Search

Distribution network connected distributed energy resources (DER) are able to provide various flexibility services for distribution system operators (DSOs) and transmission system operators (TSOs). These local and system-wide flexibility services offered by DER can support the frequency ( $f$ ) and voltage ( $U$ ) management of a future power system with large amounts of weather-dependent renewable generation and electric vehicles. Depending on the magnitude of frequency deviation, other active network management-based frequency control services for TSOs could also be provided by DSOs in coordination with adaptive control of DER. This paper proposes utilisation of demand response based on frequency-dependent HV/MV transformer on-load tap-changer (OLTC) operation in case of larger frequency deviations. The main principle underlying the proposed scheme lies in the voltage dependency of the distribution network connected loads. In this paper, it is also proposed to, simultaneously with frequency-dependent OLTC control, utilise reverse reactive power -voltage (QU) - and adaptive active power -voltage (PU) -droops with distribution network connected DER units during these larger frequency deviations, in order to enable better frequency support service for TSOs from DSO networks. The effectivity and potential of the proposed schemes are shown through PSCAD simulations. In addition, this paper also presents a holistic and collaborative view of potential future frequency control services which are provided by DSO network-connected resources for TSOs at different frequency deviation levels.

In this paper, we show that adversarial training time attacks by a few pixel modifications can cause undesirable overfitting in neural networks for both discriminative and generative models. We propose an evolutionary algorithm to search for an optimal pixel attack using a novel cost function inspired by domain adaptation literature to design our training time attack. The proposed cost function explicitly maximizes the generalization gap and domain divergence between clean and corrupted images. Empirical evaluations demonstrate that our adversarial training attack can achieve significantly low testing accuracy (with high training accuracy) on multiple datasets by just perturbing a single pixel in the training images. Even under the use of popular regularization techniques, we identify a significant performance drop compared to clean data training. Our attack is more successful than previous pixel-based training time attacks on state-of-the-art Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) architectures, as evidenced by significantly lower testing accuracy. Interestingly, we find that the choice of optimization plays an essential role in robustness against our attack. We empirically observe that Stochastic Gradient Descent (SGD) is resilient to the proposed adversarial training attack, different from adaptive optimization techniques such as the popular Adam optimizer. We identify that such vulnerabilities are caused due to over-reliance on the cross-entropy (CE) loss on highly predictive features. Therefore, we propose a robust loss function that maximizes the mutual information between latent features and input images, in addition to optimizing the CE loss. Finally, we show that the discriminator in Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs) can also be attacked by our proposed training time attack resulting in poor generative performance. Our paper is one of the first works to design attacks for generative models.

Increasing human activities have caused serious disturbance to global forest resources, so how to accurately identify individual trees has become an important task of forest resources investigation. In order to get the accurate number of individual trees, this paper took coniferous forest and mixed coniferous and broad-leaved forest as experimental samples, as well as Digital Orthophoto Map and airborne LiDAR Point Cloud as research data. We propose a deep Learning individual tree segmentation method based on RetinaNet model and PCS algorithm by doing comparative analysis (classical Watershed Algorithm and Layer Stacking Algorithm) at the plots (with high, medium, and low densities). The experimental results show that the method proposed in this paper can solve the problem of individual tree segmentation in high density forest and improve its degree of automation. Compared with Watershed algorithm and Layer stacking algorithm, F-Measure is improved by 6%-29% and 7%-20%, respectively. In other words, the results of individual tree segmentation presented in this paper can not only improve the precision of individual tree segmentation, but also maintain a high detection rate, which can meet the accuracy and high efficiency of individual tree extraction, so as to meet the needs for modern forestry investigation.

The key to an accurate understanding of terrain is to extract the informative features from the multi-modal data obtained from different devices. Sensors, such as RGB cameras, depth sensors, vibration sensors, and microphones, are used as the multi-modal data. Many studies have explored ways to use them, especially in the robotics field. Some papers have successfully introduced single-modal or multi-modal methods. However, in practice, robots can be faced with extreme conditions; microphones do not work well in crowded scenes, and an RGB camera cannot capture terrains well in the dark. In this paper, we present a novel framework using the multi-modal variational autoencoder and the Gaussian mixture model clustering algorithm on image data and audio data for terrain type clustering by forcing the features to be closer together in the feature space. Our method enables the terrain type clustering even if one of the modalities (either image or audio) is missing at the test-time. We evaluated the clustering accuracy with a conventional multi-modal terrain type clustering method and we conducted ablation studies to show the effectiveness of our approach.

As a basic task in the field of computer vision, target detection has been concerned by many researchers. The performance of target detection method is also directly related to the research in many advanced semantic fields. Current general target detection methods are not effective in small target detection, so this paper studies the problem of small target detection and proposes a small target detection method based on deep learning with considerate feature and effectively expanded sample size. Firstly, according to the characteristics of convolutional neural network, we improve the current deep network architecture which performs well in target detection, and introduce considerate multi-feature and multi-scale detection. Then, we transform the high-resolution images obtained on the Internet by combining two groups of sampling method, so that the feature distribution of the high-resolution target is closer to that of the low-resolution target, thus effectively expanding the training data set, solving the problem that small target data is difficult to be labeled and effectively avoiding overfitting. The results show the effectiveness of the improved method in small target detection. In addition, in view of the shortage of small target detection review literature, this paper gives a comprehensive and detailed introduction to the field of small target detection in terms of related work and future work.

A Switched-Capacitor Multilevel Inverter (SCMLI) topology is proposed here, which can generate up to fifteen levels with one unit and can be extended further for getting higher levels. The proposed SCMLI has a lesser number of switching devices with respect to other recently proposed structures presented in this paper. It also has the capacitor self-balancing property. Power loss analysis has also been done using PLECS software. Maximum efficiency of 96.33 % has been achieved. A generalized comparative study has also been carried out with the newly presented topologies in different research articles considering several parameters. In order to validate the structure presented in this paper, simulation is done in Matlab®2018a, and the simulation results obtained are verified using an experimental prototype.

Deep convolutional neural networks (DCNNs) have attracted extensive attention in synthetic aperture radar (SAR) image target detection. However, there is usually a lack of labeled data in SAR images which results in difficulties to improve the detection performance with DCNN based methods. Transfer learning borrows generic knowledge from other tasks for the target task and can be an effective solution to the small sample problem, but the features’ generality and specificity across various models are not discussed in target detection. In addition, conventional DCNN based models have too many parameters related to the prior information of the targets which increase the difficulty of transfer learning between different tasks. In this paper, we mainly conduct research in three folds to address these mentioned issues. First, the generality and specificity of features in different network models are analyzed in the field of SAR target detection. Second, a transitive transfer framework is developed for detection under small sample condition. Third, an anchor free rotatable detector with flexible structure is designed for SAR images detection to suit the transfer detection framework proposed in this paper and a reasonable explanation is given for its upper hand with small samples. Experimental results demonstrate that: 1) transitive transfer framework is valid in SAR target detection; 2) the anchor free detector in this framework is superior to the anchor based one; 3) the proposed detector achieves better performance under small sample condition by comparison with state-of-the-art methods.

