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We consider the problem of minimizing the $\ell _1$ norm of a linear map over the sphere, which arises in various machine learning applications such as orthogonal dictionary learning (ODL) and robust subspace recovery (RSR). The problem is numerically challenging due to its nonsmooth objective and nonconvex constraint, and its algorithmic aspects have not been well explored. In this paper, we show how the manifold structure of the sphere can be exploited to design fast algorithms with provable guarantees for tackling this problem. Specifically, our contribution is fourfold. First, we present a manifold proximal point algorithm (ManPPA) for the problem and show that it converges at a global sublinear rate. Furthermore, we show that ManPPA can achieve a local quadratic convergence rate when applied to sharp instances of the problem. Second, we develop a semismooth Newton-based inexact augmented Lagrangian method for computing the search direction in each iteration of ManPPA and show that it has an asymptotic superlinear convergence rate. Third, we propose a stochastic variant of ManPPA called StManPPA, which is well suited for large-scale computation, and establish its sublinear convergence rate. Both ManPPA and StManPPA have provably faster convergence rates than existing subgradient-type methods. Fourth, using ManPPA as a building block, we propose a new heuristic method for solving a matrix analog of the problem, in which the sphere is replaced by the Stiefel manifold. The results from our extensive numerical experiments on the ODL and RSR problems demonstrate the efficiency and efficacy of our proposed methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The integration of the variable renewable energies makes the operation conditions of the power system ever-changeable. Consequently, the power system operational reliability evaluation is increasingly important. This paper introduces the concept of decision-dependent uncertainty (DDU) in the operational reliability evaluation. Unlike the exogenous uncertainties, DDU reveals that the decisions of the system operation could significantly affect the resolution of the uncertainties which influence the reliability metrics. In this paper, the proposed DDU modeling method links the device reliability indices, i.e., the forced outage rate, and the operational-decision variables. The impacts of DDU on operational reliability are analyzed based on a reliability-constrained stochastic unit commitment (UC) model. An adaptive reliability improvement UC (ARIUC) algorithm is proposed to efficiently solve the problem. Case studies underline the necessity of considering DDU in power system operational reliability evaluations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, a novel distributed model predictive control (DMPC) strategy based on voltage observer for multiple energy storage systems (ESs) is firstly proposed to achieve a tradeoff between voltage regulation and power sharing. In order to reduce the impact of communication delay on voltage observer, an improved DMPC consensus algorithm is proposed. This scheme improves the robustness of the system to the delay. Besides, a small-signal dynamic model of a DC microgrid with the improved DMPC controllers is established to analyze its dynamic performance. The time-domain simulation results are presented to verify that, under the constraints of the DC bus voltage, a flexible trade-off between voltage regulation and power distribution can be achieved. Besides, the communication delay problems can be reduced. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Stochastic unit commitment is an efficient method for grid operation in the presence of significant uncertainties. An example is an operation during a predicted hurricane with uncertain line out-ages. However, the solution quality comes at the cost of substantial computational burden, which makes its adoption challenging. This paper evaluates some possible ways that machine learning can be used to reduce this computational burden. First, a set of feasibility studies is conducted. Results suggest that using machine learning as an assistant to the stochastic unit commitment solver is more advantageous than using it as a standalone solver. In particular, the machine learning model is trained to facilitate solving the problem by determining the unnecessary constraints that can be removed from the original problem without affecting the final accuracy. The variables that can be used as input features/predictors or outputs for the machine learning model are determined through feasibility studies. Then, an algorithm to train and utilize a machine learning model is proposed. The method is tested on a 500-bus synthetic South Carolina system. Various test cases show an average reduction in solution time by more than 90% by using the trained machine learning model to assist the stochastic unit commitment solver. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In cognitive radio networks (CRNs), dynamic spectrum access allows (unlicensed) users to identify and access unused channels opportunistically, thus improves spectrum utilization. In this paper, we address the user-channel allocation problem in multi-user multi-channel CRNs without a prior knowledge of channel statistics. The result of channel access is stochastic with unknown distribution, and statistically different for each user. In deciding the channel for access, a user needs to either explore a channel to learn its statistics, or exploit the channel with the highest expected reward based on the information collected so far. Further, a channel should be accessed exclusively by one user at a time to avoid collision. Using multi-armed bandit framework, we develop two rate-optimal algorithms with low computational complexities of $O(N)$ O (N) and $O(NK)$ O (N K) , respectively, where $N$ N denotes the number of users and $K$ K denotes the number of channels. Further, we extend the results and develop an algorithm that is amenable to implement in a distributed fashion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper studies the problem of cHarging tAsk Scheduling for direcTional wireless chargEr networks (HASTE), i.e., given a set of rotatable directional wireless chargers on a 2D area and a series of offline (online) charging tasks, scheduling the orientations of all the chargers with time in a centralized offline (distributed online) fashion to maximize the overall charging utility for all the tasks. We prove that HASTE is NP-hard. Then, we prove that a relaxed version of HASTE falls within the realm of maximizing a submodular function subject to a partition matroid constraint, and propose a centralized offline algorithm that achieves $(1-\rho)(1-\frac{1}{e})$ (1 - ρ) (1 - 1 e) approximation ratio to address HASTE where $\rho$ ρ is the switching delay of chargers. Further, we propose a distributed online algorithm and prove it achieves $\frac{1}{2}(1-\rho)(1-\frac{1}{e})$ 1 2 (1 - ρ) (1 - 1 e) competitive ratio. We conduct simulations and field experiments on a testbed consisting of eight off-the-shelf power transmitters and 8 rechargeable sensor nodes. The results show that our distributed online algorithm achieves 92.97 percent of the optimal charging utility, and outperforms the comparison algorithms by up to 15.28 percent in terms of charging utility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We consider the problem of partitioning a spectrum band into $M$ channels of equal bandwidth, and then further assigning these $M$ channels into $P$ licensed channels and $M-P$ unlicensed channels. Licensed channels can be accessed