We consider a reliable decentralized supervisory control problem for discrete event systems in the inference-based framework. This problem requires us to synthesize local supervisors such that the controlled system achieves the specification and is nonblocking, even if local control decisions of some local supervisors are not available for making the global control decision. In the case of single-level inference, we introduce a notion of reliable 1-inference-observability and show that reliable 1-inference-observability together with controllability and Lm(G)-closedness is a necessary and sufficient condition for the existence of a solution to the reliable decentralized supervisory control problem.

Real-time and scalable multicast services are of paramount importance to Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) applications. To realize these services, the multicast algorithm should, on the one hand, ensure the maximum delay of a multicast session not exceeding its upper delay bound. On the other hand, the algorithm should minimize session costs. As an emerging networking paradigm, Software-defined Networking (SDN) can provide a global view of the network to multicast algorithms, thereby bringing new opportunities for realizing the desired multicast services in IIoT environments. Unfortunately, existing SDN-based multicast (SDM) algorithms cannot meet the real-time and scalable requirements simultaneously. Therefore, in this paper, we focus on SDM algorithm design for IIoT environments. To be specific, the paper first converts the multicast tree construction problem for SDM in IIoT environments into a delay-bounded least-cost shared tree problem and proves that it is an NP-complete problem. Then, the paper puts forward a shared tree (ST) algorithm called SDM4IIoT to compute suboptimal solutions to the problem. The algorithm consists of five steps: 1) construct a delay-optimal shared tree; 2) divide the tree into a set of subpaths and a subtree; 3) optimize the cost of each subpath by relaxing the delay constraint; 4) optimize the subtree cost in the same manner; 5) recombine them into a shared tree. Simulation results show that the algorithm can provide real-time support that other ST algorithms cannot. In addition, it can achieve good scalability. Its cost is only 20.56% higher than the cost-optimal ST algorithm. Furthermore, its computation time is also acceptable. The algorithm can help to realize real-time and scalable multicast services for IIoT applications.

High frame rate and ultra-low delay vision system, which can finish reading and processing of 1000fps sequence within 1ms/frame, draws increasing attention in the field of robotics that requires immediate feedback from image process core. Meanwhile, tracking task plays an important role in many computer vision applications. Among various tracking algorithms, Lucas Kanade (LK)-based template tracking, which tracks targets with high accuracy over the sub-pixel level, is one of the keys for robotic applications, such as factory automation (FA). However, the substantial spatial iterative processing and complex computation in the LK algorithm, make it difficult to achieve a high frame rate and ultra-low delay tracking with limited resources. Aiming at an LK-based template tracking system that reads and processes 1000fps sequences within 1ms/frame with small resource costs, this paper proposes: 1) High temporal resolution-based temporal iterative tracking, which maps the spatial iterations into the temporal domain, efficiently reduces resource cost and delay caused by spatial iterative processing. 2) Label scanner-based multi-stream spatial processing, which maps the local spatial processing into the labeled input pixel stream and aggregates them with a label scanner, makes the local spatial processing in the LK algorithm possible be implemented with a small resource cost. Algorithm evaluation shows that the proposed temporal iterative tracking performs dynamic tracking, which tracks object with coarse accuracy when it's moving fast and achieves higher accuracy when it slows down. Hardware evaluation shows that the proposed label scanner-based multi-stream architecture makes the system implemented on FPGA (zcu102) with resource cost less than 20%, and the designed tracking system supports to read and process 1000fps sequence within 1ms/frame.

Speech separation is the task of extracting target speech while suppressing background interference components. In applications like video telephones, visual information about the target speaker is available, which can be leveraged for multi-speaker speech separation. Most previous multi-speaker separation methods are mainly based on convolutional or recurrent neural networks. Recently, Transformer-based Seq2Seq models have achieved state-of-the-art performance in various tasks, such as neural machine translation (NMT), automatic speech recognition (ASR), etc. Transformer has showed an advantage in modeling audio-visual temporal context by multi-head attention blocks through explicitly assigning attention weights. Besides, Transformer doesn't have any recurrent sub-networks, thus supporting parallelization of sequence computation. In this paper, we propose a novel speaker-independent audio-visual speech separation method based on Transformer, which can be flexibly applied to unknown number and identity of speakers. The model receives both audio-visual streams, including noisy spectrogram and speaker lip embeddings, and predicts a complex time-frequency mask for the corresponding target speaker. The model is made up by three main components: audio encoder, visual encoder and Transformer-based mask generator. Two different structures of encoders are investigated and compared, including ResNet-based and Transformer-based. The performance of the proposed method is evaluated in terms of source separation and speech quality metrics. The experimental results on the benchmark GRID dataset show the effectiveness of the method on speaker-independent separation task in multi-talker environments. The model generalizes well to unseen identities of speakers and noise types. Though only trained on 2-speaker mixtures, the model achieves reasonable performance when tested on 2-speaker and 3-speaker mixtures. Besides, the model still shows an advantage compared with previous audio-visual speech separation works.

