To mitigate the interference caused by frequency reuse between inter-layer and intra-layer users for Non-Orthogonal Multiple Access (NOMA) based device-to-device (D2D) communication underlaying cellular systems, this paper proposes a joint optimization strategy that combines user grouping and resource allocation. Specifically, the optimization problem is formulated to maximize the sum rate while ensuring the minimum rate of cellular users, considering three optimization parameters: user grouping, sub channel allocation and power allocation. However, this problem is a mixed integer nonlinear programming (MINLP) problem and is hard to solve directly. To address this issue, we divide the problem into two sub-problems: user grouping and resource allocation. First, we classify D2D users into D2D pairs or D2D NOMA groups based on the greedy algorithm. Then, in terms of resource allocation, we allocate the sub-channel to D2D users by swap matching algorithm to reduce the co-channel interference, and optimize the transmission power of D2D by the local search algorithm. Simulation results show that, compared to other schemes, the proposed algorithm significantly improves the system sum rate and spectral utilization.

Recently, most signal processing algorithms have been developed with floating-point arithmetic, while the fixed-point arithmetic is more popular with most commercial devices and low-power real-time applications which are implemented on embedded/ASIC/FPGA systems. Therefore, the optimal Floating-point to Fixed-point Conversion (FFC) methodology is a promising solution. In this paper, we propose the FFC consisting of signal grouping technique and simulation-based word length optimization. In order to evaluate the performance of the proposed technique, simulations are carried out and hardware co-simulation on Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs) platform have been applied to complex Digital Signal Processing (DSP) algorithms: Linear Time Invariant (LTI) systems, multi-mode Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) circuit for IEEE 802.11 ax WLAN Devices and the calibration algorithm of gain and clock skew in Time-Interleaved ADC (TI-ADC) using Adaptive Noise Canceller (ANC). The results show that the proposed technique can reduce the hardware cost about 30% while being able to maintain its speed and reliability.

For the first stage of the multi-sensitive bucketization (MSB) method, the l-diversity grouping for multiple sensitive attributes is incomplete, causing more information loss. To solve this problem, we give the definitions of the l-diversity avoidance set for multiple sensitive attributes and the avoiding of a multiple dimensional bucket, and propose a complete l-diversity grouping (CLDG) algorithm for multiple sensitive attributes. Then, we improve the first stages of the MSB algorithms by applying the CLDG algorithm to them. The experimental results show that the grouping ratio of the improved first stages of the MSB algorithms is significantly higher than that of the original first stages of the MSB algorithms, decreasing the information loss of the published microdata.

Loading test vectors and unloading test responses in shift mode during scan testing cause many scan flip-flops to switch simultaneously. The resulting shift switching activity around scan flip-flops can cause excessive local IR-drop that can change the states of some scan flip-flops, leading to test data corruption. A common approach solving this problem is partial-shift, in which multiple scan chains are formed and only one group of the scan chains is shifted at a time. However, previous methods based on this approach use random grouping, which may reduce global shift switching activity, but may not be optimized to reduce local shift switching activity, resulting in remaining high risk of test data corruption even when partial-shift is applied. This paper proposes novel algorithms (one optimal and one heuristic) to group scan chains, focusing on reducing local shift switching activity around scan flip-flops, thus reducing the risk of test data corruption. Experimental results on all large ITC'99 benchmark circuits demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed optimal and heuristic algorithms as well as the scalability of the heuristic algorithm.

Web service users are overwhelmed by the amount of information presented to them and have difficulties in finding the information that they need. Therefore, a recommendation system that predicts users' taste is an essential factor for the success of businesses. However, recommendation systems require users' personal information and can thus lead to serious privacy violations. To solve this problem, many research has been conducted about protecting personal information in recommendation systems and implementing differential privacy, a privacy protection technique that inserts noise into the original data. However, previous studies did not examine the following factors in applying differential privacy to recommendation systems. First, they did not consider the sparsity of user rating information. The total number of items is much more than the number of user-rated items. Therefore, a rating matrix created for users and items will be very sparse. This characteristic renders the identification of user patterns in rating matrixes difficult. Therefore, the sparsity issue should be considered in the application of differential privacy to recommendation systems. Second, previous studies focused on protecting user rating information but did not aim to protect the lists of user-rated items. Recommendation systems should protect these item lists because they also disclose user preferences. In this study, we propose a differentially private recommendation scheme that bases on a grouping method to solve the sparsity issue and to protect user-rated item lists and user rating information. The proposed technique shows better performance and privacy protection on actual movie rating data in comparison with an existing technique.

Figure-ground (FG) segregation has been considered as a fundamental step towards object recognition. We explored plausible mechanisms that estimate global figure-ground segregation from local image features by investigating the human visual system. Physiological studies have reported border-ownership (BO) selective neurons in V2 which signal the local direction of figure (DOF) along a border; however, how local BO signals contribute to global FG segregation has not been clarified. The BO and FG processing could be independent, dependent on each other, or inseparable. The investigation on the differences and similarities between the BO and FG judgements is important for exploring plausible mechanisms that enable global FG estimation from local clues. We performed psychophysical experiments that included two different tasks each of which focused on the judgement of either BO or FG. The perceptual judgments showed consistency between the BO and FG determination while a longer distance in gaze movement was observed in FG segregation than BO discrimination. These results suggest the involvement of distinct neural mechanism for local BO determination and global FG segregation.

