Search

Contribution: This article features a systematic literature review with the objective of presenting a study that reflects the current scenario of research on the cognitive load theory (CLT) in the domain of teaching and learning computer programming. Background: Computer programming is a highly cognitive skill, requiring mastering multiple competencies, and recognized as being difficult to learn, for this reason, the cognitive load (CL) in the learner’s working memory emerged as an influential concept, making CLT one of the most common theories in computing education research. Research Questions: What are the approaches that relate CLT to teaching and learning computer programming? What CLT-related concepts are covered? What evidence is reported with respect to this context? Methodology: Following a formal protocol, a survey was performed for papers linking CLT to teaching and learning programming published between 2010 and 2020. The selection of papers was based on a set of criteria established to drive the selection process, including alignment with the research questions and paper quality assessment. Findings: The approaches applied in the papers are based on measuring the CL; through instructional design based on the development or use of resources or tools, a range of different pedagogy strategies and the CLT concepts. With respect to the concepts, the subjective measurement technique and worked example effect are the most commonly deployed. As far as the evidence reported, the better part is related to the worked example effect and measuring CLs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Radio Frequency IDentification (RFID) is intended to supplant legacy (optical) bar code scanning technology found in many logistic and retail applications. RFID is distinguished by inexpensive, low power and compact form factor tags, whose longevity and efficacy are predicated on using passive communication techniques and on-tag power harvesting. Such tags employ backscatter modulation, which does not require any active RF components. As a result, backscatter has become an attractive design choice for short-range communications in power constrained wireless sensor networking scenarios. The purpose of this work is two-fold. First, it aims to expose backscatter communication as an emerging topic to a communication systems-theoretic audience. Since backscatter modulation and on-tag power harvesting efficiency are coupled, it is necessary to re-examine notions of power and spectral efficiency from an energy-constraint perspective; this leads to novel coded modulation schemes for future RFID systems. Further, we investigate RFID MIMO systems where the channel fading encountered has different statistics than the classical Rayleigh fading model. In turn,the trade off between diversity order and spatial multiplexing gains are distinct from wide-area MIMO. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In this paper, we study the diversity-multiplexing-gain tradeoff (DMT) of wireless relay networks under the half-duplex constraint. It is often unclear what penalty if any, is imposed by the half-duplex constraint on the DMT of such networks. We study two classes of networks; the first class, called KPP(I) networks, is the class of networks with the relays organized in K parallel paths between the source and the destination. While we assume that there is no direct source-destination path, the K relaying paths can interfere with each other. The second class, termed as layered networks, is comprised of relays organized in layers, where links exist only between adjacent layers. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The future connectivity landscape, and notably, the 5G wireless systems will feature Ultra-Reliable Low Latency Communication (URLLC). The coupling of high reliability and low latency requirements in URLLC use cases makes the wireless access design very challenging, in terms of both the protocol design and of the associated transmission techniques. This paper aims to provide a broad perspective on the fundamental tradeoffs in URLLC, as well as the principles used in building access protocols. Two specific technologies are considered in the context of URLLC: massive MIMO and multi-connectivity, also termed interface diversity. This paper also touches on the importance of the proper statistical methodology for designing and assessing extremely high-reliability levels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In one of the several manifestations, the future cellular networks are required to accommodate a massive number of devices, several orders of magnitude compared to today’s networks. At the same time, the future cellular networks will have to fulfill stringent latency constraints. To that end, one problem that is posed as a potential showstopper is extreme congestion for requesting uplink scheduling over the physical random access channel (PRACH). Indeed, such congestion drags along scheduling delay problems. In this paper, the use of self-organized device-to-device (D2D) clustering is advocated for mitigating PRACH congestion. To this end, this paper proposes two D2D clustering schemes, namely, random-based clustering and channel-gain-based clustering. Accordingly, this paper sheds light on random access within the proposed D2D clustering schemes and presents a case study based on a stochastic geometry framework. For the sake of objective evaluation, the D2D clustering is benchmarked by the conventional scheduling request procedure. Accordingly, this paper offers insights into useful scenarios that minimize the scheduling delay for each clustering scheme. Finally, this paper discusses the implementation algorithm and some potential implementation issues and remedies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To obtain reliable results from conflicting data in mobile crowdsensing, numerous truth discovery protocols have been proposed in the past decade. However, most of them do not consider the data privacy of entities involved (e.g., workers and servers), and several existing privacy-preserving truth discovery protocols either provide limited privacy protection or have heavy computation and communication overheads due to iterative computation and transmission over large ciphertexts. In this paper, we aim to propose privacy-preserving and lightweight truth discovery protocols to tackle the above problems. Specifically, we carefully design an anonymization protocol named AnonymTD to delink workers from their data, where workers’ data are computed and transmitted without complicated encryption. To further reduce each worker's overheads in the scenarios where workers are willing to share their weights, we resort to the perturbation technology to propose a more lightweight truth discovery protocol named PerturbTD. Based on workers’ perturbed data, two cloud servers in PerturbTD complete most of the workload of truth discovery together, which avoids the frequent involvement of workers. The theoretical analysis and the comparative experiments in this paper demonstrate that our two protocols can achieve our security goals with low computation and communication overheads. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper considers the sample-data-based consensus problem of multiagent systems with time-varying delay and packet losses. To distinguish the time delays caused by network-induced time-delay and packet losses, the switched system is utilized. A lower gain controller is designed based on the solution of a parametric algebraic Riccati equation. The Lyapunov stability theory is utilized to obtain the limitations on the frequency and the duration of packet losses which guarantees the consensus of multiagent systems. On the other hand, we theoretically prove that refined time-delay function can reduce the conservatism. A simulation example is given to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed method. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates how much the rate region of the two-user Gaussian interference channel can be enlarged by allowing the two source nodes to cooperate. Two cooperative transmission schemes are proposed, based on dirty-paper coding and the assumption that the radio bandwidth is partitioned into two parts, and each part is utilized by one source node. The achievable rate regions and the outage performance of these two schemes are compared with the simplified Han-Kobayashi scheme, which is an efficient coding scheme for the interference channel. Simulation results show that in some channel realizations, the rate region of the Han-Kobayashi scheme is a subset of the rate regions of our two proposed cooperative transmission schemes. Furthermore, a significant gain in outage performance can be obtained, as the cooperative schemes have twice the diversity order of the simplified Han-Kobayashi scheme. While both cooperative schemes are able to yield large diversity gain, one of them can be implemented by simple decoder. Besides, it has an efficient algorithm for maximizing its weighted sum rate, and can be extended easily to the multi-channel case. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Contribution: A systematic literature review on the empirical evidence regarding the usage of programming languages for learning purposes is presented. The review analyzes different methods and tools at different educational levels and with different objectives. Background: Learning programming has gained relevance in the last decade. This is due to the massive presence of programmable elements ranging from computers to toys. Because of this, the interest of researchers on this topic has increased. Questions, such as what to use, in what educational stages to use it, the effectiveness of the method, and the focal objectives for learning programming are questions that do not have obvious answers. Research Questions: 1) What empirical evidence exists on the use of educational programming languages (EPLs)? 2) In what context is the research performed? 3) How is effectiveness reported in the literature after applying EPLs? 4) What pedagogical goals are achieved by using EPLs? Methodology: Following a formal protocol, automated searches were performed for primary studies from 2007 to 2018. A total of 62 studies were identified, of which 29 were selected and analyzed since they include some type of empirical evidence. Findings: After performing the evaluation, the results support the need for better approaches with empirical evidence when reporting research on the usage of EPLs. Some research opportunities are identified which concerns the used programming languages, the areas or stages of their application, or the need to have more empirical evidence in general and more studies in non-WEIRD (Western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic) contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a method for controlling the voltage of inverter-based Microgrids by proposing a new scale-free distributed cooperative controller. The main contribution of this paper is that the proposed distributed cooperative controller is scale-free where is independent of any information about the communication system and the number of distributed generators, as such it works for any Microgrids with any size. Moreover, the communication network is modeled by a general time-varying graph which enhances the resilience of the proposed protocol against communication link failure, data packet loss, and arbitrarily fast plug and play operation in the presence of arbitrarily finite communication delays as the protocol does not require the knowledge of the upper bound on the delay. The stability analysis of the proposed protocol is provided. The proposed method is simulated on the CIGRE medium voltage Microgrid test system. The simulation results demonstrate the feasibility of the proposed scale-free distributed nonlinear protocol for regulating voltage of Microgrids in the presence of communication failures, data packet loss, noise, and degradation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we consider a cooperative simultaneous wireless information and power transfer (SWIPT) network with one source–destination pair and multiple energy harvesting relays. How to efficiently use these relays has been addressed in conventional cooperative networks, and this paper investigates the impact of SWIPT on the performance of such multirelay cooperative networks. In particular, the main contribution of this paper is that a closed-form expression of the outage probability achieved by the multirelay cooperative protocol is obtained, as well as its approximation at high SNR. In addition, the performance of the cooperative network with the SWIPT relays is compared with that in conventional systems with self-powered relays. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The intelligent radio is a novel emerging paradigm catching on in many practical applications, in order to provide context awareness techniques, able to learn by the environment conditions applying machine learning frameworks. The channel state information (CSI) prediction is one of the main challenges that an intelligent radio has to face with. This paper deals with the CSI prediction in the case of a buffer aided relaying communication scheme with adaptive link selection previously proposed in the literature where a direct source-destination link is not available and with both links affected by an independent fading. In particular, the CSI prediction has been reduced here to a time series prediction problem, performed by involving the usage of the recurrent neural networks. Finally, the validation of the effectiveness of the proposed intelligent radio buffer-aided relaying scheme with adaptive link selection approach has been pursued by presenting performance comparisons with the previously proposed scheme under the assumption of an ideal and actual CSI estimations, respectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the robust containment control problem of multiagent systems with heterogeneous uncertainty and nonlinearity while the nonlinear parts have to satisfy the Lipschitz condition. In this paper, both input time-delay and data transmission time-delay between the agents are considered simultaneously and communication topology of the multiagent systems may switch in the steady-state condition. Under the mentioned conditions, the objective of this paper is to make all the followers’ states converge to the convex hull shaped by the leaders’ states with an expected exponential rate. To this end, an appropriate smooth protocol is proposed. Then, a Lyapunov–Krasovskii functional composed of five terms is proposed and the stability condition is denoted by two linear matrix inequalities (LMIs). In addition to the stability assurance, solving the LMIs would obtain the suitable gains for the protocol. Finally, some numerical simulations are given to verify the theoretical analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There has been much