OpenRaiser/Intern-Atlas huggingface dataset:
Citation analysis cannot legitimate the strategic selection of excellence
Venue: arXiv cs.DL 2011
Year: 2011

In reaction to a previous critique(Opthof & Leydesdorff, 2010), the Center for Science and Technology Studies (CWTS) in Leiden proposed to change their old "crown" indicator in citation analysis into a new one. Waltman et al. (2011)argue that this change does not affect rankings at various aggregated levels. However, CWTS data is not publicly available for testing and criticism. In this correspondence, we use previously published data of Van Raan (2006) to address the pivotal issue of how the results of citation analysis correlate with the results of peer review. A quality parameter based on peer review was neither significantly correlated with the two parameters developed by the CWTS in the past (CPP/JCSm or CPP/FCSm) nor with the more recently proposed h-index (Hirsch, 2005). Given the high correlations between the old and new "crown" indicators, one can expect that the lack of correlation with the peer-review based quality indicator applies equally to the newly developed ones.
A New Method for Variable Elimination in Systems of Inequations
Venue: arXiv cs.IT 2011
Year: 2011

In this paper, we present a new method for variable elimination in systems of inequations which is much faster than the Fourier-Motzkin Elimination (FME) method. In our method, a linear Diophantine problem is introduced which is dual to our original problem. The new Diophantine system is then solved, and the final result is calculated by finding the dual inequations system. Our new method uses the algorithm Normaliz to find the Hilbert basis of the solution space of the given Diophantine problem. We introduce a problem in the interference channel with multiple nodes and solve it with our new method. Next, we generalize our method to all problems involving FME and in the end we compare our method with the previous method. We show that our method has many advantages in comparison to the previous method. It does not produce many of the redundant answers of the FME method. It also solves the whole problem in one step whereas the previous method uses a step by step approach in eliminating each auxiliary variable.
Blind source separation of convolutive mixtures of non circular linearly modulated signals with unknown baud rates
Venue: arXiv cs.IT 2011
Year: 2011

This paper addresses the problem of blind separation of convolutive mixtures of BPSK and circular linearly modulated signals with unknown (and possibly different) baud rates and carrier frequencies. In previous works, we established that the Constant Modulus Algorithm (CMA) is able to extract a source from a convolutive mixture of circular linearly modulated signals. We extend the analysis of the extraction capabilities of the CMA when the mixing also contains BPSK signals. We prove that if the various source signals do not share any non zero cyclic frequency nor any non conjugate cyclic frequencies, the local minima of the constant modulus cost function are separating filters. Unfortunately, the minimization of the Godard cost function generally fails when considering BPSK signals that have the same rates and the same carrier frequencies. This failure is due to the existence of non-separating local minima of the Godard cost function. In order to achieve the separation, we propose a simple modification of the Godard cost function which only requires knowledge of the BPSK sources frequency offsets at the receiver side. We provide various simulations of realistic digital communications scenarios that support our theoretical statements.
The Treewidth of MDS and Reed-Muller Codes
Venue: arXiv cs.IT 2011
Year: 2011

The constraint complexity of a graphical realization of a linear code is the maximum dimension of the local constraint codes in the realization. The treewidth of a linear code is the least constraint complexity of any of its cycle-free graphical realizations. This notion provides a useful parametrization of the maximum-likelihood decoding complexity for linear codes. In this paper, we prove the surprising fact that for maximum distance separable codes and Reed-Muller codes, treewidth equals trelliswidth, which, for a code, is defined to be the least constraint complexity (or branch complexity) of any of its trellis realizations. From this, we obtain exact expressions for the treewidth of these codes, which constitute the only known explicit expressions for the treewidth of algebraic codes.
Capacity of BICM Using (Bi-)Orthogonal Signal Constellations in Impulse-Radio Ultra-Wideband Systems
Venue: arXiv cs.IT 2011
Year: 2011

Bit-interleaved coded modulation (BICM) using (bi-)orthogonal signals is especially well suited for the application in impulse-radio ultra-wideband transmission systems, which typically operate in the power-limited regime and require a very low-complexity transmitter and receiver design. In this paper we analyze the capacity of BICM using (bi-)orthogonal signals with coherent and noncoherent detection and put particular focus on the power-limited or wideband regime. We give analytical expressions for the ratio energy per bit vs. noise power spectral density in the limit of infinite bandwidth and the respective wideband slope, and thus, are able to quantify the loss incurred by the restriction to BICM in contrast to coded modulation. The gained theoretical insights allow to derive design rules for impulse-radio ultra-wideband transmission systems.
Interference Networks with Point-to-Point Codes
Venue: arXiv cs.IT 2011
Year: 2011

