OpenRaiser/Intern-Atlas huggingface dataset:
Managing Fog Networks using Reinforcement Learning Based Load Balancing Algorithm
Venue: arXiv cs.DC 2019
Year: 2019

The powerful paradigm of Fog computing is currently receiving major interest, as it provides the possibility to integrate virtualized servers into networks and brings cloud service closer to end devices. To support this distributed intelligent platform, Software-Defined Network (SDN) has emerged as a viable network technology in the Fog computing environment. However, uncertainties related to task demands and the different computing capacities of Fog nodes, inquire an effective load balancing algorithm. In this paper, the load balancing problem has been addressed under the constraint of achieving the minimum latency in Fog networks. To handle this problem, a reinforcement learning based decision-making process has been proposed to find the optimal offloading decision with unknown reward and transition functions. The proposed process allows Fog nodes to offload an optimal number of tasks among incoming tasks by selecting an available neighboring Fog node under their respective resource capabilities with the aim to minimize the processing time and the overall overloading probability. Compared with the traditional approaches, the proposed scheme not only simplifies the algorithmic framework without imposing any specific assumption on the network model but also guarantees convergence in polynomial time. The results show that, during average delays, the proposed reinforcement learning-based offloading method achieves significant performance improvements over the variation of service rate and traffic arrival rate. The proposed algorithm achieves 1.17%, 1.02%, and 3.21% lower overload probability relative to random, least-queue and nearest offloading selection schemes, respectively.
Cross-Domain Image Manipulation by Demonstration
Venue: arXiv cs.LG 2019
Year: 2019

In this work we propose a model that can manipulate individual visual attributes of objects in a real scene using examples of how respective attribute manipulations affect the output of a simulation. As an example, we train our model to manipulate the expression of a human face using nonphotorealistic 3D renders of a face with varied expression. Our model manages to preserve all other visual attributes of a real face, such as head orientation, even though this and other attributes are not labeled in either real or synthetic domain. Since our model learns to manipulate a specific property in isolation using only "synthetic demonstrations" of such manipulations without explicitly provided labels, it can be applied to shape, texture, lighting, and other properties that are difficult to measure or represent as real-valued vectors. We measure the degree to which our model preserves other attributes of a real image when a single specific attribute is manipulated. We use digit datasets to analyze how discrepancy in attribute distributions affects the performance of our model, and demonstrate results in a far more difficult setting: learning to manipulate real human faces using nonphotorealistic 3D renders.
Optimal Multiuser Loading in Quantized Massive MIMO under Spatially Correlated Channels
Venue: arXiv cs.IT 2019
Year: 2019

Low-resolution digital-to-analog converter (DAC) has shown great potential in facilitating cost- and power-efficient implementation of massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems. We investigate the performance of a massive MIMO downlink network with low-resolution DACs using regularized zero-forcing (RZF) precoding. It serves multiple receivers equipped with finite-resolution analog-to-digital converters (ADCs). By taking the quantization errors at both the transmitter and receivers into account under spatially correlated channels, the regularization parameter for RZF is optimized with a closed-form solution by applying the asymptotic random matrix theory. The optimal regularization parameter increases linearly with respect to the user loading ratio while independent of the ADC quantization resolution and the channel correlation. Furthermore, asymptotic sum rate performance is characterized and a closed-form expression for the optimal user loading ratio is obtained at low signal-to-noise ratio. The optimal ratio increases with the DAC resolution while it decreases with the ADC resolution. Numerical simulations verify our observations.
A Regulation Enforcement Solution for Multi-agent Reinforcement Learning
Venue: arXiv cs.GT 2019
Year: 2019

Human behaviors are regularized by a variety of norms or regulations, either to maintain orders or to enhance social welfare. If artificially intelligent (AI) agents make decisions on behalf of human beings, we would hope they can also follow established regulations while interacting with humans or other AI agents. However, it is possible that an AI agent can opt to disobey the regulations (being defective) for self-interests. In this paper, we aim to answer the following question: Consider a multi-agent decentralized environment. Agents make decisions in complete isolation of other agents. Each agent knows the state of its own MDP and its own actions but it does not know the states and the actions taken by other players. There is a set of regulations for all agents to follow. Although most agents are benign and will comply to regulations but not all agents are compliant at first, can we develop a framework such that it is in the self-interest of non-compliant agents to comply after all?. We first introduce the problem as Regulation Enforcement and formulate it using reinforcement learning and game theory under the scenario where agents make decisions in complete isolation of other agents. We then propose a solution based on the key idea that although we could not alter how defective agents choose to behave, we can, however, leverage the aggregated power of compliant agents to boycott the defective ones. We conducted simulated experiments on two scenarios: Replenishing Resource Management Dilemma and Diminishing Reward Shaping Enforcement, using deep multi-agent reinforcement learning algorithms. We further use empirical game-theoretic analysis to show that the method alters the resulting empirical payoff matrices in a way that promotes compliance (making mutual compliant a Nash Equilibrium).
A Framework for Deep Constrained Clustering -- Algorithms and Advances
Venue: arXiv cs.LG 2019
Year: 2019

