Performance Degradation Estimation Mechanisms for Networked Control Systems Under DoS Attacks and its Application to Autonomous Ground Vehicle.

This article examines the mechanisms by which aperiodic denial-of-service (DoS) attacks can exploit vulnerabilities in the TCP/IP transport protocol and its three-way handshake during communication data transmission to hack and cause data loss in networked control systems (NCSs). Such data loss caused by DoS attacks can eventually lead to system performance degradation and impose network resource constraints on the system. Therefore, estimating system performance degradation is of practical importance. By formulating the problem as an ellipsoid-constrained performance error estimation (PEE) problem, we can estimate the system performance degradation caused by DoS attacks. We propose a new Lyapunov-Krasovskii function (LKF) using the fractional weight segmentation method (FWSM) to examine the sampling interval and introduce a relaxed, positive definite constraint to optimize the control algorithm. We also propose a relaxed, positive definite constraint that reduces the initial constraints to optimize the control algorithm. Next, we introduce an alternate direction algorithm (ADA) to solve the optimal trigger threshold and design an integral-based event-triggered controller (IETC) to estimate the error performance of NCSs with limited network resources. Finally, we verify the effectiveness and feasibility of the proposed method using the Simulink joint platform autonomous ground vehicle (AGV) model.

Novel adaptive synchronization in finite-time and fixed-time for impulsive complex networks with semi-Markovian switching.

This paper intensively studied the finite-time (FNT) and fixed-time (FXT) synchronization issues for complex networks (CNs) with semi-Markovian switching and impulsive effect. The impulses are assumed to be independent of the semi-Markovian switching. Firstly, a unified FNT and FXT stability criterion of impulsive dynamical system with time-varying delays is extended by comparison principle. Secondly, two novel hybrid control schemes, which are composed of adaptive gain and switching state-feedback are proposed. Thirdly, by employing Kronecker product, Lyapunov-Krasovskii functional and inequality technique, FNT and FXT synchronization criteria for impulsive CNs with semi-Markovian switching are presented in a set of low-dimensional linear matrix inequalities, and the settling times are computed respectively. Finally, simulations are given to verify the proposed adaptive FNT and FXT synchronization criteria.

Nonfragile power and frequency control in islanded microgrids under abnormal asynchronous stochastic cyber attacks.

In this paper, we focus on the real power sharing and frequency regulation of distributed generators in islanded microgrids with abnormal asynchronous stochastic cyber attacks, which is of great significance to the information security and stable operation of microgrids. Firstly, considering the possible cyber attacks in the communication network, a distributed non-fragile controller with coupled memory delay is proposed according to the nonperiodic sampled-data control. Then, the construction of delay-dependent two-sided looped-functional makes the Lyapunov-Krasovskii functional contain more delay and sampling information and relaxes constraints on free matrices. In addition, based on the enhanced integral inequality technique and the linear convex combination method, a sampling-based consensus protocol is presented to solve the issues of real power sharing and frequency regulation in the islanded microgrids. Finally, to verify the effectiveness and feasibility of the designed control strategy, a modified IEEE 34-bus test system is used for the experiment.

Observer-Based Adaptive NN Security Control for Switched Nonlinear Systems Against DoS Attacks: An ADT Approach.

In this article, a novel switched observer-based neural network (NN) adaptive control algorithm is established, which addresses the security control problem of switched nonlinear systems (SNSs) under denial-of-service (DoS) attacks. The considered SNSs are described in lower triangular form with external disturbances and unmodeled dynamics. Note that when an attack is launched in the sensor-controller channel, the controller will not receive any message, which makes the standard backstepping controller not workable. To tackle the challenge, a set of NN adaptive observers are designed under two different situations, which can switch adaptively depending on the DoS attack on/off. Further, an NN adaptive controller is constructed and the dynamic surface control method is borrowed to surmount the complexity explosion phenomenon. To eliminate double damage from DoS attacks and switches, a set of switching laws with average dwell time are designed via the multiple Lyapunov function method, which in combination with the proposed controllers, guarantees that all the signals in the closed-loop system are bounded. Finally, an illustrative example is offered to verify the availability of the proposed control algorithm.

