Synchronization Error Robust Transceivers for Molecular Communication

A non-parametric sequential rank-sum probability ratio test method for binary hypothesis testing

Because computers (except for parallel computers) generate simulation outputs sequentially, we recommend sequential probability ratio tests (SPRTs) for the statistical analysis of these outputs. However, until now simulation analysts have ignored SPRTs. To change this situation, we review SPRTs for the simplest case; namely, the case of choosing between two hypothesized values for the mean simulation output. For this case, the classic SPRT of Wald (Wald A. Sequential tests of statistical hypotheses. Ann Math Stat 1945; 16: 117–186) allows general types of distribution, including normal distributions with known variances. A modification permits unknown variances that are estimated. Hall (Hall WJ. Some sequential analogs of Stein’s two-stage test. Biometrika 1962; 49: 367–378) developed a SPRT that assumes normal distributions with unknown variances estimated from a pilot sample. A modification uses a fully sequential variance estimator. In this paper, we quantify the performance of the various SPRTs, using several Monte Carlo experiments. In experiment #1, simulation outputs are normal. Whereas Wald’s SPRT with estimated variance gives too high error rates, Hall’s original and modified SPRTs are “conservative”; that is, the actual error rates are smaller than those prespecified (nominal). Furthermore, our experiment shows that the most efficient SPRT is Hall’s modified SPRT. In experiment #2, we estimate the robustness of these SPRTs for non-normal output. For these two experiments, we provide details on their design and analysis; these details may also be useful for simulation experiments in general.

Precise synchronisation of transmitters and receivers is particularly challenging in diffusive molecular communication environments. To this end, a point-to-point molecular communication system is examined wherein the design of the transceiver offers resilience to synchronisation errors. In particular, the development of a sequential probability ratio test-based detector, which allows for additional observations in the presence of uncertainty due to mis-synchronisation at the receiver, and a modulation design which is optimised for this receiver strategy, is considered. The structure of the probability of molecules hitting a receiver within a particular time slot is exploited. An approximate maximum log-likelihood estimator for the synchronisation error is derived and the Cramér-Rao bound (CRB) computed, to show that the performance of the proposed estimator is close to the CRB at low transmission rates. The proposed receiver and modulation designs achieve strongly improved asynchronous detection performance for the same data rate as a decision feedback based receiver by a factor of 3 to 5 on average.

In medical, health, and sports sciences, researchers desire a device with high reliability and validity. This article focuses on reliability and validity studies with n subjects and m ≥2 repeated measurements per subject. High statistical power can be achieved by increasing n or m, and increasing m is often easier than increasing n in practice unless m is too high to result in systematic bias. The sequential probability ratio test (SPRT) is a useful statistical method which can conclude a null hypothesis H0 or an alternative hypothesis H1 with 50% of the required sample size of a non-sequential test on average. The traditional SPRT requires the likelihood function for each observed random variable, and it can be a practical burden for evaluating the likelihood ratio after each observation of a subject. Instead, m observed random variables per subject can be transformed into a test statistic which has a known sampling distribution under H0 and under H1. This allows us to formulate a SPRT based on a sequence of test statistics. In this article, three types of study are considered: reliabilityof a device, reliability of a device relative to a criterion device, and validity of a device relative to a  criterion device. Using SPRT for testing the reliability of a device, for small m, results in an average sample size of about 50% of the fixed sample size for a non-sequential test. For comparing a device to criterion, the average sample size approaches to 60% approximately as m increases. The SPRT tolerates violation of normality assumption for validity study, but it does not for reliability study.

We report a very efficient semianalytical approach for the performance evaluation of differential detection schemes for GMSK signals of the DECT standard. Precisely, for a given channel, the performance is determined by means of an analytical procedure which includes the saddlepoint approximation. We consider both static channels (with impulse response generated by the simulation program SIRCIM) and two-ray Rayleigh and log-normal fading channels. As a departure from previous works, our receiver includes an all-digital part after the analog differential detection scheme. The digital part includes: (1) a block for the estimation of both the optimum sampling phase and the nonlinear channel coefficients (by making use of the DECT training sequence), (2) a one-tap decision feedback (DF) equalizer, and (3) a block for the evaluation of the approximate optimum bias level (/spl gamma//sub e/) in the threshold detector. Both the DF equalizer coefficient and /spl gamma//sub e/ are based on the nonlinear channel coefficients estimate. For channels with a normalized delay spread up to 0.2, the use of the optimum threshold together with the DF equalizer permits a gain of about 2 dB at BER=10/sup -6/ with respect to a receiver without equalization and a zero-level decision threshold. In addition, we discover that, in indoor environments, the 2-bit GMSK detector performs roughly the same as the 1-bit detector. The threshold optimization is also effective in the presence of channels affected by fading. To support this statement, we report the performance of the 1-bit differential detection scheme combined with antenna selection diversity in the presence of a two-ray log-normal and Rayleigh fading channel.

We consider a single-hop, random-access, wireless sensor network (WSN) performing sequential distributed detection under a bandwidth constraint. At each time slot, the sensor nodes will make their decisions on whether the observed event is happening. The sensor censoring strategy is applied such that only the local decisions equal to one (i.e., the event happens) will be sent to the fusion center (FC). Because only one transmission channel between the FC and the sensor nodes is assumed, if two or more local decisions are sent at a time slot, a packet collision happens. We design a sequential probability ratio test (SPRT) at the FC that is aware of the collisions. The performance measures of the collision-aware SPRT are analyzed based on a Markov chain. In addition, we derive the asymptotic relative efficiency of the collision-aware SPRT relative to another SPRT. Numerical results show some interesting characteristics of the collision-aware SPRT. For example, the collision-aware SPRT prefers the scenario that many local decisions are likely to be sent per time slot.