The area of constrained clustering has been extensively explored by researchers and used by practitioners. Constrained clustering formulations exist for popular algorithms such as k-means, mixture models, and spectral clustering but have several limitations. A fundamental strength of deep learning is its flexibility, and here we explore a deep learning framework for constrained clustering and in particular explore how it can extend the field of constrained clustering. We show that our framework can not only handle standard together/apart constraints (without the well documented negative effects reported earlier) generated from labeled side information but more complex constraints generated from new types of side information such as continuous values and high-level domain knowledge.
Secrecy Outage and Diversity Analysis of Multiple Cooperative Source-Destination Pairs
Venue: arXiv cs.IT 2019
Year: 2019

We study the physical-layer security of a multiple source-destination (SD) pairs coexisting wireless network in the face of an eavesdropper, where an eavesdropper intends to wiretap the signal transmitted by the SD pairs. In order to protect the wireless transmission against eavesdropping, we propose a cooperation framework relying on two stages. Specifically, an SD pair is selected to access the total allocated spectrum using an appropriately designed scheme at the beginning of the first stage. The other source nodes (SNs) simultaneously transmit their data to the SN of the above-mentioned SD pair relying on an orthogonal way during the first stage. Then, the SN of the chosen SD pair transmits the data packets containing its own messages and the other SNs' messages to its dedicated destination node (DN) in the second stage, which in turn will forward all the other DNs' data to the application center via the core network. We conceive a specific SD pair selection scheme, termed as the transmit antenna selection aided source-destination pair selection (TAS-SDPS). We derive the secrecy outage probability (SOP) expressions for the TAS-SDPS, as well as for the conventional round-robin source-destination pair selection (RSDPS) and non-cooperative (Non-coop) schemes for comparison purposes. Furthermore, we carry out the secrecy diversity gain analysis in the high main-to-eavesdropper ratio (MER) region, showing that the TAS-SDPS scheme is capable of achieving the maximum attainable secrecy diversity order.
Hiding in the Clouds and Building a Stealth Communication Network
Venue: arXiv cs.CR 2019
Year: 2019

Social networks, instant messages and file sharing systems are common communication means among friends, families, coworkers, etc. Due to concerns of personal privacy, identify thefts, data misuse, freedom of speech and government surveillance, online social or communication networks have provided various options for a user to guard or control his or her personal data. However, for most these services, user data are still accessible by the service providers, which can lead to both liability issues if data breach occurs at the server side and data misuse by the network administrators. To prevent service providers from accessing user data, secure end-to-end user communication is a must, like the one provided by WhatsApp. On the other hand, the services provided by such communication network can still be interfered by an authority. For a communication network to be stealthy, the following features are essential: (1) oblivious service, (2) complete user control and flexibility, and (3) lightweight. In this paper, we first discuss the features and benefits of a stealth communication network (SNET), and then we propose a theoretical framework that can be adopted to implement an SNET. By utilizing the framework and the existing publicly available cloud storage, we present the implementation details of an instance of SNET, named Secret-Share. Last but not least, we discuss the current limitations of Secret-Share and its potential extensions.
Semantic and Influence aware k-Representative Queries over Social Streams
Venue: arXiv cs.SI 2019
Year: 2019

Massive volumes of data continuously generated on social platforms have become an important information source for users. A primary method to obtain fresh and valuable information from social streams is \emph{social search}. Although there have been extensive studies on social search, existing methods only focus on the \emph{relevance} of query results but ignore the \emph{representativeness}. In this paper, we propose a novel Semantic and Influence aware $k$-Representative ($k$-SIR) query for social streams based on topic modeling. Specifically, we consider that both user queries and elements are represented as vectors in the topic space. A $k$-SIR query retrieves a set of $k$ elements with the maximum \emph{representativeness} over the sliding window at query time w.r.t. the query vector. The representativeness of an element set comprises both semantic and influence scores computed by the topic model. Subsequently, we design two approximation algorithms, namely \textsc{Multi-Topic ThresholdStream} (MTTS) and \textsc{Multi-Topic ThresholdDescend} (MTTD), to process $k$-SIR queries in real-time. Both algorithms leverage the ranked lists maintained on each topic for $k$-SIR processing with theoretical guarantees. Extensive experiments on real-world datasets demonstrate the effectiveness of $k$-SIR query compared with existing methods as well as the efficiency and scalability of our proposed algorithms for $k$-SIR processing.
TNT, Watch me Explode: A Light in the Dark for Revealing MPLS Tunnels
Venue: arXiv cs.NI 2019
Year: 2019

