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0904.4358
Adaptive sampling for linear state estimation
math.OC cs.SY math.PR math.ST stat.TH
When a sensor has continuous measurements but sends limited messages over a data network to a supervisor which estimates the state, the available packet rate fixes the achievable quality of state estimation. When such rate limits turn stringent, the sensor's messaging policy should be designed anew. What are the good causal messaging policies ? What should message packets contain ? What is the lowest possible distortion in a causal estimate at the supervisor ? Is Delta sampling better than periodic sampling ? We answer these questions under an idealized model of the network and the assumption of perfect measurements at the sensor. For a scalar, linear diffusion process, we study the problem of choosing the causal sampling times that will give the lowest aggregate squared error distortion. We stick to finite-horizons and impose a hard upper bound on the number of allowed samples. We cast the design as a problem of choosing an optimal sequence of stopping times. We reduce this to a nested sequence of problems each asking for a single optimal stopping time. Under an unproven but natural assumption about the least-square estimate at the supervisor, each of these single stopping problems are of standard form. The optimal stopping times are random times when the estimation error exceeds designed envelopes. For the case where the state is a Brownian motion, we give analytically: the shape of the optimal sampling envelopes, the shape of the envelopes under optimal Delta sampling, and their performances. Surprisingly, we find that Delta sampling performs badly. Hence, when the rate constraint is a hard limit on the number of samples over a finite horizon, we should should not use Delta sampling.
0904.4449
DNA-Inspired Information Concealing
cs.IT cs.CR math.IT
Protection of the sensitive content is crucial for extensive information sharing. We present a technique of information concealing, based on introduction and maintenance of families of repeats. Repeats in DNA constitute a basic obstacle for its reconstruction by hybridization.
0904.4458
Learning Character Strings via Mastermind Queries, with a Case Study Involving mtDNA
cs.DS cs.CR cs.IT math.IT
We study the degree to which a character string, $Q$, leaks details about itself any time it engages in comparison protocols with a strings provided by a querier, Bob, even if those protocols are cryptographically guaranteed to produce no additional information other than the scores that assess the degree to which $Q$ matches strings offered by Bob. We show that such scenarios allow Bob to play variants of the game of Mastermind with $Q$ so as to learn the complete identity of $Q$. We show that there are a number of efficient implementations for Bob to employ in these Mastermind attacks, depending on knowledge he has about the structure of $Q$, which show how quickly he can determine $Q$. Indeed, we show that Bob can discover $Q$ using a number of rounds of test comparisons that is much smaller than the length of $Q$, under reasonable assumptions regarding the types of scores that are returned by the cryptographic protocols and whether he can use knowledge about the distribution that $Q$ comes from. We also provide the results of a case study we performed on a database of mitochondrial DNA, showing the vulnerability of existing real-world DNA data to the Mastermind attack.
0904.4525
Number of Measurements in Sparse Signal Recovery
cs.IT math.IT
We analyze the asymptotic performance of sparse signal recovery from noisy measurements. In particular, we generalize some of the existing results for the Gaussian case to subgaussian and other ensembles. An achievable result is presented for the linear sparsity regime. A converse on the number of required measurements in the sub-linear regime is also presented, which cover many of the widely used measurement ensembles. Our converse idea makes use of a correspondence between compressed sensing ideas and compound channels in information theory.
0904.4526
Feasibility Conditions for Interference Alignment
cs.IT cs.AR math.IT
The degrees of freedom of MIMO interference networks with constant channel coefficients are not known in general. Determining the feasibility of a linear interference alignment solution is a key step toward solving this open problem. Our approach in this paper is to view the alignment problem as a system of bilinear equations and determine its solvability by comparing the number of equations and the number of variables. To this end, we divide interference alignment problems into two classes - proper and improper. An interference alignment problem is called proper if the number of equations does not exceed the number of variables. Otherwise, it is called improper. Examples are presented to support the intuition that for generic channel matrices, proper systems are almost surely feasible and improper systems are almost surely infeasible.
0904.4527
Limits of Learning about a Categorical Latent Variable under Prior Near-Ignorance
cs.LG
In this paper, we consider the coherent theory of (epistemic) uncertainty of Walley, in which beliefs are represented through sets of probability distributions, and we focus on the problem of modeling prior ignorance about a categorical random variable. In this setting, it is a known result that a state of prior ignorance is not compatible with learning. To overcome this problem, another state of beliefs, called \emph{near-ignorance}, has been proposed. Near-ignorance resembles ignorance very closely, by satisfying some principles that can arguably be regarded as necessary in a state of ignorance, and allows learning to take place. What this paper does, is to provide new and substantial evidence that also near-ignorance cannot be really regarded as a way out of the problem of starting statistical inference in conditions of very weak beliefs. The key to this result is focusing on a setting characterized by a variable of interest that is \emph{latent}. We argue that such a setting is by far the most common case in practice, and we provide, for the case of categorical latent variables (and general \emph{manifest} variables) a condition that, if satisfied, prevents learning to take place under prior near-ignorance. This condition is shown to be easily satisfied even in the most common statistical problems. We regard these results as a strong form of evidence against the possibility to adopt a condition of prior near-ignorance in real statistical problems.
0904.4530
Online Maximizing Weighted Throughput In A Fading Channel
cs.IT cs.DS math.IT
We consider online scheduling weighted packets with time constraints over a fading channel. Packets arrive at the transmitter in an online manner. Each packet has a value and a deadline by which it should be sent. The fade state of the channel determines the throughput obtained per unit of time and the channel's quality may change over time. In this paper, we design online algorithms to maximize weighted throughput, defined as the total value of the packets sent by their respective deadlines. Competitive ratio is employed to measure an online algorithm's performance. For this problem and one of its variants, we present two online algorithms with competitive ratios 2.618 and 2 respectively.
0904.4541
Evaluation of Marton's Inner Bound for the General Broadcast Channel
cs.IT math.IT
The best known inner bound on the two-receiver general broadcast channel without a common message is due to Marton [3]. This result was subsequently generalized in [p. 391, Problem 10(c) 2] and [4] to broadcast channels with a common message. However the latter region is not computable (except in certain special cases) as no bounds on the cardinality of its auxiliary random variables exist. Nor is it even clear that the inner bound is a closed set. The main obstacle in proving cardinality bounds is the fact that the traditional use of the Carath\'{e}odory theorem, the main known tool for proving cardinality bounds, does not yield a finite cardinality result. One of the main contributions of this paper is the introduction of a new tool based on an identity that relates the second derivative of the Shannon entropy of a discrete random variable (under a certain perturbation) to the corresponding Fisher information. In order to go beyond the traditional Carath\'{e}odory type arguments, we identify certain properties that the auxiliary random variables corresponding to the extreme points of the inner bound need to satisfy. These properties are then used to establish cardinality bounds on the auxiliary random variables of the inner bound, thereby proving the computability of the region, and its closedness. Lastly, we establish a conjecture of \cite{NairZizhou} that Marton's inner bound and the recent outer bound of Nair and El Gamal do not match in general.
0904.4542
A Generalized Cut-Set Bound
cs.IT math.IT
In this paper, we generalize the well known cut-set bound to the problem of lossy transmission of functions of arbitrarily correlated sources over a discrete memoryless multiterminal network.
0904.4587
Adaptive Learning with Binary Neurons
cs.AI cs.NE
A efficient incremental learning algorithm for classification tasks, called NetLines, well adapted for both binary and real-valued input patterns is presented. It generates small compact feedforward neural networks with one hidden layer of binary units and binary output units. A convergence theorem ensures that solutions with a finite number of hidden units exist for both binary and real-valued input patterns. An implementation for problems with more than two classes, valid for any binary classifier, is proposed. The generalization error and the size of the resulting networks are compared to the best published results on well-known classification benchmarks. Early stopping is shown to decrease overfitting, without improving the generalization performance.
0904.4608
Temporal data mining for root-cause analysis of machine faults in automotive assembly lines
cs.LG
Engine assembly is a complex and heavily automated distributed-control process, with large amounts of faults data logged everyday. We describe an application of temporal data mining for analyzing fault logs in an engine assembly plant. Frequent episode discovery framework is a model-free method that can be used to deduce (temporal) correlations among events from the logs in an efficient manner. In addition to being theoretically elegant and computationally efficient, frequent episodes are also easy to interpret in the form actionable recommendations. Incorporation of domain-specific information is critical to successful application of the method for analyzing fault logs in the manufacturing domain. We show how domain-specific knowledge can be incorporated using heuristic rules that act as pre-filters and post-filters to frequent episode discovery. The system described here is currently being used in one of the engine assembly plants of General Motors and is planned for adaptation in other plants. To the best of our knowledge, this paper presents the first real, large-scale application of temporal data mining in the manufacturing domain. We believe that the ideas presented in this paper can help practitioners engineer tools for analysis in other similar or related application domains as well.
0904.4708
Quality Classifiers for Open Source Software Repositories
cs.SE cs.AI
Open Source Software (OSS) often relies on large repositories, like SourceForge, for initial incubation. The OSS repositories offer a large variety of meta-data providing interesting information about projects and their success. In this paper we propose a data mining approach for training classifiers on the OSS meta-data provided by such data repositories. The classifiers learn to predict the successful continuation of an OSS project. The `successfulness' of projects is defined in terms of the classifier confidence with which it predicts that they could be ported in popular OSS projects (such as FreeBSD, Gentoo Portage).
0904.4717
Continuous Strategy Replicator Dynamics for Multi--Agent Learning
cs.LG cs.AI cs.GT nlin.AO
The problem of multi-agent learning and adaptation has attracted a great deal of attention in recent years. It has been suggested that the dynamics of multi agent learning can be studied using replicator equations from population biology. Most existing studies so far have been limited to discrete strategy spaces with a small number of available actions. In many cases, however, the choices available to agents are better characterized by continuous spectra. This paper suggests a generalization of the replicator framework that allows to study the adaptive dynamics of Q-learning agents with continuous strategy spaces. Instead of probability vectors, agents strategies are now characterized by probability measures over continuous variables. As a result, the ordinary differential equations for the discrete case are replaced by a system of coupled integral--differential replicator equations that describe the mutual evolution of individual agent strategies. We derive a set of functional equations describing the steady state of the replicator dynamics, examine their solutions for several two-player games, and confirm our analytical results using simulations.
