We consider the problem of finding the best subset of sensors in wireless sensor networks where linear Bayesian parameter estimation is conducted from the selected measurements corrupted by correlated noise. We aim to directly minimize the estimation error which is manipulated by using the QR and LU factorizations. We derive an analytic result which expedites the sensor selection in a greedy manner. We also provide the complexity of the proposed algorithm in comparison with previous selection methods. We evaluate the performance through numerical experiments using random measurements under correlated noise and demonstrate a competitive estimation accuracy of the proposed algorithm with a reasonable increase in complexity as compared with the previous selection methods.

Detecting key frames in videos has garnered substantial attention in recent years, it is a point-level task and has deep research value and application prospect in daily life. For instances, video surveillance system, video cover generation and highlight moment flashback all demands the technique of key frame detection. However, the task is beset by challenges such as the sparsity of key frame instances, imbalances between target frames and background frames, and the absence of post-processing method. In response to these problems, we introduce a novel and effective Temporal Interval Guided (TIG) framework to precisely localize specific frames. The framework is incorporated with a proposed Point-Level-Soft non-maximum suppression (PLS-NMS) post-processing algorithm which is suitable for point-level task, facilitated by the well-designed confidence score decay function. Furthermore, we propose a TIG-loss, exhibiting sensitivity to temporal interval from target frame, to optimize the two-stage framework. The proposed method can be broadly applied to key frame detection in video understanding, including action start detection and static video summarization. Extensive experimentation validates the efficacy of our approach on action start detection benchmark datasets: THUMOS’14 and Activitynet v1.3, and we have reached state-of-the-art performance. Competitive results are also demonstrated on SumMe and TVSum datasets for deep learning based static video summarization.

In this paper, the Towards High Performance Voxel-based 3D Object Detection (Voxel-RCNN) three-dimensional (3D) point cloud object detection model is used as the benchmark network. Aiming at the problems existing in the current mainstream 3D point cloud voxelization methods, such as the backbone and the lack of feature expression ability under the bird’s-eye view (BEV), a high-performance voxel-based 3D object detection network (Reinforced Voxel-RCNN) is proposed. Firstly, a 3D feature extraction module based on the integration of inverted residual convolutional network and weight normalization is designed on the 3D backbone. This module can not only well retain more point cloud feature information, enhance the information interaction between convolutional layers, but also improve the feature extraction ability of the backbone network. Secondly, a spatial feature-semantic fusion module based on spatial and channel attention is proposed from a BEV perspective. The mixed use of channel features and semantic features further improves the network’s ability to express point cloud features. In the comparison of experimental results on the public dataset KITTI, the experimental results of this paper are better than many voxel-based methods. Compared with the baseline network, the 3D average accuracy and BEV average accuracy on the three categories of Car, Cyclist, and Pedestrians are improved. Among them, in the 3D average accuracy, the improvement rate of Car category is 0.23%, Cyclist is 0.78%, and Pedestrians is 2.08%. In the context of BEV average accuracy, enhancements are observed: 0.32% for the Car category, 0.99% for Cyclist, and 2.38% for Pedestrians. The findings demonstrate that the algorithm enhancement introduced in this study effectively enhances the accuracy of target category detection.

For flight simulators, it is crucial to create three-dimensional terrain using clear remote sensing images. However, due to haze and other contributing variables, the obtained remote sensing images typically have low contrast and blurry features. In order to build a flight simulator visual system, we propose a deep learning-based dehaze model for remote sensing images dehazing. An encoder-decoder architecture is proposed that consists of a multiscale fusion module and a gated large kernel convolutional attention module. This architecture can fuse multi-resolution global and local semantic features and can adaptively extract image features under complex terrain. The experimental results demonstrate that, with good generality and application, the model outperforms existing comparison techniques and achieves high-confidence dehazing in remote sensing images with a variety of haze concentrations, multi-complex terrains, and multi-spatial resolutions.

