id
stringlengths
9
16
title
stringlengths
4
278
categories
stringlengths
5
104
abstract
stringlengths
6
4.09k
0707.0978
When Network Coding and Dirty Paper Coding meet in a Cooperative Ad Hoc Network
cs.IT math.IT
We develop and analyze new cooperative strategies for ad hoc networks that are more spectrally efficient than classical DF cooperative protocols. Using analog network coding, our strategies preserve the practical half-duplex assumption but relax the orthogonality constraint. The introduction of interference due to non-orthogonality is mitigated thanks to precoding, in particular Dirty Paper coding. Combined with smart power allocation, our cooperation strategies allow to save time and lead to more efficient use of bandwidth and to improved network throughput with respect to classical RDF/PDF.
0707.1008
On Cognitive Interference Networks
cs.IT math.IT
We study the high-power asymptotic behavior of the sum-rate capacity of multi-user interference networks with an equal number of transmitters and receivers. We assume that each transmitter is cognizant of the message it wishes to convey to its corresponding receiver and also of the messages that a subset of the other transmitters wish to send. The receivers are assumed not to be able to cooperate in any way so that they must base their decision on the signal they receive only. We focus on the network's pre-log, which is defined as the limiting ratio of the sum-rate capacity to half the logarithm of the transmitted power. We present both upper and lower bounds on the network's pre-log. The lower bounds are based on a linear partial-cancellation scheme which entails linearly transforming Gaussian codebooks so as to eliminate the interference in a subset of the receivers. Inter alias, the bounds give a complete characterization of the networks and side-information settings that result in a full pre-log, i.e., in a pre-log that is equal to the number of transmitters (and receivers) as well as a complete characterization of networks whose pre-log is equal to the full pre-log minus one. They also fully characterize networks where the full pre-log can only be achieved if each transmitter knows the messages of all users, i.e., when the side-information is "full".
0707.1025
The star trellis decoding of Reed-Solomon codes
cs.IT math.IT
The new method for Reed-Solomon codes decoding is introduced. The method is based on the star trellis decoding of the binary image of Reed-Solomon codes.
0707.1063
High-resolution distributed sampling of bandlimited fields with low-precision sensors
cs.IT math.IT
The problem of sampling a discrete-time sequence of spatially bandlimited fields with a bounded dynamic range, in a distributed, communication-constrained, processing environment is addressed. A central unit, having access to the data gathered by a dense network of fixed-precision sensors, operating under stringent inter-node communication constraints, is required to reconstruct the field snapshots to maximum accuracy. Both deterministic and stochastic field models are considered. For stochastic fields, results are established in the almost-sure sense. The feasibility of having a flexible tradeoff between the oversampling rate (sensor density) and the analog-to-digital converter (ADC) precision, while achieving an exponential accuracy in the number of bits per Nyquist-interval per snapshot is demonstrated. This exposes an underlying ``conservation of bits'' principle: the bit-budget per Nyquist-interval per snapshot (the rate) can be distributed along the amplitude axis (sensor-precision) and space (sensor density) in an almost arbitrary discrete-valued manner, while retaining the same (exponential) distortion-rate characteristics. Achievable information scaling laws for field reconstruction over a bounded region are also derived: With N one-bit sensors per Nyquist-interval, $\Theta(\log N)$ Nyquist-intervals, and total network bitrate $R_{net} = \Theta((\log N)^2)$ (per-sensor bitrate $\Theta((\log N)/N)$), the maximum pointwise distortion goes to zero as $D = O((\log N)^2/N)$ or $D = O(R_{net} 2^{-\beta \sqrt{R_{net}}})$. This is shown to be possible with only nearest-neighbor communication, distributed coding, and appropriate interpolation algorithms. For a fixed, nonzero target distortion, the number of fixed-precision sensors and the network rate needed is always finite.
0707.1064
The Effect of Noise Correlation in AF Relay Networks
cs.IT math.IT
In wireless relay networks, noise at the relays can be correlated possibly due to common interference or noise propagation from preceding hops. In this work we consider a parallel relay network with noise correlation. For the relay strategy of amplify-and-forward (AF), we determine the optimal rate maximizing relay gains when correlation knowledge is available at the relays. The effect of correlation on the performance of the relay networks is analyzed for the cases where full knowledge of correlation is available at the relays and when there is no knowledge about the correlation structure. Interestingly we find that, on the average, noise correlation is beneficial regardless of whether the relays know the noise covariance matrix or not. However, the knowledge of correlation can greatly improve the performance. Typically, the performance improvement from correlation knowledge increases with the relay power and the number of relays. With perfect correlation knowledge the system is capable of canceling interference if the number of interferers is less than the number of relays. For a dual-hop multiple access parallel network, we obtain closed form expressions for the maximum sum-rate and the optimal relay strategy. The relay optimization for networks with three hops is also considered. For any relay gains for the first stage relays, this represents a parallel relay network with correlated noise. Based on the result of two hop networks with noise correlation, we propose an algorithm for solving the relay optimization problem for three-hop networks.
0707.1083
Delayed Correlations in Inter-Domain Network Traffic
cs.NI cs.IR
To observe the evolution of network traffic correlations we analyze the eigenvalue spectra and eigenvectors statistics of delayed correlation matrices of network traffic counts time series. Delayed correlation matrix D is composed of the correlations between one variable in the multivariable time series and another at a time delay \tau . Inverse participation ratio (IPR) of eigenvectors of D deviates substantially from the IPR of eigenvectors of the equal time correlation matrix C. We relate this finding to the localization and discuss its importance for network congestion control. The time-lagged correlation pattern between network time series is preserved over a long time, up to 100\tau, where \tau=300 sec. The largest eigenvalue \lambda_{max} of D and the corresponding IPR oscillate with two characteristic periods of 3\tau and 6\tau . The existence of delayed correlations between network time series fits well into the long range dependence (LRD) property of the network traffic. The ability to monitor and control the long memory processes is crucial since they impact the network performance. Injecting the random traffic counts between non-randomly correlated time series, we were able to break the picture of periodicity of \lambda_{max}. In addition, we investigated influence of the periodic injections on both largest eigenvalue and the IPR, and addressed relevance of these indicators for the LRD and self-similarity of the network traffic.
0707.1099
Worst-Case Interactive Communication and Enhancing Sensor Network Lifetime
cs.IT math.IT
We are concerned with the problem of maximizing the worst-case lifetime of a data-gathering wireless sensor network consisting of a set of sensor nodes directly communicating with a base-station.We propose to solve this problem by modeling sensor node and base-station communication as the interactive communication between multiple correlated informants (sensor nodes) and a recipient (base-station). We provide practical and scalable interactive communication protocols for data gathering in sensor networks and demonstrate their efficiency compared to traditional approaches. In this paper, we first develop a formalism to address the problem of worst-case interactive communication between a set of multiple correlated informants and a recipient. We realize that there can be different objectives to achieve in such a communication scenario and compute the optimal number of messages and bits exchanged to realize these objectives. Then, we propose to adapt these results in the context of single-hop data-gathering sensor networks. Finally, based on this proposed formalism, we propose a clustering based communication protocol for large sensor networks and demonstrate its superiority over a traditional clustering protocol.
0707.1193
Singular curves and cusp points in the joint space of 3-RPR parallel manipulators
cs.RO
This paper investigates the singular curves in two-dimensional slices of the joint space of a family of planar parallel manipulators. It focuses on special points, referred to as cusp points, which may appear on these curves. Cusp points play an important role in the kinematic behavior of parallel manipulators since they make possible a nonsingular change of assembly mode. The purpose of this study is twofold. First, it reviews an important previous work, which, to the authors' knowledge, has never been exploited yet. Second, it determines the cusp points in any two-dimensional slice of the joint space. First results show that the number of cusp points may vary from zero to eight. This work finds applications in both design and trajectory planning.
0707.1241
Graph-Based Decoding in the Presence of ISI
cs.IT math.IT
We propose an approximation of maximum-likelihood detection in ISI channels based on linear programming or message passing. We convert the detection problem into a binary decoding problem, which can be easily combined with LDPC decoding. We show that, for a certain class of channels and in the absence of coding, the proposed technique provides the exact ML solution without an exponential complexity in the size of channel memory, while for some other channels, this method has a non-diminishing probability of failure as SNR increases. Some analysis is provided for the error events of the proposed technique under linear programming.
0707.1288
Espaces de repr\'esentation multidimensionnels d\'edi\'es \`a la visualisation
cs.DB
In decision-support systems, the visual component is important for On Line Analysis Processing (OLAP). In this paper, we propose a new approach that faces the visualization problem due to data sparsity. We use the results of a Multiple Correspondence Analysis (MCA) to reduce the negative effect of sparsity by organizing differently data cube cells. Our approach does not reduce sparsity, however it tries to build relevant representation spaces where facts are efficiently gathered. In order to evaluate our approach, we propose an homogeneity criterion based on geometric neighborhood of cells. The obtained experimental results have shown the efficiency of our method.
