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This paper investigates the dynamic access point (AP) clustering and precoding problem in the downlink of user-centric virtual cell networks. The goal is to maximize the weighted sum spectral efficiency (SE) while satisfying the power constraints and AP clustering constraints in adjacent time slots (TSs). By adopting the random walk mobility to model the mobile user equipments’ movement behaviors, we consider dynamic and time-varying channel conditions. Therefore, the weighted sum SE maximization programming takes the form of discrete-time sequence of mixed-integer non-convex optimization problems. In this paper, we propose to solve this sequential problem in two stages. In the first stage, a dynamic AP clustering approach based on discrete particle swarm optimization is developed. This approach takes the advantage of the channel correlation by exploiting the relationship between AP clustering solutions in adjacent TSs to improve the SE performance and reduce complexity. In the second stage, given the AP clustering solution obtained in the first stage, a distributed precoding algorithm is devised via applying the weighted minimum mean square error method. By combining these two stages, we propose a novel dynamic AP clustering and precoding algorithm (DAPC-Pre). The effectiveness of the proposed DAPC-Pre algorithm is verified by the simulation results. In particular, the proposed algorithm converges fast and significantly outperforms benchmark algorithms in terms of sum SE under different dynamic environments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Robust optimization over time is a new way to tackle dynamic optimization problems where the goal is to find solutions that remain acceptable over an extended period of time. The state-of-the-art methods in this domain try to identify robust solutions based on their future predicted fitness values. However, predicting future fitness values is difficult and error prone. In this paper, we propose a new framework based on a multipopulation method in which subpopulations are responsible for tracking peaks and also gathering characteristic information about them. When the quality of the current robust solution falls below the acceptance threshold, the algorithm chooses the next robust solution based on the collected information. We propose four different strategies to select the next solution. The experimental results on benchmark problems show that our newly proposed methods perform significantly better than existing algorithms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Dynamic network architectures (DNAs) have been developed under the assumption that some terminals can be converted into temporary access points (APs) anytime when connected to the Internet. In this paper, we consider the problem of assigning a group of users to a set of potential APs with the aim to maximize the downlink system throughput of DNA networks, subject to total transmit power and users’ quality of service (QoS) constraints. In our first method, we relax the integer optimization variables to be continuous. The resulting non-convex continuous optimization problem is solved using successive convex approximation framework to arrive at a sequence of second-order cone programs (SOCPs). In the next method, the selection process is viewed as finding a sparsity constrained solution to our problem of sum rate maximization. It is demonstrated in numerical results that while the first approach has better data rates for dense networks, the sparsity oriented method has a superior speed of convergence. Moreover, for the scenarios considered, in addition to comprehensively outperforming some well-known approaches, our algorithms yield data rates close to those obtained by branch and bound method. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Convergence and diversity are interdependently handled during the evolutionary process by most existing many-objective evolutionary algorithms (MaOEAs). In such a design, the degraded performance of one would deteriorate the other, and only solutions with both are able to improve the performance of MaOEAs. Unfortunately, it is not easy to constantly maintain a population of solutions with both convergence and diversity. In this paper, an MaOEA based on two independent stages is proposed for effectively solving many-objective optimization problems (MaOPs), where the convergence and diversity are addressed in two independent and sequential stages. To achieve this, we first propose a nondominated dynamic weight aggregation method by using a genetic algorithm, which is capable of finding the Pareto-optimal solutions for MaOPs with concave, convex, linear and even mixed Pareto front shapes, and then these solutions are employed to learn the Pareto-optimal subspace for the convergence. Afterward, the diversity is addressed by solving a set of single-objective optimization problems with reference lines within the learned Pareto-optimal subspace. To evaluate the performance of the proposed algorithm, a series of experiments are conducted against six state-of-the-art MaOEAs on benchmark test problems. The results show the significantly improved performance of the proposed algorithm over the peer competitors. In addition, the proposed algorithm can focus directly on a chosen part of the objective space if the preference area is known beforehand. Furthermore, the proposed algorithm can also be used to effectively find the nadir points. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses the problem of semantic segmentation, where the possible class labels are from a predefined set. We exploit top-down guidance, i.e., the coarse localization of the objects and their class labels provided by object detectors. For each detected bounding box, figure–ground segmentation is performed and the final result is achieved by merging the figure–ground segmentations. The main idea of the proposed approach, which is presented in our preliminary work, is to reformulate the figure–ground segmentation problem as sparse reconstruction pursuing the object mask in a nonparametric manner. The latent segmentation mask should be coherent subject to sparse error caused by intra-category diversity; thus, the object mask is inferred by making use of sparse representations over the training set. To handle local spatial deformations, local patch-level masks are also considered and inferred by sparse representations over the spatially nearby patches. The sparse reconstruction coefficients and the latent mask are alternately optimized by applying the Lasso algorithm and the accelerated proximal gradient method. The proposed formulation results in a convex optimization problem; thus, the global optimal solution is achieved. In this paper, we provide theoretical analysis of the convergence and optimality. We also give an extended numerical analysis of the proposed algorithm and a comprehensive comparison with the related semantic segmentation methods on the challenging PASCAL visual object class object segmentation datasets and the Weizmann horse dataset. The experimental results demonstrate that the proposed algorithm achieves a competitive performance when compared with the state of the arts. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper presents a decentralized solution algorithm for network-constrained unit commitment (NCUC) in multiregional power systems. The proposed algorithm is based on our previous work in which a local NCUC was formulated for each control entity (i.e., region) and an analytical target cascading (ATC) based distributed but partially parallelized algorithm requiring a central coordinator was presented. The primary objective of this paper is to present a decentralized approach that relaxes the need for any form of central coordinator in ATC and allows fully parallelized solutions of the local NCUCs. To achieve this objective, we formulate a bilevel optimization problem for each control entity. While the upper level solves the NCUC problem of the control entity, the lower level seeks to coordinate the control entity with its neighboring regions. The lower level is a convex optimization, which can be further replaced in the upper level problem by the Karush–Kuhn–Tucker conditions. The control entities communicate directly with each other and synchronously solve their local NCUCs. Having no need for any form of central coordinator, the proposed algorithm is potentially less vulnerable to cyber-attacks and communication failures than the distributed methods utilizing a coordinator. