Accurate estimation of the state-of-charge is a crucial need for the battery, which is the most important power source in electric vehicles. To achieve better estimation result, an accurate battery model with optimum parameters is required. In this paper, a gradient-free optimization technique, namely tree seed algorithm (TSA), is utilized to identify specific parameters of the battery model. In order to strengthen the search ability of TSA and obtain more quality results, the original algorithm is improved. On one hand, the DE/rand/2/bin mechanism is employed to maintain the colony diversity, by generating mutant individuals in each time step. On the other hand, the control parameter in the algorithm is adaptively updated during the searching process, to achieve a better balance between the exploitation and exploration capabilities. The battery state-of-charge can be estimated simultaneously by regarding it as one of the parameters. Experiments under different dynamic profiles show that the proposed method can provide reliable and accurate estimation results. The performance of conventional algorithms, such as genetic algorithm and extended Kalman filter, are also compared to demonstrate the superiority of the proposed method in terms of accuracy and robustness.

Urban area suffers severe multipath effects due to its complex infrastructure environment and sector antenna is a popular choice as a base station antenna in those areas. Within sector antennas, omni cell antenna is utilized as supporting antenna to cover low reception areas between them. This paper proposes a slant 45° dual polarized omnidirectional antenna to operate as the omni cell antenna in those environments. The frequency band covers the IMT band, ranging from 1920MHz to 2170MHz with directivity focusing in horizontal plane. The antenna structure consists of a loop slot antenna array as excitation element which is placed inside a cylindrical slot antenna as parasitic element. Good performance is achieved in both S-parameter and directivity results, with a gain of more than 4 dBi and a gain difference of less than 1.5dB. The measurement results also agree well with the simulation results and the final design confirms that the proposed antenna works effectively as a slant ±45 ° dual polarized omnidirectional antenna.

In compressive sensing theory (CS), the restricted isometry property (RIP) is commonly used for the measurement matrix to guarantee the reliable recovery of sparse signals from linear measurements. Although many works have indicated that random matrices with excellent recovery performance satisfy the RIP with high probability, Toeplitz-structured matrices arise naturally in real scenarios, such as applications of linear time-invariant systems. Thus, the corresponding measurement matrix can be modeled as a Toeplitz (partial) structured matrix instead of a completely random matrix. The structure characteristics introduce coherence and cause the performance degradation of the measurement matrix. To enhance the recovery performance of the Toeplitz structured measurement matrix in multichannel convolution source separation, an efficient construction of measurement matrix is presented, referred to as sparse random block-banded Toeplitz matrix (SRBT). The sparse signal is pre-randomized by locally scrambling its sample locations. Then, the signal is subsampled using the sparse random banded matrix. Finally, the mixing measurements are obtained. Based on the analysis of eigenvalues, the theoretical results indicate that the SRBT matrix satisfies the RIP with high probability. Simulation results show that the SRBT matrix almost matches the recovery performance of random matrices. Compared with the existing banded block Toeplitz matrix, SRBT significantly improves the probability of successful recovery. Additionally, SRBT has the advantages of low storage requirements and fast computation in reconstruction.

We present an OpenACC-based parallelization implementation of stochastic algorithms for simulating biochemical reaction networks on modern GPUs (graphics processing units). To investigate the effectiveness of using OpenACC for leveraging the massive hardware parallelism of the GPU architecture, we carefully apply OpenACC's language constructs and mechanisms to implementing a parallel version of stochastic simulation algorithms on the GPU. Using our OpenACC implementation in comparison to both the NVidia CUDA and the CPU-based implementations, we report our initial experiences on OpenACC's performance and programming productivity in the context of GPU-accelerated scientific computing.