0707.1295
Efficient supervised learning in networks with binary synapses
q-bio.NC cond-mat.stat-mech cs.NE q-bio.QM
Recent experimental studies indicate that synaptic changes induced by neuronal activity are discrete jumps between a small number of stable states. Learning in systems with discrete synapses is known to be a computationally hard problem. Here, we study a neurobiologically plausible on-line learning algorithm that derives from Belief Propagation algorithms. We show that it performs remarkably well in a model neuron with binary synapses, and a finite number of `hidden' states per synapse, that has to learn a random classification task. Such system is able to learn a number of associations close to the theoretical limit, in time which is sublinear in system size. This is to our knowledge the first on-line algorithm that is able to achieve efficiently a finite number of patterns learned per binary synapse. Furthermore, we show that performance is optimal for a finite number of hidden states which becomes very small for sparse coding. The algorithm is similar to the standard `perceptron' learning algorithm, with an additional rule for synaptic transitions which occur only if a currently presented pattern is `barely correct'. In this case, the synaptic changes are meta-plastic only (change in hidden states and not in actual synaptic state), stabilizing the synapse in its current state. Finally, we show that a system with two visible states and K hidden states is much more robust to noise than a system with K visible states. We suggest this rule is sufficiently simple to be easily implemented by neurobiological systems or in hardware.
0707.1304
Un index de jointure pour les entrep\^ots de donn\'ees XML
cs.DB
XML data warehouses form an interesting basis for decision-support applications that exploit heterogeneous data from multiple sources. However, XML-native database systems currently bear limited performances and it is necessary to research ways to optimize them. In this paper, we propose a new index that is specifically adapted to the multidimensional architecture of XML warehouses and eliminates join operations, while preserving the information contained in the original warehouse. A theoretical study and experimental results demonstrate the efficiency of our index, even when queries are complex.
0707.1306
S\'election simultan\'ee d'index et de vues mat\'erialis\'ees
cs.DB
Indices and materialized views are physical structures that accelerate data access in data warehouses. However, these data structures generate some maintenance overhead. They also share the same storage space. The existing studies about index and materialized view selection consider these structures separately. In this paper, we adopt the opposite stance and couple index and materialized view selection to take into account the interactions between them and achieve an efficient storage space sharing. We develop cost models that evaluate the respective benefit of indexing and view materialization. These cost models are then exploited by a greedy algorithm to select a relevant configuration of indices and materialized views. Experimental results show that our strategy performs better than the independent selection of indices and materialized views.
0707.1452
Clusters, Graphs, and Networks for Analysing Internet-Web-Supported Communication within a Virtual Community
cs.AI cs.LG
The proposal is to use clusters, graphs and networks as models in order to analyse the Web structure. Clusters, graphs and networks provide knowledge representation and organization. Clusters were generated by co-site analysis. The sample is a set of academic Web sites from the countries belonging to the European Union. These clusters are here revisited from the point of view of graph theory and social network analysis. This is a quantitative and structural analysis. In fact, the Internet is a computer network that connects people and organizations. Thus we may consider it to be a social network. The set of Web academic sites represents an empirical social network, and is viewed as a virtual community. The network structural properties are here analysed applying together cluster analysis, graph theory and social network analysis.
0707.1470
Secrecy Capacity Region of Fading Broadcast Channels
cs.IT math.IT
The fading broadcast channel with confidential messages (BCC) is investigated, where a source node has common information for two receivers (receivers 1 and 2), and has confidential information intended only for receiver 1. The confidential information needs to be kept as secret as possible from receiver 2. The channel state information (CSI) is assumed to be known at both the transmitter and the receivers. The secrecy capacity region is first established for the parallel Gaussian BCC, and the optimal source power allocations that achieve the boundary of the secrecy capacity region are derived. In particular, the secrecy capacity region is established for the Gaussian case of the Csiszar-Korner BCC model. The secrecy capacity results are then applied to give the ergodic secrecy capacity region for the fading BCC.
0707.1534
An Architecture Framework for Complex Data Warehouses
cs.DB
Nowadays, many decision support applications need to exploit data that are not only numerical or symbolic, but also multimedia, multistructure, multisource, multimodal, and/or multiversion. We term such data complex data. Managing and analyzing complex data involves a lot of different issues regarding their structure, storage and processing, and metadata are a key element in all these processes. Such problems have been addressed by classical data warehousing (i.e., applied to "simple" data). However, data warehousing approaches need to be adapted for complex data. In this paper, we first propose a precise, though open, definition of complex data. Then we present a general architecture framework for warehousing complex data. This architecture heavily relies on metadata and domain-related knowledge, and rests on the XML language, which helps storing data, metadata and domain-specific knowledge altogether, and facilitates communication between the various warehousing processes.
0707.1548
Data Mining-based Materialized View and Index Selection in Data Warehouses
cs.DB
Materialized views and indexes are physical structures for accelerating data access that are casually used in data warehouses. However, these data structures generate some maintenance overhead. They also share the same storage space. Most existing studies about materialized view and index selection consider these structures separately. In this paper, we adopt the opposite stance and couple materialized view and index selection to take view-index interactions into account and achieve efficient storage space sharing. Candidate materialized views and indexes are selected through a data mining process. We also exploit cost models that evaluate the respective benefit of indexing and view materialization, and help select a relevant configuration of indexes and materialized views among the candidates. Experimental results show that our strategy performs better than an independent selection of materialized views and indexes.
0707.1558
Autonomy with regard to an Attribute
cs.MA
This paper presents a model of autonomy called autonomy with regard to an attribute applicable to cognitive and not cognitive artificial agents. Three criteria (global / partial, social / nonsocial, absolute / relative) are defined and used to describe the main characteristics of this type of autonomy. A software agent autonomous with regard to the mobility illustrates a possible implementation of this model.
0707.1588
A Tight Lower Bound to the Outage Probability of Discrete-Input Block-Fading Channels
cs.IT math.IT
In this correspondence, we propose a tight lower bound to the outage probability of discrete-input Nakagami-m block-fading channels. The approach permits an efficient method for numerical evaluation of the bound, providing an additional tool for system design. The optimal rate-diversity trade-off for the Nakagami-m block-fading channel is also derived and a tight upper bound is obtained for the optimal coding gain constant.
0707.1644
Fast and Simple Relational Processing of Uncertain Data
cs.DB cs.PF
This paper introduces U-relations, a succinct and purely relational representation system for uncertain databases. U-relations support attribute-level uncertainty using vertical partitioning. If we consider positive relational algebra extended by an operation for computing possible answers, a query on the logical level can be translated into, and evaluated as, a single relational algebra query on the U-relation representation. The translation scheme essentially preserves the size of the query in terms of number of operations and, in particular, number of joins. Standard techniques employed in off-the-shelf relational database management systems are effective for optimizing and processing queries on U-relations. In our experiments we show that query evaluation on U-relations scales to large amounts of data with high degrees of uncertainty.
0707.1739
On slow-fading non-separable correlation MIMO systems
cs.IT math.IT
In a frequency selective slow-fading channel in a MIMO system, the channel matrix is of the form of a block matrix. We propose a method to calculate the limit of the eigenvalue distribution of block matrices if the size of the blocks tends to infinity. We will also calculate the asymptotic eigenvalue distribution of $HH^*$, where the entries of $H$ are jointly Gaussian, with a correlation of the form $E[h_{pj}\bar h_{qk}]= \sum_{s=1}^t \Psi^{(s)}_{jk}\hat\Psi^{(s)}_{pq}$ (where $t$ is fixed and does not increase with the size of the matrix). We will use an operator-valued free probability approach to achieve this goal. Using this method, we derive a system of equations, which can be solved numerically to compute the desired eigenvalue distribution.
0707.1824
The Kinematics of Manipulators Built From Closed Planar Mechanisms
cs.RO
The paper discusses the kinematics of manipulators builts of planar closed kinematic chains. A special kinematic scheme is extracted from the array of these mechanisms that looks the most promising for the creation of different types of robotic manipulators. The structural features of this manipulator determine a number of its original properties that essentially simplify its control. These features allow the main control problems to be effectively overcome by application of the simple kinematic problems. The workspace and singular configurations of a basic planar manipulator are studied. By using a graphic simulation method, motions of the designed mechanism are examined. A prototype of this mechanism was implemented to verify the proposed approach.
0707.1859
On the Degrees of Freedom in Cognitive Radio Channels
cs.IT math.IT
After receiving useful peer comments, we would like to withdraw this paper.
0707.1912
Throughput Scaling Laws for Wireless Networks with Fading Channels
cs.IT math.IT
A network of n communication links, operating over a shared wireless channel, is considered. Fading is assumed to be the dominant factor affecting the strength of the channels between transmitter and receiver terminals. It is assumed that each link can be active and transmit with a constant power P or remain silent. The objective is to maximize the throughput over the selection of active links. By deriving an upper bound and a lower bound, it is shown that in the case of Rayleigh fading (i) the maximum throughput scales like $\log n$ (ii) the maximum throughput is achievable in a distributed fashion. The upper bound is obtained using probabilistic methods, where the key point is to upper bound the throughput of any random set of active links by a chi-squared random variable. To obtain the lower bound, a decentralized link activation strategy is proposed and analyzed.
0707.1913
Removing Manually-Generated Boilerplate from Electronic Texts: Experiments with Project Gutenberg e-Books
cs.DL cs.CL
Collaborative work on unstructured or semi-structured documents, such as in literature corpora or source code, often involves agreed upon templates containing metadata. These templates are not consistent across users and over time. Rule-based parsing of these templates is expensive to maintain and tends to fail as new documents are added. Statistical techniques based on frequent occurrences have the potential to identify automatically a large fraction of the templates, thus reducing the burden on the programmers. We investigate the case of the Project Gutenberg corpus, where most documents are in ASCII format with preambles and epilogues that are often copied and pasted or manually typed. We show that a statistical approach can solve most cases though some documents require knowledge of English. We also survey various technical solutions that make our approach applicable to large data sets.
