In future wireless network, user experience and energy efficiency will play more and more important roles in the communication systems compared to their roles at present. Quality of experience (QoE) and Energy Efficiency (EE) become the widely used metrics. In this paper, we study a combinatorial problem of QoE and EE and investigate a fair power allocation in heterogeneous networks. We first design a new metric, QoE-aware EE (QEE) to reflect the relationship of QoE and energy. Then, the concept of Utopia QEE is introduced, which is defined as the achievable maximum QEE in ideal conditions, for each user. Finally, we transform the power allocation process to an optimization of ratio of QEE and Utopia QEE and use invasive weed optimization (IWO) algorithm to solve the optimization problem. Numerical simulation results indicate that the proposed algorithm can get converged and efficiently improve the system energy efficiency and the QoE for each user.

The paper proposes a code-clone detection method that gives the highest possible precision and recall, without giving much attention to efficiency and scalability. The goal is to automatically create a reliable reference corpus that can be used as a basis for evaluating the precision and recall of clone detection tools. The algorithm takes an abstract-syntax-tree representation of source code and thoroughly examines every possible pair of all duplicate tree patterns in the tree, while avoiding unnecessary and duplicated comparisons wherever possible. The largest possible duplicate patterns are then collected in the set of pattern clusters that are used to identify code clones. The method is implemented and evaluated for a standard set of open-source Java applications. The experimental result shows very high precision and recall. False-negative clones missed by our method are all non-contiguous clones. Finally, the concept of neighbor patterns, which can be used to improve recall by detecting non-contiguous clones and intertwined clones, is proposed.

Wi-Fi Access Point (AP) optimization approaches are used in indoor positioning systems for signal coverage enhancement, as well as positioning precision improvement. Although the huge power consumption of the AP optimization forms a serious problem due to the signal coverage requirement for large-scale indoor environment, the conventional approaches treat the problem of power consumption independent from the design of indoor positioning systems. This paper proposes a new Fast Water-filling algorithm Group Power Constraint (FWA-GPC) based Wi-Fi AP optimization approach for indoor positioning in which the power consumed by the AP optimization is significantly considered. This paper has three contributions. First, it is not restricted to conventional concept of one AP for one candidate AP location, but considered spare APs once the active APs break off. Second, it utilizes the concept of water-filling model from adaptive channel power allocation to calculate the number of APs for each candidate AP location by maximizing the location fingerprint discrimination. Third, it uses a fast version, namely Fast Water-filling algorithm, to search for the optimal solution efficiently. The experimental results conducted in two typical indoor Wi-Fi environments prove that the proposed FWA-GPC performs better than the conventional AP optimization approaches.

Multimedia applications over wireless networks have been evolving to augmented reality or virtual reality services. However, a rich data size compared to conventional multimedia services causes bandwidth bottlenecks over wireless networks, which is one of the main reasons why those applications are not used widely. To overcome this limitation, bandwidth aggregation techniques, which exploit a multi-path transmission, have been considered to maximize link utilization. Currently, most of the conventional researches have been focusing on the user end problems to improve the quality of service (QoS) through optimal load distribution. In this paper, we address the joint pricing and load distribution problem for multi-homing in heterogeneous wireless access networks (ANs), considering the interests of both the users and the service providers. Specifically, we consider profit from resource allocation and cost of power consumption expenditure for operation as an utility of each service provider. Here, users decide how much to request the resource and how to split the resource over heterogeneous wireless ANs to minimize their cost while supporting the required QoS. Then, service providers compete with each other by setting the price to maximize their utilities over user reactions. We study the behaviors of users and service providers by analyzing their hierarchical decision-making process as a multileader-, multifollower Stackelberg game. We show that both the user and service provider strategies are closed form solutions. Finally, we discuss how the proposed scheme is well converged to equilibrium points.

