The critical nature of vehicular communications requires their extensive testing and evaluation. Analytical models can represent an attractive and cost-effective approach for such evaluation if they can adequately model all underlying effects that impact the performance of vehicular communications. Several analytical models have been proposed to date to model vehicular communications based on the IEEE 802.11p (or DSRC) standard. However, existing models normally model in detail the MAC (Medium Access Control), and generally simplify the propagation and interference effects. This reduces their value as an alternative to evaluate the performance of vehicular communications. This paper addresses this gap, and presents new analytical models that accurately model the performance of vehicle-to-vehicle communications based on the IEEE 802.11p standard. The models jointly account for a detailed modeling of the propagation and interference effects, as well as the impact of the hidden terminal problem. The model quantifies the PDR (Packet Delivery Ratio) as a function of the distance between transmitter and receiver. The paper also presents new analytical models to quantify the probability of the four different types of packet errors in IEEE 802.11p. In addition, the paper presents the first analytical model capable to accurately estimate the Channel Busy Ratio (CBR) metric even under high channel load levels. All the analytical models are validated by means of simulation for a wide range of parameters, including traffic densities, packet transmission frequencies, transmission power levels, data rates and packet sizes. An implementation of the models is provided openly to facilitate their use by the community.
Reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS) is very promising for wireless networks to achieve high energy efficiency, extended coverage, improved capacity, massive connectivity, etc. To unleash the full potentials of RIS-aided communications, acquiring accurate channel state information is crucial, which however is very challenging. For RIS-aided multiple-input and multiple-output (MIMO) communications, the existing channel estimation methods have computational complexity growing rapidly with the number of RIS units $N$ (e.g., in the order of $N^2$ or $N^3$) and/or have special requirements on the matrices involved (e.g., the matrices need to be sparse for algorithm convergence to achieve satisfactory performance), which hinder their applications. In this work, instead of using the conventional signal model in the literature, we derive a new signal model obtained through proper vectorization and reduction operations. Then, leveraging the unitary approximate message passing (UAMP), we develop a more efficient channel estimator that has complexity linear with $N$ and does not have special requirements on the relevant matrices, thanks to the robustness of UAMP. These facilitate the applications of the proposed algorithm to a general RIS-aided MIMO system with a larger $N$. Moreover, extensive numerical results show that the proposed estimator delivers much better performance and/or requires significantly less number of training symbols, thereby leading to notable reductions in both training overhead and latency.
To draw real-world evidence about the comparative effectiveness of multiple time-varying treatment regimens on patient survival, we develop a joint marginal structural proportional hazards model and novel weighting schemes in continuous time to account for time-varying confounding and censoring. Our methods formulate complex longitudinal treatments with multiple ``start/stop'' switches as the recurrent events with discontinuous intervals of treatment eligibility. We derive the weights in continuous time to handle a complex longitudinal dataset on its own terms, without the need to discretize or artificially align the measurement times. We further propose using machine learning models designed for censored survival data with time-varying covariates and the kernel function estimator of the baseline intensity to efficiently estimate the continuous-time weights. Our simulations demonstrate that the proposed methods provide better bias reduction and nominal coverage probability when analyzing observational longitudinal survival data with irregularly spaced time intervals, compared to conventional methods that require aligned measurement time points. We apply the proposed methods to a large-scale COVID-19 dataset to estimate the causal effects of several COVID-19 treatment strategies on in-hospital mortality or ICU admission, and provide new insights relative to findings from randomized trials.
The R package BayesPPD (Bayesian Power Prior Design) supports Bayesian power and type I error calculation and model fitting after incorporating historical data with the power prior and the normalized power prior for generalized linear models (GLM). The package accommodates summary level data or subject level data with covariate information. It supports use of multiple historical datasets as well as design without historical data. Supported distributions for responses include normal, binary (Bernoulli/binomial), Poisson and exponential. The power parameter $a_0$ can be fixed or modeled as random using a normalized power prior for each of these distributions. In addition, the package supports the use of arbitrary sampling priors for computing Bayesian power and type I error rates, and has specific features for GLMs that semi-automatically generate sampling priors from historical data. Since sample size determination (SSD) for GLMs is computationally intensive, an approximation method based on asymptotic theory has been implemented to support applications using the power prior. In addition to describing the statistical methodology and functions implemented in the package to enable SSD, we also demonstrate the use of BayesPPD in two comprehensive case studies.
