Streaming systems that can maintain Quality of Experience (QoE) for users have attracted much attention because they can be applied in various fields, such as emergency response training and medical surgery. Dynamic Adaptive Streaming over HTTP (DASH) is a typical protocol for streaming system. In order to improve QoE in DASH, a multi-server system has been presented by pseudo-increasing bandwidth through multiple servers. This multi-server system is designed to share streaming content efficiently in addition to having redundant server resources for each streaming content, which is excellent for fault tolerance. Assigning DASH server to users in these multi-servers environment is important to maintain QoE, thus a method of server assignment of users (user allocation method) for multi-servers is presented by using cooperative game theory. However, this conventional user allocation method does not take into account the size of the server bandwidth, thus users are concentrated on a particular server at the start of playback. Although the average required bit rate of video usually fluctuates, bit rate fluctuations are not taken into account. These phenomena may decrease QoE. In this paper, we propose a novel user allocation method using coalition structure generation in cooperative game theory to improve the QoE of all users in an immediate and stable manner in DASH environment. Our proposed method can avoid user concentration, since the bandwidth used by the overall system is taken into account. Moreover, our proposed method can be performed every time the average required bit rate changes. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our method through simulations using Network Simulator 3 (NS3).

In this paper, we propose a noise-robust scream detection method with the aim of expanding the scream detection system, a sound-based security system. The proposed method uses enhanced screams using Wave-U-Net, which was effective as a noise reduction method for noisy screams. However, the enhanced screams showed different frequency components from clean screams and erroneously emphasized frequency components similar to scream in noise. Therefore, Wave-U-Net was applied even in the process of training Gaussian mixture models, which are discriminators. We conducted detection experiments using the proposed method in various noise environments and determined that the false acceptance rate was reduced by an average of 2.1% or more compared with the conventional method.

We study a visible light communication (VLC) system that modulates data signals by changing the color components of image contents on a digital signage display, captures them with an image sensor, and demodulates them using image processing. This system requires that the modulated data signals should not be perceived by the human eye. Previous studies have proposed modulation methods with a chromaticity component that is difficult for the human eye to perceive, and we have also proposed a modulation method with perceptually uniform color space based on human perception characteristics. However, which chromaticity component performs better depends on the image contents, and the evaluation only for some specific image contents was not sufficient. In this paper, we evaluate the communication and visual quality of the modulation methods with chromaticity components for various standard images to clarify the superiority of the method with perceptually uniform color space. In addition, we propose a novel modulation and demodulation method using diversity combining to eliminate the dependency of performance on the image contents. Experimental results show that the proposed method can improve the communication and visual quality for almost all the standard images.

ARM chips with low energy consumption and low-cost investment have been rapidly applied to smart office and smart entertainment including cloud mobile phones and cloud games. This paper first summarizes key technologies and development status of the above scenarios including CPU, memory, IO hardware virtualization characteristics, ARM hypervisor and container, GPU virtualization, network virtualization, resource management and remote transmission technologies. Then, in view of the current lack of publicly referenced ARM cloud constructing solutions, this paper proposes and constructs an implementation framework for building an ARM cloud, and successively focuses on the formal definition of virtualization framework, Android container system and resource quota management methods, GPU virtualization based on API remoting and GPU pass-through, and the remote transmission technology. Finally, the experimental results show that the proposed model and corresponding component implementation methods are effective, especially, the pass-through mode for virtualizing GPU resources has higher performance and higher parallelism.

We considered the problem of forecasting the degradation recovery process of civil structures for prognosis and health management. In this process, structural health degrades over time but recovers when a maintenance intervention is performed. Maintenance interventions are typically recorded in terms of date and type. Such records can be represented as binary time series. Using binary maintenance intervention records, we forecast the process by using Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM). In this study, we experimentally examined how to feed binary time series data into LSTM. To this end, we compared the concatenation and reinitialization methods. The former is used to concatenate maintenance intervention records and health data and feed them into LSTM. The latter is used to reinitialize the LSTM internal memory when maintenance intervention is performed. The experimental results with the synthetic data revealed that the concatenation method outperformed the reinitialization method.