0707.1957
Moveability and Collision Analysis for Fully-Parallel Manipulators
cs.RO
The aim of this paper is to characterize the moveability of fully-parallel manipulators in the presence of obstacles. Fully parallel manipulators are used in applications where accuracy, stiffness or high speeds and accelerations are required \cite{Merlet:97}. However, one of its main drawbacks is a relatively small workspace compared to the one of serial manipulators. This is due mainly to the existence of potential internal collisions, and the existence of singularities. In this paper, the notion of free aspect is defined which permits to exhibit domains of the workspace and the joint space free of singularity and collision. The main application of this study is the moveability analysis in the workspace of the manipulator as well as path-planning, control and design.
0707.2006
Working Modes and Aspects in Fully-Parallel Manipulator
cs.RO
The aim of this paper is to characterize the notion of aspect in the workspace and in the joint space for parallel manipulators. In opposite to the serial manipulators, the parallel manipulators can admit not only multiple inverse kinematic solutions, but also multiple direct kinematic solutions. The notion of aspect introduced for serial manipulators in [Borrel 86], and redefined for parallel manipulators with only one inverse kinematic solution in [Wenger 1997], is redefined for general fully parallel manipulators. Two Jacobian matrices appear in the kinematic relations between the joint-rate and the Cartesian-velocity vectors, which are called the "inverse kinematics" and the "direct kinematics" matrices. The study of these matrices allow to respectively define the parallel and the serial singularities. The notion of working modes is introduced to separate inverse kinematic solutions. Thus, we can find out domains of the workspace and the joint space exempt of singularity. Application of this study is the moveability analysis in the workspace of the manipulator as well as path-planing and control. This study is illustrated in this paper with a RR-RRR planar parallel manipulator.
0707.2014
On the error exponent of variable-length block-coding schemes over finite-state Markov channels with feedback
cs.IT math.IT
The error exponent of Markov channels with feedback is studied in the variable-length block-coding setting. Burnashev's classic result is extended and a single letter characterization for the reliability function of finite-state Markov channels is presented, under the assumption that the channel state is causally observed both at the transmitter and at the receiver side. Tools from stochastic control theory are used in order to treat channels with intersymbol interference. In particular the convex analytical approach to Markov decision processes is adopted to handle problems with stopping time horizons arising from variable-length coding schemes.
0707.2017
The Isoconditioning Loci of A Class of Closed-Chain Manipulators
cs.RO
The subject of this paper is a special class of closed-chain manipulators. First, we analyze a family of two-degree-of-freedom (dof) five-bar planar linkages. Two Jacobian matrices appear in the kinematic relations between the joint-rate and the Cartesian-velocity vectors, which are called the ``inverse kinematics" and the "direct kinematics" matrices. It is shown that the loci of points of the workspace where the condition number of the direct-kinematics matrix remains constant, i.e., the isoconditioning loci, are the coupler points of the four-bar linkage obtained upon locking the middle joint of the linkage. Furthermore, if the line of centers of the two actuated revolutes is used as the axis of a third actuated revolute, then a three-dof hybrid manipulator is obtained. The isoconditioning loci of this manipulator are surfaces of revolution generated by the isoconditioning curves of the two-dof manipulator, whose axis of symmetry is that of the third actuated revolute.
0707.2027
Workspace and Assembly modes in Fully-Parallel Manipulators : A Descriptive Study
cs.RO
The goal of this paper is to explain, using a typical example, the distribution of the different assembly modes in the workspace and their effective role in the execution of trajectories. The singular and non-singular changes of assembly mode are described and compared to each other. The non-singular change of assembly mode is more deeply analysed and discussed in the context of trajectory planning. In particular, it is shown that, according to the location of the initial and final configurations with respect to the uniqueness domains in the workspace, there are three different cases to consider before planning a linking trajectory.
0707.2034
Conception Isotropique D'Une Morphologie Parall\`Ele : Application \`a L'Usinage
cs.RO
The aim of this paper is the isotropic design of a hybrid morphology dedicated to 3-axis machining applications. It is necessary to ensure the feasibility of continuous, singularity-free trajectories, as well as a good manipulability in position and velocity. We want to propose an alternative design to conventional serial machine-tools. We compare a serial PPP machine-tool (three prismatic orthogonal axes) with a hybrid architecture which we optimize only the first two axes. The critrerion used for the optimization is the conditioning of the Jacobian matrices. The optimum, namely isotropy, can be obtained which provides our architecture with excellent manipulability properties.
0707.2042
A distributed Approach for Access and Visibility Task under Ergonomic Constraints with a Manikin in a Virtual Reality Environment
cs.RO
This paper presents a new method, based on a multi-agent system and on digital mock-up technology, to assess an efficient path planner for a manikin for access and visibility task under ergonomic constraints. In order to solve this problem, the human operator is integrated in the process optimization to contribute to a global perception of the environment. This operator cooperates, in real-time, with several automatic local elementary agents. The result of this work validates solutions brought by digital mock-up and that can be applied to simulate maintenance task.
0707.2090
A Training based Distributed Non-Coherent Space-Time Coding Strategy
cs.IT math.IT
Unitary space-time modulation is known to be an efficient means to communicate over non-coherent Multiple Input Multiple Output (MIMO) channels. In this letter, differential unitary space-time coding and non-coherent space-time coding for the training based approach of Kim and Tarokh are addressed. For this approach, necessary and sufficient conditions for multi-group decodability are derived in a simple way assuming a Generalized Likelihood Ratio Test receiver and a unitary codebook. Extending Kim and Tarokh's approach for colocated MIMO systems, a novel training based approach to distributed non-coherent space-time coding for wireless relay networks is proposed. An explicit construction of two-group decodable distributed non-coherent space-time codes achieving full cooperative diversity for all even number of relays is provided.
0707.2176
Benefit of Delay on the Diversity-Multiplexing Tradeoffs of MIMO Channels with Partial CSI
cs.IT math.IT
This paper re-examines the well-known fundamental tradeoffs between rate and reliability for the multi-antenna, block Rayleigh fading channel in the high signal to noise ratio (SNR) regime when (i) the transmitter has access to (noiseless) one bit per coherence-interval of causal channel state information (CSI) and (ii) soft decoding delays together with worst-case delay guarantees are acceptable. A key finding of this work is that substantial improvements in reliability can be realized with a very short expected delay and a slightly longer (but bounded) worst-case decoding delay guarantee in communication systems where the transmitter has access to even one bit per coherence interval of causal CSI. While similar in spirit to the recent work on communication systems based on automatic repeat requests (ARQ) where decoding failure is known at the transmitter and leads to re-transmission, here transmit side-information is purely based on CSI. The findings reported here also lend further support to an emerging understanding that decoding delay (related to throughput) and codeword blocklength (related to coding complexity and delays) are distinctly different design parameters which can be tuned to control reliability.
0707.2185
Mod\'elisation Dynamique d'un Robot Parall\`ele \`a 3-DDL : l'Orthoglide
cs.RO
In this article, we propose a method for calculation of the inverse and direct dynamic models of the Orthoglide, a parallel robot with threedegrees of freedom in translation. These models are calculated starting from the elements of the dynamic model of the kinematic chain structure and equations of Newton-Euler applied to the platform. These models are obtained in explicit form having an interesting physical interpretation.
0707.2191
Word statistics in Blogs and RSS feeds: Towards empirical universal evidence
cs.IT math.IT
We focus on the statistics of word occurrences and of the waiting times between such occurrences in Blogs. Due to the heterogeneity of words' frequencies, the empirical analysis is performed by studying classes of "frequently-equivalent" words, i.e. by grouping words depending on their frequencies. Two limiting cases are considered: the dilute limit, i.e. for those words that are used less than once a day, and the dense limit for frequent words. In both cases, extreme events occur more frequently than expected from the Poisson hypothesis. These deviations from Poisson statistics reveal non-trivial time correlations between events that are associated with bursts of activities. The distribution of waiting times is shown to behave like a stretched exponential and to have the same shape for different sets of words sharing a common frequency, thereby revealing universal features.
0707.2227
Degeneracy study of the forward kinematics of planar 3-RPR parallel manipulators
cs.RO
This paper investigates two situations in which the forward kinematics of planar 3-RPR parallel manipulators degenerates. These situations have not been addressed before. The first degeneracy arises when the three input joint variables r1, r2 and r3 satisfy a certain relationship. This degeneracy yields a double root of the characteristic polynomial in t, which could be erroneously interpreted as two coalesce assembly modes. But, unlike what arises in non-degenerate cases, this double root yields two sets of solutions for the position coordinates (x, y) of the platform. In the second situation, we show that the forward kinematics degenerates over the whole joint space if the base and platform triangles are congruent and the platform triangle is rotated by 180 deg about one of its sides. For these "degenerate" manipulators, which are defined here for the first time, the forward kinematics is reduced to the solution of a 3rd-degree polynomial and a quadratics in sequence. Such manipulators constitute, in turn, a new family of analytic planar manipulators that would be more suitable for industrial applications.