This paper focuses on how to represent the testing face images for multi-feature face recognition. The choice of feature is critical for face recognition. The different features of the sample contribute differently to face recognition. The joint similar and specific learning (JSSL) has been effectively applied in multi-feature face recognition. In the JSSL, although the representation coefficient is divided into the similar coefficient and the specific coefficient, there is the disadvantage that the training images cannot represent the testing images well, because there are probable expressions, illuminations and disguises in the testing images. We think that the intra-class variations of one person can be linearly represented by those of other people. In order to solve well the disadvantage of JSSL, in the paper, we extend JSSL and propose the extended joint similar and specific learning (EJSSL) for multi-feature face recognition. EJSSL constructs the intra-class variant dictionary to represent the probable variation between the training images and the testing images. EJSSL uses the training images and the intra-class variant dictionary to effectively represent the testing images. The proposed EJSSL method is perfectly experimented on some available face databases, and its performance is superior to many current face recognition methods.

The present article outlines the core technologies needed to realize the Hyperloop transportation system (HTS). Currently, the HTS vacuum tube train concept is viewed as the fastest way to cross the earth’s surface. However, the concept has not yet been demonstrated for subsonic or near-sonic speeds in large-scale implementations. Among the challenging technical areas are the tube’s depressurization, the capsule’s air resistance, and choked flows occurring around the capsule. There is also a need for effective levitation and propulsion solutions compatible with the velocities being proposed. Moreover, several conflicting objectives have been identified in the HTS design. It is highlighted that the tubes should be wide enough to lower the capsule’s drag forces but that a large-sized tube comes at the expense of higher operational energy costs and infrastructure investments. Another struggle is aiming at a low-cost passive track design and, and at the same time, a lightweight vehicle. One technical path is to turn the whole guideway into an electric propulsor, arriving at a ’lightweight capsule solution’ (LCS). Alternatively, the vehicle could be transformed into a ’modified airplane’ that stores massive amounts of onboard energy, yielding an energy-autonomous ’low infrastructure solution’ (LIS). In a case study, it is shown that even LIS technology is compatible with short-haul flights (1500km) but that it requires an energy reservoir of about 30% of the capsule’s overall mass. Results and discussions presented in this paper are supported by analytical predictions with parameters or input data either supported by referred simulations or experiments. In general, the paper aims to open up the discussion, provide a sufficient understanding of the Hyperloop field’s multidisciplinary aspects, and establish a foundation for further investigations. In the end, new research tasks have been defined, which have the potential to go beyond the state of current knowledge. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License. For more information, see https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

In this paper, we present an Internet of Things framework for structural health monitoring. The proposed system detects the delimitation and debonding in composite concrete structures: more specifically, develop an IoT-Based Non-Destructive Test (NDT) to detect debonding between Carbon Fiber sheets and Concrete slabs. An Inter Digital Capacitance Sensor is designed and fabricated to function as the primary detection element. The sensor is embedded within an IoT node that manages the measurement process, captures the measurement location automatically, and performs essential data filtering operations with an attached graphical interface that allows basic control and early-access to the measured data. The IoT node integrates within the larger framework via wireless WiFi connection throughout which the data is transferred and control functions are administrated. The paper presents the system design details including mathematical modeling for the capacitance sensing element, finite element simulation results, and practical setup measured data.

With the rapid development of remote-sensing imaging technology, remote-sensing images have become increasingly diverse, and people are paying more attention to ocean remote-sensing research. Because ocean remote-sensing data are complex, and the ocean environment is diverse, results will differ, even if the same target is detected at different times in the same scene. To obtain more semantic features and better pixel-level prediction capabilities, this paper proposes a pixel-level ocean remote-sensing image algorithm (GLPO-Net) that combines local and global features. First, texture features, color features, and spatial relationship features are extracted. Second, the algorithm constructs a multiscale local cross-attention mechanism strategy to obtain feature weight information in different directions to fully mine the local features of ocean remote-sensing images. Concurrently, an algorithm constructs a multiscale global cross-attention mechanism strategy to obtain global features. Then, the fusion of global features and local features is described in each submodule to obtain more representative deep features. Finally, small-sample ocean remote-sensing is described via image pixel-level prediction. The algorithm proposed in this paper has been tested with three public ocean remote-sensing datasets. The experimental results show that the proposed GLPO-Net algorithm can learn features from small samples of ocean remote-sensing images. Compared to the prediction results of other remote-sensing image algorithms, GLPO-Net exhibits better prediction capabilities.

Accurate diagnosis of corn crop diseases is a complex challenge faced by farmers during the growth and production stages of corn. In order to address this problem, this paper proposes a method based on K-means clustering and an improved deep learning model for accurately diagnosing three common diseases of corn leaves: gray spot, leaf spot, and rust. First, to diagnose three diseases, use the K-means algorithm to cluster sample images and then feed them into the improved deep learning model. This paper investigates the impact of various k values (2, 4, 8, 16, 32, and 64) and models (VGG-16, ResNet18, Inception v3, VGG-19, and the improved deep learning model) on corn disease diagnosis. The experiment results indicate that the method has the most significant identification effect on 32-means samples, and the diagnostic recall of leaf spot, rust, and gray spot disease is 89.24 %, 100 %, and 90.95 %, respectively. Similarly, VGG-16 and ResNet18 also achieve the best diagnostic results on 32-means samples, and their average diagnostic accuracy is 84.42% and 83.75%. In addition, Inception v3 (83.05%) and VGG-19 (82.63%) perform best on the 64-means samples. For the three corn diseases, the approach cited in this paper has an average diagnostic accuracy of 93%. It has a more significant diagnostic effect than the other four approaches and can be applied to the agricultural field to protect crops.

The proposed approach uses blockchain-based technology to strengthen the data security of wireless sensor networks (WSNs). This paper integrates blockchain-based technology with data transfer to establish an extremely secure WSNs structure. The present wireless network is built on the architecture of the Internet of Things (IoT) and employs a blockchain-based method to make the reliability of data transmission strong. In this proposed research, many small-area wireless sensor networks establish the entire WSNs structure, and every small-area wireless sensor network has a primary data collection node called a “mobile database.” The “mobile database” node of this study uses embedded microcontrollers with an operating system, such as Raspberry Pi and Arduino Yun. This block contains the sensor data collected by itself and the hash value of the previous block. Then the hash value of its own block, which is also part of the hash calculation of the next block, was calculated through the mining calculation program. Any block in the proposed method includes the encrypted hash-value of the previous block, the current timestamp, and the transaction data. In our research content, the transaction data is represented as wireless network sensing data. Basically, the system employs the hash function for calculation using the Merkel-tree algorithm. Such programming makes the block with blockchain-based technology difficult to tamper with content. This study approach revises the blockchain-based transaction ledger to become a sensor data record. Therefore, the proposed system gathers and analyzes sensor data for more reliability in the wireless sensing network structure. Furthermore, the innovative system with blockchain-based technology can treat a private cloud-end. This paper also carries on to visualize the uploaded sensing data by the sensors and draws corresponding charts based on big data analysis. The wireless network architecture proposed in this paper is built on embedded devices, making it easy for the system to build a web server. Using Python or JavaScript programming language in the web environment is relatively more convenient for data visualization and data analysis. Finally, this study uses traditional methods and innovative methods to compare data transmission. When the system uses innovative methods with blockchain-based technology, it is almost impossible for any operator to tamper with the data transmitted by the sensor.

