arXiv subjects

Pramod K. Varshney

Publications and source records attributed to Pramod K. Varshney.

At least 73 records · Page 4Linked to original sources

arXiv2019

Distributed Detection of Sparse Stochastic Signals via Fusion of 1-bit Local Likelihood Ratios

In this letter, we consider the detection of sparse stochastic signals with sensor networks (SNs), where the fusion center (FC) collects 1-bit data from the local sensors and then performs global detection. For this problem, a newly developed 1-bit locally most powerful test (LMPT) detector requires 3.3Q sensors to asymptotically achieve the same detection performance as the centralized LMPT (cLMPT) detector with Q sensors. This 1-bit LMPT detector is based on 1-bit quantized observations without any additional processing at the local sensors. However, direct quantization of observations is not the most efficient processing strategy at the sensors since it incurs unnecessary information loss. In this letter, we propose an improved-1-bit LMPT (Im-1-bit LMPT) detector that fuses local 1-bit quantized likelihood ratios (LRs) instead of directly quantized local observations. In addition, we design the quantization thresholds at the local sensors to ensure asymptotically optimal detection performance of the proposed detector. It is shown theoretically and numerically that, with the designed quantization thresholds, the proposed Im-1-bit LMPT detector for the detection of sparse signals requires less number of sensor nodes to compensate for the performance loss caused by 1-bit quantization.

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arXiv2019

Decentralized Multi-target Tracking in Urban Environments: Overview and Challenges

In multi-target tracking, sensor control involves dynamically configuring sensors to achieve improved tracking performance. Many of these techniques focus on sensors with memoryless states (e.g., waveform adaptation, beam scheduling, and sensor selection), lending themselves to computationally efficient control strategies. Mobile sensor control for multi-target tracking, however, is significantly more challenging due to the complexity of the platform state dynamics. This platform complexity necessitates high-fidelity, non-myopic control strategies in order to achieve strong tracking performance while maintaining safe operation. These sensor control techniques are particularly important in non-cooperative urban surveillance applications including person of interest, vehicle, and unauthorized UAV interdiction. In this overview paper, we highlight the current state of the art in mobile sensor control for multi-target tracking in urban environments. We use this application to motivate the need for closer collaboration between the information fusion, tracking, and control research communities across three challenge areas relevant to the urban surveillance problem.

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arXiv2019

Application of Compressive Sensing Techniques in Distributed Sensor Networks: A Survey

In this survey paper, our goal is to discuss recent advances of compressive sensing (CS) based solutions in wireless sensor networks (WSNs) including the main ongoing/recent research efforts, challenges and research trends in this area. In WSNs, CS based techniques are well motivated by not only the sparsity prior observed in different forms but also by the requirement of efficient in-network processing in terms of transmit power and communication bandwidth even with nonsparse signals. In order to apply CS in a variety of WSN applications efficiently, there are several factors to be considered beyond the standard CS framework. We start the discussion with a brief introduction to the theory of CS and then describe the motivational factors behind the potential use of CS in WSN applications. Then, we identify three main areas along which the standard CS framework is extended so that CS can be efficiently applied to solve a variety of problems specific to WSNs. In particular, we emphasize on the significance of extending the CS framework to (i). take communication constraints into account while designing projection matrices and reconstruction algorithms for signal reconstruction in centralized as well in decentralized settings, (ii) solve a variety of inference problems such as detection, classification and parameter estimation, with compressed data without signal reconstruction and (iii) take practical communication aspects such as measurement quantization, physical layer secrecy constraints, and imperfect channel conditions into account. Finally, open research issues and challenges are discussed in order to provide perspectives for future research directions.

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arXiv2018

Fusion of Correlated Decisions Using Regular Vine Copulas

In this paper, we propose a regular vine copula based methodology for the fusion of correlated decisions. Regular vine copula is an extremely flexible and powerful graphical model to characterize complex dependence among multiple modalities. It can express a multivariate copula by using a cascade of bivariate copulas, the so-called pair copulas. Assuming that local detectors are single threshold binary quantizers and taking complex dependence among sensor decisions into account, we design an optimal fusion rule using a regular vine copula under the Neyman-Pearson framework. In order to reduce the computational complexity resulting from the complex dependence, we propose an efficient and computationally light regular vine copula based optimal fusion algorithm. Numerical experiments are conducted to demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach.