Given an odd prime q and an integer m ≤ q, a binary mq × q2 quasi-cyclic parity-check matrix H(m, q) can be constructed for an array low-density parity-check (LDPC) code C (m, q). In this letter, we investigate the first separating redundancy of C (m, q). We prove that H (m, q) is 1-separating for any pair of (m, q), from which we conclude that the first separating redundancy of C (m, q) is upper bounded by mq. Then we show that our upper bound on the first separating redundancy of C (m, q) is tighter than the general deterministic and constructive upper bounds in the literature. For m=2, we further prove that the first separating redundancy of C (2, q) is 2q for any odd prime q. For m ≥ 3, we conjecture that the first separating redundancy of C (m, q) is mq for any fixed m and sufficiently large q.

This letter deals with the joint direction of arrival and direction of departure estimation problem for overloaded target in bistatic multiple-input multiple-output radar system. In order to achieve the purpose of effective estimation, the presented Khatri-Rao (KR) MUSIC estimator with the ability to handle overloaded targets mainly combines the subspace characteristics of the target reflected wave signal and the KR product based on the array response. This letter also presents a computationally efficient KR noise subspace projection matrix estimation technique to reduce the computational load due to perform high-dimensional singular value decomposition. Finally, the effectiveness of the proposed method is verified by computer simulation.

In this paper, we investigated the overfitting characteristics of nonlinear equalizers based on an artificial neural network (ANN) and the Volterra series transfer function (VSTF), which were designed to compensate for optical nonlinear waveform distortion in optical fiber communication systems. Linear waveform distortion caused by, e.g., chromatic dispersion (CD) is commonly compensated by linear equalizers using digital signal processing (DSP) in digital coherent receivers. However, mitigation of nonlinear waveform distortion is considered to be one of the next important issues. An ANN-based nonlinear equalizer is one possible candidate for solving this problem. However, the risk of overfitting of ANNs is one obstacle in using the technology in practical applications. We evaluated and compared the overfitting of ANN- and conventional VSTF-based nonlinear equalizers used to compensate for optical nonlinear distortion. The equalizers were trained on repeated random bit sequences (RRBSs), while varying the length of the bit sequences. When the number of hidden-layer units of the ANN was as large as 100 or 1000, the overfitting characteristics were comparable to those of the VSTF. However, when the number of hidden-layer units was 10, which is usually enough to compensate for optical nonlinear distortion, the overfitting was weaker than that of the VSTF. Furthermore, we confirmed that even commonly used finite impulse response (FIR) filters showed overfitting to the RRBS when the length of the RRBS was equal to or shorter than the length of the tapped delay line of the filters. Conversely, when the RRBS used for the training was sufficiently longer than the tapped delay line, the overfitting could be suppressed, even when using an ANN-based nonlinear equalizer with 10 hidden-layer units.

Low capacity and reliability are the challenges in the development of ionosphere communication channel systems. To overcome this problem, one promising and state-of-the-art method is applying a multi-carrier modulation technique. Currently, the use of multi-carrier modulation technique is using a single transmission frequency with a bandwidth is no more than 24 kHz in real-world implementation. However, based on the range of the minimum and maximum ionospheric plasma frequency values, which could be in the MHz range, the use of these values as the main bandwidth in multi-carrier modulation techniques can optimize the use of available channel capacity. In this paper, we propose a multi-carrier modulation technique in combination with a model variation of Lowest Usable Frequency (LUF) and Maximum Usable Frequency (MUF) values as the main bandwidth to optimize the use of available channel capacity while also maintaining its reliability by following the variation of the ionosphere plasma frequency. To analyze its capacity and reliability, we performed a numeric simulation using a LUF-MUF model based on Long Short Term-Memory (LSTM) and Advanced Stand Alone Prediction System (ASAPS) in Near Vertical Incidence Skywave (NVIS) propagation mode with the assumption of perfect synchronization between transmitter and receiver with no Doppler and no time offsets. The results show the achievement of the ergodic channel capacity varies for every hour of the day, with values in the range of 10 Mbps and 100 Mbps with 0 to 20 dB SNR. Meanwhile, the reliability of the system is in the range of 8% to 100% for every hour of one day based on two different Mode Reliability calculation scenarios. The results also show that channel capacity and system reliability optimization are determined by the accuracy of the LUF-MUF model.

