OpenRaiser/Intern-Atlas huggingface dataset:
Cooperation and Contagion in Web-Based, Networked Public Goods Experiments
Venue: arXiv cs.GT 2011
Year: 2011

A longstanding idea in the literature on human cooperation is that cooperation should be reinforced when conditional cooperators are more likely to interact. In the context of social networks, this idea implies that cooperation should fare better in highly clustered networks such as cliques than in networks with low clustering such as random networks. To test this hypothesis, we conducted a series of web-based experiments, in which 24 individuals played a local public goods game arranged on one of five network topologies that varied between disconnected cliques and a random regular graph. In contrast with previous theoretical work, we found that network topology had no significant effect on average contributions. This result implies either that individuals are not conditional cooperators, or else that cooperation does not benefit from positive reinforcement between connected neighbors. We then tested both of these possibilities in two subsequent series of experiments in which artificial seed players were introduced, making either full or zero contributions. First, we found that although players did generally behave like conditional cooperators, they were as likely to decrease their contributions in response to low contributing neighbors as they were to increase their contributions in response to high contributing neighbors. Second, we found that positive effects of cooperation were contagious only to direct neighbors in the network. In total we report on 113 human subjects experiments, highlighting the speed, flexibility, and cost-effectiveness of web-based experiments over those conducted in physical labs.
Efficient Dealiased Convolutions without Padding
Venue: arXiv cs.CE 2011
Year: 2011

Algorithms are developed for calculating dealiased linear convolution sums without the expense of conventional zero-padding or phase-shift techniques. For one-dimensional in-place convolutions, the memory requirements are identical with the zero-padding technique, with the important distinction that the additional work memory need not be contiguous with the input data. This decoupling of data and work arrays dramatically reduces the memory and computation time required to evaluate higher-dimensional in-place convolutions. The technique also allows one to dealias the higher-order convolutions that arise from Fourier transforming cubic and higher powers. Implicitly dealiased convolutions can be built on top of state-of-the-art fast Fourier transform libraries: vectorized multidimensional implementations for the complex and centered Hermitian (pseudospectral) cases have been implemented in the open-source software FFTW++.
Joint Source-Channel Coding with Correlated Interference
Venue: arXiv cs.IT 2011
Year: 2011

We study the joint source-channel coding problem of transmitting a discrete-time analog source over an additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN) channel with interference known at transmitter.We consider the case when the source and the interference are correlated. We first derive an outer bound on the achievable distortion and then, we propose two joint source-channel coding schemes. The first scheme is the superposition of the uncoded signal and a digital part which is the concatenation of a Wyner-Ziv encoder and a dirty paper encoder. In the second scheme, the digital part is replaced by the hybrid digital and analog scheme proposed by Wilson et al. When the channel signal-tonoise ratio (SNR) is perfectly known at the transmitter, both proposed schemes are shown to provide identical performance which is substantially better than that of existing schemes. In the presence of an SNR mismatch, both proposed schemes are shown to be capable of graceful enhancement and graceful degradation. Interestingly, unlike the case when the source and interference are independent, neither of the two schemes outperforms the other universally. As an application of the proposed schemes, we provide both inner and outer bounds on the distortion region for the generalized cognitive radio channel.
A Tractable Approach to Coverage and Rate in Cellular Networks
Venue: arXiv cs.IT 2011
Year: 2011

Cellular networks are usually modeled by placing the base stations on a grid, with mobile users either randomly scattered or placed deterministically. These models have been used extensively but suffer from being both highly idealized and not very tractable, so complex system-level simulations are used to evaluate coverage/outage probability and rate. More tractable models have long been desirable. We develop new general models for the multi-cell signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio (SINR) using stochastic geometry. Under very general assumptions, the resulting expressions for the downlink SINR CCDF (equivalent to the coverage probability) involve quickly computable integrals, and in some practical special cases can be simplified to common integrals (e.g., the Q-function) or even to simple closed-form expressions. We also derive the mean rate, and then the coverage gain (and mean rate loss) from static frequency reuse. We compare our coverage predictions to the grid model and an actual base station deployment, and observe that the proposed model is pessimistic (a lower bound on coverage) whereas the grid model is optimistic, and that both are about equally accurate. In addition to being more tractable, the proposed model may better capture the increasingly opportunistic and dense placement of base stations in future networks.
Gaussian Process Bandits for Tree Search: Theory and Application to Planning in Discounted MDPs
Venue: arXiv cs.LG 2011
Year: 2011

