Performance analysis with network-enhanced complexities: On fading measurements, event-triggered mechanisms, and cyber attacks

Copyright © 2014 Derui Ding et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.Nowadays, the real-world systems are usually subject to various complexities such as parameter uncertainties, time-delays, and nonlinear disturbances. For networked systems, especially large-scale systems such as multiagent systems and systems over sensor networks, the complexities are inevitably enhanced in terms of their degrees or intensities because of the usage of the communication networks. Therefore, it would be interesting to (1) examine how this kind of network-enhanced complexities affects the control or filtering performance; and (2) develop some suitable approaches for controller/filter design problems. In this paper, we aim to survey some recent advances on the performance analysis and synthesis with three sorts of fashionable network-enhanced complexities, namely, fading measurements, event-triggered mechanisms, and attack behaviors of adversaries. First, these three kinds of complexities are introduced in detail according to their engineering backgrounds, dynamical characteristic, and modelling techniques. Then, the developments of the performance analysis and synthesis issues for various networked systems are systematically reviewed. Furthermore, some challenges are illustrated by using a thorough literature review and some possible future research directions are highlighted.This work was supported in part by the National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grants 61134009, 61329301, 61203139, 61374127, and 61374010, the Royal Society of the UK, and the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation of Germany

Time-and event-driven communication process for networked control systems: A survey

Copyright © 2014 Lei Zou et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.In recent years, theoretical and practical research topics on networked control systems (NCSs) have gained an increasing interest from many researchers in a variety of disciplines owing to the extensive applications of NCSs in practice. In particular, an urgent need has arisen to understand the effects of communication processes on system performances. Sampling and protocol are two fundamental aspects of a communication process which have attracted a great deal of research attention. Most research focus has been on the analysis and control of dynamical behaviors under certain sampling procedures and communication protocols. In this paper, we aim to survey some recent advances on the analysis and synthesis issues of NCSs with different sampling procedures (time-and event-driven sampling) and protocols (static and dynamic protocols). First, these sampling procedures and protocols are introduced in detail according to their engineering backgrounds as well as dynamic natures. Then, the developments of the stabilization, control, and filtering problems are systematically reviewed and discussed in great detail. Finally, we conclude the paper by outlining future research challenges for analysis and synthesis problems of NCSs with different communication processes.This work was supported in part by the National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grants 61329301, 61374127, and 61374010, the Royal Society of the UK, and the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation of Germany

Hyperaccretion Disks around Neutron Stars

(Abridged) We here study the structure of a hyperaccretion disk around a neutron star. We consider a steady-state hyperaccretion disk around a neutron star, and as a reasonable approximation, divide the disk into two regions, which are called inner and outer disks. The outer disk is similar to that of a black hole and the inner disk has a self-similar structure. In order to study physical properties of the entire disk clearly, we first adopt a simple model, in which some microphysical processes in the disk are simplified, following Popham et al. and Narayan et al. Based on these simplifications, we analytically and numerically investigate the size of the inner disk, the efficiency of neutrino cooling, and the radial distributions of the disk density, temperature and pressure. We see that, compared with the black-hole disk, the neutron star disk can cool more efficiently and produce a much higher neutrino luminosity. Finally, we consider an elaborate model with more physical considerations about the thermodynamics and microphysics in the neutron star disk (as recently developed in studying the neutrino-cooled disk of a black hole), and compare this elaborate model with our simple model. We find that most of the results from these two models are basically consistent with each other.Comment: 44 pages, 10 figures, improved version following the referees' comments, main conclusions unchanged, accepted for publication in Ap

Surface phase separation in nanosized charge-ordered manganites

Recent experiments showed that the robust charge-ordering in manganites can be weakened by reducing the grain size down to nanoscale. Weak ferromagnetism was evidenced in both nanoparticles and nanowires of charge-ordered manganites. To explain these observations, a phenomenological model based on surface phase separation is proposed. The relaxation of superexchange interaction on the surface layer allows formation of a ferromagnetic shell, whose thickness increases with decreasing grain size. Possible exchange bias and softening of the ferromagnetic transition in nanosized charge-ordered manganites are predicted.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figure

Scaling transform based information geometry method for DOA estimation

By exploiting the relationship between probability density and the differential geometry structure of received data and geodesic distance, the recently proposed information geometry (IG) method can provide higher accuracy and resolution ability for direction of arrival (DOA) estimation than many existing methods. However, its performance is not robust even for high signal to noise ratio (SNR). To have a deep understanding of its unstable performance, a theoretical analysis of the IG method is presented by deriving the relationship between the cost function and the number of array elements, powers and DOAs of source signals, and noise power. Then, to make better use of the nonlinear and super resolution property of the cost function, a Scaling TRansform based INformation Geometry (STRING) method is proposed, which simply scales the array received data or its covariance matrix by a real number. However, the expression for the optimum value of the scalar is complicated and related to the unknown signal DOAs and powers. Hence, a decision criterion and a simple search based procedure are developed, guaranteeing a robust performance. As demonstrated by computer simulations, the proposed STRING method has the best and robust angle resolution performance compared with many existing high resolution methods and even outperforms the classic Cramer-Rao bound (CRB), although at the cost of a bias in the estimation results