The study proposes a personalised session-based recommender system that embeds items by using Word2Vec and sequentially updates the session and user embeddings with the hierarchicalization and aggregation of item embeddings. To process a recommendation request, the system constructs a real-time user embedding that considers users’ general preferences and sequential behaviour to handle short-term changes in user preferences with a low computational cost. The system performance was experimentally evaluated in terms of the accuracy, diversity, and novelty of the ranking of recommended items and the training and prediction times of the system for three different datasets. The results of these evaluations were then compared with those of the five baseline systems. According to the evaluation experiment, the proposed system achieved a relatively high recommendation accuracy compared with baseline systems and the diversity and novelty scores of the proposed system did not fall below 90% for any dataset. Furthermore, the training times of the Word2Vec-based systems, including the proposed system, were shorter than those of FPMC and GRU4Rec. The evaluation results suggest that the proposed recommender system succeeds in keeping the computational cost for training low while maintaining high-level recommendation accuracy, diversity, and novelty.

Use case descriptions describe features consisting of multiple concepts with following a procedural flow. Because existing feature location techniques lack a relation between concepts in such features, it is difficult to identify the concepts in the source code with high accuracy. This paper presents a technique to locate concepts in a feature described in a use case description consisting of multiple use case steps using dependency between them. We regard each use case step as a description of a concept and apply an existing concept location technique to the descriptions of concepts and obtain lists of modules. Also, three types of dependencies: time, call, and data dependencies among use case steps are extracted based on their textual description. Modules in the obtained lists failing to match the dependency between concepts are filtered out. Thus, we can obtain more precise lists of modules. We have applied our technique to use case descriptions in a benchmark. Results show that our technique outperformed baseline setting without applying the filtering.

Previously a method was reported to determine the mathematical representation of the microwave oscillator admittance by using numerical calculation. When analyzing the load characteristics and synchronization phenomena by using this formula, the analysis results meet with the experimental results. This paper describes a method to determine the mathematical representation manually.

Model-based sensorless control of permanent magnet synchronous motor (PMSM) is promising for high-speed operation to estimate motor state, which is the speed and the position of the rotor, via electric signals of the stator, beside the inevitable fact that estimation accuracy is degraded by electromagnet interference (EMI) from switching devices of the converter. In this paper, the simulation system based on Luenberger observer and phase-locked loop (PLL) has been established, analyzing impacts of EMI on motor state estimations theoretically, exploring influences of EMI with different cutoff frequency, rated speeds, frequencies and amplitudes. The results show that Luenberger observer and PLL have strong immunity, which enable PMSM can still operate stably even under certain degrees of interference. EMI produces sideband harmonics that enlarge pulsation errors of speed and position estimations. Additionally, estimation errors are positively correlated with cutoff frequency of low-pass filter and the amplitude of EMI, and negatively correlated with rated speed of the motor and the frequency of EMI.  When the frequency is too high, its effects on motor state estimations are negligible. This work contributes to the comprehensive understanding of how EMI affects motor state estimations, which further enhances practical application of sensorless PMSM.

With the development of drone technology, concerns have arisen about the possibility of drones being equipped with threat payloads for terrorism and other crimes. A drone detection system that can detect drones carrying payloads is needed. A drone’s propeller rotation frequency increases with payload weight. Therefore, a method for estimating propeller rotation frequency will effectively detect the presence or absence of a payload and its weight. In this paper, we propose a method for classifying the payload weight of a drone by estimating its propeller rotation frequency from radar images obtained using a millimeter-wave fast-chirp-modulation multiple-input and multiple-output (MIMO) radar. For each drone model, the proposed method requires a pre-prepared reference dataset that establishes the relationships between the payload weight and propeller rotation frequency. Two experimental measurement cases were conducted to investigate the effectiveness of our proposal. In case 1, we assessed four drones (DJI Matrice 600, DJI Phantom 3, DJI Mavic Pro, and DJI Mavic Mini) to determine whether the propeller rotation frequency of any drone could be correctly estimated. In case 2, experiments were conducted on a hovering Phantom 3 drone with several payloads in a stable position for calculating the accuracy of the payload weight classification. The experimental results indicated that the proposed method could estimate the propeller rotation frequency of any drone and classify payloads in a 250 g step with high accuracy.

Cloud gaming systems allow users to play games that require high-performance computational capability on their mobile devices at any location. However, playing games through cloud gaming systems increases the Round-Trip Time (RTT) due to increased network delay. To simulate a local gaming experience for cloud users, we must minimize RTTs, which include network delays. The speculative video transmission pre-generates and encodes video frames corresponding to all possible user inputs and sends them to the user before the user’s input. The speculative video transmission mitigates the network, whereas a simple solution significantly increases the video traffic. This paper proposes tile-wise delta detection for traffic reduction of speculative video transmission. More specifically, the proposed method determines a reference video frame from the generated video frames and divides the reference video frame into multiple tiles. We calculate the similarity between each tile of the reference video frame and other video frames based on a hash function. Based on calculated similarity, we determine redundant tiles and do not transmit them to reduce traffic volume in minimal processing time without implementing a high compression ratio video compression technique. Evaluations using commercial games showed that the proposed method reduced 40-50% in traffic volume when the SSIM index was around 0.98 in certain genres, compared with the speculative video transmission method. Furthermore, to evaluate the feasibility of the proposed method, we investigated the effectiveness of network delay reduction with existing computational capability and the requirements in the future. As a result, we found that the proposed scheme may mitigate network delay by one to two frames, even with existing computational capability under limited conditions.

