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Search Results (509)

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Keywords = computer network routing

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13 pages, 1815 KiB  
Article
Quantifying Plant Signaling Pathways by Integrating Luminescence-Based Biosensors and Mathematical Modeling
by Shakeel Ahmed, Syed Muhammad Zaigham Abbas Naqvi, Fida Hussain, Muhammad Awais, Yongzhe Ren, Junfeng Wu, Hao Zhang, Yiheng Zang and Jiandong Hu
Biosensors 2024, 14(8), 378; https://doi.org/10.3390/bios14080378 - 5 Aug 2024
Viewed by 433
Abstract
Plants have evolved intricate signaling pathways, which operate as networks governed by feedback to deal with stressors. Nevertheless, the sophisticated molecular mechanisms underlying these routes still need to be comprehended, and experimental validation poses significant challenges and expenses. Consequently, computational hypothesis evaluation gains [...] Read more.
Plants have evolved intricate signaling pathways, which operate as networks governed by feedback to deal with stressors. Nevertheless, the sophisticated molecular mechanisms underlying these routes still need to be comprehended, and experimental validation poses significant challenges and expenses. Consequently, computational hypothesis evaluation gains prominence in understanding plant signaling dynamics. Biosensors are genetically modified to emit light when exposed to a particular hormone, such as abscisic acid (ABA), enabling quantification. We developed computational models to simulate the relationship between ABA concentrations and bioluminescent sensors utilizing the Hill equation and ordinary differential equations (ODEs), aiding better hypothesis development regarding plant signaling. Based on simulation results, the luminescence intensity was recorded for a concentration of 47.646 RLUs for 1.5 μmol, given the specified parameters and model assumptions. This method enhances our understanding of plant signaling pathways at the cellular level, offering significant benefits to the scientific community in a cost-effective manner. The alignment of these computational predictions with experimental results emphasizes the robustness of our approach, providing a cost-effective means to validate mathematical models empirically. The research intended to correlate the bioluminescence of biosensors with plant signaling and its mathematical models for quantified detection of specific plant hormone ABA. Full article
(This article belongs to the Section Optical and Photonic Biosensors)
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<p>A whole-cell biosensor integrated with bioluminescence.</p>
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<p>Abscisic acid (ABA) interaction with other hormones (<b>A</b>) ABA response for abiotic stress response, stomatal closure, seed germination, root development, etc. (<b>B</b>) Interaction of ABA with MAPK.</p>
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<p>Plant hormone interaction: (<b>a</b>) interaction of SnRK2, PP2C, and MAPK without ABA; and (<b>b</b>) interaction of SNRK2, PP2C, and MAPK in the presence of ABA.</p>
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<p>The plot of ABA concentration (µmol) and bioluminescence (RLUs) shows proportionality between varying ABA concentration and resulting bioluminescence. The gradient from blue to orange on the plot represents bioluminescence intensity. Blue color is indicating the lower and orange color is indicating the higher levels, corresponding to ABA concentrations and production rates.</p>
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20 pages, 15437 KiB  
Article
Deep Reinforcement Learning-Based Multipath Routing for LEO Megaconstellation Networks
by Chi Han, Wei Xiong and Ronghuan Yu
Electronics 2024, 13(15), 3054; https://doi.org/10.3390/electronics13153054 - 1 Aug 2024
Viewed by 393
Abstract
The expansion of megaconstellation networks (MCNs) represents a promising solution for achieving global Internet coverage. To meet the growing demand for satellite services, multipath routing allows the simultaneous establishment of multiple transmission paths, enabling the transmission of flows in parallel. Nevertheless, the mobility [...] Read more.
The expansion of megaconstellation networks (MCNs) represents a promising solution for achieving global Internet coverage. To meet the growing demand for satellite services, multipath routing allows the simultaneous establishment of multiple transmission paths, enabling the transmission of flows in parallel. Nevertheless, the mobility of satellites and time-varying link states presents a challenge for the discovery of optimal paths and traffic scheduling in multipath routing. Given the inflexibility of traditional static deep reinforcement learning (DRL)-based routing algorithms in dealing with time-varying constellation topologies, DRL-based multipath routing (DMR) enabled by a graph neural network (GNN) is proposed as a means of enhancing the transmission performance of MCNs. DMR decouples the stochastic optimization problem of multipath routing under traffic and bandwidth constraints into two subproblems: multipath routing discovery and multipath traffic scheduling. Firstly, the minimum hop count-based multipath route discovery algorithm (MHMRD) is proposed for the computation of multiple available paths between all source and destination nodes. Secondly, the GNN-based multipath traffic scheduling scheme (GMTS) is proposed as a means of dynamically scheduling the traffic on each available path for each data stream, based on the state information of ISLs and traffic demand. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed scheme can be scaled to constellations with different configurations without the necessity for repeated training and enhance the throughput, completion ratio, and delay by 42.64%, 17.39%, and 3.66% in comparison with the shortest path first algorithm (SPF), respectively. Full article
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<p>Multipath routing in the megaconstellation network.</p>
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<p>The overall structure of DRL-based multipath routing.</p>
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<p>Track of sub-satellite point of megaconstellation networks.</p>
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<p>The framework of the proposed GNN-based multipath traffic scheduling (GMTS) algorithm.</p>
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<p>DRL-based multipath routing for LEO megaconstellation networks.</p>
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<p>Average throughput on different constellations with various traffic intensity. (<b>a</b>) Average throughput for Iridium. (<b>b</b>) Average throughput for OneWeb.</p>
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<p>Average flow completion ratio of different constellations with various traffic intensity. (<b>a</b>) Average flow completion ratio for Iridium constellation. (<b>b</b>) Average flow completion ratio for OneWeb constellation.</p>
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<p>Average end-to-end delay for different constellations with various traffic intensities. (<b>a</b>) Average end-to-end delay for Iridium constellation. (<b>b</b>) Average end-to-end delay for OneWeb constellation.</p>
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21 pages, 25692 KiB  
Article
DDE-Net: Dynamic Density-Driven Estimation for Arbitrary-Oriented Object Detection
by Boyu Wang, Donglin Jing, Xiaokai Xia, Yu Liu, Luo Xu and Jiangmai Cheng
Electronics 2024, 13(15), 3029; https://doi.org/10.3390/electronics13153029 - 1 Aug 2024
Viewed by 514
Abstract
Compared with general images, objects in remote sensing (RS) images typically exhibit a conspicuous diversity due to their arbitrary orientations. However, many of the prevalent detectors generally apply an inflexible strategy in setting the angles of anchor, ignoring the fact that the number [...] Read more.