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper studies the convergence properties of the well-known message-passing algorithm for convex optimisation. Under the assumption of pairwise separability and scaled diagonal dominance, asymptotic convergence is established and a simple bound for the convergence rate is provided for message-passing. In comparison with previous results, our results do not require the given convex program to have known convex pairwise components and that our bound for the convergence rate is tighter and simpler. When specialised to quadratic optimisation, we generalise known results by providing a very simple bound for the convergence rate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The combination of non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) and intelligent reflecting surface (IRS) is an efficient solution to significantly enhance the energy efficiency of the wireless communication system. In this paper, a downlink multi-cluster NOMA network is considered, where each cluster is supported by one IRS. This paper aims to minimize the transmit power by jointly optimizing the beamforming, the power allocation and the phase shift of each IRS. The formulated problem is non-convex and challenging to be solved due to the coupled variables, i.e., the beamforming vector, the power allocation coefficient and the phase shift matrix. To address this non-convex problem, an alternating optimization based algorithm is proposed. Specifically, the primal problem is divided into two subproblems for beamforming optimization and phase shifting feasiblity, where the two subproblems are solved iteratively. Moreover, to guarantee the feasibility of the beamforming optimization problem, an iterative algorithm is proposed to search the feasible initial points. To reduce the complexity, a simplified algorithm based on partial exhaustive search for this system model is also proposed. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed alternating algorithm can yield a better performance gain than the partial exhaustive search algorithm, NOMA with random IRS phase shift scheme and OMA-IRS scheme. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Matrix factorization is a popular approach for large-scale matrix completion. The optimization formulation based on matrix factorization, even with huge size, can be solved very efficiently through the standard optimization algorithms in practice. However, due to the non-convexity caused by the factorization model, there is a limited theoretical understanding of whether these algorithms will generate a good solution. In this paper, we establish a theoretical guarantee for the factorization-based formulation to correctly recover the underlying low-rank matrix. In particular, we show that under similar conditions to those in previous works, many standard optimization algorithms converge to the global optima of a factorization-based formulation and recover the true low-rank matrix. We study the local geometry of a properly regularized objective and prove that any stationary point in a certain local region is globally optimal. A major difference of this paper from the existing results is that we do not need resampling (i.e., using independent samples at each iteration) in either the algorithm or its analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In the restructured power industry, bulk energy storage may play a crucial role to provide the flexibility required by system operators to cater for the unprecedented levels of uncertainty. Within the context of co-optimized electricity markets for energy and reserves under wind uncertainty, this paper addresses the incorporation of bulk energy storage units in day-ahead network-constrained energy and reserve scheduling. A novel two-stage robust optimization approach is presented whereby the nonconvex and time-coupled operation of storage devices is precisely modeled while accounting for the anticipativity of the two-stage setting. The resulting robust counterpart is cast as a mixed-integer trilevel program with lower-level binary variables. In order to address the nonconvexity of the recourse problem, this paper proposes the application of an exact nested column-and-constraint generation algorithm. Numerical results illustrate the effective performance of the proposed approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Deep-water offshore drilling vessels, such as a semisubmersible drilling rig, use the dynamic positioning (DP) system and the thruster-assisted position-mooring system for maintaining a stationary position. In the DP system, the thrust allocator is used to distribute the desired generalized forces computed by the motion controller among the thrusters. However, to ensure safe operation of the vessel despite the thruster failure, the vessel is equipped with redundant thruster configuration and, therefore, is overactuated. For overactuated vessels, the choice of a particular solution for thrust allocation is found using some kind of optimization process. In this paper, the thrust allocator tries to minimize the power consumption and takes forbidden/spoil zones into account. The formulated thrust allocation problem becomes nonconvex due to thrust direction constraints on azimuth thrusters. The conventional methods get trapped in local minima and fail to find the optimum solution for the formulated nonconvex thrust allocation problem. In this paper, an improved harmony search (IHS) algorithm for solving the nonconvex thrust allocation problem is proposed. IHS is a variant of the harmony search (HS) algorithm. The HS algorithm is a music-based meta-heuristic optimization method, which is analogous with the music improvisation process where a musician continues to polish the pitches to obtain better harmony. Obtained numerical results show that the IHS algorithm has better convergence property when compared to the HS algorithm and the genetic algorithm (GA). Moreover, the power consumption for thrust allocation using the IHS algorithm is lower when compared with HS, GA, and Mincon (sequential quadratic programming) algorithms. The percentage savings in total power consumption for thruster allocation as compared to the Mincon algorithm for GA, HS, and IHS methods are 44.96%, 48.39%, and 51.58%, respectively. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Generating units, participating in the secondary frequency control of a control area, are usually spinning units already connected to the network and operating outside their range of optimal performance. This paper deals with an alternative method of providing secondary frequency control called Rapid-Start (RS). It consists in assigning a regulation band to several off-line units (RS units) which are capable of being started and connected rapidly, therefore allowing the online units to operate closer to their nominal power. As RS operation may have economic benefits, an appropriate algorithm to start up an RS unit needs to be developed. This paper proposes a methodology to evaluate, compare, and choose the most appropriate RS algorithm among the ones developed for a certain AGC control area. An optimization model provides a reference by determining the hypothetically ideal start-ups and shut-downs of RS units. In addition, the definition of performance indexes to evaluate, compare, and choose the different RS algorithms is proposed. The proposed methodology is illustrated for a secondary frequency control zone within the Spanish power system by using real data signals. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Recently, the reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS), benefited from the breakthrough on the fabrication of programmable meta-material, has been speculated as one of the key enabling technologies for the future six generation (6G) wireless communication systems scaled up beyond massive multiple input multiple output (Massive-MIMO) technology to achieve smart radio environments. Employed as reflecting arrays, RIS is able to assist MIMO transmissions without the need of radio frequency chains resulting in considerable reduction in power consumption. In this paper, we investigate the joint design of transmit beamforming matrix at the base station and the phase shift matrix at the RIS, by leveraging recent advances in deep reinforcement learning (DRL). We first develop a DRL based algorithm, in which the joint design is obtained through trial-and-error interactions with the environment by observing predefined rewards, in the context of continuous state and action. Unlike the most reported works utilizing the alternating optimization techniques to alternatively obtain the transmit beamforming and phase shifts, the proposed DRL based algorithm obtains the joint design simultaneously as the output of the DRL neural network. Simulation results show that the proposed algorithm is not only able to learn from the environment and gradually improve its behavior, but also obtains the comparable performance compared with two state-of-the-art benchmarks. It is also observed that, appropriate neural network parameter settings will improve significantly the performance and convergence rate of the proposed algorithm. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper considers stochastic convex optimization problems with two sets of constraints: (a) deterministic constraints on the domain of the optimization variable, which are difficult to project onto; and (b) deterministic or stochastic constraints that admit efficient projection. Problems of this form arise frequently in the context of semidefinite programming as well as when various NP-hard problems are solved approximately via semidefinite relaxation. Since projection onto the first set of constraints is difficult, it becomes necessary to explore projection-free algorithms, such as the stochastic Frank-Wolfe (FW) algorithm. On the other hand, the second set of constraints cannot be handled in the same way, and must be incorporated as an indicator function within the objective function, thereby complicating the application of FW methods. Similar problems have been studied before; however, they suffer from slow convergence rates. This work, equipped with momentum based gradient tracking technique, guarantees fast convergence rates on par with the best-known rates for problems without the second set of constraints. Zeroth-order variants of the proposed algorithms are also developed and again improve upon the state-of-the-art rate results. We further propose the novel trimmed FW variants that enjoy the same convergence rates as their classical counterparts, but are empirically shown to require significantly fewer calls to the linear minimization oracle speeding up the overall algorithm. The efficacy of the proposed algorithms is tested on relevant applications of sparse matrix estimation, clustering via semidefinite relaxation, and uniform sparsest cut problem. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Motivated by the work of Dahrouj and Yu in applying the Han-Kobayashi transmission strategy for mitigating the intercell interference in a multi-cell multi-user multiple-input single-output interference network (MISO IN), this paper considers splitting messages into private and common parts in a multi-cell multi-user MIMO IN. Specifically, the covariances of the private messages and common messages are designed to optimize either the sum rate or the minimal rate. The common messages and private messages are decoded in sequence using successive decoding. This paper shows how these difficult optimization problems can be adequately solved by means of d.c. (difference of concave functions) optimization over a simple convex set. Numerical and simulation results also reveal the great advantage of our proposed solutions for various types of INs. In particular, the proposed solutions are shown to outperform the algorithm developed by Dahrouj and Yu for the simpler case of the MISO IN. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Community detection is one of the fundamental tasks in graph mining, which aims to identify group assignment of nodes in a complex network. Recently, network embedding techniques have demonstrated their strong power in advancing the community detection task and achieve better performance than various traditional methods. Despite their empirical success, most of the existing algorithms directly leverage the observed coarse network structure for community detection. Therefore, they often lead to suboptimal performance as the observed connections fail to capture the essential tie strength information among nodes precisely and account for the impact of noisy links. In this paper, an optimal network structure for community detection is introduced to characterize the fine-grained tie strength information between connected nodes and alleviate the adverse effects of noisy links. To obtain an expressive node representation for community detection, we learn the optimal network structure and network embeddings in a joint framework, instead of using a two-stage approach to derive the node embeddings from the coarse network topology. In particular, we formulate the joint framework as an optimization problem and an alternating optimization algorithm is exploited to solve the proposed optimization problem. Additionally, theoretical analyses regarding the computational complexity and the convergence of the optimization algorithm are also provided. Extensive experiments on both synthetic and real-world networks demonstrate the effectiveness and superiority of the proposed framework. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We present a conditional random field approach to tracking-by-detection in which we model pairwise factors linking pairs of detections and their hidden labels, as well as higher order potentials defined in terms of label costs. To the contrary of previous papers, our method considers long-term connectivity between pairs of detections and models similarities as well as dissimilarities between them, based on position, color, and as novelty, visual motion cues. We introduce a set of feature-specific confidence scores, which aim at weighting feature contributions according to their reliability. Pairwise potential parameters are then learned in an unsupervised way from detections or from tracklets. Label costs are defined so as to penalize the complexity of the labeling, based on prior knowledge about the scene like the location of entry/exit zones. Experiments on PETS'09, TUD, CAVIAR, Parking Lot, and Town Center public data sets show the validity of our approach, and similar or better performance than recent state-of-the-art algorithms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a generic strategy for short-term load forecasting (STLF) based on the support vector regression machines (SVR). Two important improvements to the SVR based load forecasting method are introduced, i.e., procedure for generation of model inputs and subsequent model input selection using feature selection algorithms. One of the objectives of the proposed strategy is to reduce the operator interaction in the model-building procedure. The proposed use of feature selection algorithms for automatic model input selection and the use of the particle swarm global optimization based technique for the optimization of SVR hyper-parameters reduces the operator interaction. To confirm the effectiveness of the proposed modeling strategy, the model has been trained and tested on two publicly available and well-known load forecasting data sets and compared to the state-of-the-art STLF algorithms yielding improved accuracy. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In this paper, a novel algorithm “firework optimization” (FO) is introduced, as well as its hybridization with generating set search (GSS). FO is an exploration algorithm, which intends to explore a vast region within the search space in order to determine regions that may contain a regional optimum. As the regions with potential are defined, GSS, the exploitation algorithm is applied to determine whether regions determined by FO contain a local or a global optimum. The validity of FO and GSS hybridization algorithm is verified using Branin and Six-Hump Camel test functions, and the hybridization algorithm is applied to an interior permanent magnet synchronous motor, in order to minimize torque ripple. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While many distributed optimization algorithms have been proposed for solving smooth or convex problems over the networks, few of them can handle non-convex and non-smooth problems. Based on a proximal primal-dual approach, this paper presents a new (stochastic) distributed algorithm with Nesterov momentum for accelerated optimization of non-convex and non-smooth problems. Theoretically, we show that the proposed algorithm can achieve an $\epsilon$ -stationary solution under a constant step size with $\mathcal {O}(1/\epsilon ^2)$ computation complexity and $\mathcal {O}(1/\epsilon)$ communication complexity when the epigraph of the non-smooth term is a polyhedral set. When compared to the existing gradient tracking based methods, the proposed algorithm has the same order of computation complexity but lower order of communication complexity. To the best of our knowledge, the presented result is the first stochastic algorithm with the $\mathcal {O}(1/\epsilon)$ communication complexity for non-convex and non-smooth problems. Numerical experiments for a distributed non-convex regression problem and a deep neural network based classification problem are presented to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed algorithms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Temporal decomposition is a potential approach to relieve the computation cost of power system multi-interval scheduling problems, such as economic dispatch. In this form of decomposition, the considered scheduling horizon is partitioned into several subhorizons. A subproblem is formulated for each subhorizon, and a distributed optimization algorithm strategy is used to coordinate subproblems. The main existing challenge is decomposing the scheduling horizon to gain the most time saving from distributed computing. This paper serves as an extension to our previous work and presents a machine learning-aided temporal decomposition strategy to partition a scheduling horizon optimally. We have found that the load profile, known before solving economic dispatch, significantly affects the best number of subhorizons. We have used load profiles as inputs to a learner whose goal is to assign a temporal decomposition class to each load profile. Possible decomposition classes are divisors of the considered scheduling horizon. Thus, the proposed learning procedure is a multiclass classification. We have selected Extreme Gradient Boosting that is a tree-based classification learner. Simulation results using real-world load profiles show the promising performance of the proposed algorithm. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we investigate the resource and interference management problem in a novel scenario where multiple unmanned aerial vehicle base stations (UAV-BSs) provide cellular services to UAV users (UAV-UEs) by reusing both licensed and unlicensed spectrum. Considering the co-existence of terrestrial cellular, WiFi and UAV-BSs, a joint optimization problem is formulated for both subchannel allocation and power control of UAV-UEs over the licensed/unlicensed spectrum in order to maximize the uplink sum-rate of the multi-cell UAV-cellular network. Since the formulated problem is NP-hard, we decompose it into three sub-problems. Specifically, we first use the convex optimization and the Hungarian algorithm to obtain the global optimal of power and subchannel allocations in the licensed spectrum, respectively. Then, we propose a matching game with externalities and coalition game algorithms to obtain the Nash stable of the subchannel allocation in the unlicensed band. Local optimal power assignment in the unlicensed spectrum is obtained using the successive convex approximation (SCA) method. An iterative algorithm is thereby developed to solve the three sub-problems sequentially till reaching convergence. Simulation results show that the proposed algorithm can improve the network capacity by nearly two times than the Long Term Evolution-Advanced (LTE-A). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As technology scales and frequencies increase, a new hybrid design style emerges, wherein designs contain a mixture of random logic and datapath standard-cell components. This paper demonstrates that conventional half-perimeter wirelength driven placers underperform in terms of regularity and Steiner wirelength (StWL) for such hybrid designs. In addition, the quality gap between manual and automatic placement is more pronounced as the designs become more datapath oriented. To effectively handle hybrid designs, this paper proposes a new unified placement flow that simultaneously places random logic and datapath cells. This flow is built on the top of a leading academic force-directed placer and significantly improves the quality of datapath placement while leveraging the speed and flexibility of existing random-logic placement algorithms. It consists of a suite of novel global and detailed placement techniques, collectively called structure-aware placement techniques (SAPT). These techniques effectively integrate alignment constraints into placement, thereby overcoming the deficiencies of existing random-logic placers when handling designs with embedded datapaths. Compared to other state-of-the-art placers, SAPT improves total StWL by more than 28% and total routing overflow by over six times on the ISPD 2011 datapath benchmark suite. In addition, it improves total StWL by 5.8% on industrial hybrid designs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on our previous work, this paper presents a dynamic hybrid framework, called DyHF, for solving constrained optimization problems. This framework consists of two major steps: global search model and local search model. In the global and local search models, differential evolution serves as the search engine, and Pareto dominance used in multiobjective optimization is employed to compare the individuals in the population. Unlike other existing methods, the above two steps are executed dynamically according to the feasibility proportion of the current population in this paper, with the purpose of reasonably distributing the computational resource for the global and local search during the evolution. The performance of DyHF is tested on 22 benchmark test functions. The experimental results clearly show that the overall performance of DyHF is highly competitive with that of a number of state-of-the-art approaches from the literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Estimating the probability of failures or accidents with aerospace systems is often necessary when new concepts or designs are introduced, as it is being done for autonomous aircraft. If the design is safe, as it is supposed to be, accident cases are hard to find. Such analysis needs some variance reduction technique and several algorithms exist for that; however, specific model features may cause difficulties in practice, such as the case of system models where independent agents have to autonomously accomplish missions within finite time, and likely with the presence