A hybrid event-triggered stabilization approach for switched systems under asynchronous switching and its application.

This paper investigates the stabilization problem of switched systems with mismatched modes by an event-triggered control approach. A hybrid event-triggered scheme (HETS) with a dynamically adjustable threshold is newly proposed, which combines periodic sampling, continuous event-trigger and slow switching. It is assumed that the modes and states of the controller are updated only at each triggering instant, so the situation of asynchronous switching could arise. Compared with the control strategy under static HETS, the proposed hybrid event-triggered control strategy has the advantage of potentially speeding up the stabilization while reducing the communication burden. To ease the analysis, the closed-loop system is accordingly represented as a combination of the switched system with a periodically sampled control input and the one with a continuously event-triggered control input. By considering input delay information in the construction of multiple Lyapunov-Krasovskii functional (LKF), a discontinuous and non-positive definite LKF is developed to establish sufficient conditions on the exponential stability for the closed-loop switched system. The design method of the desired controller and HETS is then provided. Finally, the result obtained in this paper is applied to a networked continuous stirred tank reactors system.

A super-resolution network for medical imaging via transformation analysis of wavelet multi-resolution.

In recent years, deep learning super-resolution models for progressive reconstruction have achieved great success. However, these models which refer to multi-resolution analysis basically ignore the information contained in the lower subspaces and do not explore the correlation between features in the wavelet and spatial domain, resulting in not fully utilizing the auxiliary information brought by multi-resolution analysis with multiple domains. Therefore, we propose a super-resolution network based on the wavelet multi-resolution framework (WMRSR) to capture the auxiliary information contained in multiple subspaces and to be aware of the interdependencies between spatial domain and wavelet domain features. Initially, the wavelet multi-resolution input (WMRI) is generated by combining wavelet sub-bands obtained from each subspace through wavelet multi-resolution analysis and the corresponding spatial domain image content, which serves as input to the network. Then, the WMRSR captures the corresponding features from the WMRI in the wavelet domain and spatial domain, respectively, and fuses them adaptively, thus learning fully explored features in multi-resolution and multi-domain. Finally, the high-resolution images are gradually reconstructed in the wavelet multi-resolution framework by our convolution-based wavelet transform module which is suitable for deep neural networks. Extensive experiments conducted on two public datasets demonstrate that our method outperforms other state-of-the-art methods in terms of objective and visual qualities.

Optimal H∞ tracking control of nonlinear systems with zero-equilibrium-free via novel adaptive critic designs.

In this paper, a novel adaptive critic control method is designed to solve an optimal H∞ tracking control problem for continuous nonlinear systems with nonzero equilibrium based on adaptive dynamic programming (ADP). To guarantee the finiteness of a cost function, traditional methods generally assume that the controlled system has a zero equilibrium point, which is not true in practical systems. In order to overcome such obstacle and realize H∞ optimal tracking control, this paper proposes a novel cost function design with respect to disturbance, tracking error and the derivative of tracking error. Based on the designed cost function, the H∞ control problem is formulated as two-player zero-sum differential games, and then a policy iteration (PI) algorithm is proposed to solve the corresponding Hamilton-Jacobi-Isaacs (HJI) equation. In order to obtain the online solution to the HJI equation, a single-critic neural network structure based on PI algorithm is established to learn the optimal control policy and the worst-case disturbance law. It is worth mentioning that the proposed adaptive critic control method can simplify the controller design process when the equilibrium of the systems is not zero. Finally, simulations are conducted to evaluate the tracking performance of the proposed control methods.

AutoGMap: Learning to Map Large-Scale Sparse Graphs on Memristive Crossbars.

