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Zhang

Publications and source records attributed to Zhang.

At least 109 records · Page 6Linked to original sources

Proceedings of the Third International Conference on Cloud and Robotics (ICCR2016)

The 3rd International conference on Cloud and Robotics (ICCR2016) was held November 23-23, 2016 in Saint Quentin (France). ICCR is the premier gathering of practitioners and researchers interested in how to bring the power of Cloud computing and Robotics to a new cutting-edge domain: Cloud robotics. The objective of ICCR is a working conference, where together Cloud computing and robotics researchers/practitioners to exchange their ideas. Different with traditional academic conference, ICCR is also a forum for researchers and practitioners in the two disciplines, fostering the collaboration of Cloud computing with robotics, and for practitioners to show their working projects and to discuss and exchange their problems with researchers to find a solution.

cs.RO↗

Distributed FD-MIMO: Cellular Evolution for 5G and Beyond

This paper presents the next evolution of FD-MIMO technology for beyond 5G, where antennas of the FD-MIMO system are placed in a distributed manner throughout the cell in a multi-cell deployment scenario. This system, referred to as Distributed FD-MIMO (D-FD-MIMO) system, is capable of providing higher cell average throughput as well as more uniform user experience compared to the conventional FD-MIMO system. System level simulations are performed to evaluate performance. Our results show that the proposed D-FD-MIMO system achieves 1.4-2 times cell average throughput gain compared to the FD-MIMO system. The insights of performance gain are provided. Hardware implementation challenges and potential standards impact are also presented.

cs.IT↗

Distributed Scheduling in Wireless Powered Communication Network: Protocol Design and Performance Analysis

Wireless powered communication network (WPCN) is a novel networking paradigm that uses radio frequency (RF) wireless energy transfer (WET) technology to power the information transmissions of wireless devices (WDs). When energy and information are transferred in the same frequency band, a major design issue is transmission scheduling to avoid interference and achieve high communication performance. Commonly used centralized scheduling methods in WPCN may result in high control signaling overhead and thus are not suitable for wireless networks constituting a large number of WDs with random locations and dynamic operations. To tackle this issue, we propose in this paper a distributed scheduling protocol for energy and information transmissions in WPCN. Specifically, we allow a WD that is about to deplete its battery to broadcast an energy request buzz (ERB), which triggers WET from its associated hybrid access point (HAP) to recharge the battery. If no ERB is sent, the WDs contend to transmit data to the HAP using the conventional $p$-persistent CSMA (carrier sensing multiple access). In particular, we propose an energy queueing model based on an energy decoupling property to derive the throughput performance. Our analysis is verified through simulations under practical network parameters, which demonstrate good throughput performance of the distributed scheduling protocol and reveal some interesting design insights that are different from conventional contention-based communication network assuming the WDs are powered with unlimited energy supplies.

cs.NI↗

Towards An Architecture-Centric Approach to Manage Variability of Cloud Robotics

Cloud robotics is a field of robotics that attempts to invoke Cloud technologies such as Cloud computing, Cloud storage, and other Internet technologies centered around the benefits of converged infrastructure and shared services for robotics. In a few short years, Cloud robotics as a newly emerged field has already received much research and industrial attention. The use of the Cloud for robotics and automation brings some potential benefits largely ameliorating the performance of robotic systems. However, there are also some challenges. First of all, from the viewpoint of architecture, how to model and describe the architectures of Cloud robotic systems? How to manage the variability of Cloud robotic systems? How to maximize the reuse of their architectures? In this paper, we present an architecture approach to easily design and understand Cloud robotic systems and manage their variability.

cs.RO↗

Online Charging Scheduling Algorithms of Electric Vehicles in Smart Grid: An Overview

As an environment-friendly substitute for conventional fuel-powered vehicles, electric vehicles (EVs) and their components have been widely developed and deployed worldwide. The large-scale integration of EVs into power grid brings both challenges and opportunities to the system performance. On one hand, the load demand from EV charging imposes large impact on the stability and efficiency of power grid. On the other hand, EVs could potentially act as mobile energy storage systems to improve the power network performance, such as load flattening, fast frequency control, and facilitating renewable energy integration. Evidently, uncontrolled EV charging could lead to inefficient power network operation or even security issues. This spurs enormous research interests in designing charging coordination mechanisms. A key design challenge here lies in the lack of complete knowledge of events that occur in the future. Indeed, the amount of knowledge of future events significantly impacts the design of efficient charging control algorithms. This article focuses on introducing online EV charging scheduling techniques that deal with different degrees of uncertainty and randomness of future knowledge. Besides, we highlight the promising future research directions for EV charging control.