Pre-trained CNNs on ImageNet have been widely used in object tracking for feature extraction. However, due to the domain mismatch between image classification and object tracking, the submergence of the target-specific features by noise largely decreases the expression ability of the convolutional features, resulting in an inefficient tracking. In this paper, we propose a robust tracking algorithm with low-dimensional target-specific feature extraction. First, a novel cascaded PCA module is proposed to have an explicit extraction of the low-dimensional target-specific features, which makes the new appearance model more effective and efficient. Next, a fast particle filter process is raised to further accelerate the whole tracking pipeline by sharing convolutional computation with a ROI-Align layer. Moreover, a classification-score guided scheme is used to update the appearance model for adapting to target variations while at the same time avoiding the model drift that caused by the object occlusion. Experimental results on OTB100 and Temple Color128 show that, the proposed algorithm has achieved a superior performance among real-time trackers. Besides, our algorithm is competitive with the state-of-the-art trackers in precision while runs at a real-time speed.

The large computational complexity makes stereo matching a big challenge in real-time application scenario. The problem of stereo matching in a video sequence is slightly different with that in a still image because there exists temporal correlation among video frames. However, no existing method considered temporal consistency of disparity for algorithm acceleration. In this work, we proposed a scheme called the dynamic disparity range (DDR) to optimize matching cost calculation and cost aggregation steps by narrowing disparity searching range, and a scheme called temporal cost aggregation path to optimize the cost aggregation step. Based on the schemes, we proposed the DDR-SGM and the DDR-MCCNN algorithms for the stereo matching in video sequences. Evaluation results showed that the proposed algorithms significantly reduced the computational complexity with only very slight loss of accuracy. We proved that the proposed optimizations for the stereo matching are effective and the temporal consistency in stereo video is highly useful for either improving accuracy or reducing computational complexity.

Cell phones with GPS function as well as GPS loggers are widely used and we can easily obtain users' geographic information. Now classifying the measured GPS positions into indoor/outdoor positions is one of the major challenges. In this letter, we propose a robust indoor/outdoor detection method based on sparse GPS measured positions utilizing machine learning. Given a set of clusters of measured positions whose center position shows the user's estimated stayed position, we calculate the feature values composed of: positioning accuracy, spatial features, and temporal feature of measured positions included in every cluster. Then a random forest classifier learns these feature values of the known data set. Finally, we classify the unknown clusters of measured positions into indoor/outdoor clusters using the learned random forest classifier. The experiments demonstrate that our proposed method realizes the maximum F1 measure of 1.000, which classifies measured positions into indoor/outdoor ones with almost no errors.

Efficient road-lane detection is expected to be achievable by application of the Hough transform (HT) which realizes high-accuracy straight-line extraction from images. The main challenge for HT-hardware implementation in actual applications is the trade-off optimization between accuracy maximization, power-dissipation reduction and real-time requirements. We report a HT-hardware architecture for road-lane detection with parallelized voting procedure, local maximum algorithm and FPGA-prototype implementation. Parallelization of the global design is realized on the basis of θ-value discretization in the Hough space. Four major hardware modules are developed for edge detection in the original video frames, computation of the characteristic edge-pixel values (ρ,θ) in Hough-space, voting procedure for each (ρ,θ) pair with parallel local-maximum-based peak voting-point extraction in Hough space to determine the detected straight lines. Implementation of a prototype system for real-time road-lane detection on a low-cost DE1 platform with a Cyclone II FPGA device was verified to be possible. An average detection speed of 135 frames/s for VGA (640x480)-frames was achieved at 50 MHz working frequency.

This paper proposes an enhanced affinity graph (EA-graph) for image segmentation. Firstly, the original image is over-segmented to obtain several sets of superpixels with different scales, and the color and texture features of the superpixels are extracted. Then, the similarity relationship between neighborhood superpixels is used to construct the local affinity graph. Meanwhile, the global affinity graph is obtained by sparse reconstruction among all superpixels. The local affinity graph and global affinity graph are superimposed to obtain an enhanced affinity graph for eliminating the influences of noise and isolated regions in the image. Finally, a bipartite graph is introduced to express the affiliation between pixels and superpixels, and segmentation is performed using a spectral clustering algorithm. Experimental results on the Berkeley segmentation database demonstrate that our method achieves significantly better performance compared to state-of-the-art algorithms.