Near-infrared spectroscopy (NIR) has become one of the most important methods for counterfeit drugs identification for its low cost, non-destructive, and on-site detection. However, it is often invalid for unknown samples beyond the scope of modeling samples, as well as it is not efficient in conditions of insufficient samples (insufficient number of samples within the class), unbalanced samples (large difference in the number of samples between classes), and sensitivity of identification results (different tolerance for different errors in application scenarios). To solve these problems, this paper proposes a general method for on-site identification of counterfeit drugs based on Siamese-network modeling with near-infrared spectroscopy, which especially constructs the train set and test set, learning the general knowledge of spectral differences to identify the different drugs by a costumed one-dimensional convolution neural network (1D-CNN), and finally answered the question of whether the on-site two spectra are pointed to the same drug. Based on experimental modeling samples of 1314 spectra, which are involved 9 drugs produced by 25 manufacturers, this paper has constructed and fully trained its model. Then, not known at the time of modeling, 4 drugs produced by 9 manufacturers are used for testing in the on-site application, and the accuracy rate amounts to 97.3%. For generalizing consideration, randomly divided into training and testing categories, the 32015 spectra of 135 drugs produced by 391 manufacturers in the spectral library are handled by the same processing. The generalization model is equally applicable, and the accuracy is above 97%. Compared with traditional binary classification identification methods such as SVM, PLS-DA, Auto-encoding, and one class (OC) threshold identification algorithms such as SVM-OC, SIMCA, conformity test (CT), the proposed method has the best identification ability for unknown samples in modeling.

Handwritten mathematical expressions are an essential part of many domains, including education, engineering, and science. The pervasive availability of computationally powerful touch-screen devices, similar to the recent emergence of deep neural networks as high-quality sequence recognition models, result in the widespread adoption of online recognition of handwritten mathematical expressions. Also, a deeper study and improvement of such technologies is necessary to address the current challenges posed by the extensive usage of distance learning, and remote work due to the world pandemic. This paper delineates the state-of-the-art recognition methods along with the user's experience in pen-centric applications for operating with handwritten mathematical expressions. Recognition methods have been categorized into classes, with a description of their merits and limitations. Particular attention is paid to end-to-end approaches based on encoder-decoder architecture and multi-modal input. Evaluation protocols and open benchmark datasets are considered as well as the comparison of the recognition performance, based on open competition results. The use of handwritten math recognition is illustrated by examples of applications for various fields and platforms. A distinctive part of the survey is that we also considered how UI design relies on the use of different recognition approaches, which is aimed at helping potential researchers improve the performance of the introduced approaches toward the best responses in practical applications. Finally, this paper presents the prospective survey of future research directions in handwritten mathematical expression recognition and their applications.

Supply chain resilience is the key for cross-border e-commerce enterprises to continuously obtain competitive advantages. This paper studies the influencing factors of cross-border e-commerce supply chain resilience (CBSCR), so as to further enhance the competitiveness of global supply chain and ensure the safe operation of cross-border e-commerce supply chain. Based on the ternary theory of supply chain resilience, this paper firstly constructs the CBSCR influencing factor system, and then analyzes the comprehensive influence degree, causal relationship and logical hierarchy among the influencing factors by using the fuzzy DEMATEL-ISM method. The results show that: recovery speed of supply chain disruption, response time of supply chain disruption, coordination ability among cross border e-commerce partners, experience sharing among cross-border e-commerce partners, joint planning among cross-border e-commerce partners, establish a good enterprise reputation for fairness, risk management team among partners, and develop a collaborative culture among partners are the key influencing factors of CBSCR. On this basis, it is proposed that the adaptability of supply chain is a top priority, which can be started from strengthening risk management culture, cooperation among partners and construction of supply chain agility.

The AC / DC active distribution network (ADN) connected to a large number of renewable energy source (RES) and new loads such as EV will become the main form of the future ADN, which intensifies the volatility and uncertainty of the net load. To cope with this situation, considering various types of flexibility resources, this paper quantitatively evaluates the flexibility demand and supply in the system, and constructs a day-ahead flexible operation model of AC/DC ADN with a high proportion of RES. At first, the flexibility demand is quantified firstly by considering volatility and uncertainty comprehensively, and the conditional probability distribution of wind power volatility is obtained through the analysis of mutual information and other correlation coefficients. Then, a quantitative method to the time flexibility provided by orderly charging of electric vehicles (EVs) is proposed for the flexible cooperation with other resources. Besides, voltage source converter (VSC) with precise loss is considered as flexibility source to participate in dispatching. Furthermore, considering the preference of flexibility in different directions, a weighted node flexibility margin index is proposed. Considering the accuracy and computational efficiency, a second order cone relaxation method which is suitable for the elaborate VSC model is applied in this paper. In the end, Test results of an improved IEEE33-bus system with a three-terminal DC network show that the proposed model can improve the flexibility and reduce the operation cost of the ADN.

The power industry’s participation in carbon trading and green certificate trading is an effective market-based approach to solve the negative externalities of power production. In this paper, the Virtual power plant (VPP) is taken as the aggregator to coordinate and optimize the carbon trading and green certificate trading between the power purchasing end and the power selling end, so as to achieve the goal of maximizing the comprehensive benefits of the VPP. Firstly, the operation model of VPP aggregating various types of distributed energy and different users participating in green certificate market and carbon trading market is analyzed; Secondly, a two-level collaborative optimization model of VPP participating in power purchase and sale transaction and green certificate transaction is constructed. On the one hand, the cost of power purchase and green certificate acquisition is minimized by combining various types of power generation resources at the power purchase end. On the other hand, the power purchased is distributed among various types of users at the power sale end, so as to maximize the power sale income and green certificate sales income. On this basis, the VPP as a whole participates in the electric energy market, carbon trading market and green certificate trading market to maximize the comprehensive income. Finally, a VPP is taken as an example to verify the economy and effectiveness of the proposed model in this paper.

We address the problem of depth estimation from a single monocular image in the paper. Depth estimation from a single image is an ill-posed and inherently ambiguous problem. In the paper, we propose an encoder-decoder structure with the feature pyramid to predict the depth map from a single RGB image. More specifically, the feature pyramid is used to detect objects of different scales in the image. The encoder structure aims to extract the most representative information from the original image through a series of convolution operations and to reduce the resolution of the input image. We adopt Res2-50 as the encoder to extract important features. The decoder section uses a novel upsampling structure to improve the output resolution. Then, we also propose a novel loss function that adds gradient loss and surface normal loss to the depth loss, which can predict not only the global depth but also the depth of fuzzy edges and small objects. Additionally, we use Adam as our optimization function to optimize our network and speed up convergence. Our extensive experimental evaluation proves the efficiency and effectiveness of the method, which is competitive with previous methods on the Make3D dataset and outperforms state-of-the-art methods on the NYU Depth v2 dataset.

