Search

This paper provides a link between matroid theory and locally repairable codes (LRCs) that are either linear or more generally almost affine. Using this link, new results on both LRCs and matroid theory are derived. The parameters $(n,k,d,r,\delta )$ of LRCs are generalized to matroids, and the matroid analog of the generalized singleton bound by Gopalan et al. for linear LRCs is given for matroids. It is shown that the given bound is not tight for certain classes of parameters, implying a nonexistence result for the corresponding locally repairable almost affine codes that are coined perfect in this paper. Constructions of classes of matroids with a large span of the parameters $(n,k,d,r,\delta )$ and the corresponding local repair sets are given. Using these matroid constructions, new LRCs are constructed with prescribed parameters. The existence results on linear LRCs and the nonexistence results on almost affine LRCs given in this paper strengthen the nonexistence and existence results on perfect linear LRCs given by Song et al. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Spatially-coupled (SC) codes are a family of graph-based codes that have attracted significant attention, thanks to their capacity approaching performance and low decoding latency. An SC code is constructed by partitioning an underlying block code into a number of components and coupling their copies together. In this paper, we first introduce a general approach for the enumeration of detrimental combinatorial objects in the graph of finite-length SC codes. Our approach is general in the sense that it effectively works for SC codes with various partitioning schemes, column weights, and memories. Next, we present a two-stage framework for the construction of high performance binary SC codes optimized for the additive white Gaussian noise channels; we aim at minimizing the number of detrimental combinatorial objects in the error floor region. In the first stage, we deploy a novel partitioning scheme, called the optimal overlap partitioning, to produce the optimal partitioning corresponding to the smallest number of detrimental objects. In the second stage, we apply a new circulant power optimizer to further reduce the number of detrimental objects in the lifted graph. SC codes constructed by our new framework have up to two orders of magnitude error floor performance improvement and up to 0.6 dB SNR gain compared to prior state-of-the-art SC codes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The inverse function x → x−1 on F2n, is one of the most studied functions in cryptography due to its widespread use as an S-box in block ciphers like AES. In this paper, we show that, if n ≥ 5, every function that is CCZ-equivalent to the inverse function is already EA-equivalent to it. This confirms a conjecture by Budaghyan, Calderini and Villa. We also prove that every permutation that is CCZ-equivalent to the inverse function is already affine equivalent to it. The majority of the paper is devoted to proving that there is no permutation polynomial of the form L1(x−1) + L2(x) over F2n if n ≥ 5, where L1,L2 are nonzero linear functions. In the proof, we combine Kloosterman sums, quadratic forms and tools from additive combinatorics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We consider the probabilistic group testing problem where $d$ random defective items in a large population of $N$ items are identified with high probability by applying binary tests. It is known that the $\Theta (d \log N)$ tests are necessary and sufficient to recover the defective set with vanishing probability of error when $d = O(N^{\alpha })$ for some $\alpha \in (0, 1)$. However, to the best of our knowledge, there is no explicit (deterministic) construction achieving $\Theta (d \log N)$ tests in general. In this paper, we show that a famous construction introduced by Kautz and Singleton for the combinatorial group testing problem (which is known to be suboptimal for combinatorial group testing for moderate values of $d$) achieves the order optimal $\Theta (d \log N)$ tests in the probabilistic group testing problem when $d = \Omega (\log ^{2}\,\,N)$. This provides a strongly explicit construction achieving the order optimal result in the probabilistic group testing setting for a wide range of values of $d$. To prove the order-optimality of Kautz and Singleton’s construction in the probabilistic setting, we provide a novel analysis of the probability of a non-defective item being covered by a random defective set directly, rather than arguing from combinatorial properties of the underlying code, which has been the main approach in the literature. Furthermore, we use a recursive technique to convert this construction into one that can also be efficiently decoded with only a log-log factor increase in the number of tests. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses the problem of adding redundancy to a collection of physical objects so that the overall system is more robust to failures. In contrast to its information counterpart, which can exploit parity to protect multiple information symbols from a single erasure, physical redundancy can only be realized through duplication and substitution of objects. We propose a bipartite graph model for designing defect-tolerant systems, in which the defective objects are replaced by the judiciously connected redundant objects. The fundamental limits of this model are characterized under various asymptotic settings and both asymptotic and finite-size systems that approach these limits are constructed. Among other results, we show that the simple modular redundancy is in general suboptimal. As we develop, this combinatorial problem of defect tolerant system design has a natural interpretation as one of graph coloring, and the analysis is significantly different from that traditionally used in information redundancy for error-control codes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Consider a group of stations connected through a multiple-access channel, with the constraint that if at a time instant exactly one station transmits a message, then the message is successfully received by any other station, whereas if two or more stations simultaneously transmit their messages then a conflict occurs and all messages are lost. Let us assume that $n$ is the number of stations and that an (arbitrary) subset $A$ of them, $|A|\leq k\leq n$ , is active, that is, there are at most $k$ stations that have a message to send over the channel. In the classical conflict resolution problem, the issue is to schedule the transmissions of each station to let every active station use the channel alone (i.e., without conflict) at least once, and this requirement must be satisfied whatever might be the