Sharif Digital Repository

This letter investigates the problem of sparse signal recovery in the presence of additive impulsive noise. The heavy-tailed impulsive noise is well modeled with stable distributions. Since there is no explicit formula for the probability density function of SαS distribution, alternative approximations are used, such as, generalized Gaussian distribution, which imposes ℓp-norm fidelity on the residual error. In this letter, we exploit a continuous mixed norm (CMN) for robust sparse recovery instead of ℓp-norm. We show that in blind conditions, i.e., in the case where the parameters of the noise distribution are unknown, incorporating CMN can lead to near-optimal recovery. We apply... 

This paper presents a new method for restoration of distribution networks after a fault occurrence. This problem is solved from the viewpoint of the distribution system operator with the main goal of minimizing the operating cost during the fault clearance period. The effects of distributed generation (DG) units and direct load control (DLC) programs are considered in designing the proposed restoration procedure. Moreover, the uncertainties associated with the predicted loads of different nodes and the availability of DG are modeled here. Robust optimization is used to model the uncertainties of restoration problems and manage their associated risks. Finally, a robust reconfiguration plan is... 

This paper presents a new framework for systematic assessment of the controllability of uncertain linear time-invariant (LTI) systems. The objective is to evaluate controllability of an uncertain system with norm-bounded perturbation over the entire uncertain region. The method is based on a singular-value minimization problem, over the entire complex plane. To solve the problem, first, a necessary and sufficient condition is proposed to avert the difficulties of griding over the complex plane, and to verify the controllability of directed and undirected networks in a single step. Secondly, the results are utilized to formulate the problem as two Lyapunov-based linear matrix inequalities... 

In this paper, using the chromatic properties of power graphs we propose a new approach for placing resources in symmetric networks. Our novel placement scheme guarantees a perfect placement when such a solution is feasible in the topology. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2007  

A resource investment problem is a project-scheduling problem in which the availability levels of the resources are considered as decision variables and the goal is to find a schedule, and resource requirement levels, such that some objective function optimizes. In this paper, we consider a resource investment problem in which the goal is to maximize the net present value of the project cash flows. We call this problem as Resource Investment Problem with Discounted Cash Flows (RIPDCF) and we develop a heuristic method to solve it. Results of several numerical examples show that the proposed method performs relatively well  

This paper analyzes the problem of transient-error recovery of several protecting techniques used in fault-tolerant cache memories. In this paper, reliability and mean-time-to-failure (MTTF) equations for several protecting techniques are derived and estimated. The results of the considered techniques are compared with those of cache memories without redundancies and with only parity codes in both tag and data arrays of caches. Depending on the error rate under which a cache memory will operate, and the size of the cache memory, one of the analyzed cases could be used. If the transient-error rate is very small or the size of cache memory is relatively small, then a protected with only single... 

This paper deals with learning an overcomplete set of atoms that have low mutual coherence. To this aim, we propose a new dictionary learning (DL) problem that enables a control on the amounts of the decomposition error and the mutual coherence of the atoms of the dictionary. Unlike existing methods, our new problem directly incorporates the mutual coherence term into the usual DL problem as a regularizer. We also propose an efficient algorithm to solve the new problem. Our new algorithm uses block coordinate descent, and updates the dictionary atom-by-atom, leading to closed-form solutions. We demonstrate the superiority of our new method over existing approaches in learning low-coherence... 

The redundancy allocation problem (RAP) is a useful method to enhance system reliability. In most works involving RAP, failure rates of the system components are assumed to follow either exponential or k-Erlang distributions. In real world problems however, many systems have components with increasing failure rates. This indicates that as time passes by, the failure rates of the system components increase in comparison to their initial failure rates. In this paper, the redundancy allocation problem of a series-parallel system with components having an increasing failure rate based on Weibull distribution is investigated. An optimization method via simulation is proposed for modeling and a... 

In this paper, we study the missing sample recovery problem using methods based on sparse approximation. In this regard, we investigate the algorithms used for solving the inverse problem associated with the restoration of missed samples of image signal. This problem is also known as inpainting in the context of image processing and for this purpose, we suggest an iterative sparse recovery algorithm based on constrained l1-norm minimization with a new fidelity metric. The proposed metric called Convex SIMilarity (CSIM) index, is a simplified version of the Structural SIMilarity (SSIM) index, which is convex and error-sensitive. The optimization problem incorporating this criterion, is then... 

Real time road traffic monitoring is one of the challenging problems in machine vision, especially when one is using commercially available PCs as the main processor. In this paper, we describe a real-time method for extracting a few traffic parameters in highways such as, lane change detection, vehicle classification and vehicle counting. In addition, we will explain a real time method for multiple vehicles tracking that has the capability of occlusion detection. Our tracing algorithm uses Kalman filter and background differencing techniques. We used morphological operations for vehicle contour extraction and its recognition. Our algorithm has three phases, detection of pixels on moving... 