Weakly labelled semi-supervised audio tagging (AT) and sound event detection (SED) have become significant in real-world applications. A popular method is teacher-student learning, making student models learn from pseudo-labels generated by teacher models from unlabelled data. To generate high-quality pseudo-labels, we propose a master-teacher-student framework trained with a dual-lead policy. Our experiments illustrate that our model outperforms the state-of-the-art model on both tasks.

In this letter, we discuss the ambiguity function of interleaved sequences. Furthermore, using the Guassian sum and choosing binary m-sequences as column sequences, we investigate the property of a binary sequence set given by Zhou, Tang, Gong (IEEE Trans. Inf. Theory, 54(9), 2008), which has low ambiguity property in a large region. Those sequences could be used in radar systems.

Reducing the power consumption of capsule endoscopy is essential for its further development. We introduce K-SVD dictionary learning to design a dictionary for sparse coding, and improve reconstruction accuracy of capsule endoscopic images captured using compressed sensing. At a compression ratio of 20%, the proposed method improves image quality by approximately 4.4 dB for the peak signal-to-noise ratio.

OpenFlow is a widely adopted implementation of the Software-Defined Networking (SDN) architecture. Since conventional network monitoring systems are unable to cope with OpenFlow networks, researchers have developed various monitoring systems tailored for OpenFlow networks. However, these existing systems either rely on a specific controller framework or an API, both of which are not part of the OpenFlow specification, and thus limit their applicability. This article proposes a transparent and low-overhead monitoring system for OpenFlow networks, referred to as Opimon. Opimon monitors the network topology, switch statistics, and flow tables in an OpenFlow network and visualizes the result through a web interface in real-time. Opimon monitors a network by interposing a proxy between the controller and switches and intercepting every OpenFlow message exchanged. This design allows Opimon to be compatible with any OpenFlow switch or controller. We tested the functionalities of Opimon on a virtual network built using Mininet and a large-scale international OpenFlow testbed (PRAGMA-ENT). Furthermore, we measured the performance overhead incurred by Opimon and demonstrated that the overhead in terms of latency and throughput was less than 3% and 5%, respectively.

A periodic array of InSb spheres on a substrate is numerically analyzed at terahertz frequencies. The incident field is shown to be coupled to the substrate due to the guided-mode resonance. The effect of the background refractive index on the transmission characteristics is investigated for sensor applications.

The electromagnetic environment is increasingly complex and changeable, and radar needs to meet the execution requirements of various tasks. Modern radars should improve their intelligence level and have the ability to learn independently in dynamic countermeasures. It can make the radar countermeasure strategy change from the traditional fixed anti-interference strategy to dynamically and independently implementing an efficient anti-interference strategy. Aiming at the performance optimization of target tracking in the scene where multiple signals coexist, we propose a countermeasure method of cognitive radar based on a deep Q-learning network. In this paper, we analyze the tracking performance of this method and the Markov Decision Process under the triangular frequency sweeping interference, respectively. The simulation results show that reinforcement learning has substantial autonomy and adaptability for solving such problems.

This paper addresses single image super-resolution (SR) based on convolutional neural networks (CNNs). It is known that recovery of high-frequency components in output SR images of CNNs learned by the least square errors or least absolute errors is insufficient. To generate realistic high-frequency components, SR methods using generative adversarial networks (GANs), composed of one generator and one discriminator, are developed. However, when the generator tries to induce the discriminator's misjudgment, not only realistic high-frequency components but also some artifacts are generated, and objective indices such as PSNR decrease. To reduce the artifacts in the GAN-based SR methods, we consider the set of all SR images whose square errors between downscaling results and the input image are within a certain range, and propose to apply the metric projection onto this consistent set in the output layers of the generators. The proposed technique guarantees the consistency between output SR images and input images, and the generators with the proposed projection can generate high-frequency components with few artifacts while keeping low-frequency ones as appropriate for the known noise level. Numerical experiments show that the proposed technique reduces artifacts included in the original SR images of a GAN-based SR method while generating realistic high-frequency components with better PSNR values in both noise-free and noisy situations. Since the proposed technique can be integrated into various generators if the downscaling process is known, we can give the consistency to existing methods with the input images without degrading other SR performance.

