Empowering the Vehicular Network with RIS Technology: A State-of-the-Art Review.

Reconfigurable intelligent surfaces (RIS) are expected to bring about a revolutionary transformation in vehicular networks, thus paving the way for a future characterized by connected and automated vehicles (CAV). An RIS is a planar structure comprising many passive elements that can dynamically manipulate electromagnetic waves to enhance wireless communication by reflecting, refracting, and focusing signals in a programmable manner. RIS exhibits substantial potential for improving vehicle-to-everything (V2X) communication through various means, including coverage enhancement, interference mitigation, improving signal strength, and providing additional layers of privacy and security. This article presents a comprehensive survey that explores the emerging opportunities arising from the integration of RIS into vehicular networks. To examine the convergence of RIS and V2X communications, the survey adopted a holistic approach, thus highlighting the potential benefits and challenges of this combination. In this study, we examined several applications of RIS-aided V2X communication. Subsequently, we delve into the fundamental emerging technologies that are expected to empower vehicular networks, encompassing mobile edge computing (MEC), non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA), millimeter-wave communication (mmWave), Artificial Intelligence (AI), and visible light communication (VLC). Finally, to stimulate further research in this domain, we emphasize noteworthy research challenges and potential avenues for future exploration.

Speech Emotion Recognition Using Convolution Neural Networks and Multi-Head Convolutional Transformer.

Speech emotion recognition (SER) is a challenging task in human-computer interaction (HCI) systems. One of the key challenges in speech emotion recognition is to extract the emotional features effectively from a speech utterance. Despite the promising results of recent studies, they generally do not leverage advanced fusion algorithms for the generation of effective representations of emotional features in speech utterances. To address this problem, we describe the fusion of spatial and temporal feature representations of speech emotion by parallelizing convolutional neural networks (CNNs) and a Transformer encoder for SER. We stack two parallel CNNs for spatial feature representation in parallel to a Transformer encoder for temporal feature representation, thereby simultaneously expanding the filter depth and reducing the feature map with an expressive hierarchical feature representation at a lower computational cost. We use the RAVDESS dataset to recognize eight different speech emotions. We augment and intensify the variations in the dataset to minimize model overfitting. Additive White Gaussian Noise (AWGN) is used to augment the RAVDESS dataset. With the spatial and sequential feature representations of CNNs and the Transformer, the SER model achieves 82.31% accuracy for eight emotions on a hold-out dataset. In addition, the SER system is evaluated with the IEMOCAP dataset and achieves 79.42% recognition accuracy for five emotions. Experimental results on the RAVDESS and IEMOCAP datasets show the success of the presented SER system and demonstrate an absolute performance improvement over the state-of-the-art (SOTA) models.

An Intelligent Model-Based Effective Approach for Glycemic Control in Type-1 Diabetes.

Type-1 diabetes mellitus (T1DM) is a challenging disorder which essentially involves regulation of the glucose levels to avoid hyperglycemia as well as hypoglycemia. For this purpose, this research paper proposes and develops control algorithms using an intelligent predictive control model, which is based on a UVA/Padova metabolic simulator. The primary objective of the designed control laws is to provide an automatic blood glucose control in insulin-dependent patients so as to improve their life quality and to reduce the need of an extremely demanding self-management plan. Various linear and nonlinear control algorithms have been explored and implemented on the estimated model. Linear techniques include the Proportional Integral Derivative (PID) and Linear Quadratic Regulator (LQR), and nonlinear control strategy includes the Sliding Mode Control (SMC), which are implemented in this research work for continuous monitoring of glucose levels. Performance comparison based on simulation results demonstrated that SMC proved to be most efficient in terms of regulating glucose profile to a reference level of 70 mg/dL compared to the classical linear techniques. A brief comparison is presented between the linear techniques (PID and LQR), and nonlinear technique (SMC) for analysis purposes proving the efficacy of the design.

Intelligent Reflecting Surfaces Enhanced Mobile Edge Computing: Minimizing the Maximum Computational Time.

Intelligent reflecting surfaces (IRS) and mobile edge computing (MEC) have recently attracted significant attention in academia and industry. Without consuming any external energy, IRS can extend wireless coverage by smartly reconfiguring the phase shift of a signal towards the receiver with the help of passive elements. On the other hand, MEC has the ability to reduce latency by providing extensive computational facilities to users. This paper proposes a new optimization scheme for IRS-enhanced mobile edge computing to minimize the maximum computational time of the end users' tasks. The optimization problem is formulated to simultaneously optimize the task segmentation and transmission power of users, phase shift design of IRS, and computational resource of mobile edge. The optimization problem is non-convex and coupled on multiple variables which make it very complex. Therefore, we transform it to convex by decoupling it into sub-problems and then obtain an efficient solution. In particular, the closed-form solutions for task segmentation and edge computational resources are achieved through the monotonical relation of time and Karush-Kuhn-Tucker conditions, while the transmission power of users and phase shift design of IRS are computed using the convex optimization technique. The proposed IRS-enhanced optimization scheme is compared with edge computing nave offloading, binary offloading, and edge computing, respectively. Numerical results demonstrate the benefits of the proposed scheme compared to other benchmark schemes.

A Reinforcement Learning-Based Framework for Crowdsourcing in Massive Health Care Internet of Things.

Rapid advancements in the internet of things (IoT) are driving massive transformations of health care, which is one of the largest and critical global industries. Recent pandemics, such as coronavirus 2019 (COVID-19), include increasing demands for ubiquitous, preventive, and personalized health care to be provided to the public at reduced risks and costs with rapid care. Mobile crowdsourcing could potentially meet the future massive health care IoT (mH-IoT) demands by enabling anytime, anywhere sense and analyses of health-related data to tackle such a pandemic situation. However, data reliability and availability are among the many challenges for the realization of next-generation mH-IoT, especially in COVID-19 epidemics. Therefore, more intelligent and robust health care frameworks are required to tackle such pandemics. Recently, reinforcement learning (RL) has proven its strengths to provide intelligent data reliability and availability. The action-state learning procedure of RL-based frameworks enables the learning system to enhance the optimal use of the information as the time passes and data increases. In this article, we propose an RL-based crowd-to-machine (RLC2M) framework for mH-IoT, which leverages crowdsourcing and an RL model (Q-learning) to address the health care information processing challenges. The simulation results show that the proposed framework rapidly converges with accumulated rewards to reveal the sensing environment situation.