0904.4727
Characterizations of Stable Model Semantics for Logic Programs with Arbitrary Constraint Atoms
cs.AI cs.LO cs.PL
This paper studies the stable model semantics of logic programs with (abstract) constraint atoms and their properties. We introduce a succinct abstract representation of these constraint atoms in which a constraint atom is represented compactly. We show two applications. First, under this representation of constraint atoms, we generalize the Gelfond-Lifschitz transformation and apply it to define stable models (also called answer sets) for logic programs with arbitrary constraint atoms. The resulting semantics turns out to coincide with the one defined by Son et al., which is based on a fixpoint approach. One advantage of our approach is that it can be applied, in a natural way, to define stable models for disjunctive logic programs with constraint atoms, which may appear in the disjunctive head as well as in the body of a rule. As a result, our approach to the stable model semantics for logic programs with constraint atoms generalizes a number of previous approaches. Second, we show that our abstract representation of constraint atoms provides a means to characterize dependencies of atoms in a program with constraint atoms, so that some standard characterizations and properties relying on these dependencies in the past for logic programs with ordinary atoms can be extended to logic programs with constraint atoms.
0904.4735
The Secrecy Capacity Region of the Degraded Vector Gaussian Broadcast Channel
cs.IT math.IT
In this paper, we consider a scenario where a source node wishes to broadcast two confidential messages for two respective receivers via a Gaussian MIMO broadcast channel. A wire-tapper also receives the transmitted signal via another MIMO channel. It is assumed that the channels are degraded and the wire-tapper has the worst channel. We establish the capacity region of this scenario. Our achievability scheme is a combination of the superposition of Gaussian codes and randomization within the layers which we will refer to as Secret Superposition Coding. For the outerbound, we use the notion of enhanced channel to show that the secret superposition of Gaussian codes is optimal. It is shown that we only need to enhance the channels of the legitimate receivers, and the channel of the eavesdropper remains unchanged.
0904.4741
Belief-Propagation Decoding of Lattices Using Gaussian Mixtures
cs.IT math.IT
A belief-propagation decoder for low-density lattice codes is given which represents messages explicitly as a mixture of Gaussians functions. The key component is an algorithm for approximating a mixture of several Gaussians with another mixture with a smaller number of Gaussians. This Gaussian mixture reduction algorithm iteratively reduces the number of Gaussians by minimizing the distance between the original mixture and an approximation with one fewer Gaussians. Error rates and noise thresholds of this decoder are compared with those for the previously-proposed decoder which discretely quantizes the messages. The error rates are indistinguishable for dimension 1000 and 10000 lattices, and the Gaussian-mixture decoder has a 0.2 dB loss for dimension 100 lattices. The Gaussian-mixture decoder has a loss of about 0.03 dB in the noise threshold, which is evaluated via Monte Carlo density evolution. Further, the Gaussian-mixture decoder uses far less storage for the messages.
0904.4774
Dictionary Identification - Sparse Matrix-Factorisation via $\ell_1$-Minimisation
cs.IT cs.LG math.IT
This article treats the problem of learning a dictionary providing sparse representations for a given signal class, via $\ell_1$-minimisation. The problem can also be seen as factorising a $\ddim \times \nsig$ matrix $Y=(y_1 >... y_\nsig), y_n\in \R^\ddim$ of training signals into a $\ddim \times \natoms$ dictionary matrix $\dico$ and a $\natoms \times \nsig$ coefficient matrix $\X=(x_1... x_\nsig), x_n \in \R^\natoms$, which is sparse. The exact question studied here is when a dictionary coefficient pair $(\dico,\X)$ can be recovered as local minimum of a (nonconvex) $\ell_1$-criterion with input $Y=\dico \X$. First, for general dictionaries and coefficient matrices, algebraic conditions ensuring local identifiability are derived, which are then specialised to the case when the dictionary is a basis. Finally, assuming a random Bernoulli-Gaussian sparse model on the coefficient matrix, it is shown that sufficiently incoherent bases are locally identifiable with high probability. The perhaps surprising result is that the typically sufficient number of training samples $\nsig$ grows up to a logarithmic factor only linearly with the signal dimension, i.e. $\nsig \approx C \natoms \log \natoms$, in contrast to previous approaches requiring combinatorially many samples.
0904.4789
Frequency Domain Hybrid-ARQ Chase Combining for Broadband MIMO CDMA Systems
cs.IT math.IT
In this paper, we consider high-speed wireless packet access using code division multiple access (CDMA) and multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO). Current wireless standards, such as high speed packet access (HSPA), have adopted multi-code transmission and hybrid-automatic repeat request (ARQ) as major technologies for delivering high data rates. The key technique in hybrid-ARQ, is that erroneous data packets are kept in the receiver to detect/decode retransmitted ones. This strategy is refereed to as packet combining. In CDMA MIMO-based wireless packet access, multi-code transmission suffers from severe performance degradation due to the loss of code orthogonality caused by both interchip interference (ICI) and co-antenna interference (CAI). This limitation results in large transmission delays when an ARQ mechanism is used in the link layer. In this paper, we investigate efficient minimum mean square error (MMSE) frequency domain equalization (FDE)-based iterative (turbo) packet combining for cyclic prefix (CP)-CDMA MIMO with Chase-type ARQ. We introduce two turbo packet combining schemes: i) In the first scheme, namely "chip-level turbo packet combining", MMSE FDE and packet combining are jointly performed at the chip-level. ii) In the second scheme, namely "symbol-level turbo packet combining", chip-level MMSE FDE and despreading are separately carried out for each transmission, then packet combining is performed at the level of the soft demapper. The computational complexity and memory requirements of both techniques are quite insensitive to the ARQ delay, i.e., maximum number of ARQ rounds. The throughput is evaluated for some representative antenna configurations and load factors to show the gains offered by the proposed techniques.
0904.4836
FaceBots: Steps Towards Enhanced Long-Term Human-Robot Interaction by Utilizing and Publishing Online Social Information
cs.RO cs.AI cs.CV
Our project aims at supporting the creation of sustainable and meaningful longer-term human-robot relationships through the creation of embodied robots with face recognition and natural language dialogue capabilities, which exploit and publish social information available on the web (Facebook). Our main underlying experimental hypothesis is that such relationships can be significantly enhanced if the human and the robot are gradually creating a pool of shared episodic memories that they can co-refer to (shared memories), and if they are both embedded in a social web of other humans and robots they both know and encounter (shared friends). In this paper, we are presenting such a robot, which as we will see achieves two significant novelties.
0904.4863
A two-stage algorithm for extracting the multiscale backbone of complex weighted networks
physics.soc-ph cs.SI physics.data-an stat.AP
The central problem of concern to Serrano, Boguna and Vespignani ("Extracting the multiscale backbone of complex weighted networks", Proc Natl Acad Sci 106:6483-6488 [2009]) can be effectively and elegantly addressed using a well-established two-stage algorithm that has been applied to internal migration flows for numerous nations and several other forms of "transaction flow data".
0904.4900
On optimal precoding in linear vector Gaussian channels with arbitrary input distribution
cs.IT math.IT
The design of the precoder the maximizes the mutual information in linear vector Gaussian channels with an arbitrary input distribution is studied. Precisely, the precoder optimal left singular vectors and singular values are derived. The characterization of the right singular vectors is left, in general, as an open problem whose computational complexity is then studied in three cases: Gaussian signaling, low SNR, and high SNR. For the Gaussian signaling case and the low SNR regime, the dependence of the mutual information on the right singular vectors vanishes, making the optimal precoder design problem easy to solve. In the high SNR regime, however, the dependence on the right singular vectors cannot be avoided and we show the difficulty of computing the optimal precoder through an NP-hardness analysis.
0904.4921
Renormalization and computation I: motivation and background
math.QA cs.IT math.IT
In this paper I argue that infinities in the classical computation theory such as the unsolvability of the Halting Problem can be addressed in the same way as Feynman divergences in Quantum Field Theory, and that meaningful versions of renormalization in this context can be devised. Connections with quantum computation are also touched upon.
0904.4926
Variable-Rate M-PSK Communications without Channel Amplitude Estimation
cs.IT math.IT
Channel estimation at the receiver side is essential to adaptive modulation schemes, prohibiting low complexity systems from using variable rate and/or variable power transmissions. Towards providing a solution to this problem, we introduce a variable-rate (VR) M-PSK modulation scheme, for communications over fading channels, in the absence of channel gain estimation at the receiver. The choice of the constellation size is based on the signal-plus-noise (S+N) sampling value rather than on the signal-to-noise ratio (S/N). It is analytically shown that S+N can serve as an excellent simpler criterion, alternative to S/N, for determining the modulation order in VR systems. In this way, low complexity transceivers can use VR transmissions in order to increase their spectral efficiency under an error performance constraint. As an application, we utilize the proposed VR modulation scheme in equal gain combining (EGC) diversity receivers.
0905.0024
Theoretical Analysis of Cyclic Frequency Domain Noise and Feature Detection for Cognitive Radio Systems
cs.IT math.IT
In cognitive radio systems, cyclostationary feature detection plays an important role in spectrum sensing, especially in low SNR cases. To configure the detection threshold under a certain noise level and a pre-set miss detection probability Pf, it's important to derive the theoretical distribution of the observation variable. In this paper, noise distribution in cyclic frequency domain has been studied and Generalized Extreme Value (GEV) distribution is found to be a precise match. Maximum likelihood estimation is applied to estimate the parameters of GEV. Monte Carlo simulation has been carried out to show that the simulated ROC curve is coincided with the theoretical ROC curve, which proves the efficiency of the theoretical distribution model.
0905.0036
On the Secrecy Rate Region for the Interference Channel
cs.IT math.IT
This paper studies interference channels with security constraints. The existence of an external eavesdropper in a two-user interference channel is assumed, where the network users would like to secure their messages from the external eavesdropper. The cooperative binning and channel prefixing scheme is proposed for this system model which allows users to cooperatively add randomness to the channel in order to degrade the observations of the external eavesdropper. This scheme allows users to add randomness to the channel in two ways: 1) Users cooperate in their design of the binning codebooks, and 2) Users cooperatively exploit the channel prefixing technique. As an example, the channel prefixing technique is exploited in the Gaussian case to transmit a superposition signal consisting of binning codewords and independently generated noise samples. Gains obtained form the cooperative binning and channel prefixing scheme compared to the single user scenario reveals the positive effect of interference in increasing the network security. Remarkably, interference can be exploited to cooperatively add randomness into the network in order to enhance the security.