cs.OH↗

Locally Orthogonal Training Design for Cloud-RANs Based on Graph Coloring

We consider training-based channel estimation for a cloud radio access network (CRAN), in which a large amount of remote radio heads (RRHs) and users are randomly scattered over the service area. In this model, assigning orthogonal training sequences to all users will incur a substantial overhead to the overall network, and is even impossible when the number of users is large. Therefore, in this paper, we introduce the notion of local orthogonality, under which the training sequence of a user is orthogonal to those of the other users in its neighborhood. We model the design of locally orthogonal training sequences as a graph coloring problem. Then, based on the theory of random geometric graph, we show that the minimum training length scales in the order of $\ln K$, where $K$ is the number of users covered by a CRAN. This indicates that the proposed training design yields a scalable solution to sustain the need of large-scale cooperation in CRANs. Numerical results show that the proposed scheme outperforms other reference schemes.

cs.IT↗

Profit-Maximizing Planning and Control of Battery Energy Storage Systems for Primary Frequency Control

We consider a two-level profit-maximizing strategy, including planning and control, for battery energy storage system (BESS) owners that participate in the primary frequency control (PFC) market. Specifically, the optimal BESS control minimizes the operating cost by keeping the state of charge (SoC) in an optimal range. Through rigorous analysis, we prove that the optimal BESS control is a "state-invariant" strategy in the sense that the optimal SoC range does not vary with the state of the system. As such, the optimal control strategy can be computed offline once and for all with very low complexity. Regarding the BESS planning, we prove that the the minimum operating cost is a decreasing convex function of the BESS energy capacity. This leads to the optimal BESS sizing that strikes a balance between the capital investment and operating cost. Our work here provides a useful theoretical framework for understanding the planning and control strategies that maximize the economic benefits of BESSs in ancillary service markets.

eess.SY↗

A Novel and Efficient Vector Quantization Based CPRI Compression Algorithm

The future wireless network, such as Centralized Radio Access Network (C-RAN), will need to deliver data rate about 100 to 1000 times the current 4G technology. For C-RAN based network architecture, there is a pressing need for tremendous enhancement of the effective data rate of the Common Public Radio Interface (CPRI). Compression of CPRI data is one of the potential enhancements. In this paper, we introduce a vector quantization based compression algorithm for CPRI links, utilizing Lloyd algorithm. Methods to vectorize the I/Q samples and enhanced initialization of Lloyd algorithm for codebook training are investigated for improved performance. Multi-stage vector quantization and unequally protected multi-group quantization are considered to reduce codebook search complexity and codebook size. Simulation results show that our solution can achieve compression of 4 times for uplink and 4.5 times for downlink, within 2% Error Vector Magnitude (EVM) distortion. Remarkably, vector quantization codebook proves to be quite robust against data modulation mismatch, fading, signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) and Doppler spread.

cs.IT↗

Synthetic Generation of Solar States for Smart Grid: A Multiple Segment Markov Chain Apptoach

The use of photovoltaic (PV) sources is becoming very popular in smart grid for their ecological benefits, with higher scalability and utilization for local generation and delivery. PV can also potentially avoid the energy losses that are normally associated with long-range grid distribution. The increased penetration of solar panels, however, has introduced a need for solar energy models that are capable of producing realistic synthetic data with small error margins. Such models, for instance, can be used to design the appropriate size of energy storage devices or to determine the maximum charging rate of a PV-powered electric vehicle (EV) charging station. In this regard, this paper proposes a stochastic model for solar generation using a Markov chain approach. Based on real data, it is first shown that the solar states are inter-dependent, and thus suitable for modeling using a Markov model. Then, the probabilities of transition between states are shown to be heterogeneous over different time segments. A model is proposed that captures the inter temporal dependency of solar irradiance through segmentation of the Markov chain across different times of the day. In the studied model, different state transition matrices are constructed for different time segments, which the proposed algorithm then uses to generate the solar states for different times of the day. Numerical examples are provided to show the effectiveness of the proposed synthetic generator.

cs.PF↗

Graphical Methods for Defense Against False-data Injection Attacks on Power System State Estimation

