Traffic signal phase and timing (TSPaT) information is valuable for various applications, such as velocity advisory systems, navigation systems, collision warning systems, and so forth. In this paper, we focus on learning baseline timing cycle lengths for fixed-time traffic signals. The cycle length is the most important parameter among all timing parameters, such as green lengths. We formulate the cycle length learning problem as a period estimation problem using a sparse set of noisy observations, and propose the most frequent approximate greatest common divisor (MFAGCD) algorithms to solve the problem. The accuracy performance of our proposed algorithms is experimentally evaluated on both simulation data and the real taxi GPS trajectory data collected in Shanghai, China. Experimental results show that the MFAGCD algorithms have better sparsity and outliers tolerant capabilities than existing cycle length estimation algorithms.

Malware phylogeny refers to inferring evolutionary relationships between instances of families. It has gained a lot of attention over the past several years, due to its efficiency in accelerating reverse engineering of new variants within families. Previous researches mainly focused on tree-based models. However, those approaches merely demonstrate lineage of families using dendrograms or directed trees with rough evolution information. In this paper, we propose a novel malware phylogeny construction method taking advantage of persistent phylogeny tree model, whose nodes correspond to input instances and edges represent the gain or lost of functional characters. It can not only depict directed ancestor-descendant relationships between malware instances, but also show concrete function inheritance and variation between ancestor and descendant, which is significant in variants defense. We evaluate our algorithm on three malware families and one benign family whose ground truth are known, and compare with competing algorithms. Experiments demonstrate that our method achieves a higher mean accuracy of 61.4%.

In this letter, we propose a sequential convolutional residual network, where we first analyze a tangled network architecture using simplified equations and determine the critical point to untangle the complex network architecture. Although the residual network shows good performance, the learning efficiency is not better than expected at deeper layers because the network is excessively intertwined. To solve this problem, we propose a network in which the information is transmitted sequentially. In this network architecture, the neighboring layer output adds the input of the current layer and iteratively passes its result to the next sequential layer. Thus, the proposed network can improve the learning efficiency and performance by successfully mitigating the complexity in deep networks. We show that the proposed network performs well on the Cifar-10 and Cifar-100 datasets. In particular, we prove that the proposed method is superior to the baseline method as the depth increases.

This paper improves radiation patterns and impedance matching of a broadband sleeve dipole antenna. A broadband sleeve dipole antenna is designed and the effect of the structure parameters on the |S11| characteristics is calculated. Current distributions of the resonance frequencies are calculated. A broadband sleeve dipole antenna with plate element is proposed. Better impedance matching is obtained by adjusting the size of the plate element. The nulls of the radiation patterns are reduced at high frequencies and the gain in the horizontal direction is improved.

Stochastic resonance can improve the signal-to-noise ratio of digital baseband signals. However, the output of SR system needs some time for evolution to achieve global steady-state. This paper first analyzes the evolution time of SR systems, which is an important factor for digital baseband signal processing based on SR. This investigation shows that the sampling number per symbol should be rather large, and the minimum sampling number per symbol is deduced according to the evolution time of SR system.

This paper studies a wireless powered communication network (WPCN) with non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) under successive interference cancellation (SIC) constraints, where the users first harvest energy from the power station and then transmit data to the information receiver simultaneously. Under this setup, we investigate the system throughput maximization problem. We first formulate an optimization problem for a general case, which is non-convex. To derive the optimal solution, new variables are introduced to transform the initial problem into a convex optimization problem. For a special case, i.e., two-user case, the optimal solution is derived as a closed-form expression. Simulations on the effect of SIC constraints show the importance of the distinctness among users' channels for the proposed model.

Performance based on multi-party discussion has been reported to be superior to that based on individuals. However, it is impossible that all participants simultaneously express opinions due to the time and space limitations in a large-scale discussion. In particular, only a few representative discussants and audiences can speak in conventional unidirectional discussions (e.g., panel discussion), although many participants gather for the discussion. To solve these problems, in this study, we proposed a cyber-physical discussion using “COLLAGREE,” which we developed for building consensus of large-scale online discussions. COLLAGREE is equipped with functions such as a facilitator, point ranking system, and display of discussion in tree structure. We focused on the relationship between satisfaction with the discussion and participants' desire to express opinions. We conducted the experiment in the panel discussion of an actual international conference. Participants who were audiences in the floor used COLLAGREE during the panel discussion. They responded to questionnaires after the experiment. The main findings are as follows: (1) Participation in online discussion was associated with the satisfaction of the participants; (2) Participants who desired to positively express opinions joined the cyber-space discussion; and (3) The satisfaction of participants who expressed opinions in the cyber-space discussion was higher than those of participants who expressed opinions in the real-space discussion and those who did not express opinions in both the cyber- and real-space discussions. Overall, active behaviors in the cyber-space discussion were associated with participants' satisfaction with the entire discussion, suggesting that cyberspace provided useful alternative opportunities to express opinions for audiences who used to listen to conventional unidirectional discussions passively. In addition, a complementary relationship exists between participation in the cyber-space and real-space discussions. These findings can serve to create a user-friendly discussion environment.