both for licensed and opportunistic use following a tiered structure that has a higher priority for licensed use. Unlicensed channels can be accessed only for opportunistic use. We address the following question in this paper. Given a market setup, what values of $M$ and $P$ maximize the net spectrum utilization of the spectrum band? While this problem is fundamental, it is highly relevant practically, e.g., in the context of partitioning the recently proposed Citizens Broadband Radio Service band. If $M$ is too high or too low, it may decrease spectrum utilization due to limited channel capacity or due to wastage of channel capacity, respectively. If $P$ is too high (low), it will not incentivize the wireless operators who are primarily interested in unlicensed channels (licensed channels) to join the market. These tradeoffs are captured in our optimization problem which manifests itself as a two-stage Stackelberg game. We design an algorithm to solve the Stackelberg game and hence find the optimal $M$ and $P$. The algorithm design also involves an efficient Monte Carlo integrator to evaluate the expected value of the involved random variables like spectrum utilization and operators’ revenue. We also benchmark our algorithms using numerical simulations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Graph pattern matching has been extensively investigated on general graphs without time information over decades. Nevertheless, few studies focus on temporal graphs, where a relationship between two vertices takes place at a specific moment and lingers for some time. In this paper, we propose a new notion so-called time-respecting flow graph, in which all paths are time-respecting (i.e., a sequence of contacts with non-decreasing time), and one vertex is distinguished as the root, from which other vertices can be reached via a time-respecting path. Based on this, we explore the problem of time-respecting flow graph pattern matching on temporal graphs. This problem motivates important applications in epidemiology, information diffusion, crime detection, etc. To address it, we present one baseline algorithm as well as two optimized algorithms that utilize several efficient matching strategies and topological sort based technique to boost efficiency. Extensive experimental evaluation using both real and synthetic data sets demonstrates the effectiveness and efficiency of our proposed algorithms. Compared with baseline method, our optimized algorithms could achieve up to three orders of magnitude speedup. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a new approach to accurately and efficiently identifying a large number of wireless devices blindly installed to known three-dimensional installation/fitting points, based on received signal strengths (RSSs) between the devices. The approach is non-trivial because of the factorial, mapping nature of the considered problem, the multiplicative ranging errors of the RSS measurements (with standard deviation of 5–7 dB), and the requirement of high mapping accuracy in many internet-of-things (IoT) applications, e.g., industrial IoT and aircraft. The consideration of a structured environment where the set of candidate node positions is known beforehand shifts the problem of interest from a pure position estimation problem to a position assignment problem. The key idea of the proposed approach is that we interpret the position mapping problem with a probabilistic graphical model, where the factorial nature of mapping (more specifically, the mutual exclusiveness of devices at every installation point) is fully captured. A max-product belief propagation is designed against the probabilistic graph, to estimate the max-marginal position distribution of each device. The Kuhn-Munkres algorithm is applied to preserve the mutual exclusiveness of devices throughout the belief propagation and to decide device locations based on the estimated position distributions. Large-scale simulations and field tests are carried out, showing that the new approach achieves close-to-100% accuracy in simulations with hundreds of blindfolded devices under RSS measurement errors with standard deviation of 5–7 dB. Our approach also achieves 100% accuracy in all field trials with 76 devices inside the cabin of a Fokker 100 airplane, dramatically outperforming baseline techniques. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we investigate resource allocation for IRS-assisted green multiuser multiple-input single-output (MISO) systems. To minimize the total transmit power, both the beamforming vectors at the access point (AP) and the phase shifts at multiple IRSs are jointly optimized, while taking into account the minimum required quality-of-service (QoS) of multiple users. First, two novel algorithms, namely a penalty-based alternating minimization (AltMin) algorithm and an inner approximation (IA) algorithm, are developed to tackle the non-convexity of the formulated optimization problem when perfect channel state information (CSI) is available. Existing designs employ semidefinite relaxation in AltMin-based algorithms, which, however, cannot ensure convergence. In contrast, the proposed penalty-based AltMin and IA algorithms are guaranteed to converge to a stationary point and a Karush-Kuhn-Tucker (KKT) solution of the design problem, respectively. Second, the impact of imperfect knowledge of the CSI of the channels between the AP and the users is investigated. To this end, a non-convex robust optimization problem is formulated and the penalty-based AltMin algorithm is extended to obtain a stationary solution. Simulation results reveal a key trade-off between the speed of convergence and the achievable total transmit power for the two proposed algorithms. In addition, we show that the proposed algorithms can significantly reduce the total transmit power at the AP compared to various baseline schemes and that the optimal numbers of transmit antennas and IRS reflecting elements, which maximize the system energy efficiency of the considered system, are finite. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a new method for selecting a patient specific forward model to compensate for anatomical variations in electrical impedance tomography (EIT) monitoring of neonates. The method uses a combination of shape sensors and absolute reconstruction. It takes advantage of a probabilistic approach which automatically selects the best estimated forward model fit from pre-stored library models. Absolute/static image reconstruction is performed as the core of the posterior probability calculations. The validity and reliability of the algorithm in detecting a suitable model in the presence of measurement noise is studied with simulated and measured data from 11 patients. The paper also demonstrates the potential improvements on the clinical parameters extracted from EIT images by considering a unique case study with a neonate patient undergoing computed tomography imaging as clinical indication prior to EIT monitoring. Two well-known image reconstruction techniques, namely GREIT and tSVD, are implemented to create the final tidal images. The impacts of appropriate model selection on the clinical extracted parameters such as center of ventilation and silent spaces are investigated. The results show significant improvements to the final reconstructed images and more importantly to the clinical EIT parameters extracted from the images that are crucial for decision-making and further interventions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we present a framework for performing automatic analysis of Land Use Zones based on Location-Based Social Networks (LBSNs). We model city areas