Decentralized Fair Scheduling in Two-Hop Relay-Assisted Cognitive OFDMA Systems
In this paper, we consider a two-hop relay-assisted cognitive downlink Orthogonal frequency-division multiple access (OFDMA) system (named as secondary system) dynamically accessing a spectrum licensed to a primary network, thereby improving the efficiency of spectrum usage. A cluster-based relay-assisted architecture is proposed for the secondary system, where relay stations are employed for minimizing the interference to the users in the primary network and achieving fairness for cell-edge users in the secondary system. Based on this architecture, an asymptotically optimal solution is derived for jointly controlling data rates, transmission power, and subchannel allocation to optimize the average weighted sum goodput where the proportional fair scheduling (PFS) is included as a special case. This solution supports decentralized implementation, requires small communication overhead, and is robust against imperfect channel state information at the transmitter (CSIT) and imperfect sensing measurement. The proposed solution achieves significant throughput gain and better user-fairness compared with the existing designs. Finally, we derive a simple and asymptotically optimal scheduling solution as well as the associated closed-form performance under the proportional fair scheduling for a large number of users. The system throughput is shown to be O(N(1-qp)(1-qpN)lnlnKc), where Kc is the number of users in one cluster, N is the number of subchannels, and qp is the active probability of primary users.

title: Robust Optimal Cross-Layer Designs for TDD-OFDMA Systems with Imperfect CSIT and Unknown Interference: State-Space Approach Based on 1-bit ACK/NAK Feedbacks
abstract: Cross-layer designs for OFDMA systems have been shown to offer significant gains of spectral efficiency by exploiting the multiuser diversity over the temporal and frequency domains. In this paper, we shall propose a robust optimal cross-layer design for downlink TDD-OFDMA systems with imperfect channel state information at the base station (CSIT) and unknown interference in slow fading channels. Exploiting the ACK/NAK (1-bit) feedbacks from the mobiles, the proposed cross-layer design does not require knowledge of the CSIT error statistics or interference statistics. To take into account of the potential packet error due to the imperfect CSIT and unknown interference, we define average system goodput (which measures the average b/s/Hz successfully delivered to the mobile) as our optimization objective. We formulate the cross-layer design as a state-space control problem. The optimal power, optimal rate and optimal user allocations are determined as the output equations from the system states based on dynamic programming approach. Simulation results illustrate that the performance of the proposed closed-loop cross-layer design is very robust with respect to imperfect CSIT, unknown interference, model mismatch as well as channel variations due to Doppler.

title: Decentralized Fair Resource Allocation for Relay-Assisted Cognitive Cellular Downlink Systems
abstract: In this paper, we consider a relay-assisted cognitive cellular downlink system dynamically accessing a spectrum licensed to a primary network, thereby improving the efficiency of spectrum usage. A cluster-based relay-assisted architecture is proposed, where relay stations are employed for minimizing the interference to users in the primary network and achieving fairness for cell-edge users. Based on this architecture, an optimal solution is derived for jointly controlling data rate, transmission power, and subband allocation to optimize the weighted sum goodput where proportional fair scheduling (PFS) is included as a special case. As shown by simulations, the proposed solution achieves significant throughput gains and better user fairness compared with existing designs.

title: Closed-loop cross-layer SDMA designs with outdated CSIT
abstract: In this paper, we propose a novel closed-loop approach for robust downlink multi-antenna cross-layer design with outdated channel state information at the transmitter (CSIT). Based on the ACK/NAK feedbacks from the mobiles, the proposed cross-layer design does not require the knowledge of CSIT error statistics. We formulate the cross-layer design as a mixed combinatorial search and Markov decision process (MDP). While it is well-known that general solutions for MDP are very complex, one important contribution of this paper is that we obtain simple closed-form power, rate and user allocation policies which are asymptotically optimal for small target frame error rate (FER). Simulation results illustrate that the performance of the proposed closed-loop cross-layer design is very robust with respect to the outdated CSIT, CSIT error model mismatch as well as channel variations due to Doppler.

