Cross Layer Design of Downlink Multi-Antenna OFDMA Systems with Imperfect CSIT for Slow Fading Channels
In most existing works, perfect knowledge of channel state information at the transmitter (CSIT) is assumed to realize the potential benefit of cross-layer scheduling and spatial multiplexing gains of MIMO/OFDMA systems. However, perfect knowledge of CSIT is not easy to achieve in practice due to estimation noise or delay in feedback. In this paper, we shall focus on the cross-layer design of downlink multi-antenna OFDMA systems with imperfect CSIT for slow fading channels. We shall show that our proposed cross-layer scheduler can exploit the multiuser diversity and spatial multiplexing gain even in the presence of moderate CSIT error.

title: Combined cross-layer design and HARQ for multiuser systems with outdated channel state information at transmitter (CSIT) in slow fading channels
abstract: Cross-layer scheduling and hybrid ARQ (HARQ) are effective means to improve the spectral efficiency of wireless systems. However, most of the existing works handle HARQ and cross-layer scheduling in a decoupled manner based on heuristic approaches. In this paper, we propose an integrated design framework for cross-layer scheduling and HARQ design in multiuser systems with slow fading channel and outdated knowledge of channel state information at the base station (CSIT). We consider both the chase combining and incremental redundancy in HARQ. We define the average system goodput (which measures the average bits successfully delivered to the receiver) as the measure of system performance. Based on information theoretical approach, we derive the asymptotically optimal cross-layer policy (power allocation, rate allocation and user selection policies) to optimize the average system goodput with HARQ. In addition, we derive analytically the closed-form expression of the average system goodput, from which we can obtain useful design insights such as the role of HARQ in the overall cross-layer gain, the tradeoff between the system goodput and the HARQ delay as well as the sensitivity of the average system goodput with respect to the CSIT quality.

title: Combined Cross Layer Design and HARQ for TDD Multiuser Systems with Outdated CSIT
abstract: Cross-layer scheduling and hybrid ARQ (HARQ) are effective means to improve the spectral efficiency of wireless systems and have been widely adopted in next generation wireless systems. However, most of the existing works handle HARQ and cross-layer scheduling in a decoupled manner based on heuristic approach. In this paper, we propose an integrated design framework for cross-layer scheduling and HARQ design in TDD multiuser systems with outdated knowledge of channel state information at the base station (CSIT). We focus on incremental redundancy in HARQ and derive the asymptotically optimal cross-layer policy (power allocation, rate allocation and user selection policies) to optimize the system goodput. In addition, we derive analytically closed-form expressions for the average system goodput where we can obtain useful design insights. For instance, the average system goodput scales in the order of O(In L) where L is the maximum transmission number of a packet, illustrating how the HARQ can enhance the cross-layer system goodput gain.

title: Distributive subband allocation, power and rate control for relay-assisted OFDMA cellular system with imperfect system state knowledge
abstract: In this paper, we consider distributive subband, power and rate allocation for a two-hop downlink transmission in an orthogonal frequency-division multiple-access (OFDMA) cellular system with fixed relays which operate in decode-and-forward strategy. We take into account of the penalty of packet errors due to imperfect CSIT and system fairness by considering weighted sum goodput as our optimization objective. Based on the cluster-based architecture, we obtain a fast-converging distributive solution with only local imperfect CSIT by using decomposition of the optimization problem. To further reduce the signaling overhead and computational complexity, we propose a reduced feedback distributive solution, which can achieve asymptotically optimal performance for large number of users with arbitrarily small feedback overhead per user.We also derive asymptotic average system throughput so as to obtain useful design insights.

