OpenRaiser/Intern-Atlas huggingface dataset:
Effect of Cell-Selection on the Effective Fading Distribution in a Downlink K-tier HetNet
Venue: arXiv cs.IT 2017
Year: 2017

This paper characterizes the statistics of effective fading gain in multi-tier cellular networks with strongest base station (BS) cell association policy. First, we derive the probability of association with the $n$-th nearest BS in the $k$-th tier. Next, we use this result to derive the probability density function (PDF) of the channel fading gain (effective fading) experienced by the user when associating with the strongest BS. Interestingly, our results show that the effective channel gain distribution solely depends upon the original channel fading and the path-loss exponent. Moreover, we show that in the case of Nakagami-$m$ fading channels (Gamma distribution), the distribution of the effective fading is also Gamma but with a gain of $\fracα{2}$ in the shape parameter, where $α$ is the path-loss exponent.
On the number of gapped repeats with arbitrary gap
Venue: arXiv cs.FL 2017
Year: 2017

For any functions $f(x)$, $g(x)$ from $\mathbb {N}$ to $\mathbb {R}$ we call repeats $uvu$ such that $g(|u|)\le |v|\le f(|u|)$ as {\it $f,g$-gapped repeats}. We study the possible number of $f,g$-gapped repeats in words of fixed length~$n$. For quite weak conditions on $f(x)$, $g(x)$ we obtain an upper bound on this number which is linear to~$n$.
Toward negotiable reinforcement learning: shifting priorities in Pareto optimal sequential decision-making
Venue: arXiv cs.AI 2017
Year: 2017

Existing multi-objective reinforcement learning (MORL) algorithms do not account for objectives that arise from players with differing beliefs. Concretely, consider two players with different beliefs and utility functions who may cooperate to build a machine that takes actions on their behalf. A representation is needed for how much the machine's policy will prioritize each player's interests over time. Assuming the players have reached common knowledge of their situation, this paper derives a recursion that any Pareto optimal policy must satisfy. Two qualitative observations can be made from the recursion: the machine must (1) use each player's own beliefs in evaluating how well an action will serve that player's utility function, and (2) shift the relative priority it assigns to each player's expected utilities over time, by a factor proportional to how well that player's beliefs predict the machine's inputs. Observation (2) represents a substantial divergence from naïve linear utility aggregation (as in Harsanyi's utilitarian theorem, and existing MORL algorithms), which is shown here to be inadequate for Pareto optimal sequential decision-making on behalf of players with different beliefs.
Platoon formation maximization through centralized routing and departure time coordination
Venue: arXiv cs.SY 2017
Year: 2017

Platooning allows vehicles to travel with small intervehicle distance in a coordinated fashion thanks to vehicle-to-vehicle connectivity. When applied at a larger scale, platooning will create significant opportunities for energy savings due to reduced aerodynamic drag, as well as increased road capacity and congestion reduction resulting from shorter vehicle headways. However, these potential savings are maximized if platooning-capable vehicles spend most of their travel time within platoons. Ad hoc platoon formation may not ensure a high rate of platoon driving. In this paper we consider the problem of central coordination of platooning-capable vehicles. By coordinating their routes and departure times, we can maximize the fuel savings afforded by platooning vehicles. The resulting problem is a combinatorial optimization problem that considers the platoon coordination and vehicle routing problems simultaneously. We demonstrate our methodology by evaluating the benefits of a coordinated solution and comparing it with the uncoordinated case when platoons form only in an ad hoc manner. We compare the coordinated and uncoordinated scenarios on a grid network with different assumptions about demand and the time vehicles are willing to wait.
Quantitative Analysis of Automatic Image Cropping Algorithms: A Dataset and Comparative Study
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2017
Year: 2017