set of active stations $A$ . The parameter to optimize is, usually, the worst case number of transmissions that any station has to attempt before all message transmissions are successful. In this paper, we study the following question: is it possible to obtain a significant improvement on the protocols that solve the classical conflict resolution problem if we allow the protocols to fail over a “small” fraction of all possible subsets of active stations? In other words, is it possible to significantly reduce the number of transmissions that must be attempted if the set of active stations is chosen uniformly at random and the conflict resolution algorithm is only required to work correctly with “high” probability? In this paper, we will show that this is indeed the case. Our main technical tool is a generalization of selectors, a recently introduced combinatorial structure that has found applications in several areas. As it turned out for selectors, we believe that our new combinatorial structures are likely to be useful also outside the present context. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The notion of correlation immune functions has been introduced by Siegenthaler (1984) in symmetric cryptography in the framework of stream ciphers. At the conference CRYPTO’91 by Camion et al., it has been pointed out that this notion existed in statistics and combinatorics. It has recently been highlighted that such functions also play an important role in a new framework related to side-channel attack counter-measures. Since then, the interest in correlation immune Boolean functions has been renewed, and new challenges regarding these functions have appeared. Specifically, low Hamming weight correlation immune functions have been selected as useful for counter-measures to side-channel attacks. Despite their importance, the literature is not abundant in this research direction. Two very interesting articles in which such correlation immune functions were nicely explored, given this novel use of them. Carlet initiated the first one in 2013, and the second one is due to Carlet and Chen (2018). This paper deals with correlation immune Boolean functions aiming to produce more candidates of those processing low Hamming weights. We shall focus on correlation immune Boolean functions with Hamming weights power of 2 (which offer a flexibility to control the correlation immunity aspects) and present several methods of designing them. Some design methods are efficient and could be employed to derive such functions. Consequently, given two positive integers $n$ and $m$ , we derive new effective constructions of correlation immune Boolean functions with Hamming weight power of 2. Furthermore, an upper bound on the correlation immunity of the newly constructed $n$ -variable Boolean functions with Hamming weight $2^{m}$ was determined for $n-m\ge 0$. Besides, exact values and lower bounds on the maximum correlation immunity of those functions are explored and discussed, mainly when the values of $n$ and $m$ are very close. This paper also exhibits explicit examples of those correlation immune functions that illustrate our methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In addition to their applications in data communication and storage, linear codes also have nice applications in combinatorics and cryptography. Minimal linear codes, a special type of linear codes, are preferred in secret sharing. In this paper, a necessary and sufficient condition for a binary linear code to be minimal is derived. This condition enables us to obtain three infinite families of minimal binary linear codes with $w_{\min }/w_{\max } \leq 1/2$ from a generic construction, where $w_{\min }$ and $w_{\max }$ , respectively, denote the minimum and maximum nonzero weights in a code. The weight distributions of all these minimal binary linear codes are also determined. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Codes that can correct up to $t$ symmetric errors and detect all unidirectional errors, known as $t$ -EC-AUED codes, are studied in this paper. Given positive integers $q$ , $a$ , and $t$ , let $n_{q}(a,t+1)$ denote the length of the shortest $q$ -ary $t$ -EC-AUED code of size $a$. We introduce combinatorial constructions for $q$ -ary $t$ -EC-AUED codes via one-factorizations of complete graphs, and concatenation of MDS codes and codes from resolvable set systems. Consequently, we determine the exact values of $n_{q}(a,t+1)$ for several new infinite families of $q,a$ , and $t$. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper studies properties of binary runlength-limited sequences with additional constraints on their Hamming weight and/or their number of runs of identical symbols. An algebraic and a probabilistic (entropic) characterization of the exponential growth rate of the number of such sequences, i.e., their information capacity, are obtained by using the methods of multivariate analytic combinatorics, and properties of the capacity as a function of its parameters are stated. The second-order term in the asymptotic expansion of the rate of these sequences is also given, and the typical values of the relevant quantities are derived. Several applications of the results are illustrated, including bounds on codes for weight-preserving and run-preserving channels (e.g., the run-preserving insertion-deletion channel), a sphere-packing bound for channels with sparse error patterns, and the asymptotics of constant-weight sub-block constrained sequences. In addition, the asymptotics of a closely related notion— $q$ -ary sequences with fixed Manhattan weight—is briefly discussed, and an application in coding for molecular timing channels is illustrated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we revisit the combinatorial error model of Mazumdar et al. that models errors in high-density magnetic recording caused by lack of knowledge of grain boundaries in the recording medium. We present new upper bounds on the cardinality/rate of binary block codes that correct errors within this model. All our bounds, except for one, are obtained using combinatorial arguments based on hypergraph fractional coverings. The exception is a bound derived via an information-theoretic argument. Our bounds significantly improve upon existing bounds from the prior literature. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Combinatorial structures called stopping sets are useful in analyzing the performance of a linear code when coupled with an iterative decoding algorithm over an erasure channel. In this paper, we consider stopping sets of Hermitian codes. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Frequency hopping sequences (FHSs) are employed to mitigate the interferences caused by the hits of frequencies in frequency hopping spread spectrum systems. In this paper, we present combinatorial constructions for FHS sets, including direct constructions by using cyclotomic classes, recursive constructions based on cyclic difference matrices, merging blocks, and discrete logarithm. By these constructions, a number of series of new FHS sets are then produced. These FHS sets are optimal with respect to the Peng–Fan bounds. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Ovoids in ${\mathrm {PG}}(3, {\mathrm {GF}}(q))$ have been an interesting topic in coding theory, combinatorics, and finite geometry for a long time. So far only two families of ovoids are known. The first is the elliptic quadrics and the second is the Tits ovoids. It is known that an ovoid in ${\mathrm {PG}}(3, {\mathrm {GF}}(q))$ corresponds to a $[q^{2}+1, 4, q^{2}-q]$ code over ${\mathrm {GF}}(q)$ , which is called an ovoid code. The objectives of this paper are to develop the general theories of subfield codes and to study the subfield codes of the two families of ovoid codes. The dimensions, minimum weights, and the weight distributions of the subfield codes of the elliptic quadric codes and Tits ovoid codes are settled. The parameters of the duals of these subfield codes are also studied. Some of the codes presented in this paper are optimal, and some are distance-optimal. The parameters of the subfield codes are new. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, self-dual MDS codes have attracted a lot of attention due to theoretical interest and practical importance. Similar to self-dual MDS codes, self-dual near MDS (NMDS for short) codes have nice structures as well. From both theoretical and practical points of view, it is natural to study self-dual NMDS codes. Although there has been lots of work on NMDS codes in literature, little is known for self-dual NMDS codes. It seems more challenging to construct self-dual NMDS codes than self-dual MDS codes. The only work on construction of self-dual NMDS codes shows existence of $q$ -ary self-dual NMDS codes of length $q-1$ for odd prime power $q$ or length up to 16 for some small primes $q$ with $q\le 197$. In this paper, we make use of properties of elliptic curves to construct self-dual NMDS codes. It turns out that, as long as $2|q$ and $n$ is even with $4\le n\le q+\lfloor 2\sqrt {q}\rfloor -2$ , one can construct a self-dual NMDS code of length $n$ over $ {\mathbb {F}}_{q}$. Furthermore, for odd prime power $q$ , there exists a self-dual NMDS code of length $n$ over $ {\mathbb {F}}_{q}$ if $q\ge 4^{n+3}\times (n+3)^{2}$. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Locally repairable codes are desirable for distributed storage systems to improve the repair efficiency. In this paper, a connection between locally repairable codes with multiple disjoint repair sets and packings is derived under the condition that each repair set contains exactly one check symbol. Particularly, conditions under which an optimal locally repairable code corresponds to a packing are also characterized. As an application of this connection, some optimal locally repairable codes can be obtained by packings. Specifically, two constructions of locally repairable codes are proposed which not only generalize some known explicit constructions but also give optimal locally repairable codes with flexible new parameters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

New processing models are being adopted in Big Data engineering to overcome the limitations of traditional technology. Among them, MapReduce stands out by allowing for the processing of large volumes of data over a distributed infrastructure that can change during runtime. The developer only designs the functionality of the program and its execution is managed by a distributed system. As a consequence, a program can behave differently at each execution because it is automatically adapted to the resources available at each moment. Therefore, when the program has a design fault, this could be revealed in some executions and masked in others. However, during testing, these faults are usually masked because the test infrastructure is stable, and they are only revealed in production because the environment is more aggressive with infrastructure failures, among other reasons. This paper proposes new testing techniques that aimed to detect these design faults by simulating different infrastructure configurations. The testing techniques generate a representative set of infrastructure configurations that as whole are more likely to reveal failures using random testing, and partition testing together with combinatorial testing. The techniques are automated by using a test execution engine called MRTest that is able to detect these faults using only the test input data, regardless of the expected output. Our empirical evaluation shows that MRTest can automatically detect these design faults within a reasonable time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The basic goal of threshold group testing is to identify up to $d$ defective items among a population of $n$ items, where $d$ is usually much smaller than $n$. The outcome of a test on a subset of items is positive if the subset has at least $u$ defective items, negative if it has up to $\ell $ defective items, where $0 \leq \ell < u$ , and arbitrary otherwise. This is called threshold group testing. The parameter $g = u - \ell - 1$ is called the gap. In this paper, we focus on the case $g > 0$ , i.e., threshold group testing with a gap. Note that the results presented here are also applicable to the case $g = 0$ ; however, the results are not as efficient as those in related work. Currently, a few reported studies have investigated test designs and decoding algorithms for identifying defective items. Most of the previous studies have not been feasible because there are numerous constraints on their problem settings or the decoding complexities of their proposed schemes are relatively large. Therefore, it is compulsory to reduce the number of tests as well as the decoding complexity, i.e., the time for identifying the defective items, for achieving practical schemes. The work presented here makes five contributions. The first is a more accurate theorem for a non-adaptive algorithm for threshold group testing proposed by Chen and Fu. The second is an improvement in the construction of disjunct matrices, which are the main tools for tackling (threshold) group testing and other tasks such as constructing cover-free families or learning hidden graphs. Specifically, we present a better exact upper bound on the number of tests for disjunct matrices compared with that in related work. The third and fourth contributions are a reduced exact upper bound on the number of tests and a reduced