using a hierarchical structure of POIs extracted from foursquare. We encode such structures in kernel machines, e.g., Support Vector Machines, using a new Tree Kernel, i.e., the Hierarchical POI Kernel (HPK), which can take the importance of the individual POIs into account during the substructure matching. This way, HPK projects structures in the space of all their possible substructures such that each dimension corresponds to a semantic structural feature, weighted according to the discriminative power of POIs. We generated four different datasets for the following cities: Barcelona, Lisbon, Amsterdam and Milan, where we trained and tested our models. The results show that our approach largely outperforms previous work and standard baseline built on simple features, such as counts of different POIs. Finally, we apply a mining algorithm to extract the most relevant features (tree fragments) from the implicit TK space according to the weights the kernel machine assigned to them. Our approach can produce an explicit set of representative features that can be used to classify and characterize urban areas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Coupled Matrix Tensor Factorization (CMTF) facilitates the integration and analysis of multiple data sources and helps discover meaningful information. Nonnegative CMTF (N-CMTF) has been employed in many applications for identifying latent patterns, prediction, and recommendation. However, due to the added complexity with coupling between tensor and matrix data, existing N-CMTF algorithms exhibit poor computation efficiency. In this paper, a computationally efficient N-CMTF factorization algorithm is presented based on the column-wise element selection, preventing frequent gradient updates. Theoretical and empirical analyses show that the proposed N-CMTF factorization algorithm is not only more accurate but also more computationally efficient than existing algorithms in approximating the tensor as well as in identifying the underlying nature of factors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Power control is becoming increasingly essential for the fifth-generation (5G) and beyond systems. An example use-case, among others, is the unmanned-aerial-vehicle (UAV) communications where the nearly line-of-sight (LoS) radio channels may result in very low signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratios (SINRs). The authors in (Chiang et al., 2007) proposed to efficiently and reliably solve this kind of non-convex problem via a series of geometrical programmings (GPs) using condensation approximation. However, it is only applicable for a small-scale network with several communication pairs and practically infeasible with more (e.g., tens of) nodes to be jointly optimized. We therefore in this paper aim to provide new insights into this problem. By properly introducing auxiliary variables, the problem is transformed to an equivalent form which is simpler and more intuitive for condensation. A novel condensation method with linear complexity is also proposed based on the form. The enhancements make the GP-based power control feasible for both small- and especially large-scale networks that are common in 5G and beyond. The algorithm is verified via simulations. A preliminary case study of uplink UAV communications also shows the potential of the algorithm. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the proliferation of distributed generators and energy storage systems, traditional passive consumers in power systems have been gradually evolving into the so-called “prosumers,” i.e., proactive consumers, which can both produce and consume power. To encourage energy exchange among prosumers, energy sharing is increasingly adopted, which is usually formulated as a generalized Nash game (GNG). In this paper, a distributed approach is proposed to seek the Generalized Nash equilibrium (GNE) of the energy sharing game. To this end, we first prove the strong monotonicity of the game. Then, the GNG is converted into an equivalent optimization problem. An algorithm based on Nesterov's methods is thereby devised to solve the equivalent problem and consequently find the GNE in a distributed manner. The convergence of the proposed algorithm is proved rigorously based on the nonexpansive operator theory. The performance of the algorithm is validated by experiments with three prosumers, and the scalability is tested by simulations using 1888 prosumers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes a new decentralized data-driven load restoration (DDLR) scheme for transmission and distribution (TD) systems with high penetration of wind power. Robust DDLR models are constructed in order to handle uncertainties and ensure the feasibility of decentralized schemes. The Wasserstein metric is used to describe the ambiguity sets of probability distributions in order to build the complete DDLR model and realize computationally tractable formulation. A data-driven model-nested analytical target cascading (DATC) algorithm is developed to obtain the final load restoration result by iteratively solving small-scale mathematical models. The proposed DDLR scheme provides load restoration results with adjustable robustness, and performance efficiency is independent from the amount of data. The DDLR scheme makes full use of the available data while respecting information privacy requirements of independent operated systems, and ensures the feasibility of a decentralized load restoration strategy even in the worst-case condition. The effectiveness of the proposed method is validated using a small-scale TD system and a large-scale system with the IEEE 118-bus TS and thirty IEEE-33 DSs, showing high computational efficiency and superior restoration performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is concerned with the forecasting aided state estimation (FASE) problem for power distribution networks (PDNs) subject to nonlinear measurements and limited communication resources. For the sake of using bandwidth more effectively, a special closed-loop event triggering condition is first designed with the hope to reduce unnecessary data transmission from the measurement side to the remote estimator. And an event-based robust filtering algorithm is proposed to improve the estimation performance of estimator with the nonlinear intermittent observations. In this algorithm, the measurement output function with high-order nonlinearity is reasonably reduced to a quadratic alternative form, in order to avoid the computation burden caused by the use of the second-order extended Kalman filter (SOEKF), the quadratic nonlinear function is further linearized by Taylor series with quadratic norm bound. Furthermore, an upper bound of the filtering error covariance containing some uncertainties (includes quadratic term and non-triggering errors) is derived and subsequently minimized at each time step. The desired filter gain is obtained by recursively solving a set of Riccati-like matrix equations, which is easy to implement via online computation. Finally, the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm is demonstrated using the standard IEEE 13-bus and 123-bus distribution test feeders with both phasor measurement unit (PMU) and conventional measurements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, a coupled interaction matrix is proposed to describe the interactions between line outages and the load shed at buses. The coupled interaction matrix is effectively estimated by the Expectation Maximization algorithm. A highly probabilistic coupled interaction model is further proposed to efficiently generate cascades with both line outages and