12687767
Comments on "Estimation of frequencies and damping factors by two-dimensional ESPRIT type methods"
For original paper, see Rouquette and Najim (IEEE Trans. Signal Process., vol.49, no.1, p.237-45, 2001).The original authors present two high-resolution approaches to estimate two-dimensional (2-D) signal parameters. The first approach decomposes the 2-D estimation problem into two one-dimensional (1-D) ones, estimates the 1-D frequencies with the MEMP method, and then forms correct pairs using a new pairing scheme introduced in Vanpoucke et al. (1994). The second method (the 2-D ESPRIT method) directly estimates the 2-D frequencies. It is shown that both methods are more accurate than the related methods. The present authors note that the original paper appears to have a key error in the permutation matrix specification of the first method. In this comment, they derive the correct one with the performance simulations.
18971548
Coverage-preserving Data Gathering in Wireless Sensor Networks
The power is the most significant resource in wireless sensor nodes, so energy conservation is the most important factor in designing the protocol for sensor networks. In this paper, we study the problem of energy-efficient collection of the physical information from the target area. The coverage-preserving data gathering (CPDG) problem is to build up a tree, which minimizes the total energy consumption, and preserves the original coverage to ensure the result correctness. This problem can be formalized as 0-1 integer linear programming, and solved by an efficient heuristic algorithm. Furthermore, an improved algorithm is also proposed to balance the energy consumption among all the sensor nodes. The experimental results show that CPDG algorithm can conserve the energy about 30% of PEDAP protocol, which is regarded as one of the most efficient data gathering protocols as we know.
11462203
Wireless fire monitoring system for ancient buildings
With the development of micro-processor and wireless communication, wireless sensor networks have becomes reality in some applications. In this paper, we mainly introduce the development of the fire monitoring system for ancient buildings based on wireless sensor networks. To satisfy the requirements of the application, lifetime and latency, etc, we design some key technologies in the different layers of the sensor nodes, such as data link layer, network layer and application layer. Finally, we realize the system based on MicaZ node and MTS300CB sensor broad, made by XBow Co.
19569321
An Efficient Data Exchange Protocol Using Improved Star Trees in Wireless Sensor Networks
In wireless sensor networks, it is necessary and important to send information to all nodes. In some situation, every node has its own data to send to all the other nodes. The communication patterns are all-to-all broadcasting, which is called data exchange problem. In this paper, we present an efficient data exchange protocol using improved star trees. We divide the sensor area into four equal grids and each sensor node associates itself with a virtual grid based on its location information. These grids can be divided again if necessary. In each grid, we calculate the position of root node with location information of sensor nodes. Then, an efficient data exchange Star-Tree was constructed and used to achieve the exchange behavior in the grid. The fused data of each grid was sent to the center node. Simulations show that our protocol can prolong the lifetime about 69% to the multiple-chain protocols, and the delay can be reduced at least 35%.
16403865
Contamination Level and Speciation of Heavy Metals in Sediments from Yundang Lake, Xiamen
Yundang Lake is an important area for living and traveling in Xiamen Island. Severe pollution and sedimentation have been found in the lake, and then the dredging is needed. In order to assess the pollution level of dredged material, sediments from 6 stations in the Yundang Lake were sampled for heavy metal contamination, speciation analysis, and adsorption-desorption experiment in April 2003. Heavy metals concentrations varied from 21.96~848.38 mg/kg for Cu, 51.11~398.25 mg/kg for Pb, 121.60~4301.25 mg/kg for Zn, 0.00~14.71 mg/kg for Cd and 0.70~31.18 mg/kg for total Hg, respectively. The average concentrations of metals (Cu, Zn, Cd, and total Hg) are almost much higher than the secondary standard criteria of national marine sediment quality. According to the mean values of pollution index (Pi), the order of pollution level for heavy metals is as following: Hg ≫Cd ≫Zn ≫Cu ≫Pb. The results from the concentrations and Pi values of selected metals suggest that the study area has been significantly contaminated with heavy metals, and the plan that transferring dredged material to the dumping area must be forbidden. Similar chemical fractionation distribution for each metal is found in the outer lake and Songbai Lake, except for Hg. The main fraction for selected metals is the residual species, except for Cd in station Y17. It indicates that those heavy metals exhibit low biological availability in study area. Both speciation analysis and adsorption-desorption experiment show that the effects on the heavy metals in disposal area resulting from dredging at the Yundang Lake are not significant and the dredged material is fit to be stored at the reclamation region.
