Filter and nested-lattice code design for fading MIMO channels with side-information

Linear-assignment Gel'fand-Pinsker coding (LA-GPC) is a coding technique for channels with interference known only at the transmitter, where the known interference is treated as side-information (SI). As a special case of LA-GPC, dirty paper coding has been shown to be able to achieve the optimal interference-free rate for interference channels with perfect channel state information at the transmitter (CSIT). In the cases where only the channel distribution information at the transmitter (CDIT) is available, LA-GPC also has good (sometimes optimal) performance in a variety of fast and slow fading SI channels. In this paper, we design the filters in nested-lattice based coding to make it achieve the same rate performance as LA-GPC in multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) channels. Compared with the random Gaussian codebooks used in previous works, our resultant coding schemes have an algebraic structure and can be implemented in practical systems. A simulation in a slow-fading channel is also provided, and near interference-free error performance is obtained. The proposed coding schemes can serve as the fundamental building blocks to achieve the promised rate performance of MIMO Gaussian broadcast channels with CDIT or perfect CSITComment: submitted to IEEE Transactions on Communications, Feb, 200

Managing self-image : choosing healthy food to restore competence

Food consumption has been an area of study that received much attention, especially with the concern of nudging consumers towards healthy food choices to reduce the prevalence of obesity. Building on theories of Self-Affirmation and Self-Presentation, this study explores individuals' psychological need for self-competence as a potential motivating factor for consuming healthy food. Results of the study show that individuals had a greater likelihood of choosing healthy snacks when faced with self-threat (H1), and when allowed to restore self-competency through self-affirmation, the tendency towards healthy snacks was alleviated (H3). Finally, individuals' views of self-competence were on average higher after choosing healthy food, though the difference was not significant (H2). This study tests and demonstrates the novel proposition that impression management of one’s self-image influences food choice. Contrary to previous findings on negative emotions and indulgent eating behavior, the present study shows that the threatened self chooses healthy options.Advertisin

A Multi-Robot Cooperation Framework for Sewing Personalized Stent Grafts

This paper presents a multi-robot system for manufacturing personalized medical stent grafts. The proposed system adopts a modular design, which includes: a (personalized) mandrel module, a bimanual sewing module, and a vision module. The mandrel module incorporates the personalized geometry of patients, while the bimanual sewing module adopts a learning-by-demonstration approach to transfer human hand-sewing skills to the robots. The human demonstrations were firstly observed by the vision module and then encoded using a statistical model to generate the reference motion trajectories. During autonomous robot sewing, the vision module plays the role of coordinating multi-robot collaboration. Experiment results show that the robots can adapt to generalized stent designs. The proposed system can also be used for other manipulation tasks, especially for flexible production of customized products and where bimanual or multi-robot cooperation is required.Comment: 10 pages, 12 figures, accepted by IEEE Transactions on Industrial Informatics, Key words: modularity, medical device customization, multi-robot system, robot learning, visual servoing, robot sewin

Cognitive Radio with Partial Channel State Information at the Transmitter

In this paper, we present the cognitive radio system design with partial channel state information known at the transmitter (CSIT).We replace the dirty paper coding (DPC) used in the cognitive radio with full CSIT by the linear assignment Gel'fand-Pinsker coding (LA-GPC), which can utilize the limited knowledge of the channel more efficiently. Based on the achievable rate derived from the LA-GPC, two optimization problems under the fast and slow fading channels are formulated. We derive semianalytical solutions to find the relaying ratios and precoding coefficients. The critical observation is that the complex rate functions in these problems are closely related to ratios of quadratic form. Simulation results show that the proposed semi-analytical solutions perform close to the optimal solutions found by brute-force search, and outperform the systems based on naive DPC. Asymptotic analysis also shows that these solutions converge to the optimal ones solved with full CSIT when the K-factor of Rician channel approaches infinity. Moreover, a new coding scheme is proposed to implement the LA-GPC in practice. Simulation results show that the proposed practical coding scheme can efficiently reach the theoretical rate performance.Comment: resubmitted to IEEE Transaction on Wireless Communications, May 200