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In addition to the filter coefficients, the location of the microphone array is a crucial factor in improving the overall performance of a beamformer. The optimal microphone array placement can considerably enhance speech quality. However, the optimization problem with microphone configuration variables is non-convex and highly non-linear. Heuristic algorithms that are frequently employed take a long time and have a chance of missing the optimal microphone array placement design. We extend the Bayesian optimization method to solve the microphone array configuration design problem. The proposed Bayesian optimization method does not depend on gradient and Hessian approximations and makes use of all the information available from prior evaluations. Furthermore, Gaussian process regression and acquisition functions make up the Bayesian optimization method. The objective function is given a prior probabilistic model through Gaussian process regression, which exploits this model while integrating out uncertainty. The acquisition function is adopted to decide the next placement point based upon the incumbent optimum with the posterior distribution. Numerical experiments have demonstrated that the Bayesian optimization method could find a similar or better microphone array placement compared with the hybrid descent method and computational time is significantly reduced. Our proposed method is at least four times faster than the hybrid descent method to find the optimal microphone array configuration from the numerical results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Accurate short-term load forecasting (STLF) is essential for power grid systems to ensure reliability, security and cost efficiency. Thanks to advanced smart sensor technologies, time-series data related to power load can be captured for STLF. Recent research shows that deep neural networks (DNNs) are capable of achieving accurate STLP since they are effective in predicting nonlinear and complicated time-series data. To perform STLP, existing DNNs use time-varying dynamics of either past load consumption or past power correlated features such as weather, meteorology or date. However, the existing DNN approaches do not use the time-invariant features of users, such as building spaces, ages, isolation material, number of building floors or building purposes, to enhance STLF. In fact, those time-invariant features are correlated to user load consumption. Integrating time-invariant features enhances STLF. In this paper, a fuzzy clustering-based DNN is proposed by using both time-varying and time-invariant features to perform STLF. The fuzzy clustering first groups users with similar time-invariant behaviours. DNN models are then developed using past time-varying features. Since the time-invariant features have already been learned by the fuzzy clustering, the DNN model does not need to learn the time-invariant features; therefore, a simpler DNN model can be generated. In addition, the DNN model only learns the time-varying features of users in the same cluster; a more effective learning can be performed by the DNN and more accurate predictions can be achieved. The performance of the proposed fuzzy clustering-based DNN is evaluated by performing STLF, where both time-varying features and time-invariant features are included. Experimental results show that the proposed fuzzy clustering-based DNN outperforms the commonly used long short-term memory networks and convolution neural networks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In designing acoustic broadband beamformers, the complexity can grow significantly when the number of microphones and the filter length increase. It is advantageous if many of the filter coefficients are zeroes so that the implementation can be executed with less computation. Moreover, the size of the array can also be pruned to reduce complexity. These problems are addressed in this paper. A suitable optimization model is proposed. Both array pruning and filter thinning can be solved together as a two-stage optimization problem to yield the final sparse designs. Numerical results show that the complexity of the designed beamformers can be reduced significantly with minimal effect on performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]