0905.0044
ADMiRA: Atomic Decomposition for Minimum Rank Approximation
math.NA cs.IT math.IT
We address the inverse problem that arises in compressed sensing of a low-rank matrix. Our approach is to pose the inverse problem as an approximation problem with a specified target rank of the solution. A simple search over the target rank then provides the minimum rank solution satisfying a prescribed data approximation bound. We propose an atomic decomposition that provides an analogy between parsimonious representations of a sparse vector and a low-rank matrix. Efficient greedy algorithms to solve the inverse problem for the vector case are extended to the matrix case through this atomic decomposition. In particular, we propose an efficient and guaranteed algorithm named ADMiRA that extends CoSaMP, its analogue for the vector case. The performance guarantee is given in terms of the rank-restricted isometry property and bounds both the number of iterations and the error in the approximate solution for the general case where the solution is approximately low-rank and the measurements are noisy. With a sparse measurement operator such as the one arising in the matrix completion problem, the computation in ADMiRA is linear in the number of measurements. The numerical experiments for the matrix completion problem show that, although the measurement operator in this case does not satisfy the rank-restricted isometry property, ADMiRA is a competitive algorithm for matrix completion.
0905.0079
Multiple-Bases Belief-Propagation Decoding of High-Density Cyclic Codes
cs.IT math.IT
We introduce a new method for decoding short and moderate length linear block codes with dense parity-check matrix representations of cyclic form, termed multiple-bases belief-propagation (MBBP). The proposed iterative scheme makes use of the fact that a code has many structurally diverse parity-check matrices, capable of detecting different error patterns. We show that this inherent code property leads to decoding algorithms with significantly better performance when compared to standard BP decoding. Furthermore, we describe how to choose sets of parity-check matrices of cyclic form amenable for multiple-bases decoding, based on analytical studies performed for the binary erasure channel. For several cyclic and extended cyclic codes, the MBBP decoding performance can be shown to closely follow that of maximum-likelihood decoders.
0905.0192
Fuzzy Mnesors
cs.AI
A fuzzy mnesor space is a semimodule over the positive real numbers. It can be used as theoretical framework for fuzzy sets. Hence we can prove a great number of properties for fuzzy sets without refering to the membership functions.
0905.0197
An Application of Proof-Theory in Answer Set Programming
cs.AI
We apply proof-theoretic techniques in answer Set Programming. The main results include: 1. A characterization of continuity properties of Gelfond-Lifschitz operator for logic program. 2. A propositional characterization of stable models of logic programs (without referring to loop formulas.
0905.0233
Robust Principal Component Analysis: Exact Recovery of Corrupted Low-Rank Matrices
cs.IT math.IT
This paper has been withdrawn due to a critical error near equation (71). This error causes the entire argument of the paper to collapse. Emmanuel Candes of Stanford discovered the error, and has suggested a correct analysis, which will be reported in a separate publication.
0905.0266
Gaussian Belief with dynamic data and in dynamic network
cs.AI cond-mat.stat-mech cs.IT math.IT physics.soc-ph
In this paper we analyse Belief Propagation over a Gaussian model in a dynamic environment. Recently, this has been proposed as a method to average local measurement values by a distributed protocol ("Consensus Propagation", Moallemi & Van Roy, 2006), where the average is available for read-out at every single node. In the case that the underlying network is constant but the values to be averaged fluctuate ("dynamic data"), convergence and accuracy are determined by the spectral properties of an associated Ruelle-Perron-Frobenius operator. For Gaussian models on Erdos-Renyi graphs, numerical computation points to a spectral gap remaining in the large-size limit, implying exceptionally good scalability. In a model where the underlying network also fluctuates ("dynamic network"), averaging is more effective than in the dynamic data case. Altogether, this implies very good performance of these methods in very large systems, and opens a new field of statistical physics of large (and dynamic) information systems.
0905.0374
Interference Alignment with Limited Feedback
cs.IT math.IT
We consider single-antenna interference networks where M sources, each with an average transmit power of P/M, communicate with M destinations over frequency-selective channels (with L taps each) and each destination has perfect knowledge of its channels from each of the sources. Assuming that there exist error-free non-interfering broadcast feedback links from each destination to all the nodes (i.e., sources and destinations) in the network, we show that naive interference alignment, in conjunction with vector quantization of the impulse response coefficients according to the scheme proposed in Mukkavilli et al., IEEE Trans. IT, 2003, achieves full spatial multiplexing gain of M/2, provided that the number of feedback bits broadcast by each destination is at least M(L-1) log P.
0905.0385
Diversity-Multiplexing tradeoff of the Two-User Interference Channel
cs.IT math.IT
Diversity-Multiplexing tradeoff (DMT) is a coarse high SNR approximation of the fundamental tradeoff between data rate and reliability in a slow fading channel. In this paper, we characterize the fundamental DMT of the two user single antenna Gaussian interference channel. We show that the class of multilevel superposition coding schemes universally achieves (for all fading statistics) the DMT for the two-user interference channel. For the special case of symmetric DMT, when the two users have identical rate and diversity gain requirements, we characterize the DMT achieved by the Han-Kobayashi scheme, which corresponds to two level superposition coding.
0905.0397
A representation of non-uniformly sampled deterministic and random signals and their reconstruction using sample values and derivatives
cs.IT math.IT
Shannon in his 1949 paper suggested the use of derivatives to increase the W*T product of the sampled signal. Use of derivatives enables improved reconstruction particularly in the case of non-uniformly sampled signals. An FM-AM representation for Lagrange/Hermite type interpolation and a reconstruction technique are discussed. The representation using a product of a polynomial and exponential of a polynomial is extensible to two dimensions. When the directly available information is inadequate, estimation of the signal and its derivative based on the correlation characteristics of Gaussian filtered noise has been studied. This requires computation of incomplete normal integrals. Reduction methods for reducing multivariate normal variables include multistage partitioning, dynamic path integral and Hermite expansion for computing the probability integrals necessary for estimating the mean of the signal and its derivative at points intermediate between zero or threshold crossings. The signals and their derivatives as measured or estimated are utilized to reconstruct the signal at a desired sampling rate.
0905.0417
Two-Level Fingerprinting Codes
cs.IT cs.CR math.IT
We introduce the notion of two-level fingerprinting and traceability codes. In this setting, the users are organized in a hierarchical manner by classifying them into various groups; for instance, by dividing the distribution area into several geographic regions, and collecting users from the same region into one group. Two-level fingerprinting and traceability codes have the following property: As in traditional (one-level) codes, when given an illegal copy produced by a coalition of users, the decoder identifies one of the guilty users if the coalition size is less than a certain threshold $t$. Moreover, even when the coalition is of a larger size $s$ $(> t)$, the decoder still provides partial information by tracing one of the groups containing a guilty user. We establish sufficient conditions for a code to possess the two-level traceability property. In addition, we also provide constructions for two-level fingerprinting codes and characterize the corresponding set of achievable rates.
0905.0440
Tandem Coding and Cryptography on Wiretap Channels: EXIT Chart Analysis
cs.IT cs.CR math.IT
Traditional cryptography assumes an eavesdropper receives an error-free copy of the transmitted ciphertext. Wyner's wiretap channel model recognizes that at the physical layer both the intended receiver and the passive eavesdropper inevitably receive an error-prone version of the transmitted message which must be corrected prior to decryption. This paper considers the implications of using both channel and cryptographic codes under the wiretap channel model in a way that enhances the \emph{information-theoretic} security for the friendly parties by keeping the information transfer to the eavesdropper small. We consider a secret-key cryptographic system with a linear feedback shift register (LFSR)-based keystream generator and observe the mutual information between an LFSR-generated sequence and the received noise-corrupted ciphertext sequence under a known-plaintext scenario. The effectiveness of a noniterative fast correlation attack, which reduces the search time in a brute-force attack, is shown to be correlated with this mutual information. For an iterative fast correlation attack on this cryptographic system, it is shown that an EXIT chart and mutual information are very good predictors of decoding success and failure by a passive eavesdropper.
0905.0541
Design and Analysis of Successive Decoding with Finite Levels for the Markov Channel
cs.IT math.IT
This paper proposes a practical successive decoding scheme with finite levels for the finite-state Markov channels where there is no a priori state information at the transmitter or the receiver. The design employs either a random interleaver or a deterministic interleaver with an irregular pattern and an optional iterative estimation and decoding procedure within each level. The interleaver design criteria may be the achievable rate or the extrinsic information transfer (EXIT) chart, depending on the receiver type. For random interleavers, the optimization problem is solved efficiently using a pilot-utility function, while for deterministic interleavers, a good construction is given using empirical rules. Simulation results demonstrate that the new successive decoding scheme combined with irregular low-density parity-check codes can approach the identically and uniformly distributed (i.u.d.) input capacity on the Markov-fading channel using only a few levels.
0905.0564
Selective Cooperative Relaying over Time-Varying Channels
cs.IT math.IT
In selective cooperative relaying only a single relay out of the set of available relays is activated, hence the available power and bandwidth resources are efficiently utilized. However, implementing selective cooperative relaying in time-varying channels may cause frequent relay switchings that deteriorate the overall performance. In this paper, we study the rate at which a relay switching occurs in selective cooperative relaying applications in time-varying fading channels. In particular, we derive closed-form expressions for the relay switching rate (measured in Hz) for opportunistic relaying (OR) and distributed switch and stay combining (DSSC). Additionally, expressions for the average relay activation time for both of the considered schemes are also provided, reflecting the average time that a selected relay remains active until a switching occurs. Numerical results manifest that DSSC yields considerably lower relay switching rates than OR, along with larger average relay activation times, rendering it a better candidate for implementation of relay selection in fast fading environments.
0905.0586
WinBioinfTools: Bioinformatics Tools for Windows High Performance Computing Server 2008
cs.MS cs.CE q-bio.QM
Open source bioinformatics tools running under MS Windows are rare to find, and those running under Windows HPC cluster are almost non-existing. This is despite the fact that the Windows is the most popular operating system used among life scientists. Therefore, we introduce in this initiative WinBioinfTools, a toolkit containing a number of bioinformatics tools running under Windows High Performance Computing Server 2008. It is an open source code package, where users and developers can share and add to. We currently start with three programs from the area of sequence analysis: 1) CoCoNUT for pairwise genome comparison, 2) parallel BLAST for biological database search, and 3) parallel global pairwise sequence alignment. In this report, we focus on technical aspects concerning how some components of these tools were ported from Linux/Unix environment to run under Windows. We also show the advantages of using the Windows HPC Cluster 2008. We demonstrate by experiments the performance gain achieved when using a computer cluster against a single machine. Furthermore, we show the results of comparing the performance of WinBioinfTools on the Windows and Linux Cluster.
