This work studies online learning-based trajectory planning for multiple autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) to estimate a water parameter field of interest in the under-ice environment. A centralized system is considered, where several fixed access points on the ice layer are introduced as gateways for communications between the AUVs and a remote data fusion center. We model the water parameter field of interest as a Gaussian process with unknown hyper-parameters. The AUV trajectories for sampling are determined on an epoch-by-epoch basis. At the end of each epoch, the access points relay the observed field samples from all the AUVs to the fusion center, which computes the posterior distribution of the field based on the Gaussian process regression and estimates the field hyper-parameters. The optimal trajectories of all the AUVs in the next epoch are determined to maximize a long-term reward that is defined based on the field uncertainty reduction and the AUV mobility cost, subject to the kinematics constraint, the communication constraint and the sensing area constraint. We formulate the adaptive trajectory planning problem as a Markov decision process (MDP). A reinforcement learning-based online learning algorithm is designed to determine the optimal AUV trajectories in a constrained continuous space. Simulation results show that the proposed learning-based trajectory planning algorithm has performance similar to a benchmark method that assumes perfect knowledge of the field hyper-parameters.
19 April 2023 in Measurement Science and Technology
Millimeter-wave (mmWave) radar plays a vital role in a wide range of applications such as security surveillance and environmental monitoring. This work investigates target detection with radar point cloud measurements in the slow-motion scenario. In contrast to the existing spatial domain clustering-based target detection methods, we adopt a recursive spatial-temporal clustering (STC)-based method to detect targets in the spatial and temporal domain jointly. Specifically, the points belonging to targets are obtained by clustering with a distance metric defined in the spatial-temporal domains. In addition, to ensure the feasibility of the proposed method for practical real-time implementation, a speed-up scheme that intends to reduce the computational complexity induced by clustering in both spatial and temporal dimensions is developed. We demonstrate the efficacy of the proposed recursive STC-based method through experimental mmWave radar point cloud data where multiple people walk simultaneously in an open space. The proposed method achieves decent target detection performance improvement compared to a widely-used clustering method for target detection while its computation time is negligible compared to radar data reception time.
Electrocardiogram (ECG) signals are crucial in diagnosing cardiovascular diseases (CVDs). While wavelet-based feature extraction has demonstrated effectiveness in deep learning (DL)-based ECG diagnosis, selecting the optimal wavelet base poses a significant challenge, as it directly influences feature quality and diagnostic accuracy. Traditional methods typically rely on fixed wavelet bases chosen heuristically or through trial-and-error, which can fail to cover the distinct characteristics of individual ECG signals, leading to suboptimal performance. To address this limitation, we propose a reinforcement learning-based wavelet base selection (RLWBS) framework that dynamically customizes the wavelet base for each ECG signal. In this framework, a reinforcement learning (RL) agent iteratively optimizes its wavelet base selection (WBS) strategy based on successive feedback of classification performance, aiming to achieve progressively optimized feature extraction. Experiments conducted on the clinically collected PTB-XL dataset for ECG abnormality classification show that the proposed RLWBS framework could obtain more detailed time-frequency representation of ECG signals, yielding enhanced diagnostic performance compared to traditional WBS approaches.
23 December 2023 in Journal of Real-Time Image Processing
In exploiting large propagation delays in underwater acoustic (UWA) networks, the time-domain interference alignment (TDIA) mechanism aligns interference signals through delay-aware slot scheduling, creating additional idle time for improved transmission at the medium access control (MAC) layer. However, perfect alignment remains challenging due to arbitrary delays. This study enhances TDIA by incorporating power allocation into its transmission scheduling framework across the physical and MAC layers, following the cross-layer design principle. The proposed quasi-interference alignment (QIA) mechanism enables controlled interference on useful signals by jointly optimizing the transmission schedule and power. The formulated optimization problem to maximize network throughput is divided into two sub-problems: one for coarse slot scheduling and another for refining both scheduling and power allocation. The simulation results validate the QIA framework’s superiority over the traditional TDIA and genetic algorithm benchmarks.
18 December 2023 in Science and Technology of Nuclear Installations
The rapid expansion of nuclear technology across various sectors due to global economic growth has led to a substantial rise in the transportation of radioactive materials. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) estimates that approximately 20 million shipments of radioactive materials occur annually. In this context, ensuring the safety and security of radioactive material transportation is of significant importance. IAEA’s “Security of Radioactive Materials in Transport” (Nuclear Security Series No. 9-G) mandates that an effective transport security system should provide immediate detection of any unauthorized removal of the packages. In the present study, an innovative Adam-optimized BP neural network model is developed for detecting unauthorized movements of radioactive material packages. To analyze the performance of the proposed algorithm, numerous experiments were conducted. The results demonstrate that the proposed method achieves a 99.17% accuracy rate in detecting unauthorized movements of radioactive materials, with a missed alarm rate of 0.72% and a false alarm rate of 0.1%. This method also enables real-time detection of unauthorized removal of radioactive materials and effectively enhances the security of radioactive materials during transport to reduce the risks of theft, loss, diversion, or sabotage.