastic gradient descent algorithms is widespread, but the number of iterations required to approximate optimal arguments can be prohibitive in high dimensional problems. Application of second order methods, on the other hand, is impracticable because computation of objective function Hessian inverses incurs excessive computational cost. BFGS modifies gradient descent by introducing a Hessian approximation matrix computed from finite gradient differences. RES utilizes stochastic gradients in lieu of deterministic gradients for both, the determination of descent directions and the approximation of the objective function's curvature. Since stochastic gradients can be computed at manageable computational cost RES is realizable and retains the convergence rate advantages of its deterministic counterparts. Convergence results show that lower and upper bounds on the Hessian egeinvalues of the sample functions are sufficient to guarantee convergence to optimal arguments. Numerical experiments showcase reductions in convergence time relative to stochastic gradient descent algorithms and non-regularized stochastic versions of BFGS. An application of RES to the implementation of support vector machines is developed.
1401.7631
Slope Instability of the Earthen Levee in Boston, UK: Numerical Simulation and Sensor Data Analysis
cs.CE
The paper presents a slope stability analysis for a heterogeneous earthen levee in Boston, UK, which is prone to occasional slope failures under tidal loads. Dynamic behavior of the levee under tidal fluctuations was simulated using a finite element model of variably saturated linear elastic perfectly plastic soil. Hydraulic conductivities of the soil strata have been calibrated according to piezometers readings, in order to obtain correct range of hydraulic loads in tidal mode. Finite element simulation was complemented with series of limit equilibrium analyses. Stability analyses have shown that slope failure occurs with the development of a circular slip surface located in the soft clay layer. Both models (FEM and LEM) confirm that the least stable hydraulic condition is the combination of the minimum river levels at low tide with the maximal saturation of soil layers. FEM results indicate that in winter time the levee is almost at its limit state, at the margin of safety (strength reduction factor values are 1.03 and 1.04 for the low-tide and high-tide phases, respectively); these results agree with real-life observations. The stability analyses have been implemented as real-time components integrated into the UrbanFlood early warning system for flood protection.
1401.7702
A Spectral Framework for Anomalous Subgraph Detection
cs.SI stat.ML
A wide variety of application domains are concerned with data consisting of entities and their relationships or connections, formally represented as graphs. Within these diverse application areas, a common problem of interest is the detection of a subset of entities whose connectivity is anomalous with respect to the rest of the data. While the detection of such anomalous subgraphs has received a substantial amount of attention, no application-agnostic framework exists for analysis of signal detectability in graph-based data. In this paper, we describe a framework that enables such analysis using the principal eigenspace of a graph's residuals matrix, commonly called the modularity matrix in community detection. Leveraging this analytical tool, we show that the framework has a natural power metric in the spectral norm of the anomalous subgraph's adjacency matrix (signal power) and of the background graph's residuals matrix (noise power). We propose several algorithms based on spectral properties of the residuals matrix, with more computationally expensive techniques providing greater detection power. Detection and identification performance are presented for a number of signal and noise models, including clusters and bipartite foregrounds embedded into simple random backgrounds as well as graphs with community structure and realistic degree distributions. The trends observed verify intuition gleaned from other signal processing areas, such as greater detection power when the signal is embedded within a less active portion of the background. We demonstrate the utility of the proposed techniques in detecting small, highly anomalous subgraphs in real graphs derived from Internet traffic and product co-purchases.
1401.7709
Joint Inference of Multiple Label Types in Large Networks
cs.LG cs.SI stat.ML
We tackle the problem of inferring node labels in a partially labeled graph where each node in the graph has multiple label types and each label type has a large number of possible labels. Our primary example, and the focus of this paper, is the joint inference of label types such as hometown, current city, and employers, for users connected by a social network. Standard label propagation fails to consider the properties of the label types and the interactions between them. Our proposed method, called EdgeExplain, explicitly models these, while still enabling scalable inference under a distributed message-passing architecture. On a billion-node subset of the Facebook social network, EdgeExplain significantly outperforms label propagation for several label types, with lifts of up to 120% for recall@1 and 60% for recall@3.