0905.0606
Quantization for Soft-Output Demodulators in Bit-Interleaved Coded Modulation Systems
cs.IT math.IT
We study quantization of log-likelihood ratios (LLR) in bit-interleaved coded modulation (BICM) systems in terms of an equivalent discrete channel. We propose to design the quantizer such that the quantizer outputs become equiprobable. We investigate semi-analytically and numerically the ergodic and outage capacity over single- and multiple-antenna channels for different quantizers. Finally, we show bit error rate simulations for BICM systems with LLR quantization using a rate 1/2 low-density parity-check code.
0905.0619
On the Sensitivity of Noncoherent Capacity to the Channel Model
cs.IT math.IT
The noncoherent capacity of stationary discrete-time fading channels is known to be very sensitive to the fine details of the channel model. More specifically, the measure of the set of harmonics where the power spectral density of the fading process is nonzero determines if capacity grows logarithmically in SNR or slower than logarithmically. An engineering-relevant problem is to characterize the SNR value at which this sensitivity starts to matter. In this paper, we consider the general class of continuous-time Rayleigh-fading channels that satisfy the wide-sense stationary uncorrelated-scattering (WSSUS) assumption and are, in addition, underspread. For this class of channels, we show that the noncoherent capacity is close to the AWGN capacity for all SNR values of practical interest, independently of whether the scattering function is compactly supported or not. As a byproduct of our analysis, we obtain an information-theoretic pulse-design criterion for orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing systems.
0905.0642
Simultaneous support recovery in high dimensions: Benefits and perils of block $\ell_1/\ell_\infty$-regularization
math.ST cs.IT math.IT stat.TH
Consider the use of $\ell_{1}/\ell_{\infty}$-regularized regression for joint estimation of a $\pdim \times \numreg$ matrix of regression coefficients. We analyze the high-dimensional scaling of $\ell_1/\ell_\infty$-regularized quadratic programming, considering both consistency in $\ell_\infty$-norm, and variable selection. We begin by establishing bounds on the $\ell_\infty$-error as well sufficient conditions for exact variable selection for fixed and random designs. Our second set of results applies to $\numreg = 2$ linear regression problems with standard Gaussian designs whose supports overlap in a fraction $\alpha \in [0,1]$ of their entries: for this problem class, we prove that the $\ell_{1}/\ell_{\infty}$-regularized method undergoes a phase transition--that is, a sharp change from failure to success--characterized by the rescaled sample size $\theta_{1,\infty}(n, p, s, \alpha) = n/\{(4 - 3 \alpha) s \log(p-(2- \alpha) s)\}$. An implication of this threshold is that use of $\ell_1 / \ell_{\infty}$-regularization yields improved statistical efficiency if the overlap parameter is large enough ($\alpha > 2/3$), but has \emph{worse} statistical efficiency than a naive Lasso-based approach for moderate to small overlap ($\alpha < 2/3$). These results indicate that some caution needs to be exercised in the application of $\ell_1/\ell_\infty$ block regularization: if the data does not match its structure closely enough, it can impair statistical performance relative to computationally less expensive schemes.
0905.0677
Feasibility of random basis function approximators for modeling and control
cs.NE cs.AI
We discuss the role of random basis function approximators in modeling and control. We analyze the published work on random basis function approximators and demonstrate that their favorable error rate of convergence O(1/n) is guaranteed only with very substantial computational resources. We also discuss implications of our analysis for applications of neural networks in modeling and control.
0905.0721
Diversity-Multiplexing Tradeoff in Fading Interference Channels
cs.IT math.IT
We analyze two-user single-antenna fading interference channels with perfect receive channel state information (CSI) and no transmit CSI. We compute the diversity-multiplexing tradeoff (DMT) region of a fixed-power-split Han and Kobayashi (HK)-type superposition coding scheme and provide design criteria for the corresponding superposition codes. We demonstrate that this scheme is DMT-optimal under moderate, strong, and very strong interference by showing that it achieves a DMT outer bound that we derive. Further, under very strong interference, we show that a joint decoder is DMT-optimal and "decouples" the fading interference channel, i.e., from a DMT perspective, it is possible to transmit as if the interfering user were not present. In addition, we show that, under very strong interference, decoding interference while treating the intended signal as noise, subtracting the result out, and then decoding the desired signal, a process known as "stripping", achieves the optimal DMT region. Our proofs are constructive in the sense that code design criteria for achieving DMT-optimality (in the cases where we can demonstrate it) are provided.
0905.0740
A FORTRAN coded regular expression Compiler for IBM 1130 Computing System
cs.CL cs.PL
REC (Regular Expression Compiler) is a concise programming language which allows students to write programs without knowledge of the complicated syntax of languages like FORTRAN and ALGOL. The language is recursive and contains only four elements for control. This paper describes an interpreter of REC written in FORTRAN.
0905.0747
Self-stabilizing Determinsitic Gathering
cs.MA
In this paper, we investigate the possibility to deterministically solve the gathering problem (GP) with weak robots (anonymous, autonomous, disoriented, deaf and dumb, and oblivious). We introduce strong multiplicity detection as the ability for the robots to detect the exact number of robots located at a given position. We show that with strong multiplicity detection, there exists a deterministic self-stabilizing algorithm solving GP for n robots if, and only if, n is odd.
0905.0749
Soft Motion Trajectory Planner for Service Manipulator Robot
cs.RO
Human interaction introduces two main constraints: Safety and Comfort. Therefore service robot manipulator can't be controlled like industrial robotic manipulator where personnel is isolated from the robot's work envelope. In this paper, we present a soft motion trajectory planner to try to ensure that these constraints are satisfied. This planner can be used on-line to establish visual and force control loop suitable in presence of human. The cubic trajectories build by this planner are good candidates as output of a manipulation task planner. The obtained system is then homogeneous from task planning to robot control. The soft motion trajectory planner limits jerk, acceleration and velocity in cartesian space using quaternion. Experimental results carried out on a Mitsubishi PA10-6CE arm are presented.
0905.0794
Constructions of Almost Optimal Resilient Boolean Functions on Large Even Number of Variables
cs.IT cs.CR math.IT
In this paper, a technique on constructing nonlinear resilient Boolean functions is described. By using several sets of disjoint spectra functions on a small number of variables, an almost optimal resilient function on a large even number of variables can be constructed. It is shown that given any $m$, one can construct infinitely many $n$-variable ($n$ even), $m$-resilient functions with nonlinearity $>2^{n-1}-2^{n/2}$. A large class of highly nonlinear resilient functions which were not known are obtained. Then one method to optimize the degree of the constructed functions is proposed. Last, an improved version of the main construction is given.
0905.0838
What is the Value of Joint Processing of Pilots and Data in Block-Fading Channels?
cs.IT math.IT
The spectral efficiency achievable with joint processing of pilot and data symbol observations is compared with that achievable through the conventional (separate) approach of first estimating the channel on the basis of the pilot symbols alone, and subsequently detecting the data symbols. Studied on the basis of a mutual information lower bound, joint processing is found to provide a non-negligible advantage relative to separate processing, particularly for fast fading. It is shown that, regardless of the fading rate, only a very small number of pilot symbols (at most one per transmit antenna and per channel coherence interval) should be transmitted if joint processing is allowed.
0905.0940
A Large-Deviation Analysis of the Maximum-Likelihood Learning of Markov Tree Structures
stat.ML cs.IT math.IT
The problem of maximum-likelihood (ML) estimation of discrete tree-structured distributions is considered. Chow and Liu established that ML-estimation reduces to the construction of a maximum-weight spanning tree using the empirical mutual information quantities as the edge weights. Using the theory of large-deviations, we analyze the exponent associated with the error probability of the event that the ML-estimate of the Markov tree structure differs from the true tree structure, given a set of independently drawn samples. By exploiting the fact that the output of ML-estimation is a tree, we establish that the error exponent is equal to the exponential rate of decay of a single dominant crossover event. We prove that in this dominant crossover event, a non-neighbor node pair replaces a true edge of the distribution that is along the path of edges in the true tree graph connecting the nodes in the non-neighbor pair. Using ideas from Euclidean information theory, we then analyze the scenario of ML-estimation in the very noisy learning regime and show that the error exponent can be approximated as a ratio, which is interpreted as the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) for learning tree distributions. We show via numerical experiments that in this regime, our SNR approximation is accurate.
0905.1056
Bringing Toric Codes to the next dimension
math.AG cs.IT math.IT
This paper is concerned with the minimum distance computation for higher dimensional toric codes defined by lattice polytopes. We show that the minimum distance is multiplicative with respect to taking the product of polytopes, and behaves in a simple way when one builds a k-dilate of a pyramid over a polytope. This allows us to construct a large class of examples of higher dimensional toric codes where we can compute the minimum distance explicitly.
0905.1130
Statistical Automatic Summarization in Organic Chemistry
cs.IR cs.CL
We present an oriented numerical summarizer algorithm, applied to producing automatic summaries of scientific documents in Organic Chemistry. We present its implementation named Yachs (Yet Another Chemistry Summarizer) that combines a specific document pre-processing with a sentence scoring method relying on the statistical properties of documents. We show that Yachs achieves the best results among several other summarizers on a corpus of Organic Chemistry articles.
0905.1187
The Residual Method for Regularizing Ill-Posed Problems
math.OC cs.SY
Although the \emph{residual method}, or \emph{constrained regularization}, is frequently used in applications, a detailed study of its properties is still missing. This sharply contrasts the progress of the theory of Tikhonov regularization, where a series of new results for regularization in Banach spaces has been published in the recent years. The present paper intends to bridge the gap between the existing theories as far as possible. We develop a stability and convergence theory for the residual method in general topological spaces. In addition, we prove convergence rates in terms of (generalized) Bregman distances, which can also be applied to non-convex regularization functionals. We provide three examples that show the applicability of our theory. The first example is the regularized solution of linear operator equations on $L^p$-spaces, where we show that the results of Tikhonov regularization generalize unchanged to the residual method. As a second example, we consider the problem of density estimation from a finite number of sampling points, using the Wasserstein distance as a fidelity term and an entropy measure as regularization term. It is shown that the densities obtained in this way depend continuously on the location of the sampled points and that the underlying density can be recovered as the number of sampling points tends to infinity. Finally, we apply our theory to compressed sensing. Here, we show the well-posedness of the method and derive convergence rates both for convex and non-convex regularization under rather weak conditions.
