An effective parameter extraction method based on memetic differential evolution algorithm
This paper provides an effective method for parameter extraction of microelectronic devices and elements. A novel method, memetic differential evolution (MDE) algorithm, is proposed in this paper. By combining differential evolution (DE) algorithm, mutations in immune algorithm (IA), and special operators for parameter extraction, MDE possesses characteristics of high accuracy, stability, generality, and efficiency. The effectiveness of the method has been shown by two typical examples, including small-signal equivalent circuit models for an AlGaN/GaN HEMT device up to 40GHz, as well as an equivalent circuit model for on-chip differential spiral inductors. In both cases, the initial values and parameter ranges of the elements in the equivalent circuits are hard to determine in optimization. The results and comparisons with Levenberg-Marquardt (LM) algorithm, genetic algorithm (GA), particle swarm optimization (PSO) algorithm and canonical DE algorithm, demonstrate the superiority of MDE in terms of accuracy and generality.

title: Manufacturing Grid: Needs, Concept, and Architecture
abstract: As a new approach, grid technology is rapidly used in scientific computing, large-scale data management, and collaborative work. But in the field of manufacturing, the application of grid is just at the beginning. The paper proposes the concept of manufacturing. The needs, definition and architecture of manufacturing gird are discussed, which explains why needs manufacturing grid, what is manufacturing grid and how to construct a manufacturing grid system.

title: Constrained Nonlinear State Estimation - A Differential Evolution Based Moving Horizon Approach
abstract: A solution is proposed to estimate the states in the nonlinear discrete time system. Moving Horizon Estimation (MHE) is used to obtain the approximated states by minimizing a criterion that is the Euclidean form of the difference between the estimated outputs and the measured ones over a finite time horizon. The differential evolution (DE) algorithm is incorporated into the implementation of MHE in order to solve the optimization problem which is presented as a nonlinear programming problem due to the constraints. The effectiveness of the approach is illustrated in simulated systems that have appeared in the moving horizon estimation literature.

title: An Effective PSO-Based Memetic Algorithm for Flow Shop Scheduling
abstract: This paper proposes an effective particle swarm optimization (PSO)-based memetic algorithm (MA) for the permutation flow shop scheduling problem (PFSSP) with the objective to minimize the maximum completion time, which is a typical non-deterministic polynomial-time (NP) hard combinatorial optimization problem. In the proposed PSO-based MA (PSOMA), both PSO-based searching operators and some special local searching operators are designed to balance the exploration and exploitation abilities. In particular, the PSOMA applies the evolutionary searching mechanism of PSO, which is characterized by individual improvement, population cooperation, and competition to effectively perform exploration. On the other hand, the PSOMA utilizes several adaptive local searches to perform exploitation. First, to make PSO suitable for solving PFSSP, a ranked-order value rule based on random key representation is presented to convert the continuous position values of particles to job permutations. Second, to generate an initial swarm with certain quality and diversity, the famous Nawaz-Enscore-Ham (NEH) heuristic is incorporated into the initialization of population. Third, to balance the exploration and exploitation abilities, after the standard PSO-based searching operation, a new local search technique named NEH_1 insertion is probabilistically applied to some good particles selected by using a roulette wheel mechanism with a specified probability. Fourth, to enrich the searching behaviors and to avoid premature convergence, a simulated annealing (SA)-based local search with multiple different neighborhoods is designed and incorporated into the PSOMA. Meanwhile, an effective adaptive meta-Lamarckian learning strategy is employed to decide which neighborhood to be used in SA-based local search. Finally, to further enhance the exploitation ability, a pairwise-based local search is applied after the SA-based search. Simulation results based on benchmarks demonstrate the effectiveness of the PSOMA. Additionally, the effects of some parameters on optimization performances are also discussed

title: DE and NLP Based QPLS Algorithm
abstract: As a novel evolutionary computing technique, Differential Evolution (DE) has been considered to be an effective optimization method for complex optimization problems, and achieved many successful applications in engineering. In this paper, a new algorithm of Quadratic Partial Least Squares (QPLS) based on Nonlinear Programming (NLP) is presented. And DE is used to solve the NLP so as to calculate the optimal input weights and the parameters of inner relationship. The simulation results based on the soft measurement of diesel oil solidifying point on a real crude distillation unit demonstrate that the superiority of the proposed algorithm to linear PLS and QPLS which is based on Sequential Quadratic Programming (SQP) in terms of fitting accuracy and computational costs.