recent interest in private information retrieval (PIR) in models where a database is stored across several servers using coding techniques from distributed storage, rather than being a simply replicated. In particular, a recent breakthrough result of Fazelli, Vardy, and Yaakobi introduces the notion of a PIR code and a PIR array code, and uses this notion to produce efficient PIR protocols. In this paper, we are interested in designing PIR array codes. We consider the case when we have $m$ servers, with each server storing a fraction $(1/s)$ of the bits of the database; here $s$ is a fixed rational number with $s > 1$. A PIR array code with the $k$ -PIR property enables a $k$ -server PIR protocol (with $k\leq m$) to be emulated on $m$ servers, with the overall storage requirements of the protocol being reduced. The communication complexity of a PIR protocol reduces as $k$ grows, so the virtual server rate, defined to be $k/m$ , is an important parameter. We study the maximum virtual server rate of a PIR array code with the $k$ -PIR property. We present upper bounds on the achievable virtual server rate, some constructions, and ideas how to obtain the PIR array codes with the highest possible virtual server rate. In particular, we present constructions that asymptotically meet our upper bounds and the exact largest virtual server rate is obtained when $1 < s \leq 2$. A $k$ -PIR code (and similarly a $k$ -PIR array code) is also a locally repairable code with symbol availability $k-1$. Such a code ensures $k$ parallel reads for each information symbol. So the virtual server rate is very closely related to the symbol availability of the code when used as a locally repairable code. The results of this paper are discussed also in this context where subspace codes also have an important role. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper considers secret-key generation between several agents and a base station that observe independent and identically distributed realizations of correlated random variables. Each agent wishes to generate the longest possible individual key with the base station by means of public communication. All keys must be jointly kept secret from all external entities. In this many-to-one secret-key generation setting, it can be shown that the agents can take advantage of a collective protocol to increase the sum rate of their generated keys. However, when each agent is only interested in maximizing its own secret-key rate, agents may be unwilling to participate in a collective protocol. Furthermore, when such a collective protocol is employed, how to fairly allocate individual key rates arises as a valid issue. This paper studies the tension between cooperation and self-interest with a game-theoretic treatment. This paper establishes that cooperation is in the best interest of all individualistic agents and that there exist individual secret-key rate allocations that incentivize the agents to follow the protocol. In addition, an explicit coding scheme that achieves such allocations is proposed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Real-time dynamic workload consists of tasks that can arbitrarily join and leave the system at run-time. To avoid incurring deadline misses, tasks that request to join the system must pass an admission test, which has to cope with potential scheduling transients originated by the residual effect of the tasks that previously left the system. This phenomenon may require some tasks to suffer an admission delay before being accepted for execution. This paper focuses on uniprocessor earliest-deadline first (EDF) scheduling with constrained deadlines and explicitly considers methods for handling scheduling transients in the presence of dynamic real-time workload. A generalized analysis framework is first presented to overcome several limitations of the existing approaches (including the support for overlapping transients), and is then used to derive methods for computing bounds on the admission delays incurred by tasks. Building on such results, an on-line protocol is proposed to handle the admission control of a dynamic workload, which also comes with a variant that can execute in polynomial time to favor its practical application. Furthermore, the paper shows how the presented analysis can be used off-line for analyzing mode-changes among static task sets. Experimental results are finally presented to evaluate the proposed algorithms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is concerned with the consensus problem of general linear dynamic multiagent systems with stochastic sampling. In this paper, the sampling intervals randomly switch between two different values. The communication topology between agents is fixed and directed. Full- and reduced-order observers are designed based on neighbor agents’ relative output information. The algorithms to construct such observers are also provided. By using the estimated states of the agents, the observer-based consensus protocol with stochastic sampling are presented. Sufficient conditions to ensure consensus in mean square are derived by using Lyapunov stability theory. Finally, simulations are given to examine the effectiveness of the proposed methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A specific class of nonlinear systems, admitting finite-duration attractors (FDAs), is introduced in this paper, and used for consensus of multiagent systems (MASs). The advantage is that one can obtain a closed-form solution for the settling time function of the presented nonlinear systems. Such a system exhibits a two-phase convergence process, and its settling time function takes values over a finite duration. However, the duration width changes with respect to the initial condition. The FDA-based consensus protocol is shown to make the MAS undertaken achieve finite-duration convergence. With illustrative examples, the perfect consensus property is verified for MASs with or without a leader agent. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The consensusability problems of general linear multiagent systems considering directed topologies are explored from a frequency domain perspective in this paper. By investigating the properties of Laplacian spectra, a consensus criterion is established based on the stability of several complex weighted closed-loop systems. Furthermore, for single-input multiagent systems, frequency domain consensusability criteria are proposed on the basis of the stability margins, which depend on the $ {\mathcal {H}}_{\infty }$ norm of the complementary sensitivity function determined by the agents’ unstable poles. The corresponding design procedure is also developed. A numerical example is also presented to validate the proposed consensusability results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We consider a single-hop wireless sensor network in which each sensor node has an individual elastic data stream to transmit to each other node. We refer to this traffic pattern as unicast in this paper. The network has multiple slotted channels available for the data transmissions. To guarantee successful unicast within a bounded delay, we consider deterministic schemes that pre-assign each node a periodic schedule sequence to schedule transmitting and receiving at each time slot. The sequence period should be minimized since it upper bounds the unicast delay. We have investigated both synchronous TDMA sequences and asynchronous sequences. Since accurate time synchronization is difficult to achieve in