0905.1215
Tail Behavior of Sphere-Decoding Complexity in Random Lattices
cs.IT cs.CC math.IT math.ST stat.TH
We analyze the (computational) complexity distribution of sphere-decoding (SD) for random infinite lattices. In particular, we show that under fairly general assumptions on the statistics of the lattice basis matrix, the tail behavior of the SD complexity distribution is solely determined by the inverse volume of a fundamental region of the underlying lattice. Particularizing this result to NxM, N>=M, i.i.d. Gaussian lattice basis matrices, we find that the corresponding complexity distribution is of Pareto-type with tail exponent given by N-M+1. We furthermore show that this tail exponent is not improved by lattice-reduction, which includes layer-sorting as a special case.
0905.1235
The Modular Audio Recognition Framework (MARF) and its Applications: Scientific and Software Engineering Notes
cs.SD cs.CL cs.CV cs.MM cs.NE
MARF is an open-source research platform and a collection of voice/sound/speech/text and natural language processing (NLP) algorithms written in Java and arranged into a modular and extensible framework facilitating addition of new algorithms. MARF can run distributively over the network and may act as a library in applications or be used as a source for learning and extension. A few example applications are provided to show how to use the framework. There is an API reference in the Javadoc format as well as this set of accompanying notes with the detailed description of the architectural design, algorithms, and applications. MARF and its applications are released under a BSD-style license and is hosted at SourceForge.net. This document provides the details and the insight on the internals of MARF and some of the mentioned applications.
0905.1305
On the Distribution of the Sum of Gamma-Gamma Variates and Applications in RF and Optical Wireless Communications
cs.IT math.IT
The Gamma-Gamma (GG) distribution has recently attracted the interest within the research community due to its involvement in various communication systems. In the context of RF wireless communications, GG distribution accurately models the power statistics in composite shadowing/fading channels as well as in cascade multipath fading channels, while in optical wireless (OW) systems, it describes the fluctuations of the irradiance of optical signals distorted by atmospheric turbulence. Although GG channel model offers analytical tractability in the analysis of single input single output (SISO) wireless systems, difficulties arise when studying multiple input multiple output (MIMO) systems, where the distribution of the sum of independent GG variates is required. In this paper, we present a novel simple closed-form approximation for the distribution of the sum of independent, but not necessarily identically distributed GG variates. It is shown that the probability density function (PDF) of the GG sum can be efficiently approximated either by the PDF of a single GG distribution, or by a finite weighted sum of PDFs of GG distributions. To reveal the importance of the proposed approximation, the performance of RF wireless systems in the presence of composite fading, as well as MIMO OW systems impaired by atmospheric turbulence, are investigated. Numerical results and simulations illustrate the accuracy of the proposed approach.
0905.1375
Saddle-point Solution of the Fingerprinting Capacity Game Under the Marking Assumption
cs.IT cs.CR math.IT
We study a fingerprinting game in which the collusion channel is unknown. The encoder embeds fingerprints into a host sequence and provides the decoder with the capability to trace back pirated copies to the colluders. Fingerprinting capacity has recently been derived as the limit value of a sequence of maxmin games with mutual information as the payoff function. However, these games generally do not admit saddle-point solutions and are very hard to solve numerically. Here under the so-called Boneh-Shaw marking assumption, we reformulate the capacity as the value of a single two-person zero-sum game, and show that it is achieved by a saddle-point solution. If the maximal coalition size is $k$ and the fingerprint alphabet is binary, we derive equations that can numerically solve the capacity game for arbitrary $k$. We also provide tight upper and lower bounds on the capacity. Finally, we discuss the asymptotic behavior of the fingerprinting game for large $k$ and practical implementation issues.
0905.1386
Selective-Fading Multiple-Access MIMO Channels: Diversity-Multiplexing Tradeoff and Dominant Outage Event Regions
cs.IT math.IT
We establish the optimal diversity-multiplexing (DM) tradeoff for coherent selective-fading multiple-access MIMO channels and provide corresponding code design criteria. As a byproduct, on the conceptual level, we find an interesting relation between the DM tradeoff framework and the notion of dominant error event regions, first introduced in the AWGN case by Gallager, IEEE Trans. IT, 1985. This relation allows us to accurately characterize the error mechanisms in MIMO fading multiple-access channels. In particular, we find that, for a given rate tuple, the maximum achievable diversity order is determined by a single outage event that dominates the total error probability exponentially in SNR. Finally, we examine the distributed space-time code construction proposed by Badr and Belfiore, Int. Zurich Seminar on Commun., 2008, using the code design criteria derived in this paper.
0905.1424
Concept Stability for Constructing Taxonomies of Web-site Users
cs.CY cs.AI cs.SI stat.ML
Owners of a web-site are often interested in analysis of groups of users of their site. Information on these groups can help optimizing the structure and contents of the site. In this paper we use an approach based on formal concepts for constructing taxonomies of user groups. For decreasing the huge amount of concepts that arise in applications, we employ stability index of a concept, which describes how a group given by a concept extent differs from other such groups. We analyze resulting taxonomies of user groups for three target websites.
0905.1460
Design of Learning Based MIMO Cognitive Radio Systems
cs.IT math.IT
This paper addresses the design issues of the multi-antenna-based cognitive radio (CR) system that is able to operate concurrently with the licensed primary radio (PR) system. We propose a practical CR transmission strategy consisting of three major stages: environment learning, channel training, and data transmission. In the environment learning stage, the CR transceivers both listen to the PR transmission and apply blind algorithms to estimate the spaces that are orthogonal to the channels from the PR. Assuming time-division duplex (TDD) based transmission for the PR, cognitive beamforming is then designed and applied at CR transceivers to restrict the interference to/from the PR during the subsequent channel training and data transmission stages. In the channel training stage, the CR transmitter sends training signals to the CR receiver, which applies the linear-minimum-mean-square-error (LMMSE) based estimator to estimate the effective channel. Considering imperfect estimations in both learning and training stages, we derive a lower bound on the ergodic capacity achievable for the CR in the data transmission stage. From this capacity lower bound, we observe a general learning/training/throughput tradeoff associated with the proposed scheme, pertinent to transmit power allocation between training and transmission stages, as well as time allocation among learning, training, and transmission stages. We characterize the aforementioned tradeoff by optimizing the associated power and time allocation to maximize the CR ergodic capacity.
0905.1512
A Nearly Optimal Construction of Flash Codes
cs.IT math.IT
Flash memory is a non-volatile computer memory comprised of blocks of cells, wherein each cell can take on q different values or levels. While increasing the cell level is easy, reducing the level of a cell can be accomplished only by erasing an entire block. Since block erasures are highly undesirable, coding schemes - known as floating codes or flash codes - have been designed in order to maximize the number of times that information stored in a flash memory can be written (and re-written) prior to incurring a block erasure. An (n,k,t)_q flash code C is a coding scheme for storing k information bits in n cells in such a way that any sequence of up to t writes (where a write is a transition 0 -> 1 or 1 -> 0 in any one of the k bits) can be accommodated without a block erasure. The total number of available level transitions in n cells is n(q-1), and the write deficiency of C, defined as \delta(C) = n(q-1) - t, is a measure of how close the code comes to perfectly utilizing all these transitions. For k > 6 and large n, the best previously known construction of flash codes achieves a write deficiency of O(qk^2). On the other hand, the best known lower bound on write deficiency is \Omega(qk). In this paper, we present a new construction of flash codes that approaches this lower bound to within a factor logarithmic in k. To this end, we first improve upon the so-called "indexed" flash codes, due to Jiang and Bruck, by eliminating the need for index cells in the Jiang-Bruck construction. Next, we further increase the number of writes by introducing a new multi-stage (recursive) indexing scheme. We then show that the write deficiency of the resulting flash codes is O(qk\log k) if q \geq \log_2k, and at most O(k\log^2 k) otherwise.
0905.1537
On the Separability of Parallel Gaussian Interference Channels
cs.IT math.IT
The separability in parallel Gaussian interference channels (PGICs) is studied in this paper. We generalize the separability results in one-sided PGICs (OPGICs) by Sung \emph{et al.} to two-sided PGICs (TPGICs). Specifically, for strong and mixed TPGICs, we show necessary and sufficient conditions for the separability. For this, we show diagonal covariance matrices are sum-rate optimal for strong and mixed TPGICs.
0905.1543
Sum capacity of multi-source linear finite-field relay networks with fading
cs.IT math.IT
We study a fading linear finite-field relay network having multiple source-destination pairs. Because of the interference created by different unicast sessions, the problem of finding its capacity region is in general difficult. We observe that, since channels are time-varying, relays can deliver their received signals by waiting for appropriate channel realizations such that the destinations can decode their messages without interference. We propose a block Markov encoding and relaying scheme that exploits such channel variations. By deriving a general cut-set upper bound and an achievable rate region, we characterize the sum capacity for some classes of channel distributions and network topologies. For example, when the channels are uniformly distributed, the sum capacity is given by the minimum average rank of the channel matrices constructed by all cuts that separate the entire sources and destinations. We also describe other cases where the capacity is characterized.
0905.1546
Fast and Near-Optimal Matrix Completion via Randomized Basis Pursuit
cs.IT cs.LG math.IT
Motivated by the philosophy and phenomenal success of compressed sensing, the problem of reconstructing a matrix from a sampling of its entries has attracted much attention recently. Such a problem can be viewed as an information-theoretic variant of the well-studied matrix completion problem, and the main objective is to design an efficient algorithm that can reconstruct a matrix by inspecting only a small number of its entries. Although this is an impossible task in general, Cand\`es and co-authors have recently shown that under a so-called incoherence assumption, a rank $r$ $n\times n$ matrix can be reconstructed using semidefinite programming (SDP) after one inspects $O(nr\log^6n)$ of its entries. In this paper we propose an alternative approach that is much more efficient and can reconstruct a larger class of matrices by inspecting a significantly smaller number of the entries. Specifically, we first introduce a class of so-called stable matrices and show that it includes all those that satisfy the incoherence assumption. Then, we propose a randomized basis pursuit (RBP) algorithm and show that it can reconstruct a stable rank $r$ $n\times n$ matrix after inspecting $O(nr\log n)$ of its entries. Our sampling bound is only a logarithmic factor away from the information-theoretic limit and is essentially optimal. Moreover, the runtime of the RBP algorithm is bounded by $O(nr^2\log n+n^2r)$, which compares very favorably with the $\Omega(n^4r^2\log^{12}n)$ runtime of the SDP-based algorithm. Perhaps more importantly, our algorithm will provide an exact reconstruction of the input matrix in polynomial time. By contrast, the SDP-based algorithm can only provide an approximate one in polynomial time.
