Distributed Computation Multi-agent System

This article addresses a formal model of a distributed computation multi-agent system. This model has evolved from the experimental research on using multi-agent systems as a ground for developing fuzzy cognitive maps. The main paper contribution is a distributed computation multi-agent system definition and mathematical formalization based on automata theory. This mathematical formalization is tested by developing distributed computation multi-agent systems for fuzzy cognitive maps and artificial neural networks – two typical distributed computation systems. Fuzzy cognitive maps are distributed computation systems used for qualitative modeling and behavior simulation, while artificial neural networks are used for modeling and simulating complex systems by creating a non-linear statistical data model. An artificial neural network encapsulates in its structure data patterns that are hidden in the data used to create the network. Both of these systems are well suited for formal model testing. We have used evolutionary incremental development as an agent design method which has shown to be a good approach to develop multi-agent systems according to the formal model of a distributed computation multi-agent system.     

Error rates for M-ary noncoherent FSK in impulsive reverberation noise

It is shown that reverberation noise for primary acoustic scattering in the ocean has an integral representation and that a canonical model for its analysis can be found. Exact values of error rates for M-ary noncoherent FSK for correlation receivers in such noise are given. Comparison with the well known Gaussian case is also made.     

Extending cluster dynamics to concentrated and disordered alloys: The linear-chain case

Cluster dynamics is often used in the multi-scale procedure to link atomistic and macroscopic approaches, in particular when modelling precipitation processes. To extend its use to concentrated alloys, it is necessary to take into account accurately the exclusion zones and their overlap. By investigating the one-dimensional case, one obtains an exact formula for these zones, and its generalization to higher dimensions is proposed. By integrating cluster fragmentation/coagulation processes into cluster dynamics equations, a perfect agreement between atomistic simulations (Kinetic Monte Carlo) and cluster dynamics is reached on the whole range of concentrations for kinetics which govern microstructure in one dimension.     

Uncertainty of Trypsin Inhibitor Activity Measurement of Legume Crops Using Microtiter Plate Method

Trypsin inhibitors could limit utilization of legumes in human nutrition, but they could also have beneficial health effects. The objective of this study was to measure trypsin inhibitor activity (TIA) of different legumes using microtiter plate method and to identify factors that contribute to uncertainty of TIA measurement. TIA measurements were performed on seeds of faba bean, pea, common vetch, soybean, and common bean cultivars. The significant effect of legume crop on TIA measurement uncertainty was confirmed with P = 0.045. Certain sources of measurement uncertainty were related with the content of trypsin inhibitors (Tis) in legume seeds. In respect to that, significant effect of level of sample dilution (P ? 0.001) was confirmed. Significant influence of the repeated absorbance measurement of sample reaction mixture on uncertainty of TIA measurement was identified (P ? 0.001), and it took 60% of overall TIA measurement uncertainty for soybean cultivars. TIA of soybean cultivars exceeded 90 TUI/mg. Repeated absorbance measurement of positive control reaction mixture took 70% of TIA measurement uncertainty of cultivars with TIA lesser than 4.5 TUI/mg. Graduated cylinder used for preparation of the final sample solutions took the range from 45 to 90% of overall TIA measurement uncertainty of the cultivars whose TIA were in the middle of previously mentioned. The uncertainty of TIA measurement of legume crops was not studied before; thus, this study pointed out that acquiring insight into factors contributing to uncertainty of TIA measurement could give directions for improvement of TIA testing if microtiter plate method is used.     