title: A New Performance Evaluation Model and AHP-Based Analysis Method in Service-Oriented Workflow
abstract: In service-oriented architecture, services and workflows are closely related so that the research on service-oriented workflow attracts the attention of academia. Because of the loosely-coupled, autonomic and dynamic nature of service, the operation and performance evaluation of workflow meet some challenges, such as how to judge the quality of service (QoS) and what is the relation between QoS and workflow performance. In this paper we are going to address these challenges. First the definition of service is proposed, and the characteristics and operation mechanism of service-oriented workflow are presented. Then a service-oriented workflow performance evaluation model is described which combines the performance of the business system and IT system. The key performance indicators (KPI) are also depicted with their formal representation. Finally the improved Analytic Hierarchy Process is brought forward to analyze the correlation between different KPIs and select services.

title: Hybrid Algorithm Combining Ant Colony Algorithm with Genetic Algorithm for Continuous Domain
abstract: Ant colony algorithm is a kind of new heuristic biological modeling method which has the ability of parallel processing and global searching. By use of the properties of ant colony algorithm and genetic algorithm, the hybrid algorithm which adopts genetic algorithm to distribute the original pheromone is proposed to solve the continuous optimization problem. Several solutions are obtained using the ant colony algorithm through pheromone accumulation and renewal. Finally, by using crossover and mutation operation of genetic algorithm, some effective solutions are obtained. The results of experiments show better performances of the new algorithm based on six continuous test functions compared with the methods available in literature.

title: A Novel RBF Neural Network with Fast Training and Accurate Generalization
abstract: For the reason of all the centers and radii needed to be adjusted iteratively, the learning speed of radial basis function (RBF) neural networks is always far slower than required, which obviously forms a bottleneck in many applications. To overcome such problem, we propose a fast and accurate RBF neural network in this paper. First we prove the universal approximation theorem for RBF neural networks with arbitrary centers and radii. Based on this theory, we propose a new learning algorithm called fast and accurate RBF neural network with random kernels (RBF-RK). With the arbitrary centers and radii, our RBF-RK algorithm only needs to adjust the output weights. The experimental results, on function approximation and classification problems, show that the new algorithm not only runs much faster than traditional learning algorithms, but also produces better or at least comparable generalization performance.

title: Identifying non-actionable association rules
abstract: Building predictive models and finding useful rules are two important tasks of data mining. While building predictive models has been well studied, finding useful rules for action still presents a major problem. A main obstacle is that many data mining algorithms often produce too many rules. Existing research has shown that most of the discovered rules are actually redundant or insignificant. Pruning techniques have been developed to remove those spurious and/or insignificant rules. In this paper, we argue that being a significant rule (or a non-redundant rule), however, does not mean that it is a potentially useful rule for action. Many significant rules (unpruned rules) are in fact not actionable. This paper studies this issue and presents an efficient algorithm to identify these non-actionable rules. Experiment results on many real-life datasets show that the number of non-actionable rules is typically quite large. The proposed technique thus enables the user to focus on fewer rules and to be assured that the remaining rules are non-redundant and potentially useful for action.

title: MAC Performance and Improvement in Mobile Wireless Sensor Networks
abstract: Former Media Access Control (MAC) protocols for Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) are mainly for static networks. In the networks where mobile nodes exist, the performance will degrade greatly. In this paper the performance of MAC in mobile WSNs (mWSNs) is analyzed and improved algorithms are presented. Simulations validate the effects. A new MAC protocol also is presented for the scenario with more mobile nodes.

title: Adaptive Resource Allocation in Multiuser OFDM System Based on Genetic Algorithm
abstract: Multiuser orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (MU-OFDM) is a promising technique for achieving high downlink capacities in future cellular and wireless local area network systems. The capacity of MU-OFDM can be maximized as long as subchannels and power are allocated adaptively, a new method based on genetic algorithm (GA) is proposed for adaptive power allocation in MU-OFDM system. Some proportional fairness constraints are also added to assure that each user can achieve a required data rate. Each subchannel to the user with the best channel-to-noise ratio has been assigned and an optimal power allocation algorithm based on GA has been proposed. The results demonstrate that the new method we proposed is optimal and efficient to resource allocation.