arXiv subjects

Hongwei Zhang

Publications and source records attributed to Hongwei Zhang.

At least 73 records · Page 4Linked to original sources

arXiv2022

Learning nonlinear dynamics in synchronization of knowledge-based leader-following networks

Knowledge-based leader-following synchronization of heterogeneous nonlinear multi-agent systems is a challenging problem since the leader's dynamic information is unknown to any follower node. This paper proposes a learning-based fully distributed observer for a class of nonlinear leader systems, which can simultaneously learn the leader's dynamics and states. This class of leader dynamics is rather general and does not require a bounded Jacobian matrix. Based on this learning-based distributed observer, we further synthesize an adaptive distributed control law for solving the leader-following synchronization problem of multiple Euler-Lagrange systems subject to an uncertain nonlinear leader system. The results are illustrated by a simulation example.

eess.SY↗

arXiv2022

Defending Adversarial Examples by Negative Correlation Ensemble

The security issues in DNNs, such as adversarial examples, have attracted much attention. Adversarial examples refer to the examples which are capable to induce the DNNs return completely predictions by introducing carefully designed perturbations. Obviously, adversarial examples bring great security risks to the development of deep learning. Recently, Some defense approaches against adversarial examples have been proposed, however, in our opinion, the performance of these approaches are still limited. In this paper, we propose a new ensemble defense approach named the Negative Correlation Ensemble (NCEn), which achieves compelling results by introducing gradient directions and gradient magnitudes of each member in the ensemble negatively correlated and at the same time, reducing the transferability of adversarial examples among them. Extensive experiments have been conducted, and the results demonstrate that NCEn can improve the adversarial robustness of ensembles effectively.

cs.CR↗

arXiv2022

Adaptive Cooperative Tracking and Parameter Estimation of an Uncertain Leader over General Directed Graphs

This paper studies cooperative tracking problem of heterogeneous Euler-Lagrange systems with an uncertain leader. Different from most existing works, system dynamic knowledge of the leader node is unaccessible to any follower node in our paper. Distributed adaptive observers are designed for all follower nodes, simultaneously estimate the state and parameters of the leader node. The observer design does not rely on the frequency knowledge of the leader node, and the estimation errors are shown to converge to zero exponentially. Moreover, the results are applied to general directed graphs, where the symmetry of Laplacian matrix does not hold. This is due to two newly developed Lyapunov equations, which solely depend on communication network topologies. Interestingly, using these Lyapunov equations, many results of multi-agent systems over undirected graphs can be extended to general directed graphs. Finally, this paper also advances the knowledge base of adaptive control systems by providing a main tool in the analysis of parameter convergence for adaptive observers.

eess.SY↗

arXiv2021

Coupling effect and pole assignment in trajectory regulation of multi-agent systems

This paper revisits a well studied leader-following consensus problem of linear multi-agent systems, while aiming at follower nodes' transient performance. Conventionally, when not all follower nodes have access to the leader's state information, distributed observers are designed to estimate the leader's state, and the observers are coupled via communication network. Then each follower node only needs to track its observer's state independently, without interacting with its neighbors. This paper deliberately introduces certain coupling effect among follower nodes, such that the follower nodes tend to converge to each other cooperatively on the way they converge to the leader. Moreover, by suitably designing the control law, the poles of follower nodes can be assigned as desired, and thus transient tracking performance can also be adjusted.

math.OC↗

arXiv2021

Interference and Coverage Analysis of mmWave Inter-Vehicle Broadcast with Directional Antennas

Thanks to the availability of large bandwidth and high-gain directional antennas at the millimeter-wave (mmWave) bands, mmWave communications have been considered as one of the primary solutions to meet the high data rates needs in vehicular networks. Unicast in mmWave vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) communications has been well-studied, but much less attention has been paid to V2V broadcast which is required by many V2V applications such as active safety. To fill the gap, this paper systematically investigates mmWave V2V broadcast by considering the unique properties of mmWave signal propagation in V2V environments as well as the impacts of directional antennas and interference. Based on widely-accepted, high-fidelity system models, we mathematically analyze the receiver-side signal-to-interference-plus-noise-ratio (SINR) and broadcast coverage, and we study the impacts of blockage, inter-vehicle distance, vehicle density and beam pattern. Through comprehensive numerical analysis, we find out that, instead of a single unique optimal beamwidth, there exists an optimal range of beamwidth, in which the beamwidths have similar performance and can maximize the coverage. We also find out that the selection of carrier sensing range plays an important role as it highly influences the performance of the whole vehicular networks. Our analysis provides unique insight into mmWave V2V broadcast, and it sheds light on designing effective V2V broadcast protocols.

