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Multi-input multi-out and non-orthogonal multiple access (MIMO-NOMA) internet-of-things (IoT) systems can improve channel capacity and spectrum efficiency distinctly to support the real-time applications. Age of information (AoI) is an important metric for real-time application, but there is no literature have minimized AoI of the MIMO-NOMA IoT system, which motivates us to conduct this work. In MIMO-NOMA IoT system, the base station (BS) determines the sample collection requirements and allocates the transmission power for each IoT device. Each device determines whether to sample data according to the sample collection requirements and adopts the allocated power to transmit the sampled data to the BS over MIMO-NOMA channel. Afterwards, the BS employs successive interference cancelation (SIC) technique to decode the signal of the data transmitted by each device. The sample collection requirements and power allocation would affect AoI and energy consumption of the system. It is critical to determine the optimal policy including sample collection requirements and power allocation to minimize the AoI and energy consumption of MIMO-NOMA IoT system, where the transmission rate is not a constant in the SIC process and the noise is stochastic in the MIMO-NOMA channel. In this paper, we propose the optimal power allocation to minimize the AoI and energy consumption of MIMO- NOMA IoT system based on deep reinforcement learning (DRL). Extensive simulations are carried out to demonstrate the superiority of the optimal power allocation.

Internet of vehicles (IoV) has emerged as a key technology to realize real-time vehicular application. For IoV, vehicles adopt cellular vehicle-to-everything (C-V2X) standard to support direct communication among them. C-V2X mode 4 controls resource allocation without the assistance of cellular network, hence it is widely used for IoV. However, C-V2X mode 4 has two drawbacks. First is that vehicles cannot communicate with each other for a period in some case which will cause an increase in age of information (AoI); second is that vehicles may select resource already occupied by others which will deteriorate the reliability. To address the two drawbacks, we propose an enhanced C-V2X mode 4 to optimize AoI and reliability. In addition, we consider the fact that for most vehicular applications, each vehicle periodically requires fresh information of vehicles within a certain distance and propose a new performance metric to evaluate the system AoI for IoV. Furthermore, we construct a platform through integrating SUMO and NS3. We demonstrate the superiority of the enhanced C-V2X mode 4 base on this simulation platform., Comment: This paper has been accpeted by ICCT 2023. The source code can be found at https://github.com/qiongwu86/ns3 sumo cv2x mode4.git

Scholarly and policy interest on endogenous cultural institutions (ECIs) in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) is gaining traction, albeit with a lack of robust empirical evidence on compliance determinants. This article contributes in this regard, by drawing from a sample of 200 forest-dependent households in the Santchou Landscape of Cameroon, complemented by key informant interviews (N = 17) and focus group discussions (N = 11). Using the ordinary least square and the logit model, we (i) analyze forest use practices shaped by ECIs, (ii) assess forest-based ECIs compliance determinants, and (iii) estimate the effect of compliance determinants on forest-based ECIs. We find that while norms and customs shape the harvesting of wood-based and vegetal based NTFPs, they are less likely to shape the exploitation of seed based NTFPs. Second, demographic and economic factors override socio-political determinants of ECIs. Third, elites are less likely to affect forest-based ECI compliance. Policy should leverage culturally sensitive ECIs in regulating forest resource use.

Scholarly and policy interest on endogenous cultural institutions (ECIs) in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) is gaining traction, albeit with a lack of robust empirical evidence on compliance determinants. This article contributes in this regard, by drawing from a sample of 200 forest-dependent households in the Santchou Landscape of Cameroon, complemented by key informant interviews (N = 17) and focus group discussions (N = 11). Using the ordinary least square and the logit model, we (i) analyze forest use practices shaped by ECIs, (ii) assess forest-based ECIs compliance determinants, and (iii) estimate the effect of compliance determinants on forest-based ECIs. We find that while norms and customs shape the harvesting of wood-based and vegetal based NTFPs, they are less likely to shape the exploitation of seed based NTFPs. Second, demographic and economic factors override socio-political determinants of ECIs. Third, elites are less likely to affect forest-based ECI compliance. Policy should leverage culturally sensitive ECIs in regulating forest resource use.

