Question: Interfering with the transmission of blocks and transactions within the Bitcoin network.

This paper explores the vulnerabilities of Bitcoin, a decentralized payment system that employs Proof-of-Work (PoW) for transaction verification, particularly in the context of fast payments. With the growing popularity of Bitcoin in scenarios requiring swift exchanges, such as the instance where it was used for speedy transactions at a local fast-food restaurant, the security implications have come under scrutiny. Despite Bitcoin's design to thwart double-spending, we find that the system's verification process, which can take upwards of tens of minutes, is ill-suited for transactions needing immediate confirmation. Our analysis reveals that without the integration of effective detection mechanisms, the likelihood of successful double-spending attacks on fast payments is alarmingly high and can be executed with minimal expenditure. We also critique the current advice given by Bitcoin developers for safeguarding fast payments against double-spending, showing that their suggested measures may not always be reliable. Even if these recommendations are incorporated into future Bitcoin versions, the system remains susceptible to double-spending assaults. To address this issue, we propose and implement an alteration to the existing Bitcoin infrastructure that guarantees the detection of double-spending attempts in fast payment scenarios, thereby enhancing the security of Bitcoin transactions in real-time environments.

In the process of distributing pharmaceutical products multiple stages are involved until products are delivered to patient. A reliable way for validating and verifying that products had been maintained within a licensed range is required. The paper presents a solution for pharmaceutical cold chain management using distributed ledger technologies. An application framework is proposed for shipment tracking which will deliver information to all stakeholders during the distribution phase of pharmaceutical products. The solution is based on Hyperledger Sawtooth distributed ledger framework, which has been extended with a custom transactions family and a sensors gateway for automatically collecting data from temperature tracking devices. The focus of the paper is to describe the data model and how entities of the system communicate.

We propose a novel trap-based architecture for detecting passive, “silent”, attackers who are eavesdropping on enterprise networks. Motivated by the increasing number of incidents where attackers sniff the local network for interesting information, such as credit card numbers, account credentials, and passwords, we introduce a methodology for building a trap-based network that is designed to maximize the realism of bait-laced traffic. Our proposal relies on a “record, modify, replay” paradigm that can be easily adapted to different networked environments. The primary contributions of our architecture are the ease of automatically injecting large amounts of believable bait, and the integration of different detection mechanisms in the back-end. We demonstrate our methodology in a prototype platform that uses our decoy injection API to dynamically create and dispense network traps on a subset of our campus wireless network. Our network traps consist of several types of monitored passwords, authentication cookies, credit cards, and documents containing beacons to alarm when opened. The efficacy of our decoys against a model attack program is also discussed, along with results obtained from experiments in the field. In addition, we present a user study that demonstrates the believability of our decoy traffic, and finally, we provide experimental results to show that our solution causes only negligible interference to ordinary users.

The modern automobile is controlled by networked computers. The security of these networks was historically of little concern, but researchers have in recent years demonstrated their many vulnerabilities to attack. As part of a defence against these attacks, we evaluate an anomaly detector for the automotive controller area network (CAN) bus. The majority of attacks are based on inserting extra packets onto the network. But most normal packets arrive at a strict frequency. This motivates an anomaly detector that compares current and historical packet timing. We present an algorithm that measures inter-packet timing over a sliding window. The average times are compared to historical averages to yield an anomaly signal. We evaluate this approach over a range of insertion frequencies and demonstrate the limits of its effectiveness. We also show how a similar measure of the data contents of packets is not effective for identifying anomalies. Finally we show how a one-class support vector machine can use the same information to detect anomalies with high confidence.

The paper presents, and discusses the rationale behind, a method for structuring complex computing systems by the use of what we term “recovery blocks”, “conversations” and “fault-tolerant interfaces”. The aim is to facilitate the provision of dependable error detection and recovery facilities which can cope with errors caused by residual design inadequacies, particularly in the system software, rather than merely the occasional malfunctioning of hardware components.

We present a very simple, cryptographic, Byzantine-agreement protocol that, with n = 3t + 1 players, t of which are malicious, halts in expected 9 rounds.

The traditional internet has many central points of failure and trust, like (a) the Domain Name System (DNS) servers, (b) public-key infrastructure, and (c) end-user data stored on centralized data stores. We present the design and implementation of a new internet, called Blockstack, where users don’t need to trust remote servers. We remove any trust points from the middle of the network and use blockchains to secure critical data bindings. Blockstack implements services for identity, discovery, and storage and can survive failures of underlying blockchains. The design of Blockstack is informed by three years of experience from a large blockchain-based production system. Blockstack gives comparable performance to traditional internet services and enables a much-needed security and reliability upgrade to the traditional internet.

Current blockchain systems are incapable of holding sensitive data securely on their public ledger while supporting accountability of data access requests and revocability of data access rights. Instead, they either keep the sensitive data off-chain as a semi-centralized solution or they just publish the data on the ledger ignoring the problem altogether. In this work, we introduce SCARAB the first secure decentralized access control mechanism for blockchain systems that addresses the challenges of accountability, by publicly logging each request before granting data access, and of revocability, by introducing collectively managed data access policies. SCARAB introduces, therefore, on-chain secrets, which utilize verifiable secret sharing to enable collectively managed secrets under a Byzantine adversary, and identity skipchains, which enable the dynamic management of identities and of access control policies. The evaluation of our SCARAB implementation shows that the latency of a single read/write request scales linearly with the number of access-securing trustees and is in the range of 200 ms to 8 seconds for 16 to 128 trustees.

The Philosophy of Blockchain Technology is concerned, among other things, with its ontology, how might it be characterised, how is it being created, implemented, and adopted, how does it operate in the world, and how does it evolve over time. Here, we concentrate on whether Bitcoin/blockchain can be considered a complex system and, if so, whether a chaotic one. Beyond mere academic curiosity, a positive response would raise concerns about the likelihood of Bitcoin/blockchain entering a 2010-FlashCrash-type of chaotic regime, with catastrophic consequences for financial systems based on it. This paper starts by enhancing the relevant details of Bitcoin/blockchain ecosystem formed by the blockchain itself, bitcoin end-users (payers and payees), capital gain seekers, miners, full nodes maintainers, and developers, and their interactions. Secondly, the Information Theory of Complex Systems is briefly discussed for later use. Finally, blockchain is investigated with the help of Crutchfield‟s Statistical Complexity measure. The low non-null statistical complexity value obtained suggests that blockchain may be considered algorithmically complicated, but hardly a complex system and unlikely to enter a chaotic regime.

The Controller-Area Network (CAN) bus protocol [1] is a bus protocol invented in 1986 by Robert Bosch GmbH, originally intended for automotive use. By now, the bus can be found in devices ranging from cars and trucks, over lightning setups to industrial looms. Due to its nature, it is a system very much focused on safety, i.e., reliability. Unfortunately, there is no build-in way to enforce security, such as encryption or authentication. In this paper, we investigate the problems associated with implementing a backward compatible message authentication protocol on the CAN bus. We show which constraints such a protocol has to meet and why this eliminates, to the best of our knowledge, all the authentication protocols published so far. Furthermore, we present a message authentication protocol, CANAuth, that meets all of the requirements set forth and does not violate any constraint of the CAN bus. Keywords—CAN bus, embedded networks, broadcast authentication, symmetric cryptography

Copyright © 2017 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd. 2 Blockchain has numerous benefits such as decentralization, persistency, anonymity and auditability. There is a wide spectrum of blockchain applications ranging from cryptocurrency, financial services, risk management, Internet of Things to public and social services. Although a number of studies focus on using the blockchain technology in various application aspects, there is no comprehensive survey on the blockchain technology in both technological and application perspectives. To fill this gap, we conduct a comprehensive survey on the blockchain technology. In particular, this paper gives the blockchain taxonomy, introduces typical blockchain consensus algorithms, reviews blockchain applications and discusses technical challenges as well as recent advances in tackling the challenges. Moreover, this paper also points out the future directions in the blockchain technology.


Question: An overview of energy harvesting systems utilizing multiple sources.