sensor networks, we mainly present analysis and design for asynchronous sequences. In this paper, for a group-based channel assignment, we present a lower bound on the common period and propose a sequence construction method by which the period can achieve the same order as the lower bound. We also analyze optimal transmitting and receiving probabilities for two random schemes and compare their frequency utilization efficiency. Finally, unicast delay and energy consumption performance are compared by simulations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper studies the low-SNR regime performance of a scalar complex $K$ -user interference channel with the Gaussian noise. The finite bandwidth case is considered, where the low-SNR regime is approached by letting the input power go to zero, while the bandwidth is small and fixed. We show that for all $\delta >0$ , there exists a set of channel coefficients with non-zero measure (probability), in which the wideband slope per user satisfies $ \mathcal {S}_{0}< {\scriptstyle {}^{\scriptstyle 2}}\hspace{-0.224em}/\hspace{-0.112em}{\scriptstyle K}+\delta $. This is quite contrary to the large bandwidth case, where a slope of 1 per user is achievable with probability 1. We also develop an interference alignment scheme for the finite bandwidth case that shows some gain in wideband slope. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Co-simulation of heterogeneous systems allows for in-depth analysis of various aspects of power systems’ operation while staying within the environments of the simulation tools that are best fit to represent their respective domains. Equipped with a proprietary co-simulation platform, the paper focuses on the issue of power-conjugate coupling between parts of power grids modeled in transient stability and electromagnetic transient simulation tools. The problems of co-simulation stability and precision in presence of delays are tackled by means of designing a proper coupling interface. It is shown that two established interface methods – the V-I method and the Transmission Line Interface – are special cases of a generalized interface framework proposed in the paper. Moreover, a new interface algorithm is described by parametrizing the generalized framework. Analytical tools are also formulated to aid in the analysis of interface stability and precision via the concepts of passivity and transparency. Simulation results of benchmark systems of various complexity demonstrate the application of the developed power coupling interface. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses the distributed consensus controller design approaches for one-sided Lipschitz nonlinear multiagents by employing relative state feedback. A new treatment for one-sided Lipschitz nonlinearity is rendered from the consensus control point of view. By employing the quadratic inner-boundedness and the one-sided Lipschitz constraints, a sufficient condition for asymptotic consensus of nonlinear systems under strongly connected communication topologies is provided. Further, a robust consensus protocol design scheme for the nonlinear multiagents is derived by ensuring the ${L_{2}}$ stability of the consensus error system. Furthermore, a novel robust consensus control scheme against amplitude-bounded perturbations is developed that guarantees asymptotic convergence of the consensus error into a compact set. Extensions to the proposed methodologies for the leader-following consensus for a spanning tree communication topology with the leader as the root are addressed. In contrast to the conventional consensus control methodologies, this paper is less conservative and can be applied to a broader class of nonlinear multiagent systems. Moreover, the proposed consensus control approach is less conservative for robustness against disturbances owing to its ability to handle amplitude-bounded disturbances and due to the relaxation of a balanced communication topology. A numerical simulation study is provided for the consensus control of eight mobile agents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Electrical power system monitoring, protection, operation, and control schemes are undergoing significant changes toward the next generation fully automated, resilient, and self-healing grids. At present, there still exists a lack of available user-friendly tools for the synchronized measurement technology supported application design. This paper presents a synchro-measurement application development framework (SADF) to promote a simplified design and thorough validation of synchro-measurement (IEEE Standard C37.118.2-2011) supported user-defined applications under realistic conditions. The proposed SADF supports online receiving of a phasor measurement unit (PMU) or phasor data concentrator (PDC) provided data stream and enables simultaneous use of processed machine-readable synchro-measurements in advanced user-defined applications. This paper fills the scientific gap between the IEEE Standard C37.118.2-2011 specifications and its implementation by proposing a novel robust communication technique and efficient synchro-measurement data parsing methodology. As a proof of concept, the proposed SADF is implemented as a novel open-source MATLAB library. Combining this library with MATLAB’s signal processing and visualization functions allows mastering the design and validation of complex wide-area monitoring, protection, and control applications, as well as PMU/PDC performance and compliance verification. Finally, this paper verifies the proposed library against the standard specifications, assesses its interoperability and performance via a cyber-physical simulation platform, and presents online voltage magnitude monitoring as an example application. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is widely acknowledged that the success of deep learning is built upon large-scale training data and tremendous computing power. However, the data and computing power are not always available for many real-world applications. In this paper, we address the machine learning problem where it lacks training data and limits computing power. Specifically, we investigate domain adaptation which is able to transfer knowledge from one labeled source domain to an unlabeled target domain, so that we do not need much training data from the target domain. At the same time, we consider the situation that the running environment is confined, e.g., in edge computing the end device has very limited running resources. Technically, we present the Faster Domain Adaptation (FDA) protocol and further report two paradigms of FDA: early stopping and amid skipping. The former accelerates domain adaptation by multiple early exit points. The latter speeds up the adaptation by wisely skip several amid neural network blocks. Extensive experiments on standard benchmarks verify that our method is able to achieve the comparable and even better accuracy but employ much less computing resources. To the best of our knowledge, there are very few works which investigated accelerating knowledge adaptation in the community. This work is expected to inspire the topic for more discussion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Capturing the dynamics in user preference is crucial to better predict user future behaviors because user preferences often drift over time. Many existing recommendation algorithms – including both shallow and deep ones – often model such dynamics independently, i.e., user static and dynamic preferences