In this paper, we consider a group testing (GT) problem. We derive a lower bound on the probability of error for successful decoding of defected binary signals. To this end, we exploit Fano's inequality theorem in the information theory. We show that the probability of error is bounded as an entropy function, a density of a pooling matrix and a sparsity of a binary signal. We evaluate that for decoding of highly sparse signals, the pooling matrix is required to be dense. Conversely, if dense signals are needed to decode, the sparse pooling matrix should be designed to achieve the small probability of error.

In sparsity-based optimization problems for two dimensional (2-D) direction-of-arrival (DOA) estimation using L-shaped nested arrays, one of the major issues is computational complexity. A 2-D DOA estimation algorithm is proposed based on reconsitution sparse Bayesian learning (RSBL) and cross covariance matrix decomposition. A single measurement vector (SMV) model is obtained by the difference coarray corresponding to one-dimensional nested array. Through spatial smoothing, the signal measurement vector is transformed into a multiple measurement vector (MMV) matrix. The signal matrix is separated by singular values decomposition (SVD) of the matrix. Using this method, the dimensionality of the sensing matrix and data size can be reduced. The sparse Bayesian learning algorithm is used to estimate one-dimensional angles. By using the one-dimensional angle estimations, the steering vector matrix is reconstructed. The cross covariance matrix of two dimensions is decomposed and transformed. Then the closed expression of the steering vector matrix of another dimension is derived, and the angles are estimated. Automatic pairing can be achieved in two dimensions. Through the proposed algorithm, the 2-D search problem is transformed into a one-dimensional search problem and a matrix transformation problem. Simulations show that the proposed algorithm has better angle estimation accuracy than the traditional two-dimensional direction finding algorithm at low signal-to-noise ratio and few samples.

A new fuzzy level set method (FLSM) based on the global search capability of quantum particle swarm optimization (QPSO) is proposed to improve the stability and precision of image segmentation, and reduce the sensitivity of initialization. The new combination of QPSO-FLSM algorithm iteratively optimizes initial contours using the QPSO method and fuzzy c-means clustering, and then utilizes level set method (LSM) to segment images. The new algorithm exploits the global search capability of QPSO to obtain a stable cluster center and a pre-segmentation contour closer to the region of interest during the iteration. In the implementation of the new method in segmenting liver tumors, brain tissues, and lightning images, the fitness function of the objective function of QPSO-FLSM algorithm is optimized by 10% in comparison to the original FLSM algorithm. The achieved initial contours from the QPSO-FLSM algorithm are also more stable than that from the FLSM. The QPSO-FLSM resulted in improved final image segmentation.

In order to solve the problem in Automatic Identification System (AIS) that the signal in the target slot cannot be correctly received due to partial overlap of signals in adjacent time slots, the paper introduces a new criterion: maximum expected signal power (MESP) and proposes a novel beamforming algorithm based on generalized singular value decomposition (GSVD) and orthogonal projection. The algorithm employs GSVD to estimate the signal subspace, and adopts orthogonal projection to project the received signal onto the orthogonal subspace of the non-target signal. Then, beamforming technique is used to maximize the output power of the target signal on the basis of MESP. Theoretical analysis and simulation results show the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm.

In this paper, we propose a periodic reactance time function for 2-element electronically steerable passive array radiator (ESPAR) antennas applicable to the receivers of both single-input multiple-output (SIMO) and multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems with 2 outputs. Based on the proposed function, we evaluate the power patterns of the antenna for various distances between two antenna elements. Moreover, for the distances, we discuss the correlation properties and the strength of the two outputs to find the appropriate distance for the receiver. From the discussions, we can conclude that distances from 0.1 to 0.35 times the wavelength are effective in terms of receive diversity.