Mobile opportunistic network is a kind of ad hoc networks, which implements the multi-hop routing communication with the help of contact opportunity brought about by the mobility of the nodes. It always uses opportunistic data transmission mode based on store-carry-forward to solve intermittent connect problem of link. Although many routing schemes have been proposed, most of them adopt the greedy transmission mode to pursue a higher delivery efficient, which result in unfairness extremely among nodes. While, this issue has not been paid enough attention up to now. In this paper, we analyzed the main factors that reflect fairness among nodes, modeled routing selection as a multiple attribute decision making problem, and proposed our Fairness-aware Routing Strategy, named FARS. To evaluate the performance of our FARS, extensive simulations and analysis have been done based on a real-life dataset and a synthetic dataset, respectively. The results show that, compared with other existing protocols, our FARS can greatly improve the fairness of the nodes when ensuring the overall delivery performance of the network.

Considering a dual-hop energy-harvesting (EH) relaying system, this paper advocates novel relaying protocols based on adaptive time power switching-based relaying (AR) architecture for amplify-and-forward (AF) mode. We introduce novel system model relaying network with impacts of co-channel interference (CCI) and derive analytical expressions for the average harvested energy, outage probability, and the optimal throughput of the information transmission link, taking into account the effect of CCI from neighbor cellular users. In particular, we consider such neighbor users procedure CCI both on the relay and destination nodes. Theoretical results show that, in comparison with the conventional solutions, the proposed model can achieve optimal throughput efficiency for sufficiently small threshold SNR with condition of reasonable controlling time switching fractions and power splitting fractions in concerned AR protocol. We also explore impacts of transmission distances in each hop, transmission rate, the other key parameters of AR to throughput performance for different channel models. Simulation results are presented to corroborate the proposed methodology.

In this paper, we propose a novel inter-cell handover approach from a new perspective in dense Heterogeneous and Small Cell Networks (HetSNets). We first devise a cell selection mechanism to choose a proper candidate small cell for the UEs that tend to implement inter-small cell handover (ICH). By exploiting the property of a typical non-concentric circle, i.e., circle of Apollonius, we then propose a novel analytical method for modeling inter-cell handover regions and present mathematical derivation to prove that the inter-small cell handover issues fit the property of the circle of Apollonius. We design an inter-cell handover algorithm (ICHA) by means of our proposed handover model to dynamically configure hysteresis margin and properly implement handover decision in terms of UE's mobility. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed ICHA yields lower call drop rate and radio link failure rate than the conventional methods and hence achieve high Handover Performance Indicator (HPI).

Information theory progression along with the advancements being made in the field of Vehicular Ad hoc NETworks (VANETs) supports the use of coding-aware opportunistic routing for efficient data forwarding. In this work, we propose and investigate an adaptive coding-aware routing scheme in a specific VANET scenario known as a vehicular platoon. Availability of coding opportunities may vary with time and therefore, the accurate identification of available coding opportunities at a specific time is a quite challenging task in the highly dynamic scenario of VANETs. In the proposed approach, while estimating the topology of the network at any time instance, a forwarding vehicle contemplates the composition of multiple unicast data flows to encode the correct data packets that can be decoded successfully at destinations. The results obtained by using OMNeT++ simulator reveal that higher throughput can be achieved with minimum possible packet transmissions through the proposed adaptive coding-aware routing approach. In addition, the proposed adaptive scheme outperforms static transmissions of the encoded packets in terms of coding gain, transmission percentage, and encoded packet transmission. To the best of our knowledge, the use of coding-aware opportunistic routing has not been exploited extensively in available literature with reference to its implications in VANETs.

A resource allocation algorithm is proposed in this paper to simultaneously minimize the total system power consumption and maximize the system throughput for the downlink of multi-user multiple input multiple output-orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (MIMO-OFDM) systems. With the Lagrange dual decomposition method, we transform the original problem to its convex dual problem and prove that the duality gap between the two problems is zero, which means the optimal solution of the original problem can be obtained by solving its dual problem. Then, we use convex optimization method to solve the dual problem and utilize bisection method to obtain the optimal dual variable. The numerical results show that the proposed algorithm is superior to traditional single-objective optimization method in both the system throughput and the system energy consumption.