This paper introduces a groundbreaking system, Prometheus, designed to harness and manage environmental energy for the continuous operation of wireless sensor networks without the need for manual intervention or maintenance. By capitalizing on the benefits of various energy storage components and leveraging the computational intelligence of microprocessors, Prometheus implements an efficient multi-phase energy transfer mechanism. This system overcomes the limitations typically associated with single energy storage solutions, thereby enabling virtually perpetual operation. The paper delves into the rationale behind the design choices, the tradeoffs encountered, the evaluation of circuitry, performance analysis, and modeling techniques. It elucidates the interdependencies among system components and identifies the most suitable hardware configurations to align with specific application requirements. The authors showcase a practical implementation of Prometheus, which utilizes solar energy to power a Telos Mote from Berkeley. Predictive models indicate that the system can sustain operation for 43 years under 1% load, 4 years under 10% load, and 1 year under 100% load. This longevity is achieved through a dual-storage system featuring supercapacitors as the primary buffer and a lithium rechargeable battery as the secondary buffer. The mote is equipped with comprehensive power level awareness, enabling it to orchestrate energy transfer with the aim of maximizing operational lifespan.

The objective of this paper is to review the theories and approaches of multisensor fusion and integration (MFI) with its application in mechatronics. MFI helps the system perceiving changes of the environment and monitoring the system itself. Since each individual sensor has its own inherent defects and limitations, MFI merges the redundant information acquired by multiple sensors synergistically to provide a more accurate perception and make an optimal decision in further. The wide application spectrum of MFI in mechatronics includes the industrial automation, the development of intelligent robots, military applications, biomedical applications, etc. In this paper, the architecture and algorithms of MFI are reviewed, and some implementation examples in industrial automation and robotic applications are presented. Furthermore, sensor fusion methods at different levels, namely, estimation methods, classification methods and inference methods, the most frequently used algorithms in previous researches with their advantages and limitations are summarized. Applications of MFI in robotics and mechatronics are discussed. Future perspectives of MFI deployment are included in the concluding remarks.

In this paper, the 500MHz band low power rectenna with high sensitivity characteristic is described. The rectenna is consisting of the folded dipole antenna with a 1.6kΩ impedance and the Cockcroft-Walton type rectifier for improvement of the rectification efficiency and the output dc voltage. Furthermore an L-Type LPF is added to reduce the negative influence due to the junction capacitance of the SBD. The developed rectennas (stage number: 1, 2) achieve the rectification efficiency of 48.9 % (stage number: 1) and 43.1 % (stage number: 2) at -15dBm of the input power. In addition to above, the top level efficiency of 8.7 % (stage number:1) at the input power of -30dBm can be achieved. In the Tokyo are, the output dc voltage of 0.22 V can be measured at the 25 km point from the antenna tower.

A topology for bidirectional non-isolated multiport DC-DC converter is proposed in this paper. The energy generation from the renewable sources such as wind and solar aie intermittent in nature. A battery port is mandatory for this purpose. Hence, a high gain multiport bidirectional converter for DC micro-grid application with high conversion efficiency, reduced size, and low cost is proposed. The bidirectional power flow capability through a feedback back path to charge a battery from the load capacitor is also provided. Therefore, the battery is not only charged from the input source but also from the load capacitor. The number of outputs are independent from each other and the battery is charged from the second output. Steady state operation and theoretical analysis of the converter proposed is elaborated. To validate the performance and theoretical concepts, it is simulated in MATLAB/Simulink software. The results of simulation verify the appropriate performance of proposed topology.

This paper presents a multiple-output resonant inverter for multi-coil systems featuring high efficiency and flexible output power control for modern induction heating appliances. By adopting a matrix structure, the number of controlled devices can be reduced to the square root of the number of controlled induction heating loads. Therefore, an elevated component count reduction can be achieved compared to classical multi-outputs solutions. The proposed converter is analyzed and verified experimentally, proving the feasibility of this proposal and benefits compared with previous alternatives.

This paper discusses the perspective of renewable energy (wind, solar, wave and biomass) in the making of strategies for a sustainable development. Such strategies typically involve three major technological changes: energy savings on the demand side, efficiency improvements in the energy production, and replacement of fossil fuels by various sources of renewable energy. Consequently, large-scale renewable energy implementation plans must include strategies of how to integrate the renewable sources in coherent energy systems influenced by energy savings and efficiency measures. Based on the case of Denmark, this paper discusses the problems and perspectives of converting present energy systems into a 100 percent renewable energy system. The conclusion is that such development will be possible. The necessary renewable energy sources are present, if further technological improvements of the energy system are achieved. Especially technologies of converting the transportation and the introduction of flexible energy system technologies are crucial.

The full degree of freedom in mobile systems heavily depends on the energy provided by the mobile phone's batteries. Their capacity is in general limited and for sure not keeping pace as the mobile devices are crammed up with new functionalities. The discrepancy of Moore's law, offering twice the processing power at least each second year, and the development in batteries, which did not even double over the last decade, makes a shift in researchers' way of designing networks, protocols, and the mobile device itself. The bottleneck to take care of in the design process of mobile systems is not only the wireless data rate, but even more the energy limitation as the customers ask for new energy-hungry services, e.g., requiring faster connections or even multiple air interfaces, and longer standby or operational times of their mobile devices at the same time. In this survey, the energy consuming entities of a mobile device such as wireless air interfaces, display, mp3 player and others are measured and compared. The presented measurement results allow the reader to understand what the energy hungry parts of a mobile device are and use those findings for the design of future mobile protocols and applications. All results presented in this work and further results are made public on our web page [2].

Electrical power generation is changing dramatically across the world because of the need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and to introduce mixed energy sources. The power network faces great challenges in transmission and distribution to meet demand with unpredictable daily and seasonal variations. Electrical Energy Storage (EES) is recognized as underpinning technologies to have great potential in meeting these challenges, whereby energy is stored in a certain state, according to the technology used, and is converted to electrical energy when needed. However, the wide variety of options and complex characteristic matrices make it difficult to appraise a specific EES technology for a particular application. This paper intends to mitigate this problem by providing a comprehensive and clear picture of the state-of-the-art technologies available, and where they would be suited for integration into a power generation and distribution system. The paper starts with an overview of the operation principles, technical and economic performance features and the current research and development of important EES technologies, sorted into six main categories based on the types of energy stored. Following this, a comprehensive comparison and an application potential analysis of the reviewed technologies are presented. 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/).

Growing transistor counts, limited power budgets, and the breakdown of voltage scaling are currently conspiring to create a utilization wall that limits the fraction of a chip that can run at full speed at one time. In this regime, specialized, energy-efficient processors can increase parallelism by reducing the per-computation power requirements and allowing more computations to execute under the same power budget. To pursue this goal, this paper introduces conservation cores. Conservation cores, or c-cores, are specialized processors that focus on reducing energy and energy-delay instead of increasing performance. This focus on energy makes c-cores an excellent match for many applications that would be poor candidates for hardware acceleration (e.g., irregular integer codes). We present a toolchain for automatically synthesizing c-cores from application source code and demonstrate that they can significantly reduce energy and energy-delay for a wide range of applications. The c-cores support patching, a form of targeted reconfigurability, that allows them to adapt to new versions of the software they target. Our results show that conservation cores can reduce energy consumption by up to 16.0x for functions and by up to 2.1x for whole applications, while patching can extend the useful lifetime of individual c-cores to match that of conventional processors.

This paper proposes a single-phase reconfigurable battery charger for an electric vehicle (EV) that operates in three different modes: grid-to-vehicle (G2V) mode, in which the traction batteries are charged from the power grid; vehicle-to-grid (V2G) mode, in which the traction batteries deliver part of the stored energy back to the power grid; and traction-to-auxiliary (T2A) mode, in which the auxiliary battery is charged from the traction batteries. When connected to the power grid, the battery charger works with a sinusoidal current in the ac side, for both G2V and V2G modes, and regulates the reactive power. When the EV is disconnected from the power grid, the control algorithms are modified, and the full-bridge ac-dc bidirectional converter works as a full-bridge isolated dc-dc converter that is used to charge the auxiliary battery of the EV, avoiding the use of an additional charger to accomplish this task. To assess the behavior of the proposed reconfigurable battery charger under different operation scenarios, a 3.6-kW laboratory prototype has been developed, and experimental results are presented.