Automatic photo cropping is an important tool for improving visual quality of digital photos without resorting to tedious manual selection. Traditionally, photo cropping is accomplished by determining the best proposal window through visual quality assessment or saliency detection. In essence, the performance of an image cropper highly depends on the ability to correctly rank a number of visually similar proposal windows. Despite the ranking nature of automatic photo cropping, little attention has been paid to learning-to-rank algorithms in tackling such a problem. In this work, we conduct an extensive study on traditional approaches as well as ranking-based croppers trained on various image features. In addition, a new dataset consisting of high quality cropping and pairwise ranking annotations is presented to evaluate the performance of various baselines. The experimental results on the new dataset provide useful insights into the design of better photo cropping algorithms.
Non interactive simulation of correlated distributions is decidable
Venue: arXiv cs.CC 2017
Year: 2017

A basic problem in information theory is the following: Let $\mathbf{P} = (\mathbf{X}, \mathbf{Y})$ be an arbitrary distribution where the marginals $\mathbf{X}$ and $\mathbf{Y}$ are (potentially) correlated. Let Alice and Bob be two players where Alice gets samples $\{x_i\}_{i \ge 1}$ and Bob gets samples $\{y_i\}_{i \ge 1}$ and for all $i$, $(x_i, y_i) \sim \mathbf{P}$. What joint distributions $\mathbf{Q}$ can be simulated by Alice and Bob without any interaction? Classical works in information theory by G{á}cs-K{ö}rner and Wyner answer this question when at least one of $\mathbf{P}$ or $\mathbf{Q}$ is the distribution on $\{0,1\} \times \{0,1\}$ where each marginal is unbiased and identical. However, other than this special case, the answer to this question is understood in very few cases. Recently, Ghazi, Kamath and Sudan showed that this problem is decidable for $\mathbf{Q}$ supported on $\{0,1\} \times \{0,1\}$. We extend their result to $\mathbf{Q}$ supported on any finite alphabet. We rely on recent results in Gaussian geometry (by the authors) as well as a new \emph{smoothing argument} inspired by the method of \emph{boosting} from learning theory and potential function arguments from complexity theory and additive combinatorics.
Opportunistic Downlink Interference Alignment for Multi-Cell MIMO Networks
Venue: arXiv cs.IT 2017
Year: 2017

In this paper, we propose an opportunistic downlink interference alignment (ODIA) for interference-limited cellular downlink, which intelligently combines user scheduling and downlink IA techniques. The proposed ODIA not only efficiently reduces the effect of inter-cell interference from other-cell base stations (BSs) but also eliminates intra-cell interference among spatial streams in the same cell. We show that the minimum number of users required to achieve a target degrees-of-freedom (DoF) can be fundamentally reduced, i.e., the fundamental user scaling law can be improved by using the ODIA, compared with the existing downlink IA schemes. In addition, we adopt a limited feedback strategy in the ODIA framework, and then analyze the number of feedback bits required for the system with limited feedback to achieve the same user scaling law of the ODIA as the system with perfect CSI. We also modify the original ODIA in order to further improve sum-rate, which achieves the optimal multiuser diversity gain, i.e., $\log\log N$, per spatial stream even in the presence of downlink inter-cell interference, where $N$ denotes the number of users in a cell. Simulation results show that the ODIA significantly outperforms existing interference management techniques in terms of sum-rate in realistic cellular environments. Note that the ODIA operates in a non-collaborative and decoupled manner, i.e., it requires no information exchange among BSs and no iterative beamformer optimization between BSs and users, thus leading to an easier implementation.
Behavioural - based modelling and analysis of Navigation Patterns across Information Networks
Venue: arXiv cs.SI 2017
Year: 2017

Navigation behaviour can be considered as one of the most crucial aspects of user behaviour in an electronic commerce environment, which is very good indicator of user's interests either in the process of browsing or purchasing. Revealing user navigation patterns is very helpful in finding out a way for increasing sale, turning the most browsers into buyers, keeping costumer's attention, loyalty, adjusting and improving the interface in order to boost the user experience and interaction with the system. In this regard, this research has identified the most common user navigation patterns across information networks, illustrated through the example of an electronic bookstore. A behavioural-based model that provides profound knowledge about the processes of navigation is proposed, specifically examined for different types of users, automatically identified and clustered into two clusters according to their navigational behaviour. The developed model is based on stochastic modelling using the concept of Generalized Stochastic Petri Nets which complex solution relies on Continuous Time Markov Chain. As a result, calculation of several performance measures is performed, such as: expected time spent in a transient tangible marking, cumulative sojourn time spent in a transient tangible marking, total number of visits in a transient tangible marking etc.
Locality Sim: Cloud Simulator with Data Locality
Venue: arXiv cs.DC 2017
Year: 2017