cs.NI↗

arXiv2021

Google Landmark Retrieval 2021 Competition Third Place Solution

We present our solutions to the Google Landmark Challenges 2021, for both the retrieval and the recognition tracks. Both solutions are ensembles of transformers and ConvNet models based on Sub-center ArcFace with dynamic margins. Since the two tracks share the same training data, we used the same pipeline and training approach, but with different model selections for the ensemble and different post-processing. The key improvement over last year is newer state-of-the-art vision architectures, especially transformers which significantly outperform ConvNets for the retrieval task. We finished third and fourth places for the retrieval and recognition tracks respectively.

cs.CV↗

arXiv2021

AdaL: Adaptive Gradient Transformation Contributes to Convergences and Generalizations

Adaptive optimization methods have been widely used in deep learning. They scale the learning rates adaptively according to the past gradient, which has been shown to be effective to accelerate the convergence. However, they suffer from poor generalization performance compared with SGD. Recent studies point that smoothing exponential gradient noise leads to generalization degeneration phenomenon. Inspired by this, we propose AdaL, with a transformation on the original gradient. AdaL accelerates the convergence by amplifying the gradient in the early stage, as well as dampens the oscillation and stabilizes the optimization by shrinking the gradient later. Such modification alleviates the smoothness of gradient noise, which produces better generalization performance. We have theoretically proved the convergence of AdaL and demonstrated its effectiveness on several benchmarks.

cs.LG↗

arXiv2021

ScoreGrad: Multivariate Probabilistic Time Series Forecasting with Continuous Energy-based Generative Models

Multivariate time series prediction has attracted a lot of attention because of its wide applications such as intelligence transportation, AIOps. Generative models have achieved impressive results in time series modeling because they can model data distribution and take noise into consideration. However, many existing works can not be widely used because of the constraints of functional form of generative models or the sensitivity to hyperparameters. In this paper, we propose ScoreGrad, a multivariate probabilistic time series forecasting framework based on continuous energy-based generative models. ScoreGrad is composed of time series feature extraction module and conditional stochastic differential equation based score matching module. The prediction can be achieved by iteratively solving reverse-time SDE. To the best of our knowledge, ScoreGrad is the first continuous energy based generative model used for time series forecasting. Furthermore, ScoreGrad achieves state-of-the-art results on six real-world datasets. The impact of hyperparameters and sampler types on the performance are also explored. Code is available at https://github.com/yantijin/ScoreGradPred.

cs.LG↗

arXiv2021

Real-time Forecast Models for TBM Load Parameters Based on Machine Learning Methods

Because of the fast advance rate and the improved personnel safety, tunnel boring machines (TBMs) have been widely used in a variety of tunnel construction projects. The dynamic modeling of TBM load parameters (including torque, advance rate and thrust) plays an essential part in the design, safe operation and fault prognostics of this complex engineering system. In this paper, based on in-situ TBM operational data, we use the machine-learning (ML) methods to build the real-time forecast models for TBM load parameters, which can instantaneously provide the future values of the TBM load parameters as long as the current data are collected. To decrease the model complexity and improve the generalization, we also apply the least absolute shrinkage and selection (Lasso) method to extract the essential features of the forecast task. The experimental results show that the forecast models based on deep-learning methods, {\it e.g.}, recurrent neural network and its variants, outperform the ones based on the shallow-learning methods, {\it e.g.}, support vector regression and random forest. Moreover, the Lasso-based feature extraction significantly improves the performance of the resultant models.

cs.LG↗

arXiv2020

Physical Wireless Resource Virtualization for Software-Defined Whole-Stack Slicing

