Decision diagrams: Extensions and applications to reachability analysis

Symbolic data structures and algorithms are increasingly popular tools for the analysis of complex systems. Given a high-level model of a system, such as a Petri Net, we can automatically verify certain properties about it. In this thesis, we develop data structures and techniques that can be used to improve such analyses. First, we show how decision diagrams can be used efficiently in traditional explicit generation algorithms. Next, we show how symbolic reachability analysis can be used to detect deadlocks in Petri Nets. We also present a symbolic approach that can detect deadlocks in unbounded Petri Nets. Finally, we introduce a new type of decision diagram, ESRBDD, that combines multiple reduction rules, is canonical, and produces a more compact representation than previous efforts. We show that operations on ESRBDDs are at least as efficient as those on the underlying decision diagrams and introduce extensions to ESRBDDs that improve on their compactness and operational efficiency

Analysis of Petri Net Models through Stochastic Differential Equations

It is well known, mainly because of the work of Kurtz, that density dependent Markov chains can be approximated by sets of ordinary differential equations (ODEs) when their indexing parameter grows very large. This approximation cannot capture the stochastic nature of the process and, consequently, it can provide an erroneous view of the behavior of the Markov chain if the indexing parameter is not sufficiently high. Important phenomena that cannot be revealed include non-negligible variance and bi-modal population distributions. A less-known approximation proposed by Kurtz applies stochastic differential equations (SDEs) and provides information about the stochastic nature of the process. In this paper we apply and extend this diffusion approximation to study stochastic Petri nets. We identify a class of nets whose underlying stochastic process is a density dependent Markov chain whose indexing parameter is a multiplicative constant which identifies the population level expressed by the initial marking and we provide means to automatically construct the associated set of SDEs. Since the diffusion approximation of Kurtz considers the process only up to the time when it first exits an open interval, we extend the approximation by a machinery that mimics the behavior of the Markov chain at the boundary and allows thus to apply the approach to a wider set of problems. The resulting process is of the jump-diffusion type. We illustrate by examples that the jump-diffusion approximation which extends to bounded domains can be much more informative than that based on ODEs as it can provide accurate quantity distributions even when they are multi-modal and even for relatively small population levels. Moreover, we show that the method is faster than simulating the original Markov chain

Location-aware and Superimposed-Pilot based Channel Estimation of Sparse HAP Radio Communication Channels

A superimposed (arithmetically added) Pilot (SiP) sequence based channel estimation method for beamforming assisted multi-antenna High Altitude Platform (HAP) land mobile radio communication systems is proposed, which exploits the prior available information of users' spatial location, density of users, and beam-width of HAP directional antenna. A thorough characterization of HAP sparse multipath radio propagation channels' is presented in first part of the paper, where mathematical relationship of HAP antenna beam-width with channel's delay span and optimal length of SiP base sequence are presented. Further, a location information aided and low- power SiP sequence based Stage-wise Orthogonal Match Pursuit (StOMP) algorithm is proposed for estimation of channels from single-antenna user terminals to beamforming assisted large scale multiple-antenna HAP. A thorough analysis on the basis of Normalized Channel Mean Square Error (NCMSE) and Bit Error Rate (BER) performance of proposed method is presented; where the effect of channels' sparsity level, Pilot-to-Information power Ratio (PIR), beam-width of HAP's directional antenna, amount of HAP antenna elements, density of interfering users, and spatial location of active user terminal are thoroughly studied. A comparison of the proposed method with a notable reference technique available in the literature is also presented

Superimposed Training based Estimation of Sparse MIMO Channels for Emerging Wireless Networks

Multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems constitute an important part of todays wireless communication standards and these systems are expected to take a fundamental role in both the access and backhaul sides of the emerging wireless cellular networks. Recently, reported measurement campaigns have established that various outdoor radio propagation environments exhibit sparsely structured channel impulse response (CIR). We propose a novel superimposed training (SiT) based up-link channels’ estimation technique for multipath sparse MIMO communication channels using a matching pursuit (MP) algorithm; the proposed technique is herein named as superimposed matching pursuit (SI-MP). Subsequently, we evaluate the performance of the proposed technique in terms of mean-square error (MSE) and bit-error-rate (BER), and provide its comparison with that of the notable first order statistics based superimposed least squares (SI-LS) estimation. It is established that the proposed SI-MP provides an improvement of about 2dB in the MSE at signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of 12dB as compared to SI-LS, for channel sparsity level of 21.5%. For BER = 10^−2, the proposed SI-MP compared to SI-LS offers a gain of about 3dB in the SNR. Moreover, our results demonstrate that an increase in the channel sparsity further enhances the performance gai

