Sparsity-Aware and Noise-Robust Subband Adaptive Filter

This paper presents a subband adaptive filter (SAF) for a system identification where an impulse response is sparse and disturbed with an impulsive noise. Benefiting from the uses of l1-norm optimization and l0-norm penalty of the weight vector in the cost function, the proposed l0-norm sign SAF (l0-SSAF) achieves both robustness against impulsive noise and much improved convergence behavior than the classical adaptive filters. Simulation results in the system identification scenario confirm that the proposed l0-norm SSAF is not only more robust but also faster and more accurate than its counterparts in the sparse system identification in the presence of impulsive noise.

Affine Projection Adaptive Filter with Variable Regularization

We propose two affine projection algorithms (APA) with variable regularization parameter. The proposed algorithms dynamically update the regularization parameter that is fixed in the conventional regularized APA (R-APA) using a gradient descent based approach. By introducing the normalized gradient, the proposed algorithms give birth to an efficient and a robust update scheme for the regularization parameter. Through experiments we demonstrate that the proposed algorithms outperform conventional R-APA in terms of the convergence rate and the misadjustment error.

Variable Regularization Parameter Normalized Least Mean Square Adaptive Filter

We present a normalized LMS (NLMS) algorithm with robust regularization. Unlike conventional NLMS with the fixed regularization parameter, the proposed approach dynamically updates the regularization parameter. By exploiting a gradient descent direction, we derive a computationally efficient and robust update scheme for the regularization parameter. In simulation, we demonstrate the proposed algorithm outperforms conventional NLMS algorithms in terms of convergence rate and misadjustment error.

Subband Adaptive Filter Exploiting Sparsity of System

This paper presents a normalized subband adaptive filtering (NSAF) algorithm to cope with the sparsity condition of an underlying system in the context of compressive sensing. By regularizing a weighted l1-norm of the filter taps estimate onto the cost function of the NSAF and utilizing a subgradient analysis, the update recursion of the l1-norm constraint NSAF is derived. Considering two distinct weighted l1-norm regularization cases, two versions of the l1-norm constraint NSAF are presented. Simulation results clearly indicate the superior performance of the proposed l1-norm constraint NSAFs comparing with the classical NSAF.

Sparsity-Aware Affine Projection Algorithm for System Identification

This work presents a new type of the affine projection (AP) algorithms which incorporate the sparsity condition of a system. To exploit the sparsity of the system, a weighted l1-norm regularization is imposed on the cost function of the AP algorithm. Minimizing the cost function with a subgradient calculus and choosing two distinct weighting for l1-norm, two stochastic gradient based sparsity regularized AP (SR-AP) algorithms are developed. Experimental results exhibit that the SR-AP algorithms outperform the typical AP counterparts for identifying sparse systems.

Climate Adaptive Building Shells for Plus-Energy-Buildings, Designed on Bionic Principles

Six peculiar architecture designs from the Frankfurt University will be discussed within this paper and their future potential of the adaptable and solar thin-film sheets implemented facades will be shown acting and reacting on climate/solar changes of their specific sites. The different aspects, as well as limitations with regard to technical and functional restrictions, will be named.  The design process for a “multi-purpose building”, a “high-rise building refurbishment” and a “biker’s lodge” on the river Rheine valley, has been critically outlined and developed step by step from an international studentship towards an overall energy strategy, that firstly had to push the design to a plus-energy building and secondly had to incorporate bionic aspects into the building skins design. Both main parameters needed to be reviewed and refined during the whole design process. Various basic bionic approaches have been given [e.g. solar ivy TM, flectofin TM or hygroskin TM, which were to experiment with, regarding the use of bendable photovoltaic thin film elements being parts of a hybrid, kinetic façade system.