The combination of multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) technology and sparse code multiple access (SCMA) can significantly enhance the spectral efficiency of future wireless communication networks. However, the receiver design for downlink MIMO-SCMA systems faces challenges in developing multi-user detection (MUD) schemes that achieve both low latency and low bit error rate (BER). The separated detection scheme in the MIMO-SCMA system involves performing MIMO detection first to obtain estimated signals, followed by SCMA decoding. We propose an enhanced separated detection scheme based on lightweight graph neural networks (GNNs). In this scheme, we raise the concept of coordinate point relay and full-category training, which allow for the substitution of the conventional message passing algorithm (MPA) in SCMA decoding with image classification techniques based on deep learning (DL). The features of the images used for training encompass crucial information such as the amplitude and phase of estimated signals, as well as channel characteristics they have encountered. Furthermore, various types of images demonstrate distinct directional trends, contributing additional features that enhance the precision of classification by GNNs. Simulation results demonstrate that the enhanced separated detection scheme outperforms existing separated and joint detection schemes in terms of computational complexity, while having a better BER performance than the joint detection schemes at high Eb/N0 (energy per bit to noise power spectral density ratio) values.

Wi-Fi-based person identification (PI) tasks are performed by analyzing the fluctuating characteristics of the Channel State Information (CSI) data to determine whether the person's identity is legitimate. This technology can be used for intrusion detection and keyless access to restricted areas. However, the related research rarely considers the restricted computing resources and the complexity of real-world environments, resulting in lacking practicality in some scenarios, such as intrusion detection tasks in remote substations without public network coverage. In this paper, we propose a novel neural network model named SimpleViTFi, a lightweight classification model based on Vision Transformer (ViT), which adds a downsampling mechanism, a distinctive patch embedding method and learnable positional embedding to the cropped ViT architecture. We employ the latest IEEE 802.11ac 80MHz CSI dataset provided by [1]. The CSI matrix is abstracted into a special “image” after pre-processing and fed into the trained SimpleViTFi for classification. The experimental results demonstrate that the proposed SimpleViTFi has lower computational resource overhead and better accuracy than traditional classification models, reflecting the robustness on LOS or NLOS CSI data generated by different Tx-Rx devices and acquired by different monitors.

Displacement current is the last piece of the puzzle of electromagnetic theory. Its existence implies that electromagnetic disturbance can propagate at the speed of light and finally it led to the discovery of Hertzian waves. On the other hand, since magnetic fields can be calculated only with conduction currents using Biot-Savart's law, a popular belief that displacement current does not produce magnetic fields has started to circulate. But some people think if this is correct, what is the displacement current introduced for. The controversy over the meaning of displacement currents has been going on for more than hundred years. Such confusion is caused by forgetting the fact that in the case of non-stationary currents, neither magnetic fields created by conduction currents nor those created by displacement currents can be defined. It is also forgotten that the effect of displacement current is automatically incorporated in the magnetic field calculated by Biot-Savart's law. In this paper, mainly with the help of Helmholtz decomposition, we would like to clarify the confusion surrounding displacement currents and provide an opportunity to end the long standing controversy.

A method for bandwidth enhancement of radar cross section (RCS) reduction by metasurfaces was studied. Scattering cancellation is one of common methods for reducing RCS of target scatterers. It occurs when the wave scattered by the target scatterer and the wave scattered by the canceling scatterer are the same amplitude and opposite phase. Since bandwidth of scattering cancellation is usually narrow, we proposed the bandwidth enhancement method using metasurfaces, which can control the frequency dependence of the scattering phase. We designed and fabricated a metasurface composed of a patch array on a grounded dielectric substrate. Numerical and experimental evaluations confirmed that the metasurface enhances the bandwidth of 10dB RCS reduction by 52% bandwidth ratio of the metasurface from 34% bandwidth ratio of metallic cancelling scatterers.