of human agents. For handling these scenarios, this paper presents a novel estimation approach, based on the combination of the well-established variation reduction technique of interacting particles system with the long-standing optimization algorithm denominated DIviding RECTangles. When combined, these two techniques yield statistically significant results for extremely low probabilities. In addition, this novel approach allows the identification of intermediate events and simplifies the evaluation of sensitivity of the estimated probabilities to certain system parameters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a new method based on recent optimization technique to detect slow-moving landslides (<150m/year) in time series of displacement field generated by satellite images. Sparse optimization is applied simultaneously on the 3-D data set in space as well as in time. The proposed method takes into account the distinctive signal physical properties in space and time, by enforcing a sparse representation by blocks in space, but a continuing and monotonous representation in time of the landslides. As a result, we show that a mixed $\ell _{1,2}$ -norm is the most suitable norm for this detection problem, compared to pure $\ell _{1}$ -norm or $\ell _{2}$ -norm. Moreover, an outlier estimation step is included that sets apart the Gaussian noise from locally sparse processing errors in the data. The performance of this approach is tested by applying it both on synthetic data and on a time series of displacements fields over 16 dates in the Colca Valley, Peru. This detection presents commission and omission errors for landslides of 29% and 14%, respectively, using a medium resolution (10 m) data set of optical satellite images. It detects all important landslides, already known from field investigations. Moreover, it also points out other smaller or unknown landslides, increasing the existing slow-moving landslide inventory by +50%. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In most real-world settings, designs are often gradually adapted and improved over time. Consequently, there exists knowledge from distinct (but possibly related) design exercises, which have either been previously completed or are currently in-progress, that may be leveraged to enhance the optimization performance of a particular target optimization task of interest. Further, it is observed that modern day design cycles are typically distributed in nature, and consist of multiple teams working on associated ideas in tandem. In such environments, vast amounts of related information can become available at various stages of the search process corresponding to some ongoing target optimization exercise. Successfully exploiting this knowledge is expected to be of significant value in many practical settings, where solving an optimization problem from scratch may be exorbitantly costly or time consuming. Accordingly, in this paper, we propose an adaptive knowledge reuse framework for surrogate-assisted multiobjective optimization of computationally expensive problems, based on the novel idea of multiproblem surrogates. This idea provides the capability to acquire and spontaneously transfer learned models across problems, facilitating efficient global optimization. The efficacy of our proposition is demonstrated on a series of synthetic benchmark functions, as well as two practical case studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, an adaptive synthesis using the particle swarm optimization (PSO) for implementations of resonator-coupled filters is proposed. The coupling matrix of in-band filtering response is achieved and optimized by the PSO-based synthesis. Meanwhile, the stopband coupling matrix of the filter is predicted based on the combination of extra resonant nodes representing stopband spurious and parasitic effect of input/output ports. In addition, an enhanced accurate prediction of filter performance is calculated by the proposed approach, considering the practical fabrication tolerance on filter design. To verify principles mentioned earlier, various resonator-coupled filters are implemented. The calculation, EM-simulation, and measurement of filters show good agreements in both passband and stopband. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The tensor completion issues have obtained a great deal of attention in the past few years. However, the data fidelity part minimizes a squared loss function, which may be inappropriate for the case of noisy one-bit observations. In this paper, we alleviate the mentioned difficulty by drawing on the experience of matrix scenarios. Based on the convex relation to $\ell _{1}$ norm of the tensor multi-rank, we propose a novel optimization model trying to recover the underlying tensor in case of one-bit observations. The feasibility of this model is proved by theoretical derivations. Furthermore, an alternating direction method of multipliers based algorithm is designed to find the solution. The numerical experiments demonstrate the effectiveness of our method. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Differential evolution (DE) algorithms compose an efficient type of evolutionary algorithm (EA) for the global optimization domain. Although it is well known that the population structure has a major influence on the behavior of EAs, there are few works studying its effect in DE algorithms. In this paper, we propose and analyze several DE variants using different panmictic and decentralized population schemes. As it happens for other EAs, we demonstrate that the population scheme has a marked influence on the behavior of DE algorithms too. Additionally, a new operator for generating the mutant vector is proposed and compared versus a classical one on all the proposed population models. After that, a new heterogeneous decentralized DE algorithm combining the two studied operators in the best performing studied population structure has been designed and evaluated. In total, 13 new DE algorithms are presented and evaluated in this paper. Summarizing our results, all the studied algorithms are highly competitive compared to the state-of-the-art DE algorithms taken from the literature for most considered problems, and the best ones implement a decentralized population. With respect to the population structure, the proposed decentralized versions clearly provide a better performance compared to the panmictic ones. The new mutation operator demonstrates a faster convergence on most of the studied problems versus a classical operator taken from the DE literature. Finally, the new heterogeneous decentralized DE is shown to improve the previously obtained results, and outperform the compared state-of-the-art DEs. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper presents a technique for the acceleration of gradient-based algorithms that employ finite differences in the calculation of the gradient for the optimization of array antennas. It is based on differential contributions, which takes advantage of the fact that when an array is optimized, each element is analyzed independently of the rest. Thus, the computation of the gradient of the cost function, which is typically the most time-consuming operation of the algorithm, can be accelerated. A time cost study is presented and the technique is implemented, as an example, in the generalized intersection approach algorithm for array optimization in near and far fields. Several syntheses are performed to assess the improvement of this technique. In the far field, it is compared with periodic and aperiodic arrays using different approaches for the computation of the gradient, including the analytic derivative. A reflectarray is also optimized in the near field with the goal of improving its quiet zone. The technique of differential contributions shows the important reductions in the time per iteration in all three syntheses, especially in that of aperiodic arrays and near-field optimization, where the time saved in the evaluation of the gradient is greater than 99%. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper develops a dynamically adaptive stochastic tunneling (DAST) algorithm to avoid the “freezing” problem commonly found when using simulated annealing for circuit placement on field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs). The main objective is to reduce the placement runtime and improve the quality of final placement. We achieve this by allowing the DAST placer to tunnel energetically inaccessible regions of the potential solution space, adjusting the stochastic tunneling schedule adaptively by performing detrended fluctuation analysis, and selecting move types dynamically by a multi-modal scheme based on Gibbs sampling. A prototype annealing-based placer, called DAST, was developed as part of this paper. It targets the same computer-aided design flow as the standard versatile placement and routing (VPR) but replaces its original annealer with the DAST algorithm. Our experimental results using the benchmark suite and FPGA architecture file which comes with the Toronto VPR5 software package have shown a 18.3% reduction in runtime and a 7.2% improvement in critical-path delay over that of conventional VPR. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper solves the variation-aware decoupling capacitance (decap) budgeting problem. Unlike previous works which only consider worst case design, for the first time, we consider the input of both process variation and operation variation for decap budgeting. A novel stochastic current model is proposed that efficiently and accurately captures temporal correlation between clock cycles, logic-induced correlation between ports, and current variation due to process variation with spatial correlation. An iterative alternative programming algorithm that is applicable to a variety of current models is then developed. Compared with the baseline model which assumes maximum current peaks at all ports, the model considering temporal correlation reduces noise by up to 5×, and the model considering both temporal and logic-induced correlations reduces noise by up to 17×. Compared with using deterministic process parameters, considering process variation (in particular Leff variation) reduces the mean noise by up to 4× and 3σ noise by up to 13× when both applying the current model with temporal and logic-induced correlations. Note that stochastic optimization has been used mainly for process variation in the literature, but this paper convincingly demonstrate that stochastic optimization considering operation variation is effective to reduce overdesign introduced by worst case design for power integrity. Such stochastic optimization has a wide scope of applications to design problems. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first in-depth study on decap insertion for power network design considering current correlations including process variation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many automation or manufacturing systems are too complex to be modeled by analytical approaches and can only resort to fast-running simulation. Stochastic Nelder–Mead simplex method (SNM) is a newly developed methodology for simulation optimization with expected-value-based objective functions. Quantile, as an important alternative to the usual expected value, provides additional information about the distribution of system performance. In particular, it is useful in describing the tail behavior of the distribution. In this paper, we exploit the structure of SNM and extend it to solve simulation optimization problems with quantile-based objective functions and inequality constraints. The proposed method, called SNM-QC, utilizes the same search strategy as SNM but further incorporates effective quantile estimation techniques and penalty function approaches to solve the problem. We prove that SNM-QC has the desirable global convergence guarantee, i.e., the algorithm is guaranteed to converge to the true optima with probability one. One advantage of SNM-QC is that it is a direct search method that determines the moving direction simply by comparing a set of solutions rather than estimating gradient, thus it can handle many practical problems where gradient does not exist or is difficult to estimate. An extensive numerical study shows that the performance of SNM-QC is promising compared to the existing heuristics. Two illustrative applications are provided in the end to demonstrate the viability of SNM-QC in practical settings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The design of an electromagnetic machine is a nonlinear, multivariable, and multimodal optimization problem that incurs a great deal of computation time when calculating electromagnetic fields. To overcome these problems effectively, this paper proposes a new evolutionary multimodal optimization algorithm based on the Big Bang–Big Crunch method and aided by a surrogate model using the theory of compressed sensing. Its efficiency is demonstrated by assessing the optimization results for test functions. Moreover, to evaluate the feasibility of its application to an electromagnetic problem, an interior permanent magnet motor is designed using the proposed algorithm. The obtained results confirm that the proposed method has the ability to search for multiple optimal solutions with a good computational efficiency by reducing the number of fitness function evaluations during the optimization process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The energy detection technology is recommended in the licensed assisted access (LAA) scheme by 3GPP because of its simplicity and low cost. However, due to its inherent limitation, there may exist imperfect channel detection, which can lead to the decrease of the channel utilization efficiency and the deterioration of fairness. The imperfect detection can generally be represented by the detection probability and false alarm probability, which depend on detection time, signal to noise ration (SNR), sampling rate and energy threshold. However, among the parameters, only the energy threshold can be dominated by LAA small base stations (SBSs) in the LAA scheme. Therefore, the energy threshold should be dynamically adjusted in the changeable channel environment such that the detection accuracy can improved as high as possible. Consider the fact that the optimization theory cannot be used to optimize the energy threshold since the expressions of performance indexes about the energy threshold are extremely complex, a Q-learning based energy threshold optimization algorithm (QLET) is thus proposed in the paper, where LAA SBSs act as the agent, the energy threshold is defined as the agent action, the different combinations of fairness and throughput are defined as the agent states, and the fairness and the reward function are also redefined. In order to ensure the smooth implementation of the proposed QLET algorithm, the information exchange mechanism, where the sending-confirmation mechanism and 1- persistent CSMA are used, is also proposed. Based on the proposed QL framework, the agent can learn the optimal energy threshold by repeatedly interacting with the environment, which enables the coexistence system to obtain the best coexistence performance. A large number of simulation results show that the proposed QLET is superior to the traditional fixed energy threshold scheme (FET) in terms of the fairness, WiFi collision probability and transmission delay, and that QLET is almost the same as FET in term of throughput. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes a new formulation for the corrective security-constrained optimal power flow (SCOPF) problem with DC power flow constraints. The goal is to produce a generation schedule which has a minimal number of post-contingency corrections as well as a minimal amount of total MW rescheduled. In other words, the new SCOPF model effectively clears contingencies with corrective actions that have a minimal impact on system operations. The proposed SCOPF model utilizes sparse optimization techniques to achieve computational tractability for large-scale power systems. We also propose two efficient decomposition algorithms. Extensive computational experiments show the advantage of the proposed model and algorithms on several standard IEEE test systems and large-scale real-world power systems. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The paper proposes a scalable and tractable algorithm for dynamic topology optimization of power systems involving changes in branch on/off status, while respecting small-signal stability (SSS) constraints. A procedure for fast updates of the system matrices (in descriptor form) and without additional full matrix inversions is proposed. To additionally reduce the computation time, only critical eigenvalues (right-most or those in a specified damping ratio and frequency range) are calculated. A quadratic optimization approach is proposed for optimized generation re-dispatch to satisfy SSS constraints. The approach is applied to two (medium- and large-scale) real-world test power systems. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

