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In paper production, a jumbo reel is cut into multiple intermediate rolls, and each intermediate roll is then sheeted as finished goods. This problem is called a cutting stock problem and is proven to be NP-hard. The objective is to minimize material waste or trim loss from all the cuttings. In the case that any intermediate roll is not entirely used for its associated order, the intermediate roll itself could turn to be a dead stock. We use the concept of universal sizes of intermediate rolls to eliminate the dead stock. A pre-defined number of universal sizes of intermediate rolls is to be used to serve all the orders. The problem is solved using Reinforcement Artificial Bee Colony algorithm with Integer Linear Programming subroutine. This proposed approach is then tested with a set of 1,055 orders and 127 different sizes of sheet papers from a paper manufacturer. The results reveal that our method outperforms other algorithms. Our method offers the total trim loss of 3.51%, compared to the trim loss reported by the industry of at least 5%. This approach not only reduces the number of partially cut rolls, but also decreases the number of the jumbo reels needed to serve all the orders. Therefore, both the inventory cost and material cost can be saved.

This paper studies the secure transmission in a multiuser broadcast channel where only the statistical channel state information of the eavesdropper is available. We propose to apply secret dirty-paper coding (S-DPC) in this scenario to support the secure transmission of one user and the normal (unclassified) transmission of the other users. By adopting the S-DPC and encoding the secret message in the first place, all the information-bearing signals of the normal transmission are treated as noise by potential eavesdroppers and thus provide secrecy for the secure transmission. In this way, the proposed approach exploits the intrinsic secrecy of multiuser broadcasting and can serve as an energy-efficient alternative to the traditional artificial noise (AN) scheme. To evaluate the secrecy performance of this approach and compare it with the AN scheme, we propose two S-DPC-based secure transmission schemes for maximizing the secrecy rate under constraints on the secrecy outage probability (SOP) and the normal transmission rates. The first scheme directly optimizes the covariance matrices of the transmit signals, and a novel approximation of the intractable SOP constraint is derived to facilitate the optimization. The second scheme combines zero-forcing dirty-paper coding and AN, and the optimization involves only power allocation. We establish efficient numerical algorithms to solve the optimization problems for both schemes. Theoretical and simulation results confirm that, in addition to supporting the normal transmission, the achievable secrecy rates of the proposed schemes can be close to that of the traditional AN scheme, which supports only the secure transmission of one user. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

With the introduction of automated driving, new requirements for the design and control of a vehicle powernet and powertrain arise, since the increasing level of driving automation shifts the responsibility for passengers’ safety from a driver towards automation system. Therefore, the functionality of the subsystems required for the automated transition to a standstill in case of a failure must be guaranteed. The work presented in this paper proposes a novel and generic system architecture for the energy management of a fail-operational powernet and powertrain in fault-free and failure case operation. The underlying control strategy is based on a concept enabling safety based range extension with the main goal to complete a driving mission at the safest possible location for the passengers. The proposed Energy Management System (EMS) approximates a driving trajectory to the destination based on route preview, which is then used for the dynamic optimization of the torque split in a powertrain with multiple motors. In this way, the total energy required for propulsion, which is also used as an input for the energy distribution, can be accurately predicted. The optimal distribution of the energy for the supply of safety-critical subsystems and powernet auxiliaries is then estimated by solving a mixed-integer optimization problem. If the desired driving mission cannot be completed, a three-level-degradation concept adapting the driving mission is applied. The individual modules of the EMS are presented in this paper and a system architecture enabling model predictive and adaptive energy distribution in a vehicle powertrain and powernet with automated fault reactions is proposed and exemplified with simulation results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As one of the most important unit in the papermaking industry, the high consistency (HC) refining system is confronted with challenges such as improving pulp quality, energy saving, and emissions reduction in its operation processes. In this correspondence, an optimal operation of HC refining system is presented using nonlinear multiobjective model predictive control strategies that aim at set-point tracking objective of pulp quality, economic objective, and specific energy (SE) consumption objective, respectively. First, a set of input and output data at different times are employed to construct the subprocess model of the state process model for the HC refining system, and then the Wiener-type model can be obtained through combining the mechanism model of Canadian Standard Freeness and the state process model that determines their structures based on Akaike information criterion. Second, the multiobjective optimization strategy that optimizes both the set-point tracking objective of pulp quality and SE consumption is proposed simultaneously, which uses NSGA-II approach to obtain the Pareto optimal set. Furthermore, targeting at the set-point tracking objective of pulp quality, economic objective, and SE consumption objective, the sequential quadratic programming method is utilized to produce the optimal predictive controllers. Finally, the simulation results demonstrate that the proposed methods can make the HC refining system provide a better performance of set-point tracking of pulp quality when these predictive controllers are employed. In addition, while the optimal predictive controllers orienting with comprehensive economic objective and SE consumption objective, it has been shown that they have significantly reduced the energy consumption. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The work presented in this paper concerns a switching-based control formulation for multi-intersection and multiphase traffic light systems. A macroscopic traffic flow modeling approach is first presented, which is instrumental to the development of a model-based and switching-based optimization method for traffic signal operation, in the framework of adaptive dynamic programming (ADP). The main advantage of the switching-based formulation is its capability to determine both “when”’ to switch and “which” mode to switch on without the need to use the cycle-based average flow approximation typical of state-of-the-art formulations. In addition, the framework can handle different cycle times across intersections without the need for synchronization constraints and, moreover, minimum dwell-time constraints can be directly enforced to comply with minimum green/red times in each phase. The simulation experiments on a multi-intersection and multiphase traffic light systems are presented to show the effectiveness of the method. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Radio Frequency IDentification (RFID) is intended to supplant legacy (optical) bar code scanning technology found in many logistic and retail applications. RFID is distinguished by inexpensive, low power and compact form factor tags, whose longevity and efficacy are predicated on using passive communication techniques and on-tag power harvesting. Such tags employ backscatter modulation, which does not require any active RF components. As a result, backscatter has become an attractive design choice for short-range communications in power constrained wireless sensor networking scenarios. The purpose of this work is two-fold. First, it aims to expose backscatter communication as an emerging topic to a communication systems-theoretic audience. Since backscatter modulation and on-tag power harvesting efficiency are coupled, it is necessary to re-examine notions of power and spectral efficiency from an energy-constraint perspective; this leads to novel coded modulation schemes for future RFID systems. Further, we investigate RFID MIMO systems where the channel fading encountered has different statistics than the classical Rayleigh fading model. In turn,the trade off between diversity order and spatial multiplexing gains are distinct from wide-area MIMO. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Anyone who has served as a technical program committee (TPC) chair for a conference (or program manager for a funding agency) understands that paper (or proposal panel) review assignment is a demanding job that takes a lot of time, and reviewers are rarely satisfied with the end results. This article presents signal processing tools for two critical ?mass assignment? tasks: assigning papers (or proposals) to reviewers in a way that matches reviewing expertise to scientific content while respecting the reviewers? capacity constraints and splitting accepted papers (or submitted proposals) to sessions (panels) while adhering to session (panel) capacity constraints. The basic idea is to use feature vectors to represent papers and reviewers. Features can be key words or phrases (e.g., optimization or sensor networks) or other types of attributes (e.g., timeliness). This viewpoint enables optimal assignment problem formulations that make sense from a scientific and practical point of view. While optimal solutions are hard to compute for a large number of papers and reviewers, high-quality approximate solutions of moderate complexity are developed here using familiar signal processing and optimization tools. These algorithmic solutions easily outperform days of expert manual work as demonstrated in experiments with real conference data. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Time-of-use (TOU) is an effective price-based demand response strategy. A reasonable design of TOU strategy can effectively reduce the peak-valley difference, and then produce a lot of benefits (such as delaying power grid investment, reducing interruption cost, and improving reliability). However, changing peak-valley period has a great influence on the peak-valley difference and power supply reliability of power system. Therefore, this paper aims to investigate the optimal modification of peak-valley period considering reliability loss under multiple TOU schemes. Firstly, this paper presents a clustering model and algorithm of optimal load curve based on a minimum error iteration method. Secondly, an optimal modification of peak-valley period based on a dynamic load point method is proposed, and the traditional peak-valley difference is replaced by the global peak-valley difference to calculate the objective function. Thirdly, this paper establishes a load–reliability relation fitting model based on the back propagation neural network. Finally, the effectiveness and correctness of the proposed method are investigated by the Roy Billinton test system and reliability test system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Parallel test paper generation is a biobjective distributed resource optimization problem, which aims to generate multiple similarly optimal test papers automatically according to multiple user-specified assessment criteria. Generating high-quality parallel test papers is challenging due to its NP-hardness in both of the collective objective functions. In this paper, we propose a submodular memetic approximation algorithm for solving this problem. The proposed algorithm is an adaptive memetic algorithm (MA), which exploits the submodular property of the collective objective functions to design greedy-based approximation algorithms for enhancing steps of the multiobjective MA. Synergizing the intensification of submodular local search mechanism with the diversification of the population-based submodular crossover operator, our algorithm can jointly optimize the total quality maximization objective and the fairness quality maximization objective. Our MA can achieve provable near-optimal solutions in a huge search space of large datasets in efficient polynomial runtime. Performance results on various datasets have shown that our algorithm has drastically outperformed the current techniques in terms of paper quality and runtime efficiency. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

We consider the beamformer design for multiple-input multiple-output (MISO) broadcast channels (MISO BCs) using zero-forcing dirty paper coding (ZF-DPC). Assuming a sum power constraint (SPC), most previously proposed beamformer designs are based on the QR decomposition (QRD), which is a natural choice to satisfy the ZF constraints. However, the optimality of the QRD-based design for ZF-DPC has remained unknown. In this paper, first, we analytically establish that the QRD-based design is indeed optimal for any performance measure under a SPC. Then, we propose an optimal beamformer design method for ZF-DPC with per-antenna power constraints (PAPCs), using a convex optimization framework. The beamformer design is first formulated as a rank-1-constrained optimization problem. Exploiting the special structure of the ZF-DPC scheme, we prove that the rank constraint can be relaxed and still provide the same solution. In addition, we propose a fast converging algorithm to the beamformer design problem, under the duality framework between the BCs and multiple access channels (MACs). More specifically, we show that a BC with ZF-DPC has the dual MAC with ZF-based successive interference cancellation (ZF-SIC). In this way, the beamformer design for ZF-DPC is transformed into a power allocation problem for ZF-SIC, which can be solved more efficiently. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Ladder network synthesis is very significant for winding fault diagnosis within transformer. To synthesize the network reversely based on the measurable frequency response analysis (FRA) data is the only applicable way. To date the iron core and non-tested winding, which result in the frequency-dependent network components and multiple ladders in some frequency ranges, are usually not considered in the reverse process and thus the synthesis precision is largely limited. This paper proposes to synthesize multiple ladder networks in different frequency regions to handle this problem. Firstly, the sensitivities and frequency-dependent features of network components are analyzed, based on which the topology and components of the networks in diverse frequency ranges are determined afterwards. Further, the network synthesis strategies in different frequency ranges are elaborately designed. Finally, the synthesis method is applied on a distribution transformer successfully, with the fact that the extracted network parameters meet all the constraints and its FRA curve matches well with the measured one. An intact method of multiple-network synthesis for transformer winding in wide frequency range, considering the iron core and non-tested winding, is offered in this paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Fighting against the pandemic diseases with unique characters requires new sophisticated approaches like the artificial intelligence. This paper develops an artificial intelligence algorithm to produce multi-dimensional policies for controlling and minimizing the pandemic casualties under the limited pharmacological resources. In this respect, a comprehensive parametric model with a priority and age-specific vaccination policy and a variety of non-pharmacological policies are introduced. This parametric model is utilized for constructing an artificial intelligence algorithm by following the exact analogy of the model-based solution. Also, this parametric model is manipulated by the artificial intelligence algorithm to seek for the best multi-dimensional non-pharmacological policies that minimize the future pandemic casualties as desired. The role of the pharmacological and non-pharmacological policies on the uncertain future casualties are extensively addressed on the real data. It is shown that the developed artificial intelligence algorithm is able to produce efficient policies which satisfy the particular optimization targets such as focusing on minimization of the death casualties more than the infected casualties or considering the curfews on the people age over 65 rather than the other non-pharmacological policies. The paper finally analyses a variety of the mutant virus cases and the corresponding non-pharmacological policies aiming to reduce the morbidity and mortality rates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper formulates an energy community’s centralized optimal bidding and scheduling problem as a time-series scenario-driven stochastic optimization model, building on real-life measurement data. In the presented model, a surrogate battery storage system with uncertain state-of-charge (SoC) bounds approximates the portfolio’s aggregated flexibility. First, it is emphasized in a stylized analysis that risk-based energy constraints are highly beneficial (compared to chance-constraints) in coordinating distributed assets with unknown costs of constraint violation, as they limit both violation magnitude and probability. The presented research extends state-of-the-art models by implementing a worst-case conditional value at risk (WCVaR) based constraint for the storage SoC bounds. Then, an extensive numerical comparison is conducted to analyze the trade-off between out-of-sample violations and expected objective values, revealing that the proposed WCVaR based constraint shields significantly better against extreme out-of-sample outcomes than the conditional value at risk based equivalent. To bypass the non-trivial task of capturing the underlying time and asset-dependent uncertain processes, real-life measurement data is directly leveraged for both imbalance market uncertainty and load forecast errors. For this purpose, a shape-based clustering method is implemented to capture the input scenarios’ temporal characteristics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An accurate discrimination on moisture status of oil-impregnated paper (OIP) bushings is crucial for the maintenance and replacement schedule of bushings. Based on frequency-domain spectroscopy (FDS) measurement and Dissado–Hill (DH) relaxation model, this article proposes a hybrid approach of hidden Markov model and gray wolf optimization (GWO-HMM) for MS estimation of bushings subjected to the ununiform moisture distribution and dynamic time-series modeling. First, simulation models of moisture diffusion and FDS of the OIP bushing were constructed using finite element modeling approach. Then, the GWO algorithm was employed to explore dielectric parameters influenced by moisture in the DH model. Then, the GWO-HMMs was adopted as a classification tool to discriminate the MS of the simulation and experimental data of the bushings. Classification results confirm that the average identification accuracies of the proposed method are 97.17% and 96.81% over these two datasets, which demonstrates the effectiveness of the proposed moisture estimate method for OIP bushings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper studies transmission strategies for the downlink of a cloud radio access network, in which the base stations are connected to a centralized cloud computing-based processor with digital fronthaul or backhaul links. We provide a system-level performance comparison of two fundamentally different strategies, namely, the data-sharing strategy and the compression strategy, which differ in the way the fronthaul/backhaul is utilized. It is observed that the performance of both strategies depends crucially on the available fronthaul or backhaul capacity. When the fronthaul/backhaul capacity is low, the data-sharing strategy performs better, while under moderate-to-high fronthaul/backhaul capacity, the compression strategy is superior. Using insights from such a comparison, we propose a novel hybrid strategy, combining the data-sharing and compression strategies, which allows for better control over the fronthaul/backhaul capacity utilization. An optimization framework for the hybrid strategy is proposed. Numerical evidence demonstrates the performance gain of the hybrid strategy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on minimum-time path tracking, a subproblem in motion planning of robotic systems. We generate a time-optimal velocity profile for robotic manipulators taking into account kinematic and dynamic constraints. Based on the special structure of the constraints (called peaked constraints), profile generation is formulated as a linear programming (LP) problem. The LP-based control problem is solved by a sequential optimization method. The presented algorithm has reduced computational time compared to a general LP solver. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many real-world classification problems are becoming multi-label in nature, i.e., multiple class labels are assigned to an instance simultaneously. Multi-label classification is a challenging problem due to the involvement of three forms of interactions, i.e., feature-to-feature, feature-to-label, and label-to-label interactions. What further complicates the problem is that not all features are useful, and some can deteriorate the classification performance. Sparsity-based methods have been widely used to address multi-label feature selection due to their efficiency and effectiveness. However, most (if not all) existing methods do not consider the three forms of interactions simultaneously, which could hinder their ability to achieve good performance. Moreover, most existing methods are gradient-based, which are prone to getting stuck at local optima. This paper proposes a new sparsity-based feature selection approach that can simultaneously consider all three forms of interactions. Furthermore, this paper develops a novel sparse learning method based on particle swarm optimisation that can avoid local optima. The proposed method is compared against the state-of-the-art multi-label feature selection methods in terms of multi-label classification performance. The results show that our method performed significantly better in selecting high-quality feature subsets with respect to various feature subset sizes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Urban public transport is a very complex system, and with the development of urbanization, there are many new urban traffic characteristics. Making bus routes and scheduling strategies more efficient, scientific and accurate has a positive impact on the actual operation of public transport. To solve the urban public transport line design problem, this paper describes the implicit law of the characteristics of public transport travel from a deep perspective and analyzes the forms, influencing factors and existing problems of bus dispatching. By establishing a multiobjective public transport dispatching optimization model, starting from bus companies, passengers and government departments, public transportation operating costs comprehensively consider the interests of various parties and finally realize the optimization objective of minimizing fixed costs, fuel costs, carbon emission costs and time window penalty costs. The objective function is set reasonably, and the generation and optimization method of the initial line set in the public transport line design problem is improved; suitable constraint conditions and evaluation indicators are considered. This paper attempts to control the overall length of the bus line on the premise of fully meeting the travel needs of passengers. By solving the multiobjective problem on the same network and comparing different multiobjective optimization algorithms, the effectiveness of the method is evaluated. Additionally, an improved multiobjective adaptive particle swarm optimization (MOAPSO) is proposed, which has the characteristics of faster convergence, higher efficiency and low computational complexity. The simulation experimental results show that the proposed algorithm in this paper can obtain a better Pareto optimal solution set and can effectively solve the multiobjective model. The departure interval conforms to the passenger flow distribution, which can effectively reduce costs and improve the travel service quality of passengers on a large-scale network. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the key design problems of wireless sensor networks is to reduce energy consumption and improve node survival. Because the battery in sensor nodes is difficult to replace and the energy is limited, the design of energy-saving routing protocol becomes very important. Aiming at the problems of limiting node energy and shortening network lifetime in wireless sensor networks, a WSNs routing protocol based on improved archimedes optimization algorithm (IAOAR) is proposed in this paper. Firstly, in the cluster establishment phase, the protocol defines different fitness functions according to the energy, number and distance of sensor nodes to select the appropriate initial cluster. Then the fitness value of the node is calculated, and the weight is dynamically updated according to the number of iterations to improve the optimization ability of AOA algorithm. Virtual force is introduced to adjust the selected cluster head position to ensure the selection of optimal cluster heads, reduce the transmission energy consumption of common sensor nodes. In the data transmission stage, combined with the improved ant colony algorithm, the shortest transmission path to the sink node is constructed to reduce the energy consumption of long-distance data transmission at the cluster head. The simulation results showed that compared with LEACH, E-LEACH, LEACH-ANT and MAXLEACH protocols, the network life cycle of the protocol proposed in this paper was improved by 140.55%, 107.09%, 99.24% and 96.76% respectively. It effectively reduced the speed of node death, balances the network energy consumption and prolonged the network lifetime. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In interconnected power systems, operated by several system operators, the participating areas are strongly dependent on their neighbors. In order to identify the economically efficient generation dispatch in each area, a distributed multi-area optimal power flow (OPF) must be solved. Additionally, installation of an increasing number of HVDC lines to deal with increased power flows from renewable generation is expected to change the power system operation paradigm. The controllability introduced by the HVDC lines should be considered and incorporated in the OPF algorithm. In this paper we introduce a formulation for the distributed solution of the OPF problem in multi-area systems consisting of both HVAC and HVDC lines. We show the applicability of this formulation on two different operating schemes for HVDC grids and we compare their performance with a central solution for the mixed HVAC/HVDC grid. The proposed formulations are based on a linearized solution of the OPF problem. The only data to be exchanged between the areas pertains to the border nodes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper considers the downlink of a cognitive radio (CR) network formed by multiple primary and secondary transmitters, where each multiantenna transmitter serves a preknown set of single-antenna users. This paper assumes that the secondary and primary transmitters can simultaneously transmit their data over the same frequency bands to achieve high system spectrum efficiency. This paper considers the downlink balancing problem of maximizing the minimum signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio (SINR) of the secondary transmitters subject to both the total power constraint of the secondary transmitters and the maximum interference constraint at each primary user due to secondary transmissions. This paper proposes solving the problem using the alternating direction method of multipliers, which leads to a distributed implementation through limited information exchange across the coupled secondary transmitters. This paper additionally proposes a solution that guarantees feasibility at each iteration. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed solution converges to the centralized solution in a reasonable number of iterations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we present a short introduction to the special section on nature-inspired optimization methods and their industry applications. The focus of this paper is on a brief presentation of the main idea (topics, algorithms, engineering problems) of the papers which were accepted for the publication in this special section. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The technical maturity of autonomous driving enables the discussion of beneficial use cases to leverage its full potential. In this paper, we target one such use case: Platooning is the efficient convoying of vehicles by making use of self-driving capabilities and inter-vehicle communication. Many advantages arise from grouping vehicles in platoons with a small inter-vehicle distance, such as energy savings, congestion reduction, and safety improvements. However, due to the diversity of involved stakeholders, numerous objectives have to be balanced to leverage the full potential of platooning. Furthermore, these objectives also depend on various factors that influence their optimization. The vast majority of existent literature only targets a subset of related objectives and underlying factors. This paper provides an overview which categorizes objectives and influencing factors. Additionally, metrics for the evaluation of objective attainment are proposed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Intelligent public transport systems are a key direction for the study of intelligent transportation systems (ITSs), and they perform the following functions: location and tracking, aided navigation, dispatch and command, and dynamic information release; these systems also help travelers determine optimal routes. This paper mainly studies intelligent bus operation optimization by integrating cases and data from business chains, including the optimization of public transport vehicle scheduling according to the characteristics of vehicle scheduling, considers the interests of passengers and public transport companies, and adopts a true-value encoding method with the departure time as the variable goal optimization. In addition, this paper builds a model for the intelligent scheduling problem in public transport based on an enhanced quantum genetic algorithm (EQGA) to find the optimal timetable. This model sets the minimum waiting time cost of passengers and the maximum interests of public transport companies as the goals, restricts the departure interval and two adjacent intervals, and constrains the load factor of passengers. Moreover, based on the analysis of public transport travel characteristics and passenger flow data, this paper evaluates the efficiency of public transport operation, reasonably analyzes the utilization of public transport resources and the travel time of public transport passengers, and thoroughly studies the public transport operation system. This paper selects actual bus line data for empirical analysis, and the empirical results show that the proposed algorithm and model can meet the requirements of many aspects and provides good intelligence, applicability, and optimization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper studies the impact of stochastic load variations on distributed optimal load tracking and allocation (OLTA) problems in cyber-physical DC microgrids (MGs) for transportation electrification. Without load variations, the distributed optimization strategies developed in our earlier work can achieve convergence to global optimal solutions in a multi-objective optimization that balances fair load allocation and power loss reduction. Under persistent stochastic load variations, this paper develops distributed optimal strategies to track time-varying loads under noisy observations and establishes their convergence properties and error bounds. The limiting behavior of the errors characterizes the fundamental impact of the step size on irreducible errors due to conflict between attenuating observation noises and tracking load changes. Optimality conditions and algorithms for selecting the optimal step size are introduced to guide step size selection in practical applications. Simulation studies on real-world systems demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed algorithms and validate the theoretical results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a new approach for solving the optimal merging control problem for hybrid electric vehicles (HEVs) under a connected environment. To achieve a reduction in energy consumption and save travel time, this paper focuses on deriving a decentralized feedback control law that provides not only the optimal velocity trajectory for merging but also a torque distribution strategy for the HEV powertrain. For this purpose, a distance domain-based optimal control problem is first proposed to avoid a free end-time cost function formulation that usually arises due to considering the minimization of traveling time. Then, the vehicle dynamics take into account the constraint of the optimization problem to evaluate the energy consumption at the power device level instead of the acceleration, unlike the common method used for reducing energy consumption in previous studies of merging control with linear models. The proposed optimization problem is solved by Pontryagin’s maximum principle, and a traffic-in-the-loop powertrain simulation platform with a real-world emulated traffic scenario and high-fidelity HEV powertrain model is constructed to eliminate the randomly generated merging scenario. Finally, the simulation results obtained on the platform are demonstrated to validate the effectiveness of the proposed decentralized merging control law. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, a modified centralized algorithm based on particle swarm optimization (MCPSO) is presented to solve the task allocation problem in the search and rescue domain. The reason for this paper is to provide a benchmark against distributed algorithms in search and rescue application area. The hypothesis of this paper is that a centralized algorithm should perform better than distributed algorithms because it has all the available information at hand to solve the problem. Therefore, the centralized approach will provide a benchmark for evaluating how well the distributed algorithms are working and how much improvement can still be gained. Among the distributed algorithms, the consensus-based bundle algorithm (CBBA) is a relatively recent method based on the market auction mechanism, which is receiving considerable attention. Other distributed algorithms, such as PI and PI with softmax, have shown to perform better than CBBA. Therefore, in this paper, the three distributed algorithms mentioned earlier are compared against three centralized algorithms. They are particle swarm optimization, MCPSO, described in this paper, and genetic algorithms. Two experiments were conducted. The first involved comparing all the above-mentioned algorithms, both centralized and distributed, using the same set of application scenarios. It is found that MCPSO always outperforms the other five algorithms in time cost. Due to the high failure rate of CBBA and the other two centralized methods, the second experiment focused on carrying out more tests to compare MCPSO against PI and PI with softmax. All the results are shown and analyzed to determine the performance gaps between the distributed algorithms and the MCPSO. Note to Practitioners—This paper was motivated by the limitation of current distributed task allocation algorithms as they cannot achieve performances that are as good as the centralized ones. Therefore, a centralized algorithm is