Internet topology discovery has been a recurrent research topic for nearly 20 years now. Usually, it works by sending hop-limited probes (i.e., traceroute) towards a set of destinations to collect topological data in order to infer the Internet topology at a given scale (e.g., at the router or the AS level). However, traceroute comes with multiple limitations, in particular with layer-2 clouds such as MPLS that might hide their content to traceroute exploration. Thus, the resulting Internet topology data and models are incomplete and inaccurate. In this paper, we introduce TNT (Trace the Naughty Tunnels), an extension to Paris traceroute for revealing most (if not all) MPLS tunnels along a path. TNT works in two basic stages. First, along with traceroute probes, it looks for evidences of the potential presence of hidden tunnels. Those evidences are surprising patterns in the traceroute output, e.g., abrupt and significant TTL shifts. Second, if alarms are triggered due to the presence of such evidences, TNT launches additional and dedicated probing for possibly revealing the content of the hidden tunnel. We validate TNT through emulation with GNS3 and tune its parameters through a dedicated measurement campaign. We also largely deploy TNT on the Archipelago platform and provide a quantification of tunnels, updating so the state of the art vision of MPLS tunnels. Finally, TNT and its validation platform are fully and publicly available, as well as the collected data and scripts used for processing data.
A Systematic Analysis of Fine-Grained Human Mobility Prediction with On-Device Contextual Data
Venue: arXiv cs.SI 2019
Year: 2019

User mobility prediction is widely considered to be helpful for various sorts of location based services on mobile devices. A large amount of studies have explored different algorithms to predict where a user will visit in the future based on their current and historical contexts and trajectories. Most of them focus on specific targets of predictions, such as the next venue a user checks in or the destination of her next trip, which usually depend on what their task is and what is available in their data. While successful stories are often reported, little discussion can be found on what happens if the prediction targets vary: whether coarser locations are easier to be predicted than finer locations, and whether predicting the immediate next location on the trajectory is easier than predicting the destination. On the other hand, commonly used in these prediction tasks, few have utilized finer grained, on-device user behavioral data, which are supposed to be indicative of user intentions. In this paper, we conduct a systematic study on the problem of mobility prediction using a fine-grained real-world dataset. Based on a Markov model, a recurrent neural network, and a multi-modal learning method, we perform a series of experiments to investigate the predictability of different types of granularities of prediction targets and the effectiveness of different types of signals. The results provide many insights on what can be predicted and how, which sheds light on real-world mobility prediction in general.
A new approach for query expansion using Wikipedia and WordNet
Venue: arXiv cs.IR 2019
Year: 2019

Query expansion (QE) is a well-known technique used to enhance the effectiveness of information retrieval. QE reformulates the initial query by adding similar terms that help in retrieving more relevant results. Several approaches have been proposed in literature producing quite favorable results, but they are not evenly favorable for all types of queries (individual and phrase queries). One of the main reasons for this is the use of the same kind of data sources and weighting scheme while expanding both the individual and the phrase query terms. As a result, the holistic relationship among the query terms is not well captured or scored. To address this issue, we have presented a new approach for QE using Wikipedia and WordNet as data sources. Specifically, Wikipedia gives rich expansion terms for phrase terms, while WordNet does the same for individual terms. We have also proposed novel weighting schemes for expansion terms: in-link score (for terms extracted from Wikipedia) and a tf-idf based scheme (for terms extracted from WordNet). In the proposed Wikipedia-WordNet-based QE technique (WWQE), we weigh the expansion terms twice: first, they are scored by the weighting scheme individually, and then, the weighting scheme scores the selected expansion terms concerning the entire query using correlation score. The proposed approach gains improvements of 24% on the MAP score and 48% on the GMAP score over unexpanded queries on the FIRE dataset. Experimental results achieve a significant improvement over individual expansion and other related state-of-the-art approaches. We also analyzed the effect on retrieval effectiveness of the proposed technique by varying the number of expansion terms.
Explicit topological priors for deep-learning based image segmentation using persistent homology
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2019
Year: 2019

We present a novel method to explicitly incorporate topological prior knowledge into deep learning based segmentation, which is, to our knowledge, the first work to do so. Our method uses the concept of persistent homology, a tool from topological data analysis, to capture high-level topological characteristics of segmentation results in a way which is differentiable with respect to the pixelwise probability of being assigned to a given class. The topological prior knowledge consists of the sequence of desired Betti numbers of the segmentation. As a proof-of-concept we demonstrate our approach by applying it to the problem of left-ventricle segmentation of cardiac MR images of 500 subjects from the UK Biobank dataset, where we show that it improves segmentation performance in terms of topological correctness without sacrificing pixelwise accuracy.
Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning with Multi-Step Generative Models
Venue: arXiv cs.LG 2019
Year: 2019

