Recently, adaptive streaming over information centric network (ICN) has attracted attention. In adaptive streaming over ICN, the bitrate adaptation of the client often overestimates a bitrate for available bandwidth due to congestion because the client implicitly estimates congestion status from the content download procedures of ICN. As a result, streaming overestimated bitrate results in QoE degradation of clients such as cause of a stall time and frequent variation of the bitrate. In this paper, we propose a congestion-aware adaptive streaming over ICN combined with the explicit congestion notification (CAAS with ECN) to avoid QoE degradation. CAAS with ECN encourages explicit feedback of congestion detected in the router on the communication path, and introduces the upper band of the selectable bitrate (bitrate-cap) based on explicit feedback from the router to the bitrate adaptation of the clients. We evaluate the effectiveness of CAAS with ECN for client's QoE degradation due to congestion and behavior on the QoS metrics based on throughput. The simulation experiments show that the bitrate adjustment for all the clients improves QoE degradation and QoE fairness due to effective congestion avoidance.

Shape matching with local descriptors is an underlying scheme in shape analysis. We can visually confirm the matching results and also assess them for shape classification. Generally, shape matching is implemented by determining the correspondence between shapes that are represented by their respective sets of sampled points. Some matching methods have already been proposed; the main difference between them lies in their choice of matching cost function. This function measures the dissimilarity between the local distribution of sampled points around a focusing point of one shape and the local distribution of sampled points around a referring point of another shape. A local descriptor is used to describe the distribution of sampled points around the point of the shape. In this paper, we propose an extended scheme for shape matching that can compensate for errors in existing local descriptors. It is convenient for local descriptors to adopt our scheme because it does not require the local descriptors to be modified. The main idea of our scheme is to consider the correspondence of neighboring sampled points to a focusing point when determining the correspondence of the focusing point. This is useful because it increases the chance of finding a suitable correspondence. However, considering the correspondence of neighboring points causes a problem regarding computational feasibility, because there is a substantial increase in the number of possible correspondences that need to be considered in shape matching. We solve this problem using a branch-and-bound algorithm, for efficient approximation. Using several shape datasets, we demonstrate that our scheme yields a more suitable matching than the conventional scheme that does not consider the correspondence of neighboring sampled points, even though our scheme requires only a small increase in execution time.

In a smart home environment, sensors generate events whenever activities of residents are captured. However, due to some factors, abnormal events could be generated, which are technically reasonable but contradict to real-world activities. To detect abnormal events, a number of methods has been introduced, e.g., clustering-based or snapshot-based approaches. However, they have limitations to deal with complicated anomalies which occur with large number of events and blended within normal sensor readings. In this paper, we propose a novel method of detecting sensor anomalies under smart home environment by considering spatial correlation and dependable correlation between sensors. Initially, we pre-calculate these correlations of every pair of two sensors to discover their relations. Then, from periodic sensor readings, if it has any unmatched relations to the pre-computed ones, an anomaly is detected on the correlated sensor. Through extensive evaluations with real datasets, we show that the proposed method outperforms previous approaches with 20% improvement on detection rate and reasonably low false positive rate.

Temperature-independent zero-zero-birefringence polymer (TIZZBP), which exhibits very small birefringence over the wide temperature range, is required to realize real-color images for displays, particularly vehicle-mounted displays. Previously, a TIZZBP was synthesized, but they did not put into practical use because of their too complex composition and low mechanical strength. In this paper, we propose a practical TIZZBP that has high heat resistance, high transparency and sufficient mechanical strength, using a simple binary copolymerization system. Our proposed novel polymer exhibits very low photoelastic birefringence and very low orientational birefringence. Both types of birefringence of this TIZZBP satisfy the negligible levels for displays, which are defined as follows: the absolute values of photoelastic coefficient and intrinsic birefringence are less than 1 ×10-12 Pa-1 and 1 ×10-3, respectively. In addition, temperature dependency of orientational birefringence was very low. Orientational birefringence satisfies the negligible level all over the temperature range from around -40°C to 85°C. This temperature range is important because it is the operational temperature range for vehicle-mounted display. Furthermore, our proposed novel TIZZBP showed high heat resistance, high transparency and sufficient mechanical strength. The glass transition temperature was 194°C. The total light transmittance and the haze value is more than 91% and less than 1%, respectively. The tensile strength of non-oriented films was 35 ~ 50 MPa. These results suggest our proposed novel TIZZBP has high practicality in addition to very low birefringence. Therefore, this TIZZBP film will be very useful for various displays including vehicle-mounted displays and flexible displays.

This paper studies the infinite time horizon optimal control problem for continuous-time nonlinear systems. A completely model-free approximate optimal control design method is proposed, which only makes use of the real-time measured data from trajectories instead of a dynamical model of the system. This approach is based on the actor-critic structure, where the weights of the critic neural network and the actor neural network are updated sequentially by the method of weighted residuals. It should be noted that an external input is introduced to replace the input-to-state dynamics to improve the control policy. Moreover, strict proof of convergence to the optimal solution along with the stability of the closed-loop system is given. Finally, a numerical example is given to show the efficiency of the method.