0707.2228
Kinematic Analysis of a Family of 3R Manipulators
cs.RO
The workspace topologies of a family of 3-revolute (3R) positioning manipulators are enumerated. The workspace is characterized in a half-cross section by the singular curves. The workspace topology is defined by the number of cusps that appear on these singular curves. The design parameters space is shown to be divided into five domains where all manipulators have the same number of cusps. Each separating surface is given as an explicit expression in the DH-parameters. As an application of this work, we provide a necessary and sufficient condition for a 3R orthogonal manipulator to be cuspidal, i.e. to change posture without meeting a singularity. This condition is set as an explicit expression in the DH parameters.
0707.2229
The Computation of All 4R Serial Spherical Wrists With an Isotropic Architecture
cs.RO
A spherical wrist of the serial type with n revolute (R) joints is said to be isotropic if it can attain a posture whereby the singular values of its Jacobian matrix are all equal to sqrt(n/3). What isotropy brings about is robustness to manufacturing, assembly, and measurement errors, thereby guaranteeing a maximum orientation accuracy. In this paper we investigate the existence of redundant isotropic architectures, which should add to the dexterity of the wrist under design by virtue of its extra degree of freedom. The problem formulation, for, leads to a system of eight quadratic equations with eight unknowns. The Bezout number of this system is thus 2^8=256, its BKK bound being 192. However, the actual number of solutions is shown to be 32. We list all solutions of the foregoing algebraic problem. All these solutions are real, but distinct solutions do not necessarily lead to distinct manipulators. Upon discarding those algebraic solutions that yield no new wrists, we end up with exactly eight distinct architectures, the eight corresponding manipulators being displayed at their isotropic postures.
0707.2238
A design oriented study for 3R Orthogonal Manipulators With Geometric Simplifications
cs.RO
This paper proposes a method to calculate the largest Regular Dextrous Workspace (RDW) of some types of three-revolute orthogonal manipulators that have at least one of their DH parameters equal to zero. Then a new performance index based on the RDW is introduced, the isocontours of this index are plotted in the parameter space of the interesting types of manipulators and finally an inspection of the domains of the parameter spaces is conducted in order to identify the better manipulator architectures. The RDW is a part of the workspace whose shape is regular (cube, cylinder) and the performances (conditioning index) are bounded inside. The groups of 3R orthogonal manipulators studied have interesting kinematic properties such as, a well-connected workspace that is fully reachable with four inverse kinematic solutions and that does not contain any void. This study is of high interest for the design of alternative manipulator geometries.
0707.2265
Separable convex optimization problems with linear ascending constraints
cs.IT math.IT math.OC
Separable convex optimization problems with linear ascending inequality and equality constraints are addressed in this paper. Under an ordering condition on the slopes of the functions at the origin, an algorithm that determines the optimum point in a finite number of steps is described. The optimum value is shown to be monotone with respect to a partial order on the constraint parameters. Moreover, the optimum value is convex with respect to these parameters. Examples motivated by optimizations for communication systems are used to illustrate the algorithm.
0707.2270
Design of a Spherical Wrist with Parallel Architecture: Application to Vertebrae of an Eel Robot
cs.RO
The design of a spherical wrist with parallel architecture is the object of this article. This study is part of a larger project, which aims to design and to build an eel robot for inspection of immersed piping. The kinematic analysis of the mechanism is presented first to characterize the singular configurations as well as the isotropic configurations. We add the design constraints related to the application, such as (i) the compactness of the mechanism, (ii) the symmetry of the elements in order to ensure static and dynamic balance and (iii) the possibility of the mechanism to fill the elliptic form of the ell sections.
0707.2275
Passive Control Architecture for Virtual Humans
cs.RO
In the present paper, we introduce a new control architecture aimed at driving virtual humans in interaction with virtual environments, by motion capture. It brings decoupling of functionalities, and also of stability thanks to passivity. We show projections can break passivity, and thus must be used carefully. Our control scheme enables task space and internal control, contact, and joint limits management. Thanks to passivity, it can be easily extended. Besides, we introduce a new tool as for manikin's control, which makes it able to build passive projections, so as to guide the virtual manikin when sharp movements are needed.
0707.2376
Tripartitions do not always discriminate phylogenetic networks
q-bio.PE cs.CE cs.DM
Phylogenetic networks are a generalization of phylogenetic trees that allow for the representation of non-treelike evolutionary events, like recombination, hybridization, or lateral gene transfer. In a recent series of papers devoted to the study of reconstructibility of phylogenetic networks, Moret, Nakhleh, Warnow and collaborators introduced the so-called {tripartition metric for phylogenetic networks. In this paper we show that, in fact, this tripartition metric does not satisfy the separation axiom of distances (zero distance means isomorphism, or, in a more relaxed version, zero distance means indistinguishability in some specific sense) in any of the subclasses of phylogenetic networks where it is claimed to do so. We also present a subclass of phylogenetic networks whose members can be singled out by means of their sets of tripartitions (or even clusters), and hence where the latter can be used to define a meaningful metric.
0707.2432
Pricing Asian Options for Jump Diffusions
cs.CE
We construct a sequence of functions that uniformly converge (on compact sets) to the price of Asian option, which is written on a stock whose dynamics follows a jump diffusion, exponentially fast. Each of the element in this sequence solves a parabolic partial differen- tial equation (not an integro-differential equation). As a result we obtain a fast numerical approximation scheme whose accuracy versus speed characteristics can be controlled. We analyze the performance of our numerical algorithm on several examples.
0707.2482
Multiple-Description Lattice Vector Quantization
cs.IT math.IT
In this thesis, we construct and analyze multiple-description codes based on lattice vector quantization.
0707.2506
Mixed Integer Linear Programming For Exact Finite-Horizon Planning In Decentralized Pomdps
cs.AI
We consider the problem of finding an n-agent joint-policy for the optimal finite-horizon control of a decentralized Pomdp (Dec-Pomdp). This is a problem of very high complexity (NEXP-hard in n >= 2). In this paper, we propose a new mathematical programming approach for the problem. Our approach is based on two ideas: First, we represent each agent's policy in the sequence-form and not in the tree-form, thereby obtaining a very compact representation of the set of joint-policies. Second, using this compact representation, we solve this problem as an instance of combinatorial optimization for which we formulate a mixed integer linear program (MILP). The optimal solution of the MILP directly yields an optimal joint-policy for the Dec-Pomdp. Computational experience shows that formulating and solving the MILP requires significantly less time to solve benchmark Dec-Pomdp problems than existing algorithms. For example, the multi-agent tiger problem for horizon 4 is solved in 72 secs with the MILP whereas existing algorithms require several hours to solve it.
0707.2527
Rate and Power Allocation for Discrete-Rate Link Adaptation
cs.IT math.IT
Link adaptation, in particular adaptive coded modulation (ACM), is a promising tool for bandwidth-efficient transmission in a fading environment. The main motivation behind employing ACM schemes is to improve the spectral efficiency of wireless communication systems. In this paper, using a finite number of capacity achieving component codes, we propose new transmission schemes employing constant power transmission, as well as discrete and continuous power adaptation, for slowly varying flat-fading channels. We show that the proposed transmission schemes can achieve throughputs close to the Shannon limits of flat-fading channels using only a small number of codes. Specifically, using a fully discrete scheme with just four codes, each associated with four power levels, we achieve a spectral efficiency within 1 dB of the continuous-rate continuous-power Shannon capacity. Furthermore, when restricted to a fixed number of codes, the introduction of power adaptation has significant gains with respect to ASE and probability of no transmission compared to a constant power scheme.
0707.2718
Animation of virtual mannequins, robot-like simulation or motion captures
cs.RO
In order to optimize the costs and time of design of the new products while improving their quality, concurrent engineering is based on the digital model of these products, the numerical model. However, in order to be able to avoid definitively physical model, old support of the design, without loss of information, new tools must be available. Especially, a tool making it possible to check simply and quickly the maintainability of complex mechanical sets using the numerical model is necessary. Since one decade, our team works on the creation of tool for the generation and the analysis of trajectories of virtual mannequins. The simulation of human tasks can be carried out either by robot-like simulation or by simulation by motion capture. This paper presents some results on the both two methods. The first method is based on a multi-agent system and on a digital mock-up technology, to assess an efficient path planner for a manikin or a robot for access and visibility task taking into account ergonomic constraints or joint and mechanical limits. In order to solve this problem, the human operator is integrated in the process optimization to contribute to a global perception of the environment. This operator cooperates, in real-time, with several automatic local elementary agents. In the case of the second approach, we worked with the CEA and EADS/CCR to solve the constraints related to the evolution of human virtual in its environment on the basis of data resulting from motion capture system. An approach using of the virtual guides was developed to allow to the user the realization of precise trajectory in absence of force feedback. The result of this work validates solutions through the digital mock-up; it can be applied to simulate maintenability and mountability tasks.
0707.2721
A Framework to Illustrate Kinematic Behavior of Mechanisms by Haptic Feedback
cs.RO
The kinematic properties of mechanisms are well known by the researchers and teachers. The theory based on the study of Jacobian matrices allows us to explain, for example, the singular configuration. However, in many cases, the physical sense of such properties is difficult to explain to students. The aim of this article is to use haptic feedback to render to the user the signification of different kinematic indices. The framework uses a Phantom Omni and a serial and parallel mechanism with two degrees of freedom. The end-effector of both mechanisms can be moved either by classical mouse, or Phantom Omni with or without feedback.