Evaluation of Lumber Spine Stenosis on Magnetic Resonance Imaging Correlating with Its Clinical Manifestation

Lumber spine stenosis (LSS) is one of the major reasons of spinal surgery all over the globe. Despite using standard Diagnostic tools for LSS, the clinical and imaging findings often do not correlate. Over past years, the central spinal canal stenosis is assumed to be the diagnoses of lower back pain, while other anatomical stenosis (i.e lateral recess stenosis) not gaining as much attention. This fact assumed to be the reason for failed back surgery. In this context numerous studies in past have done. The aim of this study is to verify the clinical manifestation of LSS correlation to its Diagnostic find. To evaluate the lumbar spine stenosis on magnetic resonance imaging & correlating with its clinical manifestations. The duration of study was three months. Study was done at Lahore General Hospital, Pakistan. A cross-sectional analytical study included 120 patients. According our study the patients comes with lumber spine stenosis at different levels. At L4L5 presents 39 (32.5%) patients, 47(39.2%) patients reveal at the level of L5S1, 14 (11.7%) patients at L2L3, and only 3 (2.5%) patients appear at the level of L1L2, 19 (15.8%) patients show stenosis at L3L4 Then we correlate the pain intensity with all lumber spine levels and the results are 35 (29.2%) patients are absent and 85 (70.8%) presents at the level of L4L5. On the level of L5S1 pain intensity is absent in 81 (67.5%) patients, & present in 39 (32.5) patients. On the level of L2L3 106 (83.5%) absent and 14 (11.7%) patients are present pain intensity.  On the level of L1L2 117 (97.5%) absent of pain intensity and only 3 (2.5%) patients are present with pain intensity. The study concluded that the clinical manifestation of lumber spine stenosis to devise the management plan for the patient for better diagnoses in magnetic resonance imaging in LSS. Keywords: Lumber spine stenosis, manifestation, MRI DOI: 10.7176/JHMN/90-10 Publication date:June 30th 202

Compressed Sensing of Sparse Multipath MIMO Channels with Superimposed Training Sequence

Recent advances in multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems have renewed the interests of researchers to further explore this area for addressing various dynamic challenges of emerging radio communication networks. Various measurement campaigns reported recently in the literature show that physical multipath MIMO channels exhibit sparse impulse response structure in various outdoor radio propagation environments. Therefore, a comprehensive physical description of sparse multipath MIMO channels is presented in first part of this paper. Superimposing a training sequence (low power, periodic) over the information sequence offers an improvement in the spectral efficiency by avoiding the use of dedicated time/frequency slots for the training sequence, which is unlike the traditional schemes. The main contribution of this paper includes three superimposed training (SiT) sequence based channel estimation techniques for sparse multipath MIMO channels. The proposed techniques exploit the compressed sensing theory and prior available knowledge of channel’s sparsity. The proposed sparse MIMO channel estimation techniques are named as, SiT based compressed channel sensing (SiT-CCS), SiT based hardlimit thresholding with CCS (SiT-ThCCS), and SiT training based match pursuit (SiT-MP). Bit error rate (BER) and normalized channel mean square error are used as metrics for the simulation analysis to gauge the performance of proposed techniques. A comparison of the proposed schemes with a notable first order statistics based SiT least squares (SiT-LS) estimation technique is presented to establish the improvements achieved by the proposed schemes. For sparse multipath time-invariant MIMO communication channels, it is observed that SiT-CCS, SiT-MP, and SiT-ThCCS can provide an improvement up to 2, 3.5, and 5.2 dB in the MSE at signal to noise ratio (SNR) of 12 dB when compared to SiT-LS, respectively. Moreover, for BER=10 −1.9 BER=10−1.9, the proposed SiT-CCS, SiT-MP, and SiT-ThCCS, compared to SiT-LS, can offer a gain of about 1, 2.5, and 3.5 dB in the SNR, respectively. The performance gain in MSE and BER is observed to improve with an increase in the channel sparsity