Edge computing is a promising alternative to cloud computing for offloading computationally heavy tasks from resource-constrained mobile user devices. Placed at the edge of the network, edge computing is particularly advantageous to delay-limited applications for having a short distance to end-users. However, when a mobile user moves away from the service coverage of the associated edge server, the advantage gradually vanishes, increasing response time. Although service migration has been studied to address this problem focusing on minimizing the service downtime, both zero-downtime and the amount of traffic generated as a result of migration need further study. In this paper, an optimal live migration for containerized edge computing service is studied. This paper presents three zero-downtime migration techniques based on state duplication and state reproduction techniques, and then, proposes an optimal migration technique selection algorithm that jointly minimizes the response time and network traffic during migration. For validation and performance comparison, the proposed migration techniques are implemented on off-the-shelf hardware with Linux operating system. The evaluation results showed that compared with a naive migration, the optimal approach reduced the response time and network load by at least 74.75% and 94.79%, respectively, under considered scenarios.

For the on-orbit service spacecraft attitude tracking task with external disturbances, considering the limited capacity of its actuators and high control performance required, an improved performance constraint control algorithm based on command filters is proposed in this paper. For the proposed control algorithm, before the theoretical control signal is transmitted to the actuator, it needs to be filtered by the command filter. This filter can constrain the rate, magnitude, and bandwidth of the signals, smooth the command signals and avoid peak interference. In terms of performance constraints, inspired by the performance constraint curve, this paper uses the determined points to re-design a new performance constraint function, which shows the maximum settling time parameters, allowing designers to pre-defined this limited time of the closed-loop system according to needs. Therefore, the maximum settling time of the actual closed-loop system will be less than the pre-defined maximum settling time. The controller based on the command filter is designed, and on this basis, the corresponding performance-constrained control algorithm with pre-defined maximum settling time guaranteed is proposed. Through the proof and simulation, the rationality and effectiveness of the proposed controller are further demonstrated.

Dementia diseases are increasing rapidly, according to the World Health Organization (WHO), becoming an alarming problem for the health sector. The electroencephalogram (EEG) is a non-invasive test that records brain electrical activity and has a wide field of applications in the medical area, one of which is the detection of neurodegenerative diseases. The aim of this work is to present the results of a thorough review of the use of EEG systems for the detection of dementia diseases. Around 82 papers published between 2009 and 2020 were reviewed and compared obtaining data such as sampling time, number of electrodes, the most popular processing, classification, and validation techniques, as well as an analysis of the reported results. The relationship of the selected parameters with the efficiency obtained is shown. Some more common combinations in the reviewed papers that demonstrated to have reliability levels greater than 90%, and details to be considered at each stage of the process. An overview of the most commonly used classification tools and processing techniques is also described.

Context: In this paper, we study distributed and decentralized systems in which each part is modeled as an agent in a multi-agent system. Those systems provide more scalable and easier ways to control complex, distributed and interconnected systems of embedded components. We are particularly interested in methods to secure these systems. Objectives: This study aims to identify the main security properties studied, the parts of a multi-agent architecture that are considered most often in security studies and the technical solutions used to secure those systems. Methods: We conducted a systematic mapping study on research works addressing the security of multi-agent systems with embedded agents. We identified which security features were addressed, and their roles in global security architecture. Results: We identified 70 papers published in journals and conferences. We classified the extracted data reporting a tendency to focus on securing the availability of systems under attack by means of trust schemes, sometimes supported by cryptographic primitives. Conclusion: The use of cryptography appears to be limited in decentralized systems. However, solutions should be provided to overcome those limits as other solutions such as trust schemes do not protect the system from the same type of attacks.

Industry 4.0 is a revolution in manufacturing by introducing disruptive technologies such as Internet of Things (IoT) and cloud-computing into the heart of the factory. The resulting increased automation and the improved production synergy between stocks, supply chains and customer demands, come along with the threats and attacks from the Internet. Despite extensive literature on the cybersecurity topic, many actors in manufacturing factories are just realizing the impact of cybersecurity in the preservation of their business. This paper introduces step-by-step the concepts and practical aspects of an Industry 4.0 manufacturing factory that are related to cybersecurity. Based on a subdivision of a typical factory into several generic perimeters, we present the vulnerabilities and threats regarding the network and devices usually found in each perimeter. Therefore, it is more efficient to present the recent proposals of the literature regarding cybersecurity guidelines and solutions in Industry 4.0. Instead of spreading a lot of references regarding every aspect of cybersecurity, we focused on a limited number of papers among the recent references. However, for each paper, we provide the details about the purpose of the proposal, the methodology adopted, the technical solution developed and its evaluation by the authors. These solutions range from classical cybersecurity countermeasures to innovative ones, such as those based on honeypots and digital twins. In order to deliver a review also useful to non scientists, we present our guidelines along with those of some organizations involved in cybersecurity harmonization and standardization in the world.

Multimedia sensors have recently become a significant data source in the Internet of Things (IoT), giving rise to the Internet of Media Things (IoMT). Since multimedia applications are usually latency-sensitive, data processing in the cloud is not always suitable. A strategy to minimize delay is processing multimedia streams closer to data sources, exploiting resources at the network edge. Moreover, virtualization is widely used to reduce complexity arising from heterogeneity in IoT environments. In this paper, we propose an edge-based architecture and platform to manage virtual multimedia sensors (VMS), enabling IoMT applications to be easily deployed. Our proposal encompasses V-PRISM, a software architecture tailored for IoMT, and ALFA, a distributed implementation of the architecture. V-PRISM components were designed to be deployed and executed in multiple edge nodes. VMSs are in charge of processing multimedia streams and provide an abstraction layer between IoMT applications and physical devices that produce those streams. This paper describes the proposal and the results of experiments showing that the proposed approach can successfully perform multimedia stream processing for applications that requires low-latency.

Starting with a product quality problem, this paper presents the practical applications of Industry 4.0 technology to solve the problem in manufacturing technique and to establish manufacturing process control in new product introduction (NPI) with flexibility and reconfigurability, under the condition that this is a new plant with limited resources. With regard to solving the manufacturing technique problem, the Finite Element Method (FEM) has been used to analyze failure mode and to support design optimization, the regression analysis has been adopted to obtain the force-deformation relationship and to guide the improvement for manufacturing parameter adaptation. The analysis method that combined the FEM analysis and the regression analysis can be an effective approach for dealing with manufacturing technique problem. With regard to establishing the manufacturing process control, the Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) implementation functions as the medium for data transfer and for status confirmation, thus realizing the process control and the quality control in the form of cyber-physical system (CPS). Data strategy of the process control and the quality control can be applied to general manufacturing system. The Industry 4.0 implementations and methods mentioned in this paper can serve as a reference for the company that are planning to build a small or medium-sized manufacturing plant and to enhance its performance with Industry 4.0.