A novel jig structure for S11 calibration with short/open conditions and one reference material (referred to here as SOM) in dielectric measurement of liquids using a coaxial feed type stepped cut-off circular waveguide and a formula for exact calculation of S11 for the analytical model of the structure using the method of moments (MoM) was proposed. The accuracy and validity of S11 values calculated using the relevant formula was then verified for frequencies of 0.50, 1.5 and 3.0 GHz, and S11 measurement accuracy with each termination condition was verified after calibration with SOM by combining the jig of the proposed structure with the study's electromagnetic (EM) analysis method. The relative complex permittivity was then estimated from S11 values measured with various liquids in the jig after calibration, and differences in results obtained with the proposed method and the conventional jig, the analytical model and the EM analysis method were examined. The validity of the proposed dielectric measurement method based on a combination of the above jig structure, numerical S11 calculation and the calibration method was thus confirmed.

High Frequency Surface Wave Radar (HFSWR) can achieve over-the-horizon detection, which can effectively detect and track the ships and ultra-low altitude aircrafts, as well as the acquisition of sea state information such as icebergs and ocean currents and so on. However, HFSWR is seriously affected by the clutters, especially sea clutter and ionospheric clutter. In this paper, we propose a deep learning image semantic segmentation method based on optimized Deeplabv3+ network to achieve the automatic detection of sea clutter and ionospheric clutter using the measured R-D spectrum images of HFSWR during the typhoon as experimental data, which avoids the disadvantage of traditional detection methods that require a large amount of a priori knowledge and provides a basis for subsequent the clutter suppression or the clutter characteristics research.

The energy efficiency of intelligent reflecting surface (IRS) enabled internet of things (IoT) networks is studied in this letter. The energy efficiency is mathematically expressed, respectively, as the number of reflecting elements and the spectral efficiency of the network and is shown to scale in the logarithm of the reflecting elements number in the high regime of transmit power from source node. Furthermore, it is revealed that the energy efficiency scales linearly over the spectral efficiency in the high regime of transmit power, in contrast to conventional studies on energy and spectral efficiency trade-offs in the non-IRS wireless IoT networks. Numerical simulations are carried out to verify the derived results for the IRS enabled IoT networks.

In recent years, compared with the traditional face super-resolution (SR) algorithm, the face SR based on deep neural network has shown strong performance. Among these methods, attention mechanism has been widely used in face SR because of its strong feature expression ability. However, the existing attention-based face SR methods can not fully mine the missing pixel information of low-resolution (LR) face images (structural prior). And they only consider a single attention mechanism to take advantage of the structure of the face. The use of multi-attention could help to enhance feature representation. In order to solve this problem, we first propose a new pixel attention mechanism, which can recover the structural details of lost pixels. Then, we design an attention fusion module to better integrate the different characteristics of triple attention. Experimental results on FFHQ data sets show that this method is superior to the existing face SR methods based on deep neural network.

In this paper, we propose a semi-supervised triplet loss function that realizes semi-supervised representation learning in a novel manner. We extend conventional triplet loss, which uses labeled data to achieve representation learning, so that it can deal with unlabeled data. We estimate, in advance, the degree to which each label applies to each unlabeled data point, and optimize the loss function with unlabeled features according to the resulting ratios. Since the proposed loss function has the effect of adjusting the distribution of all unlabeled data, it complements methods based on consistency regularization, which has been extensively studied in recent years. Combined with a consistency regularization-based method, our method achieves more accurate semi-supervised learning. Experiments show that the proposed loss function achieves a higher accuracy than the conventional fine-tuning method.

