Variable structure control of a class of uncertain systems

This brief paper proposes a method for tuning the parameters of a variable structure controller. The approach presented extracts the error at the output of the controller and applies a nonlinear tuning law using this error measure. The adaptation mechanism drives the state tracking error vector to the sliding hypersurface and maintains the sliding mode. In the simulations, the approach presented has been tested on the control of Duffing oscillator and the analytical claims have been justified under the existence of measurement noise, uncertainty and large nonzero initial errors.     

Similarity measures of bipolar neutrosophic sets and their application to multiple criteria decision making

In this paper, we introduced some similarity measures for bipolar neutrosophic sets such as; Dice similarity measure, weighted Dice similarity measure, Hybrid vector similarity measure and weighted Hybrid vector similarity measure. Also we examine the propositions of the similarity measures. Furthermore, a multi-criteria decision-making method for bipolar neutrosophic set is developed based on these given similarity measures. Then, a practical example is shown to verify the feasibility of the new method. Finally, we compare the proposed method with the existing methods in order to demonstrate the practicality and effectiveness of the developed method in this paper.

     

TPS3: A privacy preserving data collection protocol for smart grids

Smart grid (SG) allows for two-way communication between the utility and its consumers and hence they are considered as an inevitable future of the traditional grid. Since consumers are the key component of SGs, providing security and privacy to their personal data is a critical problem. In this paper, a security protocol, namely TPS3, is based on Temporal Perturbation and Shamir’s Secret Sharing (SSS) schemes that are proposed to ensure the privacy of SG consumer’s data. Temporal perturbation is employed to provide temporal privacy, while the SSS scheme is used to ensure data confidentiality. Temporal perturbation adds random delays to the data collected by smart meters, whereas the SSS scheme fragments these data before transmitting them to the data collection server. Joint employment of both schemes makes it hard for attackers to obtain consumer data collected in the SG. The proposed protocol TPS3 is evaluated in terms of privacy, reliability, and communication cost using two different SG topologies. The performance evaluation results clearly show that the TPS3 protocol ensures the privacy and reliability of consumer data in SGs. The results also show that the tradeoff between the communication cost and security of TPS3 is negligible.     

An expert system for automated recognition of patients with obstructive sleep apnea using electrocardiogram recordings

Obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) is a highly prevalent sleep disorder. The traditional diagnosis methods of the disorder are cumbersome and expensive. The ability to automatically identify OSA from electrocardiogram (ECG) recordings is important for clinical diagnosis and treatment. In this study, we proposed an expert system based on discrete wavelet transform (DWT), fast-Fourier transform (FFT) and least squares support vector machine (LS-SVM) for the automatic recognition of patients with OSA from nocturnal ECG recordings. Thirty ECG recordings collected from normal subjects and subjects with sleep apnea, each of approximately 8 h in duration, were used throughout the study. The proposed OSA recognition system comprises three stages. In the first stage, an algorithm based on DWT was used to analyze ECG recordings for the detection of heart rate variability (HRV) and ECG-derived respiration (EDR) changes. In the second stage, an FFT based power spectral density (PSD) method was used for feature extraction from HRV and EDR changes. Then, a hill-climbing feature selection algorithm was used to identify the best features that improve classification performance. In the third stage, the obtained features were used as input patterns of the LS-SVM classifier. Using the cross-validation method, the accuracy of the developed system was found to be 100% for using a subset of selected combination of HRV and EDR features. The results confirmed that the proposed expert system has potential for recognition of patients with suspected OSA by using ECG recordings.     

A Polynomial Time Solution to Minimum Forwarding Set Problem in Wireless Networks under Unit Disk Coverage Model

Network-wide broadcast (simply broadcast) is a frequently used operation in wireless ad hoc networks (WANETs). One promising practical approach for energy-efficient broadcast is to use localized algorithms to minimize the number of nodes involved in the propagation of the broadcast messages. In this context, the minimum forwarding set problem (MFSP) (also known as multipoint relay (MPR) problem) has received a considerable attention in the research community. Even though the general form of the problem is shown to be NP-complete, the complexity of the problem has not been known under the practical application context of ad hoc networks. In this paper, we present a polynomial time algorithm to solve the MFSP for wireless network under unit disk coverage model. We prove the existence of some geometrical properties for the problem and then propose a polynomial time algorithm to build an optimal solution based on these properties. To the best of our knowledge, our algorithm is the first polynomial time solution to the MFSP under the unit disk coverage model. We believe that the work presented in this paper will have an impact on the design and development of new algorithms for several wireless network applications including energy-efficient multicast, broadcast, and topology control protocols for WANETs and sensor networks.     