Subnational mapping of HIV incidence and mortality among individuals aged 15–49 years in sub-Saharan Africa, 2000–18 : a modelling study

Background: High-resolution estimates of HIV burden across space and time provide an important tool for tracking and monitoring the progress of prevention and control efforts and assist with improving the precision and efficiency of targeting efforts. We aimed to assess HIV incidence and HIV mortality for all second-level administrative units across sub-Saharan Africa. Methods: In this modelling study, we developed a framework that used the geographically specific HIV prevalence data collected in seroprevalence surveys and antenatal care clinics to train a model that estimates HIV incidence and mortality among individuals aged 15–49 years. We used a model-based geostatistical framework to estimate HIV prevalence at the second administrative level in 44 countries in sub-Saharan Africa for 2000–18 and sought data on the number of individuals on antiretroviral therapy (ART) by second-level administrative unit. We then modified the Estimation and Projection Package (EPP) to use these HIV prevalence and treatment estimates to estimate HIV incidence and mortality by second-level administrative unit. Findings: The estimates suggest substantial variation in HIV incidence and mortality rates both between and within countries in sub-Saharan Africa, with 15 countries having a ten-times or greater difference in estimated HIV incidence between the second-level administrative units with the lowest and highest estimated incidence levels. Across all 44 countries in 2018, HIV incidence ranged from 2 ·8 (95% uncertainty interval 2·1–3·8) in Mauritania to 1585·9 (1369·4–1824·8) cases per 100 000 people in Lesotho and HIV mortality ranged from 0·8 (0·7–0·9) in Mauritania to 676· 5 (513· 6–888·0) deaths per 100 000 people in Lesotho. Variation in both incidence and mortality was substantially greater at the subnational level than at the national level and the highest estimated rates were accordingly higher. Among second-level administrative units, Guijá District, Gaza Province, Mozambique, had the highest estimated HIV incidence (4661·7 [2544·8–8120·3]) cases per 100000 people in 2018 and Inhassunge District, Zambezia Province, Mozambique, had the highest estimated HIV mortality rate (1163·0 [679·0–1866·8]) deaths per 100 000 people. Further, the rate of reduction in HIV incidence and mortality from 2000 to 2018, as well as the ratio of new infections to the number of people living with HIV was highly variable. Although most second-level administrative units had declines in the number of new cases (3316 [81· 1%] of 4087 units) and number of deaths (3325 [81·4%]), nearly all appeared well short of the targeted 75% reduction in new cases and deaths between 2010 and 2020. Interpretation: Our estimates suggest that most second-level administrative units in sub-Saharan Africa are falling short of the targeted 75% reduction in new cases and deaths by 2020, which is further compounded by substantial within-country variability. These estimates will help decision makers and programme implementers expand access to ART and better target health resources to higher burden subnational areas

Measuring routine childhood vaccination coverage in 204 countries and territories, 1980-2019 : a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2020, Release 1

Background Measuring routine childhood vaccination is crucial to inform global vaccine policies and programme implementation, and to track progress towards targets set by the Global Vaccine Action Plan (GVAP) and Immunization Agenda 2030. Robust estimates of routine vaccine coverage are needed to identify past successes and persistent vulnerabilities. Drawing from the Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries, and Risk Factors Study (GBD) 2020, Release 1, we did a systematic analysis of global, regional, and national vaccine coverage trends using a statistical framework, by vaccine and over time. Methods For this analysis we collated 55 326 country-specific, cohort-specific, year-specific, vaccine-specific, and dosespecific observations of routine childhood vaccination coverage between 1980 and 2019. Using spatiotemporal Gaussian process regression, we produced location-specific and year-specific estimates of 11 routine childhood vaccine coverage indicators for 204 countries and territories from 1980 to 2019, adjusting for biases in countryreported data and reflecting reported stockouts and supply disruptions. We analysed global and regional trends in coverage and numbers of zero-dose children (defined as those who never received a diphtheria-tetanus-pertussis [DTP] vaccine dose), progress towards GVAP targets, and the relationship between vaccine coverage and sociodemographic development. Findings By 2019, global coverage of third-dose DTP (DTP3; 81.6% [95% uncertainty interval 80.4-82 .7]) more than doubled from levels estimated in 1980 (39.9% [37.5-42.1]), as did global coverage of the first-dose measles-containing vaccine (MCV1; from 38.5% [35.4-41.3] in 1980 to 83.6% [82.3-84.8] in 2019). Third- dose polio vaccine (Pol3) coverage also increased, from 42.6% (41.4-44.1) in 1980 to 79.8% (78.4-81.1) in 2019, and global coverage of newer vaccines increased rapidly between 2000 and 2019. The global number of zero-dose children fell by nearly 75% between 1980 and 2019, from 56.8 million (52.6-60. 9) to 14.5 million (13.4-15.9). However, over the past decade, global vaccine coverage broadly plateaued; 94 countries and territories recorded decreasing DTP3 coverage since 2010. Only 11 countries and territories were estimated to have reached the national GVAP target of at least 90% coverage for all assessed vaccines in 2019. Interpretation After achieving large gains in childhood vaccine coverage worldwide, in much of the world this progress was stalled or reversed from 2010 to 2019. These findings underscore the importance of revisiting routine immunisation strategies and programmatic approaches, recentring service delivery around equity and underserved populations. Strengthening vaccine data and monitoring systems is crucial to these pursuits, now and through to 2030, to ensure that all children have access to, and can benefit from, lifesaving vaccines. Copyright (C) 2021 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Ltd.Peer reviewe

