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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 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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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 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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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 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]

The emerging orthogonal time frequency space (OTFS) modulation technique has shown its superiority to the current orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) scheme, in terms of its capabilities of exploiting full time-frequency diversity and coping with channel dynamics. The optimal maximum a posteriori (MAP) detection is capable of eliminating the negative impacts of the inter-symbol interference in the delay-Doppler (DD) domain at the expense of a prohibitively high complexity. To reduce the receiver complexity for OTFS scheme, this paper proposes a variational Bayes (VB) approach as an approximation of the optimal MAP detection. Compared to the widely used message passing algorithm, we prove that the proposed iterative algorithm is guaranteed to converge to the global optimum of the approximated MAP detector regardless the resulting factor graph is loopy or not. Simulation results validate the fast convergence of the proposed VB receiver and also show its promising performance gain compared to the conventional message passing algorithm. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since star identification algorithms most likely yield multiple matching candidates, validation algorithms are required for star trackers. Traditional validation is performed in an iteratively cascaded way by incrementally introducing new star points for help, costing plenty of inefficient lookups and complex combinations, but leading to nondeterministic results only. Focusing on this problem, this paper considers a novel validation idea that the attitude estimate perturbation caused by bounded measuring noises should be bounded as well. As a result, a two-step validation algorithm is proposed following a noniterative deterministic structure. Theoretical analyses and simulation examples are both given to demonstrate the algorithm. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In order to glean benefits from orthogonal frequency division multiplexing combined with index modulation (OFDM-IM) in the presence of strong Phase-Noise (PHN), in this paper, low-complexity joint PHN estimation and decoding methods are developed in the framework of message passing on a factor graph. Both the Wiener process and the truncated discrete cosine transform (DCT) expansion model are considered for approximating the PHN variation. Then based on these a factor graph is constructed for explicitly representing the joint estimation and detection problem. Taking full account of the sparse and structured a priori information arriving from the soft-in soft-out (SISO) decoder of a turbo receiver, a modified generalized approximate message passing (GAMP) algorithm is invoked for decoupling the frequency-domain symbols. In the decoupling step, mean field (MF) approximation is employed for solving the unknown nonlinear transform matrix problem imposed by PHN. Furthermore, merged belief propagation and MF (BP-MF) methods amalgamated both with sequential and parallel message passing schedules are introduced and compared to the proposed GAMP based algorithms in terms of their bit error ratio (BER) vs. complexity. Our simulation results demonstrate the efficiency of the proposed algorithms in the presence of both perfect and imperfect channel state information. [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]

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]

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]

Following calibration, hyperspectral images remain affected by spatial dimension nonuniformity, i.e., stripe noise, due to stray light interference, slit contamination, and instrument instability. The full spectrum airborne hyperspectral imager (FAHI) is a Chinese next-generation pushbroom sensor with a spectral range covering the visible near-infrared, shortwave-infrared (SWIR), and thermal infrared regions with spectral sampling intervals of 2.34, 3, and 32 nm, respectively. However, the residual stripe noise remains in FAHI images after relative radiometric correction based on the laboratory calibration, especially in low signal-to-noise ratio bands. To solve this problem, a new technique combining image statistics and spatial filtering algorithms has been developed for FAHI image correction. In this method, image statistics are obtained to calculate the gain and offset of each pixel for image nonuniformity correction. Then, a spatial filter removes the residual stripes. This paper presents the principles of this method along with details of validation experiments and results. To validate the effectiveness of the proposed method, comparison with two destriping methods and quantitative analyses are carried out. Moreover, the method is applied to an SWIR hyperspectral image from the TianGong-1 spacecraft, yielding good results. The experimental results suggest that the proposed method is convenient and practical for improving the relative radiometric accuracy of airborne/spaceborne hyperspectral images. [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]