Emergency Medical Services (EMS) play a crucial role in healthcare systems, managing pre-hospital or out-of-hospital emergencies from the onset of an emergency call to the patient’s arrival at a healthcare facility. The design of an efficient ambulance location model is pivotal in enhancing survival rates, controlling morbidity, and preventing disability. Key factors in the classical models typically include travel time, demand zones, and the number of stations. While urban EMS systems have received extensive examination due to their centralized populations, rural areas pose distinct challenges. These include lower population density and longer response distances, contributing to a higher fatality rate due to sparse population distribution, limited EMS stations, and extended travel times. To address these challenges, we introduce a novel mathematical model that aims to optimize coverage and equity. A distinctive feature of our model is the integration of equity within the objective function, coupled with a focus on practical response time that includes the period required for personal protective equipment procedures, ensuring the model’s applicability and realism in emergency response scenarios. We tackle the proposed problem using a tailored genetic algorithm and propose a greedy algorithm for solution construction. The implementation of our tailored Genetic Algorithm promises efficient and effective EMS solutions, potentially enhancing emergency care and health outcomes in rural communities.

This article describes the idea of utilizing Attested Execution Secure Processors (AESPs) that fit into building a secure Self-Sovereign Identity (SSI) system satisfying Sybil-resistance under permissionless blockchains. Today’s circumstances requiring people to be more online have encouraged us to address digital identity preserving privacy. There is a momentum of research addressing SSI, and many researchers approach blockchain technology as a foundation. SSI brings natural persons various benefits such as owning controls; on the other side, digital identity systems in the real world require Sybil-resistance to comply with Anti-Money-Laundering (AML) and other needs. The main idea in our proposal is to utilize AESPs for three reasons: first is the use of attested execution capability along with tamper-resistance, which is a strong assumption; second is powerfulness and flexibility, allowing various open-source programs to be executed within a secure enclave, and the third is that equipping hardware-assisted security in mobile devices has become a norm. Rafael Pass et al.’s formal abstraction of AESPs and the ideal functionality $\color{brown}{\mathcal{G}_\mathtt{att}}$ enable us to formulate how hardware-assisted security works for secure digital identity systems preserving privacy under permissionless blockchains mathematically. Our proposal of the AESP-based SSI architecture and system protocols, $\color{blue}{\Pi^{\mathcal{G}_\mathtt{att}}}$, demonstrates the advantages of building a proper SSI system that satisfies the Sybil-resistant requirement. The protocols may eliminate the online distributed committee assumed in other research, such as CanDID, because of assuming AESPs; thus, $\color{blue}{\Pi^{\mathcal{G}_\mathtt{att}}}$ allows not to rely on multi-party computation (MPC), bringing drastic flexibility and efficiency compared with the existing SSI systems.

In this research, we investigated the digital/analog-operation utilizing ferroelectric nondoped HfO2 (FeND-HfO2) as a blocking layer (BL) in the Hf-based metal/oxide/nitride/oxide/Si (MONOS) nonvolatile memory (NVM), so called FeNOS NVM. The Al/HfN0.5/HfN1.1/HfO2/p-Si(100) FeNOS diodes realized small equivalent oxide thickness (EOT) of 4.5 nm with the density of interface states (Dit) of 5.3 × 1010 eV-1cm-2 which were suitable for high-speed and low-voltage operation. The flat-band voltage (VFB) was well controlled as 80-100 mV with the input pulses of ±3 V/100 ms controlled by the partial polarization of FeND-HfO2 BL at each 2-bit state operated by the charge injection with the input pulses of +8 V/1-100 ms.

A novel temporal convolution network-gated recurrent unit (NTCN-GRU) algorithm is proposed for the greatest of constant false alarm rate (GO-CFAR) frequency hopping (FH) prediction, integrating GRU and Bayesian optimization (BO). GRU efficiently captures the semantic associations among long FH sequences, and mitigates the phenomenon of gradient vanishing or explosion. BO improves extracting data features by optimizing hyperparameters besides. Simulations demonstrate that the proposed algorithm effectively reduces the loss in the training process, greatly improves the FH prediction effect, and outperforms the existing FH sequence prediction model. The model runtime is also reduced by three-quarters compared with others FH sequence prediction models.

