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The use of estimation techniques on stochastic models to solve control problems is an emerging paradigm that falls under the rubric of Active Inference (AI) and Control as Inference (CAI). In this work, we use probability propagation on factor graphs to show that various algorithms proposed in the literature can be seen as specific composition rules in a factor graph. We show how this unified approach, presented both in probability space and in log of the probability space, provides a very general framework that includes the Sum-product, the Max-product, Dynamic programming and mixed Reward/Entropy criteria-based algorithms. The framework also expands algorithmic design options that lead to new smoother or sharper policy distributions. We propose original recursions such as: a generalized Sum/Max-product algorithm, a Smooth Dynamic programming algorithm and a modified versions of the Reward/Entropy algorithm. The discussion is carried over with reference to a path planning problem where the recursions that arise from various cost functions, although they may appear similar in scope, bear noticeable differences. We provide a comprehensive table of composition rules and a comparison through simulations, first on a synthetic small grid with a single goal with obstacles, and then on a grid extrapolated from a real-world scene with multiple goals and a semantic map.

This paper addresses the problem of multitarget tracking using a network of sensing agents with unknown positions. Agents have to both localize themselves in the sensor network and, at the same time, perform multitarget tracking in the presence of clutter and miss detection. These two problems are jointly resolved using a holistic and centralized approach where graph theory is used to describe the statistical relationships among agent states, target states, and observations. A scalable message passing scheme, based on the sum-product algorithm, enables to efficiently approximate the marginal posterior distributions of both agent and target states. The proposed method is general enough to accommodate a full multistatic network configuration, with multiple transmitters and receivers. Numerical simulations show superior performance of the proposed joint approach with respect to the case in which cooperative self-localization and multitarget tracking are performed separately, as the former manages to extract valuable information from targets. Lastly, data acquired in 2018 by the NATO Science and Technology Organization (STO) Centre for Maritime Research and Experimentation (CMRE) through a network of autonomous underwater vehicles demonstrates the effectiveness of the approach in a practical application.

In this paper, an empirical study shows that positive tests containing multiple defectives are unlikely to provide effective messages in belief propagation (BP) for non-adaptive group testing. Thus, an objective function is proposed to measure the effectiveness of messages over edges, especially in the low-noise region. The maximization of the objective function allows us to optimize the pool size for BP. Simulation results show that the error performance of BP in the low-noise region is significantly improved by our pool size optimization.

The previous multi-frame version of the generalized labeled multi-Bernoulli model (MF-GLMB) only accounts for standard measurement models. It is not suitable for application in the detection and tracking of multiple weak targets (low signal-to-noise ratio) due to the measurement information loss. In this paper, we introduce a MF-GLMB model that formally incorporates a track-before-detect scheme for point targets using an image sensor model. Furthermore, a belief propagation algorithm is adopted to approximately calculate the marginal association probabilities of the multi-target posterior density. In this formulation, an MF-GLMB model based on the track-before-detect measurement model (MF-GLMB-TBD smoothing) enables multi-target posterior recursion for multi-target state estimation. By taking the entire history of the state estimation into account, MF-GLMB-TBD smoothing achieves superior performance in estimation precision compared with the corresponding GLMB-TBD filter. The simulation results demonstrate that the performance of the proposed algorithm is comparable to or better than that of the Gibbs sampler-based version. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The growing number of Internet of Thing (IoT) and Ultra-Reliable Low Latency Communications (URLCC) use cases in next generation communication networks calls for the development of efficient Forward Error Correction (FEC) mechanisms. These use cases usually imply using short to mid-sized information blocks and requires low-complexity and/or fast decoding procedures. This paper investigates the joint learning of short to mid block-length coding schemes and associated Belief-Propagation (BP) like decoders using Machine Learning (ML) techniques. An interpretable auto-encoder (AE) architecture is proposed, ensuring scalability to block sizes currently challenging for ML-based linear block code design approaches. By optimizing a coding scheme w.r.t. the targeted decoder, the proposed system offers a good complexity/performance trade-off compared to various codes from literature with length up to 128 bits. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article introduces a novel communication paradigm for the unsourced, uncoordinated Gaussian multiple access problem. The major components of the envisioned framework are as follows. The encoded bits of every message are partitioned into two groups. The first portion is transmitted using a compressive sensing scheme, whereas the second set of bits is conveyed using a multi-user coding scheme. The compressive sensing portion is key in sidestepping some of the challenges posed by the unsourced aspect of the problem. The information afforded by the compressive sensing is employed to create a sparse random multi-access graph conducive to joint decoding. This construction leverages the lessons learned from traditional IDMA into creating low-complexity schemes for the unsourced setting, while also accounting for inherent randomness. Under joint message-passing decoding, the proposed scheme offers good performance at a low computational complexity. Findings are supported by numerical simulations, and results are compared to existing alternatives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes a belief propagation (BP)-based algorithm for sequential detection and estimation of multipath component (MPC) parameters based on radio signals. Under dynamic channel conditions with moving transmitter/receiver, the number of MPCs, the MPC dispersion parameters, and the number of false alarm contributions are unknown and time-varying. We develop a Bayesian model for sequential detection and estimation of MPC dispersion parameters, and represent it by a factor graph enabling the use of BP for efficient computation of the marginal posterior distributions. At each time step, a snapshot-based parametric channel estimator provides parameter estimates of a set of MPCs which are used as noisy measurements by the proposed BP-based algorithm. It performs joint probabilistic data association, and estimation of the time-varying MPC parameters and the mean number of false alarm measurements, by means of the sum-product algorithm rules. The algorithm also exploits amplitude information enabling the reliable detection of “weak” MPCs with very low component signal-to-noise ratios (SNRs). The performance of the proposed algorithm compares well to state-of-the-art algorithms for high SNR MPCs, but it significantly outperforms them for medium or low SNR MPCs. Results using real radio measurements demonstrate the excellent performance of the proposed algorithm in realistic and challenging scenarios. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Achieving reliable communications with low complexity is challenging for underwater acoustic communications with moving transceivers, where the time-varying channels need to be estimated and tracked accurately and data detection needs to be performed with low complexity. In this article, with the use of a superimposed training (ST) scheme, we address this challenge by developing a low-complexity channel estimation and tracking algorithm, which is then integrated with low-complexity data detection in the frequency domain. ST is used to acquire improved channel-tracking capability. Based on belief propagation, we design a message-passing-based low-complexity bidirectional channel estimation (LCE-MP) algorithm, where all computational intensive parts are handled by the fast Fourier transform (FFT) algorithm, thereby achieving very efficient implementation with logarithmic complexity. Specifically, a message-passing-based fast information collection algorithm is presented to acquire “local” channel estimates, followed by the fusion of local channel estimates to achieve a “global” estimate of the channel. It is shown that the computational complexity per channel tap is only in a logarithmic level for the channel estimation and tracking. Moreover, the ST-scheme-based LCE-MP algorithm is combined with FFT-based data detection and decoding, which are performed in an iterative manner. The overall complexity of channel estimation and data detection is in a logarithmic level, and the system delivers excellent performance thanks to the joint processing. Field experiments were carried out in Jiaozhou Bay in 2019, and the experimental results verify the effectiveness of the proposed technique. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract Image interpolation has a wide range of applications such as frame rate-up conversion and free viewpoint TV. Despite significant progresses, it remains an open challenge especially for image pairs with large displacements. In this paper, we first propose a novel optimization algorithm for motion estimation, which combines the advantages of both global optimization and a local parametric transformation model. We perform optimization over dynamic label sets, which are modified after each iteration using the prior of piecewise consistency to avoid local minima. Then we apply it to an image interpolation framework including occlusion handling and intermediate image interpolation. We validate the performance of our algorithm experimentally, and show that our approach achieves state-of-the-art performance.

Channel coding technique is a fundamental building block in any modern communication system to realize reliable, fast, and secure data transmission. At the same time, it is a challenging and crucial task, as the data transmission happens in a channel where noise, fading, and other impairments are present. The Low-Density Parity-Check (LDPC) codes give substantial results close to the Shannon limit when the complexity and processing delay time are unlimited. In this paper, the performance of the LDPC decoding with four algorithms was investigated. The investigated four algorithms were Belief Propagation (BP), Layered Belief Propagation (LBP), Normalized min-sum (NMS), and Offset min-sum (OMS). These algorithms were examined for code rates ranging from 1/3 to 9/10 and message block lengths (64, 512, 1024, and 5120) bits. The simulation results revealed the flexibility of these decoders in supporting these code rates and block lengths, which enables their usage in a wide range of applications and scenarios for fifth-generation (5G) wireless communication. In addition, the effect of the maximum number of decoding iterations on the error correction performance was investigated, and a gain of 5.6 dB can be obtained by using 32 decoding iterations at BER=2*10-3 instead of one decoding iteration. The results showed that the decoders performed better for longer message blocks than for short message blocks, and less power was required for transmitting longer messages. Finally, the comparison results of their performance in terms of bit error rate (BER) under the same conditions showed a gain of 0.8 dB using LBP at BER= 10-5 compared with the NMS decoding algorithm.

