Fine-grained image classification is a difficult problem, and previous studies mainly overcome this problem by locating multiple discriminative regions in different scales and then aggregating complementary information explored from the located regions. However, locating discriminative regions introduces heavy overhead and is not suitable for real-world application. In this paper, we propose the recursive multi-scale channel-spatial attention module (RMCSAM) for addressing this problem. Following the experience of previous research on fine-grained image classification, RMCSAM explores multi-scale attentional information. However, the attentional information is explored by recursively refining the deep feature maps of a convolutional neural network (CNN) to better correspond to multi-scale channel-wise and spatial-wise attention, instead of localizing attention regions. In this way, RMCSAM provides a lightweight module that can be inserted into standard CNNs. Experimental results show that RMCSAM can improve the classification accuracy and attention capturing ability over baselines. Also, RMCSAM performs better than other state-of-the-art attention modules in fine-grained image classification, and is complementary to some state-of-the-art approaches for fine-grained image classification. Code is available at https://github.com/Dichao-Liu/Recursive-Multi-Scale-Channel-Spatial-Attention-Module.

Various electromagnetic (EM) wave applications have become commonplace, and humans are frequently exposed to EM waves. Therefore, the effect of EM waves on the human body should be evaluated. In this study, we focused on the specific absorption rate (SAR) due to the EM waves emitted from smartphones, developed high-resolution numerical smartphone models, and studied the SAR variation by changing the position and tilt angle (the angle between the display of the smartphone model and horizontal plane) of the smartphone models vis-à-vis the human abdomen, assuming the use of the smartphone at various tilt angles in front of the abdomen. The calculations showed that the surface shape of the human model influenced the SAR variation.

Due to the property of supporting arbitrary operation over the encrypted data, fully homomorphic encryption (FHE) has drawn considerable attention since it appeared. Some FHE schemes have been constructed based on the general approximate common divisor (GACD) problem, which is widely believed intractable. Therefore, studying the GACD problem's hardness can provide proper security parameters for these FHE schemes and their variants. This paper aims to study an orthogonal lattice algorithm introduced by Ding and Tao (Ding-Tao algorithm) to solve the GACD problem. We revisit the condition that Ding-Tao algorithm works and obtain a new bound of the GACD samples' number based on geometric series assumption. Simultaneously, we also give an analysis of the bound given in the previous work. To further verify the theoretical results, we conduct experiments on Ding-Tao algorithm under our bound. We show a comparison with the experimental results under the previous bound, which indicates the success probability under our bound is higher than that of the previous bound with the growth of the bound.

Autonomous robots are controlled using physical information acquired by various sensors. The sensors are susceptible to physical attacks, which tamper with the observed values and interfere with control of the autonomous robots. Recently, sensor spoofing attacks targeting subsequent algorithms which use sensor data have become large threats. In this paper, we introduce a new attack against the LiDAR-based simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) algorithm. The attack uses an adversarial LiDAR scan to fool a pose graph and a generated map. The adversary calculates a falsification amount for deceiving pose estimation and physically injects the spoofed distance against LiDAR. The falsification amount is calculated by gradient method against a cost function of the scan matching algorithm. The SLAM algorithm generates the wrong map from the deceived movement path estimated by scan matching. We evaluated our attack on two typical scan matching algorithms, iterative closest point (ICP) and normal distribution transform (NDT). Our experimental results show that SLAM can be fooled by tampering with the scan. Simple odometry sensor fusion is not a sufficient countermeasure. We argue that it is important to detect or prevent tampering with LiDAR scans and to notice inconsistencies in sensors caused by physical attacks.

This work proposes a design methodology that saves the power dissipation under voltage over-scaling (VOS) operation. The key idea of the proposed design methodology is to combine critical path isolation (CPI) and bit-width scaling (BWS) under the constraint of computational quality, e.g., Peak Signal-to-Noise Ratio (PSNR) in the image processing domain. Conventional CPI inherently cannot reduce the delay of intrinsic critical paths (CPs), which may significantly restrict the power saving effect. On the other hand, the proposed methodology tries to reduce both intrinsic and non-intrinsic CPs. Therefore, our design dramatically reduces the supply voltage and power dissipation while satisfying the quality constraint. Moreover, for reducing co-design exploration space, the proposed methodology utilizes the exclusiveness of the paths targeted by CPI and BWS, where CPI aims at reducing the minimum supply voltage of non-intrinsic CP, and BWS focuses on intrinsic CPs in arithmetic units. From this key exclusiveness, the proposed design splits the simultaneous optimization problem into three sub-problems; (1) the determination of bit-width reduction, (2) the timing optimization for non-intrinsic CPs, and (3) investigating the minimum supply voltage of the BWS and CPI-applied circuit under quality constraint, for reducing power dissipation. Thanks to the problem splitting, the proposed methodology can efficiently find quality-constrained minimum-power design. Evaluation results show that CPI and BWS are highly compatible, and they significantly enhance the efficacy of VOS. In a case study of a GPGPU processor, the proposed design saves the power dissipation by 42.7% with an image processing workload and by 51.2% with a neural network inference workload.