the load shed based on the coupled interaction matrix and the distribution of initial outages. To mitigate cascading failures, critical links are identified based on the coupled interaction matrix by calculating a comprehensive severity index that considers the consequences of both line outages and the load shed. Simulation results on the IEEE 300-bus system verify the effectiveness of the proposed approach. The cascades generated from the coupled interaction model match the statistics of the original cascades very well. The identified critical links based on the comprehensive severity index enable a proper tradeoff between reducing line outages and reducing the load shed, leading to a better mitigation effect than only considering either line outages or the load shed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the introduction of massive renewable energy sources and storage devices, the traditional process of grid operation must be improved in order to be safe, reliable, fast responsive and cost efficient, and in this regard power flow solvers are indispensable. In this paper, we introduce an Interior Point-based (IP) Multi-Period AC Optimal Power Flow (MPOPF) solver for the integration of Stationary Energy Storage Systems (SESS) and Electric Vehicles (EV). The primary methodology is based on: 1) analytic and exact calculation of partial differential equations of the Lagrangian sub-problem, and 2) exploiting the sparse structure and pattern of the coefficient matrix of Newton-Raphson approach in the IP algorithm. Extensive results of the application of proposed methods on several benchmark test systems are presented and elaborated, where the advantages and disadvantages of different existing algorithms for the solution of MPOPF, from the standpoint of computational efficiency, are brought forward. We compare the computational performance of the proposed Schur-Complement algorithm with a direct sparse LU solver. The comparison is performed for two different applicational purposes: SESS and EV. The results suggest the substantial computational performance of Schur-Complement algorithm in comparison with that of a direct LU solver when the number of storage devices and optimisation horizon increase for both cases of SESS and EV. Also, some situations where computational performance is inferior are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Automated machine learning (AutoML) seeks to automatically find so-called machine learning pipelines that maximize the prediction performance when being used to train a model on a given dataset. One of the main and yet open challenges in AutoMLis an effective use of computational resources: An AutoML process involves the evaluation of many candidate pipelines, which are costly but often ineffective because they are canceled due to a timeout. In this paper, we present an approach to predict the runtime of two-step machine learning pipelines with up to one pre-processor, which can be used to anticipate whether or not a pipeline will time out. Separate runtime models are trained offline for each algorithm that may be used in a pipeline, and an overall prediction is derived from these models. We empirically show that the approach increases successful evaluations made by an AutoML tool while preserving or even improving on the previously best solutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mobile crowdsensing is a new paradigm by which a platform can recruit mobile workers to perform some sensing tasks by using their smart mobile devices. In this paper, we focus on a privacy-preserving unknown worker recruitment issue. The platform needs to recruit some workers without knowing the qualities of them completing tasks. Meanwhile, these quality information also needs to be protected from disclosure. To tackle these challenges, we model the unknown worker recruitment as a Differentially Private Multi-Armed Bandit (DP-MAB) game by seeing each worker as an arm of DP-MAB and the task completion quality contributed by each worker as the reward of pulling arm. Then, recruiting workers is equivalent to designing a bandit policy of pulling DP-MAB arms. Under this model, we propose a Differentially Private ε-First-based arm-pulling (DPF) algorithm and a Differentially Private UCB-based arm-pulling (DPU) algorithm, which can achieve the nearly optimal expected accumulative rewards under a given budget. We also analyze the regrets of the DPF and DPU algorithms and prove that both of them are δ -differentially private on the task completion qualities (δ > 0). Finally, we conduct extensive simulations to verify the significant performances of DPF and DPU based on both the real-trace and synthetic datasets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Conventional model predictive control (MPC) for three-level active neutral point clamped converter (ANPC) utilizes weighting factors to achieve the optimal control of multiple control objectives in a single cost function. However, the selection of these weighting factors has an impact on the performance of the controlled objectives significantly. Tuning of weighting factors is usually tedious and lacks theoretical background. Moreover, the predictive and evaluation process for multiple objectives optimization have to be carried out by enumerating all admissible switching states within one loop. To simplify the complexity of this process and eliminate the effect of weighting factors, this paper proposes a cascaded predictive control scheme for a 3L-ANPC inverter fed induction machine (IM) drive. With the proposed approach, three separate cost functions for three control objectives, stator flux vector, neutral point voltage and device loss distribution are evaluated in a cascaded way, so that the optimization of these control objectives is performed independently. A 3L-ANPC inverter driven IM drive is studied in this paper to verify the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm. Experimental results in different operating conditions confirm that the proposed method achieves satisfactory steady-state and transient performances comparable to the conventional predictive control approach. The weighting factors used in the conventional method are eliminated and the computational effort is reduced by 68% compared to the conventional method without any sacrifice in the drive performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Image quality assessment is a critical problem for image compression, which can be utilized as a guidance for image compression and codec evaluation. In this paper, we propose a full reference image quality assessment (IQA) algorithm to measure the perceptual quality of compressed images. The proposed IQA model utilizes a data-driven transform, multi-stage Karhunen-Loeve Transform (MS-KLT), as a feature extractor to decompose both reference and compressed images into feature domain, where the importance of feature distortions in different spectral components to human visual system (HVS) is easy to distinguish. Accordingly, an efficient weighting strategy is proposed to reflect the importance of feature distortions based on the energy of transformed coefficients. Considering HVS characteristics, weighted spatial masking effect is derived from both local and global perspectives. In addition, to avoid influences of random noises, a local adaptive low-pass filtering process is applied as a pre-processing operation. Extensive experimental results on popular datasets show that our proposed method correlates better with the subjective results compared with the state-of-the-art algorithms. Moreover, the proposed method behaves more robustly compared with existing methods, and