title: Decentralized Fair Scheduling in Two-Hop Relay-Assisted Cognitive OFDMA Systems
abstract: 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: Joint cross-layer scheduling and spectrum sensing for OFDMA cognitive radio systems
abstract: In most of the existing works on cognitive radio (CR) systems, the spectrum sensing and the cross-layer scheduling are designed separately. Specifically, the sensing module first determines whether or not a channel resource is available for the CR system based on the sensing information. The scheduling module then schedules the data transmission of different users on the available channels based on the hard-decision sensing information (HSI). In this paper, we shall propose a joint crosslayer and sensing design and study its performance advantages over the aforementioned traditional decoupled approaches. We shall consider the downlink transmission of an OFDMA-based secondary system sharing the spectrum with primary users using cognitive radio technology. We shall rely on the joint design framework to optimize a system utility, which adapts the power allocation and the subcarrier assignment across the secondary users (under a average interference constraint to the primary users) based on both the channel state information (CSI) and the raw sensing information (RSI). In addition, we shall also propose a distributed implementation for the cross-layer sensing and scheduling design using primal-dual decomposition approach. Simulation results reveals the substantial performance gain of the proposed joint design over the conventional CR systems.

title: User-Centered Design and Visualization of Service Oriented Recommender Agents: An Approach to Achieve Better Consumers' Involvement in E-Commerce Systems
abstract: This paper identifies some issues related to consumers’ involvement in current e-commerce systems and presents a possible solution. In this paper, it is assumed that adopting user-centered design concept to establish service oriented recommender agents and visualizing those agents into human-look-alike avatars in virtual environments (VEs) could be a proper concept and approach to increase consumers’ involvement. This paper develops a conceptual model of how consumers’ involvement could be increased to a higher level by adopting those design concepts. The proposed experimentation that could test this model is also illustrated.

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: Context-Centric Needs Anticipation Using Information Needs Graphs
abstract: Effective agent teamwork requires information exchange to be conducted in a proactive, selective, and intelligent way. In the field of distributed artificial intelligence, there has been increasing number of research focusing on need-driven proactive communication, both theoretically and practically. Among these works, CAST has realized a team-oriented agent architecture where agents, based on a computational shared mental model, are able to anticipate teammates' information needs and proactively deliver relevant information to the needers in a timely manner. However, the first implementation of CAST takes little consideration of the dynamics of the anticipated information needs, which can change in various ways as the context develops. In this paper we describe a novel mechanism for organizing and managing the “context” of information needs. This allows agents to dynamically activate and deactivate information needs progressively. It has been shown that the two-level context-centric approach can enhance team performance considerably.

title: Learning your identity and disease from research papers: information leaks in genome wide association study
abstract: Genome-wide association studies (GWAS) aim at discovering the association between genetic variations, particularly single-nucleotide polymorphism (SNP), and common diseases, which is well recognized to be one of the most important and active areas in biomedical research. Also renowned is the privacy implication of such studies, which has been brought into the limelight by the recent attack proposed by Homer et al. Homer's attack demonstrates that it is possible to identify a GWAS participant from the allele frequencies of a large number of SNPs. Such a threat, unfortunately, was found in our research to be significantly understated. In this paper, we show that individuals can actually be identified from even a relatively small set of statistics, as those routinely published in GWAS papers. We present two attacks. The first one extends Homer's attack with a much more powerful test statistic, based on the correlations among different SNPs described by coefficient of determination (r2). This attack can determine the presence of an individual from the statistics related to a couple of hundred SNPs. The second attack can lead to complete disclosure of hundreds of participants' SNPs, through analyzing the information derived from published statistics. We also found that those attacks can succeed even when the precisions of the statistics are low and part of data is missing. We evaluated our attacks on the real human genomes and concluded that such threats are completely realistic.

title: Immortal DB: transaction time support for SQL server
abstract: Immortal DB builds transaction time database support into the SQL Server engine, not in middleware. Transaction time databases retain and provide access to prior states of a database. An update "inserts" a new record while preserving the old version. The system supports as of queries returning records current at the specified time. It also supports snapshot isolation concurrency control. Versions are stamped with the times of their updating transactions. The timestamp order agrees with transaction serialization order. Lazy timestamping propagates timestamps to all updates of a transaction after commit. All 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. We demonstrate Immortal DB with a moving objects application that tracks cars in the Seattle area.