In the field of reliability engineering, many studies on the relationship of reliability between components and the entire system have been conducted since the 1960s. Various properties of large-scale systems can be studied by limit theorems. In addition, the limit theorem can provide an approximate system reliability. Existing studies have established the limit theorems of a connected-(r, s)-out-of-(m, n):F lattice system consisting of components with the same reliability. However, the existing limit theorems are constrained in terms of (a) the system shape and (b) the condition under which the theorem can be applied. Therefore, this study generalizes the existing limit theorems along the two aforementioned directions. The limit theorem established in this paper can be useful for revealing the properties of the reliability of a large-scale connected-(r, s)-out-of-(m, n):F lattice system.

The newly proposed orthogonal time frequency space (OTFS) system exhibits excellent error performance on high-Doppler fading channels. However, the rectangular prototype window function (PWF) inherent in OTFS leads to high out-of-band emission (OOBE), which reduces the spectral efficiency in multi-user scenarios. To this end, this paper presents an OTFS system based on bi-orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OTFS-BFDM) modulation. In OTFS-BFDM systems, PWFs with bi-orthogonal properties can be optimized to provide lower OOBE than OTFS, which is a special case with rectangular PWF. We further derive that the OTFS-BFDM system is sparsely-connected so that the low-complexity message passing (MP) decoding algorithm can be adopted. Moreover, the power spectral density, peak to average power ratio (PAPR) and bit error rate (BER) of the OTFS-BFDM system with different PWFs are compared. Simulation results show that: i) the use of BFDM modulation significantly inhibits the OOBE of OTFS system; ii) the better the frequency-domain localization of PWFs, the smaller the BER and PAPR of OTFS-BFDM system.

At Eurocrypt 2011, Lindell presented practical static and adaptively UC-secure commitment schemes based on the DDH assumption. Later, Blazy et al. (at ACNS 2013) improved the efficiency of the Lindell's commitment schemes. In this paper, we present static and adaptively UC-secure commitment schemes based on the same assumption and further improve the communication and computational complexity, as well as the size of the common reference string.

The problem of enumerating connected induced subgraphs of a given graph is classical and studied well. It is known that connected induced subgraphs can be enumerated in constant time for each subgraph. In this paper, we focus on highly connected induced subgraphs. The most major concept of connectivity on graphs is vertex connectivity. For vertex connectivity, some enumeration problem settings and enumeration algorithms have been proposed, such as k-vertex connected spanning subgraphs. In this paper, we focus on another major concept of graph connectivity, edge-connectivity. This is motivated by the problem of finding evacuation routes in road networks. In evacuation routes, edge-connectivity is important, since highly edge-connected subgraphs ensure multiple routes between two vertices. In this paper, we consider the problem of enumerating 2-edge-connected induced subgraphs of a given graph. We present an algorithm that enumerates 2-edge-connected induced subgraphs of an input graph G with n vertices and m edges. Our algorithm enumerates all the 2-edge-connected induced subgraphs in O(n3m|SG|) time, where SG is the set of the 2-edge-connected induced subgraphs of G. Moreover, by slightly modifying the algorithm, we have a O(n3m)-delay enumeration algorithm for 2-edge-connected induced subgraphs.

In flat panel display (FPD) lithography, a high resolution and large depth of focus (DOF) are required. The demands for high throughput have necessitated the use of large glass plates and exposure areas, thereby increasing focal unevenness and reducing process latitude. Thus, a large DOF is needed, particularly for high-resolution lithography. To manufacture future high-definition displays, 1.0μm line and space (L/S) is predicted to be required, and a technique to achieve this resolution with adequate DOF is necessary. To improve the resolution and DOF, resolution enhancement techniques (RETs) have been introduced. RETs such as off-axis illumination (OAI) and phase-shift masks (PSMs) have been widely used in semiconductor lithography, which utilizes narrowband illumination. To effectively use RETs in FPD lithography, modification for broadband illumination is required because FPD lithography utilizes such illumination as exposure light. However, thus far, RETs for broadband illumination have not been studied. This study aimed to develop techniques to achieve 1.0μm L/S resolution with an acceptable DOF. To this end, this paper proposes a method that combines our previously developed RET, namely, divided spectrum illumination (DSI), with an attenuated PSM (Att. PSM). Theoretical observations and simulations present the design of a PSM for broadband illumination. The transmittance and phase shift, whose degree varies according to the wavelength, are determined in terms of aerial image contrast and resist loss. The design of DSI for an Att. PSM is also discussed considering image contrast, DOF, and illumination intensity. Finally, the exposure results of 1.0μm L/S using DSI and PSM techniques are shown, demonstrating that a PSM greatly improves the resist profile, and DSI enhances the DOF by approximately 30% compared to conventional OAI. Thus, DSI and PSMs can be used in practical applications for achieving 1.0μm L/S with sufficient DOF.