The Number Theoretic Transform (NTT) is a major building block in recently introduced lattice based post-quantum (PQ) cryptography. The NTT was target of a number of recently proposed Belief Propagation (BP)-based Side Channel Attacks (SCAs). Ravi et al. have recently proposed a number of countermeasures mitigating these attacks. In 2021, Hamburg et al. presented a chosen-ciphertext enabled SCA improving noise-resistance, which we use as a starting point to state our findings. We introduce a pre-processing step as well as a new factor node which we call shuffle node. Shuffle nodes allow for a modified version of BP when included into a factor graph. The node iteratively learns the shuffling permutation of fine shuffling within a BP run. We further expand our attacker model and describe several matching algorithms to find inter-layer connections based on shuffled measurements. Our matching algorithm allows for either mixing prior distributions according to a doubly stochastic mix matrix or to extract permutations and perform an exact un-matching of layers. We additionally discuss the usage of sub-graph inference to reduce uncertainty and improve un-shuffling of butterflies. Based on our results, we conclude that the proposed countermeasures of Ravi et al. are powerful and counter Hamburg et al., yet could lead to a false security perception – a powerful adversary could still launch successful attacks. We discuss on the capabilities needed to defeat shuffling in the setting of Hamburg et al. using our expanded attacker model. Our methods are not limited to the presented case but provide a toolkit to analyze and evaluate shuffling countermeasures in BP-based attack scenarios.

Knapsack problem (KP) is a representative combinatorial optimization problem that aims to maximize the total profit by selecting a subset of items under given constraints on the total weights. In this study, we analyze a generalized version of KP, which is termed the generalized multidimensional knapsack problem (GMDKP). As opposed to the basic KP, GMDKP allows multiple choices per item type under multiple weight constraints. Although several efficient algorithms are known and the properties of their solutions have been examined to a significant extent for basic KPs, there is a paucity of known algorithms and studies on the solution properties of GMDKP. To gain insight into the problem, we assess the typical achievable limit of the total profit for a random ensemble of GMDKP using the replica method. Our findings are summarized as follows: (1) when the profits of item types are normally distributed, the total profit grows in the leading order with respect to the number of item types as the maximum number of choices per item type x max increases while it depends on x max only in a sub-leading order if the profits are constant among the item types. (2) A greedy-type heuristic can find a nearly optimal solution whose total profit is lower than the optimal value only by a sub-leading order with a low computational cost. (3) The sub-leading difference from the optimal total profit can be improved by a heuristic algorithm based on the cavity method. Extensive numerical experiments support these findings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The striking growth of powerful computing resources allows time-efficient solution of computationally demanding problems. In particular, advances in high-performance computing have made stochastic approaches to real-world applications more practical. The belief propagation (BP) algorithm is a probabilistic method typically used in information theory and artificial intelligence. This article exploits the probabilistic message passing attribute of BP for solving stochastic linear systems that naturally arise from finite element formulation of stochastic partial differential equations (PDEs), establishing an explicit connection between the two fields for the first time. The accuracy of the algorithm is validated by comparison to the well-known Monte Carlo method. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A system is considered in which agents (UAVs) must cooperatively discover interest-points (i.e., burning trees, geographical features) evolving over a grid. The objective is to locate as many interest-points as possible in the shortest possible time frame. There are two main problems: a control problem, where agents must collectively determine the optimal action, and a communication problem, where agents must share their local states and infer a common global state. Both problems become intractable when the number of agents is large. This survey/concept paper curates a broad selection of work in the literature pointing to a possible solution; a unified control/communication architecture within the framework of reinforcement learning. Two components of this architecture are locally interactive structure in the state-space, and hierarchical multi-level clustering for system-wide communication. The former mitigates the complexity of the control problem and the latter adapts to fundamental throughput constraints in wireless networks. The challenges of applying reinforcement learning to multi-agent systems are discussed. The role of clustering is explored in multi-agent communication. Research directions are suggested to unify these components. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Belief Propagation (BP) algorithm has the advantages of high-speed decoding and low latency. To improve the block error rate (BLER) performance of the BP-based algorithm, the BP flipping algorithm was proposed. However, the BP flipping algorithm attempts numerous useless flippings for improving the BLER performance. To reduce the number of decoding attempts needed without any loss of BLER performance, in this paper a metric is presented to evaluate the likelihood that the bits would correct the BP flipping decoding. Based on this, a BP-Step-Flipping (BPSF) algorithm is proposed which only traces the unreliable bits in the flip set (FS) to flip and skips over the reliable ones. In addition, a threshold β is applied when the magnitude of the log–likelihood ratio (LLR) is small, and an enhanced BPSF (EBPSF) algorithm is presented to lower the BLER. With the same FS, the proposed algorithm can reduce the average number of iterations efficiently. Numerical results show the average number of iterations for EBPSF-1 decreases by 77.5% when N = 256, compared with the BP bit-flip-1 (BPF-1) algorithm at E b / N 0 = 1.5 dB. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article investigates the performance of intelligent reflective surfaces (IRS)-aided physical layer network coding (PNC) in two-way relaying channels (TWRC). Specifically, IRS is used to eliminate carrier phase offset (CPO) at the relay node. To this end, the IRS reflectors’ phase shifts are optimized to align the received signals from two source nodes at the relay. This facilitates using a simple mapping function at the relay to map the superimposed signal to a network-coded signal. Two scenarios are considered, the first of which assumes that each source node is served by a separate IRS panel, while the second scenario considers the more challenging case where only one IRS panel is available for the two source nodes. In the latter case, the IRS panel is seen by both source nodes and its phase shifts are optimized to mitigate the CPO problem while maximizing the received signal amplitude at the relay. This optimization problem is formulated and solved over the complex circle manifold. Finally, we extend the IRS-assisted PNC system to include channel coding and higher modulation orders, for which a repeat accumulate (RA) channel-coded IRS-aided PNC scheme is proposed for general quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM) signals. A belief propagation (BP) based algorithm is designed to decode the network-coded sequences over a q-Ring using modular arithmetic. Our simulation results validate the theoretical error expressions derived for the two-IRS scenario as well as the efficacy of the proposed manifold optimization approach for the one-IRS scenario. The results also confirm the efficacy of the designed channel-coded IRS-aided PNC using high QAM modulation orders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The probabilistic forecasting method described in this study is devised to leverage spatial and temporal dependency of urban traffic networks, in order to provide predictions accurate at short term and meaningful for a horizon of up to several hours. By design, it can deal with missing data, both for training and running the model. It is able to forecast the state of the entire network in one pass, with an execution time that scales linearly with the size of the network. The method consists in learning a sparse Gaussian copula of traffic variables, compatible with the Gaussian belief propagation algorithm. The model is trained automatically from an historical dataset through an iterative proportional scaling procedure, that is well suited to compatibility constraints induced by Gaussian belief propagation. Results of tests performed on two urban datasets show a very good ability to predict flow variables and reasonably good performances on speed variables. Some understanding of the observed performances is given by a careful analysis of the model, making it to some degree possible to disentangle modeling bias from the intrinsic noise of the traffic phenomena and its measurement process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Message propagation algorithms from statistical physics are widely used in various fields of artificial intelligence, especially in solving combinatorial optimization problems. According to the related literatures of message propagation algorithm, this paper summarized the history of message propagation algorithm and its related application. According to the development of message propagation algorithm, it introduced the concepts of information propagation algorithm for solving the satisfiability problem, which mainly involved the warning propagation algorithm, the belief propagation algorithm and the survey propagation algorithm. This paper described the convergence and effectiveness research of the three kind of algorithms, summarized the application of each algorithm in related fields, and summarized the research path and application direction of message propagation algorithm. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Belief propagation (BP) is widely used to solve the cooperative localization problem due to its excellent performance and natural distributed structure of implementation. For a mobile agent network, its factor graph inevitably encounters loops. In this case, the BP algorithm becomes iterative and can only provide an approximate marginal probability density function of the estimate with finite iterations. We propose an augmented-state BP algorithm for mobile agent networks to alleviate the effect of loops. By performing state augmentation, the messages in the factor graph will actually be allowed to be backward propagated, which reduces the number of loops in the factor graph, increases the available information of agents, and thus, benefits the localization. Experimental results demonstrate the better performance of the proposed algorithm over the original BP method. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This letter incorporates the adaptive kernel Kalman filter (AKKF) into the belief propagation (BP) algorithm for Multi-target tracking (MTT) in single-sensor systems. The algorithm is capable of tracking an unknown and time-varying number of targets, in the presence of false alarms, clutter and measurement-to-target association uncertainty. Experiment results reveal that the proposed method has a favourable tracking performance using the generalized optimal sub-patten assignment (GOSAP) metrics at substantially less computation cost than the particle filter (PF) based Multi-target tracking (MTT) BP algorithm. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract Clock synchronization has always been a major challenge when designing wireless networks. This work focuses on tackling the time synchronization problem in 5G networks by adopting a hybrid Bayesian approach for clock offset and skew estimation. Furthermore, we provide an in-depth analysis of the impact of the proposed approach on a synchronization-sensitive service, i.e., localization. Specifically, we expose the substantial benefit of belief propagation (BP) running on factor graphs (FGs) in achieving precise network-wide synchronization. Moreover, we take advantage of Bayesian recursive filtering (BRF) to mitigate the time-stamping error in pairwise synchronization. Finally, we reveal the merit of hybrid synchronization by dividing a large-scale network into local synchronization domains and applying the most suitable synchronization algorithm (BP- or BRF-based) on each domain. The performance of the hybrid approach is then evaluated in terms of the root mean square errors (RMSEs) of the clock offset, clock skew, and the position estimation. According to the simulations, in spite of the simplifications in the hybrid approach, RMSEs of clock offset, clock skew, and position estimation remain below 10 ns, 1 ppm, and 1.5 m, respectively.

Distinguishing obstacles from ground is an essential step for common perception tasks such as object detection-and-tracking or occupancy grid maps. Typical approaches rely on plane fitting or local geometric features, but their performance is reduced in situations with sloped terrain or sparse data. Some works address these issues using Markov Random Fields and Belief Propagation, but these rely on local geometric features uniquely. This article presents a strategy for ground segmentation in LiDAR point clouds composed by two main steps: (i) First, an initial classification is performed dividing the points in small groups and analyzing geometric features between them. (ii) Then, this initial classification is used to model the surrounding ground height as a Markov Random Field, which is solved using the Loopy Belief Propagation algorithm. Points are finally classified comparing their height with the estimated ground height map. On one hand, using an initial estimation to model the Markov Random Field provides a better description of the scene than local geometric features commonly used alone. On the other hand, using a graph-based approach with message passing achieves better results than simpler filtering or enhancement techniques, since data propagation compensates sparse distributions of LiDAR point clouds. Experiments are conducted with two different sources of information: nuScenes’s public dataset and an autonomous vehicle prototype. The estimation results are analyzed with respect to other methods, showing a good performance in a variety of situations.

As industrial plants increase the number of wirelessly connected sensors for fault detection, a key problem is to identify and obtain data from the sensors. Due to the large number of sensors, random access protocols exploiting non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) are a natural approach. In this paper, we develop new algorithms based on approximate message passing for sensor identification and channel estimation accounting for correlation in the activity probability of each sensor and observations of physical variables (e.g., temperature) by the access point. These algorithms form the basis for data decoding, while also identifying faulty machines and estimating local values of the temperature, which can lead to a reduction in the amount of data required to be transmitted. Numerical results show that for an expected activity probability of 0.35, our algorithms improve the normalized mean-square error of the channel estimate by up to 5dB and reduce the rate of sensor identification errors by a factor of four.

An efficient channel assignment plays an important role in mitigating co-channel interference in ultra-dense wireless networks. A simple solution is to separate interfering network nodes into orthogonal channels to reduce the interference among them. However, determining the optimal channel assignment is considered to be a non-linear problem, which may also be associated with practical implementation issues such as high computational complexity and control signaling issues. In an effort to cope with these challenging issues, we propose a distributed channel assignment algorithm that efficiently finds the optimal channel configuration by utilizing the concept of belief propagation. Based on a message-passing framework, the proposed distributed channel assignment algorithm maximizes the overall sum rate of the ultra-dense network with a low computational load for each network node. In addition, we design a network protocol and frame format to implement the proposed message-passing framework to real-world wireless networks. The main advantage of the proposed approach is that network nodes autonomously determine the optimal channel assignment and rapidly adapt to dynamic changes of the network. Simulation results confirm that the proposed distributed channel assignment algorithm outperforms conventional algorithms in terms of various network performance aspects, such as the sum rate, scalability, latency, and user mobility.