Compared with general images, objects in remote sensing (RS) images typically exhibit a conspicuous diversity due to their arbitrary orientations. However, many of the prevalent detectors generally apply an inflexible strategy in setting the angles of anchor, ignoring the fact that the number of possible orientations is predictable. Consequently, their processes integrate numerous superfluous angular considerations and hinder their efficiency. To deal with this situation, we propose a dynamic density-driven estimation network (DDE-Net). We design three core modules in DDE-Net: a density-map and mask generation module (DGM), mask routing prediction module (MRM), and spatial-balance calculation module (SCM). DGM is designed for the generation of a density map and mask, which can extract salient features. MRM is for the prediction of object orientation and corresponding weights, which are used to calculate feature maps. SCM is used to affine transform the convolution kernel, which applies an adaptive weighted compute mechanism to enhance the average feature, so as to balance the spatial difference to the rotation feature extraction. A broad array of experimental evaluations have conclusively shown that our methodology outperforms existing state-of-the-art detectors on common aerial object datasets (DOTA and HRSC2016). Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Artificial Intelligence in Image and Video Processing)
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<p>Distribution of objects with different orientations and process from density map to mask. (<b>a</b>,<b>b</b>) Objects with the same or similar orientations are distributed regionally; these regions are marked with yellow boxes. (<b>c</b>) The original RS image. (<b>d</b>) The object to be detected in the density map is highlighted, such as the large vehicle in (<b>c</b>), and the area with more objects has higher pixel intensity. (<b>e</b>) A mask is generated on the basis of the density map by setting a certain threshold, as shown with the yellow rectangles.</p>
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<p>Architecture of DDE-Net. DDE-Net consists of three proposed modules (<b>a</b>): a backbone network (<b>b</b>), FPN (<b>c</b>), and FAM and ODM (<b>d</b>).</p>
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<p>Density map generation network in DGM. It comprises three parallel CNNs, each with filters that have varying local receptive field sizes. Pooling is applied for each 2 × 2 region, and ReLU is adopted as the activation function.</p>
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<p>Visualization of masks with different thresholds. A smaller threshold value will obtain a larger range of local object areas, while increasing the threshold value will increase the number of areas, but the area of each area will be reduced. The thresholds (<b>a</b>–<b>c</b>) are 0.001, 0.01, and 0.1.</p>
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<p>Components in MRM. (<b>a</b>,<b>b</b>) Convolution layer and pooling layer to extract the feature. (<b>c</b>) Routing prediction in two branches.</p>
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<p>AWC in SCM. Convolution kernels apply radial rotation transformation according to the rotation angle <math display="inline"><semantics> <mrow> <mo>[</mo> <msub> <mi>θ</mi> <mn>1</mn> </msub> <mo>,</mo> <mo>…</mo> <mo>,</mo> <msub> <mi>θ</mi> <mi>n</mi> </msub> <mo>]</mo> </mrow> </semantics></math>. The affine transformation matrix corresponding to the angle <math display="inline"><semantics> <mi>θ</mi> </semantics></math> rotates the original convolution kernel sampling points through the transformation matrix to obtain the new convolution kernel sampling points after rotation. The <span class="html-italic">n</span> rotated convolution kernels convolute the input x independently, and the features extracted by each convolution are weighted and summed according to the weight <math display="inline"><semantics> <mrow> <mo>[</mo> <msub> <mi>λ</mi> <mn>1</mn> </msub> <mo>,</mo> <mo>…</mo> <mo>,</mo> <msub> <mi>λ</mi> <mi>n</mi> </msub> <mo>]</mo> </mrow> </semantics></math>.</p>
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<p>Ablation studies of different modules in DDE-Net. Vanilla DDE-Net refers to the network without DGM, MRM, and SCM, as illustrated in <a href="#electronics-13-03029-f002" class="html-fig">Figure 2</a>.</p>
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<p>Visual comparison. The red box in the images indicates errors made by other methods.</p>
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<p>Visualization results on DOTA.</p>
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<p>Visualization results on HRSC2016.</p>
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<p>Errors that may occur with DDE-Net.</p>
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47 pages, 2597 KiB  
Review
A Survey on Artificial-Intelligence-Based Internet of Vehicles Utilizing Unmanned Aerial Vehicles
by Syed Ammad Ali Shah, Xavier Fernando and Rasha Kashef
Drones 2024, 8(8), 353; https://doi.org/10.3390/drones8080353 - 29 Jul 2024
Viewed by 988
Abstract
As Autonomous Vehicles continue to advance and Intelligent Transportation Systems are implemented globally, vehicular ad hoc networks (VANETs) are increasingly becoming a part of the Internet, creating the Internet of Vehicles (IoV). In an IoV framework, vehicles communicate with each other, roadside units [...] Read more.
As Autonomous Vehicles continue to advance and Intelligent Transportation Systems are implemented globally, vehicular ad hoc networks (VANETs) are increasingly becoming a part of the Internet, creating the Internet of Vehicles (IoV). In an IoV framework, vehicles communicate with each other, roadside units (RSUs), and the surrounding infrastructure, leveraging edge, fog, and cloud computing for diverse tasks. These networks must support dynamic vehicular mobility and meet strict Quality of Service (QoS) requirements, such as ultra-low latency and high throughput. Terrestrial wireless networks often fail to satisfy these needs, which has led to the integration of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) into IoV systems. UAV transceivers provide superior line-of-sight (LOS) connections with vehicles, offering better connectivity than ground-based RSUs and serving as mobile RSUs (mRSUs). UAVs improve IoV performance in several ways, but traditional optimization methods are inadequate for dynamic vehicular environments. As a result, recent studies have been incorporating Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) algorithms into UAV-assisted IoV systems to enhance network performance, particularly in complex areas like resource allocation, routing, and mobility management. This survey paper reviews the latest AI/ML research in UAV-IoV networks, with a focus on resource and trajectory management and routing. It analyzes different AI techniques, their training features, and architectures from various studies; addresses the limitations of AI methods, including the demand for computational resources, availability of real-world data, and the complexity of AI models in UAV-IoV contexts; and considers future research directions in UAV-IoV. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Wireless Networks and UAV)
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<p>A UAV-assisted Internet of Vehicles (IoV) scenario.</p>
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<p>UAV communication architecture.</p>
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<p>UAV centralized communication.</p>
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<p>UAV decentralized communication.</p>
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<p>Categorization of resources for management in UAV-assisted IoV networks.</p>
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<p>Joint resource management metrics in UAV-assisted IoV Networks.</p>
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<p>Classification of routing protocols in UAV-IoV Networks.</p>
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23 pages, 1075 KiB  
Article
A Novel Exact and Heuristic Solution for the Periodic Location-Routing Problem Applied to Waste Collection
by Daniel Noreña-Zapata, Julián Camilo Restrepo-Vallejo, Daniel Morillo-Torres and Gustavo Gatica
Processes 2024, 12(8), 1557; https://doi.org/10.3390/pr12081557 - 25 Jul 2024
Viewed by 645
Abstract
In the development of Smart Cities, efficient waste collection networks are crucial, especially those that consider recycling. To plan for the future, routing and depot location techniques must handle heterogeneous cargo for proper waste separation. This paper introduces a Mixed-Integer Linear Programming (MILP) [...] Read more.