The development of educational informatization makes data privacy particularly important in education. With society's development, the education system is complicated, and the result of education evaluation becomes more and more critical to students. The evaluation process of education must be justice and transparent. In recent years, the Onscreen Marking (OSM) system based on traditional cloud platforms has been widely used in various large-scale public examinations. However, due to the excessive concentration of power in the existing scheme, the mainstream marking process is not transparent, and there are hidden dangers of black-box operation, which will damage the fairness of the examination. In addition, issues related to data security and privacy are still considered to be severe challenges. This paper deals with the above problems by providing secure and private transactions in a distributed OSM assuming the semi-trusted examination center. We have implemented a proof-of-concept for a consortium blockchain-based OSM in a privacy-preserving and auditable manner, enabling markers to mark on the distributed ledger anonymously. We have proposed a distributed OSM system in high-level, which provides theoretical support for the fair evaluation process of education informatization. It has particular theoretical and application value for education combined with blockchain.

Construction of multiple output functions is one of the most important problems in the design and analysis of stream ciphers. Generally, such a function has to be satisfied with several criteria, such as high nonlinearity, resiliency and high algebraic degree. But there are mutual restraints among the cryptographic parameters. Finding a way to achieve the optimization is always regarded as a hard task. In this paper, by using the disjoint linear codes and disjoint spectral functions, two classes of resilient multiple output functions are obtained. It has been proved that the obtained functions have high nonlinearity and high algebraic degree.

Object contour detection is a task of extracting the shape created by the boundaries between objects in an image. Conventional methods limit the detection targets to specific categories, or miss-detect edges of patterns inside an object. We propose a new method to represent a contour image where the pixel value is the distance to the boundary. Contour detection becomes a regression problem that estimates this contour image. A deep convolutional network for contour estimation is combined with stereo vision to detect unspecified object contours. Furthermore, thanks to similar inference targets and common network structure, we propose a network that simultaneously estimates both contour and disparity with fully shared weights. As a result of experiments, the multi-tasking network drew a good precision-recall curve, and F-measure was about 0.833 for FlyingThings3D dataset. L1 loss of disparity estimation for the dataset was 2.571. This network reduces the amount of calculation and memory capacity by half, and accuracy drop compared to the dedicated networks is slight. Then we quantize both weights and activations of the network to 3-bit. We devise a dedicated hardware architecture for the quantized CNN and implement it on an FPGA. This circuit uses only internal memory to perform forward propagation calculations, that eliminates high-power external memory accesses. This circuit is a stall-free pixel-by-pixel pipeline, and performs 8 rows, 16 input channels, 16 output channels, 3 by 3 pixels convolution calculations in parallel. The convolution calculation performance at the operating frequency of 250 MHz is 9 TOPs/s.

We propose an attention mechanism in deep learning networks for gender recognition using the gaze distribution of human observers when they judge the gender of people in pedestrian images. Prevalent attention mechanisms spatially compute the correlation among values of all cells in an input feature map to calculate attention weights. If a large bias in the background of pedestrian images (e.g., test samples and training samples containing different backgrounds) is present, the attention weights learned using the prevalent attention mechanisms are affected by the bias, which in turn reduces the accuracy of gender recognition. To avoid this problem, we incorporate an attention mechanism called gaze-guided self-attention (GSA) that is inspired by human visual attention. Our method assigns spatially suitable attention weights to each input feature map using the gaze distribution of human observers. In particular, GSA yields promising results even when using training samples with the background bias. The results of experiments on publicly available datasets confirm that our GSA, using the gaze distribution, is more accurate in gender recognition than currently available attention-based methods in the case of background bias between training and test samples.

Frequency-hopping sequence (FHS) sets with low-hit-zone (LZH) can be well applied in quasi-synchronous (QS) frequency-hopping multiple-access (FHMA) systems to reduce the mutual interference among different users. On the other hand, LHZ-FHS sets with wide-gap (WG) property can effectively resist the broadband blocking interference, the single frequency narrowband interference, the multipath fading and the tracking interference. In this letter, a new family of WG-LHZ-FHS sets is constructed. Besides, these new WG-LHZ-FHS sets possess optimal average periodic Hamming correlation (APHC) properties.