We deal with the classical problem of testing two simple statistical hypotheses but, as a new element, it is assumed that the data vector is observed after an unknown permutation of its entries. What is the fundamental limit for the detection performance in this case? How much information for detection is contained in the entry values and how much in their positions? In the first part of this paper, we answer these questions. In the second part, we focus on practical algorithms. A low-complexity detector solves the detection problem without attempting to estimate the permutation. A modified version of the auction algorithm is then considered, and two greedy algorithms with affordable worst case complexity are presented. The detection operational characteristics of these detectors are investigated by computer experiments. The problem we address is referred to as unlabeled detection and is motivated by large sensor network applications, but applications are also foreseen in different fields, including image processing, social sensing, genome research, and molecular communication. [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 paper, we consider the problem of leveraging existing fully labeled categories to improve the weakly supervised detection (WSD) of new object categories, which we refer to as mixed supervised detection (MSD). Different from previous MSD methods that directly transfer the pre-trained object detectors from existing categories to new categories, we propose a more reasonable and robust objectness transfer approach for MSD. In our framework, we first learn domain-invariant objectness knowledge from the existing fully labeled categories. The knowledge is modeled based on invariant features that are robust to the distribution discrepancy between the existing categories and new categories; therefore the resulting knowledge would generalize well to new categories and could assist detection models to reject distractors (e.g., object parts) in weakly labeled images of new categories. Under the guidance of learned objectness knowledge, we utilize multiple instance learning (MIL) to model the concepts of both objects and distractors and to further improve the ability of rejecting distractors in weakly labeled images. Our robust objectness transfer approach outperforms the existing MSD methods, and achieves state-of-the-art results on the challenging ILSVRC2013 detection dataset and the PASCAL VOC datasets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The detection of groups of individuals is attracting the attention of many researchers in diverse fields, from automated surveillance to human-computer interaction, with a growing number of approaches published every year. Unexpectedly, the evaluation metrics for this problem are not consolidated, with some measures inherited from the people detection field, other from clustering, other designed specifically for a particular approach, thus lacking in generalization and making the comparisons between different approaches hard to be carried out. Moreover, most of the existent metrics are scarcely expressive, addressing groups as they are atomic entities, ignoring that they may have different cardinalities, and that group detection approaches may fail in capturing the exact number of individuals that compose it. This paper fills this gap presenting the GROup DEtection (GRODE) metrics, which formally define precision and recall on the groups, including the group cardinality as a variable. This gives the possibility to investigate aspects never considered so far, such as the tendency of a method of over- or under-segmenting, or of better dealing with specific group cardinalities. The GRODE metrics have been evaluated first on controlled scenarios, where the differences with alternative metrics are evident. Then, the metrics have been applied to eight approaches of group detection, on eight public datasets, providing a fresh-new panorama of the state-of-the-art, discovering interesting strengths and pitfalls of the recent approaches. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A path planning and control approach of a non-holonomic three-wheeled mobile robot (WMR) for online navigation in road following and roundabout environments is presented in this paper. We proposed a complete navigation algorithm that enables the WMR to autonomously navigate on the road with various scenarios. With such an algorithm, the robot is able to localize itself within the road environment and find a collision free-path starting from a pre-defined start position to a goal point using a novel approach called laser simulator (LS). The path planning and roundabout detection are determined based on LS and sensor fusion of a laser range finder, camera, and odometry measurements. The sensor fusion algorithm is used to remove noises and uncertainties from sensors’ data and provide optimum measurements for path planning. A robot motion control scheme is used for the purpose of controlling the kinematic parameters of WMR using a resolved acceleration control coupled with an active force control for rejecting the disturbances. Experimental results show the capability of the proposed algorithms to robustly drive the robot on the road following and roundabout environments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Direct geolocation of radio emitters has traditionally been formulated using short measurement intervals over which delay and Doppler frequency shift are approximated as constant. In this paper, we consider maximum likelihood position estimation using long measurement intervals for which the Doppler is time varying. A series of assumptions and approximations are used to develop an efficient solution involving coherent combining of traditional, complex ambiguity function processing outputs. Simulation results are used to demonstrate potential gains. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