Recently, moment dual approach of sums of squares relaxations developed for polynomial optimization problems was successfully extended to optimization problems with polynomial matrix inequality constraints. In this paper, we first derive an efficient polynomial formulization for matrix rank minimization problem which does not add any slack variable or additional equality or inequality constraint. Using the aforementioned theory, then we propose a hierarchy of convex LMI relaxations to provide a sequence of increasingly tight lower bounds on the global minimum rank of an arbitrary matrix under linear and polynomial matrix inequality constraints. Surprisingly enough, these lower bounds are... 

In this paper the Karnaugh and Quine-McCluskey methods are used for symbolic classification problem, and then these methods are compared with other famous available methods. Because the data in classification problem is very large, some changes should be applied in the original Quine-McCluskey (QMC) algorithm. We proposed a new algorithm that applies the QMC algorithm greedily calling it GQMC. It is surprising that GQMC results are most of the time equal to QMC. GQMC is still very slow classifier and it can be used when the number of attributes of the data is small, and the ratio of training data to the all possible data is high. © 2007 IEEE  

Today there are many Internet sites which require only the entry by human users but unfortunately some computer softwares called bots are designed by some hackers to enter these sites and use their resources through false registration. As a result some systems named CAPTCHA have been introduced to tell apart human users and computer software. This paper introduces a new CAPTCHA method. In this method a simple mathematical problem is generated according to a predefined pattern but instead of some object's name, we put their images. Then the whole problem is saved and shown to the user inform of an image to be answered by him. But since answering this problem requires four abilities of... 

In this paper, we study the problem of finding the shortest path between two points inside a simple polygon such that there is at least one point on the path from which a query point is visible. We provide an algorithm which preprocesses the input in O (n2 + n K) time and space and provides logarithmic query time. The input polygon has n vertices and K is a parameter dependent on the input polygon which is O (n2) in the worst case but is much smaller for most polygons. The preprocessing algorithm sweeps an angular interval around every reflex vertex of the polygon to store the optimal contact points between the shortest paths and the windows separating the visibility polygons of the query... 

Many industries are involved in production and distribution of perishable products. On one hand, due to the short life cycle of these products, there should be more precaution on the issues related to supply chain planning including material requirement planning, production, transportation, etc. compared to the ones in other industries. On the other hand, as there is a fierce competition among various companies, the need for coordination in such activities is imperative, where the use of an integrated approach is justifiable. One of these coordination problems is how to integrate important operational decisions including production scheduling and vehicle routing problem; the most important... 

Nowadays "as everywhere in the world", so much attention is drawn to performing safety and HSE management rules in Iran. Considering the long life of oil and it's relevant industries in Iran (since 1908, first oil well in Middle East, Masjid Soleyman), many units with more than 50 years old are still in operation. This situation posed special problems in performing safety and HSE regulations that some of them are communal among these units. This paper reveals the result of industrial projects, collecting numerous technical checklists in such units and author's experiences in recent years in Iran, which is aimed to announce some of these major problems and also present solutions for them  

Nonlinearity caused by actuator constraint plays a destructive role in the overall performance of a control system. A model predictive controller can handle the problem by implementing a constrained optimization algorithm. Due to the iterative nature of the solution, however, this requires high computation power. In the present work we propose a new method to approach the problem by separating the constraint handling from the predictive control job. The input constraint effects are dealt with in a newly defined component called a predictive directional compensator, which works based on the directionality and predictive concepts. Through implementation of the proposed method, the... 

In this paper, we describe the design, development and preliminary evaluation of a novel animation tool for smartphones and tablets, with the goal of improving creativity and problem-solving ability among novice users, mainly young children. The user first draws the objects with markers and crayons on paper and takes a photo with their mobile or tablet to import their drawings into the app as game sprites. They then design their animation scene and point to a part of the character and selecting its animation type from existing buttons. Hence the selected part is animated in a vertex shader while ensuring a smooth transition with the non-pointed part. The results of a preliminary evaluation... 

Aximum coverage location problem is considered in this study. Extension of this problem is investigated for situations that coverage areas are elliptical; these ellipses can locate anywhere on the plane with any angle. Mixed integer nonlinear programming (MINLP) is applied for formulation. This problem can be used in many practical situations such as locating wireless transmitter towers. A heuristic algorithm named MCLPEA for solving this problem was designed. This algorithm can produce very good results in efficient running time. Finally, the comparison of the results for this study was carried done  

This paper focuses on the flow shop sequence dependent group scheduling (FSDGS) problem with minimisation of total completion time as the criterion (Fm|f mls, prmu, S plk|ΣC j). The research problem is formulated in form of two different mixed integer linear programming (MILP) models. Comparing with the latest MILP model for the proposed problem in the literature, the complexity size of the proposed models are significantly reduced. One of the proposed mathematical models is so effective that even medium-sized instances (problems up to 60 jobs in all groups) are solved to optimality in a reasonable amount of time. Moreover, a metaheuristic hybridising genetic and simulated annealing...