Decision diagrams: Extensions and applications to reachability analysis

Symbolic data structures and algorithms are increasingly popular tools for the analysis of complex systems. Given a high-level model of a system, such as a Petri Net, we can automatically verify certain properties about it. In this thesis, we develop data structures and techniques that can be used to improve such analyses. First, we show how decision diagrams can be used efficiently in traditional explicit generation algorithms. Next, we show how symbolic reachability analysis can be used to detect deadlocks in Petri Nets. We also present a symbolic approach that can detect deadlocks in unbounded Petri Nets. Finally, we introduce a new type of decision diagram, ESRBDD, that combines multiple reduction rules, is canonical, and produces a more compact representation than previous efforts. We show that operations on ESRBDDs are at least as efficient as those on the underlying decision diagrams and introduce extensions to ESRBDDs that improve on their compactness and operational efficiency.</p

Massive-MIMO Sparse Uplink Channel Estimation Using Implicit Training and Compressed Sensing

Massive multiple-input multiple-output (massive-MIMO) is foreseen as a potential technology for future 5G cellular communication networks due to its substantial benefits in terms of increased spectral and energy efficiency. These advantages of massive-MIMO are a consequence of equipping the base station (BS) with quite a large number of antenna elements, thus resulting in an aggressive spatial multiplexing. In order to effectively reap the benefits of massive-MIMO, an adequate estimate of the channel impulse response (CIR) between each transmit–receive link is of utmost importance. It has been established in the literature that certain specific multipath propagation environments lead to a sparse structured CIR in spatial and/or delay domains. In this paper, implicit training and compressed sensing based CIR estimation techniques are proposed for the case of massive-MIMO sparse uplink channels. In the proposed superimposed training (SiT) based techniques, a periodic and low power training sequence is superimposed (arithmetically added) over the information sequence, thus avoiding any dedicated time/frequency slots for the training sequence. For the estimation of such massive-MIMO sparse uplink channels, two greedy pursuits based compressed sensing approaches are proposed, viz: SiT based stage-wise orthogonal matching pursuit (SiT-StOMP) and gradient pursuit (SiT-GP). In order to demonstrate the validity of proposed techniques, a performance comparison in terms of normalized mean square error (NCMSE) and bit error rate (BER) is performed with a notable SiT based least squares (SiT-LS) channel estimation technique. The effect of channels’ sparsity, training-to-information power ratio (TIR) and signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) on BER and NCMSE performance of proposed schemes is thoroughly studied. For a simulation scenario of: 4 × 64 massive-MIMO with a channel sparsity level of 80 % and signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of 10 dB , a performance gain of 18 dB and 13 dB in terms of NCMSE over SiT-LS is observed for the proposed SiT-StOMP and SiT-GP techniques, respectively. Moreover, a performance gain of about 3 dB and 2.5 dB in SNR is achieved by the proposed SiT-StOMP and SiT-GP, respectively, for a BER of 10 − 2 , as compared to SiT-LS. This performance gain NCME and BER is observed to further increase with an increase in channels’ sparsity