Progressive learning addresses the problem of incrementally learning new tasks without compromising the prediction accuracy of previously learned tasks. In the context of artificial neural networks, several algorithms exist for achieving the progressive learning goal of learning without forgetting. However, these algorithms have traditionally been tested on the well-known and widely available datasets from the domain of image understanding and computer vision. Very little has been done on exploring the suitability of progressive learning algorithms in the important area of network threat detection. On a more fundamental level, progressive learning algorithms are still faced with the challenge of predicting the ultimate ability of a given neural network architecture to add more tasks to its repertoire without undergoing catastrophic forgetting. The goal of this paper is to address such a challenge in the context of cyber security threat detection. It does so by providing a unified conceptual and computational framework where progressive learning algorithms can be analyzed, compared, and contrasted in terms of their learning capacity and prediction accuracy for specific datasets from the cloud cyber security domain. In particular, this paper provides rigorous metrics for predicting the onset of catastrophic forgetting in the cyber security domain and contrasts them with their usage in the imaging domain. Our extensive numerical results show that progressive learning, along with the proposed criteria for catastrophic forgetting, provides a very structured framework for automating network threat detection as new threats emerge throughout network operation.

Vehicular Ad hoc Networks (VANETs) are a subset of the Internet of Things (IoT) that are used in smart traffic applications. Due to their high speed, mobility, and exposure to the environment, the security requirements for VANETs result in the conflicting design goals of protecting member privacy while also ensuring non-repudiation. Group signature schemes can fulfill these requirements, but often at the cost of expensive bilinear pairing operations. Furthermore, the cost of updating the group key information can be costly. Accordingly, this paper has two goals. First, it presents a group signature scheme that has been modified to remove pairing operations by caching computed values, while still preserving the critical requirement of conditional privacy. Second, this paper presents an argument for the abandonment of perfect forward and backward secrecy in VANET schemes in order to prevent the generation of keys that are never used, or used only once, and reduce the twin burdens of excessive key recalculation and key redistribution on the system.

The mobile demands and future business context are anticipated to be resolved by the fifth-generation (5G) of mobile communication systems. It is expected to provide an utterly mobile device, connected society, and support the demanding services of various use cases (UCs). This is intended to meet the demand requirement by providing services at tens of Gbps in terms of data rates, higher mobility range, lower latencies, and massive connectivity density devices per square kilometer. A comprehensive and up-to-date survey of the different developed and proposed use cases is presented in this paper. The first part of the paper presents the overview of the new 5G Architecture by introducing new features such as the new radio interface (New Radio), an overview of the 5G Core Network, minimum requirements, and the Radio Access Network, 5G spectrum requirements and other fundamentals of the network. Secondly, a detailed review of the developed and proposed use cases for 5G communications by the standards development organizations (SDO) and other key players in mobile communication is provided. Thirdly, we went ahead to propose spectrum bands for the deployment of the various use cases based on the low-, mid-, and high-band spectrum and further classified the use cases with respect to their relevance and family, identifying the IMT-2020 test environments and the usage scenarios derived by the 3GPP, fourthly, the channel capacity and the bandwidth of the spectrum was studied, simulated and compared to ascertain the spectrum proposed in this paper for each UC family. Hence, this paper serves as a guideline for understanding the future 5G deployment scenarios in various environments. This would allow system developers to design and implement 5G channel characterization models specific to the usage scenarios to meet the system requirements.

This paper introduces the application of a newly developed heuristic nature-inspired optimization technique, viz, tuned Marine Predator Algorithm (MPA), to solve the optimal power flow (OPF) problem of multi-regional systems. The paper proposes MPA parameters' tuning to enhance the algorithm performance. The paper takes into account the variability of different types of renewable energy resources (RERs) and loads. Two modeling approaches are presented: holistic (multi-regions are modeled as one large network) and inter-bounded (modeling the regional interfaces). The MPA is applied to the IEEE-48 bus connected system, and the results are compared with another well-established heuristic algorithm, namely the Genetic Algorithm (GA). The results demonstrate the validation, applicability and effectiveness of using the MPA for solving multi-region OPF problem considering renewable energy sources and load variability.

The Internet of Things is based on a communication network to automatically receive various information from the natural world. It uses intelligent objects with perception, communication and computers to automatically receive various information from nature. All independently managed physical objects are connected to each other to achieve integrated perception, reliable transmission and intelligent processing, and to establish intelligent information between people and objects, and objects and object service systems. This article mainly introduces the impact of industrial agglomeration on the regional economy in a simulated intelligent environment based on machine learning. This paper proposes a method to detect industrial agglomeration index to analyze industrial agglomeration. Through the establishment of the industrial agglomeration index system, the level of integration of the manufacturing industry in our city was objectively analyzed, and the impact of the integration of manufacturing industry on our city was tested empirically. Finally, the relationship between industrial integration and regional economic development was tested. The experimental results in this paper show that industrial integration in a smart environment based on simulation learning has a significant positive impact on regional economic development. Among them, the level of cooperation between the manufacturing service industry and the manufacturing industry increased by 1%, and the level of regional economic development increased by 0.025%.

The selection of the system-architecture is critical step in software-engineering lifecycle. Unfortunately, the selecting a suitable architecture is a hard mission. The difficulty of the adopting architecture increases in inconsistence case as in SOA and MSA. The paper answers “when architecture transform”, “to which architecture migrate” and “how”. The paper addresses the lack of evaluation ERPs in post-implementation phase. The paper provides static and dynamic analysis for monolith, SOA and MSA by numerical-comparison and Benchmark. This paper proposes a roadmap for migration-architecture. The roadmap consists of flowchart of migration and migration-decision model that is supported with criteria of evaluation form for assessing system’s baseline and making a consistence decision by Neutrosophic-ANP. Because of the dependency between factors of information system evolution, ANP is used. Furthermore, Neutrosophic set is selected because its accuracy in inconsistence. Benchmark assesses OpenBravoERP, Odoo12 and Metasfresh5.144 to represent monolith, SOA and MSA respectively. Benchmark assesses performance, time to the market, stability, future proof, network issue and cost. They are tested based on scenario tests which grantee that transactions are executed within more than one module of ERPS, simulates real business’s procedures, huge number of records and concurrent load by virtual users. The proposed model and benchmark help “Hitac’ enterprise in two decisions for its expansion-plan in COVID-19 crisis. The numerical steps of this case-study are provided. Most published papers and literatures about Microservices are not empirical. The main paper’s result is filling this gap by a one of the empirical aspects with an academic study support.