title: Web mapping service on second life compatible virtual world system
abstract: Online virtual world such as second life becomes more and more popular nowadays. And way-finding in large-scale virtual worlds becomes important problem for both novices and experts. Similar to the physical world, a well-designed mapping system would play an important role in way-finding process. However, Second Life only supports thumbnail map system right now. The thumbnail map system could only provide an overview of the area and with no query support. There are several challenges to develop a better virtual mapping system. First, identify the virtual world geo-features and to develop proper criteria and algorithms to generate features from primitive which is the basic unit in virtual world. Second, provide web service for data access through the Internet from systems with different architectures. In this paper, we implemented a prototype map service system called VWMS conformed to OWS specification from OpenGIS consortium. The prototype includes an AJAX style map site and a feature generalization server-module extracting geo-feature from Open Simulator primitive database. Besides, the system also provides a Web Map Service interface for

title: Outdoor Face Recognition Using Enhanced Near Infrared Imaging
abstract: In this paper, we present a robust and accurate system for outdoor (as well as indoor) face recognition, based on a recently developed enhanced near-infrared (ENIR) imaging device. Using a narrow band NIR laser generator instead of LED lights for active frontal illumination, the ENIR device can provide face images of good quality even under sunlight. Experiments show that the ENIR system performs similarly to the existing NIR system when used indoors, but outperforms it significantly outdoors especially under sunlight.

title: Motivated learning agent model for distributed collaborative systems
abstract: The paper develops and discusses a conceptual model for a Mixed Reality-based remote collaborative system (MR-Collab) based on motivated learning Agents. The proposed MR-Collab system is described in details as well to help better understand this model. Self-Development Agent based on previous work is an intelligent Agent, which not only receives information from sensors in the environment, but also gives valuable suggestions that could help to improve the system. The model is not limited to this specific system, but could be adapted to other collaboration systems as well.

title: Towards automatic reverse engineering of software security configurations
abstract: The specifications of an application's security configuration are crucial for understanding its security policies, which can be very helpful in security-related contexts such as misconfiguration detection. Such specifications, however, are often ill-documented, or even close because of the increasing use of graphic user interfaces to set program options. In this paper, we propose ConfigRE, a new technique for automatic reverse engineering of an application's access-control configurations. Our approach first partitions a configuration input into fields, and then identifies the semantic relations among these fields and the roles they play in enforcing an access control policy. Based upon such knowledge, ConfigRE automatically generates a specification language to describe the syntactic relations of these fields. The language can be converted into a scanner using standard parser generators for scanning configuration files and discovering the security policies specified in an application. We implemented ConfigRE in our research and evaluated it against real applications. The experiment results demonstrate the efficacy of our approach.

title: Information Synthesis for Answer Validation
abstract: This paper proposes an integration of Recognizing Textual Entailment (RTE) with other additional information to deal with the Answer Validation task. The additional information used in our participation in the Answer Validation Exercise (AVE 2008) is from named-entity (NE) recognizer, question analysis component, etc. We have submitted two runs, one run for English and the other for German, achieving f-measures of 0.64 and 0.61 respectively. Compared with our system last year, which purely depends on the output of the RTE system, the extra information does show its effectiveness.

title: Transaction Time Support Inside a Database Engine
abstract: Transaction time databases retain and provide access to prior states of a database. An update "inserts" a new record while preserving the old version. Immortal DB builds transaction time database support into a database engine, not in middleware. It supports as of queries returning records current at the specified time. It also supports snapshot isolation concurrency control. Versions are stamped with the "clock times" of their updating transactions. The timestamp order agrees with transaction serialization order. Lazy timestamping propagates timestamps to transaction updates after commit. Versions are kept in an integrated storage structure, with historical versions initially stored with current data. Time-splits of pages permit large histories to be maintained, and enable time based indexing, which is essential for high performance historical queries. Experiments show that Immortal DB introduces little overhead for accessing recent database states while providing access to past states.