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Published work

67 published item(s)

preprint2026arXiv

Informative Graph Structure Learning

The quality of graph-structured data is fundamental to the success of modern graph analysis techniques such as Graph Neural Networks (GNNs). However, real-world graph data is often suboptimal, suffering from issues such as noise and incomplete connections. Graph Structure Learning (GSL) has emerged as a promising technique that adaptively optimizes node connections. However, we observe that the effectiveness of GSL often comes at the cost of a dramatic expansion in edge count, resulting in significant storage and computational overhead. In this work, we reveal that this limitation stems from the prevalent use of similarity-based edge construction, which predominantly connects highly similar neighbors based on their embeddings, introducing substantial structure redundancy. To address this, we propose a novel Informative Graph Structure Learning method (InGSL), which jointly considers both similarity and diversity in edge construction by incorporating a mutual-information-guided learning strategy. Notably, InGSL serves as a plug-in module that can be seamlessly integrated into existing GSL frameworks. Through extensive experiments on six representative GSL methods, we demonstrate that InGSL achieves significant performance improvements at a reduced number of edges.

preprint2023arXiv

On Delay-Doppler Plane Orthogonal Pulse

In this paper, we analyze the recently discovered delay-Doppler plane orthogonal pulse (DDOP), which is essential for delay-Doppler plane multi-carrier modulation waveform. In particular, we introduce a local orthogonality property of pulses corresponding to Weyl-Heisenberg (WH) subset and justify the DDOP's existence, in contrast to global orthogonality corresponding to WH set governed by the WH frame theory. Then, sufficient conditions for locally-orthogonal pulses are presented and discussed. Based on the analysis, we propose a general DDOP design. We also derive the frequency domain representation of the DDOP, and compare the DDOP-based orthogonal delay-Doppler division multiplexing (ODDM) modulation with other modulation schemes, in terms of TF signal localization. Interestingly, we show perfect local orthogonality property of the DDOP with respect to delay-Doppler resolutions using its ambiguity function.

preprint2023arXiv

Protected Transverse Electric Waves in Topological Dielectric Waveguides

Waveguides are fundamental components in communication systems. However, they suffer from reflection and scattering losses at sharp routes or defects. The breakthrough in developing topological photonic crystals (PhCs) provides promising solutions to robust signal transmission. In this work, we propose a new mechanism for protecting wave-guiding modes by decorating the boundaries of a conventional waveguide with valley-Hall PhCs. This special layout enables the robust propagation of conventional transverse electric waves against defects and bends. Moreover, the proposed waveguide is compatible with the substrate integrated waveguide (SIW). High efficient mode conversion from the SIW to the proposed waveguide is achievable. By leveraging the idea of topology to conventional waveguides, we provide a powerful and practical tool that can largely improve the performance of microwave and millimeter-wave integrated circuits while reserving the features of wave-guiding modes.

preprint2022arXiv

A Decentralized Analysis and Control Synthesis Approach for Networked Systems with Arbitrary Interconnections

This paper considers the problem of decentralized analysis and control synthesis to verify and ensure properties like stability and dissipativity of a large-scale networked system comprised of linear subsystems interconnected in an arbitrary topology. In particular, we design systematic networked system analysis and control synthesis processes that can be executed in a decentralized manner at the subsystem level with minimal information sharing among the subsystems. Compared to our most recent work on the same topic, we consider a substantially more generalized problem setup in this paper and develop decentralized processes to verify and ensure a broader range of networked system properties. We show that for such decentralized processes: optimizing the used subsystem indexing scheme can substantially reduce the required inter-subsystem information-sharing sessions, and in some network topologies, information sharing among only neighboring subsystems is sufficient (distributed!). Moreover, the proposed networked system analysis and control synthesis processes are compositional/resilient to subsystem removals, which enable them to conveniently and efficiently handle situations where new subsystems are being added/removed to/from an existing network. We also provide significant insights into our decentralized approach so that it can be quickly adopted to verify and ensure properties beyond the stability and dissipativity of networked systems. Towards developing such decentralized techniques, we have also derived new centralized solutions for dissipative observer and dynamic output feedback controller design problems. Subsequently, we also specialize all the derived results for discrete-time networked systems. We conclude this paper by providing several simulation results demonstrating the proposed novel decentralized analysis and control synthesis processes and dissipativity-based results.

preprint2022arXiv

Backstepping Mean-Field Density Control for Large-Scale Heterogeneous Nonlinear Stochastic Systems

This work studies the problem of controlling the mean-field density of large-scale stochastic systems, which has applications in various fields such as swarm robotics. Recently, there is a growing amount of literature that employs mean-field partial differential equations (PDEs) to model the density evolution and uses density feedback to design control laws which, by acting on individual systems, stabilize their density towards a target profile. In spite of its stability property and computational efficiency, the success of density feedback relies on assuming the systems to be homogeneous first-order integrators (plus white noise) and ignores higher-order dynamics, making it less applicable in practice. In this work, we present a backstepping design algorithm that extends density control to heterogeneous and higher-order stochastic systems in strict-feedback forms. We show that the strict-feedback form in the individual level corresponds to, in the collective level, a PDE (of densities) distributedly driven by a collection of heterogeneous stochastic systems. The presented backstepping design then starts with a density feedback design for the PDE, followed by a sequence of stabilizing design for the remaining stochastic systems. We present a candidate control law with stability proof and apply it to nonholonomic mobile robots. A simulation is included to verify the effectiveness of the algorithm.

preprint2022arXiv

Contact-Implicit Trajectory Optimization with Hydroelastic Contact and iLQR

Contact-implicit trajectory optimization offers an appealing method of automatically generating complex and contact-rich behaviors for robot manipulation and locomotion. The scalability of such techniques has been limited, however, by the challenge of ensuring both numerical reliability and physical realism. In this paper, we present preliminary results suggesting that the Iterative Linear Quadratic Regulator (iLQR) algorithm together with the recently proposed pressure-field-based hydroelastic contact model enables reliable and physically realistic trajectory optimization through contact. We use this approach to synthesize contact-rich behaviors like quadruped locomotion and whole-arm manipulation. Furthermore, open-loop playback on a Kinova Gen3 robot arm demonstrates the physical accuracy of the whole-arm manipulation trajectories. Code is available at https://bit.ly/ilqr_hc and videos can be found at https://youtu.be/IqxJKbM8_ms.

preprint2022arXiv

Feedback Interconnected Mean-Field Density Estimation and Control

Swarm robotic systems have foreseeable applications in the near future. Recently, there has been an increasing amount of literature that employs mean-field partial differential equations (PDEs) to model the time-evolution of the probability density of swarm robotic systems and uses density feedback to design stabilizing control laws that act on individuals such that their density converges to a target profile. However, it remains largely unexplored considering problems of how to estimate the mean-field density, how the density estimation algorithms affect the control performance, and whether the estimation performance in turn depends on the control algorithms. In this work, we focus on studying the interplay of these algorithms. Specifically, we propose new density control laws which use the mean-field density and its gradient as feedback, and prove that they are globally input-to-state stable (ISS) with respect to estimation errors. Then, we design filtering algorithms to estimate the density and its gradient separately, and prove that these estimates are convergent assuming the control laws are known. Finally, we show that the feedback interconnection of these estimation and control algorithms is still globally ISS, which is attributed to the bilinearity of the PDE system. An agent-based simulation is included to verify the stability of these algorithms and their feedback interconnection.

preprint2022arXiv

Mini Cheetah, the Falling Cat: A Case Study in Machine Learning and Trajectory Optimization for Robot Acrobatics