1401.7713
A Generalized Probabilistic Framework for Compact Codebook Creation
cs.CV
Compact and discriminative visual codebooks are preferred in many visual recognition tasks. In the literature, a number of works have taken the approach of hierarchically merging visual words of an initial large-sized codebook, but implemented this approach with different merging criteria. In this work, we propose a single probabilistic framework to unify these merging criteria, by identifying two key factors: the function used to model class-conditional distribution and the method used to estimate the distribution parameters. More importantly, by adopting new distribution functions and/or parameter estimation methods, our framework can readily produce a spectrum of novel merging criteria. Three of them are specifically focused in this work. In the first criterion, we adopt the multinomial distribution with Bayesian method; In the second criterion, we integrate Gaussian distribution with maximum likelihood parameter estimation. In the third criterion, which shows the best merging performance, we propose a max-margin-based parameter estimation method and apply it with multinomial distribution. Extensive experimental study is conducted to systematically analyse the performance of the above three criteria and compare them with existing ones. As demonstrated, the best criterion obtained in our framework achieves the overall best merging performance among the comparable merging criteria developed in the literature.
1401.7715
Video Compressive Sensing for Dynamic MRI
cs.CV math.OC
We present a video compressive sensing framework, termed kt-CSLDS, to accelerate the image acquisition process of dynamic magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). We are inspired by a state-of-the-art model for video compressive sensing that utilizes a linear dynamical system (LDS) to model the motion manifold. Given compressive measurements, the state sequence of an LDS can be first estimated using system identification techniques. We then reconstruct the observation matrix using a joint structured sparsity assumption. In particular, we minimize an objective function with a mixture of wavelet sparsity and joint sparsity within the observation matrix. We derive an efficient convex optimization algorithm through alternating direction method of multipliers (ADMM), and provide a theoretical guarantee for global convergence. We demonstrate the performance of our approach for video compressive sensing, in terms of reconstruction accuracy. We also investigate the impact of various sampling strategies. We apply this framework to accelerate the acquisition process of dynamic MRI and show it achieves the best reconstruction accuracy with the least computational time compared with existing algorithms in the literature.
1401.7727
Security Evaluation of Support Vector Machines in Adversarial Environments
cs.LG cs.CR
Support Vector Machines (SVMs) are among the most popular classification techniques adopted in security applications like malware detection, intrusion detection, and spam filtering. However, if SVMs are to be incorporated in real-world security systems, they must be able to cope with attack patterns that can either mislead the learning algorithm (poisoning), evade detection (evasion), or gain information about their internal parameters (privacy breaches). The main contributions of this chapter are twofold. First, we introduce a formal general framework for the empirical evaluation of the security of machine-learning systems. Second, according to our framework, we demonstrate the feasibility of evasion, poisoning and privacy attacks against SVMs in real-world security problems. For each attack technique, we evaluate its impact and discuss whether (and how) it can be countered through an adversary-aware design of SVMs. Our experiments are easily reproducible thanks to open-source code that we have made available, together with all the employed datasets, on a public repository.
1401.7733
Security Implications of Distributed Database Management System Models
cs.DB
Security features must be addressed when escalating a distributed database. The choice between the object oriented and the relational data model, several factors should be considered. The most important of these factors are single and multilevel access controls (MAC), protection and integrity maintenance. While determining which distributed database replica will be more secure for a particular function, the choice should not be made exclusively on the basis of available security features. One should also query the effectiveness and efficiency of the delivery of these characteristics. In this paper, the security strengths and weaknesses of both database models and the thorough problems initiate in the distributed environment are conversed.
1401.7739
Stability robustness of a feedback interconnection of systems with negative imaginary frequency response
math.OC cs.SY
A necessary and sufficient condition, expressed simply as the DC loop gain (ie the loop gain at zero frequency) being less than unity, is given in this paper to guarantee the internal stability of a feedback interconnection of Linear Time-Invariant (LTI) Multiple-Input Multiple-Output (MIMO) systems with negative imaginary frequency response. Systems with negative imaginary frequency response arise for example when considering transfer functions from force actuators to co-located position sensors, and are commonly important in for example lightly damped structures. The key result presented here has similar application to the small-gain theorem, which refers to the stability of feedback interconnections of contractive gain systems, and the passivity theorem (or more precisely the positive real theorem in the LTI case), which refers to the stability of feedback interconnections of positive real systems. A complete state-space characterisation of systems with negative imaginary frequency response is also given in this paper and also an example that demonstrates the application of the key result is provided.