In this paper, we clarify the importance of performance evaluation using a plurality of smartphones in a positioning system based on radio waves. Specifically, in a positioning system using bluetooth low energy, the positioning performance of two types of positioning algorithms is performed using a plurality of smartphones. As a result, we confirmed that the fingerprint algorithm does not always provide sufficient positioning performance. It depends on the model of the smartphone used. On the other hand, the hybrid algorithm that the authors have already proposed is robust in the difference of the received signal characteristics of the smartphone. Consequently, we spotlighted that the use of multiple devices is essential for providing high-quality location-based services in real environments in the performance evaluation of radio wave-based positioning systems using smartphones.

Diffusion least-mean-square (LMS) is a method to estimate and track an unknown parameter at multiple nodes in a network. When the unknown vector has sparsity, the sparse promoting version of diffusion LMS, which utilizes a sparse regularization term in the cost function, is known to show better convergence performance than that of the original diffusion LMS. This paper proposes a novel choice of the coefficients involved in the updates of sparse diffusion LMS using the idea of message propagation. Moreover, we optimize the proposed coefficients with respect to mean-square-deviation at the steady-state. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed method outperforms conventional methods in terms of the convergence performance.

The unlicensed spectrum has been utilized to make up the shortage on frequency spectrum in new radio (NR) systems. To fully exploit the advantages brought by the unlicensed bands, one of the key issues is to guarantee the fair coexistence with WiFi systems. To reach this goal, timely and accurate estimation on the WiFi traffic loads is an important prerequisite. In this paper, a machine learning (ML) based method is proposed to detect the number of WiFi users on the unlicensed bands. An unsupervised Neural Network (NN) structure is applied to filter the detected transmission collision probability on the unlicensed spectrum, which enables the NR users to precisely rectify the measurement error and estimate the number of active WiFi users. Moreover, NN is trained online and the related parameters and learning rate of NN are jointly optimized to estimate the number of WiFi users adaptively with high accuracy. Simulation results demonstrate that compared with the conventional Kalman Filter based detection mechanism, the proposed approach has lower complexity and can achieve a more stable and accurate estimation.

Sound event detection (SED) and acoustic scene classification (ASC) are important research topics in environmental sound analysis. Many research groups have addressed SED and ASC using neural-network-based methods, such as the convolutional neural network (CNN), recurrent neural network (RNN), and convolutional recurrent neural network (CRNN). The conventional methods address SED and ASC separately even though sound events and acoustic scenes are closely related to each other. For example, in the acoustic scene “office,” the sound events “mouse clicking” and “keyboard typing” are likely to occur. Therefore, it is expected that information on sound events and acoustic scenes will be of mutual aid for SED and ASC. In this paper, we propose multitask learning for joint analysis of sound events and acoustic scenes, in which the parts of the networks holding information on sound events and acoustic scenes in common are shared. Experimental results obtained using the TUT Sound Events 2016/2017 and TUT Acoustic Scenes 2016 datasets indicate that the proposed method improves the performance of SED and ASC by 1.31 and 1.80 percentage points in terms of the F-score, respectively, compared with the conventional CRNN-based method.

Event-triggered control is a method that the control input is updated only when a certain condition is satisfied (i.e., an event occurs). In this paper, event-triggered control over a sensor network is studied based on the notion of uniformly ultimate boundedness. Since sensors are located in a distributed way, we consider multiple event-triggering conditions. In uniformly ultimate boundedness, it is guaranteed that if the state reaches a certain set containing the origin, the state stays within this set. Using this notion, the occurrence of events in the neighborhood of the origin is inhibited. First, the simultaneous design problem of a controller and event-triggering conditions is formulated. Next, this problem is reduced to an LMI (linear matrix inequality) optimization problem. Finally, the proposed method is demonstrated by a numerical example.

The relationships between producers and consumers have changed radically by the recent growth of sharing economy. Promoting resource sharing can contribute to finding a solution to environmental issues (e.g. reducing food waste, consuming surplus electricity, and so on). Although prosumers have both roles as consumers and suppliers, matching between suppliers and consumers should be determined when the prosumers share resources. Especially, it is important to achieve envy-freeness that is a metric indicating how the number of prosumers feeling unfairness is kept small since the capacity of prosumers to supply resources is limited. Changing resource capacity and demand will make the situation more complex. This paper proposes a resource sharing model based on a temporal network and flows to realize envy-free resource sharing among prosumers. Experimental results demonstrate the deviation of envy among prosumers can be reduced by setting appropriate weights in a flow network.

This paper studies a novel approach to analysis of switched dynamical systems in perspective of bifurcation and multiobjective optimization. As a first step, we analyze a simple switched dynamical system based on a boost converter with photovoltaic input. First, in a bifurcation phenomenon perspective, we consider period doubling bifurcation sets in the parameter space. Second, in a multiobjective optimization perspective, we consider a trade-off between maximum input power and stability. The trade-off is represented by a Pareto front in the objective space. Performing numerical experiments, relationship between the bifurcation sets and the Pareto front is investigated.

