16,391 research outputs found
The Error is the Feature: how to Forecast Lightning using a Model Prediction Error
Despite the progress within the last decades, weather forecasting is still a
challenging and computationally expensive task. Current satellite-based
approaches to predict thunderstorms are usually based on the analysis of the
observed brightness temperatures in different spectral channels and emit a
warning if a critical threshold is reached. Recent progress in data science
however demonstrates that machine learning can be successfully applied to many
research fields in science, especially in areas dealing with large datasets. We
therefore present a new approach to the problem of predicting thunderstorms
based on machine learning. The core idea of our work is to use the error of
two-dimensional optical flow algorithms applied to images of meteorological
satellites as a feature for machine learning models. We interpret that optical
flow error as an indication of convection potentially leading to thunderstorms
and lightning. To factor in spatial proximity we use various manual convolution
steps. We also consider effects such as the time of day or the geographic
location. We train different tree classifier models as well as a neural network
to predict lightning within the next few hours (called nowcasting in
meteorology) based on these features. In our evaluation section we compare the
predictive power of the different models and the impact of different features
on the classification result. Our results show a high accuracy of 96% for
predictions over the next 15 minutes which slightly decreases with increasing
forecast period but still remains above 83% for forecasts of up to five hours.
The high false positive rate of nearly 6% however needs further investigation
to allow for an operational use of our approach.Comment: 10 pages, 7 figure
Boosting Fronthaul Capacity: Global Optimization of Power Sharing for Centralized Radio Access Network
The limited fronthaul capacity imposes a challenge on the uplink of
centralized radio access network (C-RAN). We propose to boost the fronthaul
capacity of massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) aided C-RAN by
globally optimizing the power sharing between channel estimation and data
transmission both for the user devices (UDs) and the remote radio units (RRUs).
Intuitively, allocating more power to the channel estimation will result in
more accurate channel estimates, which increases the achievable throughput.
However, increasing the power allocated to the pilot training will reduce the
power assigned to data transmission, which reduces the achievable throughput.
In order to optimize the powers allocated to the pilot training and to the data
transmission of both the UDs and the RRUs, we assign an individual power
sharing factor to each of them and derive an asymptotic closed-form expression
of the signal-to-interference-plus-noise for the massive MIMO aided C-RAN
consisting of both the UD-to-RRU links and the RRU-to-baseband unit (BBU)
links. We then exploit the C-RAN architecture's central computing and control
capability for jointly optimizing the UDs' power sharing factors and the RRUs'
power sharing factors aiming for maximizing the fronthaul capacity. Our
simulation results show that the fronthaul capacity is significantly boosted by
the proposed global optimization of the power allocation between channel
estimation and data transmission both for the UDs and for their host RRUs. As a
specific example of 32 receive antennas (RAs) deployed by RRU and 128 RAs
deployed by BBU, the sum-rate of 10 UDs achieved with the optimal power sharing
factors improves 33\% compared with the one attained without optimizing power
sharing factors
Boosting the Figure Of Merit of LSPR-based refractive index sensing by phase-sensitive measurements
Localized surface plasmon resonances possess very interesting properties for
a wide variety of sensing applications. In many of the existing applications
only the intensity of the reflected or transmitted signals is taken into
account, while the phase information is ignored. At the center frequency of a
(localized) surface plasmon resonance, the electron cloud makes the transition
between in- and out-of-phase oscillation with respect to the incident wave.
Here we show that this information can experimentally be extracted by
performing phase-sensitive measurements, which result in linewidths that are
almost one order of magnitude smaller than those for intensity based
measurements. As this phase transition is an intrinsic property of a plasmon
resonance, this opens up many possibilities for boosting the figure of merit
(FOM) of refractive index sensing by taking into account the phase of the
plasmon resonance. We experimentally investigated this for two model systems:
randomly distributed gold nanodisks and gold nanorings on top of a continuous
gold layer and a dielectric spacer and observed FOM values up to 8.3 and 16.5
for the respective nanoparticles
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