Neighborhood Sustainability Assessment Tools: A Conceptual Framework for Their Use in Building Adaptive Capacity to Climate Change

Climate change remains a challenging matter for the human and the built environment in the 21st century, where the need to consider adaptation to climate change in the development process is paramount. However, there remains a lack of information regarding how we should prepare responses to this issue, such as through developing organized and sophisticated tools enabling the adaptation process. This study aims to build a systematic framework approach to investigate the potentials that Neighborhood Sustainability Assessment tools (NSA) might offer in enabling both the analysis of the emerging adaptive capacity to climate change. The analysis of the framework presented in this paper aims to discuss this issue in three main phases. The first part attempts to link sustainability and climate change, in the context of adaptive capacity. It is argued that in deciding to promote sustainability in the context of climate change, both the resilience and vulnerability processes become central. However, there is still a gap in the current literature regarding how the sustainable development process can respond to climate change. As well as how the resilience of practical strategies might be evaluated. It is suggested that the integration of the sustainability assessment processes with both the resilience thinking process, and vulnerability might provide important components for addressing the adaptive capacity to climate change. A critical review of existing literature is presented illustrating the current lack of work in this field, integrating these three concepts in the context of addressing the adaptive capacity to climate change. The second part aims to identify the most appropriate scale at which to address the built environment for the climate change adaptation. It is suggested that the neighborhood scale can be considered as more suitable than either the building or urban scales. It then presents the example of NSAs, and discusses the need to explore their potential role in promoting the adaptive capacity to climate change. The third part of the framework presents a comparison among three example NSAs, BREEAM Communities, LEED-ND, and CASBEE-UD. These three tools have been selected as the most developed and comprehensive assessment tools that are currently available for the neighborhood scale. This study concludes that NSAs are likely to present the basis for an organized framework to address the practical process for analyzing and yet promoting Adaptive Capacity to Climate Change. It is further argued that vulnerability (exposure & sensitivity) and resilience (Interdependence & Recovery) form essential aspects to be addressed in the future assessment of NSA’s capability to adapt to both short and long term climate change impacts. Finally, it is acknowledged that further work is now required to understand impact assessment in terms of the range of physical sectors (Water, Energy, Transportation, Building, Land Use and Ecosystems), Actor and stakeholder engagement as well as a detailed evaluation of the NSA indicators, together with a barriers diagnosis process.

Dynamic Process Monitoring of an Ammonia Synthesis Fixed-Bed Reactor

This study involves the modeling and monitoring of an ammonia synthesis fixed-bed reactor using partial least squares (PLS) and its variants. The process exhibits complex dynamic behavior due to the presence of heat recycling and feed quench. One limitation of static PLS model in this situation is that it does not take account of the process dynamics and hence dynamic PLS was used. Although it showed, superior performance to static PLS in terms of prediction, the monitoring scheme was inappropriate hence adaptive PLS was considered. A limitation of adaptive PLS is that non-conforming observations also contribute to the model, therefore, a new adaptive approach was developed, robust adaptive dynamic PLS. This approach updates a dynamic PLS model and is robust to non-representative data. The developed methodology showed a clear improvement over existing approaches in terms of the modeling of the reactor and the detection of faults.

Adaptive Kaman Filter for Fault Diagnosis of Linear Parameter-Varying Systems

Fault diagnosis of Linear Parameter-Varying (LPV) system using an adaptive Kalman filter is proposed. The LPV model is comprised of scheduling parameters, and the emulator parameters. The scheduling parameters are chosen such that they are capable of tracking variations in the system model as a result of changes in the operating regimes. The emulator parameters, on the other hand, simulate variations in the subsystems during the identification phase and have negligible effect during the operational phase. The nominal model and the influence vectors, which are the gradient of the feature vector respect to the emulator parameters, are identified off-line from a number of emulator parameter perturbed experiments. A Kalman filter is designed using the identified nominal model. As the system varies, the Kalman filter model is adapted using the scheduling variables. The residual is employed for fault diagnosis. The proposed scheme is successfully evaluated on simulated system as well as on a physical process control system.

Elitist Self-Adaptive Step-Size Search in Optimum Sizing of Steel Structures

This paper covers application of an elitist selfadaptive step-size search (ESASS) to optimum design of steel skeletal structures. In the ESASS two approaches are considered for improving the convergence accuracy as well as the computational efficiency of the original technique namely the so called selfadaptive step-size search (SASS). Firstly, an additional randomness is incorporated into the sampling step of the technique to preserve exploration capability of the algorithm during the optimization. Moreover, an adaptive sampling scheme is introduced to improve the quality of final solutions. Secondly, computational efficiency of the technique is accelerated via avoiding unnecessary analyses during the optimization process using an upper bound strategy. The numerical results demonstrate the usefulness of the ESASS in the sizing optimization problems of steel truss and frame structures.