We study the device length and/or band characteristics examined by two coupling analysis methods for our proposed fiber-type polarization splitter (FPS) composed of single mode fiber and polarization maintaining fiber. The first method is based on the power transition characteristics of the coupled-mode theory (CMT), and the second, a more accurate analysis method, is based on improved fundamental mode excitation (IFME). The CMT and IFME were evaluated and investigated with respect to the device length and bandwidth characteristics of the FPS. In addition, the influence of the excitation point shift of the fundamental mode, which has not been almost researched so far, is also analysed by using IFME.

For 6G mobile communications, it is important to realize a 300 GHz band bandpass filter that fits the occupied bandwidth of wireless communication system to prevent inter-system interference. This paper presents the design of a 300-GHz-band dual-band bandstop filter composed of two types of different sized split ring resonator (SRR) unit cells. The SRR unit cells are formed by a 5-μm-thick gold pattern on a 200-μm-thick quartz substrate. When two different-sized SRR unit cells are placed alternately on the same quartz substrate and the SRR unit cell size is over 260 μm, the stopbands of the dual-band bandstop filter are almost the same as those of the bandstop filter, which is composed of a single SRR unit cell. The insertion loss of the dual-band bandstop filter at 297.4 GHz is 1.8 dB and the 3-dB passband becomes 16.0 GHz (290.4-306.4 GHz). The attenuation in the two stopbands is greater than 20 dB. Six types of dual-band bandstop filters with different arrangement and different distance between SRR unit cells are prototyped, and the effect of the distance and arrangement between different sized SRR unit cells on the transmission characteristics of dual-band bandstop filters were clarified.

This paper presents the design and implementation of an automated multi-phase facilitation agent based on LLM to realize inclusive facilitation and efficient use of a large language model (LLM) to facilitate realistic discussions. Large-scale discussion support systems have been studied and implemented very widely since they enable a lot of people to discuss remotely and within 24 hours and 7 days. Furthermore, automated facilitation artificial intelligence (AI) agents have been realized since they can efficiently facilitate large-scale discussions. For example, D-Agree is a large-scale discussion support system where an automated facilitation AI agent facilitates discussion among people. Since the current automated facilitation agent was designed following the structure of the issue-based information system (IBIS) and the IBIS-based agent has been proven that it has superior performance. However, there are several problems that need to be addressed with the IBIS-based agent. In this paper, we focus on the following three problems: 1) The IBIS-based agent was designed to only promote other participants' posts by replying to existing posts accordingly, lacking the consideration of different behaviours taken by participants with diverse characteristics, leading to a result that sometimes the discussion is not sufficient. 2) The facilitation messages generated by the IBIS-based agent were not natural enough, leading to consequences that the participants were not sufficiently promoted and the participants did not follow the flow to discuss a topic. 3) Since the IBIS-based agent is not combined with LLM, designing the control of LLM is necessary. Thus, to solve the problems mentioned above, the design of a phase-based facilitation framework is proposed in this paper. Specifically, we propose two significant designs: One is the design for a multi-phase facilitation agent created based on the framework to address problem 1); The other one is the design for the combination with LLM to address problem 2) and 3). Particularly, the language model called “GPT-3.5” is used for the combination by using corresponding APIs from OPENAI. Furthermore, we demonstrate the improvement of our facilitation agent framework by presenting the evaluations and a case study. Besides, we present the difference between our framework and LangChain which has generic features to utilize LLMs.