The paper establishes the capacity region of the Gaussian interference channel with many transmitter-receiver pairs constrained to use point-to-point codes. The capacity region is shown to be strictly larger in general than the achievable rate regions when treating interference as noise, using successive interference cancellation decoding, and using joint decoding. The gains in coverage and achievable rate using the optimal decoder are analyzed in terms of ensemble averages using stochastic geometry. In a spatial network where the nodes are distributed according to a Poisson point process and the channel path loss exponent is $β> 2$, it is shown that the density of users that can be supported by treating interference as noise can scale no faster than $B^{2/β}$ as the bandwidth $B$ grows, while the density of users can scale linearly with $B$ under optimal decoding.
Modified Orthogonal Matching Pursuit Algorithm for Cognitive Radio Wideband Spectrum Sensing
Venue: arXiv cs.IT 2011
Year: 2011

Sampling rate is the bottleneck for spectrum sensing over multi-GHz bandwidth. Recent progress in compressed sensing (CS) initialized several sub-Nyquist rate approaches to overcome the problem. However, efforts to design CS reconstruction algorithms for wideband spectrum sensing are very limited. It is possible to further reduce the sampling rate requirement and improve reconstruction performance via algorithms considering prior knowledge of cognitive radio spectrum usages. In this paper, we group the usages of cognitive radio spectrum into three categories and propose a modified orthogonal matching pursuit (OMP) algorithm for wideband spectrum sensing. Simulation results show that this modified OMP algorithm outperforms two modified basis pursuit de-noising (BPDN) algorithms in terms of reconstruction performance and computation time.
Algorithms for Internal Validation Clustering Measures in the Post Genomic Era
Venue: arXiv cs.DS 2011
Year: 2011

Inferring cluster structure in microarray datasets is a fundamental task for the -omic sciences. A fundamental question in Statistics, Data Analysis and Classification, is the prediction of the number of clusters in a dataset, usually established via internal validation measures. Despite the wealth of internal measures available in the literature, new ones have been recently proposed, some of them specifically for microarray data. In this dissertation, a study of internal validation measures is given, paying particular attention to the stability based ones. Indeed, this class of measures is particularly prominent and promising in order to have a reliable estimate the number of clusters in a dataset. For those measures, a new general algorithmic paradigm is proposed here that highlights the richness of measures in this class and accounts for the ones already available in the literature. Moreover, some of the most representative validation measures are also considered. Experiments on 12 benchmark datasets are performed in order to assess both the intrinsic ability of a measure to predict the correct number of clusters in a dataset and its merit relative to the other measures. The main result is a hierarchy of internal validation measures in terms of precision and speed, highlighting some of their merits and limitations not reported before in the literature. This hierarchy shows that the faster the measure, the less accurate it is. In order to reduce the time performance gap between the fastest and the most precise measures, the technique of designing fast approximation algorithms is systematically applied. The end result is a speed-up of many of the measures studied here that brings the gap between the fastest and the most precise within one order of magnitude in time, with no degradation in their prediction power. Prior to this work, the time gap was at least two orders of magnitude.
Secure Multiplex Network Coding
Venue: arXiv cs.IT 2011
Year: 2011

In the secure network coding for multicasting, there is loss of information rate due to inclusion of random bits at the source node. We show a method to eliminate that loss of information rate by using multiple statistically independent messages to be kept secret from an eavesdropper. The proposed scheme is an adaptation of Yamamoto et al.'s secure multiplex coding to the secure network coding.
Improvement of BP-Based CDMA Multiuser Detection by Spatial Coupling
Venue: arXiv cs.IT 2011
Year: 2011

Kudekar et al. proved that the belief-propagation (BP) threshold for low-density parity-check codes can be boosted up to the maximum-a-posteriori (MAP) threshold by spatial coupling. In this paper, spatial coupling is applied to randomly-spread code-division multiple-access (CDMA) systems in order to improve the performance of BP-based multiuser detection (MUD). Spatially-coupled CDMA systems can be regarded as multi-code CDMA systems with two transmission phases. The large-system analysis shows that spatial coupling can improve the BP performance, while there is a gap between the BP performance and the individually-optimal (IO) performance.
Number representation using generalized $(-β)$-transformation
Venue: arXiv cs.DM 2011
Year: 2011

We study non-standard number systems with negative base $-β$. Instead of the Ito-Sadahiro definition, based on the transformation $T_{-β}$ of the interval $\big[-\fracβ{β+1},\frac{1}{β+1}\big)$ into itself, we suggest a generalization using an interval $[l,l+1)$ with $l\in(-1,0]$. Such generalization may eliminate certain disadvantages of the Ito-Sadahiro system. We focus on the description of admissible digit strings and their periodicity.
Computer Aided Tolerancing Based on Analysis and Synthetizes of Tolerances Method
Venue: arXiv cs.OH 2011
Year: 2011