Recently, the join processing of large-scale datasets in MapReduce environments has become an important issue. However, the existing MapReduce-based join algorithms suffer from too much overhead for constructing and updating the data index. Moreover, the similarity computation cost is high because the existing algorithms partition data without considering the data distribution. In this paper, we propose two grid-based join algorithms for MapReduce. First, we propose a similarity join algorithm that evenly distributes join candidates using a dynamic grid index, which partitions data considering data density and similarity threshold. We use a bottom-up approach by merging initial grid cells into partitions and assigning them to MapReduce jobs. Second, we propose a k-NN join query processing algorithm for MapReduce. To reduce the data transmission cost, we determine an optimal grid cell size by considering the data distribution of randomly selected samples. Then, we perform kNN join by assigning the only related join data to a reducer. From performance analysis, we show that our similarity join query processing algorithm and our k-NN join algorithm outperform existing algorithms by up to 10 times, in terms of query processing time.

Recently, the opportunity to discuss topics on a variety of online discussion bulletin boards has been increasing. However, it can be difficult to understand the contents of each discussion as the number of posts increases. Therefore, it is important to generate headlines that can automatically summarize each post in order to understand the contents of each discussion at a glance. In this paper, we propose a method to extract and generate post headlines for online discussion bulletin boards, automatically. We propose templates with multiple patterns to extract important sentences from the posts. In addition, we propose a method to generate headlines by matching the templates with the patterns. Then, we evaluate the effectiveness of our proposed method using questionnaires.

The intermediate frequency-over-fiber (IFoF) technology has attracted attention as an alternative transmission scheme to the functional split for the next-generation mobile fronthaul links due to its high spectral efficiency and perfect centralized control ability. In this paper, we discuss and clarify network architectures suited for IFoF, based on its advantages over the functional split. One of the major problems for IFoF transmission is dispersion-induced RF power fading, which limits capacity and transmission distance. We introduce our previous work, in which high-capacity and long-distance IFoF transmission was demonstrated by utilizing a parallel intensity/phase modulators (IM/PM) transmitter which can effectively avoid the fading. The IFoF technology with the proposed scheme is well suited for the long-distance mobile fronthaul links for the 5th generation (5G) mobile system and beyond.

In this paper, a new array geometry is proposed which is capable of performing underdetermined Direction-Of-Arrival (DOA) estimation for the circular array configuration. DOA estimation is a classical problem and one of the most important techniques in array signal processing as it has applications in wireless and mobile communications, acoustics, and seismic sensing. We consider the problem of estimating DOAs in the case when we have more sources than the number of physical sensors where the resolution must be maintained. The proposed array geometry called Nested Sparse Circular Array (NSCA) is an extension of the two level nested linear array obtained by nesting two sub-circular arrays and one element is placed at the origin. In order to extend the array aperture, a Khatri-Rao (KR) approach is applied to the proposed NSCA which yields the virtual array structure. To utilize the increase in the degrees of freedom (DOFs) that this new array provides, a subspace based approach (MUSIC) for DOA estimation and l1-based optimization approach is extended to estimate DOAs using NSCA. Simulations show that better performance for underdetermined DOA estimation is achieved using the proposed array geometry.

This paper demonstrates the suppressing power of 10 Gbps On Off keyed signal using biased half-wave rectification. Authors have previously reported that radio frequency (RF) and optical on-off keying (OOK) signal can be simultaneously transmitted over the radio over fiber (RoF) link [1]. Since the optical OOK signal has much broader bandwidth compared to RF signal, it interferes with RF signal. Reference [1] experimentally shows that the optical OOK signal degrades the RF signal in terms of signal-to-noise power ratio (SNR) when 10 Gbps OOK and 1.9 GHz microwave are employed as baseband and RF, respectively. This paper proposes an interference suppression, and the proposal is subsequently used for detecting the RF signal. Experiments are conducted for the purpose of the proof-of-concept of the proposal. Finally numerical simulations are employed to show the performance enhancement in terms of error vector magnitude (EVM).

This paper presents a 27.5-29.6GHz fractional-N frequency synthesizer using reference and frequency doublers to achieve low in-band and out-of-band phase-noise for 5G mobile communications. A consideration of the baseband carrier recovery circuit helps estimate phase noise requirement for high modulation scheme. The push-push amplifier and 28GHz balun help achieving differential signals with low out-of-band phase noise while consuming low power. A charge pump with gated offset as well as reference doubler help reducing PD noise resulting in low in-band phase noise while sampling loop filter helps reduce spurs. The proposed synthesizer has been implemented in 65nm CMOS technology achieving an in-band and out-of-band phase noise of -78dBc/Hz and -126dBc/Hz, respectively. It consumes only a total power of 33mW. The jitter-power figure-of-merit (FOM) is -231dB which is the highest among the state of the art >20GHz fractional-N PLLs using a low reference clock (<200MHz). The measured reference spurs are less than -80dBc.

