Network Functions Virtualization (NFV) is expected to provide network systems that offer significantly lower cost and greatly flexibility to network service providers and their users. Unfortunately, it is extremely difficult to implement Virtualized Network Functions (VNFs) that can equal the performance of Physical Network Functions. To realize NFV systems that have adequate performance, it is critical to accurately grasp VNF workload. In this paper, we focus on the virtual firewall as a representative VNF. The workload of the virtual firewall is mostly determined by firewall rule processing and the Access Control List (ACL) configurations. Therefore, we first reveal the major factors influencing the workload of the virtual firewall and some issues of monitoring CPU load as a traditional way of understanding the workload of virtual firewalls through preliminary experiments. Additionally, we propose a new workload metric for the virtual firewall that is derived by mathematical models of the firewall workload in consideration of the packet processing in each rule and the ACL configurations. Furthermore, we show the effectiveness of the proposed workload metric through various experiments.

This letter presents numerical results of lossy source coding for non-uniformly distributed binary source with trellis codes. The results show how the performance of trellis codes approaches the rate-distortion function in terms of the number of states.

A real-time road-direction point detection model is developed based on convolutional neural network architecture which can adapt to complex environment. Firstly, the concept of road-direction point is defined for either single road or crossroad. For single road, the predicted road-direction point can serve as a guiding point for a self-driving vehicle to go ahead. In the situation of crossroad, multiple road-direction points can also be detected which will help this vehicle to make a choice from possible directions. Meanwhile, different types of road surface can be classified by this model for both paved roads and unpaved roads. This information will be beneficial for a self-driving vehicle to speed up or slow down according to various road conditions. Finally, the performance of this model is evaluated on different platforms including Jetson TX1. The processing speed can reach 12 FPS on this portable embedded system so that it provides an effective and economic solution of road-direction estimation in the applications of autonomous navigation.

In this study, we first developed a simultaneous measurement system for accommodation and convergence eye movement and evaluated its precision. Then, using a stuffed animal as the target, whose depth should be relatively easy to perceive, we measured convergence eye movement and accommodation at the same time while a tablet displaying a 3D movie was moved in the depth direction. By adding the real 3D display depth movement to the movement of the 3D image, subjects showed convergence eye movement that corresponds appropriately to the dual change of parallax in the 3D movie and real display, even when a subject's convergence changed very little. Accommodation also changed appropriately according to the change in depth.

This paper shows a describing method of an image processing software in C for high-level synthesis (HLS) technology considering function chaining to realize an efficient hardware. A sophisticated image processing would be built on the sequence of several primitives represented as sub-functions like the gray scaling, filtering, binarization, thinning, and so on. Conventionally, generic describing methods for each sub-function so that HLS technology can generate an efficient hardware module have been shown. However, few studies have focused on a systematic describing method of the single top function consisting of the sub-functions chained. According to the proposed method, any number of sub-functions can be chained, maintaining the pipeline structure. Thus, the image processing can achieve the near ideal performance of 1 pixel per clock even when the processing chain is long. In addition, implicitly, the deadlock due to the mismatch of the number of pushes and pops on the FIFO connecting the functions is eliminated and the interpolation of the border pixels is done. The case study on a canny edge detection including the chain of some sub-functions demonstrates that our proposal can easily realize the expected hardware mentioned above. The experimental results on ZYNQ FPGA show that our proposal can be converted to the pipelined hardware with moderate size and achieve the performance gain of more than 70 times compared to the software execution. Moreover, the reconstructed C software program following our proposed method shows the small performance degradation of 8% compared with the pure C software through a comparative evaluation preformed on the Cortex A9 embedded processor in ZYNQ FPGA. This fact indicates that a unified image processing library using HLS software which can be executed on CPU or hardware module for HW/SW co-design can be established by using our proposed describing method.

Three-dimensional (3-D) scattering center models use a finite number of point scatterers to efficiently represent complex radar target signature. Using the CLEAN algorithm, 3-D scattering center model is extracted from the inverse synthetic aperture radar (ISAR) image, which is generated based on the shooting and bouncing ray (SBR) technique. The conventional CLEAN extracts the strongest peak iteratively based on the assumption that the scattering centers are isolated. In a realistic target, however, both interference from the closely spaced points and additive noise distort the extraction process. This paper proposes a matched filter-based CLEAN algorithm to improve accuracy efficiently. Using the matched filtering of which impulse response is the known point spread function (PSF), a point most correlated with the PSF is extracted. Thus, the proposed method optimally enhances the accuracy in the presence of massive distortions. Numerical simulations using canonical and realistic targets demonstrate that the extraction accuracy is improved without loss of time-efficiency compared with the existing CLEAN algorithms.

