pwc-archive/papers-with-abstracts huggingface dataset:
Local Periodicity-Based Beat Tracking for Expressive Classical Piano Music
Authors: Ching-Yu Chiu, Meinard Müller, Matthew E. P. Davies, Alvin Wen-Yu Su, Yi-Hsuan Yang
Date: 2023-08-20 00:00:00
Tasks: Beat Tracking

To model the periodicity of beats, state-of-the-art beat tracking systems use "post-processing trackers" (PPTs) that rely on several empirically determined global assumptions for tempo transition, which work well for music with a steady tempo. For expressive classical music, however, these assumptions can be too rigid. With two large datasets of Western classical piano music, namely the Aligned Scores and Performances (ASAP) dataset and a dataset of Chopin's Mazurkas (Maz-5), we report on experiments showing the failure of existing PPTs to cope with local tempo changes, thus calling for new methods. In this paper, we propose a new local periodicity-based PPT, called predominant local pulse-based dynamic programming (PLPDP) tracking, that allows for more flexible tempo transitions. Specifically, the new PPT incorporates a method called "predominant local pulses" (PLP) in combination with a dynamic programming (DP) component to jointly consider the locally detected periodicity and beat activation strength at each time instant. Accordingly, PLPDP accounts for the local periodicity, rather than relying on a global tempo assumption. Compared to existing PPTs, PLPDP particularly enhances the recall values at the cost of a lower precision, resulting in an overall improvement of F1-score for beat tracking in ASAP (from 0.473 to 0.493) and Maz-5 (from 0.595 to 0.838).
Paths to Influence: How Coordinated Influence Operations Affect the Prominence of Ideas
Authors: Darren L. Linvill, Patrick L. Warren
Date: 2023-08-18 00:00:00

This paper presents four examples of different ways that coordinated influence operations exert pressure on the prominence of ideas on social networks. We argue that these examples illustrate the four archetypical paths to influence: promotion by strengthening, promotion by weakening, demotion by strengthening, and demotion by weakening. We formalize this idea in a stylized economic model of the optimal behavior of the influence operator and derive some predictions about when we should expect each path to be followed. Finally we sketch out how one might go about quantitatively estimating the key parameters of (a variant of) this model and how it applies much more broadly than in the international political influence examples that motivate it.
Learning in Dynamic Systems and Its Application to Adaptive PID Control
Authors: Omar Makke, Feng Lin
Date: 2023-08-21 00:00:00
Tasks: Self-Learning

Deep learning using neural networks has revolutionized machine learning and put artificial intelligence into everyday life. In order to introduce self-learning to dynamic systems other than neural networks, we extend the Brandt-Lin learning algorithm of neural networks to a large class of dynamic systems. This extension is possible because the Brandt-Lin algorithm does not require a dedicated step to back-propagate the errors in neural networks. To this end, we first generalize signal-flow graphs so that they can be used to model nonlinear systems as well as linear systems. We then derive the extended Brandt-Lin algorithm that can be used to adapt the weights of branches in generalized signal-flow graphs. We show the applications of the new algorithm by applying it to adaptive PID control. In particular, we derive a new adaptation law for PID controllers. We verify the effectiveness of the method using simulations for linear and nonlinear plants, stable as well as unstable plants.
I-BaR: Integrated Balance Rehabilitation Framework
Authors: Tugce Ersoy, Pınar Kaya, Elif Hocaoglu, Ramazan Unal
Date: 2023-08-21 00:00:00

Neurological diseases are observed in approximately one billion people worldwide. A further increase is foreseen at the global level as a result of population growth and aging. Individuals with neurological disorders often experience cognitive, motor, sensory, and lower extremity dysfunctions. Thus, the possibility of falling and balance problems arise due to the postural control deficiencies that occur as a result of the deterioration in the integration of multi-sensory information. We propose a novel rehabilitation framework, Integrated Balance Rehabilitation (I-BaR), to improve the effectiveness of the rehabilitation with objective assessment, individualized therapy, convenience with different disability levels and adoption of an assist-as-needed paradigm and, with an integrated rehabilitation process as a whole, i.e., ankle-foot preparation, balance, and stepping phases, respectively. Integrated Balance Rehabilitation allows patients to improve their balance ability by providing multi-modal feedback: visual via utilization of Virtual Reality; vestibular via anteroposterior and mediolateral perturbations with the robotic platform; proprioceptive via haptic feedback.
Statistical Analysis of Geometric Algorithms in Vehicular Visible Light Positioning
Authors: Burak Soner, Sinem Coleri
Date: 2023-08-21 00:00:00
Tasks: Position