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arXiv2018

On the optimality of likelihood ratio test for prospect theory based binary hypothesis testing

In this letter, the optimality of the likelihood ratio test (LRT) is investigated for binary hypothesis testing problems in the presence of a behavioral decision-maker. By utilizing prospect theory, a behavioral decision-maker is modeled to cognitively distort probabilities and costs based on some weight and value functions, respectively. It is proved that the LRT may or may not be an optimal decision rule for prospect theory based binary hypothesis testing and conditions are derived to specify different scenarios. In addition, it is shown that when the LRT is an optimal decision rule, it corresponds to a randomized decision rule in some cases; i.e., nonrandomized LRTs may not be optimal. This is unlike Bayesian binary hypothesis testing in which the optimal decision rule can always be expressed in the form of a nonrandomized LRT. Finally, it is proved that the optimal decision rule for prospect theory based binary hypothesis testing can always be represented by a decision rule that randomizes at most two LRTs. Two examples are presented to corroborate the theoretical results.

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arXiv2018

K-medoids Clustering of Data Sequences with Composite Distributions

This paper studies clustering of data sequences using the k-medoids algorithm. All the data sequences are assumed to be generated from \emph{unknown} continuous distributions, which form clusters with each cluster containing a composite set of closely located distributions (based on a certain distance metric between distributions). The maximum intra-cluster distance is assumed to be smaller than the minimum inter-cluster distance, and both values are assumed to be known. The goal is to group the data sequences together if their underlying generative distributions (which are unknown) belong to one cluster. Distribution distance metrics based k-medoids algorithms are proposed for known and unknown number of distribution clusters. Upper bounds on the error probability and convergence results in the large sample regime are also provided. It is shown that the error probability decays exponentially fast as the number of samples in each data sequence goes to infinity. The error exponent has a simple form regardless of the distance metric applied when certain conditions are satisfied. In particular, the error exponent is characterized when either the Kolmogrov-Smirnov distance or the maximum mean discrepancy are used as the distance metric. Simulation results are provided to validate the analysis.

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arXiv2018

Nonparametric Composite Hypothesis Testing in an Asymptotic Regime

We investigate the nonparametric, composite hypothesis testing problem for arbitrary unknown distributions in the asymptotic regime where both the sample size and the number of hypotheses grow exponentially large. Such asymptotic analysis is important in many practical problems, where the number of variations that can exist within a family of distributions can be countably infinite. We introduce the notion of \emph{discrimination capacity}, which captures the largest exponential growth rate of the number of hypotheses relative to the sample size so that there exists a test with asymptotically vanishing probability of error. Our approach is based on various distributional distance metrics in order to incorporate the generative model of the data. We provide analyses of the error exponent using the maximum mean discrepancy (MMD) and Kolmogorov-Smirnov (KS) distance and characterize the corresponding discrimination rates, i.e., lower bounds on the discrimination capacity, for these tests. Finally, an upper bound on the discrimination capacity based on Fano's inequality is developed. Numerical results are presented to validate the theoretical results.

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arXiv2018

Abnormality Detection inside Blood Vessels with Mobile Nanomachines

Motivated by the numerous healthcare applications of molecular communication within Internet of Bio-Nano Things (IoBNT), this work addresses the problem of abnormality detection in a blood vessel using multiple biological embedded computing devices called cooperative biological nanomachines (CNs), and a common receiver called the fusion center (FC). Due to blood flow inside a vessel, each CN and the FC are assumed to be mobile. In this work, each of the CNs perform abnormality detection with certain probabilities of detection and false alarm by counting the number of molecules received from a source, e.g., infected tissue. These CNs subsequently report their local decisions to a FC over a diffusion-advection blood flow channel using different types of molecules in the presence of inter-symbol interference, multi-source interference, and counting errors. Due to limited computational capability at the FC, OR and AND logic based fusion rules are employed to make the final decision after obtaining each local decision based on the optimal likelihood ratio test. For the aforementioned system, probabilities of detection and false alarm at the FC are derived for OR and AND fusion rules. Finally, simulation results are presented to validate the derived analytical results, which provide important insights.