0707.2780
On the ergodic sum-rate performance of CDD in multi-user systems
cs.IT math.IT
The main focus of space-time coding design and analysis for MIMO systems has been so far focused on single-user systems. For single-user systems, transmit diversity schemes suffer a loss in spectral efficiency if the receiver is equipped with more than one antenna, making them unsuitable for high rate transmission. One such transmit diversity scheme is the cyclic delay diversity code (CDD). The advantage of CDD over other diversity schemes such as orthogonal space-time block codes (OSTBC) is that a code rate of one and delay optimality are achieved independent of the number of transmit antennas. In this work we analyze the ergodic rate of a multi-user multiple access channel (MAC) with each user applying such a cyclic delay diversity (CDD) code. We derive closed form expressions for the ergodic sum-rate of multi-user CDD and compare it with the sum-capacity. We study the ergodic rate region and show that in contrast to what is conventionally known regarding the single-user case, transmit diversity schemes are viable candidates for high rate transmission in multi-user systems. Finally, our theoretical findings are illustrated by numerical simulation results.
0707.2792
Distributed Compression and Multiparty Squashed Entanglement
quant-ph cs.IT math.IT
We study a protocol in which many parties use quantum communication to transfer a shared state to a receiver without communicating with each other. This protocol is a multiparty version of the fully quantum Slepian-Wolf protocol for two senders and arises through the repeated application of the two-sender protocol. We describe bounds on the achievable rate region for the distributed compression problem. The inner bound arises by expressing the achievable rate region for our protocol in terms of its vertices and extreme rays and, equivalently, in terms of facet inequalities. We also prove an outer bound on all possible rates for distributed compression based on the multiparty squashed entanglement, a measure of multiparty entanglement.
0707.2833
A Comparative Study between Two Three-DOF Parallel Kinematic Machines using Kinetostatic Criteria and Interval Analysis
cs.RO
This paper addresses the workspace analysis of two 3-DOF translational parallel mechanisms designed for machining applications. The two machines features three fixed linear joints. The joint axes of the first machine are orthogonal whereas these of the second are parallel. In both cases, the mobile platform moves in the Cartesian $x-y-z$ space with fixed orientation. The workspace analysis is conducted on the basis of prescribed kinetostatic performances. Interval analysis based methods are used to compute the dextrous workspace and the largest cube enclosed in this workspace.
0707.2836
Multimedia Capacity Analysis of the IEEE 802.11e Contention-based Infrastructure Basic Service Set
cs.IT cs.MM math.IT
We first propose a simple mathematical analysis framework for the Enhanced Distributed Channel Access (EDCA) function of the recently ratified IEEE 802.11e standard. Our analysis considers the fact that the distributed random access systems exhibit cyclic behavior. The proposed model is valid for arbitrary assignments of AC-specific Arbitration Interframe Space (AIFS) values and Contention Window (CW) sizes and is the first that considers an arbitrary distribution of active Access Categories (ACs) at the stations. Validating the theoretical results via extensive simulations, we show that the proposed analysis accurately captures the EDCA saturation performance. Next, we propose a framework for multimedia capacity analysis of the EDCA function. We calculate an accurate station- and AC-specific queue utilization ratio by appropriately weighing the service time predictions of the cycle time model for different number of active stations. Based on the calculated queue utilization ratio, we design a simple model-based admission control scheme. We show that the proposed call admission control algorithm maintains satisfactory user-perceived quality for coexisting voice and video connections in an infrastructure BSS and does not present over- or under-admission problems of previously proposed models in the literature.
0707.2841
The Virtual Manufacturing concept: Scope, Socio-Economic Aspects and Future Trends
cs.RO
The research area "Virtual Manufacturing (VM)'' is the use of information technology and computer simulation to model real world manufacturing processes for the purpose of analysing and understanding them. As automation technologies such as CAD/CAM have substantially shortened the time required to design products, Virtual Manufacturing will have a similar effect on the manufacturing phase thanks to the modelling, simulation and optimisation of the product and the processes involved in its fabrication. After a description of Virtual Manufacturing (definitions and scope), we present some socio-economic factors of VM and finaly some "hot topics'' for the future are proposed.
0707.2842
A Classification of 3R Orthogonal Manipulators by the Topology of their Workspace
cs.RO
A classification of a family of 3-revolute (3R) positining manipulators is established. This classification is based on the topology of their workspace. The workspace is characterized in a half-cross section by the singular curves. The workspace topology is defined by the number of cusps and nodes that appear on these singular curves. The design parameters space is shown to be divided into nine domains of distinct workspace topologies, in which all manipulators have similar global kinematic properties. Each separating surface is given as an explicit expression in the DH-parameters.
0707.2926
Robust Hypothesis Testing with a Relative Entropy Tolerance
cs.IT math.IT
This paper considers the design of a minimax test for two hypotheses where the actual probability densities of the observations are located in neighborhoods obtained by placing a bound on the relative entropy between actual and nominal densities. The minimax problem admits a saddle point which is characterized. The robust test applies a nonlinear transformation which flattens the nominal likelihood ratio in the vicinity of one. Results are illustrated by considering the transmission of binary data in the presence of additive noise.
0707.2998
Building a Cooperative Communications System
cs.IT math.IT
In this paper, we present the results from over-the-air experiments of a complete implementation of an amplify and forward cooperative communications system. Our custom OFDM-based physical layer uses a distributed version of the Alamouti block code, where the relay sends one branch of Alamouti encoded symbols. First we show analytically and experimentally that amplify and forward protocols are unaffected by carrier frequency offsets at the relay. This result allows us to use a conventional Alamouti receiver without change for the distributed relay system. Our full system implementation shows gains up to 5.5dB in peak power constrained networks. Thus, we can conclusively state that even the simplest form of relaying can lead to significant gains in practical implementations.
0707.3030
Optimal Design of Ad Hoc Injection Networks by Using Genetic Algorithms
cs.NE cs.AI cs.NI
This work aims at optimizing injection networks, which consist in adding a set of long-range links (called bypass links) in mobile multi-hop ad hoc networks so as to improve connectivity and overcome network partitioning. To this end, we rely on small-world network properties, that comprise a high clustering coefficient and a low characteristic path length. We investigate the use of two genetic algorithms (generational and steady-state) to optimize three instances of this topology control problem and present results that show initial evidence of their capacity to solve it.
0707.3043
p-Adic Modelling of the Genome and the Genetic Code
q-bio.OT cs.IT math.IT physics.bio-ph
The present paper is devoted to foundations of p-adic modelling in genomics. Considering nucleotides, codons, DNA and RNA sequences, amino acids, and proteins as information systems, we have formulated the corresponding p-adic formalisms for their investigations. Each of these systems has its characteristic prime number used for construction of the related information space. Relevance of this approach is illustrated by some examples. In particular, it is shown that degeneration of the genetic code is a p-adic phenomenon. We have also put forward a hypothesis on evolution of the genetic code assuming that primitive code was based on single nucleotides and chronologically first four amino acids. This formalism of p-adic genomic information systems can be implemented in computer programs and applied to various concrete cases.
0707.3087
Universal Reinforcement Learning
cs.IT cs.LG math.IT
We consider an agent interacting with an unmodeled environment. At each time, the agent makes an observation, takes an action, and incurs a cost. Its actions can influence future observations and costs. The goal is to minimize the long-term average cost. We propose a novel algorithm, known as the active LZ algorithm, for optimal control based on ideas from the Lempel-Ziv scheme for universal data compression and prediction. We establish that, under the active LZ algorithm, if there exists an integer $K$ such that the future is conditionally independent of the past given a window of $K$ consecutive actions and observations, then the average cost converges to the optimum. Experimental results involving the game of Rock-Paper-Scissors illustrate merits of the algorithm.
0707.3095
Channel Capacity Estimation using Free Probability Theory
cs.IT math.IT
In many channel measurement applications, one needs to estimate some characteristics of the channels based on a limited set of measurements. This is mainly due to the highly time varying characteristics of the channel. In this contribution, it will be shown how free probability can be used for channel capacity estimation in MIMO systems. Free probability has already been applied in various application fields such as digital communications, nuclear physics and mathematical finance, and has been shown to be an invaluable tool for describing the asymptotic behaviour of many large-dimensional systems. In particular, using the concept of free deconvolution, we provide an asymptotically (w.r.t. the number of observations) unbiased capacity estimator for MIMO channels impaired with noise called the free probability based estimator. Another estimator, called the Gaussian matrix mean based estimator, is also introduced by slightly modifying the free probability based estimator. This estimator is shown to give unbiased estimation of the moments of the channel matrix for any number of observations. Also, the estimator has this property when we extend to MIMO channels with phase off-set and frequency drift, for which no estimator has been provided so far in the literature. It is also shown that both the free probability based and the Gaussian matrix mean based estimator are asymptotically unbiased capacity estimators as the number of transmit antennas go to infinity, regardless of whether phase off-set and frequency drift are present. The limitations in the two estimators are also explained. Simulations are run to assess the performance of the estimators for a low number of antennas and samples to confirm the usefulness of the asymptotic results.