This work demonstrates the design of an adaptive reconfigurable rectifier to address the issue of early breakdown voltage in a conventional rectifier and extends the rectifier's operation for wide dynamic input power range. A depletion-mode field-effect transistor has been introduced to operate as a switch and compensate at low and high input power levels for rectifier. This design accomplishes 40% of RF-DC power conversion efficiency over a wide dynamic input power range from -10 dBm to 27 dBm, while exhibiting 78% of peak power efficiency at 22 dBm. The power harvester is designed to operate in the 900 MHz ISM band and suitable for Wireless Power Transfer applications.


Question: An overview of multi-source energy harvesting systems.

Introducing AmbiMax: An Autonomous Multi-Supply Energy Harvesting System for Wireless Sensor Nodes

AmbiMax is an innovative energy harvesting platform designed for wireless sensor nodes (WSNs), featuring an energy harvesting circuit and a supercapacitor-based energy storage system. This system aims to address the limitations of existing WSNs, which often struggle with energy harvesting from diverse sources or suffer from battery aging. Unlike previous solutions that either waste energy due to impedance mismatch, require active digital control with associated overhead, or are limited to a single type of energy source, AmbiMax offers a comprehensive solution. It autonomously performs maximum power point tracking (MPPT) to optimize energy extraction, ensuring the most efficient charging of supercapacitors. Moreover, AmbiMax is designed to be modular, allowing for the integration of various energy harvesting sources such as solar, wind, thermal, and vibration, each optimized for their specific conditions. The system's efficiency and versatility have been validated through experiments on the Eco platform, a real-world WSN setup. Results demonstrate that AmbiMax can manage multiple power sources simultaneously and autonomously, achieving several times higher efficiency than current state-of-the-art WSN energy management systems.

Wireless Sensor and Actuators Networks (WSANs) constitute one of the most challenging technologies with tremendous socio-economic impact for the next decade. Functionally and energy optimized hardware systems and development tools maybe is the most critical facet of this technology for the achievement of such prospects. Especially, in the area of agriculture, where the hostile operating environment comes to add to the general technological and technical issues, reliable and robust WSAN systems are mandatory. This paper focuses on the hardware design architectures of the WSANs for real-world agricultural applications. It presents the available alternatives in hardware design and identifies their difficulties and problems for real-life implementations. The paper introduces SensoTube, a new WSAN hardware architecture, which is proposed as a solution to the various existing design constraints of WSANs. The establishment of the proposed architecture is based, firstly on an abstraction approach in the functional requirements context, and secondly, on the standardization of the subsystems connectivity, in order to allow for an open, expandable, flexible, reconfigurable, energy optimized, reliable and robust hardware system. The SensoTube implementation reference model together with its encapsulation design and installation are analyzed and presented in details. Furthermore, as a proof of concept, certain use cases have been studied in order to demonstrate the benefits of migrating existing designs based on the available open-source hardware platforms to SensoTube architecture.

The aim of this research survey note is to provide a comprehensive overview of Smart Home Environments with a focus on their architectures and application areas, as well as utilized technologies, infrastructures, and standards. The main source of information was provided by past and existing research and development projects carried out in this area, while the main result of our survey is a classification of Smart Home Environments, as revealed by this projects’ survey.

There are different interesting ways that can be followed in order to reduce costs of grid-connected photovoltaic systems, i.e., by maximizing their energy production in every operating conditions, minimizing electrical losses on the plant, utilizing grid-connected photovoltaic systems not only to generate electrical energy to be put into the power system but also to implement some other important auxiliary services normally implemented by properly conceived apparatus (electrical power quality control, load demand peak control, …), making easy the integration of different kind of renewable electrical energy resources (wind plant, fuel-cells, …).

The rapid depletion of fossil fuel resources and environmental concerns has given awareness on generation of renewable energy resources. Among the various renewable resources, hybrid solar and wind energy seems to be promising solutions to provide reliable power supply with improved system efficiency and reduced storage requirements for stand-alone applications. This paper presents a feasibility assessment and optimum size of photovoltaic (PV) array, wind turbine and battery bank for a standalone hybrid Solar/Wind Power system (HSWPS) at remote telecom station of Nepal at Latitude (27°23′50″) and Longitude (86°44′23″) consisting a telecommunication load of Very Small Aperture Terminal (VSAT), Repeater station and Code Division Multiple Access Base Transceiver Station (CDMA 2C10 BTS). In any RES based system, the feasibility assessment is considered as the first step analysis. In this work, feasibility analysis is carried through hybrid optimization model for electric renewables (HOMER) and mathematical models were implemented in the MATLAB environment to perform the optimal configuration for a given load and a desired loss of power supply probability (LPSP) from a set of systems components with the lowest value of cost function defined in terms of reliability and levelized unit electricity cost (LUCE). The simulation results for the existing and the proposed models are compared. The simulation results shows that existing architecture consisting of 6.12 kW KC85T photovoltaic modules, 1kW H3.1 wind turbine and 1600 Ah GFM-800 battery bank have a 36.6% of unmet load during a year. On the other hand, the proposed system includes 1kW ∗2 H3.1 Wind turbine, 8.05 kW TSM-175DA01 photovoltaic modules and 1125 Ah T-105 battery bank with system reliability of 99.99% with a significant cost reduction as well as reliable energy production.

This book provides, for the first time, a broad and deep treatment of the fields of both ultra low power electronics and bioelectronics. It discusses fundamental principles and circuits for ultra low power electronic design and their applications in biomedical systems. It also discusses how ultra energy-efficient cellular and neural systems in biology can inspire revolutionary low power architectures in mixed-signal and RF electronics. The book presents a unique, unifying view of ultra low power analog and digital electronics and emphasizes the use of the ultra energy-efficient subthreshold regime of transistor operation in both. Chapters on batteries, energy harvesting, and the future of energy provide an understanding of fundamental relationships between energy use and energy generation at small scales and at large scales. A wealth of insights and examples from brain implants, cochlear implants, biomolecular sensing, cardiac devices, and bio-inspired systems make the book useful and engaging for students and practicing engineers.

Wearable health monitoring systems use integrated sensors to monitor vital physiological parameters of the wearer. The paper discusses the preliminary results of a prototype wearable physiological monitoring system to monitor physiological parameters such as Electrocardiogram (ECG), Heart Rate (HR), Electroencephalogram (EEG) and Body Temperature. The ECG and EEG signals are acquired using a textile electrodes integrated into the fabric of the wearer. The acquired ECG and EEG signals are processed to remove noises and the parameters are extracted and trend analysis is carried out. The physiological parameters are monitored at the remote monitoring station using a ZigBee wireless communication.

Battery lifetime is critical for wireless video sensors. To enable battery-powered wireless video sensors, low-power design is required. In this paper, we consider applying multi-view summarization to wireless video sensors to remove redundant contents such that the compression and transmission power can be reduced. A low-complexity online multi-view video summarization scheme is proposed. Experiments show that the proposed summarization method successfully reduces the video content while keeping important events. A power analysis of the system also shows that a significant amount of energy can be saved.

An Electrolyser is part of a renewable energy system (RES) and generates hydrogen from water electrolysis that is used in fuel cells. A dc-to-dc converter is required to couple the Electrolyser to the system DC bus. This paper presents the design of three soft-switched high-frequency transformer isolated dc-to-dc converters for this application based on the given specifications. It is shown that LCL-type series resonant converter with capacitive output filter is suitable for this application. Detailed theoretical and simulation results are presented. Due to the wide variation in input voltage and load current, no converter can maintain zero-voltage switching for the complete operating range. Therefore, a two stage approach (ZVT boost converter followed by LCL SRC with capacitive output filter) will be studied in the future.

We present a dynamic programming technique for solving the multiple supply voltage scheduling problem in both non-pipelined and functionally pipelined data-paths. The scheduling problem refers to the assignment of a supply voltage level to each operation in a data ow graph so as to minimize the average energy consumption for given computation time or throughput constraints or both. The energy model is accurate and accounts for the input pattern dependencies, re-convergent fanout induced dependencies, and the energy cost of level shifters. Experimental results show that using four supply voltage levels on a number of standard benchmarks, an average energy saving of 53% (with a computation time constraint of 1.5 times the critical path delay) can be obtained compared to using one fixed supply voltage level.