The attention-based SeriesNet (A-SeriesNet) combined augmented attention residual learning module-based convolutional neural network (augmented ARLM-CNN) subnetwork with hidden state attention module-based recurrent neural network (HSAM-RNN) subnetwork for conditional time series prediction with high accuracy. The augmented ARLM-CNN subnetwork has defects in extracting latent features of the multi-condition series. The forecasting accuracy will decrease when the feature dimension of the multi-condition series becomes high. The same problem also occurs in the HSAM-RNN subnetwork of A-SeriesNet. The dual-stage attention recurrent neural network (DA-RNN) proved that the attention-based encoder-decoder framework is an effective model for dealing with the above problem. This paper applies the DA-RNN to the HSAM-RNN subnetwork of A-SeriesNet and presents the triple-stage attention-based recurrent neural network (TA-RNN) subnetworks. Furthermore, this paper considers a CNN-based encoder-decoder structure named dual attention residual learning module-based convolutional neural network (DARLM-CNN) subnetwork to improve the augmented ARLM-CNN subnetwork of A-SeriesNet. Finally, this paper presents the triple-stage attention-based SeriesNet (TA-SeriesNet), which uses a new concatenation method instead of the element-wise multiplication of A-SeriesNet to parallel connect the proposed subnetworks and reduce the dependence of forecasting results on a certain subnetwork. The experimental results show our TA-SeriesNet is superior to other deep learning models in forecasting accuracy evaluation metrics for high feature dimensional time series datasets.

The rapid development of tools for communication such as social networks, tweeting and Whatsapp has generated a large mass of important textual data. Also, the COVID-19 pandemic has inflamed social networks, hence the automatic analysis of opinions has become paramount. The purpose of this paper is to analyze Arabic tweets in terms of positivity, negativity, or neutrality.In analyzing the opinions of the Arabic language, a real challenge is encountered, which lies in the use of different dialects (Egyptian, Saudian, Maghrebian, Gulfian, Levantine, Syrian $\ldots $ ). In this paper, we introduce two major components: The first employs six machine learning (ML) methods, including Decision Trees (DT), Logistic Regression (LR), k Nearest Neighbors (K-NN), Random Forests (RF), Support Vector Machines (SVM), and Nave Bayes (NB), with the TF-IDF method acting as the feature extraction.While, the second part consists of testing three variants of Deep Learning (DL) based on multiplicative Long Short Term Memory (mLSTM), Long Short Term Memory (LSTM), and Gated Recurrent Unit (GRU) by applying word embedding as the input vector. The experimental study was validated using three Arabic language corpora (TEAD, ATSAD, and ASTD) and two learning modes (Hold out and 10-folds cross validation). The obtained results in terms of Accuracy (ACC), Precesion (PREC), Recall (REC), and F1-score (F1) show a clear performance for DL techniques based on a 10-folds strategy compared to the state-of-the-art. The experiments shown in the paper reveal that the proposed DL models accomplished the best results.

In response to national and international carbon reduction goals, renewable energy resources like photovoltaics (PV) and wind, and energy storage technologies like fuel-cells are being extensively integrated in electric grids. All these energy resources require power electronic converters (PECs) to interconnect to the electric grid. These PECs have different response characteristics to dynamic stability issues compared to conventional synchronous generators. As a result, the demand for validated models to study and control these stability issues of PECs has increased drastically. This paper provides a review of the existing PEC model types and their applicable uses. The paper provides a description of the suitable model types based on the relevant dynamic stability issues. Challenges and benefits of using the appropriate PEC model type for studying each type of stability issue are also presented.

Technology forecasting not only helps business managers to make the right decisions but also helps researchers to grasp the direction of technology development. Technology forecasting, which facilitates the identification of the development technologies with high potential, can be an effective tool to support the management and plan for the future research activities. For this purpose, this paper firstly constructs Multi-modal input based on deep learning (MIDL) text classification model to extract relevant SCI papers from Web of Science database from 1996 to 2019 for topic classification, and then apply the Ensemble Empirical Mode Decomposition (EEMD) and Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) neural networks to build an EEMD-LSTM technology forecasting model to predict the future development of each research field. Besides, we verify the validity of the method by taking robotics as an example in this paper. The results show that the accuracy, recall and F1 of MIDL text classification model are 0.826, 0.822 and 0.824 respectively. As compared with the optimal results of other classification models, the accuracy, recall and F1 are improved by 4.1%, 3.5%, and 3.8% respectively. The mean MAPE of the EEMD-LSTM model is 7%, which is 11% lower than ARIMA, 8% lower than LSTM, and 10% lower than 2-layer-LSTM.

Blockchain has recently attracted significant academic attention in research fields beyond the financial industry. In the Internet of Things (IoT), blockchain can be used to create a decentralized, reliable, and secure environment. The use of blockchain in IoT applications is still in its early stages, particularly at the low end of the computing spectrum. As a result, the future roadmap is hazy, and several challenges and questions must be addressed. Several articles combining blockchain technology with IoT have recently been released, but they are limited to shallow technological potential discussions, with very few providing an in- depth examination of the complexities of implementing blockchain technology for IoT. Therefore, this paper aims to coherently and comprehensively provide current cutting-edge efforts in this direction. It provides a literature review of IoT and blockchain integration by examining current research issues and trends in the applications of blockchain-related approaches and technologies within the IoT security context. We have surveyed published articles from 2017 to 2021 on blockchain-based solutions for IoT security, taking into consideration different security areas and then, we have organized the available articles according to these areas. The surveyed articles have been chronologically organized in tables for better clarity. In this paper, we try to investigate the vital issues and challenges to the integration of IoT and blockchain, and then investigate the research efforts that have been conducted so far to overcome these challenges.

Software defects reflect software quality, and software failures can be predicted through software reliability models. Aiming at the problem that the parameters of software reliability model are difficult to estimate, this paper used the hybrid algorithm for model parameter estimation to software defect prediction. As a typical swarm intelligence algorithm, PSO (Particle Swarm Optimization) has fast convergence but low solution accuracy. SSA (Sparrow Search Algorithm) not only has high search accuracy and fast convergence speed, but also has the advantages of good stability and strong robustness. Based on the characteristic that the fitness function proposed in this paper, this paper hybrid PSO and SSA to accelerate the convergence before the individual update of the SSA. At the same time, this paper also constructed a new fitness function based on the maximum likelihood estimation of the parameters, and used it for parameter initialization. Through the analysis of the experimental results of five sets of actual data sets, the optimization performance of the hybrid algorithm (SSA-PSO) was better than that of a single algorithm with higher convergence speed and more stable, accurate results. Moreover, with the support of the new fitness function, it effectively solved the problems of slow convergence speed and low accuracy of solution. The experimental results showed that the hybrid SSA-PSO could obtain the better solution, convergence speed and stability than single SSA and PSO in software defections estimation and prediction.

Data parallel applications in data centers generate, process, and store huge volumes of data. Coflow Completion time (CCT) is one of the major performance metrics to capture application-level semantics. This paper is the first one to study the joint consideration of task placement, coflow bandwidth scheduling, and path choice to minimize the average CCT in intra-data center. This paper proposes a joint online scheduling framework, which first develops a 2-approximation algorithm to reduce the CCT of a single coflow, and then follows the Shortest Remaining Time First (SRTF) principle to schedule multiple coflows. Extensive simulations based on practical trace demonstrate that the proposed framework has better performance than the state-of-the-art works.