1401.7743
Effective Features of Remote Sensing Image Classification Using Interactive Adaptive Thresholding Method
cs.CV
Remote sensing image classification can be performed in many different ways to extract meaningful features. One common approach is to perform edge detection. A second approach is to try and detect whole shapes, given the fact that these shapes usually tend to have distinctive properties such as object foreground or background. To get optimal results, these two approaches can be combined. This paper adopts a combinatorial optimization method to adaptively select threshold based features to improve remote sensing image. Feature selection is an important combinatorial optimization problem in the remote sensing image classification. The feature selection method has to achieve three characteristics: first the performance issues by facilitating data collection and reducing storage space and classification time, second to perform semantics analysis helping to understand the problem, and third to improve prediction accuracy by avoiding the curse of dimensionality. The goal of this thresholding an image is to classify pixels as either dark or light and evaluation of classification results. Interactive adaptive thresholding is a form of thresholding that takes into account spatial variations in illumination of remote sensing image. We present a technique for remote sensing based adaptive thresholding using the interactive satellite image of the input. However, our solution is more robust to illumination changes in the remote sensing image. Additionally, our method is simple and easy to implement but it is effective algorithm to classify the image pixels. This technique is suitable for preprocessing the remote sensing image classification, making it a valuable tool for interactive remote based applications such as augmented reality of the classification procedure.
1401.7745
Feedback Control of Negative-Imaginary Systems: Large Flexible structures with colocated actuators and sensors
cs.SY math.OC
This paper presents a survey of recent results on the theory of negative imaginary systems. This theory can be applied to the robust control of large flexible structures with colocated force actuators and position sensors.
1401.7772
Spectrum Sensing Via Reconfigurable Antennas: Is Cooperation of Secondary Users Indispensable?
cs.NI cs.IT math.IT
This work presents an analytical framework for characterizing the performance of cooperative and noncooperative spectrum sensing schemes by figuring out the tradeoff between the achieved diversity and coding gains in each scheme. Based on this analysis, we try to answer the fundamental question: can we dispense with SUs cooperation and still achieve an arbitrary diversity gain? It is shown that this is indeed possible via a novel technique that can offer diversity gain for a single SU using a single antenna. The technique is based on the usage of a reconfigurable antenna that changes its propagation characteristics over time, thus creating an artificial temporal diversity. It is shown that the usage of reconfigurable antennas outperforms cooperative as well as non-cooperative schemes at low and high Signal-to-Noise Ratios (SNRs). Moreover, if the channel state information is available at the SU, an additional SNR gain can also be achieved.
1401.7828
Codes over a subset of Octonion Integers
cs.IT math.IT
In this paper we define codes over some Octonion integers. We prove that in some conditions these codes can correct up to two errors for a transmitted vector and the code rate of the codes is grater than the code rate of the codes defined on some subset of Quaternion integers.
1401.7838
Dynamic Stride Length Adaptation According to Utility And Personal Space
physics.soc-ph cs.MA math.OC
Pedestrians adjust both speed and stride length when they navigate difficult situations such as tight corners or dense crowds. They try to avoid collisions and to preserve their personal space. State-of-the-art pedestrian motion models automatically reduce speed in dense crowds simply because there is no space where the pedestrians could go. The stride length and its correct adaptation, however, are rarely considered. This leads to artefacts that impact macroscopic observation parameters such as densities in front of bottlenecks and, through this, flow. Hence modelling stride adaptation is important to increase the predictive power of pedestrian models. To achieve this we reformulate the problem as an optimisation problem on a disk around the pedestrian. Each pedestrian seeks the position that is most attractive in a sense of balanced goals between the search for targets, the need for individual space and the need to keep a distance from obstacles. The need for space is modelled according to findings from psychology defining zones around a person that, when invaded, cause unease. The result is a fully automatic adjustment that allows calibration through meaningful social parameters and that gives visually natural results with an excellent fit to measured experimental data.
1401.7842
Analysis of Compatible Discrete Operator Schemes for the Stokes Equations on Polyhedral Meshes
math.NA cs.CE cs.NA
Compatible Discrete Operator schemes preserve basic properties of the continuous model at the discrete level. They combine discrete differential operators that discretize exactly topological laws and discrete Hodge operators that approximate constitutive relations. We devise and analyze two families of such schemes for the Stokes equations in curl formulation, with the pressure degrees of freedom located at either mesh vertices or cells. The schemes ensure local mass and momentum conservation. We prove discrete stability by establishing novel discrete Poincar\'e inequalities. Using commutators related to the consistency error, we derive error estimates with first-order convergence rates for smooth solutions. We analyze two strategies for discretizing the external load, so as to deliver tight error estimates when the external load has a large irrotational or divergence-free part. Finally, numerical results are presented on three-dimensional polyhedral meshes.