Reasonable resource management scheme is the premise to ensure system reliability and practicability of vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) communications network. In this paper, spectrum resource allocation and power control scheme is studied. Firstly, the problem of resource block (RB) sharing is considered. Assuming that each V2V link occupies at most one resource block while multiple links can share the same RB. In this work, a factor graph model is proposed corresponding to the RB allocation problem through function mapping. Therefore, the RB allocation problem is equivalent to studying the message update and belief inference problem on the factor graph model. We propose a Belief Propagation based on Real-time Update of Messages (BPRUM) algorithm, in which the message of each node is calculated based on the new messages of other nodes rather than the messages calculated in the last iteration. Secondly, after the RB allocation is completed, a power control scheme under the maximum power limit is proposed by utilizing the Lagrange dual decomposition. And the total throughput of the system is maximized by using the proposed power control scheme. Simulation results show that the resource allocation and power control scheme can achieve a significant increment in spectrum utilization and throughput of the V2V communications network.

Probabilistic graphical models (PGMs) are powerful tools for solving systems of complex relationships over a variety of probability distributions. However, while tree-structured PGMs always result in efficient and exact solutions, inference on graph (or loopy) structured PGMs is not guaranteed to discover the optimal solutions. It is in principle possible to convert loopy PGMs to an equivalent tree structure, but this is usually impractical for interesting problems due to exponential blow-up. To address this, we developed the “purge-and-merge” algorithm. This algorithm iteratively nudges a malleable graph structure towards a tree structure by selectively merging factors. The merging process is designed to avoid exponential blow-up by way of sparse structures from which redundancy is purged as the algorithm progresses. We set up tasks to test the algorithm on constraint-satisfaction puzzles such as Sudoku, Fill-a-pix, and Kakuro, and it outperformed other PGM-based approaches reported in the literature. While the tasks we set focussed on the binary logic of CSP, we believe the purge-and-merge algorithm could be extended to general PGM inference.

As an algorithmic framework, message passing is extremely powerful and has wide applications in the context of different disciplines including communications, coding theory, statistics, signal processing, artificial intelligence and combinatorial optimization. In this paper, we investigate the performance of a message-passing algorithm called min-sum belief propagation (BP) for the vertex-disjoint shortest $k$ -path problem ($k$ -VDSP) on weighted directed graphs, and derive the iterative message-passing update rules. As the main result of this paper, we prove that for a weighted directed graph $G$ of order $n$ , BP algorithm converges to the unique optimal solution of $k$ -VDSP on $G$ within $O(n^{2}w_{max})$ iterations, provided that the weight $w_{e}$ is nonnegative integral for each arc $e\in E(G)$ , where $w_{max}=\max \{w_{e}: e\in E(G)\}$. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first instance where BP algorithm is proved correct for NP-hard problems. Additionally, we establish the extensions of $k$ -VDSP to the case of multiple sources or sinks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we consider the problem of learning a tree graph structure that represents the statistical data dependency among nodes for a set of data samples generated by nodes, which provides the basic structure to perform a probabilistic inference task. Inference in the data graph includes marginal inference and maximum a posteriori (MAP) estimation, and belief propagation (BP) is a commonly used algorithm to compute the marginal distribution of nodes via message-passing, incurring non-negligible amount of communication cost. We inevitably have the trade-off between the inference accuracy and the message-passing cost because the learned structure of data dependency and physical connectivity graph are often highly different. In this paper, we formalize this trade-off in an optimization problem which outputs the data dependency graph that jointly considers learning accuracy and message-passing costs. We focus on two popular implementations of BP, ASYNC-BP and SYNC-BP, which have different message-passing mechanisms and cost structures. In ASYNC-BP, we propose a polynomial-time learning algorithm that is optimal, motivated by finding a maximum weight spanning tree of a complete graph. In SYNC-BP, we prove the NP-hardness of the problem and propose a greedy heuristic. For both BP implementations, we quantify how the error probability that the learned cost-efficient data graph differs from the ideal one decays as the number of data samples grows, using the large deviation principle, which provides a guideline on how many samples are necessary to obtain a certain trade-off. We validate our theoretical findings through extensive simulations, which confirms that it has a good match. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Online social networks are vital environments for information sharing and user interactivity. To help users of online social services to build, expand, and maintain their friend networks or webs of trust, trust management systems have been deployed and trust inference (or more generally, friend recommendation) techniques have been studied in many online social networks. However, there are some challenging issues obstructing the real-world trust inference tasks. Using only explicit yet sparse trust relationships to predict user trust is inefficient in large online social networks. In the age of privacy-respecting Internet, certain types of user data may be unavailable, and thus existing models for trust inference may be less accurate or even defunct. Although some less interpretable models may achieve better performance in trust prediction, the interpretability of the models may prevent them from being adopted or improved for making relevant informed decisions. To tackle these problems, we propose a probabilistic graphical model for trust inference in online social networks in this paper. The proposed model is built upon the skeleton of explicit trust relationships (the web of trust) and embeds various types of available user data as comprehensively-designed trust-aware features. A message passing algorithm, loop belief propagation, is applied to the model inference, which greatly improves the interpretability of the proposed model. The performance of the proposed model is demonstrated by experiments on a real-world online social network dataset. Experimental results show the proposed model achieves acceptable accuracy with both fully and partially available data. Comparison experiments were conducted, and the results show the proposed model's promise for trust inference in some circumstances. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As navigation is a key to task execution of micro unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) swarm, the cooperative navigation (CN) method that integrates relative measurements between UAVs has attracted widespread attention due to its performance advantages. In view of the precision and efficiency of cooperative navigation for low-cost micro UAV swarm, this paper proposes a sigma point belief propagation-based (SPBP) CN method that can integrate self-measurement data and inter-UAV ranging in a distributed manner so as to improve the absolute positioning performance of UAV swarm. The method divides the sigma point filter into two steps: the first is to integrate local measurement data; the second is to approximate the belief of position based on the mean and covariance of the state, and pass message by augmentation, resampling and cooperative measurement update of the state to realize a low-complexity approximation to traditional message passing method. The simulation results and outdoor flight test results show that with similar performance, the proposed CN method has a calculation load more than 20 times less than traditional BP algorithms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we investigate a joint device activity detection (DAD), channel estimation (CE), and data decoding (DD) algorithm for multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) massive unsourced random access (URA). Different from the state-of-the-art slotted transmission scheme, the data in the proposed framework is split into only two parts. A portion of the data is coded by compressed sensing (CS) and the rest is low-density-parity-check (LDPC) coded. In addition to being part of the data, information bits in the CS phase also undertake the task of interleaving pattern design and CE. The principle of interleave-division multiple access (IDMA) is exploited to reduce the interference among devices in the LDPC phase. Based on the belief propagation (BP) algorithm, a low-complexity iterative message passing (MP) algorithm is utilized to decode the data embedded in these two phases separately. Moreover, combined with successive interference cancellation (SIC), the proposed joint DAD-CE-DD algorithm is performed to further improve performance by utilizing the belief of each other. Additionally, based on the energy detection (ED) and sliding window protocol (SWP), we develop a collision resolution protocol to handle the codeword collision, a common issue in the URA system. In addition to the complexity reduction, the proposed algorithm exhibits a substantial performance enhancement compared to the state-of-the-art in terms of efficiency and accuracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Only a specific location can make sensor data useful. The paper presents an simplify belief propagation and variation expectation maximization (SBPVEM) algorithm to achieve node localization by cooperating with another target node while lowering communication costs in a challenging environment where the anchor is sparse. A simplified belief propagation algorithm is proposed as the overall reasoning framework by modeling the cooperative localization problem as a graph model. The high-aggregation sampling and variation expectation–maximization algorithm is applied to sample and fit the complicated distribution. Experiments show that SBPVEM can obtain accurate node localization equal to NBP and SPAWN in a challenging environment while reducing bandwidth requirements. In addition, the SBPVEM has a better expressive ability than PVSPA, for SBPVEM is efficient in challenging environments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the great promises that the resistive random access memory (ReRAM) has shown as the next generation of non-volatile memory technology, its crossbar array structure leads to a severe sneak path interference to the signal read back from the memory cell. In this paper, we first propose a novel belief propagation (BP) based detector for the sneak path interference in ReRAM. Based on the conditions for a sneak path to occur and the dependence of the states of the memory cells that are involved in the sneak path, a Tanner graph for the ReRAM channel is constructed, inside which specific messages are updated iteratively to get a better estimation of the sneak path affected cells. We further combine the graph of the designed BP detector with that of the BP decoder of the polar codes to form a joint detector and decoder. Tailored for the joint detector and decoder over the ReRAM channel, effective polar codes are constructed using the genetic algorithm. Simulation results show that the BP detector can effectively detect the cells affected by the sneak path, and the proposed polar codes and the joint detector and decoder can significantly improve the error rate performance of ReRAM. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Turbo Product Codes (TPCs) with near Shannon capacity performance especially for high code rates allow decoding operations at a speed of several Mbps or more and has low error floor. In this paper, the characteristics of TPCs as FEC code, and their suitability for being a potential candidate in satellite communication applications are discussed. Emphasis is laid to highlight TPC's flexibility in attaining different code rates, improved coding gain especially for high code rates, benefits of different types of TPC construction and decoding modifications. The need for careful amalgamation of higher order modulation techniques with TPCs to achieve good spectral and power efficiency is discussed in detail. In addition, a deep learning based approach (neural-BP) for decoding of TPCs has been discussed. This is intended to improve the parallelism in TPC decoding and to reduce the implementation complexity. It is envisaged that the neural-BP decoding approach would lead to the design of hardware efficient decoders providing high Quality of Service (QoS) in satellite communication systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In order to reduce the decoding latency, a new early stopping criterion is proposed for belief propagation (BP) decoding. A kind of special processing elements (PEs) of BP decoder called frozen and information PE (FIPE) is selected to predict whether decoding is successful or not. Statistics indicate that FIPE can be considered reliable when the frozen bit is decoded successfully. The proposed criterion is based on the fact that the number of reliable FIPE increase along with iterations and the variation trend is approximate to the ratio of correct information bits. In the term of hardware complexity, the proposed method has a linear correlation with the number of FIPE. This criterion consumes only ‘xor’ and ‘or’ gates to check stopping condition. Simulation results show that the proposed criterion achieves lower latency than Worst Information Bits (WIB) and Frozen Bit Error Rate (FBER) without BLER degradation compared with fixed and G-matrix. Compared with WIB, FBER, Best Frozen Bits (BFB) criterion, the proposed criterion has the lowest hardware complexity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The rapid progress and plummeting costs of human-genome sequencing enable the availability of large amount of personal biomedical information, leading to one of the most important concerns — genomic data privacy. Since personal biomedical data are highly correlated with relatives, with the increasing availability of genomes and personal traits online (i.e., leakage unwittingly, or after their releasing intentionally to genetic service platforms), kin-genomic data privacy is threatened. We propose new inference attacks to predict unknown Single Nucleotide Polymorphisms (SNPs) and human traits of individuals in a familial genomic dataset based on probabilistic graphical models and belief propagation. With this method, the adversary can predict the unobserved genomes or traits of targeted individuals in a family genomic dataset where some individuals’ genomes and traits are observed, relying on SNP-trait association from Genome-Wide Association Study (GWAS), Mendel’s Laws, and statistical relations between SNPs. Existing genome inferences have relatively high computational complexity with the input of tens of millions of SNPs and human traits. Then, we propose an approach to publish genomic data with differential privacy guarantee. After finding an approximate distribution of the input genomic dataset relying on Bayesian networks, a noisy distribution is obtained after injecting noise into the approximate distribution. Finally, synthetic genomic dataset is sampled and it is proved that any query on synthetic dataset satisfies differential privacy guarantee.

The BayesNetBP package has been developed for probabilistic reasoning and visualization in Bayesian networks with nodes that are purely discrete, continuous or mixed (discrete and continuous). Probabilistic reasoning enables a user to absorb information into a Bayesian network and make queries about how the probabilities within the network change in light of new information. The package was developed in the R programming language and is freely available from the Comprehensive R Archive Network. A shiny app with Cytoscape widgets provides an interactive interface for evidence absorption, queries, and visualizations.

This paper proposes a centralized MTT method based on a state-of-the-art multi-sensor labeled multi-Bernoulli (LMB) filter in underwater multi-static networks with autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs). The LMB filter can accurately extract the number of targets and trajectories from measurements affected by noise, missed detections, false alarms and port–starboard ambiguity. However, its complexity increases as the number of sensors increases. In addition, due to the time-varying underwater environment, AUV detection probabilities are time-varying, and their mismatches often lead to poor MTT performance. Consequently, we detail a robust multi-sensor LMB filter that estimates detection probabilities and multi-target states simultaneously in real time. Moreover, we derive an effective approximate form of the multi-sensor LMB filter using Kullback–Leibler divergence and develop an efficient belief propagation (BP) implementation of the multi-sensor LMB filter. Our method scales linearly with the number of AUVs, providing good scalability and low computational complexity. The proposed method demonstrates superior performance in underwater multi-AUV network MTT simulations.