achieves top-ranking performance on different IQA datasets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents an overview of the geometric partitioning mode (GPM) algorithm that is a part of the most recent Versatile Video Coding (VVC) standard. The GPM algorithm aims to increase the partitioning precision of moving objects using non-rectangular and asymmetric rectangular partitions on top of the conventional rectangular block partitioning structure of VVC. Novel features of GPM contributing to the increase in coding efficiency and the reduction in encoder and decoder complexity are detailed and analyzed in this paper. Evaluated with VVC test model version 8.0 under the joint video experts team common test conditions, experimental results show that the presented GPM algorithm provides luma Bjøntegaard Delta rate reduction of 0.70% for random access and of 1.55% for low delay with B slices configurations, with roughly 3% to 5% additional encoding time and negligible decoder runtime change. Furthermore, as GPM provides more precise partitions for the boundaries of the moving objects, an improvement of visual quality is seen in GPM coded sequences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Benchmarking various metaheuristics and their new enhancements, strategies, and adaptation mechanisms has become standard in computational intelligence research. Recently, many challenges and issues regarding fair comparisons and recommendations toward good practices for benchmarking of metaheuristic algorithms, have been identified. This article is aimed at an important issues in metaheuristics design and benchmarking, which are boundary strategies or boundary control methods (BCMs). This work aims to investigate whether the choice of a BCM could significantly influence the performance of competitive algorithms. The experiments encompass the top three performing algorithms from IEEE CEC competitions 2017 and 2020 with six different BCMs. We provide extensive statistical analysis and rankings resulting in conclusions and recommendations for metaheuristics researchers and possibly also for the future direction of benchmark definitions. We conclude that the BCM should be considered another vital metaheuristics input variable for unambiguous reproducibility of results in benchmarking and for a better understanding of population dynamics, since the BCM setting could impact the optimization method performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To satisfy the requirement of quality control in printing and packaging industry, a sheet counting apparatus is developed, which adopts a line-scan camera to image the fringes of sheet stack and is able to provide a real-time and noncontact measurement of their quantity. With a brief introduction of the system architecture, our main work focuses on the sheet counting algorithms. The basic principle is to identify each sheet profile from the 1-D image with a robust ridge strength measurement. First, a multiscale bi-Gaussian ridge likelihood measurement and a ridge-valley descriptor are utilized to improve adjacent objects detection by increasing local contrast around sheet fringes. Then, a sheet recognition scheme, which integrates a peak detection algorithm and the ridge region criteria for verification, is proposed to discriminate true sheets from the obtained ridgeness measure. According to experiments and tests in real production lines, our apparatus can reach a very high measuring accuracy for printing papers or cards with a thickness not <0.2 mm. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Edge federated learning (FL) is an emerging paradigm that trains a global parametric model from distributed datasets based on wireless communications. This paper proposes a unit-modulus over-the-air computation (UMAirComp) framework to facilitate efficient edge federated learning, which simultaneously uploads local model parameters and updates global model parameters via analog beamforming. The proposed framework avoids sophisticated baseband signal processing, leading to low communication delays and implementation costs. Training loss bounds of UMAirComp FL systems are derived and two low-complexity large-scale optimization algorithms, termed penalty alternating minimization (PAM) and accelerated gradient projection (AGP), are proposed to minimize the nonconvex nonsmooth loss bound. Simulation results show that the proposed UMAirComp framework with PAM algorithm achieves a smaller mean square error of model parameters’ estimation, training loss, and test error compared with other benchmark schemes. Moreover, the proposed UMAirComp framework with AGP algorithm achieves satisfactory performance while reduces the computational complexity by orders of magnitude compared with existing optimization algorithms. Finally, we demonstrate the implementation of UMAirComp in a vehicle-to-everything autonomous driving simulation platform. It is found that autonomous driving tasks are more sensitive to model parameter errors than other tasks since the neural networks for autonomous driving contain sparser model parameters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The selective fixed-filter active noise control (SFANC) method selecting the best pre-trained control filters for various types of noise can achieve a fast response time. However, it may lead to large steady-state errors due to inaccurate filter selection and the lack of adaptability. In comparison, the filtered-X normalized least-mean-square (FxNLMS) algorithm can obtain lower steady-state errors through adaptive optimization. Nonetheless, its slow convergence has a detrimental effect on dynamic noise attenuation. Therefore, this paper proposes a hybrid SFANC-FxNLMS approach to overcome the adaptive algorithm’s slow convergence and provide a better noise reduction level than the SFANC method. A lightweight one-dimensional convolutional neural network (1D CNN) is designed to automatically select the most suitable pre-trained control filter for each frame of the primary noise. Meanwhile, the FxNLMS algorithm continues to update the coefficients of the chosen pre-trained control filter at the sampling rate. Owing to the effective combination of the two algorithms, experimental results show that the hybrid SFANC-FxNLMS algorithm can achieve a rapid response time, a low noise reduction error, and a high degree of robustness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recently, recommender systems are applied to provide personalized recomendation for healthcare wearables. However, due to the sparsity problem, traditional recommendation algorithms are difficult to achieve desired performance. Considering that consumers often buy and rate other types of items on E-commerce platforms, we can leverage significant information in the auxiliary domains to improve the recommendation performance of healthcare wearables, which can be regarded as cross-domain recommendation. However, traditional cross-domain recommendation model cannot fully represent user’s characteristics and fail to consider the leaks of original auxiliary domain ratings during the information transfer process. To overcome the two shortcomings, this paper proposes a Privacy-Preserving Cross-Domain Healthcare Wearables Recommendation algorithm (PPCDHWRec). Firstly, user’s characteristics are divided into domain-dependent features and domain-independent features, which complement each other and fully depict the user’s characteristics. Secondly, inspired by the latent factor model, we factorize the original rating information of each auxiliary domain by Funk-SVD and Orthogonal Nonnegative Matrix Tri-Factorization (ONMTF) model, to obtain user’s domain-dependent and domain-independent features, respectively. Finally, the Factorization Machine algorithm is used to fuse the obtained user’s features with the target domain information to provide the recommendation results. By hiding the item latent factors obtained in the factorization process, PPCDHWRec ensures that the original information cannot be inferred from the transferred user hidden vector. Hence, PPCDHWRec is a privacy-preserving recommendation model. Experiments on two groups of auxiliary domains, having high and low correlations with target domain, show the effectiveness of PPCDHWRec. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Massive machine-type communications (mMTC) are expected to support a large amount of randomly deployed users for short package transmissions. Noncoherent random access provides an efficient and practical multi-access protocol for mMTC, and also poses new challenges for the receiver design. In this paper, we leverage two well-known methods, i.e., message passing and deep learning, to jointly detect the user activity and the desired data for the noncoherent mMTC. First, by exploiting the exact distribution information of the received signal, a generalized approximate message passing (GAMP)-based algorithm is proposed, which is shown to jointly detect the user activity and the desired data by two modules: inter-user interference elimination and data detection for each user. Inspired by the two-module GAMP-based algorithm, we then propose a model-driven deep learning method, which utilizes the deep neural networks (DNNs) to approximate both the two modules. The loss function for training the DNNs is derived by formulating the two-module detection as an unconstrained optimization problem. Simulation results reveal that the proposed GAMP-based algorithm outperforms the proposed deep learning method when the channel distribution is perfectly known, while it suffers from a significant performance degradation for the case with imperfect channel distribution information. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examine the problem of uncovering communities in complex real-world networks whose elements and their respective associations manifest as streams of data. Community detection is applied in emerging computational environments and concerns critical applications in diverse areas including social computing, web analysis, IoT and biology. Despite the already expended related research efforts, the task of revealing the community structure of massive and rapidly-evolving networks remains very challenging. More specifically, there is an emerging need for online approaches that ingest graph data as a stream. In this paper, we propose a streaming-graph community-detection algorithm that expands seed-sets of nodes to communities. We consider an online setting and process a stream of edges while aiming to form communities on-the-fly using partial knowledge of the graph structure. We use space-efficient structures to maintain very limited information regarding the nodes of the graph and the sought communities, so as to effectively process large scale networks. In addition to our novel streaming approach, we develop a technique that increases the accuracy of our algorithm considerably and additionally propose a new clustering algorithm that allows for automatically deriving the size of the communities we seek to detect. Using ground-truth communities for a wide range of large real-word and synthetic networks, our experimental evaluation shows that our approach does achieve accuracy comparable, and oftentimes better, to the state-of-the-art non-streaming community detection algorithms. More importantly, we attain significant improvements in both execution time and memory requirements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Density Peak Clustering (DPC), a popular density-based clustering approach, has received considerable attention from the research community primarily due to its simplicity and fewer-parameter requirement. However, the resultant clusters obtained using DPC are influenced by the sensitive parameter $d_c$ d c , which depends on data distribution and requirements of different users. Besides, the original DPC algorithm requires visiting a large number of objects, making it slow. To this end, this paper investigates index-based solutions for DPC. Specifically, we propose two list-based index methods viz. (i) a simple List Index, and (ii) an advanced Cumulative Histogram Index. Efficient query algorithms are proposed for these indices which significantly avoids irrelevant comparisons at the cost of space. For memory-constrained systems, we further introduce an approximate solution to the above indices which allows substantial reduction in the space cost, provided that slight inaccuracies are admissible. Furthermore, owing to considerably lower memory requirements of existing tree-based index structures, we also present effective pruning techniques and efficient query algorithms to support DPC using the popular Quadtree Index and R-tree Index. Finally, we practically evaluate all the above indices and present the findings and results, obtained from a set of extensive experiments on six synthetic and real datasets. The experimental insights obtained can help to guide in selecting a befitting index. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cooperative Vehicle-Infrastructure System (CVIS) can provide innovative services for traffic management and enable trips to be safer, more coordinated, and smarter. In the CVIS, the vehicles upload crowd sensing data to the Vehicular Edge Computing (VEC) server for quick data fusion and informed decision-making. However, with the ever-increasing number of vehicles, the VEC server cannot undertake massive computation-intensive tasks due to the limited edge computing capabilities. In this paper, we propose a reverse offloading framework that can fully utilize the vehicular computation resource to relieve the burden of the VEC server and further reduce the system latency. Under the proposed offloading framework, the binary reverse offloading (BRO) and partial reverse offloading (PRO) strategies are designed for two types of tasks, i.e., non-partitioned tasks and partitioned tasks. We formulate the system latency minimization problem by optimizing reverse offloading decisions, and the communication and computation resources allocation. Due to the non-convex and existing variables coupling, the original problem is transformed into the equivalent weighted-sum optimization problem. Based on the alternative optimization, we decouple the weighted-sum optimization problems into the two subproblems, and the closed-form expressions of transmission power and computation frequency of vehicles and RSU are derived. Low complexity greedy based efficient searching (GES) algorithm and joint alternative optimization based bi-section searching (JAOBSS) algorithm are proposed for BRO and PRO strategies, respectively. The algorithm complexity and performance bounds are analyzed. Simulation results show that the proposed GES algorithm can achieve optimal performance with low complexity. Besides, the proposed GES and JAOBSS algorithms can significantly improve the performance compared with other baseline schemes by 6.14% and 13.46% at least. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Power flow analysis is a key tool for planning, operation and control of power systems. With future hybrid Supergrids in mind, a wide variety of power flow algorithms for multi-terminal VSC AC/DC systems have been proposed. However, the nonlinear nature of these formulations represents a challenge for its use in real power systems. Whereas in the study of AC networks linear approximations are frequently utilized to speed up multi-scenario steady-state analysis, an equivalent tool has not been proposed for hybrid AC/DC grids. This paper fills that gap by formulating a linear MW-only power flow algorithm with losses for multi-terminal VSC AC/DC systems. The proposed algorithm provides a consistent estimation of converters' losses and allows modelling of all branches within the converter stations. Moreover, two novel schemes for the inclusion of DC network losses are proposed and a circuit-equivalent model of the linear power flow problem in multi-terminal VSC AC/DC systems is suggested. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we study the formalism of unsupervised multi-class domain adaptation (multi-class UDA), which underlies a few recent algorithms whose learning objectives are only motivated empirically. Multi-Class Scoring Disagreement (MCSD) divergence is presented by aggregating the absolute margin violations in multi-class classification, and this proposed MCSD is able to fully characterize the relations between any pair of multi-class scoring hypotheses. By using MCSD as a measure of domain distance, we develop a new domain adaptation bound for multi-class UDA; its data-dependent, probably approximately correct bound is also developed that naturally suggests adversarial learning objectives to align conditional feature distributions across source and target domains. Consequently, an algorithmic framework of Multi-class Domain-adversarial learning Networks (McDalNets) is developed, and its different instantiations via surrogate learning objectives either coincide with or resemble a few recently popular methods, thus (partially) underscoring their practical effectiveness. Based on our identical theory for multi-class UDA, we also introduce a new algorithm of Domain-Symmetric Networks (SymmNets), which is featured by a novel adversarial strategy of domain confusion and discrimination. SymmNets affords simple extensions that work equally well under the problem settings of either closed set, partial, or open set UDA. We conduct careful empirical studies to compare different algorithms of McDalNets and our newly introduced SymmNets. Experiments verify our theoretical analysis and show the efficacy of our proposed SymmNets. In addition, we have made our implementation code publicly available. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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, MUSE, an algorithm enabled by backscattering tag-to-tag network (BTTN) is presented to accomplish simultaneous 2-D localization of large-scale (10 m × 10 m) massive (20 $\sim$ ∼ 50) passive UHF RFIDs. In BTTNs, the most intractable problem is the high-frequency loss of range measurements. In a particular case of 30 tags to be located with maximum communication range being 3 m, the rate is nearly up to 85.75 percent. In the proposed framework, we utilize relevant knowledge in the theory of graphs to obtain underlying subsets in which tags can communicate with each other and then assemble them stage by stage to achieve overall localization. Theoretical analysis shows that multistage assembly imparts extraordinary characteristics to MUSE: Assembling rectifies fragment maps given some condition, and in later stages prevents errors flowing down into the next stage. Experimental analysis shows that the condition is easy to satisfy. Furthermore, an analytical expression for the Cramér-Rao lower bound is also derived as a benchmark to evaluate the localization performance. Extensive simulations demonstrate that MUSE outperforms existing algorithms for simultaneous localization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent advances in noiseless non-adaptive group testing have led to a precise asymptotic characterization of the number of tests required for high-probability recovery in the sublinear regime $k = n^{\theta }$ (with $\theta \in (0,1)$), with $n$ individuals among which $k$ are infected. However, the required number of tests may increase substantially under real-world practical constraints, notably including bounds on the maximum number $\Delta $ of tests an individual can be placed in, or the maximum number $\Gamma $ of individuals in a given test. While previous works have given recovery guarantees for these settings, significant gaps remain between the achievability and converse bounds. In this paper, we substantially or completely close several of the most prominent gaps. In the case of $\Delta $ -divisible items, we show that the definite defectives (DD) algorithm coupled with a random regular design is asymptotically optimal in dense scaling regimes, and optimal to within a factor of e more generally; we establish this by strengthening both the best known achievability and converse bounds. In the case of $\Gamma $ -sized tests, we provide a comprehensive analysis of the regime $\Gamma = \Theta (1)$ , and again establish a precise threshold proving the asymptotic optimality of SCOMP (a slight refinement of DD) equipped with a tailored pooling scheme. Finally, for each of these two settings, we provide near-optimal adaptive algorithms based on sequential splitting, and provably demonstrate gaps between the performance of optimal adaptive and non-adaptive algorithms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Achieving high performance in many multi-server systems (e.g., web hosting center, cloud) requires finding a good assignment of worker threads to servers and also effectively allocating each server’s resources to its assigned threads. The assignment and allocation components of this problem have been studied extensively but largely separately in the literature. In this paper, we introduce the assign and allocate (AA) problem, which seeks to simultaneously find an assignment and allocation that maximizes the total utility of the threads. Assigning and allocating the threads together can result in substantially better overall utility than performing the steps separately, as is traditionally done. We model each thread by a utility function giving its performance as a function of its assigned resources. We first prove that the AA problem is NP-hard. We then present a $2 (\sqrt {2}-1) > 0.828$ factor approximation algorithm for concave utility functions, which runs in $O(mn^{2} + n (\log mC)^{2})$ time for $n$ threads and $m$ servers with $C$ amount of resources each. We also give a faster algorithm with the same approximation ratio and $O(n (\log mC)^{2})$ time complexity. We then extend the problem to two more general settings. First, we consider threads with nonconcave utility functions, and give a 1/2 factor approximation algorithm. Next, we give an algorithm for threads using multiple types of resources, and show the algorithm achieves good empirical performance. We conduct extensive experiments to test the performance of our algorithms on threads with both synthetic and realistic utility functions, and find that they achieve over 92% of the optimal utility on average. We also compare our algorithms with a number of practical heuristics, and find that our algorithms achieve up to 9 times higher total utility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this work, we propose globally optimal power allocation strategies to maximize the users sum-rate (SR), and system energy efficiency (EE) in the downlink of single-cell multicarrier non-orthogonal multiple access (MC-NOMA) systems. Each NOMA cluster includes a set of users in which the well-known superposition coding (SC) combined with successive interference cancellation (SIC) technique is applied among them. By obtaining the closed-form expression of intra-cluster power allocation, we show that MC-NOMA can be equivalently transformed to a virtual orthogonal multiple access (OMA) system, where the effective channel gain of these virtual OMA users is obtained in closed-form. Then, the SR and EE maximization problems are solved by using very fast water-filling and Dinkelbach algorithms, respectively. The equivalent transformation of MC-NOMA to the virtual OMA system brings new theoretical insights, which are discussed throughout the paper. The extensions of our analyses to other scenarios, such as considering users rate fairness, admission control, long-term performance, and a number of future next-generation multiple access (NGMA) schemes enabling recent advanced technologies, e.g., reconfigurable intelligent surfaces are discussed. Extensive numerical results are provided to demonstrate the performance gaps among single-carrier NOMA (SC-NOMA), OMA-NOMA, and OMA. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Dual Coordinate Descent (DCD) is one of the most popular optimization methods. The parallelization of DCD is difficult, as DCD is sequential in nature. As such, simultaneously running multiple DCD threads on batches of data elements causes result inaccuracy and slow convergence, due to the concurrent updates of multiple coordinates. Some parallelization methods adopt separable approximate functions that depend on the degree of parallelism. Such dependencies result in both poor scalability and slow-convergence. To address these challenges, in this paper we present a new parallel primal-dual algorithm for DCD, called PPD. In PPD, the block data distribution is utilized to obtain a new approximate function that is independent from the parallelism. Moreover, PPD is designed with a novel primal-dual acceleration scheme to approach the optimal solution closely and quickly. We demonstrate the advantages of PPD in terms of scalability and efficiency through experiments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Dictionary learning has achieved remarkable success on a wide range of machine learning-based applications. In this paper, a locality-adaptive structured dictionary learning (LASDL) algorithm for cross-domain recognition is proposed. In the LASDL, a projective structured double reconstruction strategy is developed to train class-oriented sub-dictionaries from the specific classes of cross-domain samples. The strategy benefits to make full advantage of the discriminative information of cross-domain data and bridge the distribution divergence between two different domains. Meanwhile, an adaptive geometrical structure preserving function is designed to not only preserve the local manifold structures spanned by the representation coefficient spaces of the source and target domains, but also impose a constraint that the coefficients should keep closer to their class centers, which is propitious to reduce the distribution divergence and make the representation more accurate. With the structured linear coding technique, the final cross-domain recognition can be efficiently performed by determining class-specific reconstruction error. The optimization of the proposed LASDL model can be efficiently solved by simple least square method and alternating direction method of multipliers (ADMM) algorithm. Extensive experimental results validate the superiority of the proposed algorithm in contrast to other state-of-the-art predecessors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on improving indoor Wi-Fi localization by mitigating the effect of fluctuation of received signal strength indication (RSSI). The RSSI data collected at each reference point is first transformed through translation and scaling. The BP (Back Propagation) neural network is then used to construct the ranging model using the transformed RSSI to determine the distances between the target point and each reference point. A genetic algorithm (GA) is developed to optimize the initial values of weights and biases of the BP neural network. For convenience, our proposed ranging model is denoted as GTBPD. A new localization algorithm is then proposed, which uses the GTBPD model and the sequential quadratic programming (SQP, an iterative nonlinear optimization algorithm), and the algorithm is denoted as GTBPD-LSQP for simplicity. Experiments were conducted in three areas of two different teaching buildings with complex environments. The performance of the proposed GTBPD-LSQP algorithm is evaluated and compared with four existing algorithms. The experimental results show that our proposed GTBPD-LSQP algorithm achieves significantly higher location accuracy than the four existing algorithms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Due to multi-layer encoding and Inter-layer prediction, Scalable High Efficiency Video Coding (SHVC) has extremely high coding complexity. It is very crucial to improve its coding speed so as to promote widespread and cost-effective SHVC applications. In this paper, we propose a new probability-based fast Intra prediction algorithm for spatial SHVC. More specifically, first, we integrate depth probabilities with textural based all-zero blocks and all-nonzero blocks through Lagrange Interpolation Polynomial (LIP) to derive thresholds to early skip unlikely depths and early terminate depth selection. Second, to early skip Intra mode prediction, we combine mode probabilities with Jarque-Bera test through LIP to test the residual coefficients of Inter-layer reference (ILR) mode. Third, we adopt the difference of Hadamard Costs (HCs) of horizontal, vertical and diagonal directional modes to predict candidate directional modes (DMs), and then exploit both the percentages of gradient amplitudes and HCs for DM early termination. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed algorithm can achieve a speed up gain of more than 61% with 0.03% decrease in Bjøntegaard Delta Bit Rate on average. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, an intelligent reflecting surface (IRS) is deployed to assist the terahertz (THz) communications. The sum-rate of user equipments (UEs) is maximized while guaranteeing the rate requirement of each UE. A block coordinate searching (BCS) algorithm is proposed to jointly optimize the IRS’s coordinates, phase shifts, THz sub-bands allocation and power control. Specifically, the relaxation with penalties based (RPB) algorithm is developed to obtain feasible coordinates of the IRS and guarantee the monotonicity of objective value. In addition, the IRS phase shifts are formulated as closed-form expressions with introduced pricing factors. Simulation results show that the proposed scheme can significantly enhance system performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we consider a computation offloading problem in a three-tier network consisting of multiple mobile users (MUs), multiple edge clouds, and a central cloud. On this basis, we formulate a system Energy Time Cost ($ETC$) minimization problem by jointly optimizing the resource allocation, mobile-edge matching decision, and offloading decision. Due to the difficulty of directly solving the formulated problem, we decompose it and propose two offloading algorithms, namely Gale-Shapley based Minimum/Sequential Offloading Algorithm (GS-MOA/GS-SOA), to optimize offloading decisions by minimizing the system $ETC$ , in which the mobile-edge matching strategies based on the proposed Gale-Shapley based Mobile-Edge mAtching aLgorithm (GS-MEAL) and resource allocations are optimized iteratively. The simulations show the effectiveness of our proposed algorithm. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]