The normal operation of power system relies on accurate state estimation that faithfully reflects the physical aspects of the electrical power grids. However, recent research shows that carefully synthesized false-data injection attacks can bypass the security system and introduce arbitrary errors to state estimates. In this paper, we use graphical methods to study defending mechanisms against false-data injection attacks on power system state estimation. By securing carefully selected meter measurements, no false data injection attack can be launched to compromise any set of state variables. We characterize the optimal protection problem, which protects the state variables with minimum number of measurements, as a variant Steiner tree problem in a graph. Based on the graphical characterization, we propose both exact and reduced-complexity approximation algorithms. In particular, we show that the proposed tree-pruning based approximation algorithm significantly reduces computational complexity, while yielding negligible performance degradation compared with the optimal algorithms. The advantageous performance of the proposed defending mechanisms is verified in IEEE standard power system testcases.

cs.OH↗

Online Coordinated Charging Decision Algorithm for Electric Vehicles without Future Information

The large-scale integration of plug-in electric vehicles (PEVs) to the power grid spurs the need for efficient charging coordination mechanisms. It can be shown that the optimal charging schedule smooths out the energy consumption over time so as to minimize the total energy cost. In practice, however, it is hard to smooth out the energy consumption perfectly, because the future PEV charging demand is unknown at the moment when the charging rate of an existing PEV needs to be determined. In this paper, we propose an Online cooRdinated CHARging Decision (ORCHARD) algorithm, which minimizes the energy cost without knowing the future information. Through rigorous proof, we show that ORCHARD is strictly feasible in the sense that it guarantees to fulfill all charging demands before due time. Meanwhile, it achieves the best known competitive ratio of 2.39. To further reduce the computational complexity of the algorithm, we propose a novel reduced-complexity algorithm to replace the standard convex optimization techniques used in ORCHARD. Through extensive simulations, we show that the average performance gap between ORCHARD and the offline optimal solution, which utilizes the complete future information, is as small as 14%. By setting a proper speeding factor, the average performance gap can be further reduced to less than 6%.

cs.DS↗

Phase sensitive amplification in silicon photonic crystal waveguides

We experimentally demonstrate phase sensitive amplification (PSA) in a silicon photonic crystal waveguide based on pump-degenerate four-wave mixing. An 11 dB phase extinction ratio is obtained in a record compact 196 μm nanophotonic device due to broadband slow-light, in spite of the presence of two-photon absorption and free-carriers. Numerical calculations show good agreement with the experimental results.

physics.optics↗

Robust power allocation for energy-efficient location aware networks

In wireless location-aware networks, mobile nodes (agents) typically obtain their positions through ranging with respect to nodes with known positions (anchors). Transmit power allocation not only affects network lifetime, throughput, and interference, but also determines localization accuracy. In this paper, we present an optimization framework for robust power allocation in network localization to tackle imperfect knowledge of network parameters. In particular, we formulate power allocation problems to minimize the squared position error bound (SPEB) and the maximum directional position error bound (mDPEB), respectively, for a given power budget. We show that such formulations can be efficiently solved via conic programming. Moreover, we design an efficient power allocation scheme that allows distributed computations among agents. The simulation results show that the proposed schemes significantly outperform uniform power allocation, and the robust schemes outperform their non-robust counterparts when the network parameters are subject to uncertainty.

cs.IT↗

Globally Optimal Distributed Power Control for Nonconcave Utility Maximization

Transmit power control in wireless networks has long been recognized as an effective mechanism to mitigate co-channel interference. Due to the highly non-convex nature, optimal power control is known to be difficult to achieve if a system utility is to be maximized. To date, there does not yet exist a distributed power control algorithm that maximizes any form of system utility, despite the importance of distributed implementation for the wireless infrastructureless networks such as ad hoc and sensor networks. This paper fills this gap by developing a Gibbs Sampling based Asynchronous distributed power control algorithm (referred to as GLAD). The proposed algorithm quickly converges to the global optimal solution regardless of the concavity, continuity, differentiability and monotonicity of the utility function. Same as other existing distributed power control algorithms, GLAD requires extensive message passing among all users in the network, which leads to high signaling overhead and high processing complexity. To address this issue, this paper further proposes a variant of the GLAD algorithm, referred to as I-GLAD, where the prefix "I" stands for infrequent message passing. The convergence of I-GLAD can be proved regardless of the reduction in the message passing rate. To further reduce the processing complexity at each transmitter, we develop an enhanced version of I-GLAD, referred to as NI-GLAD, where only the control messages from the neighboring links are processed. Our simulation results show that I-GLAD approximately converges to the global optimal solution regardless of the type of the system utility function. Meanwhile, the optimality of the solution obtained by NI-GLAD depends on the selection of the neighborhood size.