In the development of Smart Cities, efficient waste collection networks are crucial, especially those that consider recycling. To plan for the future, routing and depot location techniques must handle heterogeneous cargo for proper waste separation. This paper introduces a Mixed-Integer Linear Programming (MILP) model and a three-level metaheuristic to address the Periodic Location Routing Problem (PLRP) for urban waste collection. The PLRP involves creating routes that ensure each customer is visited according to their waste demand frequency, aiming to minimize logistical costs such as transportation and depot opening. Unlike previous approaches, this approach characterizes each type of customer considering different needs for waste collection. A total of 25 customer types were created based on mixed waste demands and visit frequencies. The proposed algorithm uses Variable Neighborhood Search (VNS) and Local Search heuristics, comprising three neighborhood generation structures. Computational experiments demonstrate that the VNS algorithm delivers solutions seven times better than exact methods in a fraction of the time. For larger instances, VNS achieves feasible solutions where the MILP model fails within the same time frame. Full article
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<p>An example of the centroid of two depots.</p>
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<p>An example of the exchange operator.</p>
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<p>Average costs of each level and neighborhood structure.</p>
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<p>Average execution times of each level and neighborhood structure.</p>
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<p>Average total cost and distance for the entire algorithm execution.</p>
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<p>Average execution time for the entire algorithm implementation.</p>
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29 pages, 14445 KiB  
Article
The Development of a Prototype Solution for Detecting Wear and Tear in Pedestrian Crossings
by Gonçalo J. M. Rosa, João M. S. Afonso, Pedro D. Gaspar, Vasco N. G. J. Soares and João M. L. P. Caldeira
Appl. Sci. 2024, 14(15), 6462; https://doi.org/10.3390/app14156462 - 24 Jul 2024
Viewed by 403
Abstract
Crosswalks play a fundamental role in road safety. However, over time, many suffer wear and tear that makes them difficult to see. This project presents a solution based on the use of computer vision techniques for identifying and classifying the level of wear [...] Read more.
Crosswalks play a fundamental role in road safety. However, over time, many suffer wear and tear that makes them difficult to see. This project presents a solution based on the use of computer vision techniques for identifying and classifying the level of wear on crosswalks. The proposed system uses a convolutional neural network (CNN) to analyze images of crosswalks, determining their wear status. The design includes a prototype system mounted on a vehicle, equipped with cameras and processing units to collect and analyze data in real time as the vehicle traverses traffic routes. The collected data are then transmitted to a web application for further analysis and reporting. The prototype was validated through extensive tests in a real urban environment, comparing its assessments with manual inspections conducted by experts. Results from these tests showed that the system could accurately classify crosswalk wear with a high degree of accuracy, demonstrating its potential for aiding maintenance authorities in efficiently prioritizing interventions. Full article
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<p>Illustration of the concepts of detection and classification.</p>
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<p>Illustration of the architecture of a CNN.</p>
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<p>Comparison of threshold methods.</p>
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<p>Use of Adaptive Threshold to determine degradation status: (<b>a</b>) Outcome for a crosswalk exhibiting signs of wear; (<b>b</b>) Outcome for a crosswalk without signs of wear; (<b>c</b>) Outcome for a crosswalk exhibiting a considerable degree of wear.</p>
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<p>Example of a question asked on the form.</p>
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<p>Example of the results obtained in the questionnaire.</p>
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<p>Example of how the increase in pixels can influence the results.</p>
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<p>Illustration from CNN CSPDarknet53-tiny. Adapted from [<a href="#B9-applsci-14-06462" class="html-bibr">9</a>].</p>
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<p>Architecture of the YOLOv4-tiny model. Adapted from [<a href="#B11-applsci-14-06462" class="html-bibr">11</a>].</p>
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<p>Example of a captured image.</p>
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<p>Illustration of objects captured by a 90° camera vs. a 160° camera.</p>
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<p>Diagram of how the first approach works.</p>
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<p>Examples of Adaptive Threshold detection: (<b>a</b>) Bounding boxes of three crosswalks (1)–(3) detected by the YOLOv4-tiny model; (<b>b</b>) Result of using the Adaptive Threshold method to determine the degradation state of the three crosswalks (1)–(3).</p>
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<p>Examples of Adaptive Threshold detection in scenes without shadows: (<b>a</b>) Example 1: detection (1), identification (2), and classification (3) process; (<b>b</b>) Example 2: detection (1), identification (2), and classification (3) process.</p>
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<p>Comparison between the two approaches in two different examples: Example (<b>a</b>): (1) and (2) shows the detection using the first approach considered—YOLOv4-tiny and Adaptive Threshold. (3) shows the result obtained under the same conditions but using the second approach—YOLOv4-tiny with three classes. Example (<b>b</b>): (1) and (2) shows the detection using the first approach considered—YOLOv4-tiny and Adaptive Threshold. (3) shows the result obtained under the same conditions but using the second approach—YOLOv4-tiny with three classes.</p>
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<p>The architecture of the prototype was developed.</p>
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<p>Schematic of the electrical circuit of the various hardware components.</p>
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<p>Hardware components of the prototype developed.</p>
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<p>Use case diagram.</p>
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<p>Flowchart of how the Raspberry Pi works.</p>
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<p>Structure required in documents.</p>
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<p>Endpoints on the API.</p>
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<p>Example of a response from the Geoapify API.</p>
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<p>Sequence diagram between API and Raspberry PI.</p>
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<p>Illustration of the mechanism for identifying the distance between coordinates.</p>
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<p>Sequence diagram of communication between the API and the CrosSafe application.</p>
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<p>Mockup Home page.</p>
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<p>Mockup Dashboard page.</p>
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<p>Crosswalk counting component by state of degradation.</p>
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<p>Interactive map in the application.</p>
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<p>Table with additional information on crosswalks detected using the pagination method.</p>
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<p>Popup for confirmation of crosswalk repair.</p>
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<p>Example of a success message following confirmation of a crosswalk repair.</p>
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<p>An example of a crosswalk classified as severely worn.</p>
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<p>Example of the number of documents received by Firestore.</p>
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<p>Illustration of the route taken.</p>
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<p>Detection and classification time required.</p>
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<p>An image containing a crosswalk slightly diagonally.</p>
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<p>Visualization of the data transmitted by the Raspberry PI in the CrosSafe web application.</p>
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14 pages, 3705 KiB  
Article
Navigation Based on Hybrid Decentralized and Centralized Training and Execution Strategy for Multiple Mobile Robots Reinforcement Learning
by Yanyan Dai, Deokgyu Kim and Kidong Lee
Electronics 2024, 13(15), 2927; https://doi.org/10.3390/electronics13152927 - 24 Jul 2024
Viewed by 354
Abstract
In addressing the complex challenges of path planning in multi-robot systems, this paper proposes a novel Hybrid Decentralized and Centralized Training and Execution (DCTE) Strategy, aimed at optimizing computational efficiency and system performance. The strategy solves the prevalent issues of collision and coordination [...] Read more.