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arXiv2018

Why Interpretability in Machine Learning? An Answer Using Distributed Detection and Data Fusion Theory

As artificial intelligence is increasingly affecting all parts of society and life, there is growing recognition that human interpretability of machine learning models is important. It is often argued that accuracy or other similar generalization performance metrics must be sacrificed in order to gain interpretability. Such arguments, however, fail to acknowledge that the overall decision-making system is composed of two entities: the learned model and a human who fuses together model outputs with his or her own information. As such, the relevant performance criteria should be for the entire system, not just for the machine learning component. In this work, we characterize the performance of such two-node tandem data fusion systems using the theory of distributed detection. In doing so, we work in the population setting and model interpretable learned models as multi-level quantizers. We prove that under our abstraction, the overall system of a human with an interpretable classifier outperforms one with a black box classifier.

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arXiv2018

Impact of Cooperation in Flow-Induced Diffusive Mobile Molecular Communication

Motivated by the numerous healthcare applications of molecular communication (MC) inside blood vessels, this work considers relay/cooperative nanomachine (CN)-assisted mobile MC between a source nanomachine (SN) and a destination nanomachine (DN) where each nanomachine is mobile in a flow-induced diffusive channel. Using the first hitting time model, the impact of an intermediate CN on the performance of the CN-assisted diffusive mobile MC system with fully absorbing receivers is analyzed in the presence of inter-symbol interference, multi-source interference, and counting errors. For this purpose, the likelihood ratio test based optimal symbol detection scheme is obtained at the DN considering the non-ideal nature of CN, i.e., CN can be in error with a finite probability. Further, to characterize the system performance, closed-form expressions for the end-to-end probabilities of detection and false alarm at the DN are derived between the SN-DN pair incorporating the detection performance of the intermediate CN. In addition, the channel capacity expression is also derived for the aforementioned scenario. Simulation results are presented to corroborate the theoretical results derived and also, to yield insights into system performance.

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arXiv2018

Robust Decentralized Learning Using ADMM with Unreliable Agents

Many machine learning problems can be formulated as consensus optimization problems which can be solved efficiently via a cooperative multi-agent system. However, the agents in the system can be unreliable due to a variety of reasons: noise, faults and attacks. Providing erroneous updates leads the optimization process in a wrong direction, and degrades the performance of distributed machine learning algorithms. This paper considers the problem of decentralized learning using ADMM in the presence of unreliable agents. First, we rigorously analyze the effect of erroneous updates (in ADMM learning iterations) on the convergence behavior of multi-agent system. We show that the algorithm linearly converges to a neighborhood of the optimal solution under certain conditions and characterize the neighborhood size analytically. Next, we provide guidelines for network design to achieve a faster convergence. We also provide conditions on the erroneous updates for exact convergence to the optimal solution. Finally, to mitigate the influence of unreliable agents, we propose \textsf{ROAD}, a robust variant of ADMM, and show its resilience to unreliable agents with an exact convergence to the optimum.

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arXiv2018

Cognitive MIMO-RF/FSO Cooperative Relay Communication with Mobile Nodes and Imperfect Channel State Information

This work analyzes the performance of an underlay cognitive radio based decode-and-forward mixed multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) radio frequency/free space optical (RF/FSO) cooperative relay system with multiple mobile secondary and primary user nodes. The effect of imperfect channel state information (CSI) arising due to channel estimation error is also considered at the secondary user transmitters (SU-TXs) and relay on the power control and symbol detection processes respectively. A unique aspect of this work is that both fixed and proportional interference power constraints are employed to limit the interference at the primary user receivers (PU-RXs). Analytical results are derived to characterize the exact and asymptotic outage and bit error probabilities of the above system under practical conditions of node mobility and imperfect CSI, together with impairments of the optical channel, such as path loss, atmospheric turbulence, and pointing errors, for orthogonal space-time block coded transmission between each SU-TX and relay. Finally, simulation results are presented to yield various interesting insights into the system performance such as the benefits of a midamble versus preamble for channel estimation.

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arXiv2018

Decision Tree Design for Classification in Crowdsourcing Systems

In this paper, we present a novel sequential paradigm for classification in crowdsourcing systems. Considering that workers are unreliable and they perform the tests with errors, we study the construction of decision trees so as to minimize the probability of mis-classification. By exploiting the connection between probability of mis-classification and entropy at each level of the decision tree, we propose two algorithms for decision tree design. Furthermore, the worker assignment problem is studied when workers can be assigned to different tests of the decision tree to provide a trade-off between classification cost and resulting error performance. Numerical results are presented for illustration.