The sparse representation of graphs has shown great potential for accelerating the computation of graph applications (e.g., social networks and knowledge graphs) on traditional computing architectures (CPU, GPU, or TPU). But, the exploration of large-scale sparse graph computing on processing-in-memory (PIM) platforms (typically with memristive crossbars) is still in its infancy. To implement the computation or storage of large-scale or batch graphs on memristive crossbars, a natural assumption is that a large-scale crossbar is demanded, but with low utilization. Some recent works question this assumption; to avoid the waste of storage and computational resource, the fixed-size or progressively scheduled "block partition" schemes are proposed. However, these methods are coarse-grained or static and are not effectively sparsity-aware. This work proposes the dynamic sparsity-aware mapping scheme generating method that models the problem with a sequential decision-making model, and optimizes it by reinforcement learning (RL) algorithm (REINFORCE). Our generating model long short-term memory (LSTM), combined with the dynamic-fill scheme generates remarkable mapping performance on the small-scale graph/matrix data (complete mapping costs 43% area of the original matrix) and two large-scale matrix data (costing 22.5% area on qh882 and 17.1% area on qh1484). Our method may be extended to sparse graph computing on other PIM architectures, not limited to the memristive device-based platforms.

Adaptive fixed-time output synchronization for complex dynamical networks with multi-weights.

This paper addresses fixed-time output synchronization problems for two types of complex dynamical networks with multi-weights (CDNMWs) by using two types of adaptive control methods. Firstly, complex dynamical networks with multiple state and output couplings are respectively presented. Secondly, several fixed-time output synchronization criteria for these two networks are formulated based on Lyapunov functional and inequality techniques. Thirdly, by employing two types of adaptive control methods, fixed-time output synchronization issues of these two networks are dealt with. At last, the analytical results are verified by two numerical simulations.

Asynchronous control for semi-Markov switching systems with singular perturbation and an improved protocol.

This study addresses the asynchronous control problem for a semi-Markov switching system in the presence of singular perturbation and an improved triggering protocol. To decrease the occupation of network resources, an improved protocol is skillfully established by adopting two auxiliary offset variables. Unlike the existing protocols, the established improved protocol is capable of arranging information transmission with more degrees of freedom, thereby reducing the communication frequency and maintaining control performance. Apart from the reported hidden Markov model, a nonhomogeneous hidden semi-Markov model is used to handle the mode mismatch between the systems and controllers. Benefiting from Lyapunov techniques, parameter-dependent sufficient conditions are devised to ensure a stochastically stable subject to a predetermined performance. Finally, the validity and practicability of the theoretical results are verified via a numerical example and a tunnel diode circuit model.

Sedimentary structures of microbial carbonates in the fourth member of the Middle Triassic Leikoupo Formation, Western Sichuan Basin, China.

In recent years, abundant natural gas has been found in microbial carbonates in the fourth member of the Leikoupo Formation in Western Sichuan Basin. In this study, from the observation of 626 microbial thin sections, four types of microbial carbonates are classified based on the differences of mesostructures. Among them, thrombolites and stromatolites are subdivided into eight types based on the differences of microstructures. Six types of microbial microstructure association (MSA) are identified, and are mainly developed in microbial mounds. The energy of sedimentary environment and hydrodynamic conditions of them from low to high is MSA-5, MSA-1, MSA-6, MSA-3, MSA-4 and MSA-2. Because of the arid climate in the Annie Period, a restricted platform are developed in the upper sub-member of the Leikoupo Formation in Western Sichuan Basin, and the sedimentary facies are lagoon (gypsiferous lagoon or salt lake in evaporate conditions), microbial mounds, shoals, inner platform shoals and open sea from the east to the west. Microbial microstructures not only affect the pore evolution of microbial carbonate reservoirs, but also affect the diagenesis of microbial carbonate reservoirs of the fourth member of the Leikoupo Formation.

Practical synchronization of neural networks with delayed impulses and external disturbance via hybrid control.

This paper studies the problem of practical synchronization for delayed neural networks via hybrid-driven impulsive control in which delayed impulses and external disturbance are taken into account. Firstly, a switching method which establishes the relationship between error signals and a threshold function is introduced, which determines whether time-driven control or event-driven control is activated. Secondly, the effects of delayed impulses and external disturbance on impulsive systems are considered, and the corresponding comparison lemma is proposed. Thirdly, whenever the norm of the initial value of the error system state is less than or greater than the initial value of the threshold function, under the proposed hybrid-driven impulsive control scheme, the practical synchronization of the delayed neural networks with delayed impulses and external disturbance can be achieved by synchronizing impulses. Moreover, the Zeno behavior can be excluded under the proposed hybrid-driven impulsive control. Finally, two numerical examples are presented to verify the effectiveness of the theoretical results.