are not modeled under the same latent space, which makes it difficult to fuse them for recommendation. This paper considers the problem of embedding a user's sequential behavior into the latent space of user preferences, namely translating sequence to preference. To this end, we formulate the sequential recommendation task as a dictionary learning problem, which learns: 1) a shared dictionary matrix, each row of which represents a partial signal of user dynamic preferences shared across users; and 2) a posterior distribution estimator using a deep autoregressive model integrated with Gated Recurrent Unit (GRU), which can select related rows of the dictionary to represent a user's dynamic preferences conditioned on his/her past behaviors. Qualitative studies on the Netflix dataset demonstrate that the proposed method can capture the user preference drifts over time and quantitative studies on multiple real-world datasets demonstrate that the proposed method can achieve higher accuracy compared with state-of-the-art factorization and neural sequential recommendation methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Weight sharing promises to make neural architecture search (NAS) tractable even on commodity hardware. Existing methods in this space rely on a diverse set of heuristics to design and train the shared-weight backbone network, a.k.a. the super-net. Since heuristics substantially vary across different methods and have not been carefully studied, it is unclear to which extent they impact super-net training and hence the weight-sharing NAS algorithms. In this paper, we disentangle super-net training from the search algorithm, isolate 14 frequently-used training heuristics, and evaluate them over three benchmark search spaces. Our analysis uncovers that several commonly-used heuristics negatively impact the correlation between super-net and stand-alone performance, whereas simple, but often overlooked factors, such as proper hyper-parameter settings, are key to achieve strong performance. Equipped with this knowledge, we show that simple random search achieves competitive performance to complex state-of-the-art NAS algorithms when the super-net is properly trained. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

XOR-AND Graphs (XAGs) are an enrichment of the classical AND-Inverter Graphs (AIGs) with XOR nodes. In particular, XAGs are networks composed by ANDs, XORs, and inverters. Besides several emerging technologies applications, XAGs are often exploited in cryptography-related applications based on the multiplicative complexity of a Boolean function. The multiplicative complexity of a function is the minimum number of AND gates (i.e., multiplications) that are sufficient to represent the function over the basis {AND, XOR, NOT}. In fact, the minimization of the number of AND gates is important for high-level cryptography protocols such as secure multiparty computation, where processing AND gates is more expensive than processing XOR gates. Moreover, it is an indicator of the degree of vulnerability of the circuit, as a small number of AND gates corresponds to a high vulnerability to algebraic attacks. In this paper we study the multiplicative complexity of Boolean functions characterized by two particular regularities, called autosymmetry and D-reducibility. Moreover, we exploit these regularities for decreasing the number of AND nodes in XAGs. The experimental results validate the proposed approaches. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, the quantized control of networked control systems under stochastic clock offsets is considered. We assume that the clock offsets are caused by asynchronous clocks between sensors and controllers. A stochastic variable with a specific probability density function is used to describe the stochastic clock offsets. A quantized controller is designed to deal with quantization error such that the corresponding systems are stochastically stable. Finally, two numerical examples are used to show the validity of the proposed design method. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is concerned with the moving horizon (MH) estimation issue for a type of networked nonlinear systems (NNSs) with the so-called random access (RA) protocol scheduling effects. To handle the signal transmissions between sensor nodes and the MH estimator, a constrained communication channel is employed whose channel constraints implies that at each time instant, only one sensor node is permitted to access the communication channel and then send its measurement data. The RA protocol, whose scheduling behavior is characterized by a discrete-time Markov chain (DTMC), is utilized to orchestrate the access sequence of sensor nodes. By extending the robust MH estimation method, a novel nonlinear MH estimation scheme and the corresponding approximate MH estimation scheme are developed to cope with the state estimation task. Subsequently, some sufficient conditions are established to guarantee that the estimation error is exponentially ultimately bounded in mean square. Based on that the main results are further specialized to linear systems with the RA protocol scheduling. Finally, two numerical examples and the corresponding figures are provided to verify the effectiveness/correctness of the developed MH estimation scheme and approximate MH estimation scheme. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we propose a pose grammar to tackle the problem of 3D human pose estimation from a monocular RGB image. Our model takes estimated 2D pose as the input and learns a generalized 2D-3D mapping function to leverage into 3D pose. The proposed model consists of a base network which efficiently captures pose-aligned features and a hierarchy of Bi-directional RNNs (BRNNs) on the top to explicitly incorporate a set of knowledge regarding human body configuration (i.e., kinematics, symmetry, motor coordination). The proposed model thus enforces high-level constraints over human poses. In learning, we develop a data augmentation algorithm to further improve model robustness against appearance variations and cross-view generalization ability. We validate our method on public 3D human pose benchmarks and propose a new evaluation protocol working on cross-view setting to verify the generalization capability of different methods. We empirically observe that most state-of-the-art methods encounter difficulty under such setting while our method can well handle such challenges. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA)-assisted full-duplex (FD) cooperative spectrum sharing protocol to achieve full-rate at a cell-edge primary user, where the secondary receiver helps the primary network relay the information to the cell-edge primary user. Unlike other FD cooperative schemes, the FD relay in the proposed system is not transmitting while receiving symbols from the primary transmitter. Hence, the proposed scheme can achieve full-rate at a primary user without degrading its outage performance. Further, it guarantees every alternate time-slots to the secondary network for accessing the licensed spectrum by employing a secondary receiver as a cooperative relay. In this paper, we derive the analytical expression for the outage probability and ergodic capacity. Moreover, we validate the derived expression through simulation and asymptotic results. The numerical and simulation results substantiate that the proposed scheme significantly outperforms other existing protocols. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we investigate a two-hop simultaneous wireless information and power transfer (SWIPT) amplify-and-forward (AF) multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) relay communication system with an energy-limited relay node. The relay node harvests energy based on the radio-frequency (RF) signal transmitted from the source node through the time-switching (TS) protocol and fully uses the harvested energy to precode and forward the information to the destination node. The non-linear energy harvesting models are considered at the relay node. With the consideration of the channel estimation error, the joint optimization of the TS factor, source and relay precoding matrices is proposed with robustness against the channel state information (CSI) mismatch to maximize the mutual information (MI) between the source and destination nodes. The optimal structure for the source and relay precoding matrices is derived to simplify the transceiver optimization problem. Numerical simulations show that the system performance provided by the proposed algorithms with robustness is better than the non-robust algorithm. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper considers a multiple-access system with multiple-packet reception (MPR) capability $\gamma $ , i.e., a packet can be successfully received as long as it overlaps with $\gamma -1$ or fewer other packets at any instant during its lifetime. To efficiently utilize the MPR capability, this paper generalizes $p$ -persistent carrier-sense multiple access (CSMA) to consider that a user with carrier sensing capability $c$ adopts the transmission probability $p_{n}$ if this user has sensed $n$ ongoing transmissions for $n=0,1,\ldots ,c-1$. This paper aims to model the characteristics of such CSMA and to design transmission probabilities for achieving maximum saturation throughput. To this end, we first formulate such CSMA as a parameterized Markov decision process (MDP) and use the long-run average performance to evaluate the saturation throughput. Second, by observing that the exact values of optimal transmission probabilities are in general infeasible to find, we modify this MDP to establish an upper bound on the maximum throughput, and modify this MDP again to propose a heuristic design with near-optimal performance. Simulations with respect to a wide range of configurations are provided to validate our study. The throughput performance under more general models and the robustness of our design are also investigated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The problem of multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) channel estimation at millimeter-wave frequencies, both in single-user setting and in multi-user setting, is tackled in this paper. Using a subspace approach, we develop a protocol enabling the estimation of the right (respectively, left) singular vectors at the transmitter (respectively, receiver) side; then, we adapt the projection approximation subspace tracking with deflation and the orthogonal Oja algorithms to our framework and obtain two-channel estimation algorithms. We also present an alternative algorithm based on the least squares approach. The hybrid analog/digital nature of the beamformer is also explicitly taken into account at the algorithm design stage. In order to limit the system complexity, a fixed analog beamformer is used at both sides of the communication links. The obtained numerical results, showing the accuracy in the estimation of the channel matrix dominant singular vectors, the system achievable spectral efficiency, and the system bit error rate, prove that the proposed algorithms are effective and that they compare favorably, in terms of the performance-complexity tradeoff, with respect to several competing alternatives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a protocol that enables an unlimited number of Wi-Fi users to position themselves within a meter-level accuracy and navigate indoors using time-delay-based Wi-Fi measurements. The proposed protocol, called collaborative time of arrival, is broadcast-based and relies on cooperation between the network sensors that support IEEE 802.11 fine-timing measurements (FTMs) capabilities, which are enabled in state-of-the-art Wi-Fi chipsets. The clients can estimate and track their position by passively listening to timing measurements that are exchanged between the FTM-sensors. The passive nature of the clients’ operation enables them to maintain their privacy by not exposing their presence to the network. This paper outlines the principles of the protocol and the mathematical background of the position estimation algorithms. Both theoretical analysis of the expected positioning accuracy, as well as real-life system performance examples, are provided. The protocol’s performance analysis is based on a publicly available database of real network measurements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Uplink transmission is an issue for visible light communications due to the unpleasant irradiance from the source light when placed close to the users. To overcome this problem, this paper proposes the use of relays to lower the required source optical power. A popular multi-carrier modulation scheme, termed direct-current biased optical orthogonal frequency division multiplexing, is employed to achieve high spectral efficiency. In addition, both amplitude-and-forward (AF) and decode-and-forward (DF) protocols are used. The theoretical models of AF and DF protocols are also obtained and verified by simulations. To minimize the source optical power while satisfying reliable communications, this paper formulates the associated optimization problems for AF and DF protocols. Exhaustive search is first used to obtain the optimal configuration for the system. As exhaustive search requires high computation efforts and can be time-consuming, two low-complexity suboptimal designs for AF and DF protocols are then proposed, and the proposed suboptimal designs can approximate the performance of exhaustive search in high signal-to-noise ratio regions. Numerical and experimental results indicate that when compared with the counterpart without a relay, the proposed relay-assisted system requires much lower source optical power under the constraints of reliable transmissions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Electromagnetic spectrum resources are a very important resource. With the rapid development of radio technology, electromagnetic spectrum resources have become scarce. Abuse of spectrum resources and interference with primary user often occur. Pre-sensing the electromagnetic environment and performing dynamic spectrum access is the direction of future wireless technology development. This paper focuses on the electromagnetic spectrum information service platform. We design a spectrum detection node in combination with an embedded system. The distributed spectrum detection network is constructed by using the TV White Space as the communication frequency band of the backbone network. From the perspective of signal source, research on detection and identification methods based on radio signal characteristics improves the efficiency of electromagnetic spectrum detection. A phase extreme range estimation method based on radio frequency I/Q data is proposed to improve signal estimation accuracy in a low signal-noise-ratio environment. The interquartile range is proposed to distinguish noise and signal. The experiment results show that distributed electromagnetic