This study presents a new method to exploit both accent and grouping structures of music in meter estimation. The system starts by extracting autocorrelation-based features that characterize accent periodicities. Based on the local boundary detection model, we construct grouping features that serve as additional cues for inferring meter. After the feature extraction, a multi-layer cascaded classifier based on neural network is incorporated to derive the most likely meter of input melody. Experiments on 7351 folk melodies in MIDI files indicate that the proposed system achieves an accuracy of 95.76% for classification into nine categories of meters.

In this paper, we propose a novel group formation scheme which is integrated with an EMGC protocol in order to cope with dynamic group change. It uses a link expiration time and residual energy to form a stable link in a group. It also has a group merging procedure to decrease the number of groups. Furthermore, we develop two additional functions for the protocol, i.e., GL rotation and a stay connection procedure to diminish energy consumption of sensor nodes in the network. Simulation results show that the proposed protocol outperforms MBC, EMGCwoh, and EMGC protocols in terms of data delivery, network lifetime, and energy dissipation per round with various group change probabilities and percentages of groups.

This letter presents a novel tensor voting mechanism — analytic tensor voting (ATV), to get rid of the difficulties in original tensor voting, especially the efficiency. One of the main advantages is its explicit voting formulations, which benefit the completion of tensor voting theory and computational efficiency. Firstly, new decaying function was designed following the basic spirit of decaying function in original tensor voting (OTV). Secondly, analytic stick tensor voting (ASTV) was formulated using the new decaying function. Thirdly, analytic plate and ball tensor voting (APTV, ABTV) were formulated through controllable stick tensor construction and tensorial integration. These make the each voting of tensor can be computed by several non-iterative matrix operations, improving the efficiency of tensor voting remarkably. Experimental results validate the effectiveness of proposed method.

In underlay cognitive radio (CR) multicast networks, the cognitive base station (CBS) can transmit at the lowest rate of all the secondary users (SUs) within the multicast group. Existing works showed that the sum rate of such networks saturates when the number of SUs increases. In this letter, for CR multicast networks with multiple channels, we group the SUs into different subgroups, each with an exclusive channel. Then, the problem of joint user grouping and power allocation to maximize the sum rate of all subgroups under the interference power constraint and the transmit power constraint is investigated. Compared to exponential complexity in the number of SUs required by the optimal algorithm, we proposed an efficient algorithm with only linear complexity. Simulation results confirm that the proposed algorithm achieves the sum rate very closed to that achieved by the optimal algorithm and greatly outperforms the maximum signal-to-noise-ratio based user grouping algorithm and the conventional algorithm without user grouping.

Entity descriptions have been exponentially growing in community-generated knowledge databases, such as DBpedia. However, many of those descriptions are not useful for identifying the underlying characteristics of their corresponding entities because semantically redundant facts or triples are included in the descriptions that represent the connections between entities without any semantic properties. Entity summarization is applied to filter out such non-informative triples and meaning-redundant triples and rank the remaining informative facts within the size of the triples for summarization. This study proposes an entity summarization approach based on pre-grouping the entities that share a set of attributes that can be used to characterize the entities we want to summarize. Entities are first grouped according to projected multilingual categories that provide the multi-angled semantics of each entity into a single entity space. Key facts about the entity are then determined through in-group-based rankings. As a result, our proposed approach produced summary information of significantly better quality (p-value =1.52×10-3 and 2.01×10-3 for the top-10 and -5 summaries, respectively) than the state-of-the-art method that requires additional external resources.

As the development of sensor and machine learning technologies has progressed, it has become increasingly important to detect patterns from probabilistic data streams. In this paper, we focus on complex event processing based on pattern matching. When we apply pattern matching to probabilistic data streams, numerous matches may be detected at the same time interval because of the uncertainty of data. Although existing methods distinguish between such matches, they may derive inappropriate results when some of the matches correspond to the real-world event that has occurred during the time interval. Thus, we propose two grouping methods for matches. Our methods output groups that indicate the occurrence of complex events during the given time intervals. In this paper, first we describe the definition of groups based on temporal overlap, and propose two grouping algorithms, introducing the notions of complete overlap and single overlap. Then, we propose an efficient approach for calculating the occurrence probabilities of groups by using deterministic finite automata that are generated from the query patterns. Finally, we empirically evaluate the effectiveness of our methods by applying them to real and synthetic datasets.

In this paper, an insect classification method using scanning electron microphotographs is presented. Images taken by a scanning electron microscope (SEM) have a unique problem for classification in that visual features differ from each other by magnifications. Therefore, direct use of conventional methods results in inaccurate classification results. In order to successfully classify these images, the proposed method generates an optimal training dataset for constructing a classifier for each magnification. Then our method classifies images using the classifiers constructed by the optimal training dataset. In addition, several images are generally taken by an SEM with different magnifications from the same insect. Therefore, more accurate classification can be expected by integrating the results from the same insect based on Dempster-Shafer evidence theory. In this way, accurate insect classification can be realized by our method. At the end of this paper, we show experimental results to confirm the effectiveness of the proposed method.