Cloud Computing (CC) is a model for enabling on-demand access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources. Testing and evaluating the performance of the cloud environment for allocating, provisioning, scheduling, and data allocation policy have great attention to be achieved. Therefore, using cloud simulator would save time and money, and provide a flexible environment to evaluate new research work. Unfortunately, the current simulators (e.g., CloudSim, NetworkCloudSim, GreenCloud, etc..) deal with the data as for size only without any consideration about the data allocation policy and locality. On the other hand, the NetworkCloudSim simulator is considered one of the most common used simulators because it includes different modules which support needed functions to a simulated cloud environment, and it could be extended to include new extra modules. According to work in this paper, the NetworkCloudSim simulator has been extended and modified to support data locality. The modified simulator is called LocalitySim. The accuracy of the proposed LocalitySim simulator has been proved by building a mathematical model. Also, the proposed simulator has been used to test the performance of the three-tire data center as a case study with considering the data locality feature.
Application of Fuzzy Logic in Design of Smart Washing Machine
Venue: arXiv cs.SY 2017
Year: 2017

Washing machine is of great domestic necessity as it frees us from the burden of washing our clothes and saves ample of our time. This paper will cover the aspect of designing and developing of Fuzzy Logic based, Smart Washing Machine. The regular washing machine (timer based) makes use of multi-turned timer based start-stop mechanism which is mechanical as is prone to breakage. In addition to its starting and stopping issues, the mechanical timers are not efficient with respect of maintenance and electricity usage. Recent developments have shown that merger of digital electronics in optimal functionality of this machine is possible and nowadays in practice. A number of international renowned companies have developed the machine with the introduction of smart artificial intelligence. Such a machine makes use of sensors and smartly calculates the amount of run-time (washing time) for the main machine motor. Realtime calculations and processes are also catered in optimizing the run-time of the machine. The obvious result is smart time management, better economy of electricity and efficiency of work. This paper deals with the indigenization of FLC (Fuzzy Logic Controller) based Washing Machine, which is capable of automating the inputs and getting the desired output (wash-time).
On the next-to-minimal weight of projective Reed-Muller codes
Venue: arXiv cs.IT 2017
Year: 2017

In this paper we present several values for the next-to-minimal weights of projective Reed-Muller codes. We work over $\mathbb{F}_q$ with $q \geq 3$ since in IEEE-IT 62(11) p. 6300-6303 (2016) we have determined the complete values for the next-to-minimal weights of binary projective Reed-Muller codes. As in loc. cit. here we also find examples of codewords with next-to-minimal weight whose set of zeros is not in a hyperplane arrangement.
Virtual Network Migration on the GENI Wide-Area SDN-Enabled Infrastructure
Venue: arXiv cs.NI 2017
Year: 2017

A virtual network (VN) contains a collection of virtual nodes and links assigned to underlying physical resources in a network substrate. VN migration is the process of remapping a VN's logical topology to a new set of physical resources to provide failure recovery, energy savings, or defense against attack. Providing VN migration that is transparent to running applications is a significant challenge. Efficient migration mechanisms are highly dependent on the technology deployed in the physical substrate. Prior work has considered migration in data centers and in the PlanetLab infrastructure. However, there has been little effort targeting an SDN-enabled wide-area networking environment - an important building block of future networking infrastructure. In this work, we are interested in the design, implementation and evaluation of VN migration in GENI as a working example of such a future network. We identify and propose techniques to address key challenges: the dynamic allocation of resources during migration, managing hosts connected to the VN, and flow table migration sequences to minimize packet loss. We find that GENI's virtualization architecture makes transparent and efficient migration challenging. We suggest alternatives that might be adopted in GENI and are worthy of adoption by virtual network providers to facilitate migration.
Towards an algebraic natural proofs barrier via polynomial identity testing
Venue: arXiv cs.CC 2017
Year: 2017