The tolerancing step has a great importance in the design process. It characterises the relationship between the different sectors of the product life cycle: Design, Manufacturing and Control. We can distinguish several methods to assist the tolerancing process in the design. Based on arithmetic and statistical method, this paper presents a new approach of analysis and verification of tolerances. The chosen approach is based on the Worst Case Method as an arithmetic method and Monte Carlo method as a statistical method. In this paper, we compare these methods and we present our main approach, which is validated using an example of 1 D tolerancing.
Network Coding: Is zero error always possible?
Venue: arXiv cs.IT 2011
Year: 2011

In this work we study zero vs. epsilon-error capacity in network coding instances. For multicast network coding it is well known that all rates that can be delivered with arbitrarily small error probability can also be delivered with zero error probability; that is, the epsilon-error multicast capacity region and zero-error multicast capacity region are identical. For general network coding instances in which all sources originate at the same source node, Chan and Grant recently showed [ISIT 2010] that, again, epsilon-error communication has no rate advantage over zero-error communication. We start by revisiting the setting of co-located sources, where we present an alternative proof to that given by Chan and Grant. While the new proof is based on similar core ideas, our constructive strategy complements the previous argument.We then extend our results to the setting of index coding, which is a special and representative form of network coding that encapsulates the "source coding with side information" problem. Finally, we consider the "edge removal" problem (recently studied by Jalali, Effros, and Ho in [Allerton 2010] and [ITA 2011]) that aims to quantify the loss in capacity associated with removing a single edge from a given network. Using our proof for co-located sources, we tie the "zero vs. epsilon-error" problem in general network coding instances with the "edge removal" problem. Loosely speaking, we show that the two problem are equivalent.
Spatially Coupled Quasi-Cyclic Quantum LDPC Codes
Venue: arXiv cs.IT 2011
Year: 2011

We face the following dilemma for designing low-density parity-check codes (LDPC) for quantum error correction. 1) The row weights of parity-check should be large: The minimum distances are bounded above by the minimum row weights of parity-check matrices of constituent classical codes. Small minimum distance tends to result in poor decoding performance at the error-floor region. 2) The row weights of parity-check matrices should not be large: The sum-product decoding performance at the water-fall region is degraded as the row weight increases. Recently, Kudekar et al. showed spatially-coupled (SC) LDPC codes exhibit capacity-achieving performance for classical channels. SC LDPC codes have both large row weight and capacity-achieving error-floor and water-fall performance. In this paper, we design SC LDPC-CSS (Calderbank, Shor and Steane) codes for quantum error correction over the depolarizing channels.
Modelling on the Guaranteed QoS for Wireless Sensor Networks: A Network Calculus Approach
Venue: arXiv cs.NI 2011
Year: 2011

Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) became one of the high technology domains during the last ten years. Real-time applications for them make it necessary to provide the guaranteed Quality of Service (QoS). The main contributions of this paper are a system skeleton and a guaranteed QoS model that are suitable for the WSNs. To do it, we develop a sensor node model based on virtual buffer sharing and present a two-layer scheduling model using the network calculus. With the system skeleton, we develop a guaranteed QoS model, such as the upper bounds on buffer queue length/delay/effective bandwidth, and single-hop/ multi-hops delay/jitter/effective bandwidth. Numerical results show the system skeleton and the guaranteed QoS model are scalable for different types of flows, including the self-similar traffic flows, and the parameters of flow regulators and service curves of sensor nodes affect them. Our proposal leads to buffer dimensioning, guaranteed QoS support and control in the WSNs.
Low-level dichotomy for Quantified Constraint Satisfaction Problems
Venue: arXiv cs.CC 2011
Year: 2011

Building on a result of Larose and Tesson for constraint satisfaction problems (CSP s), we uncover a dichotomy for the quantified constraint satisfaction problem QCSP(B), where B is a finite structure that is a core. Specifically, such problems are either in ALogtime or are L-hard. This involves demonstrating that if CSP(B) is first-order expressible, and B is a core, then QCSP(B) is in ALogtime. We show that the class of B such that CSP(B) is first-order expressible (indeed, trivially true) is a microcosm for all QCSPs. Specifically, for any B there exists a C such that CSP(C) is trivially true, yet QCSP(B) and QCSP(C) are equivalent under logspace reductions.
Nonbinary Quantum Codes from Two-Point Divisors on Hermitian Curves
Venue: arXiv cs.IT 2011
Year: 2011

Sarvepalli and Klappenecker showed how classical one-point codes on the Hermitian curve can be used to construct quantum codes. Homma and Kim determined the parameters of a larger family of codes, the two-point codes. In quantum error-correction, the observed presence of asymmetry in some quantum channels led to the study of asymmetric quantum codes (AQECCs) where we no longer assume that the different types of errors are equiprobable. This paper considers quantum codes constructed from the two-point codes. In the asymmetric case, we show strict improvements over all possible finite fields for a range of designed distances. We produce large dimension pure AQECC and small dimension impure AQECC that have better parameters than AQECC from one-point codes. Numerical results for the Hermitian curves over F16 and F64 are used to illustrate the gain.
Measuring Permissiveness in Parity Games: Mean-Payoff Parity Games Revisited
Venue: arXiv cs.LO 2011
Year: 2011