Multiobjective Reinforcement Learning-Based Neural Architecture Search for Efficient Portrait Parsing.

This article dedicates to automatically explore efficient portrait parsing models that are easily deployed in edge computing or terminal devices. In the interest of the tradeoff between the resource cost and performance, we design the multiobjective reinforcement learning (RL)-based neural architecture search (NAS) scheme, which comprehensively balances the accuracy, parameters, FLOPs, and inference latency. Finally, under varying hyperparameter configurations, the search procedure emits a bunch of excellent objective-oriented architectures. The combination of two-stage training with precomputing and memory-resident feature maps effectively reduces the time consumption of the RL-based NAS method, so that we complete approximately 1000 search iterations in two GPU days. To accelerate the convergence of the lightweight candidate architecture, we incorporate knowledge distillation into the training of the search process. This also provides a reasonable evaluation signal to the RL controller that enables it to converge well. In the end, we conduct full training with outstanding Pareto-optimal architectures, so that a series of excellent portrait parsing models (with only approximately 0.3M parameters) is received. Furthermore, we directly transfer the architectures searched on CelebAMask-HQ (Portrait Parsing) to other portrait and face segmentation tasks. Finally, we achieve the state-of-the-art performance of 96.5% MIOU on EG1800 (portrait segmentation) and 91.6% overall F1 -score on HELEN (face labeling). That is, our models significantly surpass the artificial network on the accuracy, but with lower resource consumption and higher real-time performance.

Event-triggering load frequency control for multi-area power system based on random dynamic triggering mechanism and two-side closed functional.

By taking into account sampled-data mechanism and transmission delay, the novel event-triggering load frequency control (LFC) strategy involving random dynamic triggering algorithm (RDTA) is developed for multi-area power systems in this paper. Firstly, an improved multi-area LFC model considering sampling and transmission delay (STD) simultaneously is addressed. Secondly, a modified event-triggering mechanism (ETM) with RDTA is proposed, considering parameter disturbances and a dynamic adjustment mechanism of the triggering threshold. Thirdly, a more advanced Lyapunov-Krasovskii functional (LKF) is constructed, introducing the delay-dependent matrices, more variable cross terms and the two-sided closed functional. Furthermore, two less conservative stability criteria are obtained according to the designed approach. Finally, two multi-area LFC systems are presented to verify the progressiveness of the proposed approach.

Relaxed Exponential Stabilization for Coupled Memristive Neural Networks With Connection Fault and Multiple Delays via Optimized Elastic Event-Triggered Mechanism.

This article investigates the problem of relaxed exponential stabilization for coupled memristive neural networks (CMNNs) with connection fault and multiple delays via an optimized elastic event-triggered mechanism (OEEM). The connection fault of the two or some nodes can result in the connection fault of other nodes and cause iterative faults in the CMNNs. Therefore, the method of backup resources is considered to improve the fault-tolerant capability and survivability of the CMNNs. In order to improve the robustness of the event-triggered mechanism and enhance the ability of the event-triggered mechanism to process noise signals, the time-varying bounded noise threshold matrices, time-varying decreased exponential threshold functions, and adaptive functions are simultaneously introduced to design the OEEM. In addition, the appropriate Lyapunov-Krasovskii functionals (LKFs) with some improved delay-product-type terms are constructed, and the relaxed exponential stabilization and globally uniformly ultimately bounded (GUUB) conditions are derived for the CMNNs with connection fault and multiple delays by means of some inequality processing techniques. Finally, two numerical examples are provided to illustrate the effectiveness of the results.

Suboptimal Leader-to-Coordination Control for Nonlinear Systems With Switching Topologies: A Learning-Based Method.

