On the stability of an optimal coalition structure

The two main questions in coalition games are 1) what coalitions should form and 2) how to distribute the value of each coalition between its members. When a game is not superadditive, other coalition structures (CSs) may be more attractive than the grand coalition. For example, if the agents care about the total payoff generated by the entire society, CSs that maximize utilitarian social welfare are of interest. The search for such optimal CSs has been a very active area of research. Stability concepts have been defined for games with coalition structure, under the assumption that the agents agree first on a CS, and then the members of each coalition decide on how to share the value of their coalition. An agent can refer to the values of coalitions with agents outside of its current coalition to argue for a larger share of the coalition payoff. To use this approach, one can find the CS s★ with optimal value and use one of these stability concepts for the game with s★. However, it may not be fair for some agents to form s★, e.g., for those that form a singleton coalition and cannot benefit from collaboration with other agents. We explore the possibility of allowing side-payments across coalitions to improve the stability of an optimal CS. We adapt existing stability concepts and prove that some of them are non-empty under our proposed scheme

Etude Schuss: le point sur les compilateurs de silicium disponibles (fin 86)

SIGLECNRS RP 253 (59) / INIST-CNRS - Institut de l'Information Scientifique et TechniqueFRFranc

Powering a Commercial Datalogger by Energy Harvesting from Generated Aeroacoustic Noise Powering a Commercial Datalogger by Energy Harvesting from Generated Aeroacoustic Noise

International audienceThis paper reports the experimental demonstration of a wireless sensor node only powered by an aeroacoustic energy harvesting device, meant to be installed on an aircraft outside skin. New results related to the physical characterization of the energy conversion process are presented. Optimized interface electronics has been designed, which allows demonstrating aeroacoustic power generation by supplying a commercial wireless datalogger in conditions representative of an actual flight

An approach to Verilog-VHDL interoperability for synchronous designs

This paper suggests that synchronous designs written in either Verilog or VHDL can be interpreted in terms of a common Hierarchical Finite State Machine model, and shows the principles for extracting the semantics of designs described in either language. Sublanguages with identical semantics are identified, and an algorithm for inferring a minimal number of state variables from VHDL processes is given. This common semantic model can be used as a kernel for cycle-based simulation, formal verification, and synthesis, irrespective of the source language. In particular, Verilog and VHDL descriptions can be proven equivalent, and modules developed in one language can be reused in projects documented in the other one. This approach has been prototyped by the implementation of a semantic link between the VIS system of Berkeley and the Prevail system of TIMA