asymptotic bound on the decoding time for identifying defective items in a noisy setting on test outcomes. The fifth contribution is a simulation on the number of tests of the resulting improvements for previous work and the proposed theorems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper considers the problem of linear Boolean classification, where the goal is to determine in which set, among two given sets of Boolean vectors, an unknown vector belongs to by making linear queries. Finding the least number of queries is equivalent to determining the minimal rank of a matrix over $GF(2)$ , whose kernel does not intersect a given set $S$ . In the case where $S$ is a Hamming ball, this reduces to finding linear codes of largest dimension. For a general set $S$ , this is an instance of the critical problem posed by Crapo and Rota in 1970, open in general. This paper focuses on the case where $S$ is an annulus. As opposed to balls, it is shown that an optimal kernel is composed not only of dense but also of sparse vectors, and the optimal mixture is identified in various cases. These findings corroborate a proposed conjecture that for an annulus of inner and outer radius $nq$ and $np$ respectively, the optimal relative rank is given by the normalized entropy $(1-q)H(p/(1-q))$ , an extension of the Gilbert–Varshamov bound. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we study the data exchange problem, where a set of users is interested in gaining access to a common file, but where each has only partial knowledge about it as side-information. Assuming that the file is broken into packets, the side-information considered is in the form of linear combinations of the file packets. Given that the collective information of all the users is sufficient to allow recovery of the entire file, the goal is for each user to gain access to the file, while minimizing some communication cost. We assume that the users can communicate over a noiseless broadcast channel, and that the communication cost is a sum of each user’s cost function over the number of bits it transmits. For instance, the communication cost could simply be the total number of bits that needs to be transmitted. In the most general case studied in this paper, each user can have any arbitrary convex cost function. We provide deterministic, polynomial-time algorithms (in the number of users and packets), which find an optimal communication scheme that minimizes the communication cost. To further lower the complexity, we also propose a simple randomized algorithm inspired by our deterministic algorithm, which is based on a random linear network-coding scheme. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, the problem of joint mode switching and power adaptation is studied for simultaneous wireless information and power transfer (SWIPT) over a fading channel. The receiver dynamically switches between information decoding (ID) and energy harvesting (EH) modes while the transmitter dynamically adapts the transmit power. Considering the nonlinearity of practical EH circuits, a realistic nonlinear EH model is adopted rather than the idealistic linear EH model. To characterize the ultimate performance tradeoff between ID and EH, an optimization problem is formulated to maximize the average harvested energy under the constraints on the average achievable rate and the average transmit power, which is a nonconvex and combinatorial problem. To solve this problem, first, the optimal power adaptation scheme for the nonlinear EH receiver that operates only in the EH mode is proposed. Using this scheme, the jointly optimal solution for the mode switching and power adaptation is then derived. By comparing the obtained results to the existing results, various useful and interesting insights into the optimized SWIPT system with nonlinear EH are presented. An important insight into the impact of nonlinear EH is that, to exploit the high energy conversion efficiency of the nonlinear circuit, the EH mode has to be selected only in the moderate range of channel gains. Also, in the EH mode, the power has to be adapted to the short-term power threshold only for the moderate channel gains. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Switch codes, first proposed by Wang et al., are codes that are designed to increase the parallelism of data writing and reading processes in network switches. A network switch is required to write $n$ incoming packets and read $k$ outgoing packets while using $m$ memory banks, each able to write and read one packet per time unit. Each set of $n$ packets written to the switch simultaneously is called a generation. The objective is to store the packets in the banks such that every request of $k$ packets, which can belong to previous generations, can be handled by reading at most one packet from every bank. In this paper, we study a new type of switch codes that can simultaneously deliver large packet request and good coding rate. These attractive features are achieved by relaxing the request model to a natural sub-class we call consecutive requests. For this new request model, we define a new type of codes called consecutive switch codes. These codes are studied in both the computational and combinatorial models, corresponding to whether the data can be encoded or not. For binary codes, we also study an intermediate model in which a coded packet is formed by the XOR operations of at most two input packets. We present several code constructions and prove the optimality of one family of these codes by providing the corresponding lower bound. Finally, we introduce a construction of conventional switch codes, which improves upon the best known results for the case $n=k$ . [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes and investigates a Boolean gossip model as a simplified but non-trivial probabilistic Boolean network. With positive node interactions, in view of standard theories from Markov chains, we prove that the node states asymptotically converge to an agreement at a binary random variable, whose distribution is characterized for large-scale networks by mean-field approximation. Using combinatorial analysis, we also successfully count the number of communication classes of the positive Boolean network explicitly in terms of the topology of the underlying interaction graph, where remarkably minor variation in local structures can drastically change the number of network communication classes. With general Boolean interaction rules, emergence of absorbing network Boolean dynamics is shown to be determined by the network structure with necessary and sufficient conditions established regarding when the Boolean gossip process defines absorbing Markov chains. Particularly, it is shown that for the majority of the Boolean