This study introduces OpenHAR, a free Matlab toolbox to combine and unify publicly open data sets. It provides an easy access to accelerometer signals of ten publicly open human activity data sets. Data sets are easy to access as OpenHAR provides all the data sets in the same format. In addition, units, measurement range and labels are unified, as well as, body position IDs. Moreover, data sets with different sampling rates are unified using downsampling. What is more, data sets have been visually inspected to find visible errors, such as sensor in wrong orientation. OpenHAR improves re-usability of data sets by fixing these errors. Altogether OpenHAR contains over 65 million labeled data samples. This is equivalent to over 280 hours of data from 3D accelerometers. This includes data from 211 study subjects performing 17 daily human activities and wearing sensors in 14 different body positions.


Question: An overview of multi-source energy harvesting systems.

This paper introduces an innovative, integrated maximum power point tracking (MPPT) converter designed specifically for photovoltaic (PV) panels. This MPPT converter aims to significantly enhance the energy output of a PV panel by up to 25% compared to conventional panels, while concurrently managing critical functions such as battery voltage regulation and optimizing the match between the PV array and the load. Contrary to traditional approaches that employ an external MPPT, the proposed solution integrates the MPPT converter directly into the PV panel itself. To ensure cost-effectiveness, the integrated MPPT utilizes a straightforward control mechanism. Additionally, to maximize energy transfer efficiency to the load, surpassing that of a direct coupling system, the converter employs a simple yet efficient soft-switched topology. This design choice results in a converter that is both highly efficient and affordable, making it a practical solution for enhancing the performance of small-scale PV energy systems.

In order to interface one photovoltaic (PV) port, one bidirectional battery port, and one load port of a PV-battery dc power system, a novel nonisolated three-port dc/dc converter named boost bidirectional buck converter (B3C) and its control method based on three-domain control are proposed in this paper. The power flow and operating principles of the proposed B3C are analyzed in detail, and then, the dc voltage relation between three ports is deduced. The proposed converter features high integration and single-stage power conversion from both PV and battery ports to the load port, thus leading to high efficiency. The current of all three ports is continuous; hence, the electromagnetic noise can be reduced. Furthermore, the control and modulation method for B3C has been proposed for realizing maximum power point tracking (MPPT), battery management, and bus voltage regulation simultaneously. The operation can be transited between conductance mode and MPPT mode automatically according to the load power. Finally, experimental verifications are given to illustrate the feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed topology and control method.

Home area energy networks will be an essential part of the future Energy Internet in terms of energy saving, demand-side management and stability improvement of the distribution network, while an energy router will be the perfect choice to serve as an intelligent and multi-functional energy interface between the home area energy network and power grid. This paper elaborates on the design, analysis and implementation of coordinated control of the low-voltage energy router-based smart home energy management system (HEMS). The main contribution of this paper is to develop a novel solution to make the energy router technically feasible and practical for the HEMS to make full use of the renewable energy sources (RESs), while maintaining “operational friendly and beneficial” to the power grid. The behaviors of the energy router-based HEMS in correlation with the power grid are investigated, then the coordinated control scheme composed of a reference voltage and current compensation strategy and a fuzzy logic control-based power management strategy is developed. The system model is built on the MATLAB/Simulink platform, simulation results have demonstrated that the presented control scheme is a strong performer in making full use of the RES generations for the HEMS while maintaining the operational stability of the whole system, as well as in collaboration with the power grid to suppress the impact of RES output fluctuations and load consumption variations.

A wireless sensor network (WSN)consisting of a large number of tiny sensors can be an effective tool for gathering data in diverse kinds of environments. The data collected by each sensor is communicated to the base station, which forwards the data to the end user. Clustering is introduced to WSNs because it has proven to be an effective approach to provide better data aggregation and scalability for large WSNs. Clustering also conserves the limited energy resources of the sensors. This paper synthesises existing clustering algorithms news's and highlights the challenges in clustering.

In the field of pattern recognition, multiple classifier systems based on the combination of outputs of a set of different classifiers have been proposed as a method for the development of high performance classification systems. In this paper, the problem of design of multiple classifier system is discussed. Six design methods based on the so-called “overproduce and choose” paradigm are described and compared by experiments. Although these design methods exhibited some interesting features, they do not guarantee to design the optimal multiple classifier system for the classification task at hand. Accordingly, the main conclusion of this paper is that the problem of the optimal MCS design still remains open.

A micro-power circuit is encapsulated with a 2.1 MHz ZT-cut quartz in a vacuum package. The oscillator core has 2 complementary active MOSFETS and amplitude stabilization. New coupling and biasing circuits, and dynamic frequency dividers allow to achieve ±2 ppm frequency stability down to 1.8 V with a current under 0.5 ¿A.

Energy and sustainability issues raise a large number of problems that can be tackled using approaches from data mining and machine learning, but traction of such problems has been slow due to the lack of publicly available data. In this paper we present the Reference Energy Disaggregation Data Set (REDD), a freely available data set containing detailed power usage information from several homes, which is aimed at furthering research on energy disaggregation (the task of determining the component appliance contributions from an aggregated electricity signal). We discuss past approaches to disaggregation and how they have influenced our design choices in collecting data, we describe the hardware and software setups for the data collection, and we present initial benchmark disaggregation results using a well-known Factorial Hidden Markov Model (FHMM) technique.

We describe an approach for how to design an essentially more scalable, flexible and resilient electric power infrastructure – one that encourages efficient use, integrates local generation, and manages demand through omnipresent awareness of energy availability and use over time. We are inspired by how the Internet has revolutionized communications infrastructure, by pushing intelligence to the edges while hiding the diversity of underlying technologies through well-defined interfaces. Any end device is a traffic source or sink and intelligent endpoints adapt their traffic to what the infrastructure can

This paper introduces a novel human activity monitoring system combining Inertial Measurement Units (IMU) and Mechanomyographic (MMG) muscle sensing technology. While other work has recognised and implemented systems for combined muscle activity and motion recording, they have focused on muscle activity through EMG sensors, which have limited use outside controlled environments. MMG is a low frequency vibration emitted by skeletal muscle whose measurement does not require gel or adhesive electrodes, potentially offering much more efficient implementation for pervasive use. We have developed a combined IMU and MMG sensor the fusion of which provides a new dimension in human activity monitoring and bridges the gap between human dynamics and muscle activity. Results show that synergy between motion and muscle detection is not only viable, but straightforward, inexpensive, and can be packaged in a lightweight wearable package.

This book provides, for the first time, a broad and deep treatment of the fields of both ultra low power electronics and bioelectronics. It discusses fundamental principles and circuits for ultra low power electronic design and their applications in biomedical systems. It also discusses how ultra energy-efficient cellular and neural systems in biology can inspire revolutionary low power architectures in mixed-signal and RF electronics. The book presents a unique, unifying view of ultra low power analog and digital electronics and emphasizes the use of the ultra energy-efficient subthreshold regime of transistor operation in both. Chapters on batteries, energy harvesting, and the future of energy provide an understanding of fundamental relationships between energy use and energy generation at small scales and at large scales. A wealth of insights and examples from brain implants, cochlear implants, biomolecular sensing, cardiac devices, and bio-inspired systems make the book useful and engaging for students and practicing engineers.

We designed, implemented, tested and measured an ultra low power Wake Up Receiver (WUR), intended for use in Wireless Body Area Networks (WBAN). Gaussian On-Off Keying (GOOK) and Pulse Width Modulation (PWM) are used to modulate and encode, respectively, the preamble signal. The receiver incorporates a decoder to enable Serial Peripheral Interface (SPI). WUR was also comprehensively tested for power consumption and robustness to RF interference from wireless devices commonly found in the vicinity of persons utilising WBAN technology. Our results and comparative evaluation demonstrate that the achieved listening power of 270nW for the Wake Up Receiver is significantly lower power consumption than for the other state-of-the-art. The proposed preamble detection scheme can significantly reduce false wake ups due to other wireless devices in a WBAN. Additionally, SPI significantly reduces the overall power consumption for packet reception and decoding.


Question: An overview of multi-source power collection systems.