This paper proposes a novel method of reducing channel state information (CSI) feedback by using transmit antenna selection for downlink multiuser multiple input multiple output (DL-MU-MIMO) transmission in dense distributed antenna systems. It is widely known that DL-MU-MIMO transmission achieves higher total bit-rate by mitigating inter-user interference based on pre-coding techniques. The pre-coding techniques require CSI between access point (AP) and multiple users. However, overhead for CSI acquisition degrades the transmission efficiency of DL-MU-MIMO transmission. In the proposed CSI feedback reduction method, AP first selects the antenna set that maximizes the received power at each user, second it skips the sequence of CSI feedback for users whose signal to interference power ratio is larger than a threshold, and finally it performs DL-MU-MIMO transmission to multiple users by using the selected antenna set. To clarify the proposed method, we evaluate it by computer simulations in an indoor scenario. The results show that the proposed method can offer higher transmission efficiency than the conventional DL-MU-MIMO transmission with the usual CSI feedback method.

The main idea of filter methods in feature selection is constructing a feature-assessing criterion and searching for feature subset that optimizes the criterion. The primary principle of designing such criterion is to capture the relevance between feature subset and the class as precisely as possible. It would be difficult to compute the relevance directly due to the computation complexity when the size of feature subset grows. As a result, researchers adopt approximate strategies to measure relevance. Though these strategies worked well in some applications, they suffer from three problems: parameter determination problem, the neglect of feature interaction information and overestimation of some features. We propose a new feature selection algorithm that could compute mutual information between feature subset and the class directly without deteriorating computation complexity based on the computation of partitions. In light of the specific properties of mutual information and partitions, we propose a pruning rule and a stopping criterion to accelerate the searching speed. To evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm, we compare our algorithm to the other five algorithms in terms of the number of selected features and the classification accuracies on three classifiers. The results on the six synthetic datasets show that our algorithm performs well in capturing interaction information. The results on the thirteen real world datasets show that our algorithm selects less yet better feature subset.

In-band full-duplex (FD) Multiple-Input and Multiple-Output (MIMO) communication performs uplink and downlink transmission at the same time using the same frequency. In this system, the spectral efficiency is theoretically double that of conventional duplex schemes, such as Time Division Duplex (TDD) and Frequency Division Duplex (FDD). However, this system suffers interference because the uplink and downlink streams coexist within the same channel. Especially at the terminal side, it is quite difficult for the terminal to eliminate the interference signals from other terminals since it has no knowledge about the contents of the interference signals. This paper presents an inter-terminal interference suppression method between the uplink and downlink signals assuming the multi-user environment. This method uses eigen-beamforming at the transmitting terminal to direct the null to the other terminal. Since this beamforming technique reduces the degrees of freedom available, the interference suppression performance and transmitting data-rate have a trade-off relation. This study investigates the system capacity characteristics in multi-user full-duplex MIMO communication using the propagation channel information measured in an actual outdoor experiment and shows that the proposed communication scheme offers higher system capacity than the conventional scheme.

Seed detection or sometimes known as nuclei detection is a prerequisite step of nuclei segmentation which plays a critical role in quantitative cell analysis. The detection result is considered as accurate if each detected seed lies only in one nucleus and is close to the nucleus center. In previous works, voting methods are employed to detect nucleus center by extracting the nucleus saliency features. However, these methods still encounter the risk of false seeding, especially for the heterogeneous intensity images. To overcome the drawbacks of previous works, a novel detection method is proposed, which is called secant normal voting. Secant normal voting achieves good performance with the proposed skipping range. Skipping range avoids over-segmentation by preventing false seeding on the occlusion regions. Nucleus centers are obtained by mean-shift clustering from clouds of voting points. In the experiments, we show that our proposed method outperforms the comparison methods by achieving high detection accuracy without sacrificing the computational efficiency.

