PORElicit A Pair Oriented Approach For Improving Multi-Lingual Requirements Elicitation For Requirements Engineers

The rise of software project offshoring has resulted in the increased of usage of multi- lingual in software development activities including requirements elicitation. In Malaysia, code switching between Malay and English language has become a common practice in multi-lingual requirements elicitation which leads to miscommunication and misinterpretation between both requirements engineers and stakeholders, due to the language barriers. Motivated from this problem, this research proposes a Pair Oriented Requirements Elicitation approach (PORElicit), to improve the performance and the accuracy of multi-lingual requirements. We adopt the concept of pair which involves two requirements engineers, namely the elicitor and the reviewer in eliciting the multi-lingual requirements. Three studies were carried out in this research: 1) controlled experiments 2) surveys and 3) observations. The focus of these studies was to evaluate PORElicit approach in comparison to solo approach in term of its performance (time spent) and the accuracy of the multi-lingual requirements (requirements correctness). The other focus is on its usability which is based on user perception on its usability and satisfaction. Based on these studies, we found that PORElicit approach is able to provide better multi-lingual requirements with lesser effort in comparison to solo approach. Further, PORElicit approach is also able to improve the communication between the requirements engineers and the stakeholders. The collaboration between the requirements engineers in PORElicit approach also helps in validating the multi-lingual requirements at the early stage of requirements engineering activities

Forex prediction engine: framework, modelling techniques and implementations

Having accurate prediction in foreign exchange (Forex) market is useful because it provides intelligent information for investment strategy. This paper studies extracted repeating patterns of historical Forex time series, so to predict future trend direction by matching the forming trend with a repeating pattern. In the proposed Forex prediction engine, global pattern movements over a period of time are extracted using a linear regression line (LRL) enhanced technique, and then further segmented into what we called up and down curves. Subsequently, the artificial neural network (ANN) is applied to classify or group the uptrend and downtrend patterns. Finally, the dynamic time warping (DTW) is used through brute force to identify a trend pattern similar to the current trend at least for the beginning part. The remaining part of the matched pattern can provide predictive clues about next day trend movement. The experimental results generated on the dataset of AUD–USD and EUR–USD currencies between 2012 and 2013 demonstrate reliable accuracy performance of 72%

Prediction of forex trend movement using linear regression line, two-stage of multi-layer perceptron and dynamic time warping algorithms

Foreign Exchange Currency prediction has become a challenging task since the late 1970s due to uncertainty movement of exchange rates. However, most researchers in this area were neglecting to analyse trend patterns from historical Forex data as input features. Thus, this motivates us to investigate possibility of repeated trend patterns from historical Forex data. This paper aims to investigate the repeated trend patterns as features from historical Forex data, which proposes new combination techniques - Linear Regression Line, two-stage of Multi-Layer Perceptron and Dynamic Time Warping algorithms in order to improve the performance of prediction significantly, thus achieving greater accuracy

Accurate Tree Roots Positioning and Sizing over Undulated Ground Surfaces by Common Offset GPR Measurements

Tree roots detection is a popular application of the Ground-penetrating radar (GPR). Normally, the ground surface above the tree roots is assumed to be flat, and standard processing methods based on hyperbolic fitting are applied to the hyperbolae reflection patterns of tree roots for detection purposes. When the surface of the land is undulating (not flat), these typical hyperbolic fitting methods becomes inaccurate. This is because, the reflection patterns change with the uneven ground surfaces. When the soil surface is not flat, it is inaccurate to use the peak point of an asymmetric reflection pattern to identify the depth and horizontal position of the underground target. The reflection patterns of the complex shapes due to extreme surface variations results in analysis difficulties. Furthermore, when multiple objects are buried under an undulating ground, it is hard to judge their relative positions based on a B-scan that assumes a flat ground. In this paper, a roots fitting method based on electromagnetic waves (EM) travel time analysis is proposed to take into consideration the realistic undulating ground surface. A wheel-based (WB) GPR and an antenna-height-fixed (AHF) GPR System are presented, and their corresponding fitting models are proposed. The effectiveness of the proposed method is demonstrated and validated through numerical examples and field experiments.Comment: 11 pages, 6 figures, accepted by IEEE TI

DMRF-UNet: A Two-Stage Deep Learning Scheme for GPR Data Inversion under Heterogeneous Soil Conditions

Traditional ground-penetrating radar (GPR) data inversion leverages iterative algorithms which suffer from high computation costs and low accuracy when applied to complex subsurface scenarios. Existing deep learning-based methods focus on the ideal homogeneous subsurface environments and ignore the interference due to clutters and noise in real-world heterogeneous environments. To address these issues, a two-stage deep neural network (DNN), called DMRF-UNet, is proposed to reconstruct the permittivity distributions of subsurface objects from GPR B-scans under heterogeneous soil conditions. In the first stage, a U-shape DNN with multi-receptive-field convolutions (MRF-UNet1) is built to remove the clutters due to inhomogeneity of the heterogeneous soil. Then the denoised B-scan from the MRF-UNet1 is combined with the noisy B-scan to be inputted to the DNN in the second stage (MRF-UNet2). The MRF-UNet2 learns the inverse mapping relationship and reconstructs the permittivity distribution of subsurface objects. To avoid information loss, an end-to-end training method combining the loss functions of two stages is introduced. A wide range of subsurface heterogeneous scenarios and B-scans are generated to evaluate the inversion performance. The test results in the numerical experiment and the real measurement show that the proposed network reconstructs the permittivities, shapes, sizes, and locations of subsurface objects with high accuracy. The comparison with existing methods demonstrates the superiority of the proposed methodology for the inversion under heterogeneous soil conditions

3DInvNet: A Deep Learning-Based 3D Ground-Penetrating Radar Data Inversion

The reconstruction of the 3D permittivity map from ground-penetrating radar (GPR) data is of great importance for mapping subsurface environments and inspecting underground structural integrity. Traditional iterative 3D reconstruction algorithms suffer from strong non-linearity, ill-posedness, and high computational cost. To tackle these issues, a 3D deep learning scheme, called 3DInvNet, is proposed to reconstruct 3D permittivity maps from GPR C-scans. The proposed scheme leverages a prior 3D convolutional neural network with a feature attention mechanism to suppress the noise in the C-scans due to subsurface heterogeneous soil environments. Then a 3D U-shaped encoder-decoder network with multi-scale feature aggregation modules is designed to establish the optimal inverse mapping from the denoised C-scans to 3D permittivity maps. Furthermore, a three-step separate learning strategy is employed to pre-train and fine-tune the networks. The proposed scheme is applied to numerical simulation as well as real measurement data. The quantitative and qualitative results show the network capability, generalizability, and robustness in denoising GPR C-scans and reconstructing 3D permittivity maps of subsurface objects