Utilizing Genetic Algorithms to Optimize Membership Functions for Fuzzy Weighted Association Rules Mining

It is not an easy task to know a priori the most appropriate fuzzy sets that cover the domains of quantitative attributes for fuzzy association rules mining. In general, it is unrealistic that experts can always provide such sets. And finding the most appropriate fuzzy sets becomes a more complex problem when items are not considered to have equal importance and the support and confidence parameters required for the association rules mining process are specified as linguistic terms. Existing clustering based automated methods are not satisfactory because they do not consider the optimization of the discovered membership functions. In order to tackle this problem, we propose Genetic Algorithms (GAs) based clustering method, which dynamically adjusts the fuzzy sets to provide maximum profit based on user specified linguistic minimum support and confidence terms. This is achieved by tuning the base values of the membership functions for each quantitative attribute with respect to two different evaluation functions maximizing the number of large itemsets and the average of the confidence intervals of the generated rules. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first effort in this direction. Experiments conducted on 100 K transactions from the adult database of United States census in year 2000 demonstrate that the proposed clustering method exhibits good performance in terms of the number of produced large itemsets and interesting association rules.     

A class of adaptive directional image smoothing filters

The gray level distribution around a pixel of an image usually tends to be more coherent in some directions compared to other directions. The idea of adaptive directional filtering is to estimate the direction of higher coherence around each pixel location and then to employ a window which approximates a line segment in that direction. Hence, the details of the image may be preserved while maintaining a satisfactory level of noise suppression performance. In this paper we describe a class of adaptive directional image smoothing filters based on generalized Gaussian distributions. We propose a measure of spread for the pixel values based on the maximum likelihood estimate of a scale parameter involved in the generalized Gaussian distribution. Several experimental results indicate a significant improvement compared to some standard filters.     

Automatic recognition of vigilance state by using a wavelet-based artificial neural network

In this study, 5-s long sequences of full-spectrum electroencephalogram (EEG) recordings were used for classifying alert versus drowsy states in an arbitrary subject. EEG signals were obtained from 30 healthy subjects and the results were classified using a wavelet-based neural network. The wavelet-based neural network model, employing the multilayer perceptron (MLP), was used for the classification of EEG signals. A multilayer perceptron neural network (MLPNN) trained with the Levenberg–Marquardt algorithm was used to discriminate the alertness level of the subject. In order to determine the MLPNN inputs, spectral analysis of EEG signals was performed using the discrete wavelet transform (DWT) technique. The MLPNN was trained, cross-validated, and tested with training, cross-validation, and testing sets, respectively. The correct classification rate was 93.3% alert, 96.6% drowsy, and 90% sleep. The classification results showed that the MLPNN trained with the Levenberg–Marquardt algorithm was effective for discriminating the vigilance state of the subject.     

The Use of Situation Theory in Context Modeling

At the heart of natural language processing is the understanding of context dependent meanings. This paper presents a preliminary model of formal contexts based on situation theory. It also gives a worked‐out example to show the use of contexts in lifting, i.e., how propositions holding in a particular context transform when they are moved to another context. This is useful in NLP applications where preserving meaning is a desideratum.     

Extracting trust information from security system of a service

The issue of trust is a research problem in emerging open environments, such as ubiquitous networks. Such environments are highly dynamic and they contain diverse number of services and autonomous entities. Entities in open environments have different security needs from services. Trust computations related to the security systems of services necessitate information that meets needs of each entity. Obtaining such information is a challenging issue for entities. In this paper, we propose a model for extracting trust information from the security system of a service based on the needs of an entity. We formally represent security policies and security systems to extract trust information according to needs of an entity. The formal representation ensures an entity to extract trust information about a security property of a service and trust information about whole security system of the service. The proposed model is applied to Dental Clinic Patient Service as a case study with two scenarios. The scenarios are analyzed experimentally with simulations. The experimental evaluation shows that the proposed model provides trust information related to the security system of a service based on the needs of an entity and it is applicable in emerging open environments.