designed to evaluate the performance gap between the state-of-the-art distributed and centralized approaches. In the future research section, a new distributed particle swarm optimization (PSO) algorithm is proposed based on this paper as the research has shown that the proposed centralized PSO algorithm delivers the best results so it is potentially a strong candidate for adaptation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The performance of cloud radio access network (C-RAN) is limited by the finite capacities of the backhaul links connecting the centralized processor (CP) with the base-stations (BSs), especially when the backhaul is implemented in a wireless medium. This paper proposes the use of wireless multicast together with BS caching, where the BSs pre-store the contents of popular files, to augment the backhaul of C-RAN. For a downlink C-RAN consisting of a single cluster of BSs and wireless backhaul, this paper studies the optimal cache size allocation strategy among the BSs and the optimal multicast beamforming transmission strategy at the CP such that the user’s requested messages are delivered from the CP to the BSs in the most efficient way. We first state a multicast backhaul rate expression based on a joint cache-channel coding scheme, which implies that larger cache sizes should be allocated to the BSs with weaker channels. We then formulate a two-timescale joint cache size allocation and beamforming design problem, where the cache is optimized offline based on the long-term channel statistical information, while the beamformer is designed during the file delivery phase based on the instantaneous channel state information. By leveraging the sample approximation method and the alternating direction method of multipliers, we develop efficient algorithms for optimizing the cache size allocation among the BSs, and quantify how much more caches should be allocated to the weaker BSs. We further consider the case with multiple files having different popularities and show that it is in general not optimal to entirely cache the most popular files first. Numerical results show considerable performance improvement of the optimized cache size allocation scheme over the uniform allocation and other heuristic schemes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is concerned with a fuzzy analysis of power-flow (PF) involving uncertainties of load demands and network parameters. The crux of this paper is to propose an advanced fuzzy arithmetic. Fuzzy transformation method merges with backward–forward sweep in order to evaluate the contribution and propagation of uncertainty in IEEE 33-bus and 69-bus distribution systems. Results are validated by true intervals and random ranges. To determine true intervals, Global Optimization Problems (GOPs) are defined and solved through derivative-based and free techniques. To estimate random ranges, Monte-Carlo Simulations (MCSs) are employed. Our findings confirm that the sharpness of fuzzy intervals, tractability of computations, and applicability of possibility distributions. Following scenario-based evaluations, this paper discusses new implications of power losses, voltage profiles, optimal re-configuration, feeder extension, and reactive power compensation so that results would be beneficial to system planners and operators. Altogether, this paper provides a blueprint for a new way to handle uncertainties in a wide variety of power system problems without global optimization, linearization, and randomized simulations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents secrecy analyses of a full-duplex MIMOME network which consists of two full-duplex multi-antenna users (Alice and Bob) and an arbitrarily located multi-antenna eavesdropper (Eve). The paper assumes that Eve's channel state information (CSI) is completely unknown to Alice and Bob except for a small radius of secured zone. The first part of this paper aims to optimize the powers of jamming noises from both users. To handle Eve's CSI being unknown to users, the focus is placed on Eve at the most harmful location, and the large matrix theory is applied to yield a hardened secrecy rate to work on. The performance gain of the power optimization in terms of maximum tolerable number of antennas on Eve is shown to be significant. The second part of this paper shows two analyses of anti-eavesdropping channel estimation (ANECE) that can better handle Eve with any number of antennas. One analysis assumes that Eve has a prior statistical knowledge of its CSI, which yields lower and upper bounds on secure degrees of freedom of the system as functions of the number (N) of antennas on Eve and the size (K) of information packet. The second analysis assumes that Eve does not have any prior knowledge of its CSI but performs blind detection of information, which yields an approximate secrecy rate for the case of K being larger than N. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Interference management is a fundamental issue in device-to-device (D2D) communications whenever the transmitter-and-receiver pairs are located in close proximity and frequencies are fully reused, so active links may severely interfere with each other. This paper devises an optimization strategy named FPLinQ to coordinate the link scheduling decisions among the interfering links, along with power control and beamforming. The key enabler is a novel optimization method called matrix fractional programming (FP) that generalizes previous scalar and vector forms of FP in allowing multiple data streams per link. From a theoretical perspective, this paper provides a deeper understanding of FP by showing a connection to the minorization-maximization (MM) algorithm. From an application perspective, this paper shows that as compared to the existing methods for coordinating scheduling in the D2D network, such as FlashLinQ, ITLinQ, and ITLinQ+, the proposed FPLinQ approach is more general in allowing multiple antennas at both the transmitters and the receivers, and further in allowing arbitrary and multiple possible associations between the devices via matching. Numerical results show that FPLinQ significantly outperforms the previous state-of-the-art in a typical D2D communication environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Bi-Level Optimization (BLO) is originated from the area of economic game theory and then introduced into the optimization community. BLO is able to handle problems with a hierarchical structure, involving two levels of optimization tasks, where one task is nested inside the other. In machine learning and computer vision fields, despite the different motivations and mechanisms, a lot of complex problems, such as hyper-parameter optimization, multi-task and meta learning, neural architecture search, adversarial learning and deep reinforcement learning, actually all contain a series of closely related subproblms. In this paper, we first uniformly express these complex learning and vision problems from the perspective of BLO. Then we construct a best-response-based single-level reformulation and establish a unified algorithmic framework to understand and formulate mainstream gradient-based BLO methodologies, covering aspects ranging from fundamental automatic differentiation schemes to various accelerations, simplifications, extensions and their convergence and complexity properties. Last but not least, we discuss the potentials of our unified BLO framework for designing new algorithms and point out some promising directions for future research. A list of important papers discussed in this survey, corresponding codes, and additional resources on BLOs are publicly available at: https://github.com/vis-opt-group/BLO. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we propose and study an energy-efficient trajectory optimization scheme for unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) assisted Internet of Things (IoT) networks. In such networks, a single UAV is powered by both solar energy and charging stations (CSs), resulting in sustainable communication services, while avoiding energy outage. In particular, we optimize the trajectory design of UAV by jointly considering the average data rate, the total energy consumption, and the fairness of coverage for the IoT terminals. A dynamic spatial-temporal configuration scheme is operated for terminals working in the discontinuous reception (DRX) mode. The module-free, action-confined on-policy and off-policy reinforcement learning (RL) approaches are proposed and jointly applied to solve the formulated optimization problem in this paper. We evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed strategy by comparing it with other dynamic benchmark algorithms. The extensive simulation results provided in this paper reveal that the proposed scheme outperforms the benchmarks in terms of data transmission, energy efficiency and adaptivity of avoiding battery depletion. By deploying the proposed trajectory scheme, the UAV is able to adapt itself according to the temporal and dynamic conditions of communication networks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Multi-relational learning on knowledge graphs infers high-order relations among the entities across the graphs. This learning task can be solved by label propagation on the tensor product of the knowledge graphs to learn the high-order relations as a tensor. In this paper, we generalize a widely used label propagation model to the normalized tensor product graph, and propose an optimization formulation and the scalable Low-rank Tensor-based Label Propagation algorithm (LowrankTLP) to infer multi-relations for two learning tasks, hyperlink prediction and multiple graph alignment. The optimization formulation minimizes the upper bound of the noisy-tensor estimating error for multiple graph alignment, by learning with a subset of the eigen-pairs in the spectrum of the normalized tensor product graph. We also provide a data-dependent transductive Rademacher bound for binary hyperlink prediction. We accelerate LowrankTLP with parallel tensor computation which enables label propagation on a tensor product of 100 graphs each of size 1000 in less than half hour in the simulation. LowrankTLP was also applied to predicting the author-paper-venue hyperlinks in publication records, alignment of segmented regions across up to 26 CT-scan images and alignment of protein-protein interaction networks across multiple species. The experiments demonstrate that LowrankTLP indeed well approximates the original label propagation with better scalability and accuracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper studies a reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS)-assisted multi-user uplink massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) system with imperfect hardware. At the RIS, the paper considers phase noise, while at the base station, the paper takes into consideration the radio frequency impairments and low-resolution analog-to-digital converters. The paper derives approximate expressions for the ergodic achievable rate in closed forms under Rician fading channels. For the cases of infinite numbers of antennas and infinite numbers of reflecting elements, asymptotic data rates are derived to provide new design insights. The derived power scaling laws indicate that while guaranteeing a required system performance, the transmit power of the users can be scaled down at most by the factor $\frac{1}{M}$ when $M$ goes infinite, or by the factor $\frac{1}{MN}$ when $M$ and $N$ go infinite, where $M$ is the number of antennas and $N$ is the number of the reflecting units. Furthermore, an optimization algorithm is proposed based on the genetic algorithm to solve the phase shift optimization problem with the aim of maximizing the sum rate of the system. Additionally, the optimization problem with discrete phase shifts is considered. Finally, numerical results are provided to validate the correctness of the analytical results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper proposed a novel intelligent transmission surface (ITS) aided transmitter in an intelligent reflection surface (IRS) assisted multiuser multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) network. The ITS deployed in the transmitter architecture can reduce the power consumption in signal beamforming at the base station (BS), and the IRS can help the information transfer from the ITS-aided transmitter to the users. We first maximize the weighted sum rate (WSR) of the users by jointly designing the beamforming vector at the BS and the phase shifts of ITS and IRS. To solve this non-convex optimization problem, we propose an effective algorithm in which the Lagrangian dual transform, the alternative optimization (AO) algorithm and the quadratic transform (QT) method are adopted to simplify the objective function. Then, the bisection search and the alternating direction method of multipliers (ADMM) algorithm are considered to design the optimal beamforming vector and phase shifts of ITS and IRS, respectively. Furthermore, the paper explores the energy efficiency (EE) maximization problem to emphasize the value of the ITS-assisted transmitter in terms of power savings. Finally, we compare the simulation results to various state-of-the-art techniques to see how much better the proposed algorithm is in terms of WSR and EE. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Modern surveillance systems rely on coverage overlapping to attain multi-viewing capabilities and to support coverage redundancy. This paper examines the coverage overlapping configurations in visual surveillance systems. This paper proposes a robust dynamic programming framework to optimize visual surveillance sensor coverage overlaps. Based on visual sensor parameters information, and the features of the area to be monitored, this paper uses a deterministic modeling approach to model the sensor coverage in a 2-D space. Then, the minimization and the maximization arrangements of the coverage overlapping are formulated as discrete optimization problems. The obtained solutions from the dynamic programming technique are evaluated with respect to local and global greedy search algorithms. The results reveal the feasibility of the proposed technique compared with the benchmarked optimization methods in terms of the amount of coverage redundancy. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper extends prior work on magnetic and inertial sensor frame calibration with an optimization study for the calibration of tilt-compensated electronic compasses. The novelty of this paper consists in formally demonstrating the optimal calibration orientations that maximize the observability of the various calibration coefficients. The optimal orientations are determined by analyzing the partial derivatives of the cost functions with respect to the calibration coefficients, and finding those orientations that produce their maximum slopes. This approach leads to the preservation of the information needed to determine the calibration coefficients by avoiding geometric dilution. Calibration schemes including optimal orientations for the accelerometers and magnetometers are determined not only for the alignment of the magnetometers and accelerometers sensor reference frames but also for the prerequisite calibrations in the sensor reference frames and partial body frames, respectively. This paper also shows that the optimal accelerometer orientations are different from the optimal magnetometer orientations, however, leaves the analysis of a possible compromise to future work. While confirming some intuitions about possible optimal orientations, this paper also offers an insight into those cases not supported by empirical wisdom, such as the misalignments, eliminating therefore the guesswork from the selection of the calibration profiles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we propose a new method for solving multiobjective optimization problems with a large number of decision variables. The proposed method called weighted optimization framework is intended to serve as a generic method that can be used with any population-based metaheuristic algorithm. After explaining some general issues of large-scale optimization, we introduce a problem transformation scheme that is used to reduce the dimensionality of the search space and search for improved solutions in the reduced subspace. This involves so-called weights that are applied to alter the decision variables and are also subject to optimization. Our method relies on grouping mechanisms and employs a population-based algorithm as an optimizer for both original variables and weight variables. Different grouping mechanisms and transformation functions within the framework are explained and their advantages and disadvantages are examined. Our experiments use test problems with 2–3 objectives 40–5000 variables. Using our approach on three well-known algorithms and comparing its performance with other large-scale optimizers, we show that our method can significantly outperform most existing methods in terms of solution quality as well as convergence rate on almost all tested problems for many-variable instances. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In this paper, we propose a design process for a plasmonic grating structure to induce the resonance at a target wavelength. In a specific condition, surface gratings may induce the surface plasmon propagation due to the diffraction and the resonance wavelength of the surface plasmon propagation is dependent on the grating shape. The grating configuration was designed by the topology optimization scheme based on the reaction-diffusion equation. To shift the resonance wavelength to the target wavelength, this paper maps the frequency response function to a probability distribution function (PDF). The mean value from the PDF becomes a part of the objective function and the design objective is set to minimize the distance between the present resonance wavelength and the target wavelength while keeping the energy intensity. The process of simulation and optimization was performed using the commercial package COMSOL combined with MATLAB programming. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In group decision making, it is inevitable that the individual decision maker’s subjectivity is involved, which causes difficulty in reaching a group decision. One of the difficulties is to aggregate a small set of expert opinions with the individual subjectivity or uncertainty modeled with probability theory. This difficult problem is called probability distribution function aggregation (DFA). This paper presents a simple and efficient approach to the DFA problem. The main idea of the proposed approach is that the DFA problem is modeled as a nonlinear function of a set of probability distribution functions, and then a linear feedback iteration scheme is proposed to solve the nonlinear function, leading to a group judgment or decision. Illustration of this new approach is given by a well-known DFA example which was solved with the Delphi method. The DFA problem is a part of the group decision problem. Therefore, the proposed algorithm is also useful to the decision making problem in general. Another contribution of the this paper is the proposed notation of systematically representing the imprecise group decision problem with the classification of imprecise information into three classes, namely incomplete information, vague information, and uncertain information. The particular DFA problem dealt with in this paper is then characterized with this general notation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Following Part I of this paper that reveals two distinct interpretations of demand curves and the corresponding different forms of the market clearing formulation, Part II of this paper analyzes the sequential and the iterative market clearing algorithms currently implemented in some markets. It is shown that these algorithms lead to socially sub-optimal solutions. The root cause of the problem is the lack of a clear representation of the demand benefit. The social surplus optimization based on the proper interpretation of demand curves is then proposed. A small numerical example is used to demonstrate the significant optimality gap between the socially optimal solution and the sequential/iterative solution. The potentially large impacts of the gap on the societal benefit and the individual resource revenues entail a close examination of these algorithms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes a novel scalable reinforcement learning approach for simultaneous routing and spectrum access in wireless ad-hoc networks. In most previous works on reinforcement learning for network optimization, the network topology is assumed to be fixed, and a different agent is trained for each transmission node—this limits scalability and generalizability. Further, routing and spectrum access are typically treated as separate tasks. Moreover, the optimization objective is usually a cumulative metric along the route, e.g., number of hops or delay. In this paper, we account for the physical-layer signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio (SINR) in a wireless network and further show that bottleneck objective such as the minimum SINR along the route can also be optimized effectively using reinforcement learning. Specifically, we propose a scalable approach in which a single agent is associated with each flow and makes routing and spectrum access decisions as it moves along the frontier nodes. The agent is trained according to the physical-layer characteristics of the environment using a novel rewarding scheme based on the Monte Carlo estimation of the future bottleneck SINR. It learns to avoid interference by intelligently making joint routing and spectrum allocation decisions based on the geographical location information of the neighbouring nodes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]