Seemingly in defiance of basic physics, cats consistently land on their feet after falling. In this paper, we design a controller that lands the Mini Cheetah quadruped robot on its feet as well. Specifically, we explore how trajectory optimization and machine learning can work together to enable highly dynamic bioinspired behaviors. We find that a reflex approach, in which a neural network learns entire state trajectories, outperforms a policy approach, in which a neural network learns a mapping from states to control inputs. We validate our proposed controller in both simulation and hardware experiments, and are able to land the robot on its feet from falls with initial pitch angles between -90 and 90 degrees.

preprint2022arXiv

Mixed-Integer Programming for Signal Temporal Logic with Fewer Binary Variables

Signal Temporal Logic (STL) provides a convenient way of encoding complex control objectives for robotic and cyber-physical systems. The state-of-the-art in trajectory synthesis for STL is based on Mixed-Integer Convex Programming (MICP). The MICP approach is sound and complete, but has limited scalability due to exponential complexity in the number of binary variables. In this letter, we propose a more efficient MICP encoding for STL. Our new encoding is based on the insight that disjunction can be encoded using a logarithmic number of binary variables and conjunction can be encoded without binary variables. We demonstrate in simulation examples that our proposed approach significantly outperforms the state-of-the-art for long and complex specifications. Open-source software is available at https://stlpy.readthedocs.io.

preprint2022arXiv

Multicarrier Modulation on Delay-Doppler Plane: Achieving Orthogonality with Fine Resolutions

In this paper, we investigate the design of a novel multicarrier (MC) modulation on delay-Doppler (DD) plane, to couple the modulated signal with a doubly-selective channel having DD resolutions. A key challenge for the design of DD plane MC modulation is to find a realizable pulse orthogonal with respect to the DD plane's fine resolutions. To this end, we first indicate that a feasible DD plane MC modulation is essentially a type of staggered multitone modulation. Then, we propose an orthogonal delay-Doppler division multiplexing (ODDM) modulation, and design the corresponding transmit pulse. Most importantly, we prove that the proposed transmit pulse is orthogonal with respect to the DD plane's resolutions and therefore a realizable DD plane orthogonal pulse does exist. Finally, we demonstrate the superior performance of the proposed ODDM modulation in terms of out-of-band radiation and bit error rate.

preprint2022arXiv

On-line Estimation of Stability and Passivity Metrics

We consider the problem of on-line evaluation of critical characteristic parameters such as the L_2-gain (L2G), input feedforward passivity index (IFP) and output feedback passivity index (OFP) of non-linear systems using their input-output data. Typically, having an accurate measure of such "system indices" enables the application of systematic control design techniques. Moreover, if such system indices can efficiently be evaluated on-line, they can be exploited to device intelligent controller reconfiguration and fault-tolerant control techniques. However, the existing estimation methods of such system indices (i.e., L2G, IFP and OFP) are predominantly off-line, computationally inefficient, and require a large amount of actual or synthetically generated input-output trajectory data under some specific initial/terminal conditions. On the other hand, the existing on-line estimation methods take an averaging-based approach, which may be sub-optimal, computationally inefficient and susceptible to estimate saturation. In this paper, to overcome these challenges (in the on-line estimation of system indices), we establish and exploit several interesting theoretical results on a particular class of fractional function optimization problems. For comparison purposes, the details of an existing averaging-based approach are provided for the same on-line estimation problem. Finally, several numerical examples are discussed to demonstrate the proposed on-line estimation approach and to highlight our contributions.

preprint2022arXiv

PSL is Dead. Long Live PSL

Property Specification Language (PSL) is a form of temporal logic that has been mainly used in discrete domains (e.g. formal hardware verification). In this paper, we show that by merging machine learning techniques with PSL monitors, we can extend PSL to work on continuous domains. We apply this technique in machine learning-based anomaly detection to analyze scenarios of real-time streaming events from continuous variables in order to detect abnormal behaviors of a system. By using machine learning with formal models, we leverage the strengths of both machine learning methods and formal semantics of time. On one hand, machine learning techniques can produce distributions on continuous variables, where abnormalities can be captured as deviations from the distributions. On the other hand, formal methods can characterize discrete temporal behaviors and relations that cannot be easily learned by machine learning techniques. Interestingly, the anomalies detected by machine learning and the underlying time representation used are discrete events. We implemented a temporal monitoring package (TEF) that operates in conjunction with normal data science packages for anomaly detection machine learning systems, and we show that TEF can be used to perform accurate interpretation of temporal correlation between events.

preprint2022arXiv

Robust Approximate Simulation for Hierarchical Control of Piecewise Affine Systems under Bounded Disturbances

Piecewise affine (PWA) systems are widely applied in many practical cases such as the control of nonlinear systems and hybrid dynamics. However, most of the existing PWA control methods have poor scalability with respect to the number of modes and system dimensions and may not be robust to the disturbances in performance. In this paper, we present a robust approximate simulation based control method for PWA systems under bounded external disturbances. First, a lower-dimensional linear system (abstraction) and an associated interface are designed to enable the output of the PWA system (concrete system) to track the output of the abstraction. Then, a Lyapunov-like simulation function is designed to show the boundedness of the output errors between the two systems. Furthermore, the results obtained for linear abstraction are extended to the case that a simpler PWA system is the abstraction. To illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach, simulation results are provided for two design examples.

preprint2022arXiv

voxel2vec: A Natural Language Processing Approach to Learning Distributed Representations for Scientific Data

Relationships in scientific data, such as the numerical and spatial distribution relations of features in univariate data, the scalar-value combinations' relations in multivariate data, and the association of volumes in time-varying and ensemble data, are intricate and complex. This paper presents voxel2vec, a novel unsupervised representation learning model, which is used to learn distributed representations of scalar values/scalar-value combinations in a low-dimensional vector space. Its basic assumption is that if two scalar values/scalar-value combinations have similar contexts, they usually have high similarity in terms of features. By representing scalar values/scalar-value combinations as symbols, voxel2vec learns the similarity between them in the context of spatial distribution and then allows us to explore the overall association between volumes by transfer prediction. We demonstrate the usefulness and effectiveness of voxel2vec by comparing it with the isosurface similarity map of univariate data and applying the learned distributed representations to feature classification for multivariate data and to association analysis for time-varying and ensemble data.

preprint2021arXiv

Local phase delay effect on the asymmetric spectroscopy of plasmon-exciton coupling systems

The phase delay of a local electric field, being well-known in plasmonic nanostructures, has seldom been investigated to modulate the plasmon-exciton interaction. Here, with the single-particle spectroscopy method, we experimentally investigate the phase effect in plasmon-exciton coupling systems consisting of monolayer WSe2 and an individual gold nanorod. The local plasmon phase delay is tuned by adopting various nanorods with different resonant energies respective to the exciton. We find that the local plasmon phase delay between the excitons and the plasmonic modes is as equally essential as the amplitude. The phase delay modulates the plasmon-exciton coupling considerably, resulting in an asymmetric spectral line-shape due to the interference behavior. There is an excellent agreement for the phase delay between the numerically calculated near-field phase distribution and the experimental results. The local phase delay can act as an effective way to modulate the properties of plexcitonic coupling at the nanoscale, which may have potential applications in nanoscale sensing, solar energy devices, and enhancing nonlinear processes.