0905.1594
A Recommender System to Support the Scholarly Communication Process
cs.DL cs.IR
The number of researchers, articles, journals, conferences, funding opportunities, and other such scholarly resources continues to grow every year and at an increasing rate. Many services have emerged to support scholars in navigating particular aspects of this resource-rich environment. Some commercial publishers provide recommender and alert services for the articles and journals in their digital libraries. Similarly, numerous noncommercial social bookmarking services have emerged for citation sharing. While these services do provide some support, they lack an understanding of the various problem-solving scenarios that researchers face daily. Example scenarios, to name a few, include when a scholar is in search of an article related to another article of interest, when a scholar is in search of a potential collaborator for a funding opportunity, when a scholar is in search of an optimal venue to which to submit their article, and when a scholar, in the role of an editor, is in search of referees to review an article. All of these example scenarios can be represented as a problem in information filtering by means of context-sensitive recommendation. This article presents an overview of a context-sensitive recommender system to support the scholarly communication process that is based on the standards and technology set forth by the Semantic Web initiative.
0905.1609
Acquisition of morphological families and derivational series from a machine readable dictionary
cs.CL
The paper presents a linguistic and computational model aiming at making the morphological structure of the lexicon emerge from the formal and semantic regularities of the words it contains. The model is word-based. The proposed morphological structure consists of (1) binary relations that connect each headword with words that are morphologically related, and especially with the members of its morphological family and its derivational series, and of (2) the analogies that hold between the words. The model has been tested on the lexicon of French using the TLFi machine readable dictionary.
0905.1643
Fixed Point and Bregman Iterative Methods for Matrix Rank Minimization
math.OC cs.IT math.IT
The linearly constrained matrix rank minimization problem is widely applicable in many fields such as control, signal processing and system identification. The tightest convex relaxation of this problem is the linearly constrained nuclear norm minimization. Although the latter can be cast as a semidefinite programming problem, such an approach is computationally expensive to solve when the matrices are large. In this paper, we propose fixed point and Bregman iterative algorithms for solving the nuclear norm minimization problem and prove convergence of the first of these algorithms. By using a homotopy approach together with an approximate singular value decomposition procedure, we get a very fast, robust and powerful algorithm, which we call FPCA (Fixed Point Continuation with Approximate SVD), that can solve very large matrix rank minimization problems. Our numerical results on randomly generated and real matrix completion problems demonstrate that this algorithm is much faster and provides much better recoverability than semidefinite programming solvers such as SDPT3. For example, our algorithm can recover 1000 x 1000 matrices of rank 50 with a relative error of 1e-5 in about 3 minutes by sampling only 20 percent of the elements. We know of no other method that achieves as good recoverability. Numerical experiments on online recommendation, DNA microarray data set and image inpainting problems demonstrate the effectiveness of our algorithms.
0905.1745
Capacity of a Class of Symmetric SIMO Gaussian Interference Channels within O(1)
cs.IT math.IT
The N+1 user, 1 x N single input multiple output (SIMO) Gaussian interference channel where each transmitter has a single antenna and each receiver has N antennas is studied. The symmetric capacity within O(1) is characterized for the symmetric case where all direct links have the same signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) and all undesired links have the same interference-to-noise ratio (INR). The gap to the exact capacity is a constant which is independent of SNR and INR. To get this result, we first generalize the deterministic interference channel introduced by El Gamal and Costa to model interference channels with multiple antennas. We derive the capacity region of this deterministic interference channel. Based on the insights provided by the deterministic channel, we characterize the generalized degrees of freedom (GDOF) of Gaussian case, which directly leads to the O(1) capacity approximation. On the achievability side, an interesting conclusion is that the generalized degrees of freedom (GDOF) regime where treating interference as noise is found to be optimal in the 2 user interference channel, does not appear in the N+1 user, 1 x N SIMO case. On the converse side, new multi-user outer bounds emerge out of this work that do not follow directly from the 2 user case. In addition to the GDOF region, the outer bounds identify a strong interference regime where the capacity region is established.
0905.1751
Experiment Study of Entropy Convergence of Ant Colony Optimization
cs.NE cs.AI
Ant colony optimization (ACO) has been applied to the field of combinatorial optimization widely. But the study of convergence theory of ACO is rare under general condition. In this paper, the authors try to find the evidence to prove that entropy is related to the convergence of ACO, especially to the estimation of the minimum iteration number of convergence. Entropy is a new view point possibly to studying the ACO convergence under general condition. Key Words: Ant Colony Optimization, Convergence of ACO, Entropy
0905.1755
Can the Utility of Anonymized Data be used for Privacy Breaches?
cs.DB
Group based anonymization is the most widely studied approach for privacy preserving data publishing. This includes k-anonymity, l-diversity, and t-closeness, to name a few. The goal of this paper is to raise a fundamental issue on the privacy exposure of the current group based approach. This has been overlooked in the past. The group based anonymization approach basically hides each individual record behind a group to preserve data privacy. If not properly anonymized, patterns can actually be derived from the published data and be used by the adversary to breach individual privacy. For example, from the medical records released, if patterns such as people from certain countries rarely suffer from some disease can be derived, then the information can be used to imply linkage of other people in an anonymized group with this disease with higher likelihood. We call the derived patterns from the published data the foreground knowledge. This is in contrast to the background knowledge that the adversary may obtain from other channels as studied in some previous work. Finally, we show by experiments that the attack is realistic in the privacy benchmark dataset under the traditional group based anonymization approach.
0905.1778
Encoding of Network Protection Codes Against Link and Node Failures Over Finite Fields
cs.IT cs.CR cs.NI math.IT
Link and node failures are common two fundamental problems that affect operational networks. Hence, protection of communication networks is essential to increase their reliability, performance, and operations. Much research work has been done to protect against link and node failures, and to provide reliable solutions based on pre-defined provision or dynamic restoration of the domain. In this paper we develop network protection strategies against multiple link failures using network coding and joint capacities. In these strategies, the source nodes apply network coding for their transmitted data to provide backup copies for recovery at the receivers' nodes. Such techniques can be applied to optical, IP, and mesh networks. The encoding operations of protection codes are defined over finite fields. Furthermore, the normalized capacity of the communication network is given by $(n-t)/n$ in case of $t$ link failures. In addition, a bound on the minimum required field size is derived.
0905.1883
Cascade multiterminal source coding
cs.IT math.IT
We investigate distributed source coding of two correlated sources X and Y where messages are passed to a decoder in a cascade fashion. The encoder of X sends a message at rate R_1 to the encoder of Y. The encoder of Y then sends a message to the decoder at rate R_2 based both on Y and on the message it received about X. The decoder's task is to estimate a function of X and Y. For example, we consider the minimum mean squared-error distortion when encoding the sum of jointly Gaussian random variables under these constraints. We also characterize the rates needed to reconstruct a function of X and Y losslessly. Our general contribution toward understanding the limits of the cascade multiterminal source coding network is in the form of inner and outer bounds on the achievable rate region for satisfying a distortion constraint for an arbitrary distortion function d(x,y,z). The inner bound makes use of a balance between two encoding tactics--relaying the information about X and recompressing the information about X jointly with Y. In the Gaussian case, a threshold is discovered for identifying which of the two extreme strategies optimizes the inner bound. Relaying outperforms recompressing the sum at the relay for some rate pairs if the variance of X is greater than the variance of Y.
0905.1906
Improved Adaptive Group Testing Algorithms with Applications to Multiple Access Channels and Dead Sensor Diagnosis
cs.DS cs.IT math.IT
We study group-testing algorithms for resolving broadcast conflicts on a multiple access channel (MAC) and for identifying the dead sensors in a mobile ad hoc wireless network. In group-testing algorithms, we are asked to identify all the defective items in a set of items when we can test arbitrary subsets of items. In the standard group-testing problem, the result of a test is binary--the tested subset either contains defective items or not. In the more generalized versions we study in this paper, the result of each test is non-binary. For example, it may indicate whether the number of defective items contained in the tested subset is zero, one, or at least two. We give adaptive algorithms that are provably more efficient than previous group testing algorithms. We also show how our algorithms can be applied to solve conflict resolution on a MAC and dead sensor diagnosis. Dead sensor diagnosis poses an interesting challenge compared to MAC resolution, because dead sensors are not locally detectable, nor are they themselves active participants.
0905.1964
On Models of Multi-user Gaussian Channels with Fading
cs.IT math.IT
An analytically tractable model for Gaussian multiuser channels with fading is studied, and the capacity region of this model is found to be a good approximation of the capacity region of the original Gaussian network. This work extends the existing body of work on deterministic models for Gaussian multiuser channels to include the physical phenomenon of fading. In particular, it generalizes these results to a unicast, multiple node network setting with fading.
0905.1990
Sparse Linear Representation
cs.IT math.IT
This paper studies the question of how well a signal can be reprsented by a sparse linear combination of reference signals from an overcomplete dictionary. When the dictionary size is exponential in the dimension of signal, then the exact characterization of the optimal distortion is given as a function of the dictionary size exponent and the number of reference signals for the linear representation. Roughly speaking, every signal is sparse if the dictionary size is exponentially large, no matter how small the exponent is. Furthermore, an iterative method similar to matching pursuit that successively finds the best reference signal at each stage gives asymptotically optimal representations. This method is essentially equivalent to successive refinement for multiple descriptions and provides a simple alternative proof of the successive refinability of white Gaussian sources.