Vehicular visible light positioning (VLP) methods find relative locations of vehicles by estimating the positions of intensity-modulated head/tail lights of one vehicle (target) with respect to another (ego). Estimation is done in two steps: 1) relative bearing or range of the transmitter-receiver link is measured over the received signal on the ego side, and 2) target position is estimated based on those measurements using a geometric algorithm that expresses position coordinates in terms of the bearing-range parameters. The primary source of statistical error for these non-linear algorithms is the channel noise on the received signals that contaminates parameter measurements with varying levels of sensitivity. In this paper, we present two such geometric vehicular VLP algorithms that were previously unexplored, compare their performance with state-of-the-art algorithms over simulations, and analyze theoretical performance of all algorithms against statistical channel noise by deriving the respective Cramer-Rao lower bounds. The two newly explored algorithms do not outperform existing state-of-the-art, but we present them alongside the statistical analyses for the sake of completeness and to motivate further research in vehicular VLP. Our main finding is that direct bearing-based algorithms provide higher accuracy against noise for estimating lateral position coordinates, and range-based algorithms provide higher accuracy in the longitudinal axis due to the non-linearity of the respective geometric algorithms.
Data-Driven Reachability Analysis of Pedestrians Using Behavior Modes
Authors: August Söderlund, Frank J. Jiang, Vandana Narri, Amr Alanwar, Karl H. Johansson
Date: 2023-08-21 00:00:00
Tasks: Descriptive

In this paper, we present a data-driven approach for safely predicting the future state sets of pedestrians. Previous approaches to predicting the future state sets of pedestrians either do not provide safety guarantees or are overly conservative. Moreover, an additional challenge is the selection or identification of a model that sufficiently captures the motion of pedestrians. To address these issues, this paper introduces the idea of splitting previously collected, historical pedestrian trajectories into different behavior modes for performing data-driven reachability analysis. Through this proposed approach, we are able to use data-driven reachability analysis to capture the future state sets of pedestrians, while being less conservative and still maintaining safety guarantees. Furthermore, this approach is modular and can support different approaches for behavior splitting. To illustrate the efficacy of the approach, we implement our method with a basic behavior-splitting module and evaluate the implementation on an open-source data set of real pedestrian trajectories. In this evaluation, we find that the modal reachable sets are less conservative and more descriptive of the future state sets of the pedestrian.
Who should pay for frequency-containment ancillary services? Making responsible units bear the cost to shape investment in generation and loads
Authors: Luis Badesa, Carlos Matamala, Goran Strbac
Date: 2023-08-21 00:00:00

While the operating cost of electricity grids based on thermal generation was largely driven by the cost of fuel, as renewable penetration increases, ancillary services represent an increasingly large proportion of the running costs. Electric frequency is an important magnitude in highly renewable grids, as it becomes more volatile and therefore the cost related to maintaining it within safe bounds has significantly increased. So far, costs for frequency-containment ancillary services have been socialised in most countries, but it has become relevant to rethink this regulatory arrangement. In this paper, we discuss the issue of cost allocation for these services, highlighting the need to evolve towards a causation-based regulatory framework. We argue that parties responsible for creating the need for ancillary services should bear these costs. However, this would imply an important change in electricity market policy, therefore it is necessary to understand the impact on current and future investments on generation, as well as on electricity tariffs. Here we provide a mostly qualitative analysis of this issue, defining guidelines for practical implementation and further study.
Quantifying traffic emission reductions and traffic congestion alleviation from high-capacity ride-sharing
Authors: Wang Chen, Jintao Ke, Xiqun Chen
Date: 2023-08-21 00:00:00