In this paper, we propose a novel Hybrid-Hierarchical spatial-aerial-Terrestrial Edge-Centric (H2TEC) for the space-air integrated Internet of Things (IoT) networks. (H2TEC) comprises unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) that act as mobile fog nodes to provide the required services for terminal nodes (TNs) in cooperation with the satellites. TNs in (H2TEC) offload their generated tasks to the UAVs for further processing. Due to the limited energy budget of TNs, a novel task allocation protocol, named TOP, is proposed to minimize the energy consumption of TNs while guaranteeing the outage probability and network reliability for which the transmission rate of TNs is optimized. TOP also takes advantage of the energy harvesting by which the low earth orbit satellites transfer energy to the UAVs when the remaining energy of the UAVs is below a predefined threshold. To this end, the harvested power of the UAVs is optimized alongside the corresponding harvesting time so that the UAVs can improve the network throughput via processing more bits. Numerical results reveal that TOP outperforms the baseline method in critical situations that more power is required to process the task. It is also found that even in such situations, the energy harvesting mechanism provided in the TOP yields a more efficient network throughput.

Blockchain is a distributed ledger technology used for trading digital assets, such as cryptocurrency, and trail records that need to be audited by third parties. The use cases of blockchain are expanding beyond cryptocurrency management. In particular, the token economy, in which tokenized assets are exchanged across different blockchain ledgers, is gaining popularity. Cross-chain technologies such as atomic swap have emerged as security technologies to realize this new use case of blockchain. However, existing approaches of cross-chain technology have unresolved issues, such as application limitations on different blockchain platforms owing to the incompatibility of the communication interface and crypto algorithm and inability to handle a complex business logic such as the escrow trade. In this study, the ConnectionChain is proposed, which enables the execution of an extended smart contract using abstracted operation on interworking ledgers. Moreover, field experimental results using the system prototype are presented and explained.

We present detailed measurements and analysis of the guided acoustic wave Brillouin scattering (GAWBS)-induced depolarization noise in a multi-core fiber (MCF) used for a digital coherent optical transmission. We first describe the GAWBS-induced depolarization noise in an uncoupled four-core fiber (4CF) with a 125μm cladding and compare the depolarization noise spectrum with that of a standard single-mode fiber (SSMF). We found that off-center cores in the 4CF are dominantly affected by higher-order TRn,m modes rather than the TR2,m mode unlike in the center core, and the total power of the depolarization noise in the 4CF was almost the same as that in the SSMF. We also report measurement results for the GAWBS-induced depolarization noise in an uncoupled 19-core fiber with a 240μm cladding. The results indicate that the amounts of depolarization noise generated in the cores are almost identical. Finally, we evaluate the influence of GAWBS-induced polarization crosstalk (XT) on a coherent QAM transmission. We found that the XT limits the achievable multiplicity of the QAM signal to 64 in a transoceanic transmission with an MCF.

Heart rate measurement for mm-wave FMCW radar based on phase analysis comprises a variety of noise. Furthermore, because the breathing and heart frequencies are so close, the harmonic of the breathing signal interferes with the heart rate, and the band-pass filter cannot solve it. On the other hand, because heart rates vary from person to person, it is difficult to choose the basic function of WT (Wavelet Transform). To solve the aforementioned difficulties, we consider performing time-frequency domain analysis on human skin surface displacement data. The PA-LI (Phase Accumulation-Linear Interpolation) joint ICEEMDAN (Improved Complete Ensemble Empirical Mode Decomposition with Adaptive Noise) approach is proposed in this paper, which effectively enhances the signal's SNR, estimates the heart rate, and reconstructs the heartbeat signal. The experimental findings demonstrate that the proposed method can not only extract heartbeat signals with high SNR from the front direction, but it can also detect heart rate from other directions (e.g., back, left, oblique front, and ceiling).

Unsupervised domain adaptation (DA) is a challenging machine learning problem since the labeled training (source) and unlabeled testing (target) sets belong to different domains and then have different feature distributions, which has recently attracted wide attention in micro-expression recognition (MER). Although some well-performing unsupervised DA methods have been proposed, these methods cannot well solve the problem of unsupervised DA in MER, a. k. a., cross-domain MER. To deal with such a challenging problem, in this letter we propose a novel unsupervised DA method called Joint Patch weighting and Moment Matching (JPMM). JPMM bridges the source and target micro-expression feature sets by minimizing their probability distribution divergence with a multi-order moment matching operation. Meanwhile, it takes advantage of the contributive facial patches by the weight learning such that a domain-invariant feature representation involving micro-expression distinguishable information can be learned. Finally, we carry out extensive experiments to evaluate the proposed JPMM method is superior to recent state-of-the-art unsupervised DA methods in dealing with cross-domain MER.