In this article the problem of a sequential test for the model of independent non-identically distributed observations is considered. Based on recursive calculation a new numerical approach to approximate test characteristics for a sequential probability ratio test (SPRT) and a truncated SPRT (TSPRT) is constructed. The problem of robustness evaluation is also studied when the contamination is presented by the distortion of the distributions of all increments of the log-likelihood ratio statistics. The two-side truncated functions are proposed to be used for constructing the robustified SPRT. An algorithm to choose the thresholds of these truncated functions is indicated. The results are applied for a sequential test on parameters of time series with trend. Some kinds of the contaminated models of time series with trend are used to study the robustness of the truncated SPRT. Numerical examples confirming the theoretical results mentioned above are given.

We investigate the equalization and channel identification for space-time block coded signals over a frequency-selective multiple-input multiple output (MIMO) channels. The equalization is considered by taking into account the cyclostationarity of space-time block coded signals. The minimum mean square error (MMSE) solutions are derived for linear and decision feedback (DF) equalizers. Due to the redundancy induced by space-time block coding, a blind estimation for MIMO channels is investigated by using the subspace method. Together with pilot symbols, the semi-blind channel estimation can be used and it can result in less (bit error rate) performance degradation of the MMSE linear and DF equalizers.

The sequential probability ratio test (SPRT) is a fundamental tool for sequential analysis. It forms the basis of numerous sequential techniques for different applications; for example, the truncated SPRT and Page's cumulative sum test (CUSUM). The performance of SPRT is characterized by two important functions—operating characteristic (OC) and average sample number (ASN), and CUSUM's performance is revealed by the average run length (ARL) function. These functions have been studied extensively under the assumption of independent and identically distributed log-likelihood ratios (LLRs) with constant bounds, which is too stringent for many applications. In this article, inductive integral equations governing these functions are developed under very general settings—the bounds can be time-varying and the LLRs are assumed independent but nonstationary. These inductive equations provide a theoretical foundation for performance analysis. Unfortunately, they have nonunique solutions in the general case except for the truncated SPRT. Numerical solutions for some frequently encountered special cases are developed and are compared with the results of Monte Carlo simulations.

Using one class SVM to counter intelligent attacks against an SPRT defense mechanism

In the Molecular Communication (MC), molecules are utilized to encode, transmit, and receive information. Transmission of the information is achieved by means of diffusion of molecules and the information is recovered based on the molecule concentration variations at the receiver location. The MC is very prone to intersymbol interference (ISI) due to residual molecules emitted previously. Furthermore, the stochastic nature of the molecule movements adds noise to the MC. For the first time, we propose four methods for a receiver in the MC to recover the transmitted information distorted by both ISI and noise. We introduce sequence detection methods based on maximum a posteriori (MAP) and maximum likelihood (ML) criterions, a linear equalizer based on minimum mean-square error (MMSE) criterion, and a decision-feedback equalizer (DFE) which is a nonlinear equalizer. We present a channel estimator to estimate time varying MC channel at the receiver. The performances of the proposed methods based on bit error rates are evaluated. The sequence detection methods reveal the best performance at the expense of computational complexity. However, the MMSE equalizer has the lowest performance with the lowest computational complexity. The results show that using these methods significantly increases the information transmission rate in the MC.

We apply high-dimensional analysis of variance (HANOVA) and sequential probability ratio test (SPRT) to detect buried land mines from array ground penetrating radar (GPR) measurements. The GPR array surveys a region of interest in a progressive manner starting at a known position and moving step by step in a fixed direction. Our detection method consists of two stages. Because, at each stop of the array the path lengths are different from every transmitter/receiver pair to a mien target, there exists statistically significant difference among received signals when a mine target is presented. Thus, the first step in our processing consists of a HANOVA test to detect this statistical difference at each stop. HANOVA does not incorporate new data as the GPR array moves down-track. So secondly, we resort to a sequential probability ratio test to look for changes in the HANOVA statistics as the array proceeds down track. The SPRT allows for real-time processing as anew data are obtained by the GPR array. Finally, real sensor data are processed to verify the method.

Conditional frequentist tests of a precise hypothesis versus a composite alternative have recently been developed, and have been shown to be equivalent to conventional Bayes tests in the very strong sense that the reported frequentist error probabilities equal the posterior probabilities of the hypotheses. These results are herein extended to sequential testing, and yield fully frequentist sequential tests that are considerably easier to use than are conventional sequential tests. Among the interesting properties of these new tests is the lack of dependence of the reported error probabilities on the stopping rule, seeming to lend frequentist support to the stopping rule principle. Keywords:Bayes factor; Composite hypothesis; Conditional test; Error probability; Likelihood ratio; Sequential probability ratio test; Sequential test.

In this paper, the theoretical as well as experimental results of BER characteristics of three different modulation schemes, ASK, FSK and BPSK, in a multi-path Rician channel are addressed. These BER characteristics are analyzed as a function of E b / N o and the power ratio of the line of sight (LOS) component to the Rayleigh scattered component The theoretical as well as computer simulation results shows the ASK is the most suitable modulation scheme for the dedicated short range communication (DSRC) in terms of implemental cost and system complexity. The decision feedback equalizer is proved to be very effective in canceling the multi-path interference in the DSRC channel environment. The simulation result of the equalized ASK, reveals the performance enhancement achievable with decision feedback (DFE) equalizer for the first generation DSRC system. The multi-ray DSRC channel model is also provided to predict the received carrier power and fluctuation, which are quite dependent on the surroundings of a cell.

The SPRT control chart for the process mean with samples starting at fixed times