In addressing the complex challenges of path planning in multi-robot systems, this paper proposes a novel Hybrid Decentralized and Centralized Training and Execution (DCTE) Strategy, aimed at optimizing computational efficiency and system performance. The strategy solves the prevalent issues of collision and coordination through a tiered optimization process. The DCTE strategy commences with an initial decentralized path planning step based on Deep Q-Network (DQN), where each robot independently formulates its path. This is followed by a centralized collision detection the analysis of which serves to identify potential intersections or collision risks. Paths confirmed as non-intersecting are used for execution, while those in collision areas prompt a dynamic re-planning step using DQN. Robots treat each other as dynamic obstacles to circumnavigate, ensuring continuous operation without disruptions. The final step involves linking the newly optimized paths with the original safe paths to form a complete and secure execution route. This paper demonstrates how this structured strategy not only mitigates collision risks but also significantly improves the computational efficiency of multi-robot systems. The reinforcement learning time was significantly shorter, with the DCTE strategy requiring only 3 min and 36 s compared to 5 min and 33 s in the comparison results of the simulation section. The improvement underscores the advantages of the proposed method in enhancing the effectiveness and efficiency of multi-robot systems. Full article
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<p>Hybrid DCTE strategy processing flowchart.</p>
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<p>Three robots obtained optimal path after decentralized path planning step.</p>
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<p>Red robot and blue robot re-planned the trajectory to avoid the collision.</p>
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<p>After replanning the path, the optimal paths are shown in the green block.</p>
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<p>Path re-optimization and connection.</p>
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<p>Three robots plan a path after decentralized path planning step, based on DQN.</p>
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<p>Robot 1 and robot 3 replan the optimal paths simultaneously, based on the DQN RL algorithm.</p>
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<p>After path re-optimization and connection step, the optimized paths for robot 1, 2, and 3, respectively.</p>
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<p>Optimal paths for robots 1, 2, and 3, based on DQN-based approach from ref [<a href="#B22-electronics-13-02927" class="html-bibr">22</a>].</p>
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<p>(<b>a</b>) Gazebo simulator environment; (<b>b</b>) Agilex LIMO robot.</p>
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<p>Three robots explore and track the optimal paths, based on a hybrid DCTE strategy: (<b>a</b>) t = 0 s; (<b>b</b>) t = 39 s; (<b>c</b>) t = 66 s; (<b>d</b>) t = 96 s; (<b>e</b>) t = 133 s; (<b>f</b>) t = 162 s; (<b>g</b>) t = 201 s; (<b>h</b>) t = 252 s; (<b>i</b>) t = 308 s.</p>
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<p>Three reach their target points efficiently, quickly, and safely, in a complex environment.</p>
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16 pages, 2681 KiB  
Article
Local and Global Context-Enhanced Lightweight CenterNet for PCB Surface Defect Detection
by Weixun Chen, Siming Meng and Xueping Wang
Sensors 2024, 24(14), 4729; https://doi.org/10.3390/s24144729 - 21 Jul 2024
Viewed by 528
Abstract
Printed circuit board (PCB) surface defect detection is an essential part of the PCB manufacturing process. Currently, advanced CCD or CMOS sensors can capture high-resolution PCB images. However, the existing computer vision approaches for PCB surface defect detection require high computing effort, leading [...] Read more.
Printed circuit board (PCB) surface defect detection is an essential part of the PCB manufacturing process. Currently, advanced CCD or CMOS sensors can capture high-resolution PCB images. However, the existing computer vision approaches for PCB surface defect detection require high computing effort, leading to insufficient efficiency. To this end, this article proposes a local and global context-enhanced lightweight CenterNet (LGCL-CenterNet) to detect PCB surface defects in real time. Specifically, we propose a two-branch lightweight vision transformer module with local and global attention, named LGT, as a complement to extract high-dimension features and leverage context-aware local enhancement after the backbone network. In the local branch, we utilize coordinate attention to aggregate more powerful features of PCB defects with different shapes. In the global branch, Bi-Level Routing Attention with pooling is used to capture long-distance pixel interactions with limited computational cost. Furthermore, a Path Aggregation Network (PANet) feature fusion structure is incorporated to mitigate the loss of shallow features caused by the increase in model depth. Then, we design a lightweight prediction head by using depthwise separable convolutions, which further compresses the computational complexity and parameters while maintaining the detection capability of the model. In the experiment, the LGCL-CenterNet increased the [email protected] by 2% and 1.4%, respectively, in comparison to CenterNet-ResNet18 and YOLOv8s. Meanwhile, our approach requires fewer model parameters (0.542M) than existing techniques. The results show that the proposed method improves both detection accuracy and inference speed and indicate that the LGCL-CenterNet has better real-time performance and robustness. Full article
(This article belongs to the Section Sensing and Imaging)
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<p>Six different kinds of PCB defects.</p>
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<p>The overall network architecture of the proposed local and global context-enhanced lightweight CenterNet.</p>
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<p>Ratio of PCB defect bounding box area to total image area.</p>
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<p>The structure of local coordinate attention and global self-attention.</p>
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<p>Sparse attention is used to skip computations in the most irrelevant region, and pooling is used to downsample the key and value to reduce FLOPs.</p>
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<p>Detection results of different object detection algorithms. More detection results of the other defects can be found in the <a href="#app1-sensors-24-04729" class="html-app">Supplementary Materials</a>.</p>
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17 pages, 432 KiB  
Article
SD-GPSR: A Software-Defined Greedy Perimeter Stateless Routing Method Based on Geographic Location Information
by Shaopei Gao, Qiang Liu, Junjie Zeng and Li Li
Future Internet 2024, 16(7), 251; https://doi.org/10.3390/fi16070251 - 17 Jul 2024
Viewed by 351
Abstract
To mitigate the control overhead of Software-Defined Mobile Ad Hoc Networks (SD-MANETs), this paper proposes a novel approach, termed Software-Defined Greedy Perimeter Stateless Routing (SD-GPSR), which integrates geographical location information. SD-GPSR optimizes routing functions by decentralizing them within the data plane of SD-MANET, [...] Read more.