Despite the promising benefits that ride-sharing offers, there has been a lack of research on the benefits of high-capacity ride-sharing services. Prior research has also overlooked the relationship between traffic volume and the degree of traffic congestion and emissions. To address these gaps, this study develops an open-source agent-based simulation platform and a heuristic algorithm to quantify the benefits of high-capacity ride-sharing with significantly lower computational costs. The simulation platform integrates a traffic emission model and a speed-density traffic flow model to characterize the interactions between traffic congestion levels and emissions. The experiment results demonstrate that ride-sharing with vehicle capacities of 2, 4, and 6 passengers can alleviate total traffic congestion by approximately 3%, 4%, and 5%, and reduce traffic emissions of a ride-sourcing system by approximately 30%, 45%, and 50%, respectively. This study can guide transportation network companies in designing and managing more efficient and environment-friendly mobility systems.
Aggregate Model of District Heating Network for Integrated Energy Dispatch: A Physically Informed Data-Driven Approach
Authors: Shuai Lu, Zihang Gao, Yong Sun, Suhan Zhang, Baoju Li, Chengliang Hao, Yijun Xu, Wei Gu
Date: 2023-08-21 00:00:00

The district heating network (DHN) is essential in enhancing the operational flexibility of integrated energy systems (IES). Yet, it is hard to obtain an accurate and concise DHN model for the operation owing to complicated network features and imperfect measurements. Considering this, this paper proposes a physical-ly informed data-driven aggregate model (AGM) for the DHN, providing a concise description of the source-load relationship of DHN without exposing network details. First, we derive the analytical relationship between the state variables of the source and load nodes of the DHN, offering a physical fundament for the AGM. Second, we propose a physics-informed estimator for the AGM that is robust to low-quality measurements, in which the physical constraints associated with the parameter normalization and sparsity are embedded to improve the accuracy and robustness. Finally, we propose a physics-enhanced algorithm to solve the nonlinear estimator with non-closed constraints efficiently. Simulation results verify the effectiveness of the proposed method.
Stochastic Co-design of Storage and Control for Water Distribution Systems
Authors: Ye Wang, Erik Weyer, Chris Manzie, Angus R. Simpson, Lisa Blinco
Date: 2023-08-21 00:00:00

Water distribution systems (WDSs) are typically designed with a conservative estimate of the ability of a control system to utilize the available infrastructure. The controller is designed and tuned after a WDS has been laid out, a methodology that may introduce unnecessary conservativeness in both system design and control, adversely impacting operational efficiency and increasing economic costs. To address these limitations, we introduce a method to simultaneously design infrastructure and develop control parameters, the co-design problem, with the aim of improving the overall efficiency of the system. Nevertheless, the co-design of a WDS is a challenging task given the presence of stochastic variables (e.g. water demands and electricity prices). In this paper, we propose a tractable stochastic co-design method to design the best tank size and optimal control parameters for WDS, where the expected operating costs are established based on Markov chain theory. We also give a theoretical result showing that the average long-run operating cost converges to the expected operating cost with probability~1. Furthermore, this method is not only applicable to greenfield projects for the co-design of WDSs but can also be utilized to improve the operations of existing WDSs in brownfield projects. The effectiveness and applicability of the co-design method are validated through three illustrative examples and a real-world case study in South Australia.
Attenuation and Loss of Spatial Coherence Modeling for Atmospheric Turbulence in Terahertz UAV MIMO Channels
Authors: Weijun Gao, Chong Han, Zhi Chen
Date: 2023-08-21 00:00:00

