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This paper proposes and evaluates two robust sheet tension estimation algorithms based on unwind and rewind variables, respectively. The proper sheet tension estimation is guaranteed by a continuous monitoring of the differences between the actual estimated values and the values predicted from the last calibration of the estimation parameters. The evaluation was performed with the aid of a developed winder emulator that allowed the offline testing in a real-time field environment, including the initial setting of the estimation constants, and evaluation of both four- and six-shipping-roll cycles. The sheet tension estimation results confirm the precise and stable operation of the proposed robust estimation algorithms, in tests conducted with signals from a winder model, and with tests involving actual field signals from an operational winder. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recently developed monitoring-systems show the need as also the possibilities for online- and offline-onsite-diagnostics. The limit in sensitivity for electrical pd-measurements according to IEC 60270 which is reached using filters for sinusoidal disturbances and compensation for corona impulses is still not satisfactory. The acoustic partial discharge measurement (pd-measurement) is also a well known and reliable method often used by transformer manufacturers in testing. In laboratory setups a gain in sensitivity of the acoustic in comparison to the electrical pd measurements could be established. This is reached by adapting the sensors to the propagation path, a modern but moderately priced acquisition hardware and the introduction of new signal processing algorithms. The developed sophisticated measuring, systems show remarkable results in online acoustic pd-measurements onsite. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes a novel algorithm to determine the optimal orientation of sensing axes of redundant inertial sensors such as accelerometers and gyroscopes (gyros) for increasing the sensing accuracy. In this paper, we have proposed a novel iterative algorithm to find the optimal sensor configuration. The proposed algorithm utilizes the majorization-minimization (MM) algorithm and the duality principle to find the optimal configuration. Unlike the state-of-the-art approaches which are mainly geometrical in nature and restricted to sensors’ noise being uncorrelated, the proposed algorithm gives the exact orientations of the sensors and can easily deal with the cases of correlated noise. The proposed algorithm has been implemented and tested via numerical simulation in the MATLAB. The simulation results show that the algorithm converges to the optimal configurations and shows the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a wireless sensor network system (WSNS) for effective, reliable, and efficient monitoring of landslides. The system incorporates a network of wireless inertial measurement unit (IMU) sensor devices for collecting movement data, a local base station for data gathering, a capture server for data processing and storage, and a warning system. The major contributions of this paper are: 1) two approaches for defining movement thresholds; 2) landslide classification concept based on IMU sensor data patterns and magnitudes; and 3) a conceptual framework for building an intelligent and reliable wireless monitoring and warning system. The IMU sensor data collected by three-axis accelerometer and three-axis gyroscope were utilized to define the movement thresholds and classify landslides based on specially designed laboratory experiments. The performances of the IMU sensors and the base station for data collection and communication were tested through a rock-fall experiment conducted in the field conditions. The WSN-IMU system is capable of monitoring all types of slope movements independent of the triggering factors. The unique ability of the WSN-IMU system to determine landslide types allows designers and authorized personnel to predict subsequent movement pattern and duration so as to implement appropriate risk management and control measures to alleviate the socioeconomic losses. This paper outcome serves as the foundation for future studies and technological advancements that will facilitate landslide stabilization or mitigation actions as well as to predict the intensity of damages associated with those landslides. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper considers the problem of data driven iterative learning control (DDILC) for a class of nonaffine nonlinear systems subject to data quantization and sensor saturation. Two novel quantized DDILC (QDDILC) algorithms are proposed based on saturated and quantized information of system outputs. The convergence of the proposed QDDILC algorithms is strictly proved and the effects of output saturation and data quantification are also analyzed. It is shown that sensor saturation does not change the convergence property, thus it causes the convergence rate to slow down. For the QDDILC algorithm, data quantization will cause the tracking error to converge to a bound depending on the quantization level. However, the modified QDDILC algorithm, which using the different quantization scheme from QDDILC algorithm, can ensure that the tracking error converges to zero. Illustrative simulations are exploited to verify the theoretical results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Fasteners are an important part of railway security. The application of computer vision and image processing on fastener detection has become a research hot spot. However, most of the researches have focused on the missing and damage detection of fasteners up to now. In this paper, a method based on image processing is proposed to locate the center of the hexagon nut in the railway fastener. The precise position of the hexagon nut can be used for the automatic replacement of the nut, which is of great significance for the automatic railway construction and maintenance. The locating method proposed in this paper can be divided into two steps. First, the improved Canny detector which combines surrounding suppression and iterative excitation is used to extract the contours of the fastener. Then, a multifeature hierarchical locating (MHL) algorithm is proposed, which integrates the circle contour of the gasket and the hexagon features of the nut. The experimental results show that the improved Canny detector suppresses noises effectively and highlights the contours of fastener. The MHL algorithm in the next step improves the locating accuracy remarkably while guaranteeing the robustness meantime. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we study two sensor assignment problems for multitarget tracking with the goal of improving the observability of the underlying estimator. We consider various measures of the observability matrix as the assignment value function. We first study the general version where the sensors must form teams to track individual targets. If the value function is monotonically increasing and submodular, then a greedy algorithm yields a $1/2$ –approximation. We then study a restricted version where exactly two sensors must be assigned to each target. We present a $1/3$ –approximation algorithm for this problem, which holds for arbitrary value functions (not necessarily submodular or monotone). In addition to approximation algorithms, we also present various properties of observability measures. We show that the inverse of the condition number of the observability matrix is neither monotone nor submodular, but present other measures that are. Specifically, we show that the trace and rank of the symmetric observability matrix are monotone and submodular and the log determinant of the symmetric observability matrix is monotone and submodular when the matrix is nonsingular. If the target's motion model is not known, the inverse cannot be computed exactly. Instead, we present a lower bound for distance sensors. In addition to theoretical results, we evaluate our results empirically through simulations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Compared with other applications in computer vision, convolutional neural networks (CNNs) have underperformed on pedestrian detection. A breakthrough was made very recently using sophisticated deep CNN (DCNN) models, with a number of handcrafted features or explicit occlusion handling mechanism. In this paper, we show that by reusing the convolutional feature maps of a DCNN model as image features to train an ensemble of boosted decision models, we are able to achieve the best reported accuracy without using specially designed learning algorithms. We empirically identify and disclose important implementation details. We also show that pixel labeling may be simply combined with a detector to boost the detection performance. By adding complementary handcrafted features such as optical flow, the DCNN-based detector can be further improved. We advance the state-of-the-art results by lowering the log-average miss rate from 11.7% to 8.9% on the Caltech data set and from 11.2% to 8.6% on the Inria data set. We also achieve a comparable result to state-of-the-art approaches on the KITTI data set. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Two-dimensional magnetic recording (TDMR) is a promising technology for boosting areal densities (ADs) using sophisticated signal processing algorithms within a systems framework. The read/write channel architectures have to effectively tackle 2-D inter-symbol interference (ISI), 2-D synchronization errors, media and electronic noise sources, as well as thermal asperities resulting in burst erasures. The 1-D low-density parity check (LDPC) codes are well studied to correct large 1-D burst errors/erasures. However, such 1-D LDPC codes are not suitable for correcting 2-D burst errors/erasures due to the 2-D span of errors. In this paper, we propose construction of a native 2-D LDPC code to effectively correct 2-D burst erasures. We also propose a joint detection and decoding engine based on the generalized belief propagation algorithm to simultaneously handle 2-D ISI, as well as correct bit/burst errors for TDMR channels. This paper is novel in two aspects: 1) we propose the construction of native 2-D LDPC codes to correct large 2-D burst erasures and 2) we develop a 2-D joint signal detection-decoder engine that incorporates 2-D ISI constraints, and modulation code constrains along with LDPC decoding. The native 2-D LDPC code can correct >20% more burst erasures compared with the 1-D LDPC code over a 128 $\times $ 256 2-D page of detected bits. Also, the proposed algorithm is observed to achieve a signal-to-noise ratio gain of >0.5 dB in bit error rate performance (translating to 10% increase in ADs around the 1.8 Tb/in2 regime with grain sizes of 9 nm) as compared with a decoupled detector-decoder system configuration over a small 2-D LDPC code of size 16 $\times $ 16. The efficacy of our proposed algorithm and system architecture is evaluated by assessing AD gains via simulations for a TDMR configuration comprising of a 2-D generalized partial response over the Voronoi media model assuming perfect 2-D synchronization. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper proposes a scheme for constructing an Internet Protocol (IP) version 6 over low-power wireless personal area networks (6LoWPAN) wireless sensor network based on a cluster tree. In the cluster generation algorithm, a cluster tree is always an isolated node with the maximum number of neighbor isolated nodes that launches the cluster generation process; therefore, the total number of cluster heads is minimized. In the cluster-tree construction algorithm, the cluster-tree architecture is proposed, and the cluster-tree construction algorithm minimizes the total number of nodes included in a cluster tree; therefore, the routing cost is reduced. In the cluster-tree repair algorithm, when a cluster head or a cluster associate node fails or moves, a new cluster head or cluster associate node is elected to maintain the cluster-tree topology. This paper compares the performance parameters of Least Cluster Change algorithm with Lowest-ID, Root-based Lowest-ID cluster constructing mechanism, and the proposed scheme, including the cluster-tree topology stability, the routing memory cost, and the routing update cost. The analytical data show that the performance of the proposed scheme is better. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Multiple-input–multiple-output (MIMO) technology can efficiently use the spectrum to increase the communication throughput. Designing low-complexity detection algorithms with high performance for the MIMO system has been an important issue. In this paper, we propose efficient detection algorithms for MIMO systems based on differential metrics. We first define differential metrics and give their recursive calculation of different orders. Based on differential metrics, we give the principle of gradient search. We then propose a gradient search algorithm (GSA) that can provide a tradeoff between performance and complexity. The GSA applies the indicative functions such that we can determine in advance some maximum-likelihood (ML) bits of the initial sequence and reduce the searching range. The GSA also uses a stop condition with which we can stop the search if the proper condition is satisfied. The GSA does not need QR decomposition (QRD) or matrix inversion. The multiplicative operations are only necessary before the searching process, during which only the additive operations are needed. For large-scaled MIMO systems, we also give a simple searching algorithm based on differential metrics. Finally, we propose a fixed-complexity gradient algorithm (FCGA), which has a fixed number of operations during the searching process and is appropriate for pipelined hardware implementation. The simulation results validate the efficiency of the proposed algorithms. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Smartphones have become an indispensable tool in the work and life of most people. Given the many kinds of sensors built into smartphones, solving indoor navigation problems using these phones has become feasible. This paper proposes such a solution, using a particle-filter-based indoor positioning method. This method improves the positioning accuracy and helps improve the user experience. The major features of the method are that it leverages and fuses the advantages of two different indoor positioning methods [pedestrian dead reckoning (PDR) and received-signal-strength-indicator-based indoor positioning], and considers the influence on positioning of the indoor spatial map. The smartphone built-in sensors are used as data sources and constitute a feasible method for PDR. The iBeacon devices are also used—because of the many advantages, they present in indoor environments, such as low energy consumption, convenient deployment, and popular applications—and their received signal strength indicator values are used as observations in the particle filter. The devices used in this paper are conventional, without any special equipment, and the experimental sites are common work environments. Therefore, we believe that the proposed method has a wide application potential for indoor navigation applications (e.g., museum guides), and is especially suitable for working with indoor navigation maps. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes two new data detection algorithms for decode-and-forward alternate-relaying cooperative communication systems. These algorithms are discussed in the context of bit-interleaved coded modulation transmission with a multiple-antenna destination. The interference signal, resulting from the concurrent transmission of the source and one of the relays, is exploited as a beneficial resource to develop an optimal data detection algorithm. We show that the optimal algorithm can be implemented by parallel demappers, each based on a family of Bahl, Cocke, Jelinek, and Raviv algorithms, connected to parallel decoders in an iterative way. Due to the need to buffer the entire frame before decoding, the optimal algorithm suffers from long processing time. A suboptimal algorithm is also proposed to avoid this problem, where each packet is decoded by using two consecutive received packets. The suboptimal algorithm reduces processing time, complexity, bandwidth loss, and memory size with a slight increase in the bit error rate (BER). The BER performance of the proposed algorithms is evaluated via Monte Carlo simulations, and the results indicate their effectiveness in improving the BER performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes a cross-layer optimization framework for the wireless sensor networks. In a wireless sensor network, each sensor makes a local observation of the underlying physical phenomenon and sends a quantized version of the observation to a central location via wireless links. As the sensor observations are often partial and correlated, the network performance is a complicated and nonseparable function of individual data rates at each sensor. In addition, due to the shared nature of wireless medium, nearby transmissions often interfere with each other. Thus, the traditional "bit-pipe" model for network link capacity no longer holds. This paper deals with the joint optimization of source quantization, routing, and power control in a wireless sensor network. We follow a separate source and channel coding approach and show that the overall network optimization problem can be naturally decomposed into a source coding subproblem at the application layer and a wireless power control subproblem at the physical layer. The interfaces between the layers are precisely the dual optimization variables. In addition, we introduce a novel source coding model at the application layer, which allows the efficient design of practical source quantization schemes at each sensor. Finally, we propose a dual algorithm for the overall network optimization problem. The dual algorithm, when combined with a column-generation method, allows an efficient solution for the overall network optimization problem. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the era of the fifth generation (5G) communication networks, massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems demand even lower computation complexity and power consumption while catching up with good detection performance. In this paper, a low-complexity nonlinear detection algorithm is proposed for massive MIMO systems, which is based on partial tree search and successive interference cancellation (SIC). The proposed scheme allows us to expedite the detection process by coping with the transmit symbols group by group. As compared to vertical-Bell laboratories layered space time (V-BLAST), the major breakthrough of computation reduction lies in the fact that the partial tree search can assist the detection process to avoid the inversion of the detection matrix required in each recursion of the SIC process. Both computational complexity analysis and simulation results show that our proposed algorithm not only significantly reduces computational complexity, but also has better bit error rate (BER) performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Autonomous driving technologies can provide greater safety, comfort, and efficiency for future transportation systems. Until now, much of the research effort has been devoted to developing different sensing and control algorithms. However, there has been limited research on how to handle sensor errors efficiently. A simple error in the sensor may lead to an unexpected failure in the whole autonomous driving function. In those cases, the vehicle is then recommended to be sent back to the manufacturer for repair, which costs time and money. This paper introduces an efficient automatic online sensor correction method. The method includes four major functions: sensor error detection, human teaching, vehicle learning, and vehicle self-evaluation. The first function is assumed to be ready and the major contribution of this paper is the human-vehicle teaching and learning framework, which utilizes human-vehicle interaction to collaboratively adjust the parameter in the control model in order to compensate for the errors of the sensors. The self-evaluation function is also briefly introduced. The applications of this method to radar and vision sensors to recover adaptive cruise control and lane keeping functions are introduced in detail. Experimental results acquired from high-fidelity 1/10-scale autonomous driving vehicles illustrate the effectiveness and advantages of the proposed approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper studies how to deploy sensors in the context of detection in adversarial environments. A fusion center is performing a binary hypothesis testing based on measurements from remotely deployed heterogeneous sensors. An attacker may compromise some of the deployed sensors, which send arbitrary measurements to the fusion center. The problems of interest are: to characterize the performance of the system under attack and, thus, develop a performance metric; and to deploy sensors within a cost budget, such that the proposed performance metric is maximized. In this paper, we first present a performance metric by formulating the detection in adversarial environments in a game theoretic way. A Nash equilibrium pair of the detection algorithm and attack strategy, with the deployed sensors given, is provided and the corresponding detection performance is adopted as the performance metric. We then show that the optimal sensor deployment can be determined approximately by solving a group of unbounded knapsack problems. We also show that the performance metric gap between the optimal sensor deployment and the optimal one with sensors being identical is within a fixed constant for any cost budget. The main results are illustrated by numerical examples. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a model predictive control-based obstacle avoidance algorithm for autonomous ground vehicles at high speed in unstructured environments. The novelty of the algorithm is its capability to control the vehicle to avoid obstacles at high speed taking into account dynamical safety constraints through a simultaneous optimization of reference speed and steering angle without a priori knowledge about the environment and without a reference trajectory to follow. Previous work in this specific context optimized only the steering command. In this paper, obstacles are detected using a planar light detection and ranging sensor. A multi-phase optimal control problem is then formulated to simultaneously optimize the reference speed and steering angle within the detection range. Vehicle acceleration capability as a function of speed, as well as stability and handling concerns such as preventing wheel lift-off, are included as constraints in the optimization problem, whereas the cost function is formulated to navigate the vehicle as quickly as possible with smooth control commands. Simulation results show that the proposed algorithm is capable of safely exploiting the dynamic limits of the vehicle while navigating the vehicle through sensed obstacles of different sizes and numbers. It is also shown that the proposed variable speed formulation can significantly improve performance by allowing navigation of obstacle fields that would otherwise not be cleared with steering control alone. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Minimum-cost flow algorithms have recently achieved state-of-the-art results in multi-object tracking. However, they rely on the whole image sequence as input. When deployed in real-time applications or in distributed settings, these algorithms first operate on short batches of frames and then stitch the results into full trajectories. This decoupled strategy is prone to errors because the batch-based tracking errors may propagate to the final trajectories and cannot be corrected by other batches. In this paper, we propose a greedy batch-based minimum-cost flow approach for tracking multiple objects. Unlike existing approaches that conduct batch-based tracking and stitching sequentially, we optimize consecutive batches jointly so that the tracking results on one batch may benefit the results on the other. Specifically, we apply a generalized minimum-cost flows (MCF) algorithm on each batch and generate a set of conflicting trajectories. These trajectories comprise the ones with high probabilities, but also those with low probabilities potentially missed by detectors and trackers. We then apply the generalized MCF again to obtain the optimal matching between trajectories from consecutive batches. Our proposed approach is simple, effective, and does not require training. We demonstrate the power of our approach on data sets of different scenarios. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper proposes an online multi-camera multi-object tracker that only requires monocular detector training, independent of the multi-camera configurations, allowing seamless extension/deletion of cameras without retraining effort. The proposed algorithm has a linear complexity in the total number of detections across the cameras, and hence scales gracefully with the number of cameras. It operates in the 3D world frame, and provides 3D trajectory estimates of the objects. The key innovation is a high fidelity yet tractable 3D occlusion model, amenable to optimal Bayesian multi-view multi-object filtering, which seamlessly integrates, into a single Bayesian recursion, the sub-tasks of track management, state estimation, clutter rejection, and occlusion/misdetection handling. The proposed algorithm is evaluated on the latest WILDTRACKS dataset, and demonstrated to work in very crowded scenes on a new dataset. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, the problem of controlling a robot manipulator in task space, while guaranteeing a compliant behavior for the redundant degrees of freedom, is considered. This issue may arise in the case where the robot experiences an interaction on its body, especially in the presence of humans. The proposed approach guarantees correct task execution and compliance of the robot’s body during intentional or accidental interaction in the null space of the main task, simultaneously. The asymptotic stability of the task-space error is ensured by using suitable observers to estimate and compensate the generalized forces acting on the task variables, without using joint torque measurements. Two different controller–observer algorithms are designed, and they are based on the task-space error and on the generalized momentum of the robot, respectively. The performance of the proposed algorithms is verified in experiments on a 7R lightweight robot arm. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The failure detector abstraction has been used to solve agreement problems in asynchronous systems prone to crash failures, but so far it has mostly been used in static and complete networks. This paper aims to adapt existing failure detectors in order to solve agreement problems in unknown, dynamic systems. We are specifically interested in the k-set agreement problem. The problem of k-set agreement is a generalization of consensus where processes can decide up to k different values. Although some solutions to this problem have been proposed in dynamic networks, they rely on communication synchrony or make strong assumptions on the number of process failures. In this paper we consider unknown dynamic systems modeled using the formalism of Time-Varying Graphs, and extend the definition of the existing \Pi \Sigma x,y failure detector to obtain the \Pi \Sigma \bot, x,y failure detector, which is sufficient to solve k-set agreement in our model. We then provide an implementation of this new failure detector using connectivity and message pattern assumptions. Finally, we present an algorithm using \Pi \Sigma \bot, x,y to solve k-set agreement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we investigate online sensor activation to ensure detectability of discrete event systems. Detectability requires that states of a system can be determined or certain pairs of states can be distinguished by an external observer eventually or periodically. Since minimal sensor activation policies for detectability may not exist, two new concepts are introduced: 1) k-step distinguishability is introduced for strong detectability and 2) information-preserving is introduced for strong periodic detectability. The online sensor activation is then proposed and is based on the best state estimate available at the time of decision making. Three algorithms are developed for online sensor activation. The first two algorithms are for strong detectability. They minimize sensor activation while preserving k-step distinguishability. The third algorithm deals with strong periodic detectability. It minimizes sensor activation while preserving state information. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper proposes a promising cost-effective phase current detection scheme for different multiphase switched reluctance motors (SRMs) by employing the multiplexed current sensors. According to the phase current characteristics for the odd-numbered multiphase SRM with m phases and even-numbered multiphase SRM with n phases, the phase windings are specially divided into (m + 1)/2 and n/2 groups, respectively, and each group shares one Hall-effect current sensor. By building the matrix functions to express the relationship between phase currents and sensor currents, the phase currents can be calculated in real time with a simple algorithm and fewer current sensors. Compared to existing phase current detection schemes, the developed method has high universality and can achieve the intact phase current detection without losing any excitation, freewheeling, and demagnetization currents. Moreover, the presented method is easy to implement without any converter change and pulse injection, which shows great potential for massive industrial application to avoid the voltage penalty, current distortion, higher switching loss, and further electromagnetic interference issues. The simulation and experiments are carried out to validate the feasibility and effectiveness of the developed phase current detection scheme. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Existing work on distributed networked storage, although extensive, has generally focused on the recovery of global data field covering the entire network. This, while demanded by a broad range of applications, has ignored cases where only a subset of the data are needed, for example, from a local region of the network. Based on this observation and the fact that the sensor readings are correlated, this paper proposes a compressive networked storage solution. Specifically, by employing the compressive sensing (CS) theory, we present a lazy-encoding algorithm with local dissemination and a region-based reconstruction algorithm. Utilizing our local dissemination strategy, sensor readings only have to be disseminated and stored in their respective regions, which makes the dissemination cost decrease significantly. With the lazy-encoding algorithm, the readings in specified local regions are capable of being encoded individually, dramatically reducing the decoding ratio. The region-based reconstruction algorithm is introduced to explore the inter-region correlation, aiming at offering improved data accuracy. We further provide the mathematical foundation that our reconstruction algorithm could ensure efficient CS recovery. Experimental results using real sensor readings show that the proposed scheme is especially beneficial to the recovery of local data. At the same time, our scheme can recover the global data field as well without increasing reconstruction error. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Tribological tests are adopted to estimate the kinetic friction coefficient of the material of interest according to the ASTM standard. Typically, for the measurement process, several replicas as well as a postprocessing data treatment are necessary to take into account the observed casual variability of the measurand. This paper describes a novel statistical approach aiming to highlight the most significant time intervals during each test replica. The experimental activity has been carried out with reference to the ball-on-flat configuration of the tribometer in order to verify the suggested procedure in terms of both accuracy and reliability. Numerical simulation and comparison of the measurement results with the output of a different outlier detection algorithm are also included to show the improvement allowed by the authors’ proposal about the dry friction coefficient measurement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Fast and accurate measuring motion with multi-degrees-of-freedom (multi-DOFs) and high resolution has been highly demanded in the development of nanopositioning systems in recent years. This paper develops an efficient and practical image correlation method capable of measuring micromotions of the planar 3-DOF ($x,y,\theta _{z}$) nanopositioners. In this method, the measurement of 3-DOF micromotion is first transformed into a problem of three-variable optimization by utilizing the correlation function of sum of squared difference. Subsequently, an optimal algorithm based on the inverse compositional Gaussian–Newton searching is developed to instantaneously solve these three variables. Simulation results show that in the image space, accuracy of translational components ($x$ , $y$) and rotation component ($\theta _{Z}$) of the proposed algorithm can reach to 0.02 pixels and 0.01°, respectively. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed method can realize real-time motion tracking of a 3-DOF nanopositioner with the performance similar to commonly used multicapacitive sensor scheme. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this correspondence paper, we study the application of approximate message passing (AMP) algorithm in the signal detection of index modulation (IM) with multiple active resources (antennas or subcarriers). First, for uplink generalized spatial modulation (GSM), AMP detectors in both spatially uncorrelated and correlated channels are proposed. Specifically, an effective method to utilize the activation pattern constraint of GSM signal vector per user in the posterior probability computation of scalar symbol node is derived. Furthermore, a simple while effective damping strategy is introduced in AMP detector to guarantee convergence in correlated channels. Second, for orthogonal frequency division multiplexing with IM in rapidly time-varying channels, the damped AMP detector is further studied. In addition, the convergence of proposed detectors is analyzed by state evolution. Finally, the effectiveness of proposed AMP detectors is verified by simulations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The stability of sparse signal reconstruction with respect to measurement noise is investigated in this paper. We design efficient algorithms to verify the sufficient condition for unique \ell1 sparse recovery. One of our algorithms produces comparable results with the state-of-the-art technique and performs orders of magnitude faster. We show that the \ell1-constrained minimal singular value (\ell1-CMSV) of the measurement matrix determines, in a very concise manner, the recovery performance of \ell1-based algorithms such as the Basis Pursuit, the Dantzig selector, and the LASSO estimator. Compared to performance analysis involving the Restricted Isometry Constant, the arguments in this paper are much less complicated and provide more intuition on the stability of sparse signal recovery. We show also that, with high probability, the subgaussian ensemble generates measurement matrices with \ell1-CMSVs bounded away from zero, as long as the number of measurements is relatively large. To compute the \ell1-CMSV and its lower bound, we design two algorithms