Sharif Digital Repository

Edit distance or Levenshtein distance is one of the most fundamental problems in computer science and engineering to measure the dissimilarity between strings.This problem is solvable in O(n^2) time using dynamic programming and in 2015 it was conditionally proven that no truly subquadratic time algorithm (\textit{i.e.}, O(n^{2-ε})) exists for edit distance.Since 2001, approximating edit distance within a constant factor was recognized as one of the biggest unsolved problems in the field of combinatorial pattern matching.This thesis designs seven approximation algorithms for edit distance and its related problems.Firstly, two quantum approximation algorithms are designed with constant... 

This project presents algorithms for intelligent control of the viral load in a HIV-1 infection model. The first part of thesis was dedicated to the study of the three states model adopted to describe the HIV-1 infection. A sensitivity analysis of the model parameters was described and computer simulations were provided to show the influence of the parameters explicitly. Then, an internal model control based on neural networks was implemented on the introduced infection model with including the RTIs and PIs drugs efficacies as control input. A stable adaptive neuro-control approach was presented for affine in the control nonlinear dynamical systems, whose nonlinearities were assumed to be... 

Vaccination is one of the ways of disease control and prevention, which not only protect individuals against the disease, but also reduce the disease spread rate. Mass vaccination of individuals is not always possible due to the high cost and limitation of immunization resources. Therefore, researchers are always seeking solutions to find the persons that their immunization may have a greater impact in reduction of disease spread rate. The advent of network epidemic models and the possibility of removal the secured nodes in those models, showed that this problem is equivalent to finding a limited set of individuals that their removal will eliminate or minimize the number of people at risk of... 

This thesis focuses on the design procedures of a Type Test tunnel intended to be used for performance verification of large electrical generator air to water coolers with a dimension of 3*3 meters. Using guidelines of related standards the tunnel was designed and modified to satisfy the requirements set by installation site and manufacturing limitations. As this required some deviations from standard guide lines, the correctness of the final design was evaluated using numerical computation of flow inside the tunnel. The tunnel structure and its internal parts were analyzed for strength and deflections. Using the results of numerical computations, the other main equipments of tunnel such... 

Three-phase electronic loads are used to test the performance of various electrical devices such as power supplies, generators, and transformers. Conventional electronic loads are composed of passive components that consume the energy, so have low power density and efficiency and to manage the produced heat, massive cooling systems are required. Nowadays, to increase efficiency and power density, three-phase regenerative electronic AC loads have been developed. To return energy to the grid and control the input power factor, the structure of these loads is based on back-to-back converters. In this project, a 35 kVA three-phase regenerative electronic AC load is designed. To control the power... 

There is an effective and functional connectivity between the central nervous system and the cardiovascular system, which is controlled by the autonomic nervous system. Investigating this connectivity and its direction can provide valuable insights into their functioning. To examine causal and directional relationships, EEG and ECG signals, which contain useful information about the activities of these two systems, are utilized. Granger causality is a popular method for estimating effective linear connectivity. However, the assumption of linearity in effective connectivity is not always valid, as nonlinear interactions also exist between the nervous and cardiovascular systems. Estimating... 

The conventional bearing-only tracking solutions are based on Kalman filter. Whenever the problem equations are nonlinear, Extended Kalman Filter (EKF) or more complicated methods are used necessarily. However, EKF suffers of being biased and unstable. Here a new recursive method based on a linear modeling of the problem is proposed, the method does not need an initial guess and outperforms the Kalman filter in the terms of accuracy, complexity and stability. Furthermore, input information needed for the proposed tracking filter is just the observer position, time and value of each angle measurements and the computation load is less than even a simple EKF. mathematical analysis, as well as... 

In this work, Hough detector has been compared with optimum detectors. We consider 2-D range-time data space, which is constructed by storing the radar returns from different range cells during several successive scans. In this space, target trajectory can be modeled as a straight line for short time intervals, and can be extracted by applying Hough transform transcendentally. In this work, a new detection method based on the likelihood ratio in the data space with Gaussian noise is introduced. ALR and GLR processors have been designed. Then formulas for probability of detection and false alarm rate is calculated, and verified via simulations. A new criterion for estimation quality is... 

Why firms does not submit several steps in their bids curve? In this paper, we present a mathematical model for the behavior of power plants in a Pay-as-Bid auction market. According to this model, in the case that the power plant has a fixed marginal cost, the optimal behavior for him is to offer only one price, but in the case of linear marginal cost, bidding one price is not an optimal price, and with increasing the slope of this function, the number of steps and their price level will increase. We also show that increasing the level of competition in the market will force the plants to lower the price level and the number of steps. The model of this paper also predicts the factors... 