In recent years, social network related applications such as WeChat, Facebook, Twitter and so on, have attracted hundreds of millions of people to share their experience, plan or organize, and attend social events with friends. In these operations, plenty of valuable information is accumulated, which makes an innovative approach to explore users' preference and overcome challenges in traditional recommender systems. Based on the study of the existing social network recommendation methods, we find there is an abundant information that can be incorporated into probability matrix factorization (PMF) model to handle challenges such as data sparsity in many recommender systems. Therefore, the research put forward a unified social network recommendation framework that combine tags, trust between users, ratings with PMF. The uniformed method is based on three existing recommendation models (SoRecUser, SoRecItem and SoRec), and the complexity analysis indicates that our approach has good effectiveness and can be applied to large-scale datasets. Furthermore, experimental results on publicly available Last.fm dataset show that our method outperforms the existing state-of-art social network recommendation approaches, measured by MAE and MRSE in different data sparse conditions.

Ships built today are larger in scale and feature more complex structures. The ever-evolving systems used on board a ship require vast amounts of data processing. In the future, with the advent of smart ships, unmanned ships and other next-generation ships, the volumes of data to be processed will continue to increase. Yet, to date, ship data has been processed using wired networks. Placed at fixed locations, the nodes on wired networks often fail to process data from mobile devices. Despite many attempts made to use Wi-Fi on ships just as on land to create wireless networks, Wi-Fi has hardly been available due to the complex metal structures of ships. Therefore, Wi-Fi on ships has been patchy as the ship-wide total Wi-Fi coverage has not properly implemented. A new ship-wide wireless network environment is part of the technology conducive to the shipbuilding industry. The wireless network environment should not only serve the purpose of communication but also be able to manage and control multiple features in real-time: fault diagnostics, tracking, accident prevention and safety management. To better understand the characteristics of wireless frequencies for ships, this paper tests the widely used TETRA, UHF and Wi-Fi and sheds light on the features, advantages and disadvantages of each technology in ship settings. The proposed deployment of a Super Wi-Fi network leveraging the legacy UHF system of TMS generates a ship-wide wireless network environment. The experimental findings corroborate the feasibility of the proposed ship-wide Super Wi-Fi network environment.

Recent studies have revealed the efficacy of incorporating delayed channel state information at transmit side (CSIT) in transmission scheme design. This paper focuses on transmit precoder design to maximize the ergodic sum-rate in a two-user Multiple-Input Single-Output (MISO) system with delayed and statistical CSIT. A new transmit strategy which precodes signals in all transmit slots is proposed in this paper, denoted as all time-slots precoding Alternative MAT (AAMAT). There is a common procedure in conventional delayed-CSIT based schemes, which is retransmitting the overheard interferences. Since the retransmitting signal is intended to both users, all previous schemes tend to use only one antenna. We however figure out an improvement in spectral efficiency could be realized if all antennas can be utilized. In this paper, we detail the design of the procoder which enabling all antennas and also we compute a lower bound of the ergodic sum-rate in an ideal condition. In addition, simulation results demonstrate the superiority of our proposed scheme.

Distance dynamics model is an excellent model for uncovering the community structure of a complex network. However, the model has poor robustness. To improve the robustness, we design an enhanced distance dynamics model based on Ego-Leader and propose a corresponding community detection algorithm, called E-Attractor. The main contributions of E-Attractor are as follows. First, to get rid of sensitive parameter ${\lambda}$, Ego-Leader is introduced into the distance dynamics model to determine the influence of an exclusive neighbor on the distance. Second, based on top-k Ego-Leader, we design an enhanced distance dynamics model. In contrast to the traditional model, enhanced model has better robustness for all networks. Extensive experiments show that E-Attractor has good performance relative to several state-of-the-art algorithms.