In the realm of wireless sensor networks, the ZebraNet project provides valuable insights into the hardware design and operational challenges encountered in such systems. The unique requirements of sensor networks, driven by the need for long-term operation without human intervention, have led to the development of specialized hardware platforms. This paper delves into the design experiences and lessons learned from the ZebraNet system, which employs GPS technology to track the movements of zebras over extended periods [14]. The hardware architecture of ZebraNet includes a 16-bit microcontroller from Texas Instruments, 4 Mbits of external flash memory, a 900 MHz radio module, and a low-power GPS receiver. The paper explores the strategies employed for creating efficient power supplies, managing energy consumption, and optimizing the performance of peripheral devices like the radio, flash memory, and sensors. It also assesses the effectiveness of the ZebraNet node design and suggests avenues for improvement. The knowledge gained from this project is not only pertinent to the design of future sensor nodes but also to the deployment of these systems in practical applications.

A topology for bidirectional non-isolated multiport DC-DC converter is proposed in this paper. The energy generation from the renewable sources such as wind and solar aie intermittent in nature. A battery port is mandatory for this purpose. Hence, a high gain multiport bidirectional converter for DC micro-grid application with high conversion efficiency, reduced size, and low cost is proposed. The bidirectional power flow capability through a feedback back path to charge a battery from the load capacitor is also provided. Therefore, the battery is not only charged from the input source but also from the load capacitor. The number of outputs are independent from each other and the battery is charged from the second output. Steady state operation and theoretical analysis of the converter proposed is elaborated. To validate the performance and theoretical concepts, it is simulated in MATLAB/Simulink software. The results of simulation verify the appropriate performance of proposed topology.

In this paper, the 500MHz band low power rectenna with high sensitivity characteristic is described. The rectenna is consisting of the folded dipole antenna with a 1.6kΩ impedance and the Cockcroft-Walton type rectifier for improvement of the rectification efficiency and the output dc voltage. Furthermore an L-Type LPF is added to reduce the negative influence due to the junction capacitance of the SBD. The developed rectennas (stage number: 1, 2) achieve the rectification efficiency of 48.9 % (stage number: 1) and 43.1 % (stage number: 2) at -15dBm of the input power. In addition to above, the top level efficiency of 8.7 % (stage number:1) at the input power of -30dBm can be achieved. In the Tokyo are, the output dc voltage of 0.22 V can be measured at the 25 km point from the antenna tower.

This paper overviews various electrical machine technologies, including brushless permanent magnet, induction, switched reluctance, and brushless reluctance machines, with particular emphasis on the concept of hybrid electrical machine topologies, and compares their relative merits, in terms of torque and power density, operating speed range, over load capability, and efficiency, for application in electric, hybrid and fuel cell vehicles. electric vehicles.

Efficient energy management is becoming an important issue when designing any electrical system. Recently, a significant effort has been devoted to the design of optimized micro and nanogrids comprising residential area subsystems. One of these approaches consists on the design of a dc-based nanogrid optimized for the interoperation of electric loads, sources, and storage elements. Home appliances are one of the main loads in such dc-based nanogrids. In this paper, the design and optimization of an appliance for operation in a dc-based nanogrid is detailed. An induction heating cooktop appliance will be considered as a reference example, being some of the design considerations generalizable to other appliances. The main design aspects, including the inductor system, power converter, EMC filter, and control are considered. Finally, some simulation results of the expected converter performance are shown.

In this paper, we study resource allocation for multiuser multiple-input single-output (MISO) secondary communication systems with multiple system design objectives. We consider cognitive radio (CR) networks where the secondary receivers are able to harvest energy from the radio frequency when they are idle. The secondary system provides simultaneous wireless power and secure information transfer to the secondary receivers. We propose a multi-objective optimization framework for the design of a Pareto optimal resource allocation algorithm based on the weighted Tchebycheff approach. In particular, the algorithm design incorporates three important system design objectives: total transmit power minimization, energy harvesting efficiency maximization, and interference power leakage-totransmit power ratio minimization. The proposed framework takes into account a quality of service (QoS) requirement regarding communication secrecy in the secondary system and the imperfection of the channel state information (CSI) of potential eavesdroppers (idle secondary receivers and primary receivers) at the secondary transmitter. The proposed framework includes total harvested power maximization and interference power leakage minimization as special cases. The adopted multiobjective optimization problem is non-convex and is recast as a convex optimization problem via semidefinite programming (SDP) relaxation. It is shown that the global optimal solution of the original problem can be constructed by exploiting both the primal and the dual optimal solutions of the SDP relaxed problem. Besides, two suboptimal resource allocation schemes for the case when the solution of the dual problem is unavailable for constructing the optimal solution are proposed. Numerical results not only demonstrate the close-to-optimal performance of the proposed suboptimal schemes, but also unveil an interesting trade-off between the considered conflicting system design objectives.

The enormous potential for wireless sensor networks to make a positive impact on our society has spawned a great deal of research on the topic, and this research is now producing environment-ready systems. Current technology limits coupled with widely-varying application requirements lead to a diversity of hardware platforms for different portions of the design space. In addition, the unique energy and reliability constraints of a system that must function for months at a time without human intervention mean that demands on sensor network hardware are different from the demands on standard integrated circuits. This paper describes our experiences designing sensor nodes and low level software to control them.
 In the ZebraNet system we use GPS technology to record fine-grained position data in order to track long term animal migrations [14]. The ZebraNet hardware is composed of a 16-bit TI microcontroller, 4 Mbits of off-chip flash memory, a 900 MHz radio, and a low-power GPS chip. In this paper, we discuss our techniques for devising efficient power supplies for sensor networks, methods of managing the energy consumption of the nodes, and methods of managing the peripheral devices including the radio, flash, and sensors. We conclude by evaluating the design of the ZebraNet nodes and discussing how it can be improved. Our lessons learned in developing this hardware can be useful both in designing future sensor nodes and in using them in real systems.

This paper analyzes the feasibility of direct current for the supply of offices and commercial facilities. This is done by analyzing a case study, i.e. the supply to a university department. Voltage drop calculations have been carried out for different voltage levels. A back-up system for reliable power supply is designed based on commercially available batteries. Finally, an economic evaluation of AC vs. DC is performed.

We describe an approach for how to design an essentially more scalable, flexible and resilient electric power infrastructure – one that encourages efficient use, integrates local generation, and manages demand through omnipresent awareness of energy availability and use over time. We are inspired by how the Internet has revolutionized communications infrastructure, by pushing intelligence to the edges while hiding the diversity of underlying technologies through well-defined interfaces. Any end device is a traffic source or sink and intelligent endpoints adapt their traffic to what the infrastructure can

This paper proposes a new method for power telemetry and wireless data transfer to biomedical implants. Confinement of the transferred energy within a predefined area, hence not influencing the neighboring sensitive circuitry on the microsystem, and also allowing for more than one telemetry link on the same platform and even operating at the same carrier frequency are among the advantages of the proposed method over the traditional approaches for power and data telemetry.

In this paper, an input-series two-transistor forward converter is proposed and investigated, which is aimed at high-input voltage multiple-output applications. In this converter, all of the switches are operating synchronously, and the input voltage sharing (IVS) of each series-module is achieved automatically by the coupling of primary windings of the common forward integrated transformer. The active IVS processes are analyzed based on the model of the forward integrated transformer. Through the influence analysis when the mismatches in various series-modules are considered, design principles of the key parameters in each series-module are discussed to suppress the input voltage difference. Finally, a 96-W laboratory-made prototype composed of two forward series-modules is built, and the feasibility of the proposed method and the theoretical analysis are verified by the experimental results.


Question: Predicting churn in the telecom sector by combining Random Forest, PSO-based data balancing, and diverse feature selection techniques.

This study focuses on determining the most effective model for predicting churn, specifically exploring the relevance of technology in the prediction process. The research examines three distinct methods—neural networks, decision trees, and regression—to ascertain their performance in forecasting customer churn based on variables related to customer complaints. The paper's objective is to highlight the factors influencing churn and to conduct a comparative evaluation of these three techniques in terms of their predictive accuracy. The analysis aims to shed light on whether technological factors play a significant role in churn prediction models and to assess the strengths of neural networks, decision trees, and regression in this context. Keywords—Churn Prediction, Technological Impact, Decision Trees, Neural Networks, Regression Analysis.

