6676888
Constrained Ant Colony Optimization for Data Clustering
Processes that simulate natural phenomena have successfully been applied to a number of problems for which no simple mathematical solution is known or is practicable. Such meta-heuristic algorithms include genetic algorithms, particle swarm optimization and ant colony systems and have received increasing attention in recent years. 
 
This paper extends ant colony systems and discusses a novel data clustering process using Constrained Ant Colony Optimization (CACO). The CACO algorithm extends the Ant Colony Optimization algorithm by accommodating a quadratic distance metric, the Sum of K Nearest Neighbor Distances (SKNND) metric, constrained addition of pheromone and a shrinking range strategy to improve data clustering. We show that the CACO algorithm can resolve the problems of clusters with arbitrary shapes, clusters with outliers and bridges between clusters.
172381
Robust VQ-based digital watermarking for memoryless binary symmetric channel
Vector quantization (VQ) has been distinguished for its high compression rate in lossy data compression applications. And VQ-based watermarking plays a newly developed branch in digital watermarking research fields. In this paper, we propose optimized schemes for VQ-based image watermarking. We overcome the VQ index assignment problem with genetic algorithm, which is suitable for transmitting the watermarked image over noisy channels. We obtain better robustness of the watermarking algorithm against the effects caused by channel noise in our simulations after inspecting the results from several test images. In addition, to compare with existing schemes in literature, the watermarked image quality in our scheme has approximately the same quality, with better performance in robustness, to the schemes proposed by other researchers. This also proves the effectiveness of our proposed schemes in VQ-based image watermarking for copyright protection.
45038628
Fast clustering algorithms for vector quantization
Abstract Some fast clustering algorithms for vector quantization (VQ) based on the LBG recursive algorithm are presented and compared. Experimental results in comparison to the conventional vector-quantization (VQ) clustering algorithm with speech data demonstrate that the best approach will save more than 99% in the number of multiplications, as well as considerable saving in the number of additions. The increase in the number of comparisons is moderate. An improve absolute error inequality (AEI) criterion for Euclidean distortion measure is also proposed and utilized in the VQ clustering algorithm.
19822286
A Multi-user Based Watermarking System with Two-Security-Level Keys
This paper presents a new watermarking scheme to reduce the detection error probability through removal of local mean values of an original signal. It will be analytically proven that the removal process plays role in reducing the interference between an original signal and a watermark to be embedded. This is simply based on the orthogonality of the DC signal and the AC signal. As a result, the process improves the ability of the right detection. The proposed method is analytically and empirically evaluated with no attack as well as JPEG compression attacks.
38537152
A Digital Image Watermarking Method Based on Labeled Bisecting Clustering Algorithm
13091217
A Parallel Particle Swarm Optimization Algorithm with Communication Strategies
Particle swarm optimization (PSO) is an alternative population-based evolutionary computation technique. It has been shown to be capable of optimizing hard mathematical problems in continuous or binary space. We present here a parallel version of the particle swarm optimization (PPSO) algorithm together with three communication strategies which can be used according to the independence of the data. The first strategy is designed for solution parameters that are independent or are only loosely correlated, such as the Rosenbrock and Rastrigrin functions. The second communication strategy can be applied to parameters that are more strongly correlated such as the Griewank function. In cases where the properties of the parameters are unknown, a third hybrid communication strategy can be used. Experimental results demonstrate the usefulness of the proposed PPSO algorithm.
3648465
Optimal base-station locations in two-tiered wireless sensor networks
We consider generic two-tiered wireless sensor networks (WSNs) consisting of sensor clusters deployed around strategic locations, and base-stations (BSs) whose locations are relatively flexible. Within a sensor cluster, there are many small sensor nodes (SNs) that capture, encode, and transmit relevant information from a designated area, and there is at least one application node (AN) that receives raw data from these SNs, creates a comprehensive local-view, and forwards the composite bit-stream toward a BS. This paper focuses on the topology control process for ANs and BSs, which constitute the upper tier of two-tiered WSNs. Since heterogeneous ANs are battery-powered and energy-constrained, their node lifetime directly affects the network lifetime of WSNs. By proposing algorithmic approaches to locate BSs optimally, we can maximize the topological network lifetime of WSNs deterministically, even when the initial energy provisioning for ANs is no longer always proportional to their average bit-stream rate. The obtained optimal BS locations are under different lifetime definitions according to the mission criticality of WSNs. By studying intrinsic properties of WSNs, we establish the upper and lower bounds of maximal topological lifetime, which enable a quick assessment of energy provisioning feasibility and topology control necessity. Numerical results are given to demonstrate the efficacy and optimality of the proposed topology control approaches designed for maximizing network lifetime of WSNs.
6653256
Domain-constrained semi-supervised mining of tracking models in sensor networks
Accurate localization of mobile objects is a major research problem in sensor networks and an important data mining application. Specifically, the localization problem is to determine the location of a client device accurately given the radio signal strength values received at the client device from multiple beacon sensors or access points. Conventional data mining and machine learning methods can be applied to solve this problem. However, all of them require large amounts of labeled training data, which can be quite expensive. In this paper, we propose a probabilistic semi supervised learning approach to reduce the calibration effort and increase the tracking accuracy. Our method is based on semi-supervised conditional random fields which can enhance the learned model from a small set of training data with abundant unlabeled data effectively. To make our method more efficient, we exploit a Generalized EM algorithm coupled with domain constraints. We validate our method through extensive experiments in a real sensor network using Crossbow MICA2 sensors. The results demonstrate the advantages of methods compared to other state-of-the-art object-tracking algorithms.
9847155
GCap: Graph-based Automatic Image Captioning
Given an image, how do we automatically assign keywords to it? In this paper, we propose a novel, graph-based approach (GCap) which outperforms previously reported methods for automatic image captioning. Moreover, it is fast and scales well, with its training and testing time linear to the data set size. We report auto-captioning experiments on the "standard" Corel image database of 680 MBytes, where GCap outperforms recent, successful auto-captioning methods by up to 10 percentage points in captioning accuracy (50% relative improvement).
2927837
Competence Driven Case-Base Mining
We present a novel algorithm for extracting a high-quality case base from raw data while preserving and sometimes improving the competence of case-based reasoning. We extend the framework of Smyth and Keane's case-deletion policy with two additional features. First, we build a case base using a statistical distribution that is mined from the input data so that the case-base competence can be preserved or even increased for future problems. Second, we introduce a nonlinear transformation of the data set so that the case-base sizes can be further reduced while ensuring that the competence be preserved and even increased. We show that Smyth and Keane's deletion-based algorithm is sensitive to noisy cases, and that our solution solves this problem more satisfactorily. We show the theoretical foundation and empirical evaluation on several data sets.
9877562
RDFS(FA): A DL-ised Sub-language of RDFS
Description Logics (DLs), as a field of research, form a formal foundation of first-order semantic Web ontology languages, such as DAML+OIL and OWL. The Semantic Web will build on XML’s ability to define customized tagging schemes and RDF(S)’s flexible approach to representing data. RDF Schema (RDFS), however, has a non-standard metamodeling architecture, which makes some elements in the model have dual roles in the RDFS specification. As a result, the specification of its semantics requires a non-standard model theory, RDF MT. This leads to semantic problems when trying to layer DL-based and other conventional firstorder Web ontology languages on top of RDFS. In this paper we suggest layering Web ontology languages on top of RDFS(FA), a sub-language of RDFS, which is based on a (relatively) standard model-theoretic semantics. We will also compare this approach with the existing RDF Model Theory and show how their semantics relate to the semantics of OWL, a newly developed Web ontology language by W3C.