At present, virtual flux voltage oriented control strategy is one of the widely used control strategies without grid voltage sensor. To solve the dc bias resulting from voltage vector integration in vector calculation of virtual flux and further avoid the steady-state error, a virtual flux observer with negative feedback resonant filter is presented in this paper based on virtual flux principle and a delay compensation algorithm is also proposed to solve the delay of virtual flux. In addition, the control system diagram of the pulsewidth modulated rectifier without grid voltage sensor is brought forth. Then, simulation system and experimental platform are both established to simulate and test the rectifier. Eventually, the correctness and feasibility of the proposed algorithm are verified through the analysis of simulation and experimental results. [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]

High-speed corner detection is an essential step in many real-time computer vision applications, e.g., object recognition, motion analysis, and stereo matching. Hardware implementation of corner detection algorithms, such as the Harris corner detector (HCD) has become a viable solution for meeting real-time requirements of the applications. A major challenge lies in the design of power, energy and area efficient architectures that can be deployed in tightly constrained embedded systems while still meeting real-time requirements. In this paper, we proposed a bit-width optimization strategy for designing hardware-efficient HCD that exploits the thresholding step in the algorithm to determine interest points from the corner responses. The proposed strategy relies on the threshold as a guide to truncate the bit-widths of the operators at various stages of the HCD pipeline with only marginal loss of accuracy. Synthesis results based on 65-nm CMOS technology show that the proposed strategy leads to power-delay reduction of 35.2%, and area reduction of 35.4% over the baseline implementation. In addition, through careful retiming, the proposed implementation achieves over 2.2 times increase in maximum frequency while achieving an area reduction of 35.1% and power-delay reduction of 35.7% over the baseline implementation. Finally, we performed repeatability tests to show that the optimized HCD architecture achieves comparable accuracy with the baseline implementation (average decrease of repeatability is less than 0.6%). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The problem of reconstructing a sparse signal vector from magnitude-only measurements (a.k.a. compressive phase retrieval) emerges in diverse applications, but it is NP-hard in general. Building on recent advances in nonconvex optimization, this paper puts forth a new algorithm that is termed compressive reweighted amplitude flow (CRAF) and abbreviated as CRAF, for compressive phase retrieval. Specifically, CRAF operates in two stages. The first stage seeks a sparse initial guess via a new spectral procedure. In the second stage, CRAF implements a few hard thresholding based iterations using reweighted gradients. When there are sufficient measurements, CRAF provably recovers the underlying signal vector exactly with high probability under suitable conditions. Moreover, its sample complexity coincides with that of state-of-the-art procedures. Finally, numerical tests showcase improved performance of the new spectral initialization, as well as improved exact recovery relative to competing alternatives. Empirically, the number of measurements required for exact recovery by CRAF is about 40% less than those of competing alternatives in our experiments using real images. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the advent of the Internet of things, massive machine-type communications (mMTC) have become one of the most important requirements for next generation communication systems. In the mMTC scenarios, grant-free nonorthogonal multiple access on the transmission side and compressive sensing-based multi-user detection (CS-MUD) on the reception side are a promising solution because many users sporadically transmit small data packets at low rates. In this paper, we propose a novel CS-MUD algorithm for the active user and data detection in the mMTC systems. The proposed scheme consists of the maximum a posteriori probability (MAP) based active user detector (MAP-AUD) and the MAP-based data detector (MAP-DD). By exchanging the extrinsic information between MAP-AUD and MAP-DD, the proposed algorithm improves the active user detection performance and the reliability of the data detection. In addition, we extend the proposed algorithm to exploit group sparsity. By jointly processing the multiple received data with common activity, the proposed algorithm dramatically enhances the active user detection performance. We show by numerical experiments that the proposed algorithm achieves a substantial performance gain over existing algorithms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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]

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]

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]

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]