The impedance expansion method (IEM), which was previously proposed by the authors, is a circuit-modeling technique for electrically-very-small devices. The equivalent circuits derived by the IEM include dependent voltage sources proportional to the powers of the frequency. However, the previous report did not describe how circuit simulators could realize such dependent voltage sources. This paper shows how this can be achieved by approximating the equivalent circuit using only passive elements.

This work presents a hybrid formulation of the stochastic reduced order model (SROM) algorithm, which makes use of Gauss quadrature, a key ingredient of the stochastic collocation method, to avoid the cumbersome optimization process required by SROM for optimal extraction of the sample set. With respect to classic SROM algorithms, the proposed formulation allows a significant reduction in computation time and burden as well as a remarkable improvement in the accuracy and convergence rate in the estimation of statistical moments. The method is here applied to a specific case study, that is the prediction of crosstalk in a two-conductor wiring structure with electrical and geometrical parameters not perfectly known. Both univariate and multivariate analyses are carried out, with the final objective being to compare the performance of the two SROM formulations with respected to Monte Carlo simulations.

Developing a robust appearance model is a challenging task due to appearance variations of objects such as partial occlusion, illumination variation, rotation and background clutter. Existing tracking algorithms employ linear combinations of target templates to represent target appearances, which are not accurate enough to deal with appearance variations. The underlying relationship between target candidates and the target templates is highly nonlinear because of complicated appearance variations. To address this, this paper presents a regularized kernel representation for visual tracking. Namely, the feature vectors of target appearances are mapped into higher dimensional features, in which a target candidate is approximately represented by a nonlinear combination of target templates in a dimensional space. The kernel based appearance model takes advantage of considering the non-linear relationship and capturing the nonlinear similarity between target candidates and target templates. l2-regularization on coding coefficients makes the approximate solution of target representations more stable. Comprehensive experiments demonstrate the superior performances in comparison with state-of-the-art trackers.

A dynamic neural network has ternary connection parameters and can generate various binary periodic orbits. In order to analyze the dynamics, we present two feature quantities which characterize stability and transient phenomenon of a periodic orbit. Calculating the feature quantities, we investigate influence of connection sparsity on stability of a target periodic orbit corresponding to a circuit control signal. As the sparsity increases, at first, stability of a target periodic orbit tends to be stronger. In the next, the stability tends to be weakened and various transient phenomena exist. In the most sparse case, the network has many periodic orbits without transient phenomenon.

In this letter, we consider the power allocation scheme with rate proportional fairness to maximize energy efficiency in the downlink the non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) systems. The optimization problem of energy efficiency is a non-convex optimization problem, and the fractional programming is used to transform the original problem into a series of optimization sub-problems. A two-layer iterative algorithm is proposed to solve these sub-problems, in which power allocation with the fixed energy efficiency is achieved in the inner layer, and the optimal energy efficiency of the system is obtained by the bisection method in the outer layer. Simulation results show the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm.

This paper presents a supervised method to classify a document at the sub-sentence level. Traditionally, sentiment analysis often classifies sentence polarity based on word features, syllable features, or N-gram features. A sentence, as a whole, may contain several phrases and words which carry their own specific sentiment. However, classifying a sentence based on phrases and words can sometimes be incoherent because they are ungrammatically formed. In order to overcome this problem, we need to arrange words and phrase in a dependency form to capture their semantic scope of sentiment. Thus, we transform a sentence into a dependency tree structure. A dependency tree is composed of subtrees, and each subtree allocates words and syllables in a grammatical order. Moreover, a sentence dependency tree structure can mitigate word sense ambiguity or solve the inherent polysemy of words by determining their word sense. In our experiment, we provide the details of the proposed subtree polarity classification for sub-opinion analysis. To conclude our discussion, we also elaborate on the effectiveness of the analysis result.

Spatio-temporal dependent data, such as weather observation data, are data of which the attribute values depend on both time and space. Typical methods for the visualization of such data include plotting the attribute values at each point in time on a map and displaying series of the maps in chronological order with animation, or displaying them by juxtaposing horizontally or vertically. However, these methods are problematic in that they compel readers interested in grasping the spatial changes of the attribute values to memorize the representations on the maps. The problem is exacerbated by considering that the longer the time-period covered by the data, the higher the cognitive load. In order to solve these problems, the authors propose a visualization method capable of overlaying the representations of multiple instantaneous values on a single static map. This paper explains the design of the proposed method and reports two experiments conducted by the authors to investigate the usefulness of the method. The experimental results show that the proposed method is useful in terms of the speed and accuracy with which it reads the spatial changes and its ability to present data with long time series efficiently.