Terahertz (THz) wireless communications have the potential to realize ultra-high-speed and secure data transfer with miniaturized devices for unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) communications. The atmospheric turbulence due to random airflow leads to spatial inhomogeneity of the communication medium, which is yet missing in most existing studies, leading to additional propagation loss and even loss of spatial coherence (LoSC) in MIMO systems. In this paper, the attenuation and loss of spatial coherence for atmospheric turbulence are modeled in THz UAV MIMO channels. Specifically, the frequency- and altitude-dependency of the refractive index structure constant (RISC), as a critical statistical parameter characterizing the intensity of turbulence, is first investigated. Then, the LoSC, fading, and attenuation caused by atmospheric turbulence are modeled, where the turbulence-induced fading is modeled by a Gamma-Gamma distribution, and the turbulence attenuation as a function of altitude and frequency is derived. Numerical results show that the turbulence leads to at most 10 dB attenuation with frequency less than 1 THz and distance less than 10 km. Furthermore, when the distance is 10 km and the RISC is 10^-9m^(-2/3), the loss of spatial coherence effect leads to 10 dB additional loss for a 1024*1024 ultra-massive MIMO system.
Parameter Estimation-Based States Reconstruction of Uncertain Linear Systems with Overparameterization and Unknown Additive Perturbations
Authors: Anton Glushchenko, Konstantin Lastochkin
Date: 2023-08-20 00:00:00
Tasks: parameter estimation

The problem of state reconstruction is considered for uncertain linear time-invariant systems with overparameterization, arbitrary state-space matrices and unknown additive perturbation described by an exosystem. A novel adaptive observer is proposed to solve it, which, unlike known solutions, simultaneously: (i) reconstructs the physical state of the original system rather than the virtual state of its observer canonical form, (ii) ensures exponential convergence of the reconstruction error to zero when the condition of finite excitation is satisfied, (iii) is applicable to systems, in which mentioned perturbation is generated by an exosystem with fully uncertain constant parameters. The proposed solution uses a recently published parametrization of uncertain linear systems with unknown additive perturbations, the dynamic regressor extension and mixing procedure, as well as a method of physical states reconstruction developed by the authors. Detailed analysis for stability and convergence has been provided along with simulation results to validate the theoretical analysis.
Fault Separation Based on An Excitation Operator with Application to a Quadrotor UAV
Authors: Sicheng Zhou, Meng Wang, Jindou Jia, Kexin Guo, Xiang Yu, Youmin Zhang, Lei Guo
Date: 2023-08-20 00:00:00

This paper presents an excitation operator based fault separation architecture for a quadrotor unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) subject to loss of effectiveness (LoE) faults, actuator aging, and load uncertainty. The actuator fault dynamics is deeply excavated, containing the deep coupling information among the actuator faults, the system states, and control inputs. By explicitly considering the physical constraints and tracking performance, an excitation operator and corresponding integrated state observer are designed to estimate separately actuator fault and load uncertainty. Moreover, a fault separation maneuver and a safety controller are proposed to ensure the tracking performance when the excitation operator is injected. Both comparative simulation and flight experiments have demonstrated the effectiveness of the proposed scheme while maintaining high levels of tracking performance.
Stochastic Optimization of Coupled Power Distribution-Urban Transportation Network Operations with Autonomous Mobility on Demand Systems
Authors: Han Wang, Xiaoyuan Xu, Yue Chen, Zheng Yan, Mohammad Shahidehpour, Jiaqi Li, Shaolun Xu
Date: 2023-08-20 00:00:00
Tasks: Stochastic Optimization

Autonomous mobility on demand systems (AMoDS) will significantly affect the operation of coupled power distribution-urban transportation networks (PTNs) by the optimal dispatch of electric vehicles (EVs). This paper proposes an uncertainty method to analyze the operational states of PTNs with AMoDS. First, a PTN operation framework is designed considering the controllable EVs dispatched by AMoDS as well as the uncontrollable driving behaviors of other vehicle users. Then, a bi-level power-traffic flow (PTF) model is proposed to characterize the interaction of power distribution networks (PDNs) and urban transportation networks (UTNs). In the upper level, a social optimum model is established to minimize the operating cost of PDNs and UTNs embedded with controllable EVs. In the lower level, a stochastic user equilibrium (SUE) model is established to minimize the operating cost of uncontrollable EVs and gasoline vehicles (GVs) in UTNs. Finally, a probabilistic PTF analysis method is developed to evaluate PTN operations under environmental and human uncertainties. A regional sensitivity analysis method is proposed to identify the critical uncertainties and quantify the impacts of their distribution ranges on PTN operations. The effectiveness of the proposed method is verified by the PTN consisting of a 21-bus PDN and a 20-node UTN.
An Observer-Based Reinforcement Learning Solution for Model-Following Problems
Authors: Mohammed I. Abouheaf, Kyriakos G. Vamvoudakis, Mohammad A. Mayyas, Hashim A. Hashim
Date: 2023-08-19 00:00:00
Tasks: reinforcement-learning, Reinforcement Learning