To mitigate the control overhead of Software-Defined Mobile Ad Hoc Networks (SD-MANETs), this paper proposes a novel approach, termed Software-Defined Greedy Perimeter Stateless Routing (SD-GPSR), which integrates geographical location information. SD-GPSR optimizes routing functions by decentralizing them within the data plane of SD-MANET, utilizing the geographic location information of nodes to enhance routing efficiency. The controller is primarily responsible for providing location services and facilitating partial centralized decision-making. Within the data plane, nodes employ an enhanced distance and angle-based greedy forwarding algorithm, denoted as GPSR_DA, to efficiently forward data. Additionally, to address the issue of routing voids in the data plane, we employ the A* algorithm to compute an optimal routing path that circumvents such voids. Finally, we conducted a comparative analysis with several state-of-the-art approaches. The evaluation experiments demonstrate that SD-GPSR significantly reduces the control overhead of the network. Simultaneously, there is a notable improvement in both end-to-end latency and packet loss rate across the network. Full article
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<p>SD-GPSR routing architecture.</p>
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<p>The process of SD-GPSR handling packets.</p>
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<p>Calculation of relay node angle.</p>
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<p>Division of the communication range of forwarding nodes.</p>
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<p>Comparison of the influence of four protocols on network performance with data service changes.</p>
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<p>Comparison of control costs in different scenarios.</p>
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<p>Comparison of average packet loss rate in different scenarios.</p>
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<p>Comparison of average end-to-end delay in different scenarios.</p>
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0 pages, 3739 KiB  
Article
A Lightweight and Efficient Multi-Type Defect Detection Method for Transmission Lines Based on DCP-YOLOv8
by Yong Wang, Linghao Zhang, Xingzhong Xiong, Junwei Kuang and Siyu Xiang
Sensors 2024, 24(14), 4491; https://doi.org/10.3390/s24144491 - 11 Jul 2024
Viewed by 519
Abstract
Currently, the intelligent defect detection of massive grid transmission line inspection pictures using AI image recognition technology is an efficient and popular method. Usually, there are two technical routes for the construction of defect detection algorithm models: one is to use a lightweight [...] Read more.
Currently, the intelligent defect detection of massive grid transmission line inspection pictures using AI image recognition technology is an efficient and popular method. Usually, there are two technical routes for the construction of defect detection algorithm models: one is to use a lightweight network, which improves the efficiency, but it can generally only target a few types of defects and may reduce the detection accuracy; the other is to use a complex network model, which improves the accuracy, and can identify multiple types of defects at the same time, but it has a large computational volume and low efficiency. To maintain the model’s high detection accuracy as well as its lightweight structure, this paper proposes a lightweight and efficient multi type defect detection method for transmission lines based on DCP-YOLOv8. The method employs deformable convolution (C2f_DCNv3) to enhance the defect feature extraction capability, and designs a re-parameterized cross phase feature fusion structure (RCSP) to optimize and fuse high-level semantic features with low level spatial features, thus improving the capability of the model to recognize defects at different scales while significantly reducing the model parameters; additionally, it combines the dynamic detection head and deformable convolutional v3’s detection head (DCNv3-Dyhead) to enhance the feature expression capability and the utilization of contextual information to further improve the detection accuracy. Experimental results show that on a dataset containing 20 real transmission line defects, the method increases the average accuracy ([email protected]) to 72.2%, an increase of 4.3%, compared with the lightest baseline YOLOv8n model; the number of model parameters is only 2.8 M, a reduction of 9.15%, and the number of processed frames per second (FPS) reaches 103, which meets the real time detection demand. In the scenario of multi type defect detection, it effectively balances detection accuracy and performance with quantitative generalizability. Full article
(This article belongs to the Section Electronic Sensors)
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<p>Detailed architecture of the proposed DCP-YOLOv8.</p>
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<p>Structure diagram of the Deformable Convolutions v3.</p>
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<p>Structure of the C2f_DCNv3.</p>
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<p>Structure of the RCSP.</p>
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<p>Structure of the DCNv3-Dyhead.</p>
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<p>Distribution of the number of defective samples in the training set.</p>
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<p>Analysis during training; (<b>a</b>) represents the box loss curve, (<b>b</b>) represents the classification loss curve, and (<b>c</b>) represents the map curve changes of YOLOv8n and DCP-YOLOv8.</p>
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<p>Some examples of defect detection effects.</p>
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<p>Some examples of defect detection effects.</p>
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<p>Robustness analysis of DCP-YOLOv8 in complex environments.</p>
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<p>Robustness analysis of DCP-YOLOv8 in complex environments.</p>
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<p>Some examples of defective target heat maps.</p>
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<p>Some examples of defective target heat maps.</p>
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16 pages, 13843 KiB  
Article
A Stream-Order Family and Order-Based Parallel River Network Routing Method
by Xi Yang, Chong Wei, Zhiping Li, Heng Yang and Hui Zheng
Water 2024, 16(14), 1965; https://doi.org/10.3390/w16141965 - 11 Jul 2024
Viewed by 465
Abstract
River network routing’s significance in reach-level flood forecasting over extensive domains is growing, requiring considerable computational resources for modeling networks comprising thousands to millions of reaches. Parallel computation plays a central role in timely forecasting in such cases. However, the sequentiality of upstream-to-downstream [...] Read more.