We observe that a certain kind of algebraic proof - which covers essentially all known algebraic circuit lower bounds to date - cannot be used to prove lower bounds against VP if and only if what we call succinct hitting sets exist for VP. This is analogous to the Razborov-Rudich natural proofs barrier in Boolean circuit complexity, in that we rule out a large class of lower bound techniques under a derandomization assumption. We also discuss connections between this algebraic natural proofs barrier, geometric complexity theory, and (algebraic) proof complexity.
Urban Rail Transit System Operation Optimization A Game Theoretical Methodology
Venue: arXiv cs.GT 2017
Year: 2017

The Urban Rail Transit (URT) has been one of the major trip modes in cities worldwide. As the passengers arrive at variable rates in different time slots, e.g., rush and non-rush hours, the departure frequency at a site directly relates to perceived service quality of passengers; the high departure frequency, however, incurs more operation cost to URT. Therefore, a tradeoff between the interest of railway operator and the service quality of passengers needs to be addressed. In this paper, we develop a model on the operation method of train operation scheduling using a Stackelberg game model. The railway operator is modeled as the game leader and the passengers as the game follower, and an optimal departure frequency can be determine the tradeoff between passengers' service quality and operation cost. We present several numerical examples based on the operation data from Nanjing transit subway at China. The results demonstrate that the proposed model can significantly improve the traffic efficiency.
Power-Constrained Secrecy Rate Maximization for Joint Relay and Jammer Selection Assisted Wireless Networks
Venue: arXiv cs.IT 2017
Year: 2017

In this paper, we examine the physical layer security for cooperative wireless networks with multiple intermediate nodes, where the decode-and-forward (DF) protocol is considered. We propose a new joint relay and jammer selection (JRJS) scheme for protecting wireless communications against eavesdropping, where an intermediate node is selected as the relay for the sake of forwarding the source signal to the destination and meanwhile, the remaining intermediate nodes are employed to act as friendly jammers which broadcast the artificial noise for disturbing the eavesdropper. We further investigate the power allocation among the source, relay and friendly jammers for maximizing the secrecy rate of proposed JRJS scheme and derive a closed-form sub-optimal solution. Specificially, all the intermediate nodes which successfully decode the source signal are considered as relay candidates. For each candidate, we derive the sub-optimal closed-form power allocation solution and obtain the secrecy rate result of the corresponding JRJS scheme. Then, the candidate which is capable of achieving the highest secrecy rate is selected as the relay. Two assumptions about the channel state information (CSI), namely the full CSI (FCSI) and partial CSI (PCSI), are considered. Simulation results show that the proposed JRJS scheme outperforms the conventional pure relay selection, pure jamming and GSVD based beamforming schemes in terms of secrecy rate. Additionally, the proposed FCSI based power allocation (FCSI-PA) and PCSI based power allocation (PCSI-PA) schemes both achieve higher secrecy rates than the equal power allocation (EPA) scheme.
Stage 4 validation of the Satellite Image Automatic Mapper lightweight computer program for Earth observation Level 2 product generation, Part 1 Theory
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2017
Year: 2017