New Data Reuse Adaptive Filters with Noise Constraint

We present a new framework of the data-reusing (DR) adaptive algorithms by incorporating a constraint on noise, referred to as a noise constraint. The motivation behind this work is that the use of the statistical knowledge of the channel noise can contribute toward improving the convergence performance of an adaptive filter in identifying a noisy linear finite impulse response (FIR) channel. By incorporating the noise constraint into the cost function of the DR adaptive algorithms, the noise constrained DR (NC-DR) adaptive algorithms are derived. Experimental results clearly indicate their superior performance over the conventional DR ones.

Impulsive Noise-Resilient Subband Adaptive Filter

We present a new subband adaptive filter (R-SAF) which is robust against impulsive noise in system identification. To address the vulnerability of adaptive filters based on the L2-norm optimization criterion against impulsive noise, the R-SAF comes from the L1-norm optimization criterion with a constraint on the energy of the weight update. Minimizing L1-norm of the a posteriori error in each subband with a constraint on minimum disturbance gives rise to the robustness against the impulsive noise and the capable convergence performance. Experimental results clearly demonstrate that the proposed R-SAF outperforms the classical adaptive filtering algorithms when impulsive noise as well as background noise exist.

Role of Feedbacks in Simulation-Based Learning

Feedback is a vital element for improving student learning in a simulation-based training as it guides and refines learning through scaffolding. A number of studies in literature have shown that students’ learning is enhanced when feedback is provided with personalized tutoring that offers specific guidance and adapts feedback to the learner in a one-to-one environment. Thus, emulating these adaptive aspects of human tutoring in simulation provides an effective methodology to train individuals. This paper presents the results of a study that investigated the effectiveness of automating different types of feedback techniques such as Knowledge-of-Correct-Response (KCR) and Answer-Until- Correct (AUC) in software simulation for learning basic information technology concepts. For the purpose of comparison, techniques like simulation with zero or no-feedback (NFB) and traditional hands-on (HON) learning environments are also examined. The paper presents the summary of findings based on quantitative analyses which reveal that the simulation based instructional strategies are at least as effective as hands-on teaching methodologies for the purpose of learning of IT concepts. The paper also compares the results of the study with the earlier studies and recommends strategies for using feedback mechanism to improve students’ learning in designing and simulation-based IT training.

Improved Network Construction Methods Based on Virtual Rails for Mobile Sensor Network

Although Mobile Wireless Sensor Networks (MWSNs), which consist of mobile sensor nodes (MSNs), can cover a wide range of observation region by using a small number of sensor nodes, they need to construct a network to collect the sensing data on the base station by moving the MSNs. As an effective method, the network construction method based on Virtual Rails (VRs), which is referred to as VR method, has been proposed. In this paper, we propose two types of effective techniques for the VR method. They can prolong the operation time of the network, which is limited by the battery capabilities of MSNs and the energy consumption of MSNs. The first technique, an effective arrangement of VRs, almost equalizes the number of MSNs belonging to each VR. The second technique, an adaptive movement method of MSNs, takes into account the residual energy of battery. In the simulation, we demonstrate that each technique can improve the network lifetime and the combination of both techniques is the most effective.

Application of Adaptive Genetic Algorithm in Function Optimization

The crossover probability and mutation probability are the two important factors in genetic algorithm. The adaptive genetic algorithm can improve the convergence performance of genetic algorithm, in which the crossover probability and mutation probability are adaptively designed with the changes of fitness value. We apply adaptive genetic algorithm into a function optimization problem. The numerical experiment represents that adaptive genetic algorithm improves the convergence speed and avoids local convergence.