Radio access network (RAN) virtualization is gaining more and more ground and expected to re-architect the next-generation cellular networks. Existing RAN virtualization studies and solutions have mostly focused on sharing communication capacity and tend to require the use of the same PHY and MAC layers across network slices. This approach has not considered the scenarios where different slices require different PHY and MAC layers, for instance, for radically different services and for whole-stack research in wireless living labs where novel PHY and MAC layers need to be deployed concurrently with existing ones on the same physical infrastructure. To enable whole-stack slicing where different PHY and MAC layers may be deployed in different slices, we develop PV-RAN, the first open-source virtual RAN platform that enables the sharing of the same SDR physical resources across multiple slices. Through API Remoting, PV-RAN enables running paravirtualized instances of OpenAirInterface (OAI) at different slices without requiring modifying OAI source code. PV-RAN effectively leverages the inter-domain communication mechanisms of Xen to transport time-sensitive I/Q samples via shared memory, making the virtualization overhead in communication almost negligible. We conduct detailed performance benchmarking of PV-RAN and demonstrate its low overhead and high efficiency. We also integrate PV-RAN with the CyNet wireless living lab for smart agriculture and transportation.

cs.NI↗

arXiv2020

Dynamic Anchor Learning for Arbitrary-Oriented Object Detection

Arbitrary-oriented objects widely appear in natural scenes, aerial photographs, remote sensing images, etc., thus arbitrary-oriented object detection has received considerable attention. Many current rotation detectors use plenty of anchors with different orientations to achieve spatial alignment with ground truth boxes, then Intersection-over-Union (IoU) is applied to sample the positive and negative candidates for training. However, we observe that the selected positive anchors cannot always ensure accurate detections after regression, while some negative samples can achieve accurate localization. It indicates that the quality assessment of anchors through IoU is not appropriate, and this further lead to inconsistency between classification confidence and localization accuracy. In this paper, we propose a dynamic anchor learning (DAL) method, which utilizes the newly defined matching degree to comprehensively evaluate the localization potential of the anchors and carry out a more efficient label assignment process. In this way, the detector can dynamically select high-quality anchors to achieve accurate object detection, and the divergence between classification and regression will be alleviated. With the newly introduced DAL, we achieve superior detection performance for arbitrary-oriented objects with only a few horizontal preset anchors. Experimental results on three remote sensing datasets HRSC2016, DOTA, UCAS-AOD as well as a scene text dataset ICDAR 2015 show that our method achieves substantial improvement compared with the baseline model. Besides, our approach is also universal for object detection using horizontal bound box. The code and models are available at https://github.com/ming71/DAL.

cs.CV↗

arXiv2020

Large anomalous Hall angle in a topological semimetal candidate TbPtBi

The magnetotransport properties in antiferromagnetic half-Heusler single crystals of TbPtBi, a magnetic-field-induced topological semimetal with simple band structure, are investigated. We found that a nonmonotonic magnetic field dependence of the anomalous Hall resistivity in a high magnetic field (B>7T), which come from the change of band structure induced by the Zeeman-like splitting when applying the external magnetic field. The experiment results show that credible anomalous Hall resistivity and conductivity reach up to 0.6798mΩcm and 125Ω-1cm-1, respectively. A large AHA up to 33% is obtained in TbPtBi, which is comparable to typical ferromagnetic Weyl semimetal. The analysis of results show it should be attributed to topological band around EF and low carrier density.

cond-mat.mtrl-sci↗

arXiv2020

ELMV: an Ensemble-Learning Approach for Analyzing Electrical Health Records with Significant Missing Values

Many real-world Electronic Health Record (EHR) data contains a large proportion of missing values. Leaving substantial portion of missing information unaddressed usually causes significant bias, which leads to invalid conclusion to be drawn. On the other hand, training a machine learning model with a much smaller nearly-complete subset can drastically impact the reliability and accuracy of model inference. Data imputation algorithms that attempt to replace missing data with meaningful values inevitably increase the variability of effect estimates with increased missingness, making it unreliable for hypothesis validation. We propose a novel Ensemble-Learning for Missing Value (ELMV) framework, which introduces an effective approach to construct multiple subsets of the original EHR data with a much lower missing rate, as well as mobilizing a dedicated support set for the ensemble learning in the purpose of reducing the bias caused by substantial missing values. ELMV has been evaluated on a real-world healthcare data for critical feature identification as well as a batch of simulation data with different missing rates for outcome prediction. On both experiments, ELMV clearly outperforms conventional missing value imputation methods and ensemble learning models.