preprint2021arXiv

Universal spin-glass behaviour in bulk LaNiO2, PrNiO2 and NdNiO2

Motivated by the recent discovery of superconductivity in infinite-layer nickelate thin films, we report on a synthesis and magnetization study on bulk samples of the parent compounds ${R}$NiO$_{2}$ (${R}$=La, Pr, Nd). The frequency-dependent peaks of the AC magnetic susceptibility, along with remarkable memory effects, characterize spin-glass states. Furthermore, various phenomenological parameters via different spin glass models show strong similarity within these three compounds as well as with other rare-earth metal nickelates. The universal spin-glass behaviour distinguishes the nickelates from the parent compound CaCuO$_{2}$ of cuprate superconductors, which has the same crystal structure and $d^9$ electronic configuration but undergoes a long-range antiferromagnetic order. Our investigations may indicate a distinctly different nature of magnetism and superconductivity in the bulk nickelates than in the cuprates.

preprint2020arXiv

A graph-based spatial temporal logic for knowledge representation and automated reasoning in cognitive robots

We propose a new graph-based spatial temporal logic for knowledge representation and automated reasoning in this paper. The proposed logic achieves a balance between expressiveness and tractability in applications such as cognitive robots. The satisfiability of the proposed logic is decidable. We apply a Hilbert style axiomatization for the proposed graph-based spatial temporal logic, in which Modus ponens and IRR are the inference rules. We show that the corresponding deduction system is sound and complete and can be implemented through SAT.

preprint2020arXiv

A Smooth Robustness Measure of Signal Temporal Logic for Symbolic Control

Recent years have seen an increasing use of Signal Temporal Logic (STL) as a formal specification language for symbolic control, due to its expressiveness and closeness to natural language. Furthermore, STL specifications can be encoded as cost functions using STL's robust semantics, transforming the synthesis problem into an optimization problem. Unfortunately, these cost functions are non-smooth and non-convex, and exact solutions using mixed-integer programming do not scale well. Recent work has focused on using smooth approximations of robustness, which enable faster gradient-based methods to find local maxima, at the expense of soundness and/or completeness. We propose a novel robustness approximation that is smooth everywhere, sound, and asymptotically complete. Our approach combines the benefits of existing approximations, while enabling an explicit tradeoff between conservativeness and completeness.

preprint2020arXiv

Automatic Trajectory Synthesis for Real-Time Temporal Logic

Many safety-critical systems must achieve high-level task specifications with guaranteed safety and correctness. Much recent progress towards this goal has been made through controller synthesis from temporal logic specifications. Existing approaches, however, have been limited to relatively short and simple specifications. Furthermore, existing methods either consider some prior discretization of the state-space, deal only with a convex fragment of temporal logic, or are not provably complete. We propose a scalable, provably complete algorithm that synthesizes continuous trajectories to satisfy non-convex \gls*{rtl} specifications. We separate discrete task planning and continuous motion planning on-the-fly and harness highly efficient boolean satisfiability (SAT) and \gls*{lp} solvers to find dynamically feasible trajectories that satisfy non-convex \gls*{rtl} specifications for high dimensional systems. The proposed design algorithms are proven sound and complete, and simulation results demonstrate our approach's scalability.

preprint2020arXiv

Calabi-Yau generalized complete intersections and aspects of cohomology of sheaves

We consider generalized complete intersection manifolds in the product space of projective spaces, and work out useful aspects pertaining to the cohomology of sheaves over them. First, we present and prove a vanishing theorem on the cohomology groups of sheaves for subvarieties of the ambient product space of projective spaces. We then prove an equivalence between configuration matrices of complete intersection Calabi-Yau manifolds. We also present a formula of the genus of curves in generalized complete intersection manifolds. Some of these curves arise as the fixed point locus of certain symmetry group action on the generalized complete intersection Calabi-Yau manifolds. We also make a blowing-up along the curves, by which one can generate new Calabi-Yau manifolds. Moreover, an approach on spectral sequences is used to compute Hodge numbers of generalized complete intersection Calabi-Yau manifolds and the genus of curves therein.

preprint2020arXiv

Deep Reinforcement Learning for Joint Beamwidth and Power Optimization in mmWave Systems

This paper studies the joint beamwidth and transmit power optimization problem in millimeter wave communication systems. A deep reinforcement learning based approach is proposed. Specifically, a customized deep Q network is trained offline, which is able to make real-time decisions when deployed online. Simulation results show that the proposed approach significantly outperforms conventional approaches in terms of both performance and complexity. Besides, strong generalization ability to different system parameters is also demonstrated, which further enhances the practicality of the proposed approach.

preprint2020arXiv

Ensuring Privacy in Location-Based Services: A Model-based Approach

In recent years, the widespread of mobile devices equipped with GPS and communication chips has led to the growing use of location-based services (LBS) in which a user receives a service based on his current location. The disclosure of user's location, however, can raise serious concerns about user privacy in general, and location privacy in particular which led to the development of various location privacy-preserving mechanisms aiming to enhance the location privacy while using LBS applications. In this paper, we propose to model the user mobility pattern and utility of the LBS as a Markov decision process (MDP), and inspired by probabilistic current state opacity notation, we introduce a new location privacy metric, namely $ε-$privacy, that quantifies the adversary belief over the user's current location. We exploit this dynamic model to design a LPPM that while it ensures the utility of service is being fully utilized, independent of the adversary prior knowledge about the user, it can guarantee a user-specified privacy level can be achieved for an infinite time horizon. The overall privacy-preserving framework, including the construction of the user mobility model as a MDP, and design of the proposed LPPM, are demonstrated and validated with real-world experimental data.

preprint2020arXiv

PDE-based Dynamic Density Estimation for Large-scale Agent Systems

Large-scale agent systems have foreseeable applications in the near future. Estimating their macroscopic density is critical for many density-based optimization and control tasks, such as sensor deployment and city traffic scheduling. In this paper, we study the problem of estimating their dynamically varying probability density, given the agents' individual dynamics (which can be nonlinear and time-varying) and their states observed in real-time. The density evolution is shown to satisfy a linear partial differential equation uniquely determined by the agents' dynamics. We present a density filter which takes advantage of the system dynamics to gradually improve its estimation and is scalable to the agents' population. Specifically, we use kernel density estimators (KDE) to construct a noisy measurement and show that, when the agents' population is large, the measurement noise is approximately ``Gaussian''. With this important property, infinite-dimensional Kalman filters are used to design density filters. It turns out that the covariance of measurement noise depends on the true density. This state-dependence makes it necessary to approximate the covariance in the associated operator Riccati equation, rendering the density filter suboptimal. The notion of input-to-state stability is used to prove that the performance of the suboptimal density filter remains close to the optimal one. Simulation results suggest that the proposed density filter is able to quickly recognize the underlying modes of the unknown density and automatically ignore outliers, and is robust to different choices of kernel bandwidth of KDE.

preprint2020arXiv

Robust Approximate Simulation for Hierarchical Control of Linear Systems under Disturbances

Approximate simulation, an extension of simulation relations from formal methods to continuous systems, is a powerful tool for hierarchical control of complex systems. Finding an approximate simulation relation between the full "concrete" system and a simplified "abstract" system establishes a bound on the output error between the two systems, allowing one to design a controller for the abstract system while formally certifying performance on the concrete system. However, many real-world control systems are subject to external disturbances, which are not accounted for in the standard approximate simulation framework. We present a notion of robust approximate simulation, which considers external disturbances to the concrete system. We derive output error bounds for the case of linear systems subject to two types of additive disturbances: bounded disturbances and a sequence of (unbounded) impulse disturbances. We demonstrate the need for robust approximate simulation and the effectiveness of our proposed approach with a simulated robot motion planning example.

preprint2020arXiv

Specification mining and automated task planning for autonomous robots based on a graph-based spatial temporal logic