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arXiv2018

Optimal Sensor Collaboration for Parameter Tracking Using Energy Harvesting Sensors

In this paper, we design an optimal sensor collaboration strategy among neighboring nodes while tracking a time-varying parameter using wireless sensor networks in the presence of imperfect communication channels. The sensor network is assumed to be self-powered, where sensors are equipped with energy harvesters that replenish energy from the environment. In order to minimize the mean square estimation error of parameter tracking, we propose an online sensor collaboration policy subject to real-time energy harvesting constraints. The proposed energy allocation strategy is computationally light and only relies on the second-order statistics of the system parameters. For this, we first consider an offline non-convex optimization problem, which is solved exactly using semidefinite programming. Based on the offline solution, we design an online power allocation policy that requires minimal online computation and satisfies the dynamics of energy flow at each sensor. We prove that the proposed online policy is asymptotically equivalent to the optimal offline solution and show its convergence rate and robustness. We empirically show that the estimation performance of the proposed online scheme is better than that of the online scheme when channel state information about the dynamical system is available in the low SNR regime. Numerical results are conducted to demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach.

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arXiv2018

Human-Machine Inference Networks For Smart Decision Making: Opportunities and Challenges

The emerging paradigm of Human-Machine Inference Networks (HuMaINs) combines complementary cognitive strengths of humans and machines in an intelligent manner to tackle various inference tasks and achieves higher performance than either humans or machines by themselves. While inference performance optimization techniques for human-only or sensor-only networks are quite mature, HuMaINs require novel signal processing and machine learning solutions. In this paper, we present an overview of the HuMaINs architecture with a focus on three main issues that include architecture design, inference algorithms including security/privacy challenges, and application areas/use cases.

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arXiv2017

A Spectral Approach for the Design of Experiments: Design, Analysis and Algorithms

This paper proposes a new approach to construct high quality space-filling sample designs. First, we propose a novel technique to quantify the space-filling property and optimally trade-off uniformity and randomness in sample designs in arbitrary dimensions. Second, we connect the proposed metric (defined in the spatial domain) to the objective measure of the design performance (defined in the spectral domain). This connection serves as an analytic framework for evaluating the qualitative properties of space-filling designs in general. Using the theoretical insights provided by this spatial-spectral analysis, we derive the notion of optimal space-filling designs, which we refer to as space-filling spectral designs. Third, we propose an efficient estimator to evaluate the space-filling properties of sample designs in arbitrary dimensions and use it to develop an optimization framework to generate high quality space-filling designs. Finally, we carry out a detailed performance comparison on two different applications in 2 to 6 dimensions: a) image reconstruction and b) surrogate modeling on several benchmark optimization functions and an inertial confinement fusion (ICF) simulation code. We demonstrate that the propose spectral designs significantly outperform existing approaches especially in high dimensions.

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arXiv2017

Optimal Crowdsourced Classification with a Reject Option in the Presence of Spammers

We explore the design of an effective crowdsourcing system for an $M$-ary classification task. Crowd workers complete simple binary microtasks whose results are aggregated to give the final decision. We consider the scenario where the workers have a reject option so that they are allowed to skip microtasks when they are unable to or choose not to respond to binary microtasks. We present an aggregation approach using a weighted majority voting rule, where each worker's response is assigned an optimized weight to maximize crowd's classification performance.

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arXiv2017

A Memristor-Based Optimization Framework for AI Applications

Memristors have recently received significant attention as ubiquitous device-level components for building a novel generation of computing systems. These devices have many promising features, such as non-volatility, low power consumption, high density, and excellent scalability. The ability to control and modify biasing voltages at the two terminals of memristors make them promising candidates to perform matrix-vector multiplications and solve systems of linear equations. In this article, we discuss how networks of memristors arranged in crossbar arrays can be used for efficiently solving optimization and machine learning problems. We introduce a new memristor-based optimization framework that combines the computational merit of memristor crossbars with the advantages of an operator splitting method, alternating direction method of multipliers (ADMM). Here, ADMM helps in splitting a complex optimization problem into subproblems that involve the solution of systems of linear equations. The capability of this framework is shown by applying it to linear programming, quadratic programming, and sparse optimization. In addition to ADMM, implementation of a customized power iteration (PI) method for eigenvalue/eigenvector computation using memristor crossbars is discussed. The memristor-based PI method can further be applied to principal component analysis (PCA). The use of memristor crossbars yields a significant speed-up in computation, and thus, we believe, has the potential to advance optimization and machine learning research in artificial intelligence (AI).

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