interaction rules, except for nine out of the total 2^16-1 possible nonempty sets of binary Boolean functions, whether the induced chain is absorbing has nothing to do with the topology of the underlying interaction graph, as long as connectivity is assumed. These results illustrate the possibilities of relating dynamical properties of Boolean networks to graphical properties of the underlying interactions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As a crucial technique for integrated circuits (IC) test response compaction, X-compact employs a special kind of codes called X-codes for reliable compressions of the test response in the presence of unknown logic values (Xs). From a combinatorial view point, Fujiwara and Colbourn introduced an equivalent definition of X-codes and studied X-codes of small weights that have good detectability and X-tolerance. An $({\it\text { m, n, d, x}})~\text {X}$ -code is an $\text {m}\times \text {n}$ binary matrix with column vectors as its codewords. The parameters ${\it\text { d, x}}$ correspond to the test quality of the code. In this paper, bounds and constructions for constant weighted X-codes are investigated. First, we obtain a general result on the maximum number of codewords n for an $({\it\text { m, n, d, x}})~\text {X}$ -code of weight w, and we further improve this lower bound for the case with $\text {x}=2$ and $\text {w}=3$ through the probabilistic method. Then, using tools from additive combinatorics and finite fields, we present some explicit constructions for constant weighted X-codes with $\text {d}=3,7$ and $\text {x}=2$ , which are optimal for the case when $\text {d}=3, \text {w}=4$ and nearly optimal for the case when $\text {d}=3,\text {w}=3$. We also consider a special class of X-codes introduced by Fujiwara and Colbourn and improve the best known lower bound on the maximum number of codewords for this kind of X-codes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Resistive memories store information in a crossbar arrangement of two-terminal devices that can be programmed to patterns of high or low resistance. While extremely compact, this technology suffers from the “sneak-path” problem: certain information patterns cannot be recovered, as multiple low resistances in parallel make a high resistance indistinguishable from a low resistance. In this paper, a multi-layer device is considered, and the number of bits it can store is derived exactly and asymptotic bounds are developed. The information density of a series of isolated arrays with extreme aspect ratios is derived in the single- and multi-layer cases with and without peripheral selection circuitry. This density is shown to be non-zero in the limit, unlike that of the arrays with moderate aspect ratios previously considered. A simple encoding scheme that achieves capacity asymptotically is presented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Let p be a prime, n=2m and d=3p^m-2 with m\geq 2 , and \gcd (d,p^n-1)=1 . In this paper, the correlation distribution between a p -ary m -sequence of period p^n-1 and its d -decimation sequence is investigated in a unified approach. Some results for the binary case are extended to the general case. It is shown that the problem of determining the correlation distribution for d can be reduced to that of solving two combinatorial problems related to the unit circle of the finite field \mathbb {F}_{p^{n}} . For an arbitrary odd prime p , it seems difficult to solve these two problems. However, for p=3 , by studying the weight distribution of the ternary Zetterberg code and counting the numbers of solutions of some equations over \mathbb {F}_{3^{n}} , the two problems are solved, and thus, the corresponding correlation distribution for d$ is completely determined. It is noteworthy that this is the first time that the correlation distribution for a non-binary Niho decimation has been determined since 1976. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Frameproof codes are used to fingerprint digital data. They can prevent copyrighted materials from unauthorized use. In this paper, we study upper and lower bounds for $w$ -frameproof codes of length N$ over an alphabet of size q$ . The upper bound is based on a combinatorial approach and the lower bound is based on a probabilistic construction. Both bounds can improve one of the previous results when q$ is small compared with w$ , say cq\leq w$ for some constant c\leq q$ . Furthermore, we pay special attention to binary frameproof codes. We show a binary w . [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Objective: In this paper, a new vibrational modal analysis technique was developed for intraoperative cementless prosthesis fixation evaluation upon hammering. Methods: An artificial bone (Sawbones)-prosthesis system was excited by sweeping of a sine signal over a wide frequency range. The exponential sine sweep technique was implemented to the response signal in order to determine the linear impulse response. Recursive Fourier transform enhancement (RFTE) technique was applied to the linear impulse response signal in order to enhance the frequency spectrum with sharp and distinguishable peak values indicating distinct high natural frequencies of the system (ranging from 15 kHz to 90 kHz). The experiment was repeated with 5 Sawbones-prosthesis samples. Upon successive hammering during the prosthesis insertion, variation of each natural frequency was traced. Results: Compared to classical Fast Fourier Transform, RFTE provided a better tracing and enhancement of frequency components during insertion. Three different types of frequency evolving trends (monotonically increasing, insensitive, and plateau-like) were observed for all samples, as confirmed by a new finite element simulation of the prosthesis dynamic insertion. Two main mechanical phenomena (i.e., geometrical compaction and compressive stress) were shown to govern these trends in opposite ways. Follow-up of the plateau-like trend upon hammering showed that the frequency shift is a good indicator of fixation. Conclusion: Alongside the individual follow-up of frequency shifts, combinatorial frequency analysis provides new objective information on the mechanical stability of Sawbone-prosthesis fixation. Significance: The proposed vibrational technique based on RTFE can provide the surgeon with a new assistive diagnostic technique during the surgery by indicating when the bone-prosthesis fixation is acceptable, and beyond of which further hammering should be done cautiously to avoid bone fracture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we investigate properties of generalized bent Boolean functions and 2^k-bent (i.e., negabent, octabent, hexadecabent, et al.) Boolean functions in a uniform framework. From the Hadamard matrices, Hodžić and Pasalic presented sufficient conditions for generalized bent functions. Using cyclotomic fields and the decomposition of generalized bent functions, we generalize their results, prove that Hodžić and Pasalic’s conditions of generalized bent functions are not only sufficient but also necessary, and completely characterize generalized bent functions in terms of their component functions. Furthermore, we present a secondary construction of bent functions or semi-bent functions from generalized bent functions. Finally, we give the relations of generalized bent functions and 2^k-bent functions, demonstrate that 2^k-bent functions are actually a special class of generalized bent functions, and completely characterize 2^k-bent functions. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In a system that performs both encryption and lossy compression, the conventional way is to compress first and then encrypt the compressed data. This separation approach has been proved to be optimal. In certain applications where sensitive information should be protected as early as possible, it is preferable to perform the encryption first and then compress the encrypted data, which leads to the concept of the reversed system. Johnson et al. proposed an achievable scheme for the reversed system, where a modulo-sum encryption is followed by a compression using the Wyner–Ziv distributed source coding with side information. However, in general, this reversed system performs worse than the conventional system in the sense that it requires more compression rate and secrecy key rate. In this paper, we propose a new achievable scheme for the reversed system, where the encryption is conducted by a permutation cipher, and then, the encrypted data is compressed using the optimal rate-distortion code. The proposed scheme can achieve the optimal compression rate and secret key rate. As a result, we show that reversing the order of the encryption and compression does not necessarily compromise the performance of an encryption-compression system. We show that the proposed system attains strong secrecy, and the information leakage vanishes exponentially. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Petabyte-scale distributed storage systems are currently transitioning to erasure codes to achieve higher storage efficiency. Classical codes, such as Reed–Solomon (RS), are highly sub-optimal for distributed environments due to their high overhead during single-failure events. Locally repairable codes (LRCs) form a new family of codes that are repair efficient. In particular, LRCs minimize the number of nodes participating in single node repairs. Fundamental bounds and methods for explicitly constructing LRCs suitable for deployment in distributed storage clusters are not fully understood and currently form an active area of research. In this paper, we present an explicit LRC that is simple to construct and is optimal for a specific set of coding parameters. Our construction is based on grouping RS symbols and then adding extra simple parities that allow for small repair locality. For the analysis of the optimality of the code, we derive a new result on the matroid represented by the code’s generator matrix. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper presents GHOST, a combinatorial optimization framework that a real-time strategy (RTS) AI developer can use to model and solve any problem encoded as a constraint satisfaction/optimization problem (CSP/COP). We show a way to model three different problems as a CSP/COP, using instances from the RTS game StarCraft as test beds. Each problem belongs to a specific level of abstraction (the target selection as reactive control problem, the wall-in as a tactics problem, and the build order planning as a strategy problem). In our experiments, GHOST shows good results computed within some tens of milliseconds. We also show that GHOST outperforms state-of-the-art constraint solvers, matching them on the resources allocation problem, a common combinatorial optimization problem. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In this paper, we consider optimal q -ary cyclic constant-weight codes of length n , minimum distance d , and weight w codes. We introduce the pure and mixed difference method to present a combinatorial description for a cyclic (n,d,w)_{q} code and then obtain some tight upper bounds on the sizes of optimal cyclic (n,d,w)_{q} codes. Finally, by using Skolem-type sequences, we completely determine the sizes of optimal cyclic (n,d,3)3 codes with minimum distance 1\leq d\leq 6 . [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When the information source is a continuous distribution and the rate–distortion function is strictly larger than the Shannon lower bound, the explicit evaluation of the rate–distortion function is not straightforward. We evaluate the rate–distortion function for an independent identically distributed gamma source with respect to the absolute-log distortion measure. The logarithmic transformation reduces this rate–distortion problem to that under the absolute distortion measure. Extending the explicit evaluation of the rate–distortion function for the Gaussian sources, we obtain the parametric form of the rate–distortion function. We show that the optimal distribution of reconstruction consists of a continuous component enclosed by left and right discrete components, and the left discrete component vanishes when the acceptable distortion is small. We further extend the result for a wider class of source distributions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The topological interference management (TIM) problem studies the degrees of freedom (DoF) of partially-connected interference networks with no channel state information (CSI) at the transmitters except the network topology (i.e., partial connectivity). In this paper, we consider a variant of the TIM problem with uncertainty in network topology, where the channel state with partial connectivity is only known to belong to one of $M$ states at the transmitters. In particular, the transmitter has access to all network topological information over $M$ states, but is unaware of which state it falls in exactly for communication. The receiver at any state is aware of the exact state it falls in besides the network topologies of all states, and wish to recover as much highly-prioritized information at current state as possible. We formulate it as the opportunistic TIM problem with network uncertainty modeled by $M$ state-varying network topologies. To adapt to network topology uncertainty and different message decoding priority, joint encoding and opportunistic decoding are enabled at the transmitters and receivers respectively. Specifically, being