We aim to enable an autonomous robot to learn new skills from demo videos and use these newly learned skills to accomplish non-trivial high-level tasks. The goal of developing such autonomous robot involves knowledge representation, specification mining, and automated task planning. For knowledge representation, we use a graph-based spatial temporal logic (GSTL) to capture spatial and temporal information of related skills demonstrated by demo videos. We design a specification mining algorithm to generate a set of parametric GSTL formulas from demo videos by inductively constructing spatial terms and temporal formulas. The resulting parametric GSTL formulas from specification mining serve as a domain theory, which is used in automated task planning for autonomous robots. We propose an automatic task planning based on GSTL where a proposer is used to generate ordered actions, and a verifier is used to generate executable task plans. A table setting example is used throughout the paper to illustrate the main ideas.

preprint2020arXiv

Unsupervised Learning for Passive Beamforming

Reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS) has recently emerged as a promising candidate to improve the energy and spectral efficiency of wireless communication systems. However, the unit modulus constraint on the phase shift of reflecting elements makes the design of optimal passive beamforming solution a challenging issue. The conventional approach is to find a suboptimal solution using the semi-definite relaxation (SDR) technique, yet the resultant suboptimal iterative algorithm usually incurs high complexity, hence is not amenable for real-time implementation. Motivated by this, we propose a deep learning approach for passive beamforming design in RIS-assisted systems. In particular, a customized deep neural network is trained offline using the unsupervised learning mechanism, which is able to make real-time prediction when deployed online. Simulation results show that the proposed approach maintains most of the performance while significantly reduces computation complexity when compared with SDR-based approach.

preprint2019arXiv

Beam Squint and Channel Estimation for Wideband mmWave Massive MIMO-OFDM Systems

With the increasing scale of antenna arrays in wideband millimeter-wave (mmWave) communications, the physical propagation delays of electromagnetic waves traveling across the whole array will become large and comparable to the time-domain sample period, which is known as the spatial-wideband effect. In this case, different subcarriers in an orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) system will "see" distinct angles of arrival (AoAs) for the same path. This effect is known as beam squint, resulting from the spatial-wideband effect, and makes the approaches based on the conventional multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) model, such as channel estimation and precoding, inapplicable. After discussing the relationship between beam squint and the spatial-wideband effect, we propose a channel estimation scheme for frequency-division duplex (FDD) mmWave massive MIMO-OFDM systems with hybrid analog/digital precoding, which takes the beam squint effect into consideration. A super-resolution compressed sensing approach is developed to extract the frequency-insensitive parameters of each uplink channel path, i.e., the AoA and the time delay, and the frequency-sensitive parameter, i.e., the complex channel gain. With the help of the reciprocity of these frequency-insensitive parameters in FDD systems, the downlink channel estimation can be greatly simplified, where only limited pilots are needed to obtain downlink complex gains and reconstruct downlink channels. Furthermore, the uplink and downlink channel covariance matrices can be constructed from these frequency-insensitive channel parameters rather than through a long-term average, which enables the minimum mean-squared error (MMSE) channel estimation to further enhance performance. Numerical results demonstrate the superiority of the proposed scheme over the conventional methods in mmWave communications.

preprint2016arXiv

$T^4$ fibrations over Calabi-Yau two-folds and non-Kahler manifolds in string theory

We construct a geometric model of eight-dimensional manifolds and realize them in the context of type II string theory. These eight-manifolds are constructed by non-trivial $T^{4}$ fibrations over Calabi-Yau two-folds. These give rise to eight-dimensional non-Kahler Hermitian manifolds with $SU(4)$ structure. The eight-manifold is also a circle fibration over a seven-dimensional $G_{2}$ manifold with skew torsion. The eight-manifolds of this type appear as internal manifolds with $SU(4)$ structure in type IIB string theory with $F_{3}$ and $F_{7}$ fluxes. These manifolds have generalized calibrated cycles in the presence of fluxes.

preprint2016arXiv

Combined Top-Down and Bottom-Up Approaches to Performance-guaranteed Integrated Task and Motion Planning of Cooperative Multi-agent Systems

We propose a hierarchical design framework to automatically synthesize coordination schemes and control policies for cooperative multi-agent systems to fulfill formal performance requirements, by associating a bottom-up reactive motion controller with a top-down mission plan. On one hand, starting from a global mission that is specified as a regular language over all the agents' mission capabilities, a mission planning layer sits on the top of the proposed framework, decomposing the global mission into local tasks that are in consistency with each agent's individual capabilities, and compositionally justifying whether the achievement of local tasks implies the satisfaction of the global mission via an assume-guarantee paradigm. On the other hand, bottom-up motion plans associated with each agent are synthesized corresponding to the obtained local missions by composing basic motion primitives, which are verified safe by differential dynamic logic (d$\mathcal{L}$), through a Satisfiability Modulo Theories (SMT) solver that searches feasible solutions in face of constraints imposed by local task requirements and the environment description. It is shown that the proposed framework can handle dynamical environments as the motion primitives possess reactive features, making the motion plans adaptive to local environmental changes. Furthermore, on-line mission reconfiguration can be triggered by the motion planning layer once no feasible solutions can be found through the SMT solver. The effectiveness of the overall design framework is validated by an automated warehouse case study.

preprint2016arXiv

D3-D5 theories with unquenched flavors

We construct the string duals of the defect theories generated when N_f flavor D5-branes intersect N_c color D3-branes along a 2+1 dimensional subspace. We work in the Veneziano limit in which N_c and N_f are large and N_f/N_c is fixed. By smearing the D5-branes, we find supergravity solutions that take into account the backreaction of the flavor branes and preserve two supercharges. When the flavors are massless the resulting metric displays an anisotropic Lifshitz-like scale invariance. The case of massive quarks is also considered.

preprint2016arXiv

Downlink Performance of Pilot-Reused HetNet with Large-Scale Antenna Arrays

Considering a heterogeneous network (HetNet) where both macro base station (BS) and small cell (SC) nodes are equipped with massive antennas, this paper studies the performance for multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) downlinks when the macro and small cells share the same spectrum and hence interfere with each other. Suppose that the large-scale antenna arrays at both macro BS and SC nodes employ maximum-ratio transmission (MRT) or zero-forcing transmission (ZFT) precoding, and transmit data streams to the served users simultaneously. A new pilot reuse pattern among SCs is proposed for channel estimation. Taking into account imperfect channel state information (CSI), capacity lower bounds for MRT and ZFT are derived, respectively, in closed-form expressions involving only statistical CSI. Then asymptotic analyses for massive arrays are presented under specific power scaling laws. Subsequently, two user scheduling algorithms, greedy scheduling algorithm and asymptotical scheduling algorithm (ASA), are proposed based on derived capacity lower bounds and asymptotic analyses, respectively. ASA is demonstrated to be a near optimal in the asymptotic regime and has low complexity. Finally, the derived closed-form expressions are verified to be accurate predictors of the system performance by Monte-Carlo simulations. Numerical results demonstrate the effectiveness of asymptotic analysis and proposed user scheduling schemes.

preprint2016arXiv

Formal Design of Robot Integrated Task and Motion Planning

Integrated Task and Motion Planning (ITMP) for mobile robots in a dynamic environment with moving obstacles is a challenging research question and attracts more and more attentions recently. Most existing methods either restrict to static environments or lack performance guarantees. This motivates us to investigate the ITMP problem using formal methods and propose a bottom-up compositional design approach called CoSMoP (Composition of Safe Motion Primitives). Our basic idea is to synthesize a global motion plan through composing simple local moves and actions, and to achieve its performance guarantee through modular and incremental verifications. The design consists of two steps. First, basic motion primitives are designed and verified locally. Then, a global motion path is built upon these certified motion primitives by concatenating them together. In particular, we model the motion primitives as hybrid automata and verify their safety through formulating as Differential Dynamic Logic (d$\mathcal{L}$). Furthermore, these proven safe motion primitives are composed based on an encoding to Satisfiability Modulo Theories (SMT) that takes into account the geometric constraints. Since d$\mathcal{L}$ allows compositional verification, the sequential composition of the safe motion primitives also preserves safety properties. Therefore, the CoSMoP generates correct plans for given task specifications that are formally proven safe even for moving obstacles. Illustrative examples are presented to show the effectiveness of the methods.