Despite the increasing use of conversational artificial intelligence (AI) in online discussion environments, few studies explore the application of AI as a facilitator in forming problem-solving debates and influencing opinions in cross-venue scenarios, particularly in diverse and war-ravaged countries. This study aims to investigate the impact of AI on enhancing participant engagement and collaborative problem-solving in online-mediated discussion environments, especially in diverse and heterogeneous discussion settings, such as the five cities in Afghanistan. We seek to assess the extent to which AI participation in online conversations succeeds by examining the depth of discussions and participants' contributions, comparing discussions facilitated by AI with those not facilitated by AI across different venues. The results are discussed with respect to forming and changing opinions with and without AI-mediated communication. The findings indicate that the number of opinions generated in AI-facilitated discussions significantly differs from discussions without AI support. Additionally, statistical analyses reveal quantitative disparities in online discourse sentiments when conversational AI is present compared to when it is absent. These findings contribute to a better understanding of the role of AI-mediated discussions and offer several practical and social implications, paving the way for future developments and improvements.

Both group process studies and collective intelligence studies are concerned with “which of the crowds and the best members perform better.” This can be seen as a matter of democracy versus dictatorship. Having evidence of the growth potential of crowds and experts can be useful in making correct predictions and can benefit humanity. In the collective intelligence experimental paradigm, experts' or best members ability is compared with the accuracy of the crowd average. In this research (n = 620), using repeated trials of simple tasks, we compare the correct answer of a class average (index of collective intelligence) and the best member (the one whose answer was closest to the correct answer). The results indicated that, for the cognition task, collective intelligence improved to the level of the best member through repeated trials without feedback; however, it depended on the ability of the best members for the prediction task. The present study suggested that best members' superiority over crowds for the prediction task on the premise of being free from social influence. However, machine learning results suggests that the best members among us cannot be easily found beforehand because they appear through repeated trials.

Despite recent advancements in utilizing meta-learning for addressing the generalization challenges of graph neural networks (GNN), their performance in argumentation mining tasks, such as argument classifications, remains relatively limited. This is primarily due to the under-utilization of potential pattern knowledge intrinsic to argumentation structures. To address this issue, our study proposes a two-stage, pattern-based meta-GNN method in contrast to conventional pattern-free meta-GNN approaches. Initially, our method focuses on learning a high-level pattern representation to effectively capture the pattern knowledge within an argumentation structure and then predicts edge types. It then utilizes a meta-learning framework in the second stage, designed to train a meta-learner based on the predicted edge types. This feature allows for rapid generalization to novel argumentation graphs. Through experiments on real English discussion datasets spanning diverse topics, our results demonstrate that our proposed method substantially outperforms conventional pattern-free GNN approaches, signifying a significant stride forward in this domain.

In recent years, location-based technologies for ubiquitous environments have aimed to realize services tailored to each purpose based on information about an individual's current location. To establish such advanced location-based services, an estimation technology that can accurately recognize and predict the movements of people and objects is necessary. Although global positioning system (GPS) has already been used as a standard for outdoor positioning technology and many services have been realized, several techniques using conventional wireless sensors such as Wi-Fi, RFID, and Bluetooth have been considered for indoor positioning technology. However, conventional wireless indoor positioning is prone to the effects of noise, and the large range of estimated indoor locations makes it difficult to identify human activities precisely. We propose a method to mine user activity patterns from time-series data of user's locationss in an indoor environment using ultra-wideband (UWB) sensors. An UWB sensor is useful for indoor positioning due to its high noise immunity and measurement accuracy, however, to our knowledge, estimation and prediction of human indoor activities using UWB sensors have not yet been addressed. The proposed method consists of three steps: 1) obtaining time-series data of the user's location using a UWB sensor attached to the user, and then estimating the areas where the user has stayed; 2) associating each area of the user's stay with a nearby landmark of activity and assigning indoor activities; and 3) mining the user's activity patterns based on the user's indoor activities and their transitions. We conducted experiments to evaluate the proposed method by investigating the accuracy of estimating the user's area of stay using a UWB sensor and observing the results of activity pattern mining applied to actual laboratory members over 30-days. The results showed that the proposed method is superior to a comparison method, Time-based clustering algorithm, in estimating the stay areas precisely, and that it is possible to reveal the user's activity patterns appropriately in the actual environment.