In the cooperative control for multiagent systems (MASs), the key issues of distributed interaction, nonlinear characteristics, and optimization should be considered simultaneously, which, however, remain intractable theoretically even to this day. Considering these factors, this article investigates leader-to-formation control and optimization for nonlinear MASs using a learning-based method. Under time-varying switching topology, a fully distributed state observer based on neural networks is designed to reconstruct the dynamics and the state trajectory of the leader signal with arbitrary precision under jointly connected topology assumption. Benefitted from the observers, formation for MASs under switching topologies is transformed into tracking control for each subsystem with continuous state generated by the observers. An augmented system with discounted infinite LQR performance index is considered to optimize the control effect. Due to the complexity of solving the Hamilton-Jacobi-Bellman equation, the optimal value function is approximated by a critic network via the integral reinforcement learning method without the knowledge of drift dynamics. Meanwhile, an actor network is also presented to assure stability. The tracking errors and estimation weighted matrices are proven to be uniformly ultimately bounded. Finally, two illustrative examples are given to show the effectiveness of this method.

Mode-Dependent Adaptive Event-Triggered Control for Stabilization of Markovian Memristor-Based Reaction-Diffusion Neural Networks.

This article focuses on the design of a mode- dependent adaptive event-triggered control (AETC) scheme for the stabilization of Markovian memristor-based reaction-diffusion neural networks (RDNNs). Different from the existing works with completely known transition probabilities, partly unknown transition probabilities (PUTPs) are considered here. The switching conditions and values of memristive connection weights are all correlated with Markovian jumping. A mode-dependent AETC scheme is newly proposed, in which different adaptive event-triggered mechanisms will be applied for different Markovian jumping modes and memristor switching modes. For each given mode, the corresponding event-triggered mechanism can efficiently reduce the number of transmission signals by adaptively adjusting the threshold. Thus, the mode-dependent AETC scheme can effectively save the limited network communication resources for the considered system. Based on the proposed control scheme, a new stabilization criterion is set up for Markovian memristor-based RDNNs with PUTPs. Meanwhile, a memristor-dependent AETC scheme is devised for memristor-based RDNNs. Finally, simulation results are presented to verify the effectiveness and superiority of the analysis results.

Compact and Stable Memristive Visual Geometry Group Neural Network.

As edge computing platforms need low power consumption and small volume circuit with artificial intelligence (AI), we design a compact and stable memristive visual geometry group (MVGG) neural network for image classification. According to characteristics of matrix-vector multiplication (MVM) using memristor crossbars, we design three pruning methods named row pruning, column pruning, and parameter distribution pruning. With a loss of only 0.41% of the classification accuracy, a pruning rate of 36.87% is obtained. In the MVGG circuit, both the batch normalization (BN) layers and dropout layers are combined into the memristive convolutional computing layer for decreasing the computing amount of the memristive neural network. In order to further reduce the influence of multistate conductance of memristors on classification accuracy of MVGG circuit, the layer optimization circuit and the channel optimization circuit are designed in this article. The theoretical analysis shows that the introduction of the optimized methods can greatly reduce the impact of the multistate conductance of memristors on the classification accuracy of MVGG circuits. Circuit simulation experiments show that, for the layer-optimized MVGG circuit, when the number of multistate conductance of memristors is 25 = 32 , the optimized circuit can basically achieve an accuracy of the full-precision MVGG. For the channel-optimized MVGG circuit, when the number of multistate conductance of memristors is 22 = 4 , the optimized circuit can basically achieve an accuracy of the full-precision MVGG.

Approximate Optimal Control for Nonlinear Systems With Periodic Event-Triggered Mechanism.

This article investigates the approximate optimal control problem for nonlinear affine systems under the periodic event triggered control (PETC) strategy. In terms of optimal control, a theoretical comparison of continuous control, traditional event-based control (ETC), and PETC from the perspective of stability convergence, concluding that PETC does not significantly affect the convergence rate than ETC. It is the first time to present PETC for optimal control target of nonlinear systems. A critic network is introduced to approximate the optimal value function based on the idea of reinforcement learning (RL). It is proven that the discrete updating time series from PETC can also be utilized to determine the updating time of the learning network. In this way, the gradient-based weight estimation for continuous systems is developed in discrete form. Then, the uniformly ultimately bounded (UUB) condition of controlled systems is analyzed to ensure the stability of the designed method. Finally, two illustrative examples are given to show the effectiveness of the method.