cs.NI↗

TDMA Achieves the Optimal Diversity Gain in Relay-Assisted Cellular Networks

In multi-access wireless networks, transmission scheduling is a key component that determines the efficiency and fairness of wireless spectrum allocation. At one extreme, greedy opportunistic scheduling that allocates airtime to the user with the largest instantaneous channel gain achieves the optimal spectrum efficiency and transmission reliability but the poorest user-level fairness. At the other extreme, fixed TDMA scheduling achieves the fairest airtime allocation but the lowest spectrum efficiency and transmission reliability. To balance the two competing objectives, extensive research efforts have been spent on designing opportunistic scheduling schemes that reach certain tradeoff points between the two extremes. In this paper and in contrast to the conventional wisdom, we find that in relay-assisted cellular networks, fixed TDMA achieves the same optimal diversity gain as greedy opportunistic scheduling. In addition, by incorporating very limited opportunism, a simple relaxed-TDMA scheme asymptotically achieves the same optimal system reliability in terms of outage probability as greedy opportunistic scheduling. This reveals a surprising fact: transmission reliability and user fairness are no longer contradicting each other in relay-assisted systems. They can be both achieved by the simple TDMA schemes. For practical implementations, we further propose a fully distributed algorithm to implement the relaxed-TDMA scheme. Our results here may find applications in the design of next-generation wireless communication systems with relay architectures such as LTE-advanced and WiMAX.

cs.NI↗

Improving PPM Algorithm Using Dictionaries

We propose a method to improve traditional character-based PPM text compression algorithms. Consider a text file as a sequence of alternating words and non-words, the basic idea of our algorithm is to encode non-words and prefixes of words using character-based context models and encode suffixes of words using dictionary models. By using dictionary models, the algorithm can encode multiple characters as a whole, and thus enhance the compression efficiency. The advantages of the proposed algorithm are: 1) it does not require any text preprocessing; 2) it does not need any explicit codeword to identify switch between context and dictionary models; 3) it can be applied to any character-based PPM algorithms without incurring much additional computational cost. Test results show that significant improvements can be obtained over character-based PPM, especially in low order cases.

cs.IT↗

On the Degree of Freedom for Multi-Source Multi-Destination Wireless Network with Multi-layer Relays

Degree of freedom (DoF) region provides an approximation of capacity region in high signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) regime, while sum DoF gives the scaling factor. In this correspondence, we analyse the DoF region and sum DoF for unicast layered multi-hop relay wireless networks with arbitrary number of source/destination/relay nodes, arbitrary number of hops and arbitrary number of antennas at each node. The result is valid for quite a few message topologies. We reveal the limitation on capacity of multi-hop network due to the concatenation structure and show the similarity with capacitor network. From the analysis on bound gap and optimality condition, the ultimate capacity of multi-hop network is shown to be strictly inferior to that of single-hop network. Linear scaling law can be established when the number of hops is fixed. At cost of channel state information at transmitters (CSIT) for each component single-hop network, our achievable scheme avoids routing and simplifies scheduling.

cs.IT↗

How Does Multiple-Packet Reception Capability Scale the Performance of Wireless Local Area Networks?

Thanks to its simplicity and cost efficiency, wireless local area network (WLAN) enjoys unique advantages in providing high-speed and low-cost wireless services in hot spots and indoor environments. Traditional WLAN medium-access-control (MAC) protocols assume that only one station can transmit at a time: simultaneous transmissions of more than one station cause the destruction of all packets involved. By exploiting recent advances in PHY-layer multiuser detection (MUD) techniques, it is possible for a receiver to receive multiple packets simultaneously. This paper argues that such multipacket reception (MPR) capability can greatly enhance the capacity of future WLANs. In addition, the paper provides the MAC-layer and PHY-layer designs needed to achieve the improved capacity. First, to demonstrate MPR as a powerful capacity-enhancement technique, we prove a "super-linearity" result, which states that the system throughput per unit cost increases as the MPR capability increases. Second, we show that the commonly deployed binary exponential backoff (BEB) algorithm in today's WLAN MAC may not be optimal in an MPR system, and that the optimal backoff factor increases with the MPR capability, the number of packets that can be received simultaneously. Third, based on the above insights, we design a joint MAC-PHY layer protocol for an IEEE 802.11-like WLAN that incorporates advanced PHY-layer signal processing techniques to implement MPR.

cs.NI↗