We propose a pre-T event-triggered controller (ETC) for the stabilization of a chain of integrators. Our per-T event-triggered controller is a modified event-triggered controller by adding a pre-defined positive constant T to the event-triggering condition. With this pre-T, the immediate advantages are (i) the often complicated additional analysis regarding the Zeno behavior is no longer needed, (ii) the positive lower bound of interexecution times can be specified, (iii) the number of control input updates can be further reduced. We carry out the rigorous system analysis and simulations to illustrate the advantages of our proposed method over the traditional event-triggered control method.

Choco Banana is one of Nikoli’s pencil puzzles. We study the computational complexity of Choco Banana. It is shown that deciding whether a given instance of the Choco Banana puzzle has a solution is NP-complete.

In 2005, Nandi introduced a class of double-block-length compression functions hπ(x) := (h(x), h(π(x))), where h is a random oracle with an n-bit output and π is a non-cryptographic public permutation. Nandi demonstrated that the collision resistance of hπ is optimal if π has no fixed point in the classical setting. Our study explores the collision resistance of hπ and the Merkle-Damgård hash function using hπ in the quantum random oracle model. Firstly, we reveal that the quantum collision resistance of hπ may not be optimal even if π has no fixed point. If π is an involution, then a colliding pair of inputs can be found for hπ with only O(2n/2) queries by the Grover search. Secondly, we present a sufficient condition on π for the optimal quantum collision resistance of hπ. This condition states that any collision attack needs Ω(22n/3) queries to find a colliding pair of inputs. The proof uses the recent technique of Zhandry’s compressed oracle. Thirdly, we show that the quantum collision resistance of the Merkle-Damgård hash function using hπ can be optimal even if π is an involution. Finally, we discuss the quantum collision resistance of double-block-length compression functions using a block cipher.

The development of energy-efficient neural network hardware using magnetic tunnel junction (MTJ) devices has been widely investigated. One of the issues in the use of MTJ devices is large write energy. Since MTJ devices show stochastic behaviors, a large write current with enough time length is required to guarantee the certainty of the information held in MTJ devices. This paper demonstrates that quantized neural networks (QNNs) exhibit high tolerance to bit errors in weights and an output feature map. Since probabilistic switching errors in MTJ devices do not have always a serious effect on the performance of QNNs, large write energy is not required for reliable switching operations of MTJ devices. Based on the evaluation results, we achieve about 80% write-energy reduction on buffer memory compared to the conventional method. In addition, it is demonstrated that binary representation exhibits higher bit-error tolerance than the other data representations in the range of large error rates.

Neural networks (NNs) fail to perform well or make excessive predictions when predicting out-of-distribution or unseen datasets. In contrast, Bayesian neural networks (BNNs) can quantify the uncertainty of their inference to solve this problem. Nevertheless, BNNs have not been widely adopted owing to their increased memory and computational cost. In this study, we propose a novel approach to extend binary neural networks by introducing a probabilistic interpretation of binary weights, effectively converting them into BNNs. The proposed approach can reduce the number of weights by half compared to the conventional method. A comprehensive comparative analysis with established methods like Monte Carlo dropout and Bayes by backprop was performed to assess the performance and capabilities of our proposed technique in terms of accuracy and capturing uncertainty. Through this analysis, we aim to provide insights into the advantages of this Bayesian extension.

We present a time-efficient lower bound κ on the number of gates in Toffoli-based reversible circuits that represent a given reversible logic function. For the characteristic vector s of a reversible logic function, κ(s) closely approximates σ-lb(s), which is known as a relatively efficient lower bound in respect of evaluation time and tightness. The primary contribution of this paper is that κ enables fast computation while maintaining a tightness of the lower bound, approximately equal to σ-lb. We prove that the discrepancy between κ(s) and σ-lb(s) is at most one only, by providing upper and lower bounds on σ-lb in terms of κ. Subsequently, we show that κ can be calculated more efficiently than σ-lb. An algorithm for κ(s) with a complexity of 𝓞(n) is presented, where n is the dimension of s. Experimental results comparing κ and σ-lb are also given. The results demonstrate that the two lower bounds are equal for most reversible functions, and that the calculation of κ is significantly faster than σ-lb by several orders of magnitude.