Federated edge learning (FEEL) technology for vehicular networks is considered as a promising technology to reduce the computation workload while keeping the privacy of users. In the FEEL system, vehicles upload data to the edge servers, which train the vehicles' data to update local models and then return the result to vehicles to avoid sharing the original data. However, the cache queue in the edge is limited and the channel between edge server and each vehicle is time-varying. Thus, it is challenging to select a suitable number of vehicles to ensure that the uploaded data can keep a stable cache queue in edge server while maximizing the learning accuracy. Moreover, selecting vehicles with different resource statuses to update data will affect the total amount of data involved in training, which further affects the model accuracy. In this paper, we propose a vehicle selection scheme, which maximizes the learning accuracy while ensuring the stability of the cache queue, where the statuses of all the vehicles in the coverage of edge server are taken into account. The performance of this scheme is evaluated through simulation experiments, which indicates that our proposed scheme can perform better than the known benchmark scheme., Comment: This paper has been accepted by China Communications

Vehicular edge computing (VEC) is a promising technology to support real-time applications through caching the contents in the roadside units (RSUs), thus vehicles can fetch the contents requested by vehicular users (VUs) from the RSU within short time. The capacity of the RSU is limited and the contents requested by VUs change frequently due to the high-mobility characteristics of vehicles, thus it is essential to predict the most popular contents and cache them in the RSU in advance. The RSU can train model based on the VUs' data to effectively predict the popular contents. However, VUs are often reluctant to share their data with others due to the personal privacy. Federated learning (FL) allows each vehicle to train the local model based on VUs' data, and upload the local model to the RSU instead of data to update the global model, and thus VUs' privacy information can be protected. The traditional synchronous FL must wait all vehicles to complete training and upload their local models for global model updating, which would cause a long time to train global model. The asynchronous FL updates the global model in time once a vehicle's local model is received. However, the vehicles with different staying time have different impacts to achieve the accurate global model. In this paper, we consider the vehicle mobility and propose an Asynchronous FL based Mobility-aware Edge Caching (AFMC) scheme to obtain an accurate global model, and then propose an algorithm to predict the popular contents based on the global model. Experimental results show that AFMC outperforms other baseline caching schemes., Comment: This paper has been submitted to The 14th International Conference on Wireless Communications and Signal Processing (WCSP 2022)

Vehicular fog computing (VFC) is envisioned as a promising solution to process the explosive tasks in autonomous vehicular networks. In the VFC system, task offloading is the key technique to process the computation-intensive tasks efficiently. In the task offloading, the task is transmitted to the VFC system according to the 802.11p standard and processed by the computation resources in the VFC system. The delay of task offloading, consisting of the transmission delay and computing delay, is extremely critical especially for some delay-sensitive applications. Furthermore, the long-term reward of the system (i.e., jointly considers the transmission delay, computing delay, available resources, and diversity of vehicles and tasks) becomes a significantly important issue for providers. Thus, in this article, we propose an optimal task offloading scheme to maximize the long-term reward of the system where 802.11p is employed as the transmission protocol for the communications between vehicles. Specifically, a task offloading problem based on a semi-Markov decision process (SMDP) is formulated. To solve this problem, we utilize an iterative algorithm based on the Bellman equation to approach the desired solution. The performance of the proposed scheme has been demonstrated by extensive numerical results., Comment: This paper has been accepted by IEEE Internet of Things Journal. Simulation codes have been provided at: https://github.com/qiongwu86/SMDP

Platooning is a critical technology to realize autonomous driving. Each vehicle in platoons adopts the IEEE 802.11p standard to exchange information through communications to maintain the string stability of platoons. However, one vehicle in platoons inevitably suffers from a disturbance resulting from the leader vehicle acceleration/deceleration, wind gust and uncertainties in a platoon control system, i.e., aerodynamics drag and rolling resistance moment etc. Disturbances acting on one vehicle may inevitably affect the following vehicles and cause that the spacing error is propagated or even amplified downstream along the platoon, i.e., platoon string instability. In this case, the connectivity among vehicles is dynamic, resulting in the performance of 802.11p in terms of packet delay and packet delivery ratio being time-varying. The effect of the string instability would be further deteriorated once the time-varying performance of 802.11p cannot satisfy the basic communication requirement. Unlike the existing works which only analyze the steady performance of 802.11p in vehicular networks, we will focus on the impact of disturbance and construct models to analyze the time-dependent performance of 802.11p-based platooning communications. The effectiveness of the models is validated through simulation results. Moreover, the time-dependent performance of 802.11p is analyzed through numerical results and it is validated that 802.11p is able to satisfy the communication requirement under disturbance., Comment: This paper has been accepted by IEEE Transactions on Vehicular Technology. Simulation codes have been provided at: https://github.com/qiongwu86/TVT_code