The broadcast nature of wireless communication systems makes wireless transmission extremely susceptible to eavesdropping and even malicious interference. Physical layer security technology can effectively protect the private information sent by the transmitter from being listened to by illegal eavesdroppers, thus ensuring the privacy and security of communication between the transmitter and legitimate users. The development of mobile communication presents new challenges to physical layer security research. This paper provides a comprehensive survey of the physical layer security research on various promising mobile technologies, including directional modulation (DM), spatial modulation (SM), covert communication, intelligent reflecting surface (IRS)-aided communication, and so on. Finally, future trends and the unresolved technical challenges are summarized in physical layer security for mobile communications.
Analysis and use of stochastic models represented by a discrete-time Markov Chain require evaluation of performance measures and characterization of its stationary distribution. Analytical solutions are often unavailable when the system states are continuous or mixed. This paper presents a new method for computing the stationary distribution and performance measures for stochastic systems represented by continuous-, or mixed-state Markov chains. We show the asymptotic convergence and provide deterministic non-asymptotic error bounds for our method under the supremum norm. Our finite approximation method is near-optimal among all discrete approximate distributions, including empirical distributions obtained from Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC). Numerical experiments validate the accuracy and efficiency of our method and show that it significantly outperforms MCMC based approach.
Analog, low-voltage electronics show great promise in producing silicon neurons (SiNs) with unprecedented levels of energy efficiency. Yet, their inherently high susceptibility to process, voltage and temperature (PVT) variations, and noise has long been recognised as a major bottleneck in developing effective neuromorphic solutions. Inspired by spike transmission studies in biophysical, neocortical neurons, we demonstrate that the inherent noise and variability can coexist with reliable spike transmission in analog SiNs, similarly to biological neurons. We illustrate this property on a recent neuromorphic model of a bursting neuron by showcasing three different relevant types of reliable event transmission: single spike transmission, burst transmission, and the on-off control of a half-centre oscillator (HCO) network.
The Internet of Vehicles (IoV) is flourishing and offers various applications relating to road safety, traffic and fuel efficiency, and infotainment. Dealing with security and privacy threats and managing the trust (detecting malicious and misbehaving peers) in IoV remains the most significant concern. Artificial Intelligence is one of the most revolutionizing technologies, and the predictive power of its machine learning models can help detect intrusions and misbehaviors. Similarly, empowering the state-of-the-art IoV security framework with blockchain can make it secure and resilient. This article discusses joint AI and blockchain for security, privacy and trust-related risks in IoV. This paper also presents problems, challenges, requirements and solutions using ML and blockchain to address aforementioned issues in IoV.
In today's era, there is no doubt about the importance of information. However, people still have different opinions on information, and the research on information measurement is also inconclusive. Based on the researches of predecessors, this paper summarizes the important progress and main shortcomings in understanding and measurement of information, discusses the basic problems such as the essential connotation of objectivity of information, puts forward the mathematical model of information and the basic properties of information, and deduces and establishes the universality, delicacy, persistence, richness, inclusiveness, delay, etc.. The structural model and mathematical basic theoretical framework of information space are formed. The motion law of information flow in information space is systematically and comprehensively analyzed, and the information dynamics for complex information system is preliminarily discussed.
The paper is concerned with common shock models of claim triangles. These are usually constructed as a linear combinations of shock components and idiosyncratic components. Previous literature has discussed the unbalanced property of such models, whereby the shocks may over- or under-contribute to some observations. The literature has also introduced corrections for this. The present paper discusses 'auto-balanced' models, in which all shock and idiosyncratic components contribute to observations such that their proportionate contributions are constant from one observation to another. The conditions for auto-balance are found to be simple and applicable to a wide range of model structures. Numerical illustrations are given.
Over the past years, there has been a resurgence of Datalog-based systems in the database community as well as in industry. In this context, it has been recognized that to handle the complex knowl\-edge-based scenarios encountered today, such as reasoning over large knowledge graphs, Datalog has to be extended with features such as existential quantification. Yet, Datalog-based reasoning in the presence of existential quantification is in general undecidable. Many efforts have been made to define decidable fragments. Warded Datalog+/- is a very promising one, as it captures PTIME complexity while allowing ontological reasoning. Yet so far, no implementation of Warded Datalog+/- was available. In this paper we present the Vadalog system, a Datalog-based system for performing complex logic reasoning tasks, such as those required in advanced knowledge graphs. The Vadalog system is Oxford's contribution to the VADA research programme, a joint effort of the universities of Oxford, Manchester and Edinburgh and around 20 industrial partners. As the main contribution of this paper, we illustrate the first implementation of Warded Datalog+/-, a high-performance Datalog+/- system utilizing an aggressive termination control strategy. We also provide a comprehensive experimental evaluation.