0707.3175
Stacked OSTBC: Error Performance and Rate Analysis
cs.IT math.IT
It is well known, that the Alamouti scheme is the only space-time code from orthogonal design achieving the capacity of a multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) wireless communication system with n_T=2 transmit antennas and n_R=1 receive antenna. In this work, we propose the n-times stacked Alamouti scheme for n_T=2n transmit antennas and show that this scheme achieves the capacity in the case of n_R=1 receive antenna. This result may regarded as an extension of the Alamouti case. For the more general case of more than one receive antenna, we show that if the number of transmit antennas is higher than the number of receive antennas we achieve a high portion of the capacity with this scheme. Further, we show that the MIMO capacity is at most twice the rate achieved with the proposed scheme for all SNR. We derive lower and upper bounds for the rate achieved with this scheme and compare it with upper and lower bounds for the capacity. In addition to the capacity analysis based on the assumption of a coherent channel, we analyze the error rate performance of the stacked OSTBC with the optimal ML detector and with the suboptimal lattice-reduction (LR) aided zero-forcing detector. We compare the error rate performance of the stacked OSTBC with spatial multiplexing (SM) and full-diversity achieving schemes. Finally, we illustrate the theoretical results by numerical simulations.
0707.3186
Kinematic and stiffness analysis of the Orthoglide, a PKM with simple, regular workspace and homogeneous performances
cs.RO
The Orthoglide is a Delta-type PKM dedicated to 3-axis rapid machining applications that was originally developed at IRCCyN in 2000-2001 to meet the advantages of both serial 3-axis machines (regular workspace and homogeneous performances) and parallel kinematic architectures (good dynamic performances and stiffness). This machine has three fixed parallel linear joints that are mounted orthogonally. The geometric parameters of the Orthoglide were defined as function of the size of a prescribed cubic Cartesian workspace that is free of singularities and internal collision. The interesting features of the Orthoglide are a regular Cartesian workspace shape, uniform performances in all directions and good compactness. In this paper, a new method is proposed to analyze the stiffness of overconstrained Delta-type manipulators, such as the Orthoglide. The Orthoglide is then benchmarked according to geometric, kinematic and stiffness criteria: workspace to footprint ratio, velocity and force transmission factors, sensitivity to geometric errors, torsional stiffness and translational stiffness.
0707.3205
Neutrality and Many-Valued Logics
cs.LO cs.AI
In this book, we consider various many-valued logics: standard, linear, hyperbolic, parabolic, non-Archimedean, p-adic, interval, neutrosophic, etc. We survey also results which show the tree different proof-theoretic frameworks for many-valued logics, e.g. frameworks of the following deductive calculi: Hilbert's style, sequent, and hypersequent. We present a general way that allows to construct systematically analytic calculi for a large family of non-Archimedean many-valued logics: hyperrational-valued, hyperreal-valued, and p-adic valued logics characterized by a special format of semantics with an appropriate rejection of Archimedes' axiom. These logics are built as different extensions of standard many-valued logics (namely, Lukasiewicz's, Goedel's, Product, and Post's logics). The informal sense of Archimedes' axiom is that anything can be measured by a ruler. Also logical multiple-validity without Archimedes' axiom consists in that the set of truth values is infinite and it is not well-founded and well-ordered. On the base of non-Archimedean valued logics, we construct non-Archimedean valued interval neutrosophic logic INL by which we can describe neutrality phenomena.
0707.3248
Decentralized sequential change detection using physical layer fusion
cs.IT math.IT
The problem of decentralized sequential detection with conditionally independent observations is studied. The sensors form a star topology with a central node called fusion center as the hub. The sensors make noisy observations of a parameter that changes from an initial state to a final state at a random time where the random change time has a geometric distribution. The sensors amplify and forward the observations over a wireless Gaussian multiple access channel and operate under either a power constraint or an energy constraint. The optimal transmission strategy at each stage is shown to be the one that maximizes a certain Ali-Silvey distance between the distributions for the hypotheses before and after the change. Simulations demonstrate that the proposed analog technique has lower detection delays when compared with existing schemes. Simulations further demonstrate that the energy-constrained formulation enables better use of the total available energy than the power-constrained formulation in the change detection problem.
0707.3263
Autonomous tools for Grid management, monitoring and optimization
cs.DC cs.CE hep-ex
We outline design and lines of development of autonomous tools for the computing Grid management, monitoring and optimization. The management is proposed to be based on the notion of utility. Grid optimization is considered to be application-oriented. A generic Grid simulator is proposed as an optimization tool for Grid structure and functionality.
0707.3269
International Standard for a Linguistic Annotation Framework
cs.CL
This paper describes the Linguistic Annotation Framework under development within ISO TC37 SC4 WG1. The Linguistic Annotation Framework is intended to serve as a basis for harmonizing existing language resources as well as developing new ones.
0707.3270
A Formal Model of Dictionary Structure and Content
cs.CL
We show that a general model of lexical information conforms to an abstract model that reflects the hierarchy of information found in a typical dictionary entry. We show that this model can be mapped into a well-formed XML document, and how the XSL transformation language can be used to implement a semantics defined over the abstract model to enable extraction and manipulation of the information in any format.
0707.3336
Statistical mechanical analysis of the linear vector channel in digital communication
cs.IT cond-mat.dis-nn cond-mat.stat-mech math.IT
A statistical mechanical framework to analyze linear vector channel models in digital wireless communication is proposed for a large system. The framework is a generalization of that proposed for code-division multiple-access systems in Europhys. Lett. 76 (2006) 1193 and enables the analysis of the system in which the elements of the channel transfer matrix are statistically correlated with each other. The significance of the proposed scheme is demonstrated by assessing the performance of an existing model of multi-input multi-output communication systems.
0707.3390
Consistency of the group Lasso and multiple kernel learning
cs.LG
We consider the least-square regression problem with regularization by a block 1-norm, i.e., a sum of Euclidean norms over spaces of dimensions larger than one. This problem, referred to as the group Lasso, extends the usual regularization by the 1-norm where all spaces have dimension one, where it is commonly referred to as the Lasso. In this paper, we study the asymptotic model consistency of the group Lasso. We derive necessary and sufficient conditions for the consistency of group Lasso under practical assumptions, such as model misspecification. When the linear predictors and Euclidean norms are replaced by functions and reproducing kernel Hilbert norms, the problem is usually referred to as multiple kernel learning and is commonly used for learning from heterogeneous data sources and for non linear variable selection. Using tools from functional analysis, and in particular covariance operators, we extend the consistency results to this infinite dimensional case and also propose an adaptive scheme to obtain a consistent model estimate, even when the necessary condition required for the non adaptive scheme is not satisfied.
0707.3409
Faster exon assembly by sparse spliced alignment
cs.DS cs.CC cs.CE q-bio.QM
Assembling a gene from candidate exons is an important problem in computational biology. Among the most successful approaches to this problem is \emph{spliced alignment}, proposed by Gelfand et al., which scores different candidate exon chains within a DNA sequence of length $m$ by comparing them to a known related gene sequence of length n, $m = \Theta(n)$. Gelfand et al.\ gave an algorithm for spliced alignment running in time O(n^3). Kent et al.\ considered sparse spliced alignment, where the number of candidate exons is O(n), and proposed an algorithm for this problem running in time O(n^{2.5}). We improve on this result, by proposing an algorithm for sparse spliced alignment running in time O(n^{2.25}). Our approach is based on a new framework of \emph{quasi-local string comparison}.
0707.3457
A Generalized Information Formula as the Bridge between Shannon and Popper
cs.IT cs.AI math.IT
A generalized information formula related to logical probability and fuzzy set is deduced from the classical information formula. The new information measure accords with to Popper's criterion for knowledge evolution very much. In comparison with square error criterion, the information criterion does not only reflect error of a proposition, but also reflects the particularity of the event described by the proposition. It gives a proposition with less logical probability higher evaluation. The paper introduces how to select a prediction or sentence from many for forecasts and language translations according to the generalized information criterion. It also introduces the rate fidelity theory, which comes from the improvement of the rate distortion theory in the classical information theory by replacing distortion (i.e. average error) criterion with the generalized mutual information criterion, for data compression and communication efficiency. Some interesting conclusions are obtained from the rate-fidelity function in relation to image communication. It also discusses how to improve Popper's theory.
0707.3461
Lattices for Distributed Source Coding: Jointly Gaussian Sources and Reconstruction of a Linear Function
cs.IT math.IT
Consider a pair of correlated Gaussian sources (X1,X2). Two separate encoders observe the two components and communicate compressed versions of their observations to a common decoder. The decoder is interested in reconstructing a linear combination of X1 and X2 to within a mean-square distortion of D. We obtain an inner bound to the optimal rate-distortion region for this problem. A portion of this inner bound is achieved by a scheme that reconstructs the linear function directly rather than reconstructing the individual components X1 and X2 first. This results in a better rate region for certain parameter values. Our coding scheme relies on lattice coding techniques in contrast to more prevalent random coding arguments used to demonstrate achievable rate regions in information theory. We then consider the case of linear reconstruction of K sources and provide an inner bound to the optimal rate-distortion region. Some parts of the inner bound are achieved using the following coding structure: lattice vector quantization followed by "correlated" lattice-structured binning.