Congli Jia,1 Zhengquan Li,2 Dong Guo,1 Zhen Zhang,3 Jingming Yu,4 Guangdong Jiang,1 Xiaobo Xing,3 Shengjun Ji,5 Feng Jin3 1Weifang Medical University, Weifang, People’s Republic of China; 2Department of Laboratory Pathology, People’s Liberation Army 80th Group Military Hospital, Weifang, People’s Republic of China; 3Department of Radiotherapy & Oncology, Qingdao Center Hospital, Qingdao, People’s Republic of China; 4Department of Radiotherapy & Oncology, Shandong Hospital, Jinan, People’s Republic of China; 5Department of Radiotherapy & Oncology, Nanjing Medical University Affiliated Suzhou Hospital, Suzhou, People’s Republic of ChinaCorrespondence: Shengjun JiDepartment of Radiotherapy & Oncology, Nanjing Medical University Affiliated Suzhou Hospital, No. 16 Baita Road, Suzhou 215001, People’s Republic of ChinaEmail drshengjunji@163.comFeng JinDepartment of Radiotherapy & Oncology, Qingdao Center Hospital, No. 127 Siliu Road, Qingdao 266042, People’s Republic of ChinaEmail 1093910079@qq.comBackground: Brain metastases (BM) are severe incidents among patients with non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) and have been associated with significant morbidity and decreased survival; thus, new methods are required to improve clinical management. Magnetic resonance spectroscopy (MRS) allows noninvasive measurements of biochemical information from tumor tissue, providing clinically useful imaging biomarkers. The primary aim of this study was to explore the application of MRS in the assessment of tumor prognosis after stereotactic radiotherapy in NSCLC patients with BM.Patients and Methods: MRS was performed on NSCLC patients attending Qingdao Center Hospital with suspected BM, and 68 patients were included in the survival analysis. The qualitative and quantitative parameters of MRS metabolites, such as choline (Cho), creatine (Cr), and N-acetyl-aspartate (NAA)

In this paper, we propose a swarming approach and optimize the one-hop delay for interplatoon communications through adjusting the minimum contention window size of each backbone vehicle in two steps. In the first step, we first set a small enough average one-hop delay as the initial optimization goal and then propose a swarming approach to find a minimum average one-hop delay for inter-platoon communications through adjusting the minimum contention window of each backbone vehicle iteratively. In the second step, we first set the minimum average one-hop delay found in the first step as the initial optimization goal and then adopt the swarming approach again to get the one-hop delay of each backbone vehicle balance to the minimum average one-hop delay. The optimal minimum contention window sizes that get the one-hop delay of each backbone vehicle balance to the minimum average one-hop delay are obtained after the second step. The simulation results indicate that the one-hop delay is optimized and the other performance metrics including end-to-end delay, one-hop throughput and transmission probability are presented by using the optimal minimum contention window sizes., Comment: published by sensors. Simulation codes are available online at https://codeocean.com/2018/06/28/code-for-colon-a-swarming-approach-to

Wireless network virtualization and information-centric networking (ICN) are two promising technologies for next generation wireless networks. Although some excellent works have focused on these two technologies, device-to-device (D2D) communications have not beeen investigated in information-centric virtualized cellular networks. Meanwhile, content caching in mobile devices has attracted great attentions due to the saved backhaul consumption or reduced transmission latency in D2D-assisted cellular networks. However, when it comes to the multi-operator scenario, the direct content sharing between different operators via D2D communications is typically infeasible. In this article, we propose a novel information-centric virtualized cellular network framework with D2D communications, enabling not only content caching in the air, but also inter-operator content sharing between mobile devices. Moreover, we describe the key components in the proposed framework, and present the interactions among them. In addition, we incorporate and formulate the content caching strategies in resource allocation optimization, to maximize the total utility of mobile virtual network operators (MVNOs) through caching popular contents in mobile devices. Simulations results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed framework and scheme with different system parameters.