preprint2016arXiv

Multi-band superconductivity and large anisotropy in FeS crystals

By using a hydrothermal method, we have successfully grown crystals of the newly discovered superconductor FeS, which has an isostructure of the iron based superconductor FeSe. The superconductivity appears at about 4.5K, as revealed by both resistive and magnetization measurements. It is found that the upper critical field is relatively low, with however an rather large anisotropy $Γ=[(dH_{c2}^{ab}/dT)/(dH_{c2}^{c}/dT)]_{T_c}\approx5.8$. A huge magnetoresistivity (290$\%$ at 9T and 10K, ${H}$ $\parallel$ c-axis) together with a non-linear behavior of Hall resistivity vs. external field are observed. A two-band model is applied to fit the magnetoresistance and non-linear transverse resistivity, yielding the basic parameters of the electron and hole bands.

preprint2016arXiv

Possible superconducting fluctuation and pseudogap state above $T_c$ in CsFe$_2$As$_2$

Resistive, magnetization, torque, specific heat and scanning tunneling microscopy measurements are carried out on the hole heavily doped CsFe$_2$As$_2$ single crystals. A characteristic temperature $T^*\sim13$ K, which is several times higher than the superconducting transition temperature $T_c=2.15$ K, is observed and possibly related to the superconducting fluctuation or the pseudogap state. A diamagnetic signal detected by torque measurements starts from the superconducting state, keeps finite and vanishes gradually until a temperature near $T^*$. Temperature dependent resistivity and specific heat also show kinks near $T^*$. An asymmetric gap-like feature with the energy of 8.4 meV and a symmetric superconducting related gap of 2.2 meV on the scanning tunneling spectra are detected, and these pseudogap-related features disappear at temperatures up to at least 9 K. These observations by different experimental tools suggest the possible existence of superconducting fluctuation or pseudogap state in the temperature range up to 4 - 6 times of $T_c$ in CsFe$_2$As$_2$.

preprint2016arXiv

Robust superconductivity and transport properties in (Li1-xFex)OHFeSe single crystals

The recently discovered (Li${_{1-x}}$Fe${_x}$)OHFeSe superconductor with $T_c$ about 40K provides a good platform for investigating the magnetization and electrical transport properties of FeSe-based superconductors. By using a hydrothermal ion-exchange method, we have successfully grown crystals of (Li${_{1-x}}$Fe${_x}$)OHFeSe. X-ray diffraction on the sample shows the single crystalline PbO-type structure with the c-axis preferential orientation. Magnetic susceptibility and resistive measurements show an onset superconducting transition at around ${T_c}$=38.3K. Using the magnetization hysteresis loops and Bean critical state model, a large critical current ${J_s}$ is observed in low temperature region. The critical current density is suppressed exponentially with increasing magnetic field. Temperature dependencies of resistivity under various currents and fields are measured, revealing a robust superconducting current density and bulk superconductivity.

preprint2016arXiv

SafeGuardPF: Safety Guaranteed Reactive Potential Fields for Mobile Robots in Unknown and Dynamic Environments

An autonomous navigation with proven collision avoidance in unknown and dynamic environments is still a challenge, particularly when there are moving obstacles. A popular approach to collision avoidance in the face of moving obstacles is based on model predictive algorithms, which, however, may be computationally expensive. Hence, we adopt a reactive potential field approach here. At every cycle, the proposed approach requires only current robot states relative to the closest obstacle point to find the potential field in the current position; thus, it is more computationally efficient and more suitable to scale up for multiple agent scenarios. Our main contribution here is to write the reactive potential field based motion controller as a hybrid automaton, and then formally verify its safety using differential dynamic logic. In particular, we can guarantee a passive safety property, which means that collisions cannot occur if the robot is to blame, namely a collision can occur only if the robot is at rest. The proposed controller and verification results are demonstrated via simulations and implementation on a Pioneer P3-AT robot.

preprint2016arXiv

Safety Certified Cooperative Adaptive Cruise Control under Unreliable Inter-vehicle Communications

Cooperative adaptive cruise control(CACC) system provides a great promise to significantly reduce traffic congestion while maintaining a high level of safety. Recent years have seen an increase of using formal methods in the analysis and design of cooperative adaptive cruise control systems. However, most existing results using formal methods usually assumed an ideal inter-vehicle communication, which is far from the real world situation. Hence, we are motivated to close the gap by explicitly considering non-deterministic time delay and packet dropout due to unreliable inter-vehicle communications. In particular, we consider a passive safety property, which requests a vehicle to avoid any collisions that can be considered as its fault. Under the assumption that the communication delay is bounded and we know the upper bound, we then formally verify the passivity safety of a class of hybrid CACC systems. This result allows us to define a safe control envelope that will guide the synthesis of control signals. Vehicles under the CACC within the safe control envelope are guaranteed to avoid active collisions.

preprint2016arXiv

Strong coupling superconductivity revealed by scanning tunneling microscope in tetragonal FeS

We investigate the electronic properties of the tetragonal FeS superconductor by using scanning tunneling microscope/spectroscopy. It is found that the typical tunneling spectrum on the top layer of sulfur can be nicely fitted with an anisotropic s-wave or a combination of two superconducting components in which one may have a highly anisotropic or nodal like superconducting gap. The fittings lead to the maximum superconducting gap $Δ_{max}\approx$ 0.90$\;$meV, which yields a ratio of 2$Δ_{max}/k_BT_c\approx$ 4.65. This value is larger than that of the predicted value 3.53 by the BCS theory in the weak coupling limit, indicating a strong coupling superconductivity. Two kinds of defects are observed on the surface, which can be assigned to the defects on the S sites (four-fold image) and Fe sites (dumbbell shape). Impurity induced resonance states are found only for the former defects and stay at zero-bias energy.

preprint2016arXiv

Superconductivity in LiOHFeS single crystals with a shrunk c-axis lattice constant

By using a hydrothermal ion-exchange method, we have successfully grown superconducting crystals of LiOHFeS with ${T_c}$ of about 2.8 K. Being different from the sister sample (Li${_{1-x}}$Fe${_x}$)OHFeSe, the energy dispersion spectrum analysis on LiOHFeS shows that the Fe/S ratio is very close to 1:1, suggesting an almost charge neutrality and less electron doping in the FeS planes of the system. Comparing with the non superconducting LiOHFeS crystal, each peak of the X-ray diffraction pattern of the superconducting crystal splits into two, and the diffraction peaks locating at lower reflection angles are consistent with that of non-superconducting ones. The rest set of diffraction peaks with higher reflection angles is corresponding to the superconducting phase, suggesting that the superconducting phase may has a shrunk c-axis lattice constant. Magnetization measurements indicate that the magnetic shielding due to superconductivity can be quite high under a weak magnetic field. The resistivity measurements under various magnetic fields show that the upper critical field is quite low, which is similar to the tetragonal FeS superconductor.