Chemical reactions have an intricate relationship with the search for better-quality neighborhood solutions to optimization problems. A catalytic reaction for chemical reactions provides a clue and a framework to solve complicated optimization problems. The application of a catalytic reaction reveals new information hidden in the optimization problem and provides a non-intuitive perspective. This paper proposes a new simulated catalytic reaction method for search in optimization problems. In the experiments using this method, significantly improved results are obtained in almost all graphs tested by applying to a graph bisection problem, which is a representative problem of combinatorial optimization problems.

This paper studies resource allocation schemes for the relay-aided cooperative system consisting of multiple source-destination pairs and decode-forward (DF) relays. Specially, relaying selection, multisubcarrier pairing and assignment, and power allocation are investigated jointly. We consider a combinatorial optimization problem on quality of experience (QoE) and energy consumption based on relay-aided cooperative system. For providing better QoE and lower energy consumption we formulate a multi-objective optimization problem to maximize the total mean opinion score (MOS) value and minimize the total power consumption. To this end, we employ the nondominated sorting genetic algorithm version II (NSGA-II) and obtain sets of Pareto optimal solutions. Specially, two formulas are devised for the optimal solutions of the multi-objective optimization problems with and without a service priority constraint. Moreover, simulation results show that the proposed schemes are superior to the existing ones.

In the era of big data, consumers capture more and more economic surplus yet the seed of distrust also grows with the fast-spreading of social commerce, this paper began with the idea that product types may determine the degree of consumers' distrust even when identical discounts are offered for those products on Chinese social commerce websites. We also attempted to determine if distrust negatively affected consumers' purchase attitudes. 20 representative products that are commonly sold on social commerce websites in China were chosen to examine the relationships among product types, discount rates, distrust levels, and purchase attitudes. Inductive interview was used to collect the data as well as consumers' perceptions of the relationships. Data analysis results suggested that consumers like deep discounts, but their distrust levels increase along with the discount rates, however, the levels of increasing distrust vary according to product types. High, medium, and low discount rate categorizations were made and three propositions were suggested. This paper will contribute to the body of knowledge on online social commerce market and provide valuable implications for e-retailers and general consumers in online social commerce websites in China.

The unstructured and semi-structured big data in social network poses new challenges in query retrieval. This requirement needs to be met by introducing quality retrieval time measures like indexing. Due to the huge volume of data storage, there originate the need for efficient index algorithms to promote query processing. However, conventional algorithms fail to index the huge amount of frequently obtained information in real time and fall short of providing scalable indexing service. In this paper, a new LIndex algorithm, which is a heuristic on Lucene is built on Neo4jHA architecture that holds the social network Big data. LIndex is a flexible and simplified adaptive indexing scheme that ascendancy decomposed shortest paths around term neighbors as basic indexing unit. This newfangled index proves to be effectual in query space pruning of graph database Neo4j, scalable in index construction and deployment. A graph query is processed and optimized beyond the traditional Lucene in a time-based manner to a more efficient path method in LIndex. This advanced algorithm significantly reduces query fetch without compromising the quality of results in time. The experiments are conducted to confirm the efficiency of the proposed query retrieval in Neo4j graph NoSQL database.