0707.3479
Quantum Algorithms for Learning and Testing Juntas
quant-ph cs.LG
In this article we develop quantum algorithms for learning and testing juntas, i.e. Boolean functions which depend only on an unknown set of k out of n input variables. Our aim is to develop efficient algorithms: - whose sample complexity has no dependence on n, the dimension of the domain the Boolean functions are defined over; - with no access to any classical or quantum membership ("black-box") queries. Instead, our algorithms use only classical examples generated uniformly at random and fixed quantum superpositions of such classical examples; - which require only a few quantum examples but possibly many classical random examples (which are considered quite "cheap" relative to quantum examples). Our quantum algorithms are based on a subroutine FS which enables sampling according to the Fourier spectrum of f; the FS subroutine was used in earlier work of Bshouty and Jackson on quantum learning. Our results are as follows: - We give an algorithm for testing k-juntas to accuracy $\epsilon$ that uses $O(k/\epsilon)$ quantum examples. This improves on the number of examples used by the best known classical algorithm. - We establish the following lower bound: any FS-based k-junta testing algorithm requires $\Omega(\sqrt{k})$ queries. - We give an algorithm for learning $k$-juntas to accuracy $\epsilon$ that uses $O(\epsilon^{-1} k\log k)$ quantum examples and $O(2^k \log(1/\epsilon))$ random examples. We show that this learning algorithms is close to optimal by giving a related lower bound.
0707.3482
A Bayesian Framework for Combining Valuation Estimates
q-fin.ST cs.CE nlin.AO nlin.CD nlin.SI physics.pop-ph physics.soc-ph stat.AP
Obtaining more accurate equity value estimates is the starting point for stock selection, value-based indexing in a noisy market, and beating benchmark indices through tactical style rotation. Unfortunately, discounted cash flow, method of comparables, and fundamental analysis typically yield discrepant valuation estimates. Moreover, the valuation estimates typically disagree with market price. Can one form a superior valuation estimate by averaging over the individual estimates, including market price? This article suggests a Bayesian framework for combining two or more estimates into a superior valuation estimate. The framework justifies the common practice of averaging over several estimates to arrive at a final point estimate.
0707.3507
Workspace and Kinematic Analysis of the VERNE machine
cs.RO
This paper describes the workspace and the inverse and direct kinematic analysis of the VERNE machine, a serial/parallel 5-axis machine tool designed by Fatronik for IRCCyN. This machine is composed of a three-degree-of-freedom (DOF) parallel module and a two-DOF serial tilting table. The parallel module consists of a moving platform that is connected to a fixed base by three non-identical legs. This feature involves (i) a simultaneous combination of rotation and translation for the moving platform, which is balanced by the tilting table and (ii) workspace whose shape and volume vary as a function of the tool length. This paper summarizes results obtained in the context of the European projects NEXT ("Next Generation of Productions Systems").
0707.3509
Upper bound of loss probability in an OFDMA system with randomly located users
math.PR cs.IT cs.NI math.IT
For OFDMA systems, we find a rough but easily computed upper bound for the probability of loosing communications by insufficient number of sub-channels on downlink. We consider as random the positions of receiving users in the system as well as the number of sub-channels dedicated to each one. We use recent results of the theory of point processes which reduce our calculations to the first and second moments of the total required number of sub-carriers.
0707.3531
e-Science initiatives in Venezuela
cs.CE cs.DC
Within the context of the nascent e-Science infrastructure in Venezuela, we describe several web-based scientific applications developed at the Centro Nacional de Calculo Cientifico Universidad de Los Andes (CeCalCULA), Merida, and at the Instituto Venezolano de Investigaciones Cientificas (IVIC), Caracas. The different strategies that have been followed for implementing quantum chemistry and atomic physics applications are presented. We also briefly discuss a damage portal based on dynamic, nonlinear, finite elements of lumped damage mechanics and a biomedical portal developed within the framework of the \textit{E-Infrastructure shared between Europe and Latin America} (EELA) initiative for searching common sequences and inferring their functions in parasitic diseases such as leishmaniasis, chagas and malaria.
0707.3534
The Kinetostatic Optimization of a Novel Prismatic Drive
cs.RO
The design of a mechanical transmission taking into account the transmitted forces is reported in this paper. This transmission is based on Slide-o-Cam, a cam mechanism with multiple rollers mounted on a common translating follower. The design of Slide-o-Cam, a transmission intended to produce a sliding motion from a turning drive, or vice versa, was reported elsewhere. This transmission provides pure-rolling motion, thereby reducing the friction of rack-and-pinions and linear drives. The pressure angle is a suitable performance index for this transmission because it determines the amount of force transmitted to the load vs. that transmitted to the machine frame. To assess the transmission capability of the mechanism, the Hertz formula is introduced to calculate the stresses on the rollers and on the cams. The final transmission is intended to replace the current ball-screws in the Orthoglide, a three-DOF parallel robot for the production of translational motions, currently under development for machining applications at Ecole Centrale de Nantes.
0707.3550
A Six Degree-Of-Freedom Haptic Device Based On The Orthoglide And A Hybrid Agile Eye
cs.RO
This paper is devoted to the kinematic design of a new six degree-of-freedom haptic device using two parallel mechanisms. The first one, called orthoglide, provides the translation motions and the second one, called agile eye, produces the rotational motions. These two motions are decoupled to simplify the direct and inverse kinematics, as it is needed for real-time control. To reduce the inertial load, the motors are fixed on the base and a transmission with two universal joints is used to transmit the rotational motions from the base to the end-effector. Two alternative wrists are proposed (i), the agile eye with three degrees of freedom or (ii) a hybrid wrist made by the assembly of a two-dof agile eye with a rotary motor. The last one is optimized to increase its stiffness and to decrease the number of moving parts.
0707.3552
Analyse Comparative des Manipulateurs 3R \`a Axes Orthogonaux
cs.RO
A family of 3R orthogonal manipulators without offset on the third body can be divided into exactly nine workspace topologies. The workspace is characterized in a half-cross section by the singular curves. The workspace topology is defined by the number of cusps and nodes that appear on these singular curves. Based on this classification, we evaluate theses manipulators by the condition number related to the joint space and the proportion of the region with four inverse kinematic solutions compared to a sphere containing all the workspace. This second performance number is in relation with the workspace. We determine finally le topology of workspace to which belong manipulators having the best performance number values.
0707.3553
An Exhaustive Study of the Workspace Topologies of all 3R Orthogonal Manipulators with Geometric Simplifications
cs.RO
This paper analyses the workspace of the three-revolute orthogonal manipulators that have at least one of their DH parameters equal to zero. These manipulators are classified into different groups with similar kinematic properties. The classification criteria are based on the topology of the workspace. Each group is evaluated according to interesting kinematic properties such as the size of the workspace subregion reachable with four inverse kinematic solutions, the existence and the size of voids, and the size of the regions of feasible paths in the workspace.
0707.3559
Practical Approach to Knowledge-based Question Answering with Natural Language Understanding and Advanced Reasoning
cs.CL cs.AI cs.HC cs.IR
This research hypothesized that a practical approach in the form of a solution framework known as Natural Language Understanding and Reasoning for Intelligence (NaLURI), which combines full-discourse natural language understanding, powerful representation formalism capable of exploiting ontological information and reasoning approach with advanced features, will solve the following problems without compromising practicality factors: 1) restriction on the nature of question and response, and 2) limitation to scale across domains and to real-life natural language text.
0707.3560
Integration of a Balanced Virtual Manikin in a Virtual Reality Platform aimed at Virtual Prototyping
cs.RO
The work presented here is aimed at introducing a virtual human controller in a virtual prototyping framework. After a brief introduction describing the problem solved in the paper, we describe the interest as for digital humans in the context of concurrent engineering. This leads us to draw a control architecture enabling to drive virtual humans in a real-time immersed way, and to interact with the product, through motion capture. Unfortunately, we show this control scheme can lead to unfeasible movements because of the lack of balance control. Introducing such a controller is a problem that was never addressed in the context of real-time. We propose an implementation of a balance controller, that we insert into the previously described control scheme. Next section is dedicated to show the results we obtained. Finally, we propose a virtual reality platform into which the digital character controller is integrated.
0707.3562
Balanced Virtual Humans Interacting with their Environment
cs.RO
The animation of human avatars seems very successful; the computer graphics industry shows outstanding results in films everyday, the game industry achieves exploits... Nevertheless, the animation and control processes of such manikins are very painful. It takes days to a specialist to build such animated sequences, and it is not adaptive to any type of modifications. Our main purpose is the virtual human for engineering, especially virtual prototyping. As for this domain of activity, such amounts of time are prohibitive.
0707.3563
Virtual reality: A human centered tool for improving Manufacturing
cs.RO
Manufacturing is using Virtual Reality tools to enhance the product life cycle. Their definitions are still in flux and it is necessary to define their connections. Thus, firstly, we will introduce more closely some definitions where we will find that, if the Virtual manufacturing concepts originate from machining operations and evolve in this manufacturing area, there exist a lot of applications in different fields such as casting, forging, sheet metalworking and robotics (mechanisms). From the recent projects in Europe or in USA, we notice that the human perception or the simulation of mannequin is more and more needed in both fields. In this context, we have isolated some applications as ergonomic studies, assembly and maintenance simulation, design or training where the virtual reality tools can be applied. Thus, we find out a family of applications where the virtual reality tools give the engineers the main role in the optimization process. We will illustrate our paper by several examples where virtual reality interfaces are used and combined with optimization tools as multi-agent systems.