714502
Face Re-Lighting from a Single Image under Harsh Lighting Conditions
In this paper, we present a new method to change the illumination condition of a face image, with unknown face geometry and albedo information. This problem is particularly difficult when there is only one single image of the subject available and it was taken under a harsh lighting condition. Recent research demonstrates that the set of images of a convex Lambertian object obtained under a wide variety of lighting conditions can be approximated accurately by a low-dimensional linear subspace using spherical harmonic representation. However, the approximation error can be large under harsh lighting conditions thus making it difficult to recover albedo information. In order to address this problem, we propose a subregion based framework that uses a Markov Random Field to model the statistical distribution and spatial coherence of face texture, which makes our approach not only robust to harsh lighting conditions, but insensitive to partial occlusions as well. The performance of our framework is demonstrated through various experimental results, including the improvement to the face recognition rate under harsh lighting conditions.
19020033
Estimation of multiple directional light sources for synthesis of augmented reality images
We present a new method for the detection and estimation of multiple directional illuminants, using a single image of any object with known geometry and Lambertian reflectance. We use the resulting highly accurate estimates to modify virtually the illumination and geometry of a real scene and produce correctly illuminated mixed reality images. Our method obviates the need to modify the imaged scene by inserting calibration objects of any particular geometry, relying instead on partial knowledge of the geometry of the scene. Thus, the recovered multiple illuminants can be used both for image-based rendering and for shape reconstruction. Our method combines information both from the shading of the object and from shadows cast on the scene by the object. Initially we use a method based on shadows and a method based on shading independently. The shadow based method utilizes brightness variation inside the shadows cast by the object, whereas the shading based method utilizes brightness variation on the directly illuminated portions of the object. We demonstrate how the two sources of information complement each other in a number of occasions. We then describe an approach that integrates the two methods, with results superior to those obtained if the two methods are used separately. The resulting illumination information can be used (i) to render synthetic objects in a real photograph with correct illumination effects, and (ii) to virtually re-light the scene.
1173197
Situating Productive Play: Online Gaming Practices and Guanxi in China
Economic activities in and around online gaming in China are often correlated in the West with practices of gold farming, or selling in-game currency to players for real money in online games. What can we learn about online gaming in China and about online gaming and online sociality more broadly when we look at economic and other "pragmatic" practices through which online gaming becomes meaningful to players? In this paper, we present findings from an ethnographic study of online gaming in China's urban Internet cafes to discuss implications for game design, and HCI design more broadly. Considering the ties between socio-economic practices, development of trust and culturally situated imaginings of self-hood and otherness, brings to the fore how online gaming in and of itself constitutes the means for practical achievements in day-to-day management of guanxi (social connection).
1200220
Boosting over Groups and Its Application to Acronym-Expansion Extraction
In many real-world classification applications, instances are generated from different `groups'. Take webpage classification as an example, the webpages for training and testing can be naturally grouped by network domains, which often vary a lot from one to another in domain size or webpage template. The differences between `groups' would result that the distribution of instances from different `groups' also vary. Thus, it is not so reasonable to equally treat the instances as the independent elements during training and testing as in conventional classification algorithms. This paper addresses the classification problem where all the instances can be naturally grouped. Specifically, we give a formulation to this kind of problem and propose a simple but effective boosting approach, which is called AdaBoost.Group. The problem is demonstrated by the task of recognizing acronyms and their expansions from text, where all the instances are grouped by sentences. The experimental results show that our approach is more appropriate to this kind of problems than conventional classification approaches.