For the problem of cross-layer joint resource allocation (JRA) in the Long-Term Evolution (LTE)-Advanced standard using carrier aggregation (CA) technology, it is difficult to obtain the optimal resource allocation scheme. This paper proposes a joint resource allocation algorithm based on the weights of user's average quality of experience (JRA-WQOE). In contrast to prevalent algorithms, the proposed method can satisfy the carrier aggregation abilities of different users and consider user fairness. An optimization model is established by considering the user quality of experience (QoE) with the aim of maximizing the total user rate. In this model, user QoE is quantified by the mean opinion score (MOS) model, where the average MOS value of users is defined as the weight factor of the optimization model. The JRA-WQOE algorithm consists of the iteration of two algorithms, a component carrier (CC) and resource block (RB) allocation algorithm called DABC-CCRBA and a subgradient power allocation algorithm called SPA. The former is used to dynamically allocate CC and RB for users with different carrier aggregation capacities, and the latter, which is based on the Lagrangian dual method, is used to optimize the power allocation process. Simulation results showed that the proposed JRA-WQOE algorithm has low computational complexity and fast convergence. Compared with existing algorithms, it affords obvious advantages such as improving the average throughput and fairness to users. With varying numbers of users and signal-to-noise ratios (SNRs), the proposed algorithm achieved higher average QoE values than prevalent algorithms.

We propose a deep learning method for multi-focus image fusion. Unlike most existing pixel-level fusion methods, either in spatial domain or in transform domain, our method directly learns an end-to-end fully convolutional two-stream network. The framework maps a pair of different focus images to a clean version, with a chain of convolutional layers, fusion layer and deconvolutional layers. Our deep fusion model has advantages of efficiency and robustness, yet demonstrates state-of-art fusion quality. We explore different parameter settings to achieve trade-offs between performance and speed. Moreover, the experiment results on our training dataset show that our network can achieve good performance with subjective visual perception and objective assessment metrics.

This paper describes transformations between elemental image arrays and a RGBD image for three-dimensional integral imaging and transmitting systems. Two transformations are introduced and analyzed in the proposed method. Normally, a RGBD image is utilized in efficient 3D data transmission although 3D imaging and display is restricted. Thus, a pixel-to-pixel mapping is required to obtain an elemental image array from a RGBD image. However, transformations and their analysis have little attention in computational integral imaging and transmission. Thus, in this paper, we introduce two different mapping methods that are called as the forward and backward mapping methods. Also, two mappings are analyzed and compared in terms of complexity and visual quality. In addition, a special condition, named as the hole-free condition in this paper, is proposed to understand the methods analytically. To verify our analysis, we carry out experiments for test images and the results indicate that the proposed methods and their analysis work in terms of the computational cost and visual quality.

Extracting key visual information from images containing natural scene is a challenging task and an important step for the visually impaired to recognize information based on tactile graphics. In this study, a novel method is proposed for extracting salient regions based on global contrast enhancement and saliency cuts in order to improve the process of recognizing images for the visually impaired. To accomplish this, an image enhancement technique is applied to natural scene images, and a saliency map is acquired to measure the color contrast of homogeneous regions against other areas of the image. The saliency maps also help automatic salient region extraction, referred to as saliency cuts, and assist in obtaining a binary mask of high quality. Finally, outer boundaries and inner edges are detected in images with natural scene to identify edges that are visually significant. Experimental results indicate that the method we propose in this paper extracts salient objects effectively and achieves remarkable performance compared to conventional methods. Our method offers benefits in extracting salient objects and generating simple but important edges from images containing natural scene and for providing information to the visually impaired.

The method of operating a game could determine the psychological distance between the player and the game character, and thus, in the Virtual Reality, players' control methodologies are important to enhance their immersion. This study has the objective of examining the difference in games according to the method of operation based on the player's movements. This study researched the effect of the method of operating movement conforming to the movement of the character and the physical operation of the body on forming game experiences for the player. The result of performing an experiment increased reality for the game player through a controller in the shape of the actual control, to increase focus in the game. As so, game play through movements, including actual movements by the player displayed to enhance game satisfaction. In the part of media remediation field, Game can be defined as media which has their own unique hypermediacy. Especially, in the motion based game, players' movement mediates players and the game, therefore, players' movement could make players' experience augmented or immediate in accordance with the characteristics of movements. Even though sports and dances genres of motion-based games are common, RPG or adventure genres are rare. It can be explained that the characteristics of the action have been explained in the immediacy. In a game of fantasy, which is difficult to experience in real-life situations, the nature of the player's motion can increase the immersion of the game, which can contribute to utilization of players' motion and experience design in the various genres and suggestion of grounds theory. In addition, through this study, it is able to design motion-based games of various genres.