Locally optimum detection in moving average non-Gaussian noise

Detection algorithms that are locally optimum Bayes, and also asymptotically optimum, are developed for both coherent and incoherent signaling for arbitrary interference and signal waveforms when the dependence in the noise samples is represented by a moving-average model. This leads to receiver structures, which are prewhitened versions of the locally optimum detectors in the independent case. A probability-of-error expression (in the ideal-observer symmetric case), the processing gain, and the minimum-detectable signal are derived in both cases. These demonstrate, by means of an expression comparing performance between this and the independent case, that for the same large sample size (n≫1), an improvement in performance is always achieved when the noise samples are dependent, without any additional complexity in receiver structure     

Diversity for binary noncoherent frequency shift keying in impulsive reverberation noise

The error rate in active sonar is given for binary non-coherent frequency shift keying (FSK) in slow and non-selective Rayleigh fading (multipath) and additive non-Gaussian reverberation noise. The improvement achieved by using time-diversity is derived from the expression for the probability of error. It is shown that for error probabilities of the order of 10?5 the improvement factor is 10 dB.     

Evaluating fault tolerance approaches in multi-agent systems

A multi-agent system (MAS) is a distributed system that consists of multiple agents working together to solve mutual problems. Even though MASs are well suited for the development of complex distributed systems, the number of real-world usages is still small. One of the main reasons for this is that MASs are very fragile. In a typical, large-scale MAS, the rate of failure grows with the number of hosts, the number of deployed agents, and the duration of the agent’s task execution. For this reason, numerous approaches have been introduced to deal with aspects of failure handling. However, the absence of centralized control and a large number of individual intelligent components makes it difficult to detect and treat errors. The risk of uncontrollable fault propagation is high and can seriously impact on system performance. There are two important factors that limit the usage of MASs: (1) existing fault tolerance (FT) approaches are not generic, as they focus on and improve specific issues of FT; and (2) despite the plethora of available FT approaches and theories, there is a remarkable lack of general metrics, tools, benchmarks, and experimental methods for formal validation and comparison of existing or newly developed FT approaches. As FT approaches in MASs become a well-established field, the need for generalized, standardized evaluation of FT approaches emerges as imperative. In this paper, we first present a detailed overview of existing FT solutions, approaches, and techniques in agent platform hosted MASs. From that overview, we derive the commonalities in existing research. Next, we present the main contribution of our paper: an evaluation methodology, with a set of metrics, for comparing FT approaches in MASs. We adopt an engineering perspective on the problem, defining a methodology and metrics that are both implementation- and domain-independent. The metrics are formalized with an acyclic directed graph. By using our methodology, evaluators can select an appropriate FT approach for targeted MAS application, thus improving MAS usability, stability, and development speed. In order to show the viability of our approach, a case study that compares two FT approaches for a targeted MAS is presented. The case study results show that our methodology can be used for selecting an appropriate FT approach for the targeted MAS.     

Particle filtering to combat inter-carrier interference in mobile communications

This paper deals with the effect of the Doppler spread in a mobile communication system. The Doppler effect in a moving mobile is computed by predicting the mobile velocity via particle filtering, an instance of Sequential Monte Carlo (SMC) filtering. By calculating the Doppler spread in the receiver and adjusting the transmitter in the appropriate frequency, the performance of communication systems, such as Orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) which suffer from loss of orthogonality due to frequency offset, can be improved. Moreover, it is shown that, via performance comparison of OFDM between the compensated and un-compensated for Doppler shift cases, a substantial improvement (O(10⁻¹)) can be achieved in terms of Bit-Error-Rate (BER) for expectedly large values of Signal to Noise Ratio (SNR)     

The relationship between Internet identification,Internet anxiety and Internet use

This paper reports a study investigating the relationship between Internet identification, Internet anxiety and Internet use. The participants were 446 students (319 females and 127 males) from two universities in the UK and one university in Australia. Measures of Internet identification and Internet anxiety were developed. The majority of participants were NOT anxious about using the Internet, although there were approximately 8% who showed evidence of Internet anxiety. There was a significant and negative relationship between Internet anxiety and Internet use. Those who were more anxious about using the Internet used the Internet less, although the magnitude of effect was small. There was a positive and significant relationship between Internet use and Internet identification. Those who scored high on the measure of Internet identification used the Internet more than those who did not. There was also a significant and negative relationship between Internet anxiety and Internet identification. Finally, males had a significantly higher Internet identification score than females. Implications of these findings are discussed.