In this paper, a parallel flow monitoring technique that achieves accurate measurement of end-to-end delay of networks is proposed. In network monitoring tasks, network researchers and practitioners usually monitor multiple probe flows to measure delays on multiple paths in parallel. However, when they measure an end-to-end delay on a path, information of flows except for the flow along the path is not utilized in the conventional method. Generally, paths of flows share common parts in parallel monitoring. In the proposed method, information of flows on paths that share common parts, utilizes to measure delay on a path by partially converting the observation results of a flow to those of another flow. We perform simulations to confirm that the observation results of 72 parallel flows of active measurement are appropriately converted between each other. When the 99th-percentile of the end-to-end delay for each flow are measured, the accuracy of the proposed method is doubled compared with the conventional method.

Generalized approximate message passing (GAMP) is introduced into distributed compressed sensing (DCS) to reconstruct jointly sparse signals under the mixed support-set model. A GAMP algorithm with known support-set is presented and the matching pursuit generalized approximate message passing (MPGAMP) algorithm is modified. Then, a new joint recovery algorithm, referred to as the joint MPGAMP algorithm, is proposed. It sets up the jointly shared support-set of the signal ensemble with the support exploration ability of matching pursuit and recovers the signals' amplitudes on the support-set with the good reconstruction performance of GAMP. Numerical investigation shows that the joint MPGAMP algorithm provides performance improvements in DCS reconstruction compared to joint orthogonal matching pursuit, joint look ahead orthogonal matching pursuit and regular MPGAMP.

In recent years we have witnessed an increasing demand to process queries on large datasets in Non-ordered Discrete Data Spaces (NDDS). In particular, one type of query in an NDDS, called box queries, is used in many emerging applications including error corrections in bioinformatics and network intrusion detection in cybersecurity. Effective indexing methods are necessary for efficiently processing queries on large datasets in disk. However, most existing NDDS indexing methods were not designed for box queries. Several recent indexing methods developed for box queries on a large NDDS dataset in disk are based on the popular data-partitioning approach. Unfortunately, a space-partitioning based indexing scheme, which is more effective for box queries in an NDDS, has not been studied before. In this paper, we propose a novel indexing method based on space-partitioning, called the BINDS-tree, for supporting efficient box queries on a large NDDS dataset in disk. A number of effective strategies such as node split based on minimum span and cross optimal balance, redundancy reduction utilizing a singleton dimension inheritance property, and a space-efficient structure for the split history are incorporated in the constructing algorithm for the BINDS-tree. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed BINDS-tree significantly improves the box query I/O performance, comparing to that of the state-of-the-artdata-partitioning based NDDS indexing method.

Given a graph G=(V,E), where V and E are vertex and edge sets of G, and a subset VNT of vertices called a non-terminal set, the minimum spanning tree with a non-terminal set VNT, denoted by MSTNT, is a connected and acyclic spanning subgraph of G that contains all vertices of V with the minimum weight where each vertex in a non-terminal set is not a leaf. On general graphs, the problem of finding an MSTNT of G is NP-hard. We show that if G is a series-parallel graph then finding an MSTNT of G is linearly solvable with respect to the number of vertices.

Massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems are a key promising technology for future broadband cellular networks. The propagation paths within massive MIMO radio channels are often sparse, both in the sub-6GHz frequency band and at millimeter wave frequencies. Herein, we propose a two-layer beamforming scheme for downlink transmission over massive multiuser MIMO sparse beam-space channels. The first layer employs a bipartite graph to dynamically group users in the beam-space domain; the aim is to minimize inter-user interference while significantly reducing the effective channel dimensionality. The second layer performs baseband linear MIMO precoding to maximize spatial multiplexing gain and system throughput. Simulation results demonstrate the proposed two-layer beamforming scheme outperforms other, more conventional algorithms.

The recent rapid increase in the scale of superconducting quantum computing systems greatly increases the demand for qubit control by digital circuits operating at qubit temperatures. In this paper, superconducting digital circuits, such as single-flux quantum and adiabatic quantum flux parametron circuits are described, that are promising candidates for this purpose. After estimating their energy consumption and speed, a conceptual overview of the superconducting electronics for controlling a multiple-qubit system is provided, as well as some of its component circuits.