Human actions can be recognized from depth sequences. In the proposed algorithm, we initially construct depth, motion maps (DMM) by projecting each depth frame onto three orthogonal Cartesian planes and add the motion energy for each view. The body part of the action (BPoA) is calculated by using bounding box with an optimal window size based on maximum spatial and temporal changes for each DMM. Furthermore, feature vector is constructed by using BPoA for each human action view. In this paper, we employed an ensemble based learning approach called Rotation Forest to recognize different actions Experimental results show that proposed method has significantly outperforms the state-of-the-art methods on Microsoft Research (MSR) Action 3D and MSR DailyActivity3D dataset.

QR codes as public patent are widely used to acquire the information in various fields. However, it faces security problem when delivering the privacy message by QR code. To overcome this weakness, we propose a secret hiding scheme by improving exploiting modification direction to protect the private message in QR code. The secret messages will be converted into octal digit stream and concealed to the cover QR code by overwriting the cover QR code public message bits. And the private messages can be faithfully decoded using the extraction function. In our secret hiding scheme, the QR code public message still can be fully decoded publicly from the marked QR codes via any standard QR Code reader, which helps to reduce attackers' curiosity. Experiments show that the proposed scheme is feasible, with high secret payload, high security protection level, and resistant to common image post-processing attacks.

Multi-view super-resolution (MVSR) refers to the process of reconstructing a high-resolution (HR) image from a set of low-resolution (LR) images captured from different viewpoints typically by different cameras. These multi-view images are usually obtained by a camera array. In our previous work [1], we super-resolved multi-view LR images via image fusion (IF) and blind deblurring (BD). In this paper, we present a new MVSR method that jointly realizes IF and BD based on an integrated energy function optimization. First, we reformulate the MVSR problem into a multi-channel blind deblurring (MCBD) problem which is easier to be solved than the former. Then the depth map of the desired HR image is calculated. Finally, we solve the MCBD problem, in which the optimization problems with respect to the desired HR image and with respect to the unknown blur are efficiently addressed by the alternating direction method of multipliers (ADMM). Experiments on the Multi-view Image Database of the University of Tsukuba and images captured by our own camera array system demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method.

Trust management is one of the most challenging issues for the highly heterogeneous Internet of Things (IoT). In the context of the IoT, it is difficult to evaluate the node's trustworthiness in the same trust model when a node provides different services. Guaranteeing the availability of the trust management service is another significant challenge because of the dynamic nature of IoT environments. With these issues in mind, this paper propose a robust and adaptive trust management system for the IoT that is able to measure the trustworthiness of nodes based on feedbacks collected from participants in a specific context and ensure the availability of trust management services. The main contributions of our system are: 1) Proposing a partly decentralized trust management framework, which improves the resiliency of the trust mechanism; 2) Proposing an adaptive trust evaluation scheme and a three-dimensional context representation makes trust evaluation more accurate and specific; 3) Enhancing the adaptive trust evaluation scheme by incorporating a bad behavior factor in trust estimation, which efficiently distinguishes misleading feedbacks from On-Off attacks. Simulation results show the good performance of the proposed system and especially show effectiveness against On-Off attacks compared to other trust mechanisms.

In order to solve the problem that the current network security situation assessment methods just focus on the attack behaviors, this paper proposes a kind of network security situation assessment method based on Markov Decision Process and Game theory. The method takes the Markov Game model as the core, and uses the 4 levels data fusion to realize the evaluation of the network security situation. In this process, the Nash equilibrium point of the game is used to determine the impact on the network security. Experiments show that the results of this method are basically consistent with the expert evaluation data. As the method takes full account of the interaction between the attackers and defenders, it is closer to reality, and can accurately assess network security situation.