In this paper, a multi-objective model-following control problem is solved using an observer-based adaptive learning scheme. The overall goal is to regulate the model-following error dynamics along with optimizing the dynamic variables of a process in a model-free fashion. This solution employs an integral reinforcement learning approach to adapt three strategies. The first strategy observes the states of desired process dynamics, while the second one stabilizes and optimizes the closed-loop system. The third strategy allows the process to follow a desired reference-trajectory. The adaptive learning scheme is implemented using an approximate projection estimation approach under mild conditions about the learning parameters.
DiffCharge: Generating EV Charging Scenarios via a Denoising Diffusion Model
Authors: Siyang Li, Hui Xiong, Yize Chen
Date: 2023-08-18 00:00:00
Tasks: Denoising, Management, Time Series

Recent proliferation of electric vehicle (EV) charging events has brought prominent stress over power grid operation. Due to the stochastic and volatile EV charging behaviors, the induced charging loads are extremely uncertain, posing modeling and control challenges for grid operators and charging management. Generating EV charging scenarios would aid via synthesizing a myriad of realistic charging scenarios. To this end, we propose a novel denoising Diffusion-based Charging scenario generation model DiffCharge, which is capable of generating a broad variety of realistic EV charging profiles with distinctive temporal properties. It is able to progressively convert the simply known Gaussian noise to genuine charging time-series data, by learning a parameterized reversal of a forward diffusion process. Besides, we leverage the multi-head self-attention and prior conditions to capture the temporal correlations and unique information associated with EV or charging station types in real charging profiles. Moreover, We demonstrate the superiority of DiffCharge on extensive real-world charging datasets, as well as the efficacy on EV integration in power distribution grids.
Reliability and Delay Analysis of 3-Dimensional Networks with Multi-Connectivity: Satellite, HAPs, and Cellular Communications
Authors: Fateme Salehi, Mustafa Ozger, Cicek Cavdar
Date: 2023-08-18 00:00:00

Aerial vehicles (AVs) such as electric vertical take-off and landing (eVTOL) aircraft make aerial passenger transportation a reality in urban environments. However, their communication connectivity is still under research to realize their safe and full-scale operation. This paper envisages a multi-connectivity (MC) enabled aerial network to provide ubiquitous and reliable service to AVs. Vertical heterogeneous networks with direct air-to-ground (DA2G) and air-to-air (A2A) communication, high altitude platforms (HAPs), and low Earth orbit (LEO) satellites are considered. We evaluate the end-to-end (E2E) multi-hop reliability and network availability of the downlink of AVs for remote piloting scenarios, and control/telemetry traffic. Command and control (C2) connectivity service requires ultra-reliable and low-latency communication (URLLC), therefore we analyse E2E reliability and latency under the finite blocklength (FBL) regime. We explore how different MC options satisfy the demanding E2E connectivity requirements taking into account antenna radiation patterns and unreliable backhaul links. Since providing seamless connectivity to AVs is very challenging due to the line-of-sight (LoS) interference and reduced gains of downtilt ground base station (BS) antennas, we use coordinated multi-point (CoMP) among ground BSs to alleviate the inter-cell interference. Furthermore, we solve an optimization problem to select the best MC path under the quality of service (QoS) constraints. We maximize spectral efficiency (SE) to specify the optimum MC path with the minimum number of required links. Based on the simulation results, we find out that even with very efficient interference mitigation, MC is the key enabler for safe remote piloting operations.