We motivate and analyse a new Tree Search algorithm, GPTS, based on recent theoretical advances in the use of Gaussian Processes for Bandit problems. We consider tree paths as arms and we assume the target/reward function is drawn from a GP distribution. The posterior mean and variance, after observing data, are used to define confidence intervals for the function values, and we sequentially play arms with highest upper confidence bounds. We give an efficient implementation of GPTS and we adapt previous regret bounds by determining the decay rate of the eigenvalues of the kernel matrix on the whole set of tree paths. We consider two kernels in the feature space of binary vectors indexed by the nodes of the tree: linear and Gaussian. The regret grows in square root of the number of iterations T, up to a logarithmic factor, with a constant that improves with bigger Gaussian kernel widths. We focus on practical values of T, smaller than the number of arms. Finally, we apply GPTS to Open Loop Planning in discounted Markov Decision Processes by modelling the reward as a discounted sum of independent Gaussian Processes. We report similar regret bounds to those of the OLOP algorithm.
New and improved Johnson-Lindenstrauss embeddings via the Restricted Isometry Property
Venue: arXiv cs.IT 2011
Year: 2011

Consider an m by N matrix Phi with the Restricted Isometry Property of order k and level delta, that is, the norm of any k-sparse vector in R^N is preserved to within a multiplicative factor of 1 +- delta under application of Phi. We show that by randomizing the column signs of such a matrix Phi, the resulting map with high probability embeds any fixed set of p = O(e^k) points in R^N into R^m without distorting the norm of any point in the set by more than a factor of 1 +- delta. Consequently, matrices with the Restricted Isometry Property and with randomized column signs provide optimal Johnson-Lindenstrauss embeddings up to logarithmic factors in N. In particular, our results improve the best known bounds on the necessary embedding dimension m for a wide class of structured random matrices; for partial Fourier and partial Hadamard matrices, we improve the recent bound m = O(delta^(-4) log(p) log^4(N)) appearing in Ailon and Liberty to m = O(delta^(-2) log(p) log^4(N)), which is optimal up to the logarithmic factors in N. Our results also have a direct application in the area of compressed sensing for redundant dictionaries.
The Complexity of Causality and Responsibility for Query Answers and non-Answers
Venue: arXiv cs.DB 2011
Year: 2011

An answer to a query has a well-defined lineage expression (alternatively called how-provenance) that explains how the answer was derived. Recent work has also shown how to compute the lineage of a non-answer to a query. However, the cause of an answer or non-answer is a more subtle notion and consists, in general, of only a fragment of the lineage. In this paper, we adapt Halpern, Pearl, and Chockler's recent definitions of causality and responsibility to define the causes of answers and non-answers to queries, and their degree of responsibility. Responsibility captures the notion of degree of causality and serves to rank potentially many causes by their relative contributions to the effect. Then, we study the complexity of computing causes and responsibilities for conjunctive queries. It is known that computing causes is NP-complete in general. Our first main result shows that all causes to conjunctive queries can be computed by a relational query which may involve negation. Thus, causality can be computed in PTIME, and very efficiently so. Next, we study computing responsibility. Here, we prove that the complexity depends on the conjunctive query and demonstrate a dichotomy between PTIME and NP-complete cases. For the PTIME cases, we give a non-trivial algorithm, consisting of a reduction to the max-flow computation problem. Finally, we prove that, even when it is in PTIME, responsibility is complete for LOGSPACE, implying that, unlike causality, it cannot be computed by a relational query.
Universal Rate-Efficient Scalar Quantization
Venue: arXiv cs.IT 2011
Year: 2011

Scalar quantization is the most practical and straightforward approach to signal quantization. However, it has been shown that scalar quantization of oversampled or Compressively Sensed signals can be inefficient in terms of the rate-distortion trade-off, especially as the oversampling rate or the sparsity of the signal increases. In this paper, we modify the scalar quantizer to have discontinuous quantization regions. We demonstrate that with this modification it is possible to achieve exponential decay of the quantization error as a function of the oversampling rate instead of the quadratic decay exhibited by current approaches. Our approach is universal in the sense that prior knowledge of the signal model is not necessary in the quantizer design, only in the reconstruction. Thus, we demonstrate that it is possible to reduce the quantization error by incorporating side information on the acquired signal, such as sparse signal models or signal similarity with known signals. In doing so, we establish a relationship between quantization performance and the Kolmogorov entropy of the signal model.
Computing sparse multiples of polynomials
Venue: arXiv cs.SC 2011
Year: 2011

We consider the problem of finding a sparse multiple of a polynomial. Given f in F[x] of degree d over a field F, and a desired sparsity t, our goal is to determine if there exists a multiple h in F[x] of f such that h has at most t non-zero terms, and if so, to find such an h. When F=Q and t is constant, we give a polynomial-time algorithm in d and the size of coefficients in h. When F is a finite field, we show that the problem is at least as hard as determining the multiplicative order of elements in an extension field of F (a problem thought to have complexity similar to that of factoring integers), and this lower bound is tight when t=2.
Expansion and Search in Networks
Venue: arXiv cs.SI 2011
Year: 2011