The very high path loss caused by molecular absorption becomes the biggest problem in Terahertz (THz) wireless communications. Recently, the multi-band ultra-massive multi-input multi-output (UM-MIMO) system has been proposed to overcome the distance problem. In UM-MIMO systems, the impact of mutual coupling among antennas on the system performance is unable to be ignored because of the dense array. In this letter, a channel model of UM-MIMO communication system is developed which considers coupling effect. The effect of mutual coupling in the subarray on the functionality of the system has been investigated through simulation studies, and reliable results have been derived.

In this letter, a deep neural network (DNN) aided joint source-channel (JSCC) decoding scheme is proposed for polar codes. In the proposed scheme, an integrated factor graph with an unfolded structure is first designed. Then a DNN aided flooding belief propagation decoding (FBP) algorithm is proposed based on the integrated factor, in which both source and channel scaling parameters in the BP decoding are optimized for better performance. Experimental results show that, with the proposed DNN aided FBP decoder, the polar coded JSCC scheme can have about 2-2.5 dB gain over different source statistics p with source message length NSC = 128 and 0.2-1 dB gain over different source statistics p with source message length NSC = 512 over the polar coded JSCC system with existing BP decoder.

We present a novel adversarial, end-to-end framework based on Creative-GAN to generate artistic music conditioned on dance videos. Our proposed framework takes the visual and motion posture data as input, and then adopts a quantized vector as the audio representation to generate complex music corresponding to input. However, the GAN algorithm just imitate and reproduce works what humans have created, instead of generating something new and creative. Therefore, we newly introduce Creative-GAN, which extends the original GAN framework to two discriminators, one is to determine whether it is real music, and the other is to classify music style. The paper shows that our proposed Creative-GAN can generate novel and interesting music which is not found in the training dataset. To evaluate our model, a comprehensive evaluation scheme is introduced to make subjective and objective evaluation. Compared with the advanced methods, our experimental results performs better in measureing the music rhythm, generation diversity, dance-music correlation and overall quality of generated music.

The detection of hardware trojans has been extensively studied in the past. In this article, we propose a side-channel analysis technique that uses a wrapper-based feature selection technique for hardware trojan detection. The whale optimization algorithm is modified to carefully extract the best feature subset. The aim of the proposed technique is multiobjective: improve the accuracy and minimize the number of features. The power consumption traces measured from AES-128 trojan circuits are used as features in this experiment. The stabilizing property of the feature selection method helps to bring a mutual trade-off between the precision and recall parameters thereby minimizing the number of false negatives. The proposed hardware trojan detection scheme produces a maximum of 10.3% improvement in accuracy and reduction up to a single feature by employing the modified whale optimization technique. Thus the evaluation results conducted on various trust-hub cryptographic benchmark circuits prove to be efficient from the existing state-of-art methods.

When a mathematical model is not available for a dynamical system, it is reasonable to use a data-driven approach for analysis and control of the system. With this motivation, the authors have recently developed a data-driven solution to Lyapunov equations, which uses not the model but the data of several state trajectories of the system. However, the number of state trajectories to uniquely determine the solution is O(n2) for the dimension n of the system. This prevents us from applying the method to a case with a large n. Thus, this paper proposes a novel class of data-driven Lyapunov equations, which requires a smaller amount of data. Although the previous method constructs one scalar equation from one state trajectory, the proposed method constructs three scalar equations from any combination of two state trajectories. Based on this idea, we derive data-driven Lyapunov equations such that the number of state trajectories to uniquely determine the solution is O(n).

In interdependent systems, such as electric power systems, entities or components mutually depend on each other. Due to these interdependencies, a small number of initial failures can propagate throughout the system, resulting in catastrophic system failures. This paper addresses the problem of finding the set of entities whose failures will have the worst effects on the system. To this end, a two-phase algorithm is developed. In the first phase, the tight bound on failure propagation steps is computed using a Boolean Satisfiablility (SAT) solver. In the second phase, the problem is formulated as an Integer Linear Programming (ILP) problem using the obtained step bound and solved with an ILP solver. Experimental results show that the algorithm scales to large problem instances and outperforms a single-phase algorithm that uses a loose step bound.

A PBN is well known as a mathematical model of complex network systems such as gene regulatory networks. In Boolean networks, interactions between nodes (e.g., genes) are modeled by Boolean functions. In PBNs, Boolean functions are switched probabilistically. In this paper, for a PBN, a simplified representation that is effective in analysis and control is proposed. First, after a polynomial representation of a PBN is briefly explained, a simplified representation is derived. Here, the steady-state value of the expected value of the state is focused, and is characterized by a minimum feedback vertex set of an interaction graph expressing interactions between nodes. Next, using this representation, input selection and stabilization are discussed. Finally, the proposed method is demonstrated by a biological example.