cs.LG↗

arXiv2020

Revisiting Graph Convolutional Network on Semi-Supervised Node Classification from an Optimization Perspective

Graph convolutional networks (GCNs) have achieved promising performance on various graph-based tasks. However they suffer from over-smoothing when stacking more layers. In this paper, we present a quantitative study on this observation and develop novel insights towards the deeper GCN. First, we interpret the current graph convolutional operations from an optimization perspective and argue that over-smoothing is mainly caused by the naive first-order approximation of the solution to the optimization problem. Subsequently, we introduce two metrics to measure the over-smoothing on node-level tasks. Specifically, we calculate the fraction of the pairwise distance between connected and disconnected nodes to the overall distance respectively. Based on our theoretical and empirical analysis, we establish a universal theoretical framework of GCN from an optimization perspective and derive a novel convolutional kernel named GCN+ which has lower parameter amount while relieving the over-smoothing inherently. Extensive experiments on real-world datasets demonstrate the superior performance of GCN+ over state-of-the-art baseline methods on the node classification tasks.

cs.LG↗

arXiv2020

Stochastic Graph Recurrent Neural Network

Representation learning over graph structure data has been widely studied due to its wide application prospects. However, previous methods mainly focus on static graphs while many real-world graphs evolve over time. Modeling such evolution is important for predicting properties of unseen networks. To resolve this challenge, we propose SGRNN, a novel neural architecture that applies stochastic latent variables to simultaneously capture the evolution in node attributes and topology. Specifically, deterministic states are separated from stochastic states in the iterative process to suppress mutual interference. With semi-implicit variational inference integrated to SGRNN, a non-Gaussian variational distribution is proposed to help further improve the performance. In addition, to alleviate KL-vanishing problem in SGRNN, a simple and interpretable structure is proposed based on the lower bound of KL-divergence. Extensive experiments on real-world datasets demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed model. Code is available at https://github.com/StochasticGRNN/SGRNN.

stat.ML↗

arXiv2019

Large topological Hall effect in a geometrically frustrated kagome magnet Fe$_3$Sn$_2$

We report on the observation of a large topological Hall effect (THE) over a wide temperature region in a geometrically frustrated Fe3Sn2 magnet with a kagome-bilayer structure. We found that the magnitude of the THE resistivity increases with temperature and reaches -0.875 μΩ.cm at 380 K. Moreover, the critical magnetic fields with the change of THE are consistent with the magnetic structure transformation, which indicates that the real-space fictitious magnetic field is proportional to the formation of magnetic skyrmions in Fe3Sn2. The results strongly suggest that the large THE originates from the topological magnetic spin textures and may open up further research opportunities in exploring emergent phenomena in kagome materials.

cond-mat.mtrl-sci↗

arXiv2019

Creation of Single Chain of Nanoscale Skyrmion Bubbles with Record-high Temperature Stability in a Geometrically Confined Nanostripe

Nanoscale topologically non-trivial spin textures, such as magnetic skyrmions, have been identified as promising candidates for the transport and storage of information for spintronic applications, notably magnetic racetrack memory devices. The design and realization of single skyrmion chain at room temperature (RT) and above in the low-dimensional nanostructures are of great importance for future practical applications. Here, we report the creation of a single skyrmion bubble chain in a geometrically confined Fe3Sn2 nanostripe with a width comparable to the featured size of a skyrmion bubble. Systematic investigations on the thermal stability have revealed that the single chain of skyrmion bubbles can keep stable at temperatures varying from RT up to a record-high temperature of 630 K. This extreme stability can be ascribed to the weak temperature-dependent magnetic anisotropy and the formation of edge states at the boundaries of the nanostripes. The realization of the highly stable skyrmion bubble chain in a geometrically confined nanostructure is a very important step towards the application of skyrmion-based spintronic devices.

cond-mat.mtrl-sci↗

arXiv2019

A Refined Non-asymptotic Tail Bound of Sub-Gaussian Matrix

In this paper, we obtain a refined non-asymptotic tail bound for the largest singular value (the soft edge) of sub-Gaussian matrix. As an application, we use the obtained theorem to compute the tail bound of the Gaussian Toeplitz matrix.

math.PR↗