We consider model-based reinforcement learning (MBRL) in 2-agent, high-fidelity continuous control problems -- an important domain for robots interacting with other agents in the same workspace. For non-trivial dynamical systems, MBRL typically suffers from accumulating errors. Several recent studies have addressed this problem by learning latent variable models for trajectory segments and optimizing over behavior in the latent space. In this work, we investigate whether this approach can be extended to 2-agent competitive and cooperative settings. The fundamental challenge is how to learn models that capture interactions between agents, yet are disentangled to allow for optimization of each agent behavior separately. We propose such models based on a disentangled variational auto-encoder, and demonstrate our approach on a simulated 2-robot manipulation task, where one robot can either help or distract the other. We show that our approach has better sample efficiency than a strong model-free RL baseline, and can learn both cooperative and adversarial behavior from the same data.
Understanding and Training Deep Diagonal Circulant Neural Networks
Venue: arXiv cs.LG 2019
Year: 2019

In this paper, we study deep diagonal circulant neural networks, that is deep neural networks in which weight matrices are the product of diagonal and circulant ones. Besides making a theoretical analysis of their expressivity, we introduced principled techniques for training these models: we devise an initialization scheme and proposed a smart use of non-linearity functions in order to train deep diagonal circulant networks. Furthermore, we show that these networks outperform recently introduced deep networks with other types of structured layers. We conduct a thorough experimental study to compare the performance of deep diagonal circulant networks with state of the art models based on structured matrices and with dense models. We show that our models achieve better accuracy than other structured approaches while required 2x fewer weights as the next best approach. Finally we train deep diagonal circulant networks to build a compact and accurate models on a real world video classification dataset with over 3.8 million training examples.
Approximation of functions by neural networks
Venue: arXiv cs.LG 2019
Year: 2019

We study the approximation of measurable functions on the hypercube by functions arising from affine neural networks. Our main achievement is an approximation of any measurable function $f \colon W_n \to [-1,1]$ up to a prescribed precision $\varepsilon>0$ by a bounded number of neurons, depending only on $\varepsilon$ and not on the function $f$ or $n \in \mathbb N$.
Performance comparison of an AI-based Adaptive Learning System in China
Venue: arXiv cs.CY 2019
Year: 2019

Adaptive learning systems stand apart from traditional learning systems by offering a personalized learning experience to students according to their different knowledge states. Adaptive systems collect and analyse students' behavior data, update learner profiles, then accordingly provide timely individualized feedback to each student. Such interactions between the learning system and students can improve the engagement of students and the efficiency of learning. This paper evaluates the effectiveness of an adaptive learning system, "Yixue Squirrel AI" (or Yixue), on English and math learning in middle school. The effectiveness of the Yixue's math and English learning systems is respectively compared against (1) traditional classroom math instruction conducted by expert human teachers and (2) BOXFiSH, another adaptive learning platform for English language learning. Results suggest that students achieved better performance using Yixue adaptive learning system than both traditional classroom instruction by expert teachers and another adaptive learning platform.
Structural Material Property Tailoring Using Deep Neural Networks
Venue: arXiv cs.LG 2019
Year: 2019

Advances in robotics, artificial intelligence, and machine learning are ushering in a new age of automation, as machines match or outperform human performance. Machine intelligence can enable businesses to improve performance by reducing errors, improving sensitivity, quality and speed, and in some cases achieving outcomes that go beyond current resource capabilities. Relevant applications include new product architecture design, rapid material characterization, and life-cycle management tied with a digital strategy that will enable efficient development of products from cradle to grave. In addition, there are also challenges to overcome that must be addressed through a major, sustained research effort that is based solidly on both inferential and computational principles applied to design tailoring of functionally optimized structures. Current applications of structural materials in the aerospace industry demand the highest quality control of material microstructure, especially for advanced rotational turbomachinery in aircraft engines in order to have the best tailored material property. In this paper, deep convolutional neural networks were developed to accurately predict processing-structure-property relations from materials microstructures images, surpassing current best practices and modeling efforts. The models automatically learn critical features, without the need for manual specification and/or subjective and expensive image analysis. Further, in combination with generative deep learning models, a framework is proposed to enable rapid material design space exploration and property identification and optimization. The implementation must take account of real-time decision cycles and the trade-offs between speed and accuracy.
Using adjoint CFD to quantify the impact of manufacturing variations on a heavy duty turbine vane
Venue: arXiv cs.CE 2019
Year: 2019

We consider the evaluation of manufacturing variations to the aerodynamic performace of turbine vanes using the adjoint method. The empirical data is based on 102 white light scans from casted parts. We compare expensive calculations by the finite disfference method with cheap adjoint calculations and we find high correlations.