In this paper, we consider a distributed stochastic nonconvex optimization problem for multiagent systems. We propose a distributed stochastic gradient-tracking method with event-triggered communication. A group of agents cooperatively finds a critical point of the sum of local cost functions, which are smooth but not necessarily convex. We show that the proposed algorithm achieves a sublinear convergence rate by appropriately tuning the step size and the trigger threshold. Moreover, we show that agents can effectively solve a nonconvex optimization problem by the proposed event-triggered algorithm with less communication than by the existing time-triggered gradient-tracking algorithm. We confirm the validity of the proposed method by numerical experiments.

A wireless sensor terminal module of 5cc size (2.5 cm × 2.5 cm × 0.8 cm) that does not require a battery is proposed by integrating three kinds of circuit technologies. (i) a low-power sensor interface: an FM modulation type CMOS sensor interface circuit that can operate with a typical power consumption of 24.5 μW was fabricated by the 0.7-μm CMOS process technology. (ii) power supply to the sensor interface circuit: a wireless power transmission characteristic to a small-sized PCB spiral coil antenna was clarified and applied to the module. (iii) wireless sensing from the module: backscatter communication technology that modulates the signal from the base terminal equipment with sensor information and reflects it, which is used for the low-power sensing operation. The module fabricated includes a rectifier circuit with the PCB spiral coil antenna that receives wireless power transmitted from base terminal equipment by electromagnetic resonance coupling and converts it into DC power and a sensor interface circuit that operates using the power. The interface circuit modulates the received signal with the sensor information and reflects it back to the base terminal. The module could achieve 100 mm communication distance when 0.4 mW power is feeding to the sensor terminal.

Infrared and visible image fusion can combine the thermal radiation information and the textures to provide a high-quality fused image. In this letter, we propose a hybrid variational fusion model to achieve this end. Specifically, an ℓ0 term is adopted to preserve the highlighted targets with salient gradient variation in the infrared image, an ℓ1 term is used to suppress the noise in the fused image and an ℓ2 term is employed to keep the textures of the visible image. Experimental results demonstrate the superiority of the proposed variational model and our results have more sharpen textures with less noise.

With the recent advances in IoT, there is a growing interest in multi-surface computing, where a mobile app can cooperatively utilize multiple devices' surfaces. We propose a novel framework that seamlessly augments mobile apps with multi-surface computing capabilities. It enables various apps to employ multiple surfaces with acceptable performance.

In this note, we consider the problem of finding a step-by-step transformation between two longest increasing subsequences in a sequence, namely LONGEST INCREASING SUBSEQUENCE RECONFIGURATION. We give a polynomial-time algorithm for deciding whether there is a reconfiguration sequence between two longest increasing subsequences in a sequence. This implies that INDEPENDENT SET RECONFIGURATION and TOKEN SLIDING are polynomial-time solvable on permutation graphs, provided that the input two independent sets are largest among all independent sets in the input graph. We also consider a special case, where the underlying permutation graph of an input sequence is bipartite. In this case, we give a polynomial-time algorithm for finding a shortest reconfiguration sequence (if it exists).

Owing to the several cases wherein abnormal sounds, called adventitious sounds, are included in the lung sounds of a patient suffering from pulmonary disease, the objective of this study was to automatically detect abnormal sounds from auscultatory sounds. To this end, we expressed the acoustic features of the normal lung sounds of healthy people and abnormal lung sounds of patients using Gaussian mixture model (GMM)-hidden Markov models (HMMs), and distinguished between normal and abnormal lung sounds. In our previous study, we constructed left-to-right GMM-HMMs with a limited number of states. Because we expressed abnormal sounds that occur intermittently and repeatedly using limited states, the GMM-HMMs could not express the acoustic features of abnormal sounds. Furthermore, because the analysis frame length and intervals were long, the GMM-HMMs could not express the acoustic features of short time segments, such as heart sounds. Therefore, the classification rate of normal and abnormal respiration was low (86.60%). In this study, we propose the construction of ergodic GMM-HMMs with a repetitive structure for intermittent sounds. Furthermore, we considered a suitable frame length and frame interval to analyze acoustic features. Using the ergodic GMM-HMM, which can express the acoustic features of abnormal sounds and heart sounds that occur repeatedly in detail, the classification rate increased (89.34%). The results obtained in this study demonstrated the effectiveness of the proposed method.

Cloud computing has become the mainstream computing paradigm nowadays. More and more data owners (DO) choose to outsource their data to a cloud service provider (CSP), who is responsible for data management and query processing on behalf of DO, so as to cut down operational costs for the DO.  However, in real-world applications, CSP may be untrusted, hence it is necessary to authenticate the query result returned from the CSP.  In this paper, we consider the problem of approximate string query result authentication in the context of database outsourcing. Based on Merkle Hash Tree (MHT) and Trie, we propose an authenticated tree structure named MTrie for authenticating approximate string query results. We design efficient algorithms for query processing and query result authentication. To verify effectiveness of our method, we have conducted extensive experiments on real datasets and the results show that our proposed method can effectively authenticate approximate string query results.