Towards Incorporating Context Awareness into Business Process Management

Context-aware technologies provide system applications with the awareness of environmental conditions, customer behaviours, object movements, etc. Further, with such capability system applications can be smart to intelligently adapt their responses to the changing conditions. In regard to business operations, this promises businesses that their business processes can run more intelligently, adaptively and flexibly, and thereby either improve customer experience, enhance reliability of service delivery, or lower operational cost, to make the business more competitive and sustainable. Aiming at realising such context-aware business process management, this paper firstly explores its potential benefit, and then identifies some gaps between the current business process management support and the expected. In addition, some preliminary solutions are also discussed in regard to context definition, rule-based process execution, run-time process evolution, etc. A framework is also presented to give a conceptual architecture of context-aware business process management system to guide system implementation.

Adaptive and Personalizing Learning Sequence Using Modified Roulette Wheel Selection Algorithm

Prior literature in the field of adaptive and personalized learning sequence in e-learning have proposed and implemented various mechanisms to improve the learning process such as individualization and personalization, but complex to implement due to expensive algorithmic programming and need of extensive and prior data. The main objective of personalizing learning sequence is to maximize learning by dynamically selecting the closest teaching operation in order to achieve the learning competency of learner. In this paper, a revolutionary technique has been proposed and tested to perform individualization and personalization using modified reversed roulette wheel selection algorithm that runs at O(n). The technique is simpler to implement and is algorithmically less expensive compared to other revolutionary algorithms since it collects the dynamic real time performance matrix such as examinations, reviews, and study to form the RWSA single numerical fitness value. Results show that the implemented system is capable of recommending new learning sequences that lessens time of study based on student's prior knowledge and real performance matrix.

A Survey on Opportunistic Routing in Mobile Ad Hoc Networks

Opportunistic Routing (OR) increases the transmission reliability and network throughput. Traditional routing protocols preselects one or more predetermined nodes before transmission starts and uses a predetermined neighbor to forward a packet in each hop. The opportunistic routing overcomes the drawback of unreliable wireless transmission by broadcasting one transmission can be overheard by manifold neighbors. The first cooperation-optimal protocol for Multirate OR (COMO) used to achieve social efficiency and prevent the selfish behavior of the nodes. The novel link-correlation-aware OR improves the performance by exploiting the miscellaneous low correlated forward links. Context aware Adaptive OR (CAOR) uses active suppression mechanism to reduce packet duplication. The Context-aware OR (COR) can provide efficient routing in mobile networks. By using Cooperative Opportunistic Routing in Mobile Ad hoc Networks (CORMAN), the problem of opportunistic data transfer can be tackled. While comparing to all the protocols, COMO is the best as it achieves social efficiency and prevents the selfish behavior of the nodes.

Exploring SSD Suitable Allocation Schemes Incompliance with Workload Patterns

In the Solid-State-Drive (SSD) performance, whether the data has been well parallelized is an important factor. SSD parallelization is affected by allocation scheme and it is directly connected to SSD performance. There are dynamic allocation and static allocation in representative allocation schemes. Dynamic allocation is more adaptive in exploiting write operation parallelism, while static allocation is better in read operation parallelism. Therefore, it is hard to select the appropriate allocation scheme when the workload is mixed read and write operations. We simulated conditions on a few mixed data patterns and analyzed the results to help the right choice for better performance. As the results, if data arrival interval is long enough prior operations to be finished and continuous read intensive data environment static allocation is more suitable. Dynamic allocation performs the best on write performance and random data patterns.

Crisis In/Out, Emergent, and Adaptive Urban Organisms

This paper focuses on the questions raised through the work of Unit 5: ‘In/Out Crisis, emergent and adaptive’; an architectural research-based studio at [ARC] University of Nicosia. Students were asked to delve into state of Art Technologies in order to propose sustainable Emergent and Adaptive Architectures and Urbanities, the resulting unprecedented spatial conditions and atmospheres of the emergent new ways of living are deemed to be the ultimate aim of the investigation. Students explored a variety of sites and crisis conditions seen through their primary ingredient identified as soil, water and air and their paired combination. Within this methodology, crisis is seen as a mechanism for allowing an emergence of new and fascinating ultimate sustainable future cultures and cities by taking advantage of the primary materiality of the sites.