We study nondeterministic strategies in parity games with the aim of computing a most permissive winning strategy. Following earlier work, we measure permissiveness in terms of the average number/weight of transitions blocked by the strategy. Using a translation into mean-payoff parity games, we prove that the problem of computing (the permissiveness of) a most permissive winning strategy is in NP intersected coNP. Along the way, we provide a new study of mean-payoff parity games. In particular, we prove that the opponent player has a memoryless optimal strategy and give a new algorithm for solving these games.
Wireless Secrecy in Large-Scale Networks
Venue: arXiv cs.IT 2011
Year: 2011

The ability to exchange secret information is critical to many commercial, governmental, and military networks. The intrinsically secure communications graph (iS-graph) is a random graph which describes the connections that can be securely established over a large-scale network, by exploiting the physical properties of the wireless medium. This paper provides an overview of the main properties of this new class of random graphs. We first analyze the local properties of the iS-graph, namely the degree distributions and their dependence on fading, target secrecy rate, and eavesdropper collusion. To mitigate the effect of the eavesdroppers, we propose two techniques that improve secure connectivity. Then, we analyze the global properties of the iS-graph, namely percolation on the infinite plane, and full connectivity on a finite region. These results help clarify how the presence of eavesdroppers can compromise secure communication in a large-scale network.
Simplicity-Expressiveness Tradeoffs in Mechanism Design
Venue: arXiv cs.GT 2011
Year: 2011

A fundamental result in mechanism design theory, the so-called revelation principle, asserts that for many questions concerning the existence of mechanisms with a given outcome one can restrict attention to truthful direct revelation-mechanisms. In practice, however, many mechanism use a restricted message space. This motivates the study of the tradeoffs involved in choosing simplified mechanisms, which can sometimes bring benefits in precluding bad or promoting good equilibria, and other times impose costs on welfare and revenue. We study the simplicity-expressiveness tradeoff in two representative settings, sponsored search auctions and combinatorial auctions, each being a canonical example for complete information and incomplete information analysis, respectively. We observe that the amount of information available to the agents plays an important role for the tradeoff between simplicity and expressiveness.
Towards Autonomic Service Provisioning Systems
Venue: arXiv cs.DC 2011
Year: 2011

This paper discusses our experience in building SPIRE, an autonomic system for service provision. The architecture consists of a set of hosted Web Services subject to QoS constraints, and a certain number of servers used to run session-based traffic. Customers pay for having their jobs run, but require in turn certain quality guarantees: there are different SLAs specifying charges for running jobs and penalties for failing to meet promised performance metrics. The system is driven by an utility function, aiming at optimizing the average earned revenue per unit time. Demand and performance statistics are collected, while traffic parameters are estimated in order to make dynamic decisions concerning server allocation and admission control. Different utility functions are introduced and a number of experiments aiming at testing their performance are discussed. Results show that revenues can be dramatically improved by imposing suitable conditions for accepting incoming traffic; the proposed system performs well under different traffic settings, and it successfully adapts to changes in the operating environment.
Allocation and Admission Policies for Service Streams
Venue: arXiv cs.PF 2011
Year: 2011

A service provisioning system is examined, where a number of servers are used to offer different types of services to paying customers. A customer is charged for the execution of a stream of jobs; the number of jobs in the stream and the rate of their submission is specified. On the other hand, the provider promises a certain quality of service (QoS), measured by the average waiting time of the jobs in the stream. A penalty is paid if the agreed QoS requirement is not met. The objective is to maximize the total average revenue per unit time. Dynamic policies for making server allocation and stream admission decisions are introduced and evaluated. The results of several simulations are described.
A New Bound on the Performance of the Bandwidth Puzzle
Venue: arXiv cs.CR 2011
Year: 2011

A bandwidth puzzle was recently proposed to defend against colluding adversaries in peer-to-peer networks. The colluding adversaries do not do actual work but claim to have uploaded contents for each other to gain free credits from the system. The bandwidth puzzle guarantees that if the adversaries can solve the puzzle, they must have spent substantial bandwidth, the size of which is comparable to the size of the contents they claim to have uploaded for each other. Therefore, the puzzle discourages the collusion. In this paper, we study the performance of the bandwidth puzzle and give a lower bound on the average number of bits the adversaries must receive to be able to solve the puzzles with a certain probability. We show that our bound is tight in the sense that there exists a strategy to approach this lower bound asymptotically within a small factor. The new bound gives better security guarantees than the existing bound, and can be used to guide better choices of puzzle parameters to improve the system performance.