River network routing’s significance in reach-level flood forecasting over extensive domains is growing, requiring considerable computational resources for modeling networks comprising thousands to millions of reaches. Parallel computation plays a central role in timely forecasting in such cases. However, the sequentiality of upstream-to-downstream flow paths within river networks poses a significant challenge for parallelization. This study introduces a family of stream orders and an associated order-based parallel routing approach. We assign each reach an order that falls between one more than the maximum order of its upstream reaches and one less than the order of its downstream reach. This strategy enables the parallel simulation of reaches with identical orders while sequentially processing those with different orders, thus maintaining the crucial upstream-to-downstream dynamic. To further enhance parallel scalability, we strategically relax the upstream-to-downstream relationship along the longest flow paths, dividing the network into independent subnetworks and introducing halo reaches to mitigate the impact of inexact inflows. We validate our approach using China’s Yangtze River basin, the country’s largest river network with 53,600 fully connected reaches. Employing a conceptual parallel execution machine, we demonstrate that our method achieves 80% parallel efficiency with up to 25 processors. By strategically introducing breakpoints, we further enhance scalability, enabling efficient simulations on 77 processors while maintaining 80% efficiency. These results highlight the scalability and efficiency of our methods for large-scale, high-resolution river network modeling within Earth system models. Our study also lays a theoretical groundwork for optimizing stream orders and halo reach placements, crucial for advancing river network modeling. Full article
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<p>Illustration of and comparison between different stream-ordering methods. (<b>a</b>) Lower limits of the feasible stream-order values from our proposed methods. (<b>b</b>) The upper limits of the feasible stream-order values from our proposed methods. (<b>c</b>) Another feasible set of stream-order values conforming to the two rules of our proposed ordering methods, as described in <a href="#water-16-01965-t001" class="html-table">Table 1</a>. (<b>d</b>) The Strahler stream-ordering method. (<b>e</b>) The Shreve stream-ordering method.</p>
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<p>Yangtze River basin network delineated from the MERIT-Hydro dataset. The black lines outline the national boundaries or coastal lines of China, providing a geographical context. The color-coded lines depict the river reaches. Each color indicates the total number of reaches, encompassing the current reach and all upstream reaches.</p>
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<p>Diagram of workflow.</p>
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<p>Spatial distribution of stream orders over the Yangtze River basin. (<b>a</b>) The Strahler order. (<b>b</b>) The Shreve order. (<b>c</b>) The lower bounds of the proposed order family. (<b>d</b>) The upper bounds of the proposed order family.</p>
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<p>The count of stream-order values with a limited number of reaches. For the sake of clarity, only stream orders with 16 or fewer reaches are illustrated.</p>
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<p>Parallelization speedup (<b>a</b>) and efficiency (<b>b</b>) for the Shreve orders and the proposed stream orders, respectively. The solid black lines represent the ideal speedup or efficiency under conditions of perfect scaling. The dashed black lines indicate the limits imposed by the upstream-to-downstream sequentiality along the longest flow path.</p>
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<p>Computation deficiencies observed for routing each individual reach at a processor count of 51 for the Yangtze River network.</p>
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<p>Histogram of computation deficiencies observed for the Yangtze River network at a processor count of 51.</p>
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<p>Optimization of the stream order. (<b>a</b>) Decrease in the total computation time with the optimization iteration. (<b>b</b>) Comparison of the histogram of computation deficiencies between the optimized stream orders and the upper bounds of the stream-order family. (<b>c</b>) Spatial distribution of the computation deficiencies.</p>
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<p>Same as <a href="#water-16-01965-f006" class="html-fig">Figure 6</a> but for the optimized stream orders and the upper bounds of the proposed order family. (<b>a</b>) Parallelization speedup. (<b>b</b>) Parallelization efficiency.</p>
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<p>Same as <a href="#water-16-01965-f004" class="html-fig">Figure 4</a>d but for the stream orders with one (<b>a</b>) and three (<b>b</b>) breaks along the longest flow path. The red dots denote the breakpoints. The halo reaches are not shown for clarity.</p>
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<p>Same as <a href="#water-16-01965-f006" class="html-fig">Figure 6</a> but for the upper bounds of the order family with two (the orange lines) or four (the blue lines) breaks along the longest flow path. (<b>a</b>) Parallelization speedup. (<b>b</b>) Parallelization efficiency.</p>
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23 pages, 5296 KiB  
Article
Solving Dynamic Full-Truckload Vehicle Routing Problem Using an Agent-Based Approach
by Selin Çabuk and Rızvan Erol
Mathematics 2024, 12(13), 2138; https://doi.org/10.3390/math12132138 - 7 Jul 2024
Viewed by 561
Abstract
In today’s complex and dynamic transportation networks, increasing energy costs and adverse environmental impacts necessitate the efficient transport of goods or raw materials across a network to minimize all related costs through vehicle assignment and routing decisions. Vehicle routing problems under dynamic and [...] Read more.