preprint2016arXiv

Upper critical field and quantum oscillations in tetragonal superconducting FeS

The magnetoresistance and magnetic torque of FeS are measured in magnetic fields $B$ of up to 18 T down to a temperature of 0.03 K. The superconducting transition temperature is found to be $T_c$ = 4.1 K, and the anisotropy ratio of the upper critical field $B_{c2}$ at $T_c$ is estimated from the initial slopes to be $Γ(T_c)$ = 6.9. $B_{c2}(0)$ is estimated to be 2.2 and 0.36 T for $B \parallel ab$ and $c$, respectively. Quantum oscillations are observed in both the resistance and torque. Two frequencies $F$ = 0.15 and 0.20 kT are resolved and assigned to a quasi-two-dimensional Fermi surface cylinder. The carrier density and Sommerfeld coefficient associated with this cylinder are estimated to be 5.8 $\times$ 10$^{-3}$ carriers/Fe and 0.48 mJ/(K$^2$mol), respectively. Other Fermi surface pockets still remain to be found. Band-structure calculations are performed and compared to the experimental results.

preprint2015arXiv

Nodal Superconducting Gap in $β$-FeS

Low temperature specific heat has been measured in superconductor $β$-FeS with T$_c$ = 4.55 K. It is found that the low temperature electronic specific heat C$_e$/T can be fitted to a linear relation in the low temperature region, but fails to be described by an exponential relation as expected by an s-wave gap. We try fittings to the data with different gap structures and find that a model with one or two nodal gaps can fit the data. Under a magnetic field, the field induced specific heat $Δγ$=[C$_e$(H)-C$_e$(0)]/T shows the Volovik relation $Δγ_e(H)\propto \sqrt{H}$, suggesting the presence of nodal gap(s) in this material.

preprint2015arXiv

Scrutinizing the double superconducting gaps and strong coupling pairing in (Li1-xFexOH)FeSe

In the iron based superconductors, one of the on-going frontier studies is about the pairing mechanism. The recent interest concerns the high temperature superconductivity and its intimate reason in the monolayer FeSe thin films. The challenge here is how the double superconducting gaps seen by the scanning tunnelling spectroscopy (STS) associate however to only one set of Fermi pockets seen by the angle resolved photoemission spectroscopy (ARPES). The recently discovered (Li1-xFexOH)FeSe phase with Tc=40 K provides a good platform to check the fundamental problems. Here we report the STS study on the (Li1-xFexOH)FeSe single crystals. The STS spectrum clearly indicates the presence of double anisotropic gaps with maximum magnitudes of Delta_1=14.3 meV and Delta_2=8.6 meV, and mimics that of the monolayer FeSe thin film. Further analysis based on the quasiparticle interference (QPI) allows us to rule out the d-wave gap, and for the first time assign the larger (smaller) gap to the outer (inner) hybridized Fermi pockets associating with the dxy (dxz/dyz) orbitals, respectively. The huge value Delta_1/k_BT_c = 8.7 discovered here undoubtedly proves the strong coupling mechanism in the present superconducting system.

preprint2014arXiv

Decentralized Hybrid Formation Control of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles

This paper presents a decentralized hybrid supervisory control approach for a team of unmanned helicopters that are involved in a leader-follower formation mission. Using a polar partitioning technique, the motion dynamics of the follower helicopters are abstracted to finite state machines. Then, a discrete supervisor is designed in a modular way for different components of the formation mission including reaching the formation, keeping the formation, and collision avoidance. Furthermore, a formal technique is developed to design the local supervisors decentralizedly, so that the team of helicopters as whole, can cooperatively accomplish a collision-free formation task.

preprint2013arXiv

On exotic sphere fibrations, topological phases, and edge states in physical systems

We suggest that exotic sphere fibrations can be mapped to band topologies in condensed matter systems. These fibrations can correspond to geometric phases of two double bands or state vector bases with second Chern numbers m+n and -n respectively. They can be related to topological insulators, magneto-electric effects, and photonic crystals with special edge states. We also consider time-reversal symmetry breaking perturbations of topological insulator, and heterostructures of topological insulators with normal insulators and with superconductors. We consider periodic TI/NI/TI/NI' heterostuctures, and periodic TI/SC/TI/SC' heterostuctures. They also give rise to models of Weyl semimetals which have thermal and electrical transports.

preprint2013arXiv

Structural Controllability of Switched Linear Systems

This paper studies the structural controllability of a class of uncertain switched linear systems, where the parameters of subsystems state matrices are either unknown or zero. The structural controllability is a generalization of the traditional controllability concept for dynamical systems, and purely based on the interconnection relation between the state variables and inputs through non-zero elements in the state matrices. In order to illustrate such a relationship, two kinds of graphic representations of switched linear systems are proposed, based on which graph theory based necessary and sufficient characterizations of the structural controllability for switched linear systems are presented. Finally, the paper concludes with discussions on the results and future work.

preprint2012arXiv

Additive-Decomposition-Based Output Feedback Tracking Control for Systems with Measurable Nonlinearities and Unknown Disturbances

In this paper, a new control scheme, called as additive-decomposition-based tracking control, is proposed to solve the output feedback tracking problem for a class of systems with measurable nonlinearities and unknown disturbances. By the additive decomposition, the output feedback tracking task for the considered nonlinear system is decomposed into three independent subtasks: a pure tracking subtask for a linear time invariant (LTI) system, a pure rejection subtask for another LTI system and a stabilization subtask for a nonlinear system. By benefiting from the decomposition, the proposed additive-decomposition-based tracking control scheme i) can give a potential way to avoid conflict among tracking performance, rejection performance and robustness, and ii) can mix both design in time domain and frequency domain for one controller design. To demonstrate the effectiveness, the output feedback tracking problem for a single-link robot arm subject to a sinusoidal or a general disturbance is solved respectively, where the transfer function method for tracking and rejection and backstepping method for stabilization are applied together to the design.

preprint2012arXiv

An Input-Output Simulation Approach to Controlling Multi-AffineSystems for Linear Temporal Logic Specifications

This paper presents an input-output simulation approach to controlling multi-affine systems for linear temporal logic (LTL) specifications, which consists of the following steps. First, we partition the state space into rectangles, each of which satisfies atomic LTL propositions. Then, we study the control of multi-affine systems on rectangles including the control of driving all trajectories starting from a rectangle to exit through a facet and the control of stabilizing the system towards a desired point. With the proposed controllers, a finitely abstracted transition system is constructed which is shown to be input-output simulated by the rectangular transition system of the multi-affine system. Since input-output simulation preserves LTL properties, the controller synthesis of the multi-affine system for LTL specifications is achieved by designing a nonblocking supervisor for the abstracted transition system and by continuously implementing the resulting supervisor for the original multi-affine system.

preprint2012arXiv

Bisimilarity Enforcing Supervisory Control for Deterministic Specifications

This paper investigates the supervisory control of nondeterministic discrete event systems to enforce bisimilarity with respect to deterministic specifications. A notion of synchronous simulation-based controllability is introduced as a necessary and sufficient condition for the existence of a bisimilarity enforcing supervisor, and a polynomial algorithm is developed to verify such a condition. When the existence condition holds, a supervisor achieving bisimulation equivalence is constructed. Furthermore, when the existence condition does not hold, two different methods are provided for synthesizing maximal permissive sub-specifications.

preprint2012arXiv

Cooperative Tasking for Deterministic Specification Automata

In our previous work [1], a divide-and-conquer approach was proposed for cooperative tasking among multi-agent systems. The basic idea is to decompose a requested global specification into subtasks for individual agents such that the fulfillment of these subtasks by each individual agent leads to the satisfaction of the global specification as a team. It was shown that not all tasks can be decomposed. Furthermore, a necessary and sufficient condition was proposed for the decomposability of a task automaton between two cooperative agents. The current paper continues the results in [1] and proposes necessary and sufficient conditions for task decomposability with respect to arbitrary finite number of agents. It is further shown that the fulfillment of local specifications can guarantee the satisfaction of the global specification. This work provides hints for the designers on how to rule out the indecomposable task automata and enforce the decomposability conditions. The result therefore may pave the way towards a new perspective for decentralized cooperative control of multi-agent systems.