Hyperspectral image classification faces various levels of difficulty due to the use of different types of hyperspectral image data. Recently, spectral–spatial approaches have been developed by jointly taking care of spectral and spatial information. This paper presents a completely different approach from a subpixel target detection view point. It implements four stage processes, a preprocessing stage, which uses band selection (BS) and nonlinear band expansion, referred to as BS-then-nonlinear expansion (BSNE), a detection stage, which implements constrained energy minimization (CEM) to produce subpixel target maps, and an iterative stage, which develops an iterative CEM (ICEM) by applying Gaussian filters to capture spatial information, and then feeding the Gaussian-filtered CEM-detection maps back to BSNE band images to reprocess CEM in an iterative manner. Finally, in the last stage Otsu’s method is applied to converting ICEM-detected real-valued maps to discrete values for classification. The entire process is called BSNE-ICEM. Experimental results demonstrate BSNE-ICEM, which has advantages over support vector machine-based approaches in many aspects, such as easy implementation, fewer parameters to be used, and better false classification and precision rates. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In this paper, we developed a golf position analysis system with an inertial sensor and swing motion analysis algorithm that can be used in golf courses. Specifically, we developed a band for both wrists that analyzes the golf swing of whoever is wearing it. By analyzing the movements of both the right and left wrists of the golfer, their golf swing can be judged more accurately, which can be used to advise the golfer regarding their golf swing. Experimental results show that this portable instrument along with its swing motion detection algorithm is a promising training tool for golfers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper develops distortion metrics for compressed synthetic aperture radar (SAR) imagery from change detection test statistics. These metrics are used to predict lossy image compression’s impact on change detection performance. The metrics do not require the intended change detection comparison image to provide these benefits. An SAR compression system leveraging the distortion metrics is proposed. The system generates a bad-pixel mask highlighting potential false alarms that are generated due to compression and are subsequently discarded in the change detection process. The proposed system’s performance is demonstrated through noncoherent change detection analysis after JPEG2000 and JPEG image compression. Similarly, a coherent change detection system is evaluated after JPEG2000 image compression. For noncoherent change detection at large compression ratios (CRs) using JPEG2000, the proposed system provides a 33% reduction in false alarms at a 0.1 probability of detection as well as the ability to maintain near-distortionless false alarm rates across a wide range of CRs. At a 0.1 probability of detection for coherent change detection, the system provides a 37% reduction in false alarms at modest CRs. The coherent change detection system is also demonstrated to maintain low false alarm rates across a range of CRs. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In order to provide benchmark data sets for radiation detector and algorithm development, a particle transport test bed has been created using experimental data as model input and validation. A detailed radiation measurement campaign at the Combined Arms Collective Training Facility in Fort Indiantown Gap, PA (FTIG), USA, provides sample background radiation levels for a variety of materials present at the site (including cinder block, gravel, asphalt, and soil) using long dwell high-purity germanium (HPGe) measurements. In addition, detailed light detection and ranging data and ground-truth measurements inform model geometry. This paper describes the collected data and the application of these data to create background and injected source synthetic data for an arbitrary gamma-ray detection system using particle transport model detector response calculations and statistical sampling. In the methodology presented here, HPGe measurements inform model source terms while detector response calculations are validated via long dwell measurements using 2” $\times 4$ ” $\times 16$ ” NaI(Tl) detectors at a variety of measurement points. A collection of responses, along with sampling methods and interpolation, can be used to create data sets to gauge radiation detector and algorithm (including detection, identification, and localization) performance under a variety of scenarios. Data collected at the FTIG site are available for query, filtering, visualization, and download at muse.lbl.gov. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper describes a novel inversion algorithm for determining the 3-D position coordinates and environmental complex permittivity of wireless nodes embedded in a dispersive propagation media. In this paper, wireless sensors are considered to form part of a network for monitoring salient parameters, such as temperature and humidity, in large wheat-filled storage vessels, where the highly reflective nature of the propagation environment engenders extreme multipath effects. Under such conditions, the inherent difficulties in deriving reliable pulse propagation delay and amplitude estimates greatly diminishes the effectiveness of conventional free-space positioning methods. These limitations have lead to the development of alternative inversion techniques capable of retrieving both geometric positioning and electromagnetic propagation data. The inversion algorithm developed within is formulated as a nonlinear least squares problem in which the misfit between time domain positioning measurements and modeled data is minimized via application of a novel minimum single-level linkage optimization algorithm. In developing a more refined propagation forward solution incorporating position coordinates, host media electromagnetic properties and antenna radiation patterns, accurate positioning resolutions and macroscopic permittivity estimates are obtained under challenging propagation conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]