The purpose of this work has been to generate a method by which an automobile tire manufacturer can optimally allocate its weekly production ticket to its automatic tire-curing presses. The problem is of interest for the reason that the value of the objective function is markedly affected by the relative locations of tires amongst themselves. This consideration has negated the possibility of a solution being effected by the application of an algorithm for the classical linear assignment problem. In this work the problem has been formulated and solved as a quadratic assignment problem. The logic of this method of solution has been programmed and subsequently used to solve example problems, the results of which are extremely encouraging. / Thesis / Master of Engineering (MEngr)

Thesis (Ph. D., Natural Resources)--University of Idaho, May 2007. / Major professor: Jo Ellen Force. Includes bibliographical references (leaves ). Also available online (PDF file) by subscription or by purchasing the individual file.

The aim of this thesis is to study the influence that the human resource allocation process carried out at ALLEGION has over the employee satisfaction level of its employees. ALLEGION is an international manufacturing project-oriented company based in Ensenada, Baja California, Mexico, which operates with over 8,500 employees. Up until the development of this thesis, ALLEGION had never contemplated the job satisfaction level of its employees as a result of the human resource allocation process carried out in the company. Some studies have previously paid attention to the impact that best practices in human resource management have in employee performance, however, to our knowledge, it has never been discussed how the allocation of the human resources in a company can influence job satisfaction. For this reason, we believe is pertinent to conduct a study focusing on this topic. This thesis is presented as a case study of ALLEGION which follows a qualitative method and an inductive approach, where we as researchers, explored the influence that the current method followed by the company to allocate its human resources to projects has over the job satisfaction level of its employees. The first section of this thesis is dedicated to discuss the background of our research topic and to examine relevant literature focused in the subjects of human resource allocation and employee satisfaction. As part of this section, we encountered that four factors are consistently mentioned in the literature related to these core topics having an intrinsic relationship among them. We found that these factors were utilised by some scholars in the development of models to optimise the human resource allocation process and also during the measurement of employee satisfaction in different contexts. The four factors are: personal qualifications –referring to skills utilisation and expertise–, personal aspirations –referring to career development and personal growth–, group relationships –referring to personal relationships with co-workers and managers–, and finally, personal motivations –referring to job motivations–. At the end of this section we present a theoretical model that summarises our findings and highlights the correlations of the factors we identified from the literature. The central part of this thesis focuses on our practical method which comprised nine interviews with employees and project managers of ALLEGION. Our interviews were aimed to discover the relationship and influence that the human resource allocation process implemented in the company had over the job satisfaction level in its employees respectively. As part of our findings we discovered that four elements were contributors to such influence and simultaneously were related to the findings obtained during our literature review. Based upon these four factors, we drew our conclusions for the study. As a conclusion of this thesis, we found that the human resource allocation process conducted at ALLEGION holds a significant influence in the job satisfaction of its employees working in projects, and that four distinct factors should be taken into consideration during the process that functional managers carry out when they have to allocate their human resources to a certain project. These factors are: skills utilisation, career development, individual relationships of the employees with their co-workers and managers, and finally, job motivations. We concluded that the extent to which these elements are considered as part of the decision-making involved in the human resource allocation process will bring as a result a positive or negative outcome in terms of employee satisfaction among the projects of the organisation.

Macrodiversity system is a communication architecture where base stations (BS) act as distributed nodes of a multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) antennas. It has many promising features that can improve system performance from a network perspective, such as improving the weak signals of users affected by shadow fading, or users at the cell-edge. They also allow multiple users to share the same resource in time and frequency, improving the overall user capacity. Traditionally, evaluating the link quality of resource-sharing users requires instantaneous channel state information (CSI). However, finding compatible users to share resource in macrodiversity systems is a challenging task. For macrodiversity systems, instantaneous CSI could be passed to the backhaul processing unit (BPU) through the network backhaul. This creates a delay in the signal, and makes instantaneous CSI a less accurate reflection of the channel environment at the time. Passing instantaneous CSI of all users also creates a significant amount of network overheads, reducing the overall efficiency of the network. Compared to MIMO systems with co-located antennas, macrodiversity systems cover a larger geographical area and more users. For this reason, the number of user selection combinations can become extremely large, making scheduling decisions in real time an even more challenging task. These problems limit the realisation of the user capacity potential of macrodiversity systems. This thesis presents a low complexity method of resource allocation for up-link macrodiversity systems. In particular, it uses long-term power to estimate the link quality of resource-sharing users. Using long-term power bypasses the issue of channel estimation error introduced by the network delay, and it also reduces the communication overhead on the network backhaul. In this thesis, we use Symbol-Error Rate (SER) as the measure for link quality. Using the method developed by Basnayaka [1], we are able to estimate SER of resource-sharing users using long-term power. Using the SER estimation method, we further proposed a user compatibility check (UCC), which evaluates the compatibility of users sharing the same resource. Users are only considered compatible with each other if all of them meet a pre-defined SER threshold. We attempt to reduce the complexity of user selection by using heuristic solution-finding methods. In our research, we found that greedy algorithms have the least complexity. We propose four low-complexity user selection algorithms based on a greedy algorithm. These algorithms are simulated under different environment parameters. We evaluate the system performance in terms of utilisation and complexity. Utilisation refers to the percentage of allocated users compared to the theoretical user capacity. Complexity refers to the number of SER calculations required to find a resource allocation solution. From the simulation results, we observed that with the proposed user selection algorithms, we can achieve moderately high utilisation with much lower complexity, compared to finding user selections via an exhaustive search method. Out of the proposed user selection algorithms, the Priority Order with Sequential Removal (PO+SR) and the First-Fit (FF) algorithm have the best overall performance, in terms of the trade-off between utilisation performance, and complexity performance. The final choice of the algorithm will depend on the processing power and the system performance requirement of the macrodiversity system.