aware of all possible network topologies, each transmitter sends a signal jointly encoded from all messages desired over $M$ states, say $M$ distinct messages, and at a certain State $m$ , Receiver $k$ wishes to opportunistically decode the first $\pi _{k}(m) \in \{1,2,\cdots,M\}$ higher-priority messages. Under this opportunistic TIM setting, we construct a multi-state conflict graph to capture the mutual conflict of messages over $M$ states, and characterize the optimal DoF region of two classes of network topologies via polyhedral combinatorics. A remarkable fact is that, under an additional mild monotonous condition, the optimality conditions of orthogonal access and one-to-one interference alignment still apply to TIM with uncertainty in network topology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In data centers, up to dozens of tasks are colocated on a single physical machine. Machines are used more efficiently, but the performance of the tasks deteriorates, as the colocated tasks compete for shared resources. Since the tasks are heterogeneous, the resulting performance dependencies are complex. In our previous work [1] , [2] we proposed a new combinatorial optimization model that uses two parameters of a task — its size and its type — to characterize how a task influences the performance of other tasks allocated to the same machine. In this paper, we study the egalitarian optimization goal: the aim is to optimize the performance of the worst-off task. This problem generalizes the classic makespan minimization on multiple processors ($P||C_{\max }$P||Cmax). We prove that polynomially-solvable variants of $P||C_{\max }$P||Cmax are NP-hard for this generalization, and that the problem is hard to approximate when the number of types is not constant. For a constant number of types, we propose a PTAS, a fast approximation algorithm, and a series of heuristics. We simulate the algorithms on instances derived from a trace of one of Google clusters. Compared with baseline algorithms solving $P||C_{\max }$P||Cmax, our proposed algorithms aware of the types of the jobs lead to significantly better tasks' performance. The notion of type enables us to extend standard combinatorial optimization methods to handle degradation of performance caused by colocation. Types add a layer of additional complexity. However, our results — approximation algorithms and good average-case performance — show that types can be handled efficiently. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Multiobjective evolutionary algorithms (MOEAs) are typically proposed, studied, and applied as monolithic blocks with a few numerical parameters that need to be set. Few works have studied how the algorithmic components of these evolutionary algorithms can be classified and combined to produce new algorithmic designs. The motivation for studies of this latter type stem from the development of flexible software frameworks and the usage of automatic algorithm configuration methods to find novel algorithm designs. In this paper, we propose anMOEA template and a new conceptual view of its components that surpasses existing frameworks in both number of algorithms that can be instantiated from the template and flexibility to produce novel algorithmic designs. We empirically demonstrate the flexibility of our proposed framework by automatically designing MOEAs for continuous and combinatorial optimization problems. The automatically designed algorithms are often able to outperform six traditional MOEAs from the literature, even after tuning their numerical parameters. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

As a fundamental optimization problem, the vehicle routing problem has wide application backgrounds and has been paid lots of attentions in past decades. In this paper we study its applications in data gathering and wireless energy charging for wireless sensor networks, by devising improved approximation algorithms for it and its variants. The key ingredients in the algorithm design include exploiting the combinatorial properties of the problems and making use of tree decomposition and minimum weighted maximum matching techniques. Specifically, given a metric complete graph G and an integer k>0, we consider rootless, uncapacitated rooted, and capacitated rooted min-max cycle cover problems in G with an aim to find k rootless (or rooted) edge-disjoint cycles covering the vertices in V such that the maximum cycle weight among the k cycles is minimized. For each of the mentioned problems, we develop an improved approximate solution. That is, for the rootless min-max cycle cover problem, we develop a (5 1\over 3 +\epsilon)-approximation algorithm; for the uncapacitated rooted min-max cycle cover problem, we devise a (6 1\over 3 +\epsilon) -approximation algorithm; and for the capacitated rooted min-max cycle cover problem, we propose a (7+\epsilon)-approximation algorithm. These algorithms improve the best existing approximation ratios of the corresponding problems 6+\epsilon, 7+\epsilon, and 13+\epsilon, respectively, where \epsilon is a constant with 0< \epsilon <1. We finally evaluate the performance of the proposed algorithms through experimental simulations. Experimental results show that the actual approximation ratios delivered by the proposed algorithms are always no more than 2, much better than their analytical counterparts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Baranyai’s theorem is well known in the theory of hypergraphs. A corollary of this theorem says that one can partition the family of all \(u\) -subsets of an \(n\) -element set into \({n-1\choose u-1}\) subfamilies such that each subfamily forms a partition of the \(n\) -element set, where \(n\) is divisible by \(u\) . In this paper, we present a coding-theoretic application of Baranyai’s theorem. More precisely, we propose a combinatorial construction of locally decodable codes. Locally decodable codes are error-correcting codes that allow the recovery of any message symbol by looking at only a few symbols of the codeword. The number of looked codeword symbols is called query complexity. Such codes have attracted a lot of attention in recent years. The Walsh–Hadamard code is a well-known binary two-query locally decodable code of exponential length that can recover any message bit using 2 bits of the codeword. Our construction can give locally decodable codes over small finite fields for any constant query complexities. In particular, it gives a ternary two-query locally decodable code of length asymptotically shorter than the Walsh–Hadamard code. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