1401.7846
Optimal power control in Cognitive MIMO systems with limited feedback
cs.IT math.IT
In this paper, the problem of optimal power allocation in Cognitive Radio (CR) Multiple Input Multiple Output (MIMO) systems is treated. The focus is on providing limited feedback solutions aiming at maximizing the secondary system rate subject to a constraint on the average interference caused to primary communication. The limited feedback solutions are obtained by reducing the information available at secondary transmitter (STx) for the link between STx and the secondary receiver (SRx) as well as by limiting the level of available information at STx that corresponds to the link between the STx and the primary receiver PRx. Monte Carlo simulation results are given that allow to quanitfy the performance achieved by the proposed algorithms.
1401.7860
Motion planning and control of a planar polygonal linkage
math.MG cs.RO
For a polygonal linkage, we produce a fast navigation algorithm on its configuration space. The basic idea is to approximate the configuration space by the vertex-edge graph of its cell decomposition discovered by the first author. The algorithm has three aspects: (1) the number of navigation steps does not exceed 15 (independent of the linkage), (2) each step is a disguised flex of a quadrilateral from one triangular configuration to another, which is a well understood type of flex, and (3) each step can be performed explicitly by adding some extra bars and obtaining a mechanism with one degree of freedom.
1401.7890
Exploring the Relationship between Membership Turnover and Productivity in Online Communities
cs.SI physics.soc-ph
One of the more disruptive reforms associated with the modern Internet is the emergence of online communities working together on knowledge artefacts such as Wikipedia and OpenStreetMap. Recently it has become clear that these initiatives are vulnerable because of problems with membership turnover. This study presents a longitudinal analysis of 891 WikiProjects where we model the impact of member turnover and social capital losses on project productivity. By examining social capital losses we attempt to provide a more nuanced analysis of member turnover. In this context social capital is modelled from a social network perspective where the loss of more central members has more impact. We find that only a small proportion of WikiProjects are in a relatively healthy state with low levels of membership turnover and social capital losses. The results show that the relationship between social capital losses and project performance is U-shaped, and that member withdrawal has significant negative effect on project outcomes. The results also support the mediation of turnover rate and network density on the curvilinear relationship.
1401.7898
Maximum Margin Multiclass Nearest Neighbors
cs.LG math.ST stat.TH
We develop a general framework for margin-based multicategory classification in metric spaces. The basic work-horse is a margin-regularized version of the nearest-neighbor classifier. We prove generalization bounds that match the state of the art in sample size $n$ and significantly improve the dependence on the number of classes $k$. Our point of departure is a nearly Bayes-optimal finite-sample risk bound independent of $k$. Although $k$-free, this bound is unregularized and non-adaptive, which motivates our main result: Rademacher and scale-sensitive margin bounds with a logarithmic dependence on $k$. As the best previous risk estimates in this setting were of order $\sqrt k$, our bound is exponentially sharper. From the algorithmic standpoint, in doubling metric spaces our classifier may be trained on $n$ examples in $O(n^2\log n)$ time and evaluated on new points in $O(\log n)$ time.
1401.7909
When is it Biased? Assessing the Representativeness of Twitter's Streaming API
cs.SI physics.soc-ph
Twitter has captured the interest of the scientific community not only for its massive user base and content, but also for its openness in sharing its data. Twitter shares a free 1% sample of its tweets through the "Streaming API", a service that returns a sample of tweets according to a set of parameters set by the researcher. Recently, research has pointed to evidence of bias in the data returned through the Streaming API, raising concern in the integrity of this data service for use in research scenarios. While these results are important, the methodologies proposed in previous work rely on the restrictive and expensive Firehose to find the bias in the Streaming API data. In this work we tackle the problem of finding sample bias without the need for "gold standard" Firehose data. Namely, we focus on finding time periods in the Streaming API data where the trend of a hashtag is significantly different from its trend in the true activity on Twitter. We propose a solution that focuses on using an open data source to find bias in the Streaming API. Finally, we assess the utility of the data source in sparse data situations and for users issuing the same query from different regions.