0905.2004
Termination Prediction for General Logic Programs
cs.PL cs.AI cs.LO
We present a heuristic framework for attacking the undecidable termination problem of logic programs, as an alternative to current termination/non-termination proof approaches. We introduce an idea of termination prediction, which predicts termination of a logic program in case that neither a termination nor a non-termination proof is applicable. We establish a necessary and sufficient characterization of infinite (generalized) SLDNF-derivations with arbitrary (concrete or moded) queries, and develop an algorithm that predicts termination of general logic programs with arbitrary non-floundering queries. We have implemented a termination prediction tool and obtained quite satisfactory experimental results. Except for five programs which break the experiment time limit, our prediction is 100% correct for all 296 benchmark programs of the Termination Competition 2007, of which eighteen programs cannot be proved by any of the existing state-of-the-art analyzers like AProVE07, NTI, Polytool and TALP.
0905.2098
End-to-End Joint Antenna Selection Strategy and Distributed Compress and Forward Strategy for Relay Channels
cs.IT math.IT
Multi-hop relay channels use multiple relay stages, each with multiple relay nodes, to facilitate communication between a source and destination. Previously, distributed space-time codes were proposed to maximize the achievable diversity-multiplexing tradeoff, however, they fail to achieve all the points of the optimal diversity-multiplexing tradeoff. In the presence of a low-rate feedback link from the destination to each relay stage and the source, this paper proposes an end-to-end antenna selection (EEAS) strategy as an alternative to distributed space-time codes. The EEAS strategy uses a subset of antennas of each relay stage for transmission of the source signal to the destination with amplify and forwarding at each relay stage. The subsets are chosen such that they maximize the end-to-end mutual information at the destination. The EEAS strategy achieves the corner points of the optimal diversity-multiplexing tradeoff (corresponding to maximum diversity gain and maximum multiplexing gain) and achieves better diversity gain at intermediate values of multiplexing gain, versus the best known distributed space-time coding strategies. A distributed compress and forward (CF) strategy is also proposed to achieve all points of the optimal diversity-multiplexing tradeoff for a two-hop relay channel with multiple relay nodes.
0905.2125
Experience-driven formation of parts-based representations in a model of layered visual memory
q-bio.NC cs.LG nlin.AO
Growing neuropsychological and neurophysiological evidence suggests that the visual cortex uses parts-based representations to encode, store and retrieve relevant objects. In such a scheme, objects are represented as a set of spatially distributed local features, or parts, arranged in stereotypical fashion. To encode the local appearance and to represent the relations between the constituent parts, there has to be an appropriate memory structure formed by previous experience with visual objects. Here, we propose a model how a hierarchical memory structure supporting efficient storage and rapid recall of parts-based representations can be established by an experience-driven process of self-organization. The process is based on the collaboration of slow bidirectional synaptic plasticity and homeostatic unit activity regulation, both running at the top of fast activity dynamics with winner-take-all character modulated by an oscillatory rhythm. These neural mechanisms lay down the basis for cooperation and competition between the distributed units and their synaptic connections. Choosing human face recognition as a test task, we show that, under the condition of open-ended, unsupervised incremental learning, the system is able to form memory traces for individual faces in a parts-based fashion. On a lower memory layer the synaptic structure is developed to represent local facial features and their interrelations, while the identities of different persons are captured explicitly on a higher layer. An additional property of the resulting representations is the sparseness of both the activity during the recall and the synaptic patterns comprising the memory traces.
0905.2159
On the Secrecy Rate of Interference Networks using structured codes
cs.IT math.IT
This paper shows that structured transmission schemes are a good choice for secret communication over interference networks with an eavesdropper. Structured transmission is shown to exploit channel asymmetries and thus perform better than randomly generated codebooks for such channels. For a class of interference channels, we show that an equivocation sumrate that is within two bits of the maximum possible legitimate communication sum-rate is achievable using lattice codes.
0905.2200
Towards Chip-on-Chip Neuroscience: Fast Mining of Frequent Episodes Using Graphics Processors
cs.DC cs.DB
Computational neuroscience is being revolutionized with the advent of multi-electrode arrays that provide real-time, dynamic, perspectives into brain function. Mining event streams from these chips is critical to understanding the firing patterns of neurons and to gaining insight into the underlying cellular activity. We present a GPGPU solution to mining spike trains. We focus on mining frequent episodes which captures coordinated events across time even in the presence of intervening background/"junk" events. Our algorithmic contributions are two-fold: MapConcatenate, a new computation-to-core mapping scheme, and a two-pass elimination approach to quickly find supported episodes from a large number of candidates. Together, they help realize a real-time "chip-on-chip" solution to neuroscience data mining, where one chip (the multi-electrode array) supplies the spike train data and another (the GPGPU) mines it at a scale unachievable previously. Evaluation on both synthetic and real datasets demonstrate the potential of our approach.
0905.2203
Accelerator-Oriented Algorithm Transformation for Temporal Data Mining
cs.DC cs.DB
Temporal data mining algorithms are becoming increasingly important in many application domains including computational neuroscience, especially the analysis of spike train data. While application scientists have been able to readily gather multi-neuronal datasets, analysis capabilities have lagged behind, due to both lack of powerful algorithms and inaccessibility to powerful hardware platforms. The advent of GPU architectures such as Nvidia's GTX 280 offers a cost-effective option to bring these capabilities to the neuroscientist's desktop. Rather than port existing algorithms onto this architecture, we advocate the need for algorithm transformation, i.e., rethinking the design of the algorithm in a way that need not necessarily mirror its serial implementation strictly. We present a novel implementation of a frequent episode discovery algorithm by revisiting "in-the-large" issues such as problem decomposition as well as "in-the-small" issues such as data layouts and memory access patterns. This is non-trivial because frequent episode discovery does not lend itself to GPU-friendly data-parallel mapping strategies. Applications to many datasets and comparisons to CPU as well as prior GPU implementations showcase the advantages of our approach.
0905.2248
Protection against link errors and failures using network coding
cs.IT cs.NI math.IT
We propose a network-coding based scheme to protect multiple bidirectional unicast connections against adversarial errors and failures in a network. The network consists of a set of bidirectional primary path connections that carry the uncoded traffic. The end nodes of the bidirectional connections are connected by a set of shared protection paths that provide the redundancy required for protection. Such protection strategies are employed in the domain of optical networks for recovery from failures. In this work we consider the problem of simultaneous protection against adversarial errors and failures. Suppose that n_e paths are corrupted by the omniscient adversary. Under our proposed protocol, the errors can be corrected at all the end nodes with 4n_e protection paths. More generally, if there are n_e adversarial errors and n_f failures, 4n_e + 2n_f protection paths are sufficient. The number of protection paths only depends on the number of errors and failures being protected against and is independent of the number of unicast connections.
0905.2297
On Optimal Distributed Joint Source-Channel Coding for Correlated Gaussian Sources over Gaussian Channels
cs.IT math.IT
We consider the problem of distributed joint source-channel coding of correlated Gaussian sources over a Gaussian Multiple Access Channel (GMAC). There may be side information at the decoder and/or at the encoders. First we specialize a general result (for transmission of correlated sources over a MAC with side information) to obtain sufficient conditions for reliable transmission over a Gaussian MAC. This system does not satisfy the source-channel separation. We study and compare three joint source-channel coding schemes available in literature. We show that each of these schemes is optimal under different scenarios. One of the schemes, Amplify and Forward (AF) which simplifies the design of encoders and the decoder, is optimal at low SNR but not at high SNR. Another scheme is asymptotically optimal at high SNR. The third coding scheme is optimal for orthogonal Gaussian channels. We also show that AF is close to the optimal scheme for orthogonal channels even at high SNR.
0905.2311
Residus de 2-formes differentielles sur les surfaces algebriques et applications aux codes correcteurs d'erreurs
math.AG cs.IT math.IT
The theory of algebraic-geometric codes has been developed in the beginning of the 80's after a paper of V.D. Goppa. Given a smooth projective algebraic curve X over a finite field, there are two different constructions of error-correcting codes. The first one, called "functional", uses some rational functions on X and the second one, called "differential", involves some rational 1-forms on this curve. Hundreds of papers are devoted to the study of such codes. In addition, a generalization of the functional construction for algebraic varieties of arbitrary dimension is given by Y. Manin in an article of 1984. A few papers about such codes has been published, but nothing has been done concerning a generalization of the differential construction to the higher-dimensional case. In this thesis, we propose a differential construction of codes on algebraic surfaces. Afterwards, we study the properties of these codes and particularly their relations with functional codes. A pretty surprising fact is that a main difference with the case of curves appears. Indeed, if in the case of curves, a differential code is always the orthogonal of a functional one, this assertion generally fails for surfaces. Last observation motivates the study of codes which are the orthogonal of some functional code on a surface. Therefore, we prove that, under some condition on the surface, these codes can be realized as sums of differential codes. Moreover, we show that some answers to some open problems "a la Bertini" could give very interesting informations on the parameters of these codes.
0905.2341
Differential approach for the study of duals of algebraic-geometric codes on surfaces
math.AG cs.IT math.IT math.NT
The purpose of the present article is the study of duals of functional codes on algebraic surfaces. We give a direct geometrical description of them, using differentials. Even if this geometrical description is less trivial, it can be regarded as a natural extension to surfaces of the result asserting that the dual of a functional code on a curve is a differential code. We study the parameters of such codes and state a lower bound for their minimum distance. Using this bound, one can study some examples of codes on surfaces, and in particular surfaces with Picard number 1 like elliptic quadrics or some particular cubic surfaces. The parameters of some of the studied codes reach those of the best known codes up to now.
0905.2345
The dual minimum distance of arbitrary dimensional algebraic--geometric codes
math.AG cs.IT math.IT
In this article, the minimum distance of the dual $C^{\bot}$ of a functional code $C$ on an arbitrary dimensional variety $X$ over a finite field $\F_q$ is studied. The approach consists in finding minimal configurations of points on $X$ which are not in "general position". If $X$ is a curve, the result improves in some situations the well-known Goppa designed distance.
0905.2347
Combining Supervised and Unsupervised Learning for GIS Classification
cs.LG
This paper presents a new hybrid learning algorithm for unsupervised classification tasks. We combined Fuzzy c-means learning algorithm and a supervised version of Minimerror to develop a hybrid incremental strategy allowing unsupervised classifications. We applied this new approach to a real-world database in order to know if the information contained in unlabeled features of a Geographic Information System (GIS), allows to well classify it. Finally, we compared our results to a classical supervised classification obtained by a multilayer perceptron.
