Non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) allows several users to multiplex in the power-domain to improve spectral efficiency. To further improve its performance, it is desirable to reduce inter-user interference (IUI). In this paper, we propose a downlink asynchronous NOMA (ANOMA) scheme applicable to frequency-selective channels. The proposed scheme introduces an intentional symbol offset between the multiplexed signals to reduce IUI, and it employs cyclic-prefixed single-carrier transmission with frequency-domain equalization (FDE) to reduce inter-symbol interference. We show that the mean square error for the FDE of the proposed ANOMA scheme is smaller than that of a conventional NOMA scheme. Simulation results show that the proposed ANOMA with appropriate power allocation achieves a better sum rate compared to the conventional NOMA.

We proposed a new method for evaluating the deterioration of messenger wires by using terahertz waves. We use terahertz time-domain spectroscopy to measure several twisted wire samples with different levels of deterioration. We find that each twisted wire sample had a different distribution of reflection intensity which was due to the wires' twist structure. We show that it is possible to assess the degradation from the straight lines present in the reflection intensity distribution image. Furthermore, it was confirmed that our method can be applied to wire covered with resin.

When BJTs are irradiated by gamma rays, interface trapped charges and positive oxide trapped charges are formed by ionization at the Si-SiO2 interface and SiO2 regions, respectively. These trapped charges affect the movement of carriers depending on the type of BJT. This paper presents experimental results regarding operating characteristics of gamma irradiated pnp Si BJTs.

We have investigated the electromotive force (EMF) of a composite sample consisting of a Π-type thermoelectric power generation structure with a pair of n- and p-type Si wafers and piezoelectric devices in order to collect electricity from vibration energy and thermal energy, simultaneously. The observed EMF was obtained by superimposing the oscillating EMF of vibration energy on the constant EMF of thermal energy. Therefore, we have improved the composite sample with diodes for rectifying the oscillating EMF. As a result, the full-wave rectification and the preservation of EMF amplitude were realized. From the frequency dependence, it was found that the dielectric loss of the piezoelectric device influences the amplitude and the time delay in the EMF.

A surrogate-based electromagnetic (EM) optimization using neural networks (NNs) is presented for computationally efficient microwave bandpass filter (BPF) design. This paper first describes the forward problem (EM analysis) and the inverse problems (EM design), and the two fundamental issues in BPF designs. The first issue is that the EM analysis is a time-consuming task, and the second one is that EM design highly depends on the structural optimization performed with the help of EM analysis. To accelerate the optimization design, two surrogate models of forward and inverse models are introduced here, which are built with the NNs. As a result, the inverse model can instantaneously guess initial structural parameters with high accuracy by simply inputting synthesized coupling-matrix elements into the NN. Then, the forward model in conjunction with optimization algorithm enables designers to rapidly find optimal structural parameters from the initial ones. The effectiveness of the surrogate-based EM optimization is verified through the structural designs of a typical fifth-order microstrip BPF with multiple couplings.

The Graph Coloring Problem (GCP) is a fundamental combinatorial optimization problem that has many practical applications. Degree of SATURation (DSATUR) and Recursive Largest First (RLF) are well known as typical solution construction algorithms for GCP. It is necessary to update the vertex degree in the subgraph induced by uncolored vertices when selecting vertices to be colored in both DSATUR and RLF. There is an issue that the higher the edge density of a given graph, the longer the processing time. The purposes of this paper are to propose a degree updating method called Adaptive Degree Updating (ADU for short) that improves the issue, and to evaluate the effectiveness of ADU for DSATUR and RLF on DIMACS benchmark graphs as well as random graphs having a wide range of sizes and densities. Experimental results show that the construction algorithms with ADU are faster than the conventional algorithms for many graphs and that the ADU method yields significant speed-ups relative to the conventional algorithms, especially in the case of large graphs with higher edge density.

Graph layouts reveal global or local structures of graph data. However, there are few studies on assisting readers in better reconstructing a graph from a layout. This paper attempts to generate a layout whose edges can be reestablished. We reformulate the graph layout problem as an edge classification problem. The inputs are the vertex pairs, and the outputs are the edge existences. The trainable parameters are the laid-out coordinates of the vertices. We propose a binary classification-based graph layout (BCGL) framework in this paper. This layout aims to preserve the local structure of the graph and does not require the total similarity relationships of the vertices. We implement two concrete algorithms under the BCGL framework, evaluate our approach on a wide variety of datasets, and draw comparisons with several other methods. The evaluations verify the ability of the BCGL in local neighborhood preservation and its visual quality with some classic metrics.