Online deception is disrupting our daily life, organizational process, and even national security. Existing deception detection approaches followed a traditional paradigm by using a set of cues as antecedents, and used a variety of data sets and common classification models to detect deception, which were demonstrated to be an accurate technique, but the previous results also showed the necessity to expand the deception feature set in order to improve the accuracy. In our study, we propose a novel feature selection method of the combination of CHI statistics and hypothesis testing, and achieve the accuracy level of 86% and F-measure of 0.84 by using the novel feature sets and SVM classification models, which exceeds the previous experiment results.

This paper describes an experimental mobile data mining system that allows intelligent monitoring of time-critical financial data from a hand-held PDA. It presents the overall system architecture and the philosophy behind the design. It explores one particular aspect of the system---automated construction of personalized focus area that calls for user's attention. This module works using data mining techniques. The paper describes the data mining component of the system that employs a novel Fourier analysis-based approach to efficiently represent, visualize, and communicate decision trees over limited bandwidth wireless networks. The paper also discusses a quadratic programming-based personalization module that runs on the PDAs and the multi-media based user-interfaces. It reports experimental results using an ad hoc peer-to-peer IEEE 802.11 wireless network.

Mobility prediction is one of the most essential issues that need to be explored for mobility management in mobile computing systems. In this paper, we propose a new algorithm for predicting the next inter-cell movement of a mobile user in a Personal Communication Systems network. In the first phase of our threephase algorithm, user mobility patterns are mined from the history of mobile user trajectories. In the second phase, mobility rules are extracted from these patterns, and in the last phase, mobility predictions are accomplished by using these rules. The performance of the proposed algorithm is evaluated through simulation as compared to two other prediction methods. The performance results obtained in terms of Precision and Recall indicate that our method can make more accurate predictions than the other methods. 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Now-a-days, diabetes disease is considered one of the key reasons of death among the people in the world. The availability of extensive medical information leads to the search for proper tools to support physicians to diagnose diabetes disease accurately. This research aimed at improving the diagnostic accuracy and reducing diagnostic missclassification based on the extracted significant diabetes features. Feature selection is critical to the superiority of classifiers founded through knowledge discovery approaches, thereby solving the classification problems relating to diabetes patients. This study proposed an integration approach between the SVM technique and K-means clustering algorithms to diagnose diabetes disease. Experimental results achieved high accuracy for differentiating the hidden patterns of the Diabetic and Nondiabetic patients compared with the modern diagnosis methods in term of the performance measure. The T-test statistical method obtained significant improvement results based on KSVM technique when tested on the UCI Pima Indian standard dataset. Keywords—K-means Clustering; Diabetes Patients; SVM;

User intended actions are widely seen in many areas. Forecasting these actions and taking proactive measures to optimize business outcome is a crucial step towards sustaining the steady business growth. In this work, we focus on predicting attrition, which is one of typical user intended actions. Conventional attrition predictive modeling strategies suffer a few inherent drawbacks. To overcome these limitations, we propose a novel end-to-end learning scheme to keep track of the evolution of attrition patterns for the predictive modeling. It integrates user activity logs, dynamic and static user profiles based on multi-path learning. It exploits historical user records by establishing a decaying multi-snapshot technique. And finally it employs the precedent user intentions via guiding them to the subsequent learning procedure. As a result, it addresses all disadvantages of conventional methods. We evaluate our methodology on two public data repositories and one private user usage dataset provided by Adobe Creative Cloud. The extensive experiments demonstrate that it can offer the appealing performance in comparison with several existing approaches as rated by different popular metrics. Furthermore, we introduce an advanced interpretation and visualization strategy to effectively characterize the periodicity of user activity logs. It can help to pinpoint important factors that are critical to user attrition and retention and thus suggests actionable improvement targets for business practice. Our work will provide useful insights into the prediction and elucidation of other user intended actions as well.

Since last decades, online technologies have revolutionized the modern computing world. However, as a result, security threats are increasing rapidly. A huge community is using the online services even from chatting to banking is done via online transactions. Customers of web technologies face various security threats and phishing is one of the most important threat that needs to be address. Therefore, the security mechanism must be enhanced. The attacker uses phishing attack to get victims credential information like bank account number, passwords or any other information by mimicking a website of an enterprise, and the victim is unaware of phishing website. In literature, several approaches have been proposed for detection and filtering phishing attack. However, researchers are still searching for such a solution that can provide better results to secure users from phishing attack. Phishing websites have certain characteristics and patterns and to identify those features can help us to detect phishing. To identify such features is a classification task and can be solved using data mining techniques. In this paper, we are presenting a hybrid model for classification to overcome phishing-sites problem. To evaluate this model, we have used the dataset from UCI repository which contains 30 attributes and 11055 instances. The experimental results showed that our proposed hybrid model outperforms in terms of high accuracy and less error rate.

Variable and feature selection have become the focus of much research in areas of application for which datasets with tens or hundreds of thousands of variabl es are available. These areas include text processing of internet documents, gene expression arr ay nalysis, and combinatorial chemistry. The objective of variable selection is three-fold: improvi ng the prediction performance of the predictors, providing faster and more cost-effective predict ors, and providing a better understanding of the underlying process that generated the data. The contrib utions of this special issue cover a wide range of aspects of such problems: providing a better definit ion of the objective function, feature construction, feature ranking, multivariate feature sele ction, efficient search methods, and feature validity assessment methods.

Particle swarm optimization (PSO) is a practical and effective optimization approach that has been applied recently for data clustering in many applications. While various non-evolutionary optimization and clustering algorithms have been applied for clustering multivariate time series in some applications such as customer segmentation, they usually provide poor results due to their dependency on the initial values and their poor performance in manipulating multiple objectives. In this paper, a particle swarm optimization algorithm is proposed for clustering multivariate time series data. Since the time series data sometimes do not have the same length and they usually have missing data, the regular Euclidean distance and dynamic time warping can not be applied for such data to measure the similarity. Therefore, a hybrid similarity measure based on principal component analysis and Mahalanobis distance is applied in order to handle such limitations. The comparison between the results of the proposed method with the similar ones in the literature shows the superiority of the proposed method.

This paper proposes an intelligent credit card fraud detection model for detecting fraud from highly imbalanced and anonymous credit card transaction datasets. The class imbalance problem is handled by finding legal as well as fraud transaction patterns for each customer by using frequent itemset mining. A matching algorithm is also proposed to find to which pattern (legal or fraud) the incoming transaction of a particular customer is closer and a decision is made accordingly. In order to handle the anonymous nature of the data, no preference is given to any of the attributes and each attribute is considered equally for finding the patterns. The performance evaluation of the proposed model is done on UCSD Data Mining Contest 2009 Dataset (anonymous and imbalanced) and it is found that the proposed model has very high fraud detection rate, balanced classification rate, Matthews correlation coefficient, and very less false alarm rate than other state-of-the-art classifiers.

Deep Learning is an artificial intelligence function that imitates the mechanisms of the human mind in processing records and developing shapes to be used in selection construction. The objective of the paper is to improve the performance of the deep learning using a proposed algorithm called RFHTMC. This proposed algorithm is a merged version from Random Forest and HTM Cortical Learning Algorithm. The methodology for improving the performance of Deep Learning depends on the concept of minimizing the mean absolute percentage error which is an indication of the high performance of the forecast procedure. In addition to the overlap duty cycle which its high percentage is an indication of the speed of the processing operation of the classifier. The outcomes depict that the proposed set of rules reduces the absolute percent errors by using half of the value. And increase the percentage of the overlap duty cycle with 15%.


Question: Predicting customer churn in telecommunications by combining Random Forest, PSO-based data balancing, and diverse feature selection methods.

This paper presents an innovative strategy, DataBoost-IM, designed to tackle the challenge of learning from imbalanced data sets, where the disparity in class distribution significantly skews traditional machine learning outcomes. Such imbalances often result in classifiers being disproportionately influenced by the majority class, leading to subpar performance in accurately predicting the minority class. To address this issue, DataBoost-IM integrates the ensemble learning technique of boosting with data generation methods, specifically targeting the enhancement of classifier performance on imbalanced two-class data sets. During the boosting process, DataBoost-IM identifies and isolates difficult examples from both the majority and minority classes. These challenging instances are then utilized to generate synthetic data points, separately for each class, ensuring a balanced representation. The augmented data, inclusive of the synthetic examples, is reintroduced to the training set, and the class distribution and weights are recalibrated to achieve balance. This comprehensive approach was rigorously tested against seventeen highly and moderately imbalanced data sets, employing decision trees as the base classifier. The evaluation metrics included F-measures, G-mean, and overall accuracy. The results were highly encouraging, demonstrating that DataBoost-IM outperforms a baseline classifier, a conventional boosting algorithm, and three advanced boosting-based techniques tailored for imbalanced data. Importantly, the methodology does not compromise one class for the benefit of the other, instead delivering superior predictive capabilities across both minority and majority classes.

