Although the deep neural network (DNN) has shown a powerful ability in hyperspectral image (HSI) classification, its learning requires a large number of labeled training samples; otherwise, it is prone to over-fitting and has a poor classification performance. However, this requirement is impractical for HSIs due to the difficulty in obtaining class labels. To make DNNs suitable for HSI classification with few labeled samples, we propose a graph-based deep multitask few-shot learning (GDMFSL) framework that learns the intrinsic relationships among all samples (labeled and unlabeled) of HSIs with the assistance of graph information to alleviate the over-fitting caused by few labeled training samples. Firstly, a semi-supervised graph is constructed to generate graph information. Secondly, a deep multitask network (DMN) is designed, which contains two subnetworks (tasks): a classifier subnetwork for learning class information from labeled samples and a Siamese subnetwork for learning sample relationships from the semi-supervised graph. To effectively learn graph information, a loss function suitable for the Siamese subnetwork is designed that shortens (and expands) the distance between the target sample and its nearest (and farthest) neighbors. Finally, since the number of training samples of the two subnetworks is severely imbalanced, a multitask few-shot learning strategy is designed to make two subnetworks converge simultaneously. Experimental results on the Indian Pines, University of Pavia and Salinas datasets demonstrate that GDMFSL achieves a better classification performance relative to existing competitors in few-shot settings. In particular, when only five labels per class are involved in training, the classification accuracy of GDMFSL on the three datasets reaches 87.58%, 86.42% and 98.85%, respectively.

Deep neural networks have achieved significant development and wide applications for their amazing performance. However, their complex structure, high computation and storage resource limit their applications in mobile or embedding devices such as sensor platforms. Neural network pruning is an efficient way to design a lightweight model from a well-trained complex deep neural network. In this paper, we propose an evolutionary multi-objective one-shot filter pruning method for designing a lightweight convolutional neural network. Firstly, unlike some famous iterative pruning methods, a one-shot pruning framework only needs to perform filter pruning and model fine-tuning once. Moreover, we built a constraint multi-objective filter pruning problem in which two objectives represent the filter pruning ratio and the accuracy of the pruned convolutional neural network, respectively. A non-dominated sorting-based evolutionary multi-objective algorithm was used to solve the filter pruning problem, and it provides a set of Pareto solutions which consists of a series of different trade-off pruned models. Finally, some models are uniformly selected from the set of Pareto solutions to be fine-tuned as the output of our method. The effectiveness of our method was demonstrated in experimental studies on four designed models, LeNet and AlexNet. Our method can prune over 85%, 82%, 75%, 65%, 91% and 68% filters with little accuracy loss on four designed models, LeNet and AlexNet, respectively.

Multi-task optimization (MTO) is related to the problem of simultaneous optimization of multiple optimization problems, for the purpose of solving these problems better in terms of optimization accuracy or time cost. To handle MTO problems, there emerges many evolutionary MTO (EMTO) algorithms, which possess distinguished strategies or frameworks in the aspect of handling the knowledge transfer between different optimization problems (tasks). In this paper, we explore the possibility of developing a more efficient EMTO solver based on differential evolution by introducing the strategies of a self-adaptive multi-task particle swarm optimization (SaMTPSO) algorithm, and by developing a new knowledge incorporation strategy. Then, we try to apply the proposed algorithm to solve the weapon–target assignment problem, which has never been explored in the field of EMTO before. Experiments were conducted on a popular MTO test benchmark and a WTA-MTO test set. Experimental results show that knowledge transfer in the proposed algorithm is effective and efficient, and EMTO is promising in solving WTA problems.

Population based search techniques have been developed and applied to wide applications for their good performance, such as the optimization of the unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) path planning problems. However, the search for optimal solutions for an optimization problem is usually expensive. For example, the UAV problem is a large-scale optimization problem with many constraints, which makes it hard to get exact solutions. Especially, it will be time-consuming when multiple UAV problems are waiting to be optimized at the same time. Evolutionary multi-task optimization (EMTO) studies the problem of utilizing the population-based characteristics of evolutionary computation techniques to optimize multiple optimization problems simultaneously, for the purpose of further improving the overall performance of resolving all these problems. EMTO has great potential in solving real-world problems more efficiently. Therefore, in this paper, we develop a novel EMTO algorithm using a classical PSO algorithm, in which the developed knowledge transfer strategy achieves knowledge transfer between task by synthesizing the transferred knowledges from a selected set of component tasks during the updating of the velocities of population. Two knowledge transfer strategies are developed along with two versions of the proposed algorithm. The proposed algorithm is compared with the multifactorial PSO algorithm, the SREMTO algorithm, the popular multifactorial evolutionary algorithm and a classical PSO algorithm on nine popular single-objective MTO problems and six five-task MTO problems, which demonstrates its superiority.

Cross-Technology Communication (CTC) technique enables direct interconnection among heterogeneous devices, which provides new technical routes for IoT’s heterogeneous interconnection. However, existing CTC methods have a great dependence on the capabilities of wireless devices. The inherent asymmetry of devices’ capabilities brings great challenges to CTC. In this paper, we focus on establishing symmetric CTC among the heterogeneous IoT devices. We propose a CTC based on multi-subframe aggregation to solve the serious payload adaptation inefficiency problem caused by asymmetric data rate. Then we design a CTC based on multi-channel disturbance that achieves reliable decoding at low SNR and extends the communication range from ZigBee to WiFi. To cope with the spectrum inefficiency problem caused by asymmetric bandwidth, we propose a CTC based on multi-signal combination to achieve parallel transmission among commodity BLE, ZigBee, and LoRa devices. The evaluation results show that our methods can achieve efficient and reliable CTC among heterogeneous IoT devices.