The European Space Agency (ESA) defines an Earth Observation (EO) Level 2 product as a multispectral (MS) image corrected for geometric, atmospheric, adjacency and topographic effects, stacked with its scene classification map (SCM), whose legend includes quality layers such as cloud and cloud-shadow. No ESA EO Level 2 product has ever been systematically generated at the ground segment. To contribute toward filling an information gap from EO big data to the ESA EO Level 2 product, an original Stage 4 validation (Val) of the Satellite Image Automatic Mapper (SIAM) lightweight computer program was conducted by independent means on an annual Web-Enabled Landsat Data (WELD) image composite time-series of the conterminous U.S. The core of SIAM is a one pass prior knowledge based decision tree for MS reflectance space hyperpolyhedralization into static color names presented in literature in recent years. For the sake of readability this paper is split into two. The present Part 1 Theory provides the multidisciplinary background of a priori color naming in cognitive science, from linguistics to computer vision. To cope with dictionaries of MS color names and land cover class names that do not coincide and must be harmonized, an original hybrid guideline is proposed to identify a categorical variable pair relationship. An original quantitative measure of categorical variable pair association is also proposed. The subsequent Part 2 Validation discusses Stage 4 Val results collected by an original protocol for wall-to-wall thematic map quality assessment without sampling where the test and reference map legends can differ. Conclusions are that the SIAM-WELD maps instantiate a Level 2 SCM product whose legend is the 4 class taxonomy of the FAO Land Cover Classification System at the Dichotomous Phase Level 1 vegetation/nonvegetation and Level 2 terrestrial/aquatic.
Multi-spectral Image Panchromatic Sharpening, Outcome and Process Quality Assessment Protocol
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2017
Year: 2017

Multispectral (MS) image panchromatic (PAN) sharpening algorithms proposed to the remote sensing community are ever increasing in number and variety. Their aim is to sharpen a coarse spatial resolution MS image with a fine spatial resolution PAN image acquired simultaneously by a spaceborne or airborne Earth observation (EO) optical imaging sensor pair. Unfortunately, to date, no standard evaluation procedure for MS image PAN sharpening outcome and process is community agreed upon, in contrast with the Quality Assurance Framework for Earth Observation (QA4EO) guidelines proposed by the intergovernmental Group on Earth Observations (GEO). In general, process is easier to measure, outcome is more important. The original contribution of the present study is fourfold. First, existing procedures for quantitative quality assessment (Q2A) of the (sole) PAN sharpened MS product are critically reviewed. Their conceptual and implementation drawbacks are highlighted to be overcome for quality improvement. Second, a novel (to the best of these authors' knowledge, the first) protocol for Q2A of MS image PAN sharpening product and process is designed, implemented and validated by independent means. Third, within this protocol, an innovative categorization of spectral and spatial image quality indicators and metrics is presented. Fourth, according to this new taxonomy, an original third order isotropic multi scale gray level co occurrence matrix (TIMS GLCM) calculator and a TIMS GLCM texture feature extractor are proposed to replace popular second order GLCMs.
Joint Power and Admission Control based on Channel Distribution Information: A Novel Two-Timescale Approach
Venue: arXiv cs.IT 2017
Year: 2017

In this letter, we consider the joint power and admission control (JPAC) problem by assuming that only the channel distribution information (CDI) is available. Under this assumption, we formulate a new chance (probabilistic) constrained JPAC problem, where the signal to interference plus noise ratio (SINR) outage probability of the supported links is enforced to be not greater than a prespecified tolerance. To efficiently deal with the chance SINR constraint, we employ the sample approximation method to convert them into finitely many linear constraints. Then, we propose a convex approximation based deflation algorithm for solving the sample approximation JPAC problem. Compared to the existing works, this letter proposes a novel two-timescale JPAC approach, where admission control is performed by the proposed deflation algorithm based on the CDI in a large timescale and transmission power is adapted instantly with fast fadings in a small timescale. The effectiveness of the proposed algorithm is illustrated by simulations.
Backward deterministic and weak alternating $ω$-automata
Venue: arXiv cs.FL 2017
Year: 2017

We present a direct transformation of weak alternating $ω$-automata into equivalent backward deterministic $ω$-automata and show (1) how it can be used to obtain a transformation of non-deterministic Büchi automata into equivalent backward deterministic automata and (2) that it yields optimal equivalent backward deterministic automata when applied to linear-time temporal logic formulas. (1) uses the alternation-free fragment of the linear-time $μ$-calculus as an intermediate step; (2) is based on the straightforward translation of linear-time temporal logic into weak alternating $ω$-automata.