0905.2386
Combinatorial information distance
cs.DM cs.IT math.IT
Let $|A|$ denote the cardinality of a finite set $A$. For any real number $x$ define $t(x)=x$ if $x\geq1$ and 1 otherwise. For any finite sets $A,B$ let $\delta(A,B)$ $=$ $\log_{2}(t(|B\cap\bar{A}||A|))$. We define {This appears as Technical Report # arXiv:0905.2386v4. A shorter version appears in the {Proc. of Mini-Conference on Applied Theoretical Computer Science (MATCOS-10)}, Slovenia, Oct. 13-14, 2010.} a new cobinatorial distance $d(A,B)$ $=$ $\max\{\delta(A,B),\delta(B,A)\} $ which may be applied to measure the distance between binary strings of different lengths. The distance is based on a classical combinatorial notion of information introduced by Kolmogorov.
0905.2392
On Channel Output Feedback in Deterministic Interference Channels
cs.IT math.IT
In this paper, we study the effect of channel output feedback on the sum capacity in a two-user symmetric deterministic interference channel. We find that having a single feedback link from one of the receivers to its own transmitter results in the same sum capacity as having a total of 4 feedback links from both the receivers to both the transmitters. Hence, from the sum capacity point of view, the three additional feedback links are not helpful. We also consider a half-duplex feedback model where the forward and the feedback resources are symmetric and timeshared. Surprisingly, we find that there is no gain in sum-capacity with feedback in a half-duplex feedback model when interference links have more capacity than direct links.
0905.2413
Outage Capacity and Optimal Transmission for Dying Channels
cs.IT math.IT
In wireless networks, communication links may be subject to random fatal impacts: for example, sensor networks under sudden power losses or cognitive radio networks with unpredictable primary user spectrum occupancy. Under such circumstances, it is critical to quantify how fast and reliably the information can be collected over attacked links. For a single point-to-point channel subject to a random attack, named as a \emph{dying channel}, we model it as a block-fading (BF) channel with a finite and random delay constraint. First, we define the outage capacity as the performance measure, followed by studying the optimal coding length $K$ such that the outage probability is minimized when uniform power allocation is assumed. For a given rate target and a coding length $K$, we then minimize the outage probability over the power allocation vector $\mv{P}_{K}$, and show that this optimization problem can be cast into a convex optimization problem under some conditions. The optimal solutions for several special cases are discussed. Furthermore, we extend the single point-to-point dying channel result to the parallel multi-channel case where each sub-channel is a dying channel, and investigate the corresponding asymptotic behavior of the overall outage probability with two different attack models: the independent-attack case and the $m$-dependent-attack case. It can be shown that the overall outage probability diminishes to zero for both cases as the number of sub-channels increases if the \emph{rate per unit cost} is less than a certain threshold. The outage exponents are also studied to reveal how fast the outage probability improves over the number of sub-channels.
0905.2416
Identifying Influential Bloggers: Time Does Matter
cs.IR cs.DL
Blogs have recently become one of the most favored services on the Web. Many users maintain a blog and write posts to express their opinion, experience and knowledge about a product, an event and every subject of general or specific interest. More users visit blogs to read these posts and comment them. This "participatory journalism" of blogs has such an impact upon the masses that Keller and Berry argued that through blogging "one American in tens tells the other nine how to vote, where to eat and what to buy" \cite{keller1}. Therefore, a significant issue is how to identify such influential bloggers. This problem is very new and the relevant literature lacks sophisticated solutions, but most importantly these solutions have not taken into account temporal aspects for identifying influential bloggers, even though the time is the most critical aspect of the Blogosphere. This article investigates the issue of identifying influential bloggers by proposing two easily computed blogger ranking methods, which incorporate temporal aspects of the blogging activity. Each method is based on a specific metric to score the blogger's posts. The first metric, termed MEIBI, takes into consideration the number of the blog post's inlinks and its comments, along with the publication date of the post. The second metric, MEIBIX, is used to score a blog post according to the number and age of the blog post's inlinks and its comments. These methods are evaluated against the state-of-the-art influential blogger identification method utilizing data collected from a real-world community blog site. The obtained results attest that the new methods are able to better identify significant temporal patterns in the blogging behaviour.
0905.2422
Multilevel Coding over Two-Hop Single-User Networks
cs.IT math.IT
In this paper, a two-hop network in which information is transmitted from a source via a relay to a destination is considered. It is assumed that the channels are static fading with additive white Gaussian noise. All nodes are equipped with a single antenna and the Channel State Information (CSI) of each hop is not available at the corresponding transmitter. The relay is assumed to be simple, i.e., not capable of data buffering over multiple coding blocks, water-filling over time, or rescheduling. A commonly used design criterion in such configurations is the maximization of the average received rate at the destination. We show that using a continuum of multilevel codes at both the source and the relay, in conjunction with decode and forward strategy at the relay, performs optimum in this setup. In addition, we present a scheme to optimally allocate the available source and relay powers to different levels of their corresponding codes. The performance of this scheme is evaluated assuming Rayleigh fading and compared with the previously known strategies.
0905.2423
Bounds on sets with few distances
math.CO cs.IT math.IT math.MG
We derive a new estimate of the size of finite sets of points in metric spaces with few distances. The following applications are considered: (1) we improve the Ray-Chaudhuri--Wilson bound of the size of uniform intersecting families of subsets; (2) we refine the bound of Delsarte-Goethals-Seidel on the maximum size of spherical sets with few distances; (3) we prove a new bound on codes with few distances in the Hamming space, improving an earlier result of Delsarte. We also find the size of maximal binary codes and maximal constant-weight codes of small length with 2 and 3 distances.
0905.2429
Time Delay Estimation from Low Rate Samples: A Union of Subspaces Approach
cs.IT math.IT
Time delay estimation arises in many applications in which a multipath medium has to be identified from pulses transmitted through the channel. Various approaches have been proposed in the literature to identify time delays introduced by multipath environments. However, these methods either operate on the analog received signal, or require high sampling rates in order to achieve reasonable time resolution. In this paper, our goal is to develop a unified approach to time delay estimation from low rate samples of the output of a multipath channel. Our methods result in perfect recovery of the multipath delays from samples of the channel output at the lowest possible rate, even in the presence of overlapping transmitted pulses. This rate depends only on the number of multipath components and the transmission rate, but not on the bandwidth of the probing signal. In addition, our development allows for a variety of different sampling methods. By properly manipulating the low-rate samples, we show that the time delays can be recovered using the well-known ESPRIT algorithm. Combining results from sampling theory with those obtained in the context of direction of arrival estimation methods, we develop necessary and sufficient conditions on the transmitted pulse and the sampling functions in order to ensure perfect recovery of the channel parameters at the minimal possible rate. Our results can be viewed in a broader context, as a sampling theorem for analog signals defined over an infinite union of subspaces.
0905.2435
Quantified Multimodal Logics in Simple Type Theory
cs.AI cs.LO
We present a straightforward embedding of quantified multimodal logic in simple type theory and prove its soundness and completeness. Modal operators are replaced by quantification over a type of possible worlds. We present simple experiments, using existing higher-order theorem provers, to demonstrate that the embedding allows automated proofs of statements in these logics, as well as meta properties of them.
0905.2447
The Diversity Multiplexing Tradeoff for Interference Networks
cs.IT math.IT
The diversity-multiplexing tradeoff (DMT) for interference networks, such as the interference channel, the X channel, the Z interference channel and the Z channel, is analyzed. In particular, we investigate the impact of rate-splitting and channel knowledge at the transmitters. We also use the DMT of the Z channel and the Z interference channel to distill insights into the "loud neighbor" problem for femto-cell networks.
0905.2449
The Role of Self-Forensics in Vehicle Crash Investigations and Event Reconstruction
cs.CY cs.AI cs.CR cs.OH
This paper further introduces and formalizes a novel concept of self-forensics for automotive vehicles, specified in the Forensic Lucid language. We argue that self-forensics, with the forensics taken out of the cybercrime domain, is applicable to "self-dissection" of intelligent vehicles and hardware systems for automated incident and anomaly analysis and event reconstruction by the software with or without the aid of the engineering teams in a variety of forensic scenarios. We propose a formal design, requirements, and specification of the self-forensic enabled units (similar to blackboxes) in vehicles that will help investigation of incidents and also automated reasoning and verification of theories along with the events reconstruction in a formal model. We argue such an analysis is beneficial to improve the safety of the passengers and their vehicles, like the airline industry does for planes.
0905.2459
On Design and Implementation of the Distributed Modular Audio Recognition Framework: Requirements and Specification Design Document
cs.CV cs.DC cs.MM cs.NE cs.SD
We present the requirements and design specification of the open-source Distributed Modular Audio Recognition Framework (DMARF), a distributed extension of MARF. The distributed version aggregates a number of distributed technologies (e.g. Java RMI, CORBA, Web Services) in a pluggable and modular model along with the provision of advanced distributed systems algorithms. We outline the associated challenges incurred during the design and implementation as well as overall specification of the project and its advantages and limitations.
0905.2463
Generalized Kernel-based Visual Tracking
cs.CV cs.MM
In this work we generalize the plain MS trackers and attempt to overcome standard mean shift trackers' two limitations. It is well known that modeling and maintaining a representation of a target object is an important component of a successful visual tracker. However, little work has been done on building a robust template model for kernel-based MS tracking. In contrast to building a template from a single frame, we train a robust object representation model from a large amount of data. Tracking is viewed as a binary classification problem, and a discriminative classification rule is learned to distinguish between the object and background. We adopt a support vector machine (SVM) for training. The tracker is then implemented by maximizing the classification score. An iterative optimization scheme very similar to MS is derived for this purpose.
0905.2473
On the Workings of Genetic Algorithms: The Genoclique Fixing Hypothesis
cs.NE cs.AI
We recently reported that the simple genetic algorithm (SGA) is capable of performing a remarkable form of sublinear computation which has a straightforward connection with the general problem of interacting attributes in data-mining. In this paper we explain how the SGA can leverage this computational proficiency to perform efficient adaptation on a broad class of fitness functions. Based on the relative ease with which a practical fitness function might belong to this broad class, we submit a new hypothesis about the workings of genetic algorithms. We explain why our hypothesis is superior to the building block hypothesis, and, by way of empirical validation, we present the results of an experiment in which the use of a simple mechanism called clamping dramatically improved the performance of an SGA with uniform crossover on large, randomly generated instances of the MAX 3-SAT problem.