Most academic courses in information and communication technology (ICT) or engineering disciplines are designed to improve practical skills; however, practical skills and theoretical knowledge are equally important to achieve high academic performance. This research aims to explore how practical skills are influential in improving students’ academic performance by collecting real-world data from a computer programming course in the ICT discipline. Today, computer programming has become an indispensable skill for its wide range of applications and significance across the world. In this paper, a novel framework to extract hidden features and related association rules using a real-world dataset is proposed. An unsupervised k-means clustering algorithm is applied for data clustering, and then the frequent pattern-growth algorithm is used for association rule mining. We leverage students’ programming logs and academic scores as an experimental dataset. The programming logs are collected from an online judge (OJ) system, as OJs play a key role in conducting programming practices, competitions, assignments, and tests. To explore the correlation between practical (e.g., programming, logical implementations, etc.) skills and overall academic performance, the statistical features of students are analyzed and the related results are presented. A number of useful recommendations are provided for students in each cluster based on the identified hidden features. In addition, the analytical results of this paper can help teachers prepare effective lesson plans, evaluate programs with special arrangements, and identify the academic weaknesses of students. Moreover, a prototype of the proposed approach and data-driven analytical results can be applied to other practical courses in ICT or engineering disciplines.

Autonomous driving (AD) provides a reliable solution for safe driving by replacing human drivers responsible for the majority of accidents. The emergence of Machine Learning, specifically Deep Reinforcement Learning (DRL), and its ability to solve complex games proved its potential to address AD challenges. However, model-free methods still suffer from safety-related issues that can be resolved using safe-DRL approaches. The addition of model-based safety filters to the learning-based algorithms provides safety bounds on their performance and constraint satisfaction. In this paper, we investigate the addition of a safety filter based on Model Predictive Control and show an increase in mean testing episode reward by 110% from −75 mean episode reward during testing for 50 episodes for Deep Deterministic Policy Gradient ( $DDPG$ ) to 7.758. We study the impacts of safety filters (7.758 mean reward), heuristic rules, bounded additive noises (0.49% performance increase comparing to noise-free case), and exploration (3.425 mean reward) on the learning algorithm. We compare the effects of filters in the context of simulated exploration and bounded exploration and prove that bounded exploration results in 9.86% increase in mean reward and 12.95% decrease in std comparing to the other method. Additionally, inspired by Deep Internal Learning and biological mechanisms like brain plasticity, we investigate the idea of using each sample for training only once instead of utilizing stochastic batches which increases the mean testing accumulated reward by 1.87% and leads to the best performance (7.942 mean reward and 0.048 std). Finally, the results demonstrate better automotive results for our proposed method than DDPG. Our proposed method, DDPG with safety filter in bounded exploration and adaptive learning under noisy input conditions, has a success rate of 100% under different traffic densities for the simulation environment used in this paper and our assumptions. The proposed method’s automotive results are shown for a braking scenario to avoid collision with other road users.

Wind turbine fault diagnosis and early warning are important to reduce wind farm operation and maintenance costs and improve power generation efficiency. In this paper, we take the Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) data as the research object and research wind turbine health data purification, fault diagnosis model building, and unit operation status monitoring from a completely data-driven perspective. Firstly, for the problem that Density-Based Spatial Clustering of Applications with Noise (DBSCAN) algorithm cannot identify high-density anomalous data. An anomaly data processing scheme combining a density clustering algorithm and normal power interval estimation is proposed. The accuracy of extracting health data from wind turbines is improved. Secondly, to address the problem that the eXtreme Gradient Boosting (XGBoost) algorithm has more hyperparameters, we propose an optimization scheme based on the Bayesian Optimization Algorithm (BOA) and tree model for feature weight measurement, which improves the efficiency and accuracy of intuitive mapping from SCADA system monitoring data to fault features. Finally, a wind turbine condition monitoring scheme based on the information fusion of multi-characteristic monitoring parameters is designed. The wind turbine condition monitoring scheme proposed in this paper can warn generator system failure 3.67 hours, gearbox system failure 5.17 hours in advance, and hydraulic system failure 2.33 hours in advance.

Choosing optimal Deep Learning (DL) architecture and hyperparameters for a particular problem is still not a trivial task among researchers. The most common approach relies on popular architectures proven to work on specific problem domains led on the same experiment environment and setup. However, this limits the opportunity to choose or invent novel DL networks that could lead to better results. This paper proposes a novel approach for providing general recommendations of an appropriate DL architecture and its hyperparameters based on different configurations presented in thousands of published research papers that examine various problem domains. This architecture can further serve as a starting point of investigating DL architecture for a concrete data set. Natural language processing (NLP) methods are used to create structured data from unstructured scientific papers upon which intelligent models are learned to propose optimal DL architecture, layer type, and activation functions. The advantage of the proposed methodology is multifold. The first is the ability to eventually use the knowledge and experience from thousands of DL papers published through the years. The second is the contribution to the forthcoming novel researches by aiding the process of choosing optimal DL setup based on the particular problem to be analyzed. The third advantage is the scalability and flexibility of the model, meaning that it can be easily retrained as new papers are published in the future, and therefore to be constantly improved.

Reliability enhancement of AlGaN / GaN HEMT is a significant thrust area due to rapidly improving material and processing technology. In this paper, a detailed analysis of gate–shaped AlGaN / GaN HEMT with field plate is presented. Although AlGaN / GaN HEMT with field–plate is well known, its blending with gate–shaping leading to a more robust and reliable behaviour is described in this paper. It is observed that the threshold voltage and transconductance invariably remain constant for various combinations of gate–shaped and field plate placements. The threshold voltage for all the devices are found to be – 5.8 V. The peak transconductance for the devices without field plate and with field plate is $\sim ~0.16$ S/mm and $\sim ~0.15$ S/mm, respectively. Apart from leakage current, the electric field also gets mitigated for both gate–shaped and field–plated devices by $\sim ~45$ % and $\sim ~68$ %, respectively. The moderation in electric field further assists in the reduction of electron temperature for gate–shaped and field–plated structures by $\sim ~12$ % and $\sim ~85$ %, respectively. Additionally, breakdown voltage increases for the gate–shaped devices to 133 V as compared to 120 V of conventional devices without field plate. Significant reduction in leakage current, electric field, and electron temperature is accompanied by a minor increment in capacitance for the field–plated structure, hence, the proposed structure is expected to enhance reliability of the device. Thus, it is anticipated that the proposed devices with enhanced reliability would be a step ahead of conventional devices and would find major applications in high power domain.