In order to further reduce the transmission rate of multi-channel satellite broadcast signals, whose carrier-to-noise ratio (CNR fluctuates due to rainfall attenuation, we propose a novel digitized radio-over-fiber (DRoF) -based optical re-transmission system based on adaptive combination compression for ultra-high definition (UHD) broadcasting satellite (BS)/communications satellite (CS) broadcast signals. The proposed system reduces the optical re-transmission rate of BS/CS signals as much as possible while handling input CNR fluctuations. Therefore, the transmission rate of communication signals in time-division multiplexing (TDM) transmission is ensured, and network sharing of communication signals and broadcast signals via passive optical network (PON) is realized. Based on the ITU-R P.618-13 prediction model, an experimental evaluation is performed using estimates of the long-term statistics of attenuation due to rainfall. The attenuation is evaluated as a percentage of the time that long-term re-transmission service is available. It is shown that the proposed system is able to accommodate a wide range of rainfall attenuation and achieve a 99.988% time percentage for the duration of service provision. In order to show the rate reduction effect of the proposed system, the quantization bit reduction effect as a function of the input CNR, which depends on rainfall attenuation, is experimentally confirmed. Experiments show that service operation time of 99.978% can be achieved by 3-bit transmission. This means a 62.5% reduction in transmission rate is realized compared to conventional fixed quantization. Furthermore, the average quantization bit number in our system for service operation times is 3.000, indicating that most service operation times are covered by just 3-bit transmission.

We propose a penalty-based and constraint Bayesian optimization methods with an agent-based supply-chain (SC) simulator as a new Monte Carlo optimization approach for multi-echelon inventory management to improve key performance indicators such as inventory cost and sales opportunity loss. First, we formulate the multi-echelon inventory problem and introduce an agent-based SC simulator architecture for the optimization. Second, we define the optimization framework for the formulation. Finally, we discuss the evaluation of the effectiveness of the proposed methods by benchmarking it against the most commonly used genetic algorithm (GA) in simulation-based inventory optimization. Our results indicate that the constraint Bayesian optimization can minimize SC inventory cost with lower sales opportunity loss rates and converge to the optimal solution 22 times faster than GA in the best case.

This letter studies a biobjective optimization problem in binary associative memories characterized by ternary connection parameters. First, we introduce a condition of parameters that guarantees storage of any desired memories and suppression of oscillatory behavior. Second, we define a biobjective problem based on two objectives that evaluate uniform stability of desired memories and sparsity of connection parameters. Performing precise numerical analysis for typical examples, we have clarified existence of a trade-off between the two objectives.

Moon-or-Sun, Nagareru, and Nurimeizu are Nikoli's pencil puzzles. We study the computational complexity of Moon-or-Sun, Nagareru, and Nurimeizu puzzles. It is shown that deciding whether a given instance of each puzzle has a solution is NP-complete.

In this letter, a ray tracing (RT) acceleration method based on rank minimization is proposed. RT is a general tool used to simulate wireless communication environments. However, the simulation is time consuming because of the large number of ray calculations. This letter focuses on radio map interpolation as an acceleration approach. In the conventional methods cannot appropriately estimate short-span variation caused by multipath fading. To overcome the shortage of the conventional methods, we adopt rank minimization based interpolation. A computational simulation using commercial RT software revealed that the interpolation accuracy of the proposed method was higher than those of other radio map interpolation methods and that RT simulation can be accelerated approximate five times faster with the missing rate of 0.8.

Feature selection based on particle swarm optimization is often employed for promoting the performance of artificial intelligence algorithms. However, its interpretability has been lacking of concrete research. Improving the stability of the feature selection method is a way to effectively improve its interpretability. A novel feature selection approach named Interpretable Particle Swarm Optimization is developed in this paper. It uses four data perturbation ways and three filter feature selection methods to obtain stable feature subsets, and adopts Fuch map to convert them to initial particles. Besides, it employs similarity mutation strategy, which applies Tanimoto distance to choose the nearest 1/3 individuals to the previous particles to implement mutation. Eleven representative algorithms and four typical datasets are taken to make a comprehensive comparison with our proposed approach. Accuracy, F1, precision and recall rate indicators are used as classification measures, and extension of Kuncheva indicator is employed as the stability measure. Experiments show that our method has a better interpretability than the compared evolutionary algorithms. Furthermore, the results of classification measures demonstrate that the proposed approach has an excellent comprehensive classification performance.

Fault localization analyzes the runtime information of two classes of test cases (i.e., passing test cases and failing test cases) to identify suspicious statements potentially responsible for a failure. However, the failing test cases are always far fewer than passing test cases in reality, and the class imbalance problem will affect fault localization effectiveness. To address this issue, we propose a data augmentation approach using conditional variational auto-encoder to synthesize new failing test cases for FL. The experimental results show that our approach significantly improves six state-of-the-art fault localization techniques.