based on the interior point algorithm and the semidefinite relaxation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we propose a novel approach to perform detection of stochastic signals embedded in an additive random noise. Both signal and noise are considered to be realizations of zero mean random processes of which only second-order statistics are known (their covariance matrices). The method proposed, called constrained stochastic matched filter (CSMF), is an extension of the stochastic matched filter itself derived from the matched filter. The CSMF is optimal in the sense that it maximizes the signal-to-noise ratio in a subspace whose dimension is fixed a priori. In this paper, after giving the reasons for our approach, we show that there is neither an obvious nor analytic solution to the problem expressed. Then an algorithm, which is proved to converge, is proposed to obtain the optimal solution. Evaluation of the algorithm's performance is completed through estimation of receiver operating characteristic curves. Experiments on real signals show the improvement brought about by this method and thus its significance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we present a comprehensive study on sensor-assisted video encoding (SaVE) schemes for video capturing on mobile devices in real-world environments. Our purpose is to reduce the computational complexity of video encoding by leveraging sensors that are increasingly available on mobile devices, e.g., accelerometers and digital compasses. Motion estimation is a key component of video encoding. In this paper, SaVE calculates the rotational movement of a camera (on mobile devices) and then infers the global motion in the camera imager. SaVE subsequently employs the estimated global motion as predictors to simplify motion estimation algorithms for state-of-the-art H.264/AVC video coding. We have constructed a prototype of SaVE and evaluated its performance with a pair of accelerometers, a digital compass, and their combination. Our experimental results show that SaVE can significantly reduce the computations of motion estimation while achieving equal or better video quality. Our results also show that SaVE has a strong noise-resistant capability. Therefore, it can be practically employed in real-world environments. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper proposes a novel solution to the problems that exist in the conventional hill climb searching (HCS) maximum power point tracking (MPPT) algorithm for the wind energy conversion system. The presented solution not only solves the tracking speed versus control efficiency tradeoff problem of HCS but also makes sure that the changing wind conditions do not lead HCS in the wrong direction. It intelligently adapts the variable step size to keep up with the rapid changes in the wind and seizes the perturbation at the maxima to yield 100% control efficiency. For this purpose, a novel peak detection capability has been devised which, in contrast with conventional peak detection, can work robustly under changing wind conditions. The proposed MPPT performs self-tuning to cope with the nonconstant efficiencies of the generator–converter subsystems—a phenomenon quite rarely discussed in research papers so far. In addition, a smart speed-sensorless scheme has been developed to avoid the use of mechanical sensors. The experimental results confirm that the proposed algorithm is remarkably faster and more efficient than the conventional HCS. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we consider a multistatic synthetic aperture radar (SAR) imaging scenario where a swarm of airborne antennas, some of which are transmitting, receiving or both, are traversing arbitrary flight trajectories and transmitting arbitrary waveforms without any form of multiplexing. The received signal at each receiving antenna may be interfered by the scattered signal due to multiple transmitters and additive thermal noise at the receiver. In this scenario, standard bistatic SAR image reconstruction algorithms result in artifacts in reconstructed images due to these interferences. In this paper, we use microlocal analysis in a statistical setting to develop a filtered-back projection (FBP) type analytic image formation method that suppresses artifacts due to interference while preserving the location and orientation of edges of the scene in the reconstructed image. Our FBP-type algorithm exploits the second-order statistics of the target and noise to suppress the artifacts due to interference in a mean-square sense. We present numerical simulations to demonstrate the performance of our multistatic SAR image formation algorithm with the FBP-type bistatic SAR image reconstruction algorithm. While we mainly focus on radar applications, our image formation method is also applicable to other problems arising in fields such as acoustic, geophysical and medical imaging. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Real-time knowledge of the slip angle in a vehicle is useful in many active vehicle safety applications, including yaw stability control, rollover prevention, and lane departure avoidance. Sensors to measure slip angle, including two-antenna GPS systems and optical sensors, are too expensive for ordinary automotive applications. This paper develops a real-time algorithm for estimation of slip angle using inexpensive sensors normally available for yaw stability control applications. The algorithm utilizes a combination of model-based estimation and kinematics-based estimation. Compared with previously published results on slip angle estimation, this present paper compensates for the presence of road bank angle and variations in tire-road characteristics. The developed algorithm is evaluated through experimental tests on a Volvo XC90 sport utility vehicle. Detailed experimental results show that the developed system can reliably estimate slip angle for a variety of test maneuvers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper departs from the popular usage of the Backus-Gilbert inversion (BGI) method as a tool for inversion of antenna temperature measurements in microwave radiometry. The BGI method is applied in this paper to enhance the information content of an existing set of oversampled brightness-temperature (TB) data. The purpose is to isolate the inversion process from its resolution enhancement counterpart. The advantage gained is that the resolution enhancement can be performed in a simplified way and in a different level of processing that starts with the scan-mode TB data product and simply requires with it the knowledge of the antenna gain pattern and the sensor's scan geometry. The technique is demonstrated with the 19.35-GHz Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) Microwave Imager (TMI) channel, which provides oversampled TB data. The radiometric resemblance of this channel with that of the 37 GHz and geocollocation of their TB footprints facilitate validation of the enhancement of features. The significance of oversampling the low-frequency (LF) radiometer channels is underscored in the process, which gives the authors the confidence to propose oversampling of the LF data for the forthcoming sensor Microwave Analysis and Detection of Rain and Atmospheric Structures (MADRAS) onboard the Megha-Tropiques mission, which is a joint ISRO-CNES collaboration (due for launch in 2009). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we propose to develop wireless Sensor Networks with Mobile Sinks (MSSNs). The proposed MSSN is highly energy efficient, because the multihop transmissions of high-volume data over the network are converted into single-hop transmissions. We focus our investigation on sparsely deployed networks, where single node-to-sink transmission is considered. The transmission-scheduling algorithm (TSA-MSSN) is proposed, where a parameter λ is employed to control the tradeoff between the maximization of the probability of successful information retrieval and the minimization of the energy-consumption cost. It is shown that the proposed implementation of the TSA-MSSN has a complexity of O(1). This paper serves as the foundation for understanding fundamental laws behind the aforementioned tradeoff with useful implications for the design of more complex MSSNs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper quantifies the adaptive performance of a blind adaptive multiuser detector (MUD) based on the linearly constrained constant modulus algorithm (LCCMA) in both a stationary and nonstationary channel. A framework is developed to apply the feedback analysis method to analyzing adaptive MUD schemes. A closed-form expression for the excess mean square error (EMSE) of LCCMA blind adaptive MUD in a CDMA communications system is derived for both of the steady-state and tracking cases. The effects of additive noise and multiple access interference are considered. A transient analysis is performed that predicts the learning curve of the adaptive filter. Computer simulation is used to verify the accuracy of the analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The theory and algorithms of the proposed technique have been presented in Part I of this two-paper set. In Part II of this two-paper set, the proposed technique is evaluated by considerable simulation cases simulated by the Mattab/Power system Blockset simulator. For the proposed fault detector, the trip time achieved can be up to 3.25 ms and the average value of trip times is about 8 ms for both permanent and arcing faults on transmission lines. For the proposed fault locator, the accuracy can be up to 99.99% and the error does not exceed 0.45%. Moreover, the proposed arcing fault discriminator can discriminate between arcing and permanent faults within four cycles after fault inception. It has proven to be an effective tool to block reclosing on the permanent faults in the computer simulations. The simulation results also demonstrate that the presented extended discrete Fourier transform algorithm eliminates effectively the error caused by exponentially decaying dc offset on fundamental and harmonic phasor computations. Finally, a test case using the real-life measured data proves the feasibility of the proposed technique. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we extend the bilinear generalized approximate message passing (BiG-AMP) approach, originally proposed for high-dimensional generalized bilinear regression, to the multi-layer case for the handling of cascaded problem such as matrix-factorization problem arising in relay communication among others. Assuming statistically independent matrix entries with known priors, the new algorithm called ML-BiGAMP could approximate the general sum-product loopy belief propagation (LBP) in the high-dimensional limit enjoying a substantial reduction in computational complexity. We demonstrate that, in large system limit, the asymptotic MSE performance of ML-BiGAMP could be fully characterized via a set of simple one-dimensional equations termed state evolution (SE). We establish that the asymptotic MSE predicted by ML-BiGAMP’ SE matches perfectly the exact MMSE predicted by the replica method, which is well-known to be Bayes-optimal but infeasible in practice. This consistency indicates that the ML-BiGAMP may still retain the same Bayes-optimal performance as the MMSE estimator in high-dimensional applications, although ML-BiGAMP's computational burden is far lower. As an illustrative example of the general ML-BiGAMP, we provide a detector design that could estimate the channel fading and the data symbols jointly with high precision for the two-hop amplify-and-forward relay communication systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A deep learning assisted sum-product detection algorithm (DL-SPDA) for faster-than-Nyquist (FTN) signaling is proposed in this paper. The proposed detection algorithm works on a modified factor graph which concatenates a neural network function node to the variable nodes of the conventional FTN factor graph to approach the maximum a posterior probabilities (MAP) error performance. In specific, the neural network performs as a function node in the modified factor graph to deal with the residual intersymbol interference (ISI) that is not considered by the conventional detector with a limited complexity. We modify the updating rule in the conventional sum-product algorithm so that the neural network assisted detector can be complemented to a turbo equalization receiver. Furthermore, we propose a compatible training technique to improve the detection performance of the proposed DL-SPDA with turbo equalization. In particular, the neural network is optimized in terms of the mutual information between the transmitted sequence and the extrinsic information. We also investigate the maximum-likelihood bit error rate (BER) performance of a finite length coded FTN system. Simulation results show that the error performance of the proposed algorithm approaches the MAP performance, which is consistent with the analytical BER. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we present a subcategory-aware recognition framework to boost category level object classification performance. Different from the existing monolithic model approaches, we aim to automatically leverage the embedded subcategory structure to assist the further category level recognition. Motivated by the observation of considerable intra-class diversities and inter-class ambiguities in many current object classification data sets, we explicitly split data into subcategories by ambiguity-guided subcategory mining. The resulting subcategories are seamlessly integrated into the state-of-the-art detection-assisted classification framework. In particular, we build the instance affinity graph by combining both intra-class similarity and inter-class ambiguity. Visual subcategories, which correspond to the dense subgraphs, are detected by the graph shift algorithm. We then train an individual model for each subcategory rather than an attempt to represent an object category with a monolithic model. Related samples, which are informative for subcategory classification, are utilized to regularize each subcategory model. Finally, the responses from subcategory models are aggregated by subcategory-aware kernel regression. The extensive experiments over the PASCAL visual object challenge (VOC) 2007 and PASCAL VOC 2010 databases show the state-of-the-art performance from our framework. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Many hyperspectral anomaly detectors are designed based on the traditional Mahalanobis distance-based RX algorithm, which is usually considered as an inverse operation of the principal components analysis. Such detectors include the uniform target detector (UTD) algorithm, RX-UTD algorithm, and so on. However, the possibility of background statistical contamination caused by anomalies still exists. In order to alleviate this problem, in this paper, we propose a spectral matched filter (background-anomaly component projection and separation optimized filter) to minimize the average output energy of separate image components and the output values of the weighted background regular term for hyperspectral image anomaly detection, which could strengthen the separation between anomalies and backgrounds. By calculating the optimal solution to the background-anomaly component projection and separation function, we obtain the optimal projection, where we can effectively suppress the background while highlighting the anomalies. Proposed algorithm has the following research advantages: 1) it creates a novel collaborative component projection and robust background optimization function to separate the background and anomalies and 2) it analyzes the intrinsic statistical distribution of pixels and applies appropriate iterative shrinkage-thresholding algorithm to solve the $\ell _{1}$ -min problem. Experiments were conducted on three real hyperspectral data sets. The detection results demonstrate that the proposed algorithm is superior to other state-of-the-art anomaly detection algorithms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The demand for accurate localization in complex environments continues to increase despite the difficulty in extracting positional information from measurements. Conventional range-based localization approaches rely on distance estimates obtained from measurements (e.g., delay or strength of received waveforms). This paper goes one step further and develops localization techniques that rely on all probable range values rather than on a single estimate of each distance. In particular, the concept of soft range information (SRI) is introduced, showing its essential role for network localization. We then establish a general framework for SRI-based localization and develop algorithms for obtaining the SRI using machine learning techniques. The performance of the proposed approach is quantified via network experimentation in indoor environments. The results show that SRI-based localization techniques can achieve performance approaching the Cramér–Rao lower bound and significantly outperform the conventional techniques especially in harsh wireless environments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The pull test (PT) is a common practice to assess the postural instability of patients with Parkinson’s disease. Postural instability is a serious issue for elderly and people with neurological disease, which can cause falls. The implementation of the PT consists in observing the user response after providing a tug to the patients’ shoulders, in order to displace the center of gravity from its neutral position. The validity of the test can be compromised by a nonstandard backward tug provided to the patient. The solution proposed in this paper consists of a low-cost multisensor system allowing an instrumented estimation of the input solicitation. Moreover, the system provides supplementary information on the user postural stability, by means of a set of features extracted from the user stabilogram. A wide set of experiments have been performed to assess the system capability to provide a rough classification between stable and unstable behaviors. Results obtained demonstrate the validity of the approach proposed, with very low rates of false positive and false negative. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Autonomous vehicle navigation is challenging since various types of road scenarios in real urban environments have to be considered, particularly when only perception sensors are used, without position information. This paper presents a novel real-time optimal-drivable-region and lane detection system for autonomous driving based on the fusion of light detection and ranging (LIDAR) and vision data. Our system uses a multisensory scheme to cover the most drivable areas in front of a vehicle. We propose a feature-level fusion method for the LIDAR and vision data and an optimal selection strategy for detecting the best drivable region. Then, a conditional lane detection algorithm is selectively executed depending on the automatic classification of the optimal drivable region. Our system successfully handles both structured and unstructured roads. The results of several experiments are provided to demonstrate the reliability, effectiveness, and robustness of the system. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In recent years, vehicle detectors built on deep convolutional neural network (DCNN) have been widely used in autonomous driving. Under the complex conditions of road traffic, the detector is expected to run in high speed and high accuracy. However, due to the limited computing power and storage space on the autonomous vehicle, the deployment of advanced DCNN detectors is often restricted. The design of lightweight and powerful detectors is in a great desire. Recently, group convolution, as a novel convolution algorithm, has been proposed to reduce the floating-point operations and make the detection network lighter and faster. However, in practice, it is found that the increase of group number does not always boost the detection speed, but sometimes leads to the performance degradation. In addition, the existing guidelines for network design do not indicate how to choose the group number in the group convolution in order to maximize the overall detection speed. To this end, in this paper, we propose three new guidelines to determine the valid range of the group number, and design a lightweight detection network—DenseLightNet—based on these new design criteria. The proposed detector runs at a speed of three times faster than the current real-time detector YoloV3, while holding a much smaller model size. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we address the problem of detector design in the frequency-selective fading channels for unique-word-based single-carrier spatial modulation (UWSC-SM) systems. We propose to precede the conventional M-algorithm with an appropriately designed frequency-domain prefilter to condition the equivalent channel so that the number of the survivor paths needed for a satisfactory performance can be significantly reduced. By exploiting the block circulant channel induced by the UWSC-SM block format, the prefilter can be computed, and carried out efficiently using the fast Fourier transforms. Simulation results demonstrate that, compared to the conventional M-algorithm, the proposed algorithm achieves essentially the same error-rate performance with a considerably lower overall complexity in systems where the number of receive antennas is no smaller than that of transmit antennas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]