Borrowing from concepts in expander graphs, we study the expansion properties of real-world, complex networks (e.g. social networks, unstructured peer-to-peer or P2P networks) and the extent to which these properties can be exploited to understand and address the problem of decentralized search. We first produce samples that concisely capture the overall expansion properties of an entire network, which we collectively refer to as the expansion signature. Using these signatures, we find a correspondence between the magnitude of maximum expansion and the extent to which a network can be efficiently searched. We further find evidence that standard graph-theoretic measures, such as average path length, fail to fully explain the level of "searchability" or ease of information diffusion and dissemination in a network. Finally, we demonstrate that this high expansion can be leveraged to facilitate decentralized search in networks and show that an expansion-based search strategy outperforms typical search methods.
Forever Young: Aging Control For Smartphones In Hybrid Networks
Venue: arXiv cs.PF 2011
Year: 2011

The demand for Internet services that require frequent updates through small messages, such as microblogging, has tremendously grown in the past few years. Although the use of such applications by domestic users is usually free, their access from mobile devices is subject to fees and consumes energy from limited batteries. If a user activates his mobile device and is in range of a service provider, a content update is received at the expense of monetary and energy costs. Thus, users face a tradeoff between such costs and their messages aging. The goal of this paper is to show how to cope with such a tradeoff, by devising \emph{aging control policies}. An aging control policy consists of deciding, based on the current utility of the last message received, whether to activate the mobile device, and if so, which technology to use (WiFi or 3G). We present a model that yields the optimal aging control policy. Our model is based on a Markov Decision Process in which states correspond to message ages. Using our model, we show the existence of an optimal strategy in the class of threshold strategies, wherein users activate their mobile devices if the age of their messages surpasses a given threshold and remain inactive otherwise. We then consider strategic content providers (publishers) that offer \emph{bonus packages} to users, so as to incent them to download updates of advertisement campaigns. We provide simple algorithms for publishers to determine optimal bonus levels, leveraging the fact that users adopt their optimal aging control strategies. The accuracy of our model is validated against traces from the UMass DieselNet bus network.
Delay-Guaranteed Cross-Layer Scheduling in Multi-Hop Wireless Networks
Venue: arXiv cs.IT 2011
Year: 2011

In this paper, we propose a cross-layer scheduling algorithm that achieves a throughput "epsilon-close" to the optimal throughput in multi-hop wireless networks with a tradeoff of O(1/epsilon) in delay guarantees. The algorithm aims to solve a joint congestion control, routing, and scheduling problem in a multi-hop wireless network while satisfying per-flow average end-to-end delay guarantees and minimum data rate requirements. This problem has been solved for both backlogged as well as arbitrary arrival rate systems. Moreover, we discuss the design of a class of low-complexity suboptimal algorithms, the effects of delayed feedback on the optimal algorithm, and the extensions of the proposed algorithm to different interference models with arbitrary link capacities.
Sensor Activation and Radius Adaptation (SARA) in Heterogeneous Sensor Networks
Venue: arXiv cs.NI 2011
Year: 2011

In this paper we address the problem of prolonging the lifetime of wireless sensor networks (WSNs) deployed to monitor an area of interest. In this scenario, a helpful approach is to reduce coverage redundancy and therefore the energy expenditure due to coverage. We introduce the first algorithm which reduces coverage redundancy by means of Sensor Activation and sensing Radius Adaptation (SARA)in a general applicative scenario with two classes of devices: sensors that can adapt their sensing range (adjustable sensors) and sensors that cannot (fixed sensors). In particular, SARA activates only a subset of all the available sensors and reduces the sensing range of the adjustable sensors that have been activated. In doing so, SARA also takes possible heterogeneous coverage capabilities of sensors belonging to the same class into account. It specifically addresses device heterogeneity by modeling the coverage problem in the Laguerre geometry through Voronoi-Laguerre diagrams. SARA executes quickly and is guaranteed to terminate. It provides a configuration of the active set of sensors that lifetime and coverage requirements of demanding WSN applications, not met by current solutions. By means of extensive simulations we show that SARA achieves a network lifetime that is significantly superior to that obtained by previous algorithms in all the considered scenarios.
A non-cooperative Pareto-efficient solution to a one-shot Prisoner's Dilemma
Venue: arXiv cs.GT 2011
Year: 2011

The Prisoner's Dilemma is a simple model that captures the essential contradiction between individual rationality and global rationality. Although the one-shot Prisoner's Dilemma is usually viewed simple, in this paper we will categorize it into five different types. For the type-4 Prisoner's Dilemma game, we will propose a self-enforcing algorithmic model to help non-cooperative agents obtain Pareto-efficient payoffs. The algorithmic model is based on an algorithm using complex numbers and can work in macro applications.
Design and Performance of Rate-compatible Non-Binary LDPC Convolutional Codes
Venue: arXiv cs.IT 2011
Year: 2011