Anomaly detection has become an indispensable tool for modern society, applied in a wide range of applications, from detecting fraudulent transactions to malignant brain tumours. Over time, many anomaly detection techniques have been introduced. However, in general, they all suffer from the same problem: a lack of data that represents anomalous behaviour. As anomalous behaviour is usually costly (or dangerous) for a system, it is difficult to gather enough data that represents such behaviour. This, in turn, makes it difficult to develop and evaluate anomaly detection techniques. Recently, generative adversarial networks (GANs) have attracted a great deal of attention in anomaly detection research, due to their unique ability to generate new data. In this paper, we present a systematic literature review of the applications of GANs in anomaly detection, covering 128 papers on the subject. The goal of this review paper is to analyze and summarize: (1) which anomaly detection techniques can benefit from certain types of GANs, and how, (2) in which application domains GAN-assisted anomaly detection techniques have been applied, and (3) which datasets and performance metrics have been used to evaluate these techniques. Our study helps researchers and practitioners to find the most suitable GAN-assisted anomaly detection technique for their application. In addition, we present a research roadmap for future studies in this area., Comment: 34 pages,5 figures

Accurate electricity consumption forecasting in the power grids ensures efficient generation and distribution of electricity. Keeping this in mind, the paper introduces a novel deep learning model, termed Gated-FCN, for short-term load forecasting. The key idea is to introduce an automated feature selection and deep learning model for forecasting. The model includes an eight-layered Fully Convolutional Network (FCN-8) in which the hand-crafted feature selection that requires expert domain knowledge is avoided. Furthermore, the model also reduces noise as it learns internal dependencies and the correlation of the time series. Enhanced Bidirectional Gated Recurrent Unit (EBiGRU) is used in combination with FCN-8 to learn long-term temporal dependencies of the time series. Moreover, a weighted averaging mechanism of multiple snapshot models is adopted in the proposed model to assign optimized weights to BiGRU. At the end of FCN-8 and BiGRU, a fully connected dense layer is used that gives final prediction results. Gated-FCN is an end-to-end forecasting model that does not require any other model for enhancing its forecasting efficiency. Different activation functions are initially analyzed to determine how the proposed model learns complex patterns from the time series data. Later, the activation function having the best accuracy is used for forecasting. The proposed model extracts both spatial and temporal features from the data. Furthermore, this paper also provides predictive and exploratory data analyses to assist policymakers in making optimal decisions regarding power production and dispatch. In order to demonstrate the applicability of the proposed technique, the simulations are performed using nine years’ load consumption data taken from Independent System Operators New England (ISO-NE). The comparison with five state-of-the-art techniques is also provided to prove the fact that Gated-FCN gives the best forecasting accuracy as compared to other benchmark techniques in terms of two performance metrics: Mean Absolute Percentage Error (MAPE) and Root Mean Square Error (RMSE).

Many studies showed the feasibility of detecting Freezing of Gait (FOG) of Parkinson’s patients by using several numbers of inertial sensors worn on the body and in back-end computing power. This work uses machine learning approaches for analyzing the data of one single body-worn inertial sensor system to classify and detect FOG. Long-Short-Term-Memory (LSTM) is employed as the FOG detection algorithm and the Daphnet (FOG and normal gait) dataset provides the data for model training and testing in this paper. The model considers raw data from three channels of the acceleration sensor mounted on the patient’s shank and ignores all other data from other sensors. The model is patient dependent and uses sensitivity and specificity metrics to evaluate the model’s performance. In this paper, we propose a novel padding method that is applied to the windows of FOG and non-FOG with zero overlaps on the training set and adapts the padding to the individual regions. This method produces windows of only one type of data and label. The proposed padding method reduces the padding amount by two orders of magnitude compared to bigger batch sizes in the sequence splitting method offered by MATLAB 2019a. The padding amount is independent of the batch size. Raw data is fed to the model in the testing mode without any pre-processing or data transformation. The standard rolling window generates fixed-size windows for the test set without overlap and the higher amount of FOG or Normal walking data which defines the label of the individual window. The model for one-second long windows applied in this work outperformed the literature results with a sensitivity of 92.57% and a specificity of 95.62% compared to 82% and 94% reported by Masiala et al.

This paper discusses impact of recovering missing Electroencephalography (EEG) data on classification accuracy of hand movements using tensor-based methods. Improvement in classification accuracy is important for efficient performance of prosthesis. Classification accuracy relies on quality of the observed data. In practice, observed data is usually incomplete because of disconnection of electrodes and other artefacts, which negatively affect the classification accuracy. In this paper, we employ tensor-based imputation methods (canonical/polyadiac decomposition (CPD), weighted optimization version of CPD (CP-WOPT and Nonnegative Matrix Factorization (NMF)) to recover missing data in EEG signals and apply various classifiers to classify hand movements on recovered data. In particular, structured missing data was considered because that is how data gets missed in real-life data acquisition. Percentage of missing data was changed from 10% to 50%. Classifiers are applied on complete, missing and recovered data explicitly to test the performance of our framework. Results show that mean classification accuracy on complete data, missing data and recovered data was 71%, 53% and 64% respectively which shows applicability of our framework.

Laparoscopic surgery is a surgical procedure performed by inserting narrow tubes into the abdomen without making large incisions in the skin. It is done with the aid of a video camera. Laparoscopic videos are affected by various distortions during surgery which lead to loss of visual quality. Identification of these distortions is the primary requisite in automated video enhancement systems used to classify the distortions correctly and accordingly select the proper algorithm to enhance video quality. In addition to high accuracy, the speed of distortion classification should be high, and the system must consider real-time conditions. This paper aims to address the issues faced by similar methods by developing a fast and accurate deep learning model for distortion classification. The dataset proposed by the ICIP2020 conference challenge was used for training and evaluation of the proposed method. This challenging dataset contains videos that have five types of distortions such as noise, smoke, uneven illumination, defocus blur, and motion blur with four levels of intensity. This paper discusses the proposed solution which received the first prize in the ICIP2020 challenge. The solution utilized a transfer learning approach to transfer representation from the domain of natural images to the domain of laparoscopic videos. We used a pre-trained ResNet50 convolutional neural network (CNN) to extract informative features that were mapped by support vector machine (SVM) classifiers to various distortion categories. In this work, the problem of multiple distortions in the same video was formulated as a multi-label distortion classification problem. The approach of transfer learning with decision fusion was applied and was found to outperform other solutions in terms of accuracy (83%), F1 score of a single distortion (94.7%), and F1 score of single and multiple distortions (94.9%). In addition, the proposed solution can run in real time with an inference speed of 20 frames per second (FPS).

Small cells (SCs) are expected to be ultra-densely deployed in or close to the traffic hot-spots in the fifth generation (5G) mobile networks to provide wireless capacity cost-effectively. Traffic hot-spots change over time, which means SCs cannot be deployed in a one-off manner as macrocells normally do, rather they should be constructed in a staged process. Hence, mathematical models that capture the time-varying staged-construction process, are urgently needed for operators to effectively predict the construction period, but are currently lacking. In this paper, inspired by the foam bursting process-a natural phenomenon that can be observed in daily life such as hand-washing, we first propose a novel model that can predict the time-varying expectation and logarithmic variance of SC coverage areas. Then, we verify the model by real network deployment cases. Additionally, in order to extract parameters from historical base station deployment data, a parameter estimation algorithm is designed and verified. The findings of the paper reveal that mobile operators should construct ultra-dense SC networks in a staged manner like how larger foams split into smaller ones.