preprint2012arXiv

Graph-Theoretic Characterizations of Structural Controllability for Multi-Agent System with Switching Topology

This paper considers the controllability problem for multi-agent systems. In particular, the structural controllability of multi-agent systems under switching topologies is investigated. The structural controllability of multi-agent systems is a generalization of the traditional controllability concept for dynamical systems, and purely based on the communication topologies among agents. The main contributions of the paper are graph-theoretic characterizations of the structural controllability for multi-agent systems. It turns out that the multi-agent system with switching topology is structurally controllable if and only if the union graph G of the underlying communication topologies is connected (single leader) or leader-follower connected (multi-leader). Finally, the paper concludes with several illustrative examples and discussions of the results and future work.

preprint2012arXiv

Output Feedback Tracking Control for a Class of Uncertain Systems subject to Unmodeled Dynamics and Delay at Input

Besides parametric uncertainties and disturbances, the unmodeled dynamics and time delay at the input are often present in practical systems, which cannot be ignored in some cases. This paper aims to solve output feedback tracking control problem for a class of nonlinear uncertain systems subject to unmodeled high-frequency gains and time delay at the input. By the additive decomposition, the uncertain system is transformed to an uncertainty-free system, where the uncertainties, disturbance and effect of unmodeled dynamics plus time delay are lumped into a new disturbance at the output. Sequently, additive decomposition is used to decompose the transformed system, which simplifies the tracking controller design. To demonstrate the effectiveness, the proposed control scheme is applied to three benchmark examples.

preprint2011arXiv

Communicate only when necessary: Cooperative tasking for multi-agent systems

New advances in large scale distributed systems have amazingly offered complex functionalities through parallelism of simple and rudimentary components. The key issue in cooperative control of multi-agent systems is the synthesis of local control and interaction rules among the agents such that the entire controlled system achieves a desired global behavior. For this purpose, three fundamental problems have to be addressed: (1) task decomposition for top-down design, such that the fulfillment of local tasks guarantees the satisfaction of the global task, by the team; (2) fault-tolerant top-down design, such that the global task remains decomposable and achievable, in spite of some failures, and (3) design of interactions among agents to make an undecomposable task decomposable and achievable in a top-down framework. The first two problems have been addressed in our previous works, by identifying necessary and sufficient conditions for task automaton decomposition, and fault-tolerant task decomposability. This paper deals with the third problem and proposes a procedure to redistribute the events among agents in order to enforce decomposability of an undecomposable task automaton. The decomposability conditions are used to identify the root causes of undecomposability which are found to be due to over-communications that have to be deleted, while respecting the fault-tolerant decomposability conditions; or because of the lack of communications that require new sharing of events, while considering new violations of decomposability conditions. This result provides a sufficient condition to make any undecomposable deterministic task automaton decomposable in order to facilitate cooperative tasking. Illustrative examples are presented to show the concept of task automaton decomposabilization.

preprint2011arXiv

Computation for Supremal Simulation-Based Controllable and Strong Observable Subautomata

Bisimulation relation has been successfully applied to computer science and control theory. In our previous work, simulation-based controllability and simulation-based observability are proposed, under which the existence of bisimilarity supervisor is guaranteed. However, a given specification automaton may not satisfy these conditions, and a natural question is how to compute a maximum permissive subspecification. This paper aims to answer this question and investigate the computation of the supremal simulation-based controllable and strong observable subautomata with respect to given specifications by the lattice theory. In order to achieve the supremal solution, three monotone operators, namely simulation operator, controllable operator and strong observable operator, are proposed upon the established complete lattice. Then, inequalities based on these operators are formulated, whose solution is the simulation-based controllable and strong observable set. In particular, a sufficient condition is presented to guarantee the existence of the supremal simulation-based controllable and strong observable subautomata. Furthermore, an algorithm is proposed to compute such subautomata.

preprint2011arXiv

Decentralized Supervisory Control of Discrete Event Systems for Bisimulation Equivalence

In decentralized systems, branching behaviors naturally arise due to communication, unmodeled dynamics and system abstraction, which can not be adequately captured by the traditional sequencing-based language equivalence. As a finer behavior equivalence than language equivalence, bisimulation not only allows the full set of branching behaviors but also explicitly specifies the properties in terms of temporal logic such as CTL* and mu-calculus. This observation motivates us to consider the decentralized control of discrete event systems (DESs) for bisimulation equivalence in this paper, where the plant and the specification are taken to be nondeterministic and the supervisor is taken to be deterministic. An automata-based control framework is formalized, upon which we develop three architectures with respect to different decision fusion rules for the decentralized bisimilarity control, named a conjunctive architecture, a disjunctive architecture and a general architecture. Under theses three architectures, necessary and sufficient conditions for the existence of decentralized bisimilarity supervisors are derived respectively, which extend the traditional results of supervisory control from language equivalence to bisimulation equivalence. It is shown that these conditions can be verified with exponential complexity. Furthermore, the synthesis of bisimilarity supervisors is presented when the existence condition holds.

preprint2011arXiv

Design and analysis of continuous hybrid differentiator

In this paper, a continuous hybrid differentiator is presented based on a strong Lyapunov function. The differentiator design can not only reduce sufficiently chattering phenomenon of derivative estimation by introducing a perturbation parameter, but also the dynamical performances are improved by adding linear correction terms to the nonlinear ones. Moreover, strong robustness ability is obtained by integrating sliding mode items and the linear filter. Frequency analysis is applied to compare the hybrid continuous differentiator with sliding mode differentiator. The merits of the continuous hybrid differentiator include the excellent dynamical performances, restraining noises sufficiently, and avoiding the chattering phenomenon.

preprint2011arXiv

Design and frequency analysis of continuous finite-time-convergent differentiator

In this paper, a continuous finite-time-convergent differentiator is presented based on a strong Lyapunov function. The continuous differentiator can reduce chattering phenomenon sufficiently than normal sliding mode differentiator, and the outputs of signal tracking and derivative estimation are all smooth. Frequency analysis is applied to compare the continuous differentiator with sliding mode differentiator. The beauties of the continuous finite-time-convergent differentiator include its simplicity, restraining noises sufficiently, and avoiding the chattering phenomenon.

preprint2011arXiv

Fault-tolerant Cooperative Tasking for Multi-agent Systems

A natural way for cooperative tasking in multi-agent systems is through a top-down design by decomposing a global task into sub-tasks for each individual agent such that the accomplishments of these sub-tasks will guarantee the achievement of the global task. In our previous works [1], [2] we presented necessary and sufficient conditions on the decomposability of a global task automaton between cooperative agents. As a follow-up work, this paper deals with the robustness issues of the proposed top-down design approach with respect to event failures in the multi-agent systems. The main concern under event failure is whether a previously decomposable task can still be achieved collectively by the agents, and if not, we would like to investigate that under what conditions the global task could be robustly accomplished. This is actually the fault-tolerance issue of the top-down design, and the results provide designers with hints on which events are fragile with respect to failures, and whether redundancies are needed. The main objective of this paper is to identify necessary and sufficient conditions on failed events under which a decomposable global task can still be achieved successfully. For such a purpose, a notion called passivity is introduced to characterize the type of event failures. The passivity is found to reflect the redundancy of communication links over shared events, based on which necessary and sufficient conditions for the reliability of cooperative tasking under event failures are derived, followed by illustrative examples and remarks for the derived conditions.