A new software based in-situ training (SBIST) method to achieve high accuracies is proposed for binarized neural networks inference accelerator chips in which measured offsets in sense amplifiers (activation binarizers) are transformed into biases in the training software. To expedite this individual training, the initial values for the weights are taken from results of a common forming training process which is conducted in advance by using the offset fluctuation distribution averaged over the fabrication line. SPICE simulation inference results for the accelerator predict that the accuracy recovers to higher than 90% even when the amplifier offset is as large as 40mV only after a few epochs of the individual training.

While social media is now used by many people and plays a role in distributing information, it has recently created an unexpected problem: the actual shrinkage of information sources. This is mainly due to the ease of connecting people with similar opinions and the recommendation system. Biased information distribution promotes polarization that divides people into multiple groups with opposing views. Also, people may receive only the seemingly positive information that they prefer, or may trigger them into holding onto their opinions more strongly when they encounter opposing views. This, combined with the characteristics of social media, is accelerating the polarization of opinions and eventually social division. In this paper, we propose a model of opinion formation on social media to simulate polarization. While based on the idea that opinion neutrality is only relative, this model provides new techniques for dealing with polarization.

This paper presents a fully integrated yet compact receiver front-end for Sub-GHz applications such as Internet-of-Things (IoT). The low noise amplifier (LNA) matching network leverages an inductance boosting technique. A relatively small on-chip inductor with a compact area achieves impedance matching in such a low frequency. Moreover, a passive-mixer-first mode bypasses the LNA to extend the receiver dynamic-range. The passive mixer provides matching to the 50Ω antenna interface to eliminate the need for additional passive components. Therefore, the receiver can be fully-integrated without any off-chip matching components. The flipped-voltage-follower (FVF) cell is adopted in the low pass filter (LPF) and the variable gain amplifier (VGA) for its high linearity and low power consumption. Fabricated in 65nm LP CMOS process, the proposed receiver front-end occupies 0.37mm2 core area, with a tolerable input power ranging from -91.5dBm to -1dBm for 500kbps GMSK signal at 924MHz frequency. The power consumption is 1mW power under a 1.2V supply.

This paper presents robust optimization models for minimizing the required backup capacity while providing probabilistic protection against multiple simultaneous failures of physical machines under uncertain virtual machine capacities in a cloud provider. If random failures occur, the required capacities for virtual machines are allocated to the dedicated backup physical machines, which are determined in advance. We consider two uncertainties: failure event and virtual machine capacity. By adopting a robust optimization technique, we formulate six mixed integer linear programming problems. Numerical results show that for a small size problem, our presented models are applicable to the case that virtual machine capacities are uncertain, and by using these models, we can obtain the optimal solution of the allocation of virtual machines under the uncertainty. A simulated annealing heuristic is presented to solve large size problems. By using this heuristic, an approximate solution is obtained for a large size problem.

This paper proposes a novel multi-layer substrate integrated waveguide (SIW) resonator loaded with asymmetric E-shaped slot-lines and shows a tri-band band-pass filter (BPF) using the proposed structure. In the previous literature, various SIW resonators have been proposed to simultaneously solve the problems of large area and high insertion loss. Although these SIWs have a lower insertion loss than planar-type resonators using a printed circuit board, the size of these structures tends to be larger. A multi-layer SIW resonator loaded with asymmetric E-shaped slot-lines can solve the above problems and realize a tri-band BPF without increasing the size to realize further miniaturization. The theoretical design method and the structural design are shown. Moreover, the configured structure is fabricated and measured for showing the validity of the design method in this paper.

This paper investigates the charging control strategy design problem of a large-scale plug-in electric vehicle (PEV) group, where each PEV aims to find an optimal charging strategy to minimize its own cost function. It should be noted that the collective behavior of the group is coupled in the individual cost function, which complicates the design of decentralized charging strategies. To obtain the decentralized charging strategy, a mean-field game (MFG) formulation is proposed where a penalty on collective consensus is embedded and a class of mean-field coupled time-varying stochastic systems is targeted for solving the MFG which involves the charging model of PEVs as a special case. Then, an augmented system with dimension extension and the policy iteration algorithm are proposed to solve the mean-field game problem for the class of mean-field coupled time-varying stochastic systems. Moreover, analysis of the convergence of proposed approach has been studied. Last, simulation is conducted to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed MFG-based charging control strategy and shows that the charging control strategy can achieve desired mean-field state and impact to the power grid can be buffered.