This paper presents a Multi-channel MAC protocol with channel grouping for multi-channel ad-hoc networks. The proposed protocol has both concepts of the multiple rendezvous and the single control channel protocols, which were proposed as a MAC protocol for multi-channel ad-hoc network without centralized stations. In the proposed protocol, all the channels are divided into some groups and each group has a control channel. Network nodes circulate among the groups and channel negotiations are carried out on a control channel of the group. By applying the channel grouping, it is possible to enhance network throughput without reducing the channel-usage probability. Because there is an optimum group number for obtaining the highest throughput, this paper gives analytical expressions of maximum network throughput for the proposed protocol as a function of system parameters. The effectiveness of the proposed protocol is shown from simulation results. In addition, the validity of the analytical expressions is confirmed from quantitative agreements between analytical predictions and simulation results.

In the optimization of decision diagrams, variable reordering approaches are often used to minimize the number of nodes. However, such approaches are less effective for analysis of multi-state systems given by monotone structure functions. Thus, in this paper, we propose algorithms to minimize the number of edges in an edge-valued multi-valued decision diagram (EVMDD) for fast analysis of multi-state systems. The proposed algorithms minimize the number of edges by grouping multi-valued variables into larger-valued variables. By grouping multi-valued variables, we can reduce the number of nodes as well. To show the effectiveness of the proposed algorithms, we compare the proposed algorithms with conventional optimization algorithms based on a variable reordering approach. Experimental results show that the proposed algorithms reduce the number of edges by up to 15% and the number of nodes by up to 47%, compared to the conventional ones. This results in a speed-up of the analysis of multi-state systems by about three times.

In this paper, a new evolutionary approach to recommender systems is presented. The aim of this work is to develop a new recommendation method that effectively adapts and immediately responds to the user's preference. To this end, content-based filtering is judiciously utilized in conjunction with interactive evolutionary computation (IEC). Specifically, a fitness-based truncation selection and a feature-wise crossover are devised to make full use of desirable properties of promising items within the IEC framework. Moreover, to efficiently search for proper items, the content-based filtering is modified in cooperation with data grouping. The experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach, compared with existing methods.

Communication among isolated networks (clusters) in delay tolerant networks (DTNs) can be supported by a message ferry, which collects bundles from clusters and delivers them to a sink node. When there are lots of distant static clusters, multiple message ferries and sink nodes will be required. In this paper, we aim to make groups, each of which consists of physically close clusters, a sink node, and a message ferry. Our objective is minimizing the overall mean delivery delay of bundles in consideration of both the offered load of clusters and distances between clusters and their sink nodes. Based on existing work, we first model this problem as a nonlinear integer programming. Using a commercial nonlinear solver, we obtain a quasi-optimal grouping. Through numerical evaluations, we show the fundamental characteristics of grouping, the impact of location limitation of base clusters, and the relationship between delivery delay and the number of base clusters.

In this paper, we propose a two-step error concealment algorithm based on an error resilient three-dimensional discrete wavelet transform (3-D DWT) video coding scheme. The proposed scheme consists of an error-resilient encoder duplicating the lowest sub-band bit-streams for dispersive grouped frames and an error concealment decoder. The error concealment method of this decoder is decomposed of two steps, the first step is replacement of erroneous coefficients in the lowest sub-band by the duplicated coefficients, and the second step is interpolation of the missing wavelet coefficients by minimum mean square error (MMSE) estimation. The proposed scheme can achieve robust transmission over unreliable channels. Experimental results provide performance comparisons in terms of peak signal-to-noise ratio (PSNR) and demonstrate increased performances compared to state-of-the-art error concealment schemes.

In a closed-loop scenario, the performance of transmit-diversity schemes for a multiple antenna system depends on the reliability of the channel state information (CSI). However, estimating the reliability of the instantaneous CSI at the transmitter is a challenging task. In this paper, we propose a robust transmit-diversity scheme for the case when the instantaneous CSI available at the transmitter is imperfect and its reliability is unknown to the transmitter. We show by simulation that our proposed scheme is efficient when the CSI reliability varies arbitrarily in every channel realization.

Test data volume and test power are two major concerns when testing modern large circuits. Recently, selective encoding of scan slices is proposed to compress test data. This encoding technique, unlike many other compression techniques encoding all the bits, only encodes the target-symbol by specifying a single bit index and copying group data. In this paper, we propose an extended selective encoding which presents two new techniques to optimize this method: a flexible grouping strategy, X bits exploitation and filling strategy. Flexible grouping strategy can decrease the number of groups which need to be encoded and improve test data compression ratio. X bits exploitation and filling strategy can exploit a large number of don't care bits to reduce testing power with no compression ratio loss. Experimental results show that the proposed technique needs less test data storage volume and reduces average weighted switching activity by 25.6% and peak weighted switching activity by 9.68% during scan shift compared to selective encoding.