This paper shows that sum-of-product expression (SOP) minimization produces the generalization ability. We show this in three steps. First, various classes of SOPs are generated. Second, minterms of SOP are randomly selected to generate partially defined functions. And, third, from the partially defined functions, original functions are reconstructed by SOP minimization. We consider Achilles heel functions, majority functions, monotone increasing cascade functions, functions generated from random SOPs, monotone increasing random SOPs, circle functions, and globe functions. As for the generalization ability, the presented method is compared with Naive Bayes, multi-level perceptron, support vector machine, JRIP, J48, and random forest. For these functions, in many cases, only 10% of the input combinations are sufficient to reconstruct more than 90% of the truth tables of the original functions.

To enhance fuel efficiency and lower manufacturing and maintenance costs, in-vehicle wireless networks can facilitate the weight reduction of vehicle wire harnesses. In this paper, we utilize the Impulse Radio-Ultra Wideband (IR-UWB) of IEEE 802.15.4a/z for in-vehicle wireless networks because of its excellent signal penetration and robustness in multipath environments. Since clear channel assessment is optional in this standard, we employ polling control as a multiple access control to prevent interference within the system. Therein, the preamble overhead is large in IR-UWB of IEEE 802.15.4a/z. Hence, aggregating as much sensor data as possible within each frame is more efficient. In this paper, we assume that reading out data from sensors and sending data to actuators is periodical and that their respective phases can be adjusted. Therefore, this paper proposes an integer linear programming-based scheduling algorithm that minimizes the number of transmitted frames by adjusting the read and write phases. Furthermore, we provide a heuristic algorithm that computes a sub-optimal but acceptable solution in a shorter time. Experimental validation shows that the data aggregation of the proposed algorithms is robust against interference.

Direct-current biased optical orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (DCO-OFDM) exhibits a high peak-to-average power ratio (PAPR), which leads to nonlinear distortion in the system. In response to the above, the study proposes a scheme that combines direct-current biased optical orthogonal frequency division multiplexing with index modulation (DCO-OFDM-IM) and convex optimization algorithms. The proposed scheme utilizes partially activated subcarriers of the system to transmit constellation modulated symbol information, and transmits additional symbol information of the system through the combination of activated carrier index. Additionally, a dither signal is added to the system’s idle subcarriers, and the convex optimization algorithm is applied to solve for the optimal values of this dither signal. Therefore, by ensuring the system’s peak power remains unchanged, the scheme enhances the system’s average transmission power and thus achieves a reduction in the PAPR. Experimental results indicate that at a system’s complementary cumulative distribution function (CCDF) of 10-4, the proposed scheme reduces the PAPR by approximately 3.5 dB compared to the conventional DCO-OFDM system. Moreover, at a bit error rate (BER) of 10-3, the proposed scheme can lower the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) by about 1 dB relative to the traditional DCO-OFDM system. Therefore, the proposed scheme enables a more substantial reduction in PAPR and improvement in BER performance compared to the conventional DCO-OFDM approach.

Terahertz (THz) ultra-massive multiple-input multiple-output (UM-MIMO) is envisioned as a key enabling technology of 6G wireless communication. In UM-MIMO systems, downlink channel state information (CSI) has to be fed to the base station for beamforming. However, the feedback overhead becomes unacceptable because of the large antenna array. In this letter, the characteristic of CSI is explored from the perspective of data distribution. Based on this characteristic, a novel network named Attention-GRU Net (AGNet) is proposed for CSI feedback. Simulation results show that the proposed AGNet outperforms other advanced methods in the quality of CSI feedback in UM-MIMO systems.

In underwater acoustic communication systems based on orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM), taking clipping to reduce the peak-to-average power ratio leads to nonlinear distortion of the signal, making the receiver unable to recover the faded signal accurately. In this letter, an Aquila optimizer-based convolutional attention block stacked network (AO-CABNet) is proposed to replace the receiver to improve the ability to recover the original signal. Simulation results show that the AO method has better optimization capability to quickly obtain the optimal parameters of the network model, and the proposed AO-CABNet structure outperforms existing schemes.

In this letter, we propose a novel direct construction of three-phase Z-complementary triads with flexible lengths and various widths of the zero-correlation zone based on extended Boolean functions. The maximum width ratio of the zero-correlation zone of the construction can reach 3/4. And the proposed sequences can exist for all lengths other than powers of three. We also investigate the peak-to-average power ratio properties of the proposed ZCTs.