Recently, computer scientists and economists have defined many joint problems and cooperate widely in various areas. Importance of this interconnection is clear for everybody, now. New works have been conducted, nowadays, to use the daily - increasing web-based social networks in viral marketing for improving companies profits. The main problem which is proved to be NP-Complete in this context is about discovering k most influential nodes in a network. In this dissertation, we generalize the problem to a group-based version and we we use group-based advertising to achieve our main goal. A new algorithm called Group-Based Diffusion technique is proposed in this thesis for solving this problem... 

This thesis focuses on design of various strategies to maximize sellers’ profits in different social markets where agents’ behaviors and decisions are greatly influenced by their network friends. We introduce different social networks with various properties and present models to analyze the agents’ behaviors. We also study different pricing strategies for each model and design algorithms for sellers in order to maximize their profits. Furthermore, we study the prediction markets where agents with different points of views participate in the market. Each agent invests in the market with respect to her information. We propose a model for these markets which are both predictable and... 

We consider a special class of Congestion Games enhanced with a notion of time.Network Routing problems, such as road traffic networks, computer neworks, and evacuation problems are some applications of this class of games. Two subclasses of these games, namely atomic and non-atomic is considered in this article, both of them introduced in 2009. Some of the existing results are Nash equilibria existence proof for “single-source single-sink” case, and a mechanism for improving price of anarchy in the non-atomic subclass. There are also some results in the atomic subclass of this game.We extend both models of atomic and non-atomic subclasses to “multi-source,multi-sink” configurations. We call... 

We consider extending the visibility polygon of a given point q inside a simple polygon by converting one or some of the edges to mirrors. It is known that the visibility polygon of a point inside a polygon in the presence of a mirror can be computed in linear time. We propose a linear time algorithm that checks whether a given segment inside a simple polygon is visible by a given point q via a mirror-edge, and finds all such edges. And we prove that finding edges to add exactly k unit squares to the visibility polygon of a query point q in most cases is NP-complete and its minimization is NP-hard. These cases contain single and muliple, either with secular or difuse reflections. Moreover,... 

In many network which relationships between nodes are defined based on the similarity of attributes (Such as the World Wide Web and social networks), extracting information about networks object’s attributes may be difficult or even in many cases impossible.In these cases, predicting unknown attributes based on other objects attributes according to network structure can be extremely useful.Even more, finding a representative sample set of objects and trying to obtain their attributes in order to predict other object’s attributes with this obtained data can be an interesting problem. Finding such a set of objects with minimum size while giving maximizing accuracy in predicting other object’s... 

In this research, we want to find a point of the kernel in an unknown star-shaped polygon by a robot with minimal sensing, such that the path is not far from the optimum path. The robot has a gap sensor which detects the dicontinuities (gaps) in its visibility polygon and detects the direction of gaps. The robat can move toward or against these gaps. Also, the robot has a compass, and detects the North, the West, the South and the East. The robot detects the position of gaps between these directions, and also, can move along these directions. In this research, we present an on-line algorithm, by which this robot can find a point of the kernel in an unknown star-shaped polygon. The... 

Planar visibility computing is defned as determining the region of the plane that is visible from a specifc observer. This concept has many applications in computer graphics, robotic and computer games. In certain visibility problems, counting the number of visible objects in an appropriate time is required. For obtaining a solution fast, current algorithms give an approximated count. In this thesis, we consider visibility testing problem and visibility counting problem.For a given set S = fs1; s2; :::; sng of non-intersecting segments and a query point p in the plane, the visibility testing problem checks the inter-visibility of p and a segment si 2 S and the visibility counting problem... 

In this research, path planning in unknown environment is considered. It is assumed that the robot’s sensors are the only tools to collect information from the scene. Volume of the information gathered from the environment depends on the capability of the sensor. So, a detour from the optimal path is unavoidable. In this research, the basic robot is equipped with a minimal sensing system that only detects the iscontinuities in depth information (gaps). We present some online search strategies that guide such a robot to navigate unknown streets from a start point s to reach a target point t. Then, we empower the robot by adding a compass to patrol more general classes of polygons. We present... 

Nowadays, we observe the growth in the number of mobile smart phones. These smart phones have had an impressive progress in software and hardware. Many studies have focused on utilizing this new platform. One of these areas of research is collecting information from environment.Two major challenges for a successful crowdsourcing system are engaging a sufficient number of workers and validating of their registered data, which make the system more reliable. Collecting data from different points of a territory can be defined as some tasks and should be assigned to users near those tasks properly. Some users want a monetary reward for the cost they incur. On the other hand, information...