Dynamic Evolutionary Game-based Modeling,Analysis and Performance Enhancement of Blockchain Channels

The recent development of channel technology has promised to reduce the transaction verification time in blockchain operations.When transactions are transmitted through the channels created by nodes,the nodes need to cooperate with each other.If one party refuses to do so,the channel is unstable.A stable channel is thus required.Because nodes may show uncooperative behavior,they may have a negative impact on the stability of such channels.In order to address this issue,this work proposes a dynamic evolutionary game model based on node behavior.This model considers various defense strategies'cost and attack success ratio under them.Nodes can dynamically adjust their strategies according to the behavior of attackers to achieve their effective defense.The equilibrium stability of the proposed model can be achieved.The proposed model can be applied to general channel networks.It is compared with two state-of-the-art blockchain channels:Lightning network and Spirit channels.The experimental results show that the proposed model can be used to improve a channel's stability and keep it in a good cooperative stable state.Thus its use enables a blockchain to enjoy higher transaction success ratio and lower transaction transmission delay than the use of its two peers.

Cryptocurrency Transaction Network Embedding From Static and Dynamic Perspectives: An Overview

Cryptocurrency, as a typical application scene of blockchain, has attracted broad interests from both industrial and academic communities. With its rapid development, the cryptocurrency transaction network embedding(CTNE) has become a hot topic. It embeds transaction nodes into low-dimensional feature space while effectively maintaining a network structure,thereby discovering desired patterns demonstrating involved users' normal and abnormal behaviors. Based on a wide investigation into the state-of-the-art CTNE, this survey has made the following efforts: 1) categorizing recent progress of CTNE methods, 2) summarizing the publicly available cryptocurrency transaction network datasets, 3) evaluating several widely-adopted methods to show their performance in several typical evaluation protocols, and 4) discussing the future trends of CTNE. By doing so, it strives to provide a systematic and comprehensive overview of existing CTNE methods from static to dynamic perspectives,thereby promoting further research into this emerging and important field.

AI-Based Modeling and Data-Driven Evaluation for Smart Manufacturing Processes

Smart manufacturing refers to optimization techniques that are implemented in production operations by utilizing advanced analytics approaches. With the widespread increase in deploying industrial internet of things(IIOT) sensors in manufacturing processes, there is a progressive need for optimal and effective approaches to data management.Embracing machine learning and artificial intelligence to take advantage of manufacturing data can lead to efficient and intelligent automation. In this paper, we conduct a comprehensive analysis based on evolutionary computing and neural network algorithms toward making semiconductor manufacturing smart.We propose a dynamic algorithm for gaining useful insights about semiconductor manufacturing processes and to address various challenges. We elaborate on the utilization of a genetic algorithm and neural network to propose an intelligent feature selection algorithm. Our objective is to provide an advanced solution for controlling manufacturing processes and to gain perspective on various dimensions that enable manufacturers to access effective predictive technologies.

Optimal Integrated Schedule of Entire Process of Dual-blade Multi-cluster Tools From Start-up to Close-down

Multi-cluster tools are widely used in majority of wafer fabrication processes in semiconductor industry. Smaller lot production, thinner circuit width in wafers, larger wafer size, and maintenance have resulted in a large quantity of their start-up and close-down transient periods. Yet, most of existing efforts have been concentrated on scheduling their steady states.Different from such efforts, this work schedules their transient and steady-state periods subject to wafer residency constraints. It gives the schedulability conditions for the steady-state scheduling of dual-blade robotic multi-cluster tools and a corresponding algorithm for finding an optimal schedule. Based on the robot synchronization conditions, a linear program is proposed to figure out an optimal schedule for a start-up period, which ensures a tool to enter the desired optimal steady state. Another linear program is proposed to find an optimal schedule for a closedown period that evolves from the steady state period. Finally,industrial cases are presented to illustrate how the provided method outperforms the existing approach in terms of system throughput improvement.

Residual-driven Fuzzy C-Means Clustering for Image Segmentation

In this paper,we elaborate on residual-driven Fuzzy C-Means(FCM)for image segmentation,which is the first approach that realizes accurate residual(noise/outliers)estimation and enables noise-free image to participate in clustering.We propose a residual-driven FCM framework by integrating into FCM a residual-related regularization term derived from the distribution characteristic of different types of noise.Built on this framework,a weighted?2-norm regularization term is presented by weighting mixed noise distribution,thus resulting in a universal residual-driven FCM algorithm in presence of mixed or unknown noise.Besides,with the constraint of spatial information,the residual estimation becomes more reliable than that only considering an observed image itself.Supporting experiments on synthetic,medical,and real-world images are conducted.The results demonstrate the superior effectiveness and efficiency of the proposed algorithm over its peers.

A Bi-population Cooperative Optimization Algorithm Assisted by an Autoencoder for Medium-scale Expensive Problems

This study presents an autoencoder-embedded optimization(AEO)algorithm which involves a bi-population cooperative strategy for medium-scale expensive problems(MEPs).A huge search space can be compressed to an informative lowdimensional space by using an autoencoder as a dimension reduction tool.The search operation conducted in this low space facilitates the population with fast convergence towards the optima.To strike the balance between exploration and exploitation during optimization,two phases of a tailored teaching-learning-based optimization(TTLBO)are adopted to coevolve solutions in a distributed fashion,wherein one is assisted by an autoencoder and the other undergoes a regular evolutionary process.Also,a dynamic size adjustment scheme according to problem dimension and evolutionary progress is proposed to promote information exchange between these two phases and accelerate evolutionary convergence speed.The proposed algorithm is validated by testing benchmark functions with dimensions varying from 50 to 200.As indicated in our experiments,TTLBO is suitable for dealing with medium-scale problems and thus incorporated into the AEO framework as a base optimizer.Compared with the state-of-the-art algorithms for MEPs,AEO shows extraordinarily high efficiency for these challenging problems,t hus opening new directions for various evolutionary algorithms under AEO to tackle MEPs and greatly advancing the field of medium-scale computationally expensive optimization.

Nonlinear Bayesian Estimation： From Kalman Filtering to a Broader Horizon

This article presents an up-to-date tutorial review of nonlinear Bayesian estimation. State estimation for nonlinear systems has been a challenge encountered in a wide range of engineering fields, attracting decades of research effort. To date,one of the most promising and popular approaches is to view and address the problem from a Bayesian probabilistic perspective,which enables estimation of the unknown state variables by tracking their probabilistic distribution or statistics(e.g., mean and covariance) conditioned on a system's measurement data.This article offers a systematic introduction to the Bayesian state estimation framework and reviews various Kalman filtering(KF)techniques, progressively from the standard KF for linear systems to extended KF, unscented KF and ensemble KF for nonlinear systems. It also overviews other prominent or emerging Bayesian estimation methods including Gaussian filtering, Gaussian-sum filtering, particle filtering and moving horizon estimation and extends the discussion of state estimation to more complicated problems such as simultaneous state and parameter/input estimation.