In this paper, we describe the direct learning of an end-to-end mapping between under-/over-exposed images and well-exposed images. The mapping is represented as a deep convolutional neural network (CNN) that takes multiple-exposure images as input and outputs a high-quality image. Our CNN has a lightweight structure, yet gives state-of-the-art fusion quality. Furthermore, we know that for a given pixel, the influence of the surrounding pixels gradually increases as the distance decreases. If the only pixels considered are those in the convolution kernel neighborhood, the final result will be affected. To overcome this problem, the size of the convolution kernel is often increased. However, this also increases the complexity of the network (too many parameters) and the training time. In this paper, we present a method in which a number of sub-images of the source image are obtained using the same CNN model, providing more neighborhood information for the convolution operation. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed method achieves better performance in terms of both objective evaluation and visual quality.

Compressive spectral imaging (CSI) systems capture the 3D spatiospectral data by measuring the 2D compressed focal plane array (FPA) coded projection with the help of reconstruction algorithms exploiting the sparsity of signals. However, the contradiction between the multi-dimension of the scenes and the limited dimension of the sensors has limited improvement of recovery performance. In order to solve the problem, a novel CSI system based on a coded aperture snapshot spectral imager, RGB-CASSI, is proposed, which has two branches, one for CASSI, another for RGB images. In addition, considering that conventional reconstruction algorithms lead to oversmoothing, a RGB-guided low-rank (RGBLR) method for compressive hyperspectral image reconstruction based on compressed sensing and coded aperture spectral imaging system is presented, in which the available additional RGB information is used to guide the reconstruction and a low-rank regularization for compressive sensing and a non-convex surrogate of the rank is also used instead of nuclear norm for seeking a preferable solution. Experiments show that the proposed algorithm performs better in both PSNR and subjective effects compared with other state-of-art methods.

In recent years, Fischlin and Fleischhacker showed the impossibility of proving the security of specific types of FS-type signatures, the signatures constructed by the Fiat-Shamir transformation, via a single-instance reduction in the non-programmable random oracle model (NPROM, for short). In this paper, we pose a question whether or not the impossibility of proving the security of any FS-type signature can be shown in the NPROM. For this question, we show that each FS-type signature cannot be proven to be secure via a key-preserving reduction in the NPROM from the security against the impersonation of the underlying identification scheme under the passive attack, as long as the identification scheme is secure against the impersonation under the active attack. We also show the security incompatibility between the security of some FS-type signatures in the NPROM via a single-instance key-preserving reduction and the underlying cryptographic assumptions. By applying this result to the Schnorr signature, one can prove the incompatibility between the security of the Schnorr signature in this situation and the discrete logarithm assumption, whereas Fischlin and Fleischhacker showed that such an incompatibility cannot be proven via a non-key-preserving reduction.

In this letter, robust sparse signal recovery is considered in the presence of heavy-tailed impulsive noise. Two Bayesian approaches are developed where a Bayesian framework is constructed by utilizing the Laplace distribution to model the noise. By rewriting the noise-fitting term as a reweighted quadratic function which is optimized in the sparse signal space, the Type I Maximum A Posteriori (MAP) approach is proposed. Next, by exploiting the hierarchical structure of the sparse prior and the likelihood function, we develop the Type II Evidence Maximization approach optimized in the hyperparameter space. The numerical results verify the effectiveness of the proposed methods in the presence of impulsive noise.

This paper deals with the scattering of a cylindrical wave by a perfectly conductive periodic surface. This problem is equivalent to finding the Green's function G(x,z|xs,zs), where (x,z) and (xs,zs) are the observation and radiation source positions above the periodic surface, respectively. It is widely known that the Green's function satisfies the reciprocity: G(x,z|xs,zs)=G(xs,zs|x,z), where G(xs,zs|x,z) is named the reversal Green's function in this paper. So far, there is no numerical method to synthesize the Green's function with the reciprocal property in the grating theory. By combining the shadow theory, the reciprocity theorem for scattering factors and the average filter introduced previously, this paper gives a new numerical method to synthesize the Green's function with reciprocal property. The reciprocity means that any properties of the Green's function can be obtained from the reversal Green's function. Taking this fact, this paper obtains several new formulae on the radiation and scattering from the reversal Green's function, such as a spectral representation of the Green's function, an asymptotic expression of the Green's function in the far region, the angular distribution of radiation power, the total power of radiation and the relative error of power balance. These formulae are simple and easy to use. Numerical examples are given for a very rough periodic surface. Several properties of the radiation and scattering are calculated for a transverse magnetic (TM) case and illustrated in figures.