In today’s complex and dynamic transportation networks, increasing energy costs and adverse environmental impacts necessitate the efficient transport of goods or raw materials across a network to minimize all related costs through vehicle assignment and routing decisions. Vehicle routing problems under dynamic and stochastic conditions are known to be very challenging in both mathematical modeling and computational complexity. In this study, a special variant of the full-truckload vehicle assignment and routing problem was investigated. First, a detailed analysis of the processes in a liquid transportation logistics firm with a large fleet of tanker trucks was conducted. Then, a new original problem with distinctive features compared with similar studies in the literature was formulated, including pickup/delivery time windows, nodes with different functions (pickup/delivery, washing facilities, and parking), a heterogeneous truck fleet, multiple trips per truck, multiple trailer types, multiple freight types, and setup times between changing freight types. This dynamic optimization problem was solved using an intelligent multi-agent model with agent designs that run on vehicle assignment and routing algorithms. To assess the performance of the proposed approach under varying environmental conditions (e.g., congestion factors and the ratio of orders with multiple trips) and different algorithmic parameter levels (e.g., the latest response time to orders and activating the interchange of trip assignments between vehicles), a detailed scenario analysis was conducted based on a set of designed simulation experiments. The simulation results indicate that the proposed dynamic approach is capable of providing good and efficient solutions in response to dynamic conditions. Furthermore, using longer latest response times and activating the interchange mechanism have significant positive impacts on the relevant costs, profitability, ratios of loaded trips over the total distance traveled, and the acceptance ratios of customer orders. Full article
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<p>A typical route of a vehicle.</p>
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<p>Illustration of time windows and the latest response time.</p>
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<p>Interaction diagram of the agents.</p>
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<p>Flowchart of the agent algorithms.</p>
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<p>A numerical example of the proposed interchange mechanism (<b>a</b>) search for a feasible vehicle, (<b>b</b>) search for a vehicle with profitable assignment.</p>
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<p>The impact of congestion factor on performance measures (<b>a</b>) unit cost and unit profit under interchange mechanism levels, (<b>b</b>) order acceptance ratio and loaded trip ratio under interchange mechanism levels, (<b>c</b>) unit cost and unit profit under multiple trip order ratio levels, (<b>d</b>) order acceptance ratio and loaded trip ratio under multiple trip order ratio levels.</p>
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<p>The impact of congestion factor on performance measures (<b>a</b>) unit cost and unit profit under interchange mechanism levels, (<b>b</b>) order acceptance ratio and loaded trip ratio under interchange mechanism levels, (<b>c</b>) unit cost and unit profit under multiple trip order ratio levels, (<b>d</b>) order acceptance ratio and loaded trip ratio under multiple trip order ratio levels.</p>
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<p>The impact of response time on performance measures (<b>a</b>) unit cost and unit profit under congestion levels, (<b>b</b>) order acceptance ratio and loaded trip ratio under congestion levels, (<b>c</b>) unit cost and unit profit under interchange mechanism levels, (<b>d</b>) order acceptance ratio and loaded trip ratio under interchange mechanism levels, (<b>e</b>) unit cost and unit profit under multiple trip order ratio levels, (<b>f</b>) order acceptance ratio and loaded trip ratio under multiple trip order ratio levels.</p>
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<p>The impact of response time on performance measures (<b>a</b>) unit cost and unit profit under congestion levels, (<b>b</b>) order acceptance ratio and loaded trip ratio under congestion levels, (<b>c</b>) unit cost and unit profit under interchange mechanism levels, (<b>d</b>) order acceptance ratio and loaded trip ratio under interchange mechanism levels, (<b>e</b>) unit cost and unit profit under multiple trip order ratio levels, (<b>f</b>) order acceptance ratio and loaded trip ratio under multiple trip order ratio levels.</p>
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<p>The impact of multiple-trip order ratio on performance measures (<b>a</b>) unit cost and unit profit under interchange mechanism levels, (<b>b</b>) order acceptance ratio and loaded trip ratio under interchange mechanism levels.</p>
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<p>The impact of the problem size on the CPU time.</p>
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19 pages, 3465 KiB  
Article
Design and Implementation of Lightweight Certificateless Secure Communication Scheme on Industrial NFV-Based IPv6 Virtual Networks
by Zeeshan Ashraf, Adnan Sohail and Muddesar Iqbal
Electronics 2024, 13(13), 2649; https://doi.org/10.3390/electronics13132649 - 5 Jul 2024
Viewed by 905
Abstract
With the fast growth of the Industrial Internet of Everything (IIoE), computing and telecommunication industries all over the world are moving rapidly towards the IPv6 address architecture, which supports virtualization architectures such as Network Function Virtualization (NFV). NFV provides networking services like routing, [...] Read more.
With the fast growth of the Industrial Internet of Everything (IIoE), computing and telecommunication industries all over the world are moving rapidly towards the IPv6 address architecture, which supports virtualization architectures such as Network Function Virtualization (NFV). NFV provides networking services like routing, security, storage, etc., through software-based virtual machines. As a result, NFV reduces equipment costs. Due to the increase in applications on Industrial Internet of Things (IoT)-based networks, security threats have also increased. The communication links between people and people or from one machine to another machine are insecure. Usually, critical data are exchanged over the IoE, so authentication and confidentiality are significant concerns. Asymmetric key cryptosystems increase computation and communication overheads. This paper proposes a lightweight and certificateless end-to-end secure communication scheme to provide security services against replay attacks, man-in-the-middle (MITM) attacks, and impersonation attacks with low computation and communication overheads. The system is implemented on Linux-based Lubuntu 20.04 virtual machines using Java programming connected to NFV-based large-scale hybrid IPv4-IPv6 virtual networks. Finally, we compare the performance of our proposed security scheme with existing schemes based on the computation and communication costs. In addition, we measure and analyze the performance of our proposed secure communication scheme over NFV-based virtualized networks with regard to several parameters like end-to-end delay and packet loss. The results of our comparison with existing security schemes show that our proposed security scheme reduces the computation cost by 38.87% and the communication cost by 26.08%. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Cyber-Physical Systems in Industrial IoT)
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<p>Proposed secure communication scheme.</p>
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<p>Key exchange and authentication process.</p>
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<p>MITM attack detection.</p>
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<p>Results through OFMC and AtSe.</p>
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<p>Experimental setup of NFV-based IPv4-IPv6 virtual networks.</p>
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<p>Server output.</p>
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<p>Client output.</p>
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<p>Connectivity and traffic path.</p>
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41 pages, 2860 KiB  
Review
Analysis of the Use of Artificial Intelligence in Software-Defined Intelligent Networks: A Survey
by Bayron Jesit Ospina Cifuentes, Álvaro Suárez, Vanessa García Pineda, Ricardo Alvarado Jaimes, Alber Oswaldo Montoya Benitez and Juan David Grajales Bustamante
Technologies 2024, 12(7), 99; https://doi.org/10.3390/technologies12070099 - 2 Jul 2024
Viewed by 889
Abstract
The distributed structure of traditional networks often fails to promptly and accurately provide the computational power required for artificial intelligence (AI), hindering its practical application and implementation. Consequently, this research aims to analyze the use of AI in software-defined networks (SDNs). To achieve [...] Read more.