1401.7923
Loopy annealing belief propagation for vertex cover and matching: convergence, LP relaxation, correctness and Bethe approximation
cs.DM cs.DS cs.IT math-ph math.IT math.MP math.PR
For the minimum cardinality vertex cover and maximum cardinality matching problems, the max-product form of belief propagation (BP) is known to perform poorly on general graphs. In this paper, we present an iterative loopy annealing BP (LABP) algorithm which is shown to converge and to solve a Linear Programming relaxation of the vertex cover or matching problem on general graphs. LABP finds (asymptotically) a minimum half-integral vertex cover (hence provides a 2-approximation) and a maximum fractional matching on any graph. We also show that LABP finds (asymptotically) a minimum size vertex cover for any bipartite graph and as a consequence compute the matching number of the graph. Our proof relies on some subtle monotonicity arguments for the local iteration. We also show that the Bethe free entropy is concave and that LABP maximizes it. Using loop calculus, we also give an exact (also intractable for general graphs) expression of the partition function for matching in term of the LABP messages which can be used to improve mean-field approximations.
1401.7941
Exploiting Causality for Selective Belief Filtering in Dynamic Bayesian Networks
cs.AI
Dynamic Bayesian networks (DBNs) are a general model for stochastic processes with partially observed states. Belief filtering in DBNs is the task of inferring the belief state (i.e. the probability distribution over process states) based on incomplete and noisy observations. This can be a hard problem in complex processes with large state spaces. In this article, we explore the idea of accelerating the filtering task by automatically exploiting causality in the process. We consider a specific type of causal relation, called passivity, which pertains to how state variables cause changes in other variables. We present the Passivity-based Selective Belief Filtering (PSBF) method, which maintains a factored belief representation and exploits passivity to perform selective updates over the belief factors. PSBF produces exact belief states under certain assumptions and approximate belief states otherwise, where the approximation error is bounded by the degree of uncertainty in the process. We show empirically, in synthetic processes with varying sizes and degrees of passivity, that PSBF is faster than several alternative methods while achieving competitive accuracy. Furthermore, we demonstrate how passivity occurs naturally in a complex system such as a multi-robot warehouse, and how PSBF can exploit this to accelerate the filtering task.
1401.7944
Performance Rescaling of Complex Networks
cs.NI cond-mat.stat-mech cs.SI physics.soc-ph
Recent progress in network topology modeling [1], [2] has shown that it is possible to create smaller-scale replicas of large complex networks, like the Internet, while simultaneously preserving several important topological properties. However, the constructed replicas do not include notions of capacities and latencies, and the fundamental question of whether smaller networks can reproduce the performance of larger networks remains unanswered. We address this question in this letter, and show that it is possible to predict the performance of larger networks from smaller replicas, as long as the right link capacities and propagation delays are assigned to the replica's links. Our procedure is inspired by techniques introduced in [2] and combines a time-downscaling argument from [3]. We show that significant computational savings can be achieved when simulating smaller-scale replicas with TCP and UDP traffic, with simulation times being reduced by up to two orders of magnitude.
1401.8008
Support vector comparison machines
stat.ML cs.LG
In ranking problems, the goal is to learn a ranking function from labeled pairs of input points. In this paper, we consider the related comparison problem, where the label indicates which element of the pair is better, or if there is no significant difference. We cast the learning problem as a margin maximization, and show that it can be solved by converting it to a standard SVM. We use simulated nonlinear patterns, a real learning to rank sushi data set, and a chess data set to show that our proposed SVMcompare algorithm outperforms SVMrank when there are equality pairs.
1401.8022
Synchronizing Rankings via Interactive Communication
cs.IT math.IT
We consider the problem of exact synchronization of two rankings at remote locations connected by a two-way channel. Such synchronization problems arise when items in the data are distinguishable, as is the case for playlists, tasklists, crowdvotes and recommender systems rankings. Our model accounts for different constraints on the communication throughput of the forward and feedback links, resulting in different anchoring, syndrome and checksum computation strategies. Information editing is assumed of the form of deletions, insertions, block deletions/insertions, translocations and transpositions. The protocols developed under the given model are order-optimal with respect to genie aided lower bounds.
1401.8042
Online Dating Recommendations: Matching Markets and Learning Preferences
cs.SI cs.IR physics.soc-ph
Recommendation systems for online dating have recently attracted much attention from the research community. In this paper we proposed a two-side matching framework for online dating recommendations and design an LDA model to learn the user preferences from the observed user messaging behavior and user profile features. Experimental results using data from a large online dating website shows that two-sided matching improves significantly the rate of successful matches by as much as 45%. Finally, using simulated matchings we show that the the LDA model can correctly capture user preferences.