We show that the inequality H(A | B,X) + H(A | B,Y) \leqslant H(A | B) for jointly distributed random variables A,B,X,Y , which does not hold in general case, holds under some natural condition on the support of the probability distribution of A,B,X,Y . This result generalizes a version of the conditional Ingleton inequality: if for some distribution , then I(A \mskip 5mu {:} \mskip 5mu B) \leqslant I(A \mskip 5mu {:} \mskip 5mu B | X) + I(A \mskip 5mu {:} \mskip 5mu B | Y) + I(X \mskip 5mu {:} \mskip 5mu Y) . We present two applications of our result. The first one is the following easy-to-formulate theorem on edge colorings of bipartite graphs: assume that the edges of a bipartite graph are colored in K$ colors so that each two edges sharing a vertex have different colors and for each pair (left vertex $x$ , right vertex $y$ ) there is at most one color $a$ such both $x$ and $y$ are incident to edges with color $a$ ; assume further that the degree of each left vertex is at least $L$ and the degree of each right vertex is at least $R$ . Then $K \geqslant LR$ . The second application is a new method to prove lower bounds for biclique cover of bipartite graphs. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

It was shown in previous work that a vector x ∊ ℝn with at mostk < n nonzeros can be recovered from an expander sketch Ax in O(nnz(A) log k) operations via the parallel-l0 decoding algorithm, where nnz(A) denotes the number of nonzero entries in A ∊ ℝm×n. In this paper, we present the robust-l0 decoding algorithm, which robustifies parallel-l0 when the sketch Ax is corrupted by additive noise. This robustness is achieved by approximating the asymptotic posterior distribution of values in the sketch given its corrupted measurements. We provide analytic expressions that approximate these posteriors under the assumptions that the nonzero entries in the signal and the noise are drawn from continuous distributions. Numerical experiments presented show that robust-l0 is superior to existing greedy and combinatorial compressed sensing algorithms in the presence of small to moderate signal-to-noise ratios in the setting of Gaussian signals and Gaussian additive noise. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a high voltage direct current (HVDC) transmission system, the devices like HVDC cable and its accessory, HVDC bush play important roles in power transmission and power transformation. The local electric field could be greatly enhanced due to the space charge accumulation in the insulation, which significantly influences the electrical performance of the electric devices. In this paper, an algorithm for solving the charge coupled systems of solid dielectrics is presented. The algorithm is based upon a finite element method (FEM) solving the Poisson equation and a finite volume method (FVM) discretizing the transportation equation on a cell-centered tessellation. Both FEM and FVM share a set of unstructured mesh. The study focuses on the capability of different upwind schemes on capture of charge density step. The numerical experiment results show that in contrast to conventional methods that constrain charge densities to piecewise constants within a cell, a higher-order approximation of charge density is obtained by reconstructing the charge densities gradient in the control volumes. And the oscillation could be avoided when a limiter function is adopted to make sure that no new extrema created between the central cell and the neighbor cells. The influences of time step, total calculation time, and the mesh structured or not are also investigated. The results show that the algorithm could provide enough accuracy when suitable time step and time duration are adopted with unstructured mesh. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

We suggest a new optimization technique for minimizing the sum $\sum _{i=1}^n g_i(x)$ ∑ i = 1 n g i (x) of $n$ n non-convex real functions that satisfy a property that we call piecewise log-Lipschitz. This is by forging links between techniques in computational geometry, combinatorics and convex optimization. As an example application, we provide the first constant-factor approximation algorithms whose running-times are polynomial in $n$ n for the fundamental problem of Points-to-Lines alignment: Given $n$ n points $p_1,\ldots,p_n$ p 1 ,... , p n and $n$ n lines $\ell _1,\ldots,\ell _n$ ℓ 1 ,... , ℓ n on the plane and $z>0$ z > 0 , compute the matching $\pi :[n]\to [n]$ π : [ n ] → [ n ] and alignment (rotation matrix $R$ R and translation vector $t$ t ) that minimize the sum of euclidean distances $\sum _{i=1}^n \mathrm{dist}(Rp_i-t,\ell _{\pi (i)})^z$ ∑ i = 1 n dist (R p i - t , ℓ π (i)) z between each point to its corresponding line. This problem is non-trivial even if $z=1$ z = 1 and the matching $\pi$ π is given. If $\pi$ π is given, our algorithms run in $O(n^3)$ O (n 3) time, and even near-linear in $n$ n using core-sets that support: streaming, dynamic, and distributed parallel computations in poly-logarithmic update time. Generalizations for handling e.g., outliers or pseudo-distances such as $M$ M -estimators for the problem are also provided. Experimental results and open source code show that our algorithms improve existing heuristics also in practice. A companion demonstration video in the context of Augmented Reality shows how such algorithms may be used in real-time systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Motivated by applications involving hot data, the notion of (r, t) -availability was introduced, where a symbol is said to have (r, t) -availability if it can be reconstructed, respectively, from t disjoint repair alternatives of other symbols, each of size at most r . The key to constructing a family of locally repairable codes with (r, t) -availability is the design of a membership matrix for dividing global parities into local ones such that each repair group contains only one parity symbol. Although explicit designs of membership matrices are available, it remains unclear whether membership matrices with significantly better parameters can be constructed, which was a question left open. To tackle the open problem, this paper first provides a connection between the design of membership matrices and the design of a combinatorial object in the well-known combinatorial design theory, called resolvable configurations. This paper then proposes several direct designs of membership matrices based on Euclidean geometry, finite fields, circulant permutation matrices, affine permutation matrices, and Reed–Solomon codes. By leveraging the notion of resolvable configurations and the Kronecker product, this paper further proposes a two-step design of membership matrices. The proposed direct and two-step designs of membership matrices are shown to have significantly better parameters than those recently available. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]