The distributed structure of traditional networks often fails to promptly and accurately provide the computational power required for artificial intelligence (AI), hindering its practical application and implementation. Consequently, this research aims to analyze the use of AI in software-defined networks (SDNs). To achieve this goal, a systematic literature review (SLR) is conducted based on the PRISMA 2020 statement. Through this review, it is found that, bottom-up, from the perspective of the data plane, control plane, and application plane of SDNs, the integration of various network planes with AI is feasible, giving rise to Intelligent Software Defined Networking (ISDN). As a primary conclusion, it was found that the application of AI-related algorithms in SDNs is extensive and faces numerous challenges. Nonetheless, these challenges are propelling the development of SDNs in a more promising direction through the adoption of novel methods and tools such as route optimization, software-defined routing, intelligent methods for network security, and AI-based traffic engineering, among others. Full article
(This article belongs to the Collection Review Papers Collection for Advanced Technologies)
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<p>PRISMA Flowchart. Self-elaboration based on Scopus.</p>
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<p>Articles published per year on the topic of ISDN through the use of AI. Source. Self-elaboration based on Scopus and Bibliometrix.</p>
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<p>Articles published by authors on the topic of ISDN through the use of AI. Source. Self-elaboration based on Scopus and Bibliometrix.</p>
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<p>Trend and evolution of keywords over time in the theme of ISDN through the use of AI. Source. Self-elaboration based on Scopus and Bibliometrix.</p>
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<p>Correlation of keywords in the theme of ISDN through the use of AI. Source. Self-elaboration based on Scopus and VosViewer.</p>
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<p>Relevance of keywords in the theme of ISDN through the use of AI. Source. Self-elaboration based on Scopus and Bibliometrix.</p>
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<p>SDN Architecture. Source: Self-elaboration based on literature review.</p>
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<p>Relevance of Keywords in the ISDN Theme Based on the Use of AI. Source: Own elaboration based on Scopus and Bibliometrix.</p>
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37 pages, 40520 KiB  
Article
The Development of a Prototype Solution for Collecting Information on Cycling and Hiking Trail Users
by Joaquim Miguel, Pedro Mendonça, Agnelo Quelhas, João M. L. P. Caldeira and Vasco N. G. J. Soares
Information 2024, 15(7), 389; https://doi.org/10.3390/info15070389 - 2 Jul 2024
Viewed by 674
Abstract
Hiking and cycling have gained popularity as ways of promoting well-being and physical activity. This has not gone unnoticed by Portuguese authorities, who have invested in infrastructure to support these activities and to boost sustainable and nature-based tourism. However, the lack of reliable [...] Read more.
Hiking and cycling have gained popularity as ways of promoting well-being and physical activity. This has not gone unnoticed by Portuguese authorities, who have invested in infrastructure to support these activities and to boost sustainable and nature-based tourism. However, the lack of reliable data on the use of these infrastructures prevents us from recording attendance rates and the most frequent types of users. This information is important for the authorities responsible for managing, maintaining, promoting and using these infrastructures. In this sense, this study builds on a previous study by the same authors which identified computer vision as a suitable technology to identify and count different types of users of cycling and hiking routes. The performance tests carried out led to the conclusion that the YOLOv3-Tiny convolutional neural network has great potential for solving this problem. Based on this result, this paper describes the proposal and implementation of a prototype demonstrator. It is based on a Raspberry Pi 4 platform with YOLOv3-Tiny, which is responsible for detecting and classifying user types. An application available on users’ smartphones implements the concept of opportunistic networks, allowing information to be collected over time, in scenarios where there is no end-to-end connectivity. This aggregated information can then be consulted on an online platform. The prototype was subjected to validation and functional tests and proved to be a viable low-cost solution. Full article
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<p>The signage utilized along the trails.</p>
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<p>Examples of marked places.</p>
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<p>An illustration of the scenario.</p>
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<p>Prototype architecture.</p>
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<p>The IoT device from the prototype’s sensor node.</p>
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<p>Convolutional neural network structure.</p>
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<p>Classification of one-stage detection and two-stage detection model types in object detection.</p>
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<p>One-stage detection model architecture.</p>
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<p>Two-stage detection model architecture.</p>
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<p>3 × 3 grid division.</p>
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<p>Architecture of YOLOv3-Tiny model.</p>
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<p>Representation of bounding boxes for each class.</p>
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<p>(<b>a</b>) Training loss and mAP of first training using YOLOv3-Tiny. (<b>b</b>) Training loss and mAP of new training using YOLOv3-Tiny.</p>
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<p>A flowchart of the detection and classification algorithm.</p>
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<p>Sensor node local database.</p>
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<p>Hybrid cryptosystem.</p>
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<p>Connection to Bluetooth service and exchange of RSA public keys.</p>
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<p>Process of preparing to transmit data.</p>
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<p>An illustration of a scenario in which a user using a bicycle passes within range of the Bluetooth signal from the sensor node.</p>
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<p>Example of block of 10 records in JSON.</p>
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<p>Communication between nodes when transmitting data.</p>
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<p>Mobile application screen.</p>
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<p>The output on the mobile application with information on the route started and the location of the nodes.</p>
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<p>Output of data exchange between nodes.</p>
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<p>Bridge node local database.</p>
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<p>Output from synchronization service.</p>
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<p>A flowchart describing how the bridge node application works.</p>
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<p>Central database.</p>
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<p>GET method for obtaining information from sensor nodes.</p>
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<p>POST method for sending and creating records.</p>
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<p>Login page of web application.</p>
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<p>Main page of web application.</p>
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<p>A web application page with a view of the trails and sensor nodes.</p>
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<p>A web application page with information on the sensor node selected by the user.</p>
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<p>Filtering by time period in a sensor node.</p>
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<p>Example of detection with YOLOv3-Tiny model trained with improved dataset.</p>
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<p>Second example of detection with YOLOv3-Tiny model trained with improved dataset.</p>
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<p>Positioning the sensor node on the ground.</p>
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<p>Part of the trail captured by the sensor node.</p>
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<p>SSH connection to the sensor node via the Terminus application.</p>
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<p>Classification and detection of motorcycle class.</p>
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<p>Classification and detection of bicycle class.</p>
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<p>Simultaneous identification of person and bicycle classes.</p>
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<p>Simultaneous identification of person class.</p>
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<p>The records in the sensor node database.</p>
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<p>Starting the trail and connection establishment.</p>
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<p>Data exchange between nodes and initialization of synchronization service.</p>
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<p>Activating Wi-Fi on the Android device.</p>
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<p>Data synchronized with central database.</p>
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<p>Records in central database.</p>
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<p>Class counts in PRN-3, filtered by detection dates.</p>
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<p>The class counts in PRN-3 on the page showing the map and the sensor nodes distributed on the ground.</p>
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<p>The class counts in PRN-3 filtered by detection dates on the page showing the map and the sensor nodes distributed on the ground.</p>
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