Visual Question Answering (VQA) is multi-task research that requires simultaneous processing of vision and text. Recent research on the VQA models employ a co-attention mechanism to build a model between the context and the image. However, the features of questions and the modeling of the image region force irrelevant information to be calculated in the model, thus affecting the performance. This paper proposes a novel dual self-guided attention with sparse question networks (DSSQN) to address this issue. The aim is to avoid having irrelevant information calculated into the model when modeling the internal dependencies on both the question and image. Simultaneously, it overcomes the coarse interaction between sparse question features and image features. First, the sparse question self-attention (SQSA) unit in the encoder calculates the feature with the highest weight. From the self-attention learning of question words, the question features of larger weights are reserved. Secondly, sparse question features are utilized to guide the focus on image features to obtain fine-grained image features, and to also prevent irrelevant information from being calculated into the model. A dual self-guided attention (DSGA) unit is designed to improve modal interaction between questions and images. Third, the sparse question self-attention of the parameter δ is optimized to select these question-related object regions. Our experiments with VQA 2.0 benchmark datasets demonstrate that DSSQN outperforms the state-of-the-art methods. For example, the accuracy of our proposed model on the test-dev and test-std is 71.03% and 71.37%, respectively. In addition, we show through visualization results that our model can pay more attention to important features than other advanced models. At the same time, we also hope that it can promote the development of VQA in the field of artificial intelligence (AI).

The challenges posed by big data in the 21st Century are complex: Under the previous common sense, we considered that polynomial-time algorithms are practical; however, when we handle big data, even a linear-time algorithm may be too slow. Thus, sublinear- and constant-time algorithms are required. The academic research project, “Foundations of Innovative Algorithms for Big Data,” which was started in 2014 and will finish in September 2021, aimed at developing various techniques and frameworks to design algorithms for big data. In this project, we introduce a “Sublinear Computation Paradigm.” Toward this purpose, we first provide a survey of constant-time algorithms, which are the most investigated framework of this area, and then present our recent results on sublinear progressive algorithms. A sublinear progressive algorithm first outputs a temporary approximate solution in constant time, and then suggests better solutions gradually in sublinear-time, finally finds the exact solution. We present Sublinear Progressive Algorithm Theory (SPA Theory, for short), which enables to make a sublinear progressive algorithm for any property if it has a constant-time algorithm and an exact algorithm (an exponential-time one is allowed) without losing any computation time in the big-O sense.

In the rendezvous problem, two computing entities (called agents) located at different vertices in a graph have to meet at the same vertex. In this paper, we consider the synchronous neighborhood rendezvous problem, where the agents are initially located at two adjacent vertices. While this problem can be trivially solved in O(Δ) rounds (Δ is the maximum degree of the graph), it is highly challenging to reveal whether that problem can be solved in o(Δ) rounds, even assuming the rich computational capability of agents. The only known result is that the time complexity of O($O(sqrt{n})$) rounds is achievable if the graph is complete and agents are probabilistic, asymmetric, and can use whiteboards placed at vertices. Our main contribution is to clarify the situation (with respect to computational models and graph classes) admitting such a sublinear-time rendezvous algorithm. More precisely, we present two algorithms achieving fast rendezvous additionally assuming bounded minimum degree, unique vertex identifier, accessibility to neighborhood IDs, and randomization. The first algorithm runs within $ ilde{O}(sqrt{nDelta/delta} + n/delta)$ rounds for graphs of the minimum degree larger than $sqrt{n}$, where n is the number of vertices in the graph, and δ is the minimum degree of the graph. The second algorithm assumes that the largest vertex ID is O(n), and achieves $ ilde{O}left( rac{n}{sqrt{delta}} ight)$-round time complexity without using whiteboards. These algorithms attain o(Δ)-round complexity in the case of $delta = {omega}(sqrt{n} log n)$ and δ=ω(n2/3log4/3n) respectively. We also prove that four unconventional assumptions of our algorithm, bounded minimum degree, accessibility to neighborhood IDs, initial distance one, and randomization are all inherently necessary for attaining fast rendezvous. That is, one can obtain the Ω(n)-round lower bound if either one of them is removed.

We developed a mantle-cloak antenna by controlling the surface reactance of a dielectric-loaded dipole antenna. First, a mantle-cloak antenna with an assumed ideal metasurface sheet was designed, and band rejection characteristics were obtained by controlling the surface reactance of the mantle cloak. The variable range of the frequency spacing between the operating and stopband frequencies of the antenna was clarified by changing the value of the surface reactance. Next, a mantle-cloak antenna that uses vertical strip conductors was designed to clarify the characteristics and operating principle of the antenna. It was confirmed that the stopband frequency was 1130MHz, and the proposed antenna had a 36.3% bandwidth (|S11| ≤ -10dB) from 700 to 1010MHz. By comparing the |S11| characteristics and the input impedance characteristics of the proposed antenna with those of the dielectric-loaded antenna, the effect of the mantle cloak was confirmed. Finally, a prototype of the mantle-cloak antenna that uses vertical strip conductors was developed and measured to validate the simulation results. The measurement results were consistent with the simulation results.