spectrum information service platform based on signal characteristics can improve detection accuracy and increase system flexibility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper studies simultaneous wireless information and power transfer (SWIPT) techniques for point-to-point multiple-input multiple-output channels, where a multi-antenna transmitter conveys information and energy at the same time to a multi-antenna receiver equipped with time switching (TS) circuits for an energy harvesting (EH) mode and an information decoding (ID) mode. Unlike conventional uniform TS (UTS) structure where all the receive antennas at the receiver employ a single TS circuit, in this paper, we propose a general dynamic TS (DTS) receiver architecture which has an individual TS circuit for each antenna. In the proposed DTS, the operation modes of the antennas can be dynamically changed to improve SWIPT performance. We aim to identify the achievable rate–energy (R–E) tradeoff of the DTS protocol for both linear and non-linear EH models by maximizing the information rate subject to the EH constraint. This results in joint optimization of the transmit covariance matrices and the time durations for the EH and the ID modes of the receive antennas, which is jointly non-convex in general. To tackle the non-convexity of the original problem, the successive convex approximation technique is adopted by addressing a series of approximated convex problems. As a result, efficient optimization algorithms are proposed for determining the boundary points of the achievable R–E region. We also provide a low-complexity algorithm which achieves near-optimal performance with much reduced complexity. Numerical results demonstrate that the proposed DTS presents significant performance gains over conventional UTS approaches. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper introduces a node-asynchronous communication protocol in which an agent in a network wakes up randomly and independently, collects states of its neighbors, updates its own state, and then broadcasts back to its neighbors. This protocol differs from consensus algorithms and it allows distributed computation of an arbitrary eigenvector of the network, in which communication between agents is allowed to be directed. (The graph operator is still required to be a normal matrix). To analyze the scheme, this paper studies a random asynchronous variant of the power iteration. Under this random asynchronous model, an initial signal is proven to converge to an eigenvector of eigenvalue 1 (a fixed point) even in the case of operator having spectral radius larger than unity. The rate of convergence is shown to depend not only on the eigenvalue gap but also on the eigenspace geometry of the operator as well as the amount of asynchronicity of the updates. In particular, the convergence region for the eigenvalues gets larger as the updates get less synchronous. Random asynchronous updates are also interpreted from the graph signal perspective, and it is shown that a non-smooth signal converges to the smoothest signal under the random model. When the eigenvalues are real, second order polynomials are used to achieve convergence to an arbitrary eigenvector of the operator. Using second order polynomials the paper formalizes the node-asynchronous communication model. As an application, the protocol is used to compute the Fiedler vector of a network to achieve autonomous clustering. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper introduces a localization protocol that fills a gap among already existing methods, such as ground penetrating radar or methods based on inductive prospecting. The principle is to attach a radio frequency identification (RFID) tag to a non-metallic object of interest buried in a non-magnetic soil and deduce its depth from the magnetic induction in the near field regime between the buried tag and an RFID antenna. Electromagnetic propagation in soils has been extensively studied in geophysics. The higher the frequency, the lower the penetration depth. The standard frequency range in geophysics is lower than 100 kHz to reach penetration depth as high as several tens of meters and the soil conductance is the main influencing factor. When working with passive RFID tags, their received power and, consequently, the detection range in air grows with the frequency. A frequency tradeoff for the detection in media lies in the range of 10–50 MHz, where the authorized RFID frequency is 13.56 MHZ. In this range, the wavenumber in weakly saline soils depends essentially on the medium dielectric permittivity (see). In this paper, we calculate the precision of the estimation of the burying depth of the tag in terms of the standard deviation and the corresponding bias up to two uncertain parameters—the penetration depth and the activation field. The laboratory experiments provide results supporting the chosen model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the last years, vehicular networking has grown up in terms of interest and transmission capability, due to the possibility of exploiting the distributed communication paradigm in a mobile scenario, where moving nodes are represented by vehicles. The different existing standards for vehicular ad-hoc networks, such as dedicate short range communication (DSRC), wireless access for vehicular environment (WAVE)/IEEE802.11p, have given to the research community the possibility of developing new medium access control (MAC) and routing schemes, in order to enhance the quality and the comfort of mobile users who are driving their vehicles. In this paper, we focus our attention on the optimization of traffic flowing in a vehicular environment with vehicle-2-roadside capability. As shown later, the proposed idea exploits the information that is gathered by road-side units to redirect traffic flows (in terms of vehicles) to less congested roads, with an overall system optimization, also in terms of carbon dioxide emissions reduction. An analytical model, as well as a set of pseudo-code instructions, have been introduced in the paper. A deep campaign of simulations has been carried out to give more effectiveness to our proposal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses the leaderless consensus control for a network of multiagent systems with the one-sided Lipschitz and quadratic inner-boundedness nonlinear dynamics. A distributed dynamic consensus protocol as a function of relative state feedback of the neighboring agents with edge-based adaptive coupling weights is designed for an undirected communication graph to achieve asymptotic consensus among the nonlinear agents. Further, an extension of the proposed consensus protocol in the presence of external disturbance is devised to ensure the ${L_{2}}$ stability of the consensus error. This paper is less conservative and more general owing to its application to the systems with large Lipschitz constants and to a broad class of the nonlinear systems. In comparison to the previous consensus control schemes, the proposed approach can be employed to design consensus protocols for the one-sided Lipschitz systems with unknown communication topology. This feature enables the fully distributed consensus control as the communication graph information is not required for the consensus protocol design. Simulation results for a network of six mobile agents are provided to demonstrate the effectiveness of proposed consensus schemes in the absence or presence of an external