The algorithms that are inspired by the principles of natural biological evolution and distributed collective behaviour of social colonies have shown excellence in dealing with complex optimization problems and are becoming more popular nowadays. This paper surveys the recent advances in biologically inspired swarm optimization methods, including ant colony optimization algorithm, particle swarm optimization algorithm, artificial bee colony algorithm and their hybridizations, which are applied in various fields. KeywordsBiologically inspired algorithms, Swarm Intelligence, application of Bio-inspired algorithms.

Data mining techniques have been extensively applied in bioinformatics to analyze biomedical data. In this paper, we choose the Rapid-I¿s RapidMiner as our tool to analyze a Pima Indians Diabetes Data Set, which collects the information of patients with and without developing diabetes. The discussion follows the data mining process. The focus will be on the data preprocessing, including attribute identification and selection, outlier removal, data normalization and numerical discretization, visual data analysis, hidden relationships discovery, and a diabetes prediction model construction.

Network security engineers work to keep services available all the time by handling intruder attacks. Intrusion Detection System (IDS) is one of the obtainable mechanism that used to sense and classify any abnormal actions. Therefore, the IDS must be always up to date with the latest intruder attacks signatures to preserve confidentiality, integrity and availability of the services. The speed of the IDS is very important issue as well learning the new attacks. This research work illustrates how the Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining (or Knowledge Discovery in Databases) KDD dataset is very handy for testing and evaluating different Machine Learning Techniques. It mainly focuses on the KDD preprocess part in order to prepare a decent and fair experimental data set. The techniques J48, Random Forest, Random Tree, MLP, Naïve Bayes and Bayes Network classifiers have been chosen for this study. It has been proven that the Random forest classifier has achieved the highest accuracy rate for detecting and classifying all KDD dataset attacks, which are of type (DOS, R2L, U2R, and PROBE). Keywords— IDS, DDoS, MLP, Naïve Bayes, Random Forest

The deluge of the data generated by mobile phone devices imposes new challenges on the data mining community. User activities recorded by mobile phones could be useful for uncovering behavioral patterns. An interesting question is whether patterns in mobile phone usage can reveal demographic characteristics of the user? Demographic information about gender, age, marital status, job type, etc. is a key for applications with customer centric strategies. In this paper, we describe our approach to feature extraction from raw data and building predictive models for the task of demographic attributes predictions. We experimented with graph based representation of users inferred from similarity of their feature vectors, feature selections and classifications algorithms. Our work contributes to the Nokia Mobile Data Challenge (MDC) in the endeavor of exploring the real-world mobile data.

The problem of preprocessing transaction data for supervised fraud classification is considered. It is impractical to present an entire series of transactions to a fraud detection system, partly because of the very high dimensionality of such data but also because of the heterogeneity of the transactions. Hence, a framework for transaction aggregation is considered and its effectiveness is evaluated against transaction-level detection, using a variety of classification methods and a realistic cost-based performance measure. These methods are applied in two case studies using real data. Transaction aggregation is found to be advantageous in many but not all circumstances. Also, the length of the aggregation period has a large impact upon performance. Aggregation seems particularly effective when a random forest is used for classification. Moreover, random forests were found to perform better than other classification methods, including SVMs, logistic regression and KNN. Aggregation also has the advantage of not requiring precisely labeled data and may be more robust to the effects of population drift.

An efficient optimization method called ‘Teaching–Learning-Based Optimization (TLBO)’ is proposed in this paper for large scale non-linear optimization problems for finding the global solutions. The proposed method is based on the effect of the influence of a teacher on the output of learners in a class. The basic philosophy of the method is explained in detail. The effectiveness of the method is tested on many benchmark problems with different characteristics and the results are compared with other population based methods. 2011 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Feature selection plays an important role in classifying systems such as neural networks (NNs). We use a set of attributes which are relevant, irrelevant or redundant and from the viewpoint of managing a dataset which can be huge, reducing the number of attributes by selecting only the relevant ones is desirable. In doing so, higher performances with lower computational effort is expected. In this paper, we propose two feature selection algorithms. The limitation of mutual information feature selector (MIFS) is analyzed and a method to overcome this limitation is studied. One of the proposed algorithms makes more considered use of mutual information between input attributes and output classes than the MIFS. What is demonstrated is that the proposed method can provide the performance of the ideal greedy selection algorithm when information is distributed uniformly. The computational load for this algorithm is nearly the same as that of MIFS. In addition, another feature selection algorithm using the Taguchi method is proposed. This is advanced as a solution to the question as to how to identify good features with as few experiments as possible. The proposed algorithms are applied to several classification problems and compared with MIFS. These two algorithms can be combined to complement each other's limitations. The combined algorithm performed well in several experiments and should prove to be a useful method in selecting features for classification problems.

Leveraging the power of increasing amounts of data to analyze customer base for attracting and retaining the most valuable customers is a major problem facing companies in this information age. Data mining technologies extract hidden information and knowledge from large data stored in databases or data warehouses, thereby supporting the corporate decision making process. CRM uses data mining (one of the elements of CRM) techniques to interact with customers. This study investigates the use of a technique, semi-supervised learning, for the management and analysis of customer-related data warehouse and information. The idea of semi-supervised learning is to learn not only from the labeled training data, but to exploit also the structural information in additionally available unlabeled data. The proposed semi-supervised method is a model by means of a feed-forward neural network trained by a back propagation algorithm (multi-layer perceptron) in order to predict the category of an unknown customer (potential customers). In addition, this technique can be used with Rapid Miner tools for both labeled and unlabeled data.

Redundant and irrelevant features in data have caused a long-term problem in network traffic classification. These features not only slow down the process of classification but also prevent a classifier from making accurate decisions, especially when coping with big data. In this paper, we propose a mutual information based algorithm that analytically selects the optimal feature for classification. This mutual information based feature selection algorithm can handle linearly and nonlinearly dependent data features. Its effectiveness is evaluated in the cases of network intrusion detection. An Intrusion Detection System (IDS), named Least Square Support Vector Machine based IDS (LSSVM-IDS), is built using the features selected by our proposed feature selection algorithm. The performance of LSSVM-IDS is evaluated using three intrusion detection evaluation datasets, namely KDD Cup 99, NSL-KDD and Kyoto 2006+ dataset. The evaluation results show that our feature selection algorithm contributes more critical features for LSSVM-IDS to achieve better accuracy and lower computational cost compared with the state-of-the-art methods.

Nowadays companies increasingly derive revenue from the creation and sustenance of long-term relationships with their customers. In such an environment, marketing serves the purpose of maximizing customer lifetime value (CLV) and customer equity, which is the sum of the lifetime values of the company’s customers. A frequently-encountered difficulty for companies wishing to measure customer profitability is that management accounting and reporting systems have tended to reflect product profitability rather than customer profitability. But in spite of these difficulties, Companies looking for methods to know how calculate their customers's CLV. In this paper, we used K-Mean clustering approach to determine customers's CLV and segment them based on recency, frequency and monetary (RFM) measures. We also used Discriminant analysis to approve clustering results. Data required applying this method gathered from one branch of an Iranian private bank which is established newly. Finally, in terms of this segmentation, we proposed customer retention strategies for treating with the bank customers.


Question: Predicting customer churn in telecommunications by combining Random Forest, PSO-based data balancing, and multiple feature selection methods.

