3,482 research outputs found
On the Sum of Order Statistics and Applications to Wireless Communication Systems Performances
We consider the problem of evaluating the cumulative distribution function
(CDF) of the sum of order statistics, which serves to compute outage
probability (OP) values at the output of generalized selection combining
receivers. Generally, closed-form expressions of the CDF of the sum of order
statistics are unavailable for many practical distributions. Moreover, the
naive Monte Carlo (MC) method requires a substantial computational effort when
the probability of interest is sufficiently small. In the region of small OP
values, we propose instead two effective variance reduction techniques that
yield a reliable estimate of the CDF with small computing cost. The first
estimator, which can be viewed as an importance sampling estimator, has bounded
relative error under a certain assumption that is shown to hold for most of the
challenging distributions. An improvement of this estimator is then proposed
for the Pareto and the Weibull cases. The second is a conditional MC estimator
that achieves the bounded relative error property for the Generalized Gamma
case and the logarithmic efficiency in the Log-normal case. Finally, the
efficiency of these estimators is compared via various numerical experiments
Policy Gradients for CVaR-Constrained MDPs
We study a risk-constrained version of the stochastic shortest path (SSP)
problem, where the risk measure considered is Conditional Value-at-Risk (CVaR).
We propose two algorithms that obtain a locally risk-optimal policy by
employing four tools: stochastic approximation, mini batches, policy gradients
and importance sampling. Both the algorithms incorporate a CVaR estimation
procedure, along the lines of Bardou et al. [2009], which in turn is based on
Rockafellar-Uryasev's representation for CVaR and utilize the likelihood ratio
principle for estimating the gradient of the sum of one cost function
(objective of the SSP) and the gradient of the CVaR of the sum of another cost
function (in the constraint of SSP). The algorithms differ in the manner in
which they approximate the CVaR estimates/necessary gradients - the first
algorithm uses stochastic approximation, while the second employ mini-batches
in the spirit of Monte Carlo methods. We establish asymptotic convergence of
both the algorithms. Further, since estimating CVaR is related to rare-event
simulation, we incorporate an importance sampling based variance reduction
scheme into our proposed algorithms
Hadron energy response of the Iron Calorimeter detector at the India-based Neutrino Observatory
The results of a Monte Carlo simulation study of the hadron energy response
for the magnetized Iron CALorimeter detector, ICAL, proposed to be located at
the India-based Neutrino Observatory (INO) is presented. Using a GEANT4
modeling of the detector ICAL, interactions of atmospheric neutrinos with
target nuclei are simulated. The detector response to hadrons propagating
through it is investigated using the hadron hit multiplicity in the active
detector elements. The detector response to charged pions of fixed energy is
studied first, followed by the average response to the hadrons produced in
atmospheric neutrino interactions using events simulated with the NUANCE event
generator. The shape of the hit distribution is observed to fit the Vavilov
distribution, which reduces to a Gaussian at high energies. In terms of the
parameters of this distribution, we present the hadron energy resolution as a
function of hadron energy, and the calibration of hadron energy as a function
of the hit multiplicity. The energy resolution for hadrons is found to be in
the range 85% (for 1GeV) -- 36% (for 15 GeV).Comment: 14 pages, 10 figures (24 eps files
Sequential quasi-Monte Carlo: Introduction for Non-Experts, Dimension Reduction, Application to Partly Observed Diffusion Processes
SMC (Sequential Monte Carlo) is a class of Monte Carlo algorithms for
filtering and related sequential problems. Gerber and Chopin (2015) introduced
SQMC (Sequential quasi-Monte Carlo), a QMC version of SMC. This paper has two
objectives: (a) to introduce Sequential Monte Carlo to the QMC community, whose
members are usually less familiar with state-space models and particle
filtering; (b) to extend SQMC to the filtering of continuous-time state-space
models, where the latent process is a diffusion. A recurring point in the paper
will be the notion of dimension reduction, that is how to implement SQMC in
such a way that it provides good performance despite the high dimension of the
problem.Comment: To be published in the proceedings of MCMQMC 201
Co-existence in the two-dimensional May-Leonard model with random rates
We employ Monte Carlo simulations to numerically study the temporal evolution
and transient oscillations of the population densities, the associated
frequency power spectra, and the spatial correlation functions in the
(quasi-)steady state in two-dimensional stochastic May--Leonard models of
mobile individuals, allowing for particle exchanges with nearest-neighbors and
hopping onto empty sites. We therefore consider a class of four-state
three-species cyclic predator-prey models whose total particle number is not
conserved. We demonstrate that quenched disorder in either the reaction or in
the mobility rates hardly impacts the dynamical evolution, the emergence and
structure of spiral patterns, or the mean extinction time in this system. We
also show that direct particle pair exchange processes promote the formation of
regular spiral structures. Moreover, upon increasing the rates of mobility, we
observe a remarkable change in the extinction properties in the May--Leonard
system (for small system sizes): (1) As the mobility rate exceeds a threshold
that separates a species coexistence (quasi-)steady state from an absorbing
state, the mean extinction time as function of system size N crosses over from
a functional form ~ e^{cN} / N (where c is a constant) to a linear dependence;
(2) the measured histogram of extinction times displays a corresponding
crossover from an (approximately) exponential to a Gaussian distribution. The
latter results are found to hold true also when the mobility rates are randomly
distributed.Comment: 9 pages, 4 figures; to appear in Eur. Phys. J. B (2011
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