disturbance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper studies and analyzes the performance of the licensed-assisted access (LAA) scheme introduced by 3GPP in LTE Release 13, and adopted by 3GPP in LTE Release 14, which is called 3GPP LAA scheme for short. Considering the characteristics that the 3GPP LAA scheme is different from other LAA schemes and IEEE 802.11 distributed coordination function (DCF) protocol in WiFi systems, the 3GPP LAA scheme is modeled as a new two-dimensional discrete Markov model, and the collision probability and the channel occupancy utilization are further derived based on the proposed model. To more deeply analyze the performance of the 3GPP LAA scheme by comparisons, we also derive the expressions of the same performance indices for the linear backoff based LAA scheme proposed in this paper and the fixed contention window based LAA scheme mentioned in existing literatures. The simulation and numerical results prove the validity of the proposed Markov chain model, and also show that the 3GPP LAA scheme is the friendliest one to WiFi networks among the three LAA schemes, whereas its total channel occupancy utilization is the lowest when the number of LAA small base stations (SBSs) is little and that is the highest when large. However, the other two LAA schemes are still the graceful coexistence, which is defined as the scheme where the interference to WiFi users caused by LAA SBSs coexisting with them is not more than that caused by other WiFi APs replacing the LAA SBSs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses the various aspects involving the research and development of smart grids. Discussed are applications, from large grid renewable integration, wide-area monitoring, protection, and control systems to microgrids. Load scheduling and power balance, communications issues, understanding customer behavior, large-area protection, and distribution control are only some aspects of the challenge of making power grids more robust and more intelligent. The potential complexity of such smart grids requires careful study and analysis before actual realization. This paper explains how such challenges are addressed using real-time simulation technologies in different laboratories around the world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Quantum key distribution (QKD) relies on the laws of physics to establish a symmetric binary key between remote parties. A QKD link involves the realization of a quantum channel for the transmission of quantum key material encoded in certain photon properties, as well as a public channel for verification of the exchanged key material. This paper deals with the mutual dependence of these channels and analyzes the impact of performance of both channels on the overall key material establishment process. This paper presents measurement data obtained under laboratory conditions as well as the results obtained by establishing a virtual QKD link. Despite the common beliefs that increased quantum bit error rate implies a larger amount of traffic on the public channel, our measurements prove the opposite. The obtained data clearly show that the public channel has a major impact on the overall performance of the QKD link. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Besides designing channel-hopping (CH) sequences, finding good methods of communication rendezvous is important for improving spectral efficiency and alleviating traffic load of cognitive radio (CR) networks. In this paper, new asynchronous-symmetric CH sequences are constructed and their (channel overlap, even-channel-use, and pairwise shift invariance) properties are investigated. Their operations in three transmission scenarios involving different basic collision-avoidance mechanisms are analyzed and compared in terms of maximum time-to-rendezvous, rendezvous-success (RS) rate, and RS variance. This paper shows that the new sequences have shorter period, larger cardinality, and smaller RS variations than other CH sequences, thus supporting greater number of secondary users and more frequent and uniform rendezvous in the CR networks. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper surveys the literature over the last decades in the field of self-organizing multiagent systems. Self-organization has been extensively studied and applied in multiagent systems and other fields, e.g., sensor networks and grid systems. Self-organization mechanisms in other fields have been thoroughly surveyed. However, there has not been a survey of self-organization mechanisms developed for use in multiagent systems. In this paper, we provide a survey of existing literature on self-organization mechanisms in multiagent systems. We also highlight the future work on key research issues in multiagent systems. This paper can serve as a guide and a starting point for anyone who will conduct research on self-organization in multiagent systems. Also, this paper complements existing survey studies on self-organization in multiagent systems. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Population dynamics have been widely used in the design of learning and control systems for networked engineering applications, where the information dependency among elements of the network has become a relevant issue. Classic population dynamics (e.g., replicator, logit choice, Smith, and projection) require full information to evolve to the solution (Nash equilibrium). The main reason is that classic population dynamics are deduced by assuming well-mixed populations, which limits the applications where this theory can be implemented. In this paper, we extend the concept of population dynamics for nonwell-mixed populations in order to deal with distributed information structures that are characterized by noncomplete graphs. Although the distributed population dynamics proposed in this paper use partial information, they preserve similar characteristics and properties of their classic counterpart. Specifically, we prove mass conservation and convergence to Nash equilibrium. To illustrate the performance of the proposed dynamics, we show some applications in the solution of optimization problems, classic games, and the design of distributed controllers. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In this paper, we investigate the simultaneous wireless information and power transfer in a multiple-input multiple-output decode-and-forward relay system, where the relay is an energy harvesting (EH) multi-antenna node equipped with an EH receiver and an information decoding (ID) receiver. The relay harvests the energy from the radio frequency signals sent by the source and uses it to forward the signals to the destination. The main objective in this paper is to maximize the achievable transmission rate of the overall link by optimizing the source/relay precoders. First, we study an upper bound on the maximum achievable rate where we assume that the EH and ID receivers operate simultaneously and have access to the whole power of the received signals. Afterward, we study two practical schemes, which are the power splitting and time switching schemes, where the ID and EH receivers have partial access to the power or duration of the received signals. For each scheme, we have studied the complexity and the performance comparison. In addition, we considered the case of the imperfect channel estimation error and we have observed its impact on the achievable end-to-end rate and the harvested energy at the relay. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]