This paper discusses an innovative methodology for predicting churn in the telecom industry by integrating Random Forest (RF) classifiers with Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) for data balancing, alongside various feature selection strategies. Unlike traditional approaches that often overlook the importance of balanced data and feature selection in model accuracy, this method comprehensively addresses these aspects. In the proposed scheme, PSO is utilized to optimize the data balancing process, ensuring that the RF classifier receives a dataset that is not skewed towards one class, which is particularly crucial in churn prediction where the number of churners and non-churners may be significantly imbalanced. Furthermore, the integration of diverse feature selection techniques allows for the identification and utilization of the most relevant features, improving the model's efficiency and predictive power. This combined approach of RF, PSO-based data balancing, and feature selection strategies not only enhances the accuracy of churn prediction but also provides insights into the critical factors driving customer churn in the telecom sector, enabling more targeted and effective retention strategies.

Text classification is the task of assigning predefined categories to text documents. It is a common machine learning problem. Statistical text classification that makes use of machine learning methods to learn classification rules are particularly known to be successful in this regard. In this research project we are trying to re-invent the text classification problem with a sound methodology based on statistical data compression technique-the Minimum Message Length (MML) principle. To model the data sequence we have used the Probabilistic Finite State Automata (PFSAs). We propose two approaches for text classification using the MML-PFSAs. We have tested both the approaches with the Enron spam dataset and the results of our empirical evaluation has been recorded in terms of the well known classification measures i.e. recall, precision, accuracy and error. The results indicate good classification accuracy that can be compared with the state of art classifiers.

A cloud workflow system is a type of platform service which facilitates the automation of distributed applications based on the novel cloud infrastructure. Compared with grid environment, data transfer is a big overhead for cloud workflows due to the market-oriented business model in the cloud environments. In this paper, a Revised Discrete Particle Swarm Optimization (RDPSO) is proposed to schedule applications among cloud services that takes both data transmission cost and computation cost into account. Experiment is conducted with a set of workflow applications by varying their data communication costs and computation costs according to a cloud price model. Comparison is made on make span and cost optimization ratio and the cost savings with RDPSO, the standard PSO and BRS (Best Resource Selection) algorithm. Experimental results show that the proposed RDPSO algorithm can achieve much more cost savings and better performance on make span and cost optimization.

Parkinson disease has become a serious problem in the old people. There is no precise method to diagnosis Parkinson disease now. Considering the significance and difficulty of recognizing the Parkinson disease, the measurement of samples' voices is regard as one of the best non-invasive ways to find the real patient. Support Vector Machine is one of the most effective tools to classify in machine learning, and it has been applied successfully in many areas. In this paper, we implement the SVM-recursive feature elimination which has not been used before for selecting the subset including the most important features for classification from the original features. We also implement SVM with PCA for selecting the principle components for diagnosis PD set with 22 features in order to compare. At last, we discuss the relationship between SVM-RFE and SVM with PCA specially in the experiment. The experiment illustrates that the SVM-RFE has the better performance than other methods in general.

Students' dropout rate is a key metric in online and open distance learning courses. We propose a time-series classification method to construct data based on students' behaviour and activities on a number of online distance learning modules. Further, we propose a dropout prediction model based on the time series forest (TSF) classification algorithm. The proposed predictive model is based on interaction data and is independent of learning objectives and subject domains. The model enables prediction of dropout rates without the requirement for pedagogical experts. Results show that the prediction accuracy on two selected datasets increases as the portion of data used in the model grows. However, a reasonable prediction accuracy of 0.84 is possible with only 5% of the dataset processed. As a result, early prediction can help instructors design interventions to encourage course completion before a student falls too far behind.

Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) has been shown to perform very well on a wide range of optimization problems. One of the drawbacks to PSO is that the base algorithm assumes continuous variables. In this paper, we present a version of PSO that is able to optimize over discrete variables. This new PSO algorithm, which we call Integer and Categorical PSO (ICPSO), incorporates ideas from Estimation of Distribution Algorithms (EDAs) in that particles represent probability distributions rather than solution values, and the PSO update modifies the probability distributions. In this paper, we describe our new algorithm and compare its performance against other discrete PSO algorithms. In our experiments, we demonstrate that our algorithm outperforms comparable methods on both discrete benchmark functions and NK landscapes, a mathematical framework that generates tunable fitness landscapes for evaluating EAs.

Artificial bee colony algorithm (ABC), which is inspired by the foraging behavior of honey bee swarm, is a biological-inspired optimization. It shows more effective than genetic algorithm (GA), particle swarm optimization (PSO) and ant colony optimization (ACO). However, ABC is good at exploration but poor at exploitation, and its convergence speed is also an issue in some cases. For these insufficiencies, we propose an improved ABC algorithm called I-ABC. In I-ABC, the best-so-far solution, inertia weight and acceleration coefficients are introduced to modify the search process. Inertia weight and acceleration coefficients are defined as functions of the fitness. In addition, to further balance search processes, the modification forms of the employed bees and the onlooker ones are different in the second acceleration coefficient. Experiments show that, for most functions, the I-ABC has a faster convergence speed and ptimization better performances than each of ABC and the gbest-guided ABC (GABC). But I-ABC could not still substantially achieve the best solution for all optimization problems. In a few cases, it could not find better results than ABC or GABC. In order to inherit the bright sides of ABC, GABC and I-ABC, a high-efficiency hybrid ABC algorithm, which is called PS-ABC, is proposed. PS-ABC owns the abilities of prediction and selection. Results show that PS-ABC has a faster convergence speed like I-ABC and better search ability ods f than other relevant meth

Competition of the consumer credit market in Taiwan has become severe recently. Therefore, most financial institutions actively develop credit scoring models based on assessments of the credit approval of new customers and the credit risk management of existing customers. This study uses a genetic algorithm for feature selection and decision trees for customer segmentation. Moreover, it utilizes logistic regression to build the application and credit bureau scoring models where the two scoring models are combined for constructing the scoring matrix. The scoring matrix undergoes more accurate risk judgment and segmentation to further identify the parts required enhanced management or control within a personal loan portfolio. The analytical results demonstrate that the predictive ability of the scoring matrix outperforms both the application and credit bureau scoring models. Regarding the K-S value, the scoring matrix increases the prediction accuracy compared to the application and credit bureau scoring models by 18.40 and 5.70%, respectively. Regarding the AUC value, the scoring matrix increases the prediction accuracy compared to the application and credit bureau scoring models by 10.90 and 6.40%, respectively. Furthermore, this study applies the scoring matrix to the credit approval decisions for corresponding risk groups to strengthen bank’s risk management practices.

Imbalanced data is a common problem in data mining when dealing with classification problems, where samples of a class vastly outnumber other classes. In this situation, many data mining algorithms generate poor models as they try to optimize the overall accuracy and perform badly in classes with very few samples. Software Engineering data in general and defect prediction datasets are not an exception and in this paper, we compare different approaches, namely sampling, cost-sensitive, ensemble and hybrid approaches to the problem of defect prediction with different datasets preprocessed differently. We have used the well-known NASA datasets curated by Shepperd et al. There are differences in the results depending on the characteristics of the dataset and the evaluation metrics, especially if duplicates and inconsistencies are removed as a preprocessing step.
 Further Results and replication package: http://www.cc.uah.es/drg/ease14

Gaming systems like Kinect and XBox always have to tackle the problem of extracting features from video data sets and classifying the body movement. In this study, reasonable features like human joints positions, joints velocities, joint angles and joint angular velocities are extracted. We used several machine learning methods including Naive Bayes, Support Vector Machine and Random Forest to learn and classify the human gestures. Simulation results and the final confusion matrix show that by combining delicately preprocessed data sets and Random Forest methods, the F-scores of the correct predictions can be maximized. Such methods can also be applied in real-time scenarios.

This study presents an approach to predict the performance of sales agents of a call center dedicated exclusively to sales and telemarketing activities. This approach is based on a naive Bayesian classifier. The objective is to know what levels of the attributes are indicative of individuals who perform well. A sample of 1037 sales agents was taken during the period between March and September of 2009 on campaigns related to insurance sales and service pre-paid phone services, to build the naive Bayes network. It has been shown that, socio-demographic attributes are not suitable for predicting performance. Alternatively, operational records were used to predict production of sales agents, achieving satisfactory results. In this case, the classifier training and testing is done through a stratified tenfold cross-validation. It classified the instances correctly 80.60% of times, with the proportion of false positives of 18.1% for class no (does not achieve minimum) and 20.8% for the class yes (achieves equal or above minimum acceptable). These results suggest that socio-demographic attributes has no predictive power on performance, while the operational information of the activities of the sale agent can predict the future performance of the