C-C successive approximation register analog-to-digital converter (C-C SAR-ADC) is space-saving architecture compared to SAR-ADC with binary weighted capacitive digital-to-analog converter (CDAC). However, the accuracy of C-C SAR-ADC is degraded due to parasitic capacitance of floating nodes. This paper proposes an algorithm calibrating the non-linearity by γ-estimation to accurately estimate radix greater than 2 required to realize C-C SAR-ADC. Behavioral analyses show that the radix γ-estimation error become within 1.5, 0.4 and 0.1% in case of 8-, 10- and 12-bit resolution ADC, respectively. SPICE simulations show that the γ-estimation satisfies the requirement of 10-bit resolution C-C SAR-ADC. The C-C SAR-ADC using γ-estimation achieves 9.72bit of ENOB, 0.8/-0.5LSB and 0.5/-0.4LSB of DNL/INL.

In this paper, we investigate a model-free design of decentralized event-triggered mechanism for networked control systems (NCSs). The approach aims at simultaneously tuning the optimal parameters for the controller and the event-triggered condition, such that a prescribed cost function can be minimized. To achieve this goal, we employ the Bayesian optimization (BO), which is known to be an automatic tuning framework for finding the optimal solution to the black-box optimization problem. Thanks to its efficient search strategy for the global optimum, the BO allows us to design the event-triggered mechanism with relatively a small number of experimental evaluations. This is particularly suited for NCSs where network resources such as the limited life-time of battery powered devices are limited. Some simulation examples illustrate the effectiveness of the approach.

This paper proposes a route calculation method for a bicycle navigation system that complies with traffic regulations. The extension of the node map and three kinds of route calculation methods are constructed and evaluated on the basis of travel times and system acceptability survey results. Our findings reveal the effectiveness of the proposed route calculation method and the acceptability of the bicycle navigation system that included the method.

For exploration of the functional use of dielectric anisotropy of liquid crystals (LCs), we investigated the dynamic response of molecular alignment in a nematic-phase LC cell with compressive force-induced flow behavior. The results showed that the initial alignment and thickness of the LC layer affect the capacitance of the cell when mechanical pressure is applied.

This letter presents an image quality assessment (IQA) metric for scanning electron microscopy (SEM) images based on texture inpainting. Inspired by the observation that the texture information of SEM images is quite sensitive to distortions, a texture inpainting network is first trained to extract texture features. Then the weights of the trained texture inpainting network are transferred to the IQA network to help it learn an effective texture representation of the distorted image. Finally, supervised fine-tuning is conducted on the IQA network to predict the image quality score. Experimental results on the SEM image quality dataset demonstrate the advantages of the presented method.

Universal filtered multicarrier (UFMC) systems offer a flexibility of filtering sub-bands with arbitrary bandwidth to suppress out-of-band (OoB) emission, while keeping the orthogonality between subcarriers in one sub-band. Oscillator discrepancies between the transmitter and receiver induce carrier frequency offset (CFO) in practical systems. In this paper, we propose a novel CFO estimation method for UFMC systems that has very low computational complexity and can then be used in practical systems. In order to fully exploit the coherence bandwidth of the channel, the training symbols are designed to have several identical segments in the frequency domain. As a result, the integral part of CFO can be estimated by simply determining the correlation between received signal and the training symbol. Simulation results show that the proposed method can achieve almost the same performance as an existing method and even a better performance in channels that have small decay parameter values. The proposed method can also be used in other multicarrier systems, such as orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM).

Image deformations caused by different steganographic methods are typically extremely small and highly similar, which makes their detection and identification to be a difficult task. Although recent steganalytic methods using deep learning have achieved high accuracy, they have been made to detect stego images to which specific steganographic methods have been applied. In this letter, a staganalytic method is proposed that uses hierarchical residual neural networks (ResNet), allowing detection (i.e. classification between stego and cover images) and identification of four spatial steganographic methods (i.e. LSB, PVD, WOW and S-UNIWARD). Experimental results show that using hierarchical ResNets achieves a classification rate of 79.71% in quinary classification, which is approximately 23% higher compared to using a plain convolutional neural network (CNN).

A method for the calibration of S11 at the front surface of a material for a coaxial-feed type cut-off circular waveguide with three reference materials inserted and no short termination condition was proposed as a preliminary step for dielectric measurement in liquids. The equations for jig calibration of S11 with these reference materials were first defined, and the electrostatic capacitance for the analytical model unique to the jig was quantified by substituting the reflection constant (calculated at frequencies of 0.50, 1.5 and 3.0 GHz using the mode-matching (MM) technique) into the equivalent circuit, assuming the sample liquid in the jig. The accuracy of S11 measured using the proposed method was then verified. S11 for the front surface of the sample material was also measured with various liquids in the jig after calibration, and the dielectric constants of the liquids were estimated as an inverse problem based on comparison of S11 calculated from an analytical model using EM analysis via the MM technique with the measured S11 values described above. The effectiveness of the proposed S11 calibration method was verified by comparison with dielectric constants estimated after S11 SOM (short, open and reference material) calibration and similar, with results showing favorable agreement with each method.