In this paper, we present a construction method of non-binary low-density parity-check (LDPC) convolutional codes. Our construction method is an extension of Felstroem and Zigangirov construction for non-binary LDPC convolutional codes. The rate-compatibility of the non-binary convolutional code is also discussed. The proposed rate-compatible code is designed from one single mother (2,4)-regular non-binary LDPC convolutional code of rate 1/2. Higher-rate codes are produced by puncturing the mother code and lower-rate codes are produced by multiplicatively repeating the mother code. Simulation results show that non-binary LDPC convolutional codes of rate 1/2 outperform state-of-the-art binary LDPC convolutional codes with comparable constraint bit length. Also the derived low-rate and high-rate non-binary LDPC convolutional codes exhibit good decoding performance without loss of large gap to the Shannon limits.
Real-time Robust Principal Components' Pursuit
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2011
Year: 2011

In the recent work of Candes et al, the problem of recovering low rank matrix corrupted by i.i.d. sparse outliers is studied and a very elegant solution, principal component pursuit, is proposed. It is motivated as a tool for video surveillance applications with the background image sequence forming the low rank part and the moving objects/persons/abnormalities forming the sparse part. Each image frame is treated as a column vector of the data matrix made up of a low rank matrix and a sparse corruption matrix. Principal component pursuit solves the problem under the assumptions that the singular vectors of the low rank matrix are spread out and the sparsity pattern of the sparse matrix is uniformly random. However, in practice, usually the sparsity pattern and the signal values of the sparse part (moving persons/objects) change in a correlated fashion over time, for e.g., the object moves slowly and/or with roughly constant velocity. This will often result in a low rank sparse matrix. For video surveillance applications, it would be much more useful to have a real-time solution. In this work, we study the online version of the above problem and propose a solution that automatically handles correlated sparse outliers. The key idea of this work is as follows. Given an initial estimate of the principal directions of the low rank part, we causally keep estimating the sparse part at each time by solving a noisy compressive sensing type problem. The principal directions of the low rank part are updated every-so-often. In between two update times, if new Principal Components' directions appear, the "noise" seen by the Compressive Sensing step may increase. This problem is solved, in part, by utilizing the time correlation model of the low rank part. We call the proposed solution "Real-time Robust Principal Components' Pursuit".
Strong security and separated code constructions for the broadcast channels with confidential messages
Venue: arXiv cs.IT 2011
Year: 2011

We show that the capacity region of the broadcast channel with confidential messages does not change when the strong security criterion is adopted instead of the weak security criterion traditionally used. We also show a construction method of coding for the broadcast channel with confidential messages by using an arbitrary given coding for the broadcast channel with degraded message sets.
Graph-theoretical Constructions for Graph Entropy and Network Coding Based Communications
Venue: arXiv cs.IT 2011
Year: 2011

The guessing number of a directed graph (digraph), equivalent to the entropy of that digraph, was introduced as a direct criterion on the solvability of a network coding instance. This paper makes two contributions on the guessing number. First, we introduce an undirected graph on all possible configurations of the digraph, referred to as the guessing graph, which encapsulates the essence of dependence amongst configurations. We prove that the guessing number of a digraph is equal to the logarithm of the independence number of its guessing graph. Therefore, network coding solvability is no more a problem on the operations made by each node, but is simplified into a problem on the messages that can transit through the network. By studying the guessing graph of a given digraph, and how to combine digraphs or alphabets, we are thus able to derive bounds on the guessing number of digraphs. Second, we construct specific digraphs with high guessing numbers, yielding network coding instances where a large amount of information can transit. We first propose a construction of digraphs with finite parameters based on cyclic codes, with guessing number equal to the degree of the generator polynomial. We then construct an infinite class of digraphs with arbitrary girth for which the ratio between the linear guessing number and the number of vertices tends to one, despite these digraphs being arbitrarily sparse. These constructions yield solvable network coding instances with a relatively small number of intermediate nodes for which the node operations are known and linear, although these instances are sparse and the sources are arbitrarily far from their corresponding sinks.
A Strategy-Proof and Non-monetary Admission Control Mechanism for Wireless Access Networks
Venue: arXiv cs.GT 2011
Year: 2011

We study admission control mechanisms for wireless access networks where (i) each user has a minimum service requirement, (ii) the capacity of the access network is limited, and (iii) the access point is not allowed to use monetary mechanisms to guarantee that users do not lie when disclosing their minimum service requirements. To guarantee truthfulness, we use auction theory to design a mechanism where users compete to be admitted into the network. We propose admission control mechanisms under which the access point intelligently allocates resources based on the announced minimum service requirements to ensure that users have no incentive to lie and the capacity constraint is fulfilled. We also prove the properties that any feasible mechanism should have.