preprint2011arXiv

Nonplanar Integrability

In this article we study operators with a dimension $Δ\sim O(N)$ and show that simple analytic expressions for the action of the dilatation operator can be found. The operators we consider are restricted Schur polynomials. There are two distinct classes of operators that we consider: operators labeled by Young diagrams with two long columns or two long rows. The main complication in working with restricted Schur polynomials is in building a projector from a given $S_{n+m}$ irreducible representation to an $S_n\times S_m$ irreducible representation (both specified by the labels of the restricted Schur polynomial). We give an explicit construction of these projectors by reducing it to the simple problem of addition of angular momentum in ordinary non-relativistic quantum mechanics. The diagonalizationof the dilatation operator reduces to solving three term recursion relations. The fact that the recursion relations have only three terms is a direct consequence of the weak mixing at one loop of the restricted Schur polynomials. The recursion relations can be solved exactly in terms of symmetric Kravchuk polynomials or in terms of Clebsch-Gordan coefficients. This proves that the dilatation operator reduces to a decoupled set of harmonic oscillators and therefore it is integrable.

preprint2011arXiv

Synchronized Task Decomposition for Cooperative Multi-agent Systems

It is an amazing fact that remarkably complex behaviors could emerge from a large collection of very rudimentary dynamical agents through very simple local interactions. However, it still remains elusive on how to design these local interactions among agents so as to achieve certain desired collective behaviors. This paper aims to tackle this challenge and proposes a divide-and-conquer approach to guarantee specified global behaviors through local coordination and control design for multi-agent systems. The basic idea is to decompose the requested global specification into subtasks for each individual agent. It should be noted that the decomposition is not arbitrary. The global specification should be decomposed in such a way that the fulfilment of these subtasks by each individual agent will imply the satisfaction of the global specification as a team. First, it is shown by a counterexample that not all specifications can be decomposed in this sense. Then, a natural follow-up question is what the necessary and sufficient condition should be for the proposed decomposability of a global specification. The main part of the paper is set to answer this question. The case of two cooperative agents is investigated first, and a necessary and sufficient condition is presented and proven. Later on, the result is generalized to the case of arbitrary finite number of agents, and a hierarchical algorithm is proposed, which is shown to be a sufficient condition. Finally, a cooperative control scenario for a team of three robots is developed to illustrate the task decomposition procedure.

preprint2011arXiv

Topological conditions of scale-free networks for cooperation to evolve

Evolutionary game theory is employed to study topological conditions of scale-free networks for the evolution of cooperation. We show that Apollonian Networks (ANs) are perfect scale-free networks, on which cooperation can spread to all individuals, even though there are initially only 3 or 4 hubs occupied by cooperators and all the others by defectors. Local topological features such as degree, clustering coefficient, gradient as well as topology potential are adopted to analyze the advantages of ANs in cooperation enhancement. Furthermore, a degree-skeleton underlying ANs is uncovered for understanding the cooperation diffusion. Constructing this kind degree-skeleton for random scale-free networks promotes cooperation level close to that of Barabási-Albert networks, which gives deeper insights into the origin of the latter on organization and further promotion of cooperation.

preprint2011arXiv

Two-step differentiator for delayed signal

This paper presents a high-order differentiator for delayed measurement signal. The proposed differentiator not only can correct the delay in signal, but aslo can estimate the undelayed derivatives. The differentiator consists of two-step algorithms with the delayed time instant. Conditions are given ensuring convergence of the estimation error for the given delay in the signals. The merits of method include its simple implementation and interesting application. Numerical simulations illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed differentiator.

preprint2010arXiv

How to strictly calculate self-consistent fields of realistic plasma particles

Because currently the most popular method of calculating plasma self-consistent fields is an incomplete method which, strictly speaking, is not suitable to scientific investigation, we develop this method into be a complete reliable basic tool for scientific investigation. Here, the text after the pargraph around Eq.(7) have two different presentations, the presentation given latter is more concise and straightforward. PACS: 52.65.-y, 52.35.-g.

preprint2006arXiv

Instantons, supersymmetric vacua, and emergent geometries

We study instanton solutions and superpotentials for the large number of vacua of the plane-wave matrix model and a 2+1 dimensional Super Yang-Mills theory on $R\times S^2$ with sixteen supercharges. We get the superpotential in the weak coupling limit from the gauge theory description. We study the gravity description of these instantons. Perturbatively with respect to a background, they are Euclidean branes wrapping cycles in the dual gravity background. Moreover, the superpotential can be given by the energy of the electric charge system characterizing each vacuum. These charges are interpreted as the eigenvalues of matrices from a reduction for the 1/8 BPS sector of the gauge theories. We also discuss qualitatively the emergence of the extra spatial dimensions appeared on the gravity side.

preprint2004arXiv

Bubbling AdS space and 1/2 BPS geometries

We consider all 1/2 BPS excitations of $AdS \times S$ configurations in both type IIB string theory and M-theory. In the dual field theories these excitations are described by free fermions. Configurations which are dual to arbitrary droplets of free fermions in phase space correspond to smooth geometries with no horizons. In fact, the ten dimensional geometry contains a special two dimensional plane which can be identified with the phase space of the free fermion system. The topology of the resulting geometries depends only on the topology of the collection of droplets on this plane. These solutions also give a very explicit realization of the geometric transitions between branes and fluxes. We also describe all 1/2 BPS excitations of plane wave geometries. The problem of finding the explicit geometries is reduced to solving a Laplace (or Toda) equation with simple boundary conditions. We present a large class of explicit solutions. In addition, we are led to a rather general class of $AdS_5$ compactifications of M-theory preserving ${\cal N} =2$ superconformal symmetry. We also find smooth geometries that correspond to various vacua of the maximally supersymmetric mass-deformed M2 brane theory. Finally, we present a smooth 1/2 BPS solution of seven dimensional gauged supergravity corresponding to a condensate of one of the charged scalars.

preprint2001arXiv

A Grand Canonical Ensemble Approach to the Thermodynamic Properties of the Nucleon in the Quark-Gluon Coupling Model

In this paper, we put forward a way to study the nucleon's thermodynamic properties such as its temperature, entropy and so on, without inputting any free parameters by human hand, even the nucleon's mass and radius. First we use the Lagrangian density of the quark gluon coupling fields to deduce the Dirac Equation of the quarks confined in the gluon fields. By boundary conditions we solve the wave functions and energy eigenvalues of the quarks, and thus get energy-momentum tensor, nucleon mass, and density of states. Then we utilize a hybrid grand canonical ensemble, to generate the temperature and chemical potentials of quarks, antiquarks of three flovars by the four conservation laws of the energy and the valence quark numbers, after which, all other thermodynamic properties are known. The only seemed free paremeter, the nucleon radius is finally determined by the grand potential minimal principle.

preprint2001arXiv

A Statistical Treatment to the Evolution Equation for Quark Distributions

The evolution of polarized quark distribution functions is taken into account the gluon emission and absorption, quark pair production and annihilation processes and treated by a statistical method which provides quark distribution functions at small $Q^2$. The evolution function of quark distributions is derived and solved by numerical methods. Then the $Q^2$ dependent and $α_{s}$ dependent structure functions $F_{2}(x, Q^{2})$ are obtained and the example of it, the proton structure function, is calculated, whose increase and decrease tendency with $α_{s}$ at different $x$ is consistent with experiments. This is also an evidence that the statistical methods for the nucleon is reasonable.