To address the problem of segmenting an image into sizeable homogeneous regions, this paper proposes an efficient agglomerative algorithm on the basis of modularity optimization. Given an oversegmented image that consists of many small regions, our algorithm automatically merges those neighboring regions that produce the largest increase in modularity index. When the modularity of the segmented image is maximized, the algorithm stops merging and produces the final segmented image. To preserve the repetitive patterns in a homogeneous region, we propose a feature on the basis of the histogram of states of image gradients and use it together with the color feature to characterize the similarity of two regions. By constructing the similarity matrix in an adaptive manner, the oversegmentation problem can be effectively avoided. Our algorithm is tested on the publicly available Berkeley Segmentation Data Set as well as the semantic segmentation data set and compared with other popular algorithms. Experimental results have demonstrated that our algorithm produces sizable segmentation, preserves repetitive patterns with appealing time complexity, and achieves object-level segmentation to some extent. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we tackle the problem of multi-cell resource scheduling, where the objective is to maximize the weighted sum-rate through inter-cell interference coordination (ICIC). The blanking method is used to mitigate the inter-cell interference, where a resource is either used with a predetermined transmit power or not used at all, i.e., blanked. This problem is known to be strongly NP-hard, which means that it is not only hard to solve in polynomial time, but it is also hard to find an approximation algorithm with guaranteed optimality gap. In this work, we identify special scenarios where a polynomial-time algorithm can be constructed to solve this problem with theoretical guarantees. In particular, we define a dominant interference environment, in which for each user the received power from each interferer is significantly greater than the aggregate received power from all other weaker interferers. We show that the originally strongly NP-hard problem can be tightly relaxed to a linear programming problem in a dominant interference environment. Consequently, we propose a polynomial time distributed algorithm that is not only guaranteed to be tight in a dominant interference environment, but which also computes an upper bound on the optimality gap without additional computational complexity. The proposed scheme is based on the primal-decomposition method, where the problem is divided into a master-problem and multiple subproblems. We solve the master-problem iteratively using the projected-subgradient method. We also show that each subproblem has a special network flow structure. By exploiting this network structure, each subproblem is solved using the network-based optimization methods, which significantly reduces the complexity in comparison to the general-purpose convex or linear optimization methods. In comparison with baseline schemes, simulation results of the International Mobile Telecommunications-Advanced (IMT-Advanced) scenarios show that the proposed scheme achieves higher gains in aggregate throughput, cell-edge throughput, and outage probability. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper addresses the problem of finding sparse solutions to linear systems. Although this problem involves two competing cost function terms (measurement error and a sparsity-inducing term), previous approaches combine these into a single cost term and solve the problem using conventional numerical optimization methods. In contrast, the main contribution of this paper is to use a multiobjective approach. The paper begins by investigating the sparse reconstruction problem, and presents data to show that knee regions do exist on the Pareto front (PF) for this problem and that optimal solutions can be found in these knee regions. Another contribution of the paper, a new soft-thresholding evolutionary multiobjective algorithm (StEMO), is then presented, which uses a soft-thresholding technique to incorporate two additional heuristics: one with greater chance to increase speed of convergence toward the PF, and another with higher probability to improve the spread of solutions along the PF, enabling an optimal solution to be found in the knee region. Experiments are presented, which show that StEMO significantly outperforms five other well known techniques that are commonly used for sparse reconstruction. Practical applications are also demonstrated to fundamental problems of recovering signals and images from noisy data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, regarding the observer form of the well-known Youla parameterization, the controller design and optimization are exhibited with an integrated residual access. To better reveal this philosophy, the feedback control loop is interpreted on the basis of the observer-based residual generator. The next main attention is drawn to the generation of residuals, the design of a deadbeat controller for system stabilization both in the data-driven environment, and later the optimal adaptive realization of a dynamic system that translates residuals into compensatory control inputs to meet certain performance specifications. Towards these goals, numerical algorithms are summarized, and for the issues of controller optimization, the reinforcement learning algorithm is introduced using only measured input-output and residual signals. In addition, the effectiveness of developed schemes for industrial applications is also illustrated by experimental studies on a laboratory continuous stirred tank heater (CSTH) process. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Random projection has been widely used in data classification. It maps high-dimensional data into a low-dimensional subspace in order to reduce the computational cost in solving the related optimization problem. While previous studies are focused on analyzing the classification performance in the low-dimensional space, in this paper, we consider the recovery problem, i.e., how to accurately recover the optimal solution to the original high-dimensional optimization problem based on the solution learned after random projection. We present a simple algorithm, termed dual random projection, which uses the dual solution of the low-dimensional optimization problem to recover the optimal solution to the original problem. Our theoretical analysis shows that with a high probability, the proposed algorithm is able to accurately recover the optimal solution to the original problem, provided that the data matrix is (approximately) low-rank and/or optimal solution is (approximately) sparse. We further show that the proposed algorithm can be applied iteratively to reducing the recovery error exponentially. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The purpose of this tutorial paper is to make general type-2 fuzzy logic systems (GT2 FLSs) more accessible to fuzzy logic researchers and practitioners, and to expedite their research, designs, and use. To accomplish this, the paper 1) explains four different mathematical representations for general type-2 fuzzy sets (GT2 FSs); 2) demonstrates that for the optimal design of a GT2 FLS, one should use the vertical-slice representation of its GT2 FSs because it is the only one of the four mathematical representations that is parsimonious; 3) shows how to obtain set theoretic and other operations for GT2 FSs using type-1 (T1) FS mathematics (\alpha - cuts play a central role); 4) reviews Mamdani and TSK interval type-2 (IT2) FLSs so that their mathematical operations can be easily used in a GT2 FLS; 5) provides all of the formulas that describe both Mamdani and TSK GT2 FLSs; 6) explains why center-of sets type-reduction should be favored for a GT2 FLS over centroid type-reduction; 7) provides three simplified GT2 FLSs (two are for Mamdani GT2 FLSs and one is for a TSK GT2 FLS), all of which bypass type reduction and are generalizations from their IT2 FLS counterparts to GT2 FLSs; 8) explains why gradient-based optimization should not be used to optimally design a GT2 FLS; 9) explains how derivative-free optimization algorithms can be used to optimally design a GT2 FLS; and 10) provides a three-step approach for optimally designing FLSs in a progressive manner, from T1 to IT2 to GT2, each of which uses a quantum particle swarm optimization algorithm, by virtue of which the performance for the IT2 FLS cannot be worse than that of the T1 FLS, and the performance for the GT2 FLS cannot be worse than that of the IT2 FLS. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents an on-line energy management strategy (EMS) based on trip condition prediction for commuter plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (P-HEVs). The purpose is to provide an on-line predictive control approach to minimize fuel consumption. Two pivotal contributions are provided to realize the purpose. First of all, we establish the trip condition prediction model by using back propagation neural network, to obtain the real-time vehicle-speed trajectory on-line. Particularly, both the genetic algorithm and particle swarm optimization algorithm are applied to improve the prediction accuracy of the trip condition prediction model. Next, to obtain an applicable EMS in real time, we propose a dynamic programming-based predictive control strategy. Finally, a simulation study is conducted for applying the proposed strategy to a practical trip path in the Beijing road network. The results show that the designed trip condition prediction model can effectively realize the on-line vehicle-speed prediction, and the prediction accuracy is more than 93%. In addition, compared to the offline global optimization EMS, although the proposed strategy makes the fuel consumption grow less than 5.2%, it can be implemented in real time. Moreover, compared with the existing real-time EMSs, it can further reduce the fuel consumption and emissions. It shows that the proposed EMS can provide an effective solution for commuter P-HEVs applying it on-line. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The race to increase the efficiency and reduce the power losses in transmission systems has resulted in the substantial growth of high-voltage direct current (HVDC) transmission systems. Moreover, the interconnection of these transmission systems significantly increases their reliability. However, the control of these meshed grids is a key problem that usually is managed through the control of the VSCs in those grids, but the control of the VSC can be complemented with a reconfiguration algorithm. This paper proposes the use of the particle swarm optimization algorithm, in order to reconfigure meshed HVDC transmission systems and reduce losses. The proposed algorithm has been tested in the CIGRE benchmark grid, which comprises of several offshore wind farms that generate energy sent to the grid through several HVDC transmission lines. The results show that as the energy generation changes due to wind changes, the grid topology must be reconfigured in order to achieve the maximum efficiency. Doing this reconfiguration, power savings around 18–19% could be achieved. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Visualizing spatial data on small-screen devices such as smartphones and smartwatches poses new challenges in computational cartography. The current interfaces for map exploration require their users to zoom in and out frequently. Indeed, zooming and panning are tools suitable for choosing the map extent corresponding to an area of interest. They are not as suitable, however, for resolving the graphical clutter caused by a high feature density since zooming in to a large map scale leads to a loss of context. Therefore, in this paper, we present new external labeling methods that allow a user to navigate through dense sets of points of interest while keeping the current map extent fixed. We provide a unified model, in which labels are placed at the boundary of the map and visually associated with the corresponding features via connecting lines, which are called leaders. Since the screen space is limited, labeling all features at the same time is impractical. Therefore, at any time, we label a subset of the features. We offer interaction techniques to change the current selection of features systematically and, thus, give the user access to all features. We distinguish three methods, which allow the user either to slide the labels along the bottom side of the map or to browse the labels based on pages or stacks. We present a generic algorithmic framework that provides us with the possibility of expressing the different variants of interaction techniques as optimization problems in a unified way. We propose both exact algorithms and fast and simple heuristics that solve the optimization problems taking into account different criteria such as the ranking of the labels, the total leader length as well as the distance between leaders. In experiments on real-world data we evaluate these algorithms and discuss the three variants with respect to their strengths and weaknesses proving the flexibility of the presented algorithmic framework. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Identification of variable interaction is essential for an efficient implementation of a divide-and-conquer algorithm for large-scale black-box optimization. In this paper, we propose an improved variant of the differential grouping (DG) algorithm, which has a better efficiency and grouping accuracy. The proposed algorithm, DG2, finds a reliable threshold value by estimating the magnitude of roundoff errors. With respect to efficiency, DG2 reuses the sample points that are generated for detecting interactions and saves up to half of the computational resources on fully separable functions. We mathematically show that the new sampling technique achieves the lower bound with respect to the number of function evaluations. Unlike its predecessor, DG2 checks all possible pairs of variables for interactions and has the capacity to identify overlapping components of an objective function. On the accuracy aspect, DG2 outperforms the state-of-the-art decomposition methods on the latest large-scale continuous optimization benchmark suites. DG2 also performs reliably in the presence of imbalance among contribution of components in an objective function. Another major advantage of DG2 is the automatic calculation of its threshold parameter ( $\epsilon $ ), which makes it parameter-free. Finally, the experimental results show that when DG2 is used within a cooperative co-evolutionary framework, it can generate competitive results as compared to several state-of-the-art algorithms. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]