0707.3564
A New Six Degree-of-Freedom Haptic Device based on the Orthoglide and the Agile Eye
cs.RO
The aim of this paper is to present a new six degree-of-freedom (dof) haptic device using two parallel mechanisms. The first one, called orthoglide, provides the translation motions and the second one produces the rotational motions. These two motions are decoupled to simplify the direct and inverse kinematics, as it is needed for real-times control. To reduce the inertial load, the motors are fixed on the base and a transmission with two universal joints is used to transmit the rotational motions from the base to the end-effector. The main feature of the orthoglide and of the agile eye mechanism is the existence of an isotropic configuration. The length of the legs and the range limits of the orthoglide are optimized to have homogeneous performance throughout the Cartesian workspace, which has a nearly cubic workspace. These properties permit to have a high stiffness throughout the workspace and workspace limits that are easily understandable by the user.
0707.3574
L'orthoglide : une machine-outil rapide d'architecture parall\`ele isotrope
cs.RO
This article presents the Orthoglide project. The purpose of this project is the realization of a prototype of machine tool to three degrees of translation. The characteristic of this machine is a parallel kinematic architecture optimized to obtain a compact workspace with homogeneous performance. For that, the principal criterion of design which was used is the isotropy.
0707.3575
An exploratory study of Google Scholar
cs.DL cs.IR
The paper discusses and analyzes the scientific search service Google Scholar (GS). The focus is on an exploratory study which investigates the coverage of scientific serials in GS. The study shows deficiencies in the coverage and up-to-dateness of the GS index. Furthermore, the study points up which Web servers are the most important data providers for this search service and which information sources are highly represented. We can show that there is a relatively large gap in Google Scholars coverage of German literature as well as weaknesses in the accessibility of Open Access content. Keywords: Search engines, Digital libraries, Worldwide Web, Serials, Electronic journals
0707.3584
The effect of fading, channel inversion, and threshold scheduling on ad hoc networks
cs.IT math.IT
This paper addresses three issues in the field of ad hoc network capacity: the impact of i)channel fading, ii) channel inversion power control, and iii) threshold-based scheduling on capacity. Channel inversion and threshold scheduling may be viewed as simple ways to exploit channel state information (CSI) without requiring cooperation across transmitters. We use the transmission capacity (TC) as our metric, defined as the maximum spatial intensity of successful simultaneous transmissions subject to a constraint on the outage probability (OP). By assuming the nodes are located on the infinite plane according to a Poisson process, we are able to employ tools from stochastic geometry to obtain asymptotically tight bounds on the distribution of the signal-to-interference (SIR) level, yielding in turn tight bounds on the OP (relative to a given SIR threshold) and the TC. We demonstrate that in the absence of CSI, fading can significantly reduce the TC and somewhat surprisingly, channel inversion only makes matters worse. We develop a threshold-based transmission rule where transmitters are active only if the channel to their receiver is acceptably strong, obtain expressions for the optimal threshold, and show that this simple, fully distributed scheme can significantly reduce the effect of fading.
0707.3665
A Comparative Study of Parallel Kinematic Architectures for Machining Applications
cs.RO
Parallel kinematic mechanisms are interesting alternative designs for machining applications. Three 2-DOF parallel mechanism architectures dedicated to machining applications are studied in this paper. The three mechanisms have two constant length struts gliding along fixed linear actuated joints with different relative orientation. The comparative study is conducted on the basis of a same prescribed Cartesian workspace for the three mechanisms. The common desired workspace properties are a rectangular shape and given kinetostatic performances. The machine size of each resulting design is used as a comparative criterion. The 2-DOF machine mechanisms analyzed in this paper can be extended to 3-axis machines by adding a third joint.
0707.3666
Kinematic Analysis of a New Parallel Machine Tool: the Orthoglide
cs.RO
This paper describes a new parallel kinematic architecture for machining applications: the orthoglide. This machine features three fixed parallel linear joints which are mounted orthogonally and a mobile platform which moves in the Cartesian x-y-z space with fixed orientation. The main interest of the orthoglide is that it takes benefit from the advantages of the popular PPP serial machines (regular Cartesian workspace shape and uniform performances) as well as from the parallel kinematic arrangement of the links (less inertia and better dynamic performances), which makes the orthoglide well suited to high-speed machining applications. Possible extension of the orthoglide to 5-axis machining is also investigated.
0707.3673
The Computation of All 4R Serial Spherical Wrists With an Isotropic Architecture
cs.RO
A spherical wrist of the serial type is said to be isotropic if it can attain a posture whereby the singular values of its Jacobian matrix are all identical and nonzero. What isotropy brings about is robustness to manufacturing, assembly, and measurement errors, thereby guaranteeing a maximum orientation accuracy. In this paper we investigate the existence of redundant isotropic architectures, which should add to the dexterity of the wrist under design by virtue of its extra degree of freedom. The problem formulation leads to a system of eight quadratic equations with eight unknowns. The Bezout number of this system is thus 2^8 = 256, its BKK bound being 192. However, the actual number of solutions is shown to be 32. We list all solutions of the foregoing algebraic problem. All these solutions are real, but distinct solutions do not necessarily lead to distinct manipulators. Upon discarding those algebraic solutions that yield no new wrists, we end up with exactly eight distinct architectures, the eight corresponding manipulators being displayed at their isotropic posture.
0707.3781
Bijective Faithful Translations among Default Logics
cs.AI cs.LO
In this article, we study translations between variants of defaults logics such that the extensions of the theories that are the input and the output of the translation are in a bijective correspondence. We assume that a translation can introduce new variables and that the result of translating a theory can either be produced in time polynomial in the size of the theory or its output is polynomial in that size; we however restrict to the case in which the original theory has extensions. This study fills a gap between two previous pieces of work, one studying bijective translations among restrictions of default logics, and the other one studying non-bijective translations between default logics variants.
0707.3878
Plotkin construction: rank and kernel
cs.IT math.IT
Given two binary codes of length n, using Plotkin construction we obtain a code of length 2n. The construction works for linear and nonlinear codes. For the linear case, it is straightforward to see that the dimension of the final code is the sum of the dimensions of the starting codes. For nonlinear codes, the rank and the dimension of the kernel are standard mesures of linearity. In this report, we prove that both parameters are also the sum of the corresponding ones of the starting codes.
0707.3925
Use of a $d$-Constraint During LDPC Decoding in a Bliss Scheme
cs.IT math.IT
Bliss schemes of a run length limited (RLL) codec in combination with an LDPC codec, generate LDPC parity bits over a systematic sequence of RLL channel bits that are inherently redundant as they satisfy e.g. a $d=1$ minimum run length constraint. That is the subsequences consisting of runs of length $d=1$, viz. $...010...$ and $...101...$, cannot occur. We propose to use this redundancy during LDPC decoding in a Bliss scheme by introducing additional $d$-constraint nodes in the factor graph used by the LDPC decoder. The messages sent from these new nodes to the variable or codeword bit nodes exert a ``force'' on the resulting soft-bit vector coming out of the LDPC decoding that give it a tendency to comply with the $d$-constraints. This way, we can significantly reduce the probability of decoding error.
0707.3959
Four-Group Decodable Space-Time Block Codes
cs.IT math.IT
Two new rate-one full-diversity space-time block codes (STBC) are proposed. They are characterized by the \emph{lowest decoding complexity} among the known rate-one STBC, arising due to the complete separability of the transmitted symbols into four groups for maximum likelihood detection. The first and the second codes are delay-optimal if the number of transmit antennas is a power of 2 and even, respectively. The exact pair-wise error probability is derived to allow for the performance optimization of the two codes. Compared with existing low-decoding complexity STBC, the two new codes offer several advantages such as higher code rate, lower encoding/decoding delay and complexity, lower peak-to-average power ratio, and better performance.
0707.3972
Learning Probabilistic Models of Word Sense Disambiguation
cs.CL cs.AI
This dissertation presents several new methods of supervised and unsupervised learning of word sense disambiguation models. The supervised methods focus on performing model searches through a space of probabilistic models, and the unsupervised methods rely on the use of Gibbs Sampling and the Expectation Maximization (EM) algorithm. In both the supervised and unsupervised case, the Naive Bayesian model is found to perform well. An explanation for this success is presented in terms of learning rates and bias-variance decompositions.
0707.3979
Clifford Algebra of the Vector Space of Conics for decision boundary Hyperplanes in m-Euclidean Space
cs.NE cs.CG
In this paper we embed $m$-dimensional Euclidean space in the geometric algebra $Cl_m $ to extend the operators of incidence in ${R^m}$ to operators of incidence in the geometric algebra to generalize the notion of separator to a decision boundary hyperconic in the Clifford algebra of hyperconic sections denoted as ${Cl}({Co}_{2})$. This allows us to extend the concept of a linear perceptron or the spherical perceptron in conformal geometry and introduce the more general conic perceptron, namely the {elliptical perceptron}. Using Clifford duality a vector orthogonal to the decision boundary hyperplane is determined. Experimental results are shown in 2-dimensional Euclidean space where we separate data that are naturally separated by some typical plane conic separators by this procedure. This procedure is more general in the sense that it is independent of the dimension of the input data and hence we can speak of the hyperconic elliptic perceptron.