This paper newly proposes a fast computation technique on the method of image Green's function for p-characteristic calculations, when a plane wave with the transverse wavenumber p is incident on a periodic rough surface having perfect conductivity. In the computation of p-characteristics, based on a spectral domain periodicity of the periodic image Green's function, the image integral equation for a given incidence p maintains the same form for other particular incidences except for the excitation term. By means of a quadrature method, such image integral equations lead to matrix equations. Once the first given matrix equation is performed by a solution procedure as calculations of its matrix elements and its inverse matrix, the other matrix equations for other particular incidences no longer need such a solution procedure. Thus, the total CPU time for the computation of p-characteristics is largely reduced in complex shaped surface cases, huge roughness cases or large period cases.

In the plane wave scattering from a periodic grating high order diffracted plane waves disappear at a low grazing angle limit of incidence. In this paper the scattering of a beam wave by the end-face of an ordered waveguide system composed of identical cores of equal space is treated by the perturbation method and the scattered field is analytically derived. The possibility that high order diffracted beam waves remain at a low grazing angle limit of incidence is shown.

360 videos have recently become a popular virtual reality content type. However, a good quality metric for 360 videos is still an open issue. In this work, our goal is to identify appropriate objective quality metrics for 360 video communications. Especially, fourteen objective quality measures at different processing phases are considered. Also, a subjective test is conducted in this study. The relationship between objective quality and subjective quality is investigated. It is found that most of the PSNR-related quality measures are well correlated with subjective quality. However, for evaluating video quality across different contents, a content-based quality metric is needed.

Knowledge graphs (KG) play a crucial role in many modern applications. However, constructing a KG from natural language text is challenging due to the complex structure of the text. Recently, many approaches have been proposed to transform natural language text to triples to obtain KGs. Such approaches have not yet provided efficient results for mapping extracted elements of triples, especially the predicate, to their equivalent elements in a KG. Predicate mapping is essential because it can reduce the heterogeneity of the data and increase the searchability over a KG. In this article, we propose T2KG, an automatic KG creation framework for natural language text, to more effectively map natural language text to predicates. In our framework, a hybrid combination of a rule-based approach and a similarity-based approach is presented for mapping a predicate to its corresponding predicate in a KG. Based on experimental results, the hybrid approach can identify more similar predicate pairs than a baseline method in the predicate mapping task. An experiment on KG creation is also conducted to investigate the performance of the T2KG. The experimental results show that the T2KG also outperforms the baseline in KG creation. Although KG creation is conducted in open domains, in which prior knowledge is not provided, the T2KG still achieves an F1 score of approximately 50% when generating triples in the KG creation task. In addition, an empirical study on knowledge population using various text sources is conducted, and the results indicate the T2KG could be used to obtain knowledge that is not currently available from DBpedia.

In this paper, we propose a low-complexity widely-linear minimum mean square error (WL-MMSE) signal detection based on the Chebyshev polynomials accelerated symmetric successive over relaxation (SSORcheb) algorithm for uplink (UL) over-loaded large-scale multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems. The technique of utilizing Chebyshev acceleration not only speeds up the convergence rate significantly, and maximizes the data throughput, but also reduces the cost. By utilizing the random matrix theory, we present good estimates for the Chebyshev acceleration parameters of the proposed signal detection in real large-scale MIMO systems. Simulation results demonstrate that the new WL-SSORcheb-MMSE detection not only outperforms the recently proposed linear iterative detection, and the optimal polynomial expansion (PE) WL-MMSE detection, but also achieves a performance close to the exact WL-MMSE detection. Additionally, the proposed detection offers superior sum rate and bit error rate (BER) performance compared to the precision MMSE detection with substantially fewer arithmetic operations in a short coherence time. Therefore, the proposed detection can satisfy the high-density and high-mobility requirements of some of the emerging wireless networks, such as, the high-mobility Internet of Things (IoT) networks.