Due to introduction of smart phones with data intensive multimedia and interactive applications and exponential growth of wireless devices, there is a shortage for useful radio spectrum. Even though the spectrum has become crowded, many spectrum occupancy measurements indicate that most of the allocated spectrum is underutilised. Hence radically new approaches in terms of allocation of wireless resources are required for better utilization of radio spectrum. This has motivated the concept of opportunistic spectrum sharing or the so-called cognitive radio technology that has great potential to improve spectrum utilization. The cognitive radio technology allows an opportunistic user namely the secondary user to access the spectrum of the licensed user (known as primary user) provided that the secondary transmission does not harmfully affect the primary user. This is possible with the introduction of advanced resource allocation techniques together with the use of wireless relays and spatial diversity techniques. In this thesis, various mathematical optimization techniques have been developed for the efficient use of radio spectrum within the context of spectrum sharing networks. In particular, optimal power allocation techniques and centralised and distributed beamforming techniques have been developed. Initially, an optimization technique for subcarrier and power allocation has been proposed for an Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiple Access (OFDMA) based secondary wireless network in the presence of multiple primary users. The solution is based on integer linear programming with multiple interference leakage and transmission power constraints. In order to enhance the spectrum efficiency further, the work has been extended to allow multiple secondary users to occupy the same frequency band under a multiple-input and multiple-output (MIMO) framework. A sum rate maximization technique based on uplink-downlink duality and dirty paper coding has been developed for the MIMO based OFDMA network. The work has also been extended to handle fading scenarios based on maximization of ergodic capacity. The optimization techniques for MIMO network has been extended to a spectrum sharing network with relays. This has the advantage of extending the coverage of the secondary network and assisting the primary network in return for the use of the primary spectrum. Finally, instead of considering interference mitigation, the recently emerged concept of interference alignment has been used for the resource allocation in spectrum sharing networks. The performances of all these new algorithms have been demonstrated using MATLAB based simulation studies.

The next generation (4G) wireless systems are expected to provide universal personal and multimedia communications with seamless connection and very high rate transmissions and without regard to the users’ mobility and location. OFDM technique is recognized as one of the leading candidates to provide the wireless signalling for 4G systems. The major challenges in downlink multiuser OFDM based 4G systems include the wireless channel, the synchronization and radio resource management. Thus algorithms are required to achieve accurate timing and frequency offset estimation and the efficient utilization of radio resources such as subcarrier, bit and power allocation. The objectives of the thesis are of two fields. Firstly, we presented the frequency offset estimation algorithms for OFDM systems. Building our work upon the classic single user OFDM architecture, we proposed two FFT-based frequency offset estimation algorithms with low computational complexity. The computer simulation results and comparisons show that the proposed algorithms provide smaller error variance than previous well-known algorithm. Secondly, we presented the resource allocation algorithms for OFDM systems. Building our work upon the downlink multiuser OFDM architecture, we aimed to minimize the total transmit power by exploiting the system diversity through the management of subcarrier allocation, adaptive modulation and power allocation. Particularly, we focused on the dynamic resource allocation algorithms for multiuser OFDM system and multiuser MIMO-OFDM system. For the multiuser OFDM system, we proposed a lowiv complexity channel gain difference based subcarrier allocation algorithm. For the multiuser MIMO-OFDM system, we proposed a unit-power based subcarrier allocation algorithm. These proposed algorithms are all combined with the optimal bit allocation algorithm to achieve the minimal total transmit power. The numerical results and comparisons with various conventional nonadaptive and adaptive algorithmic approaches are provided to show that the proposed resource allocation algorithms improve the system efficiencies and performance given that the Quality of Service (QoS) for each user is guaranteed. The simulation work of this project is based on hand written codes in the platform of the MATLAB R2007b.

No description available.

無線通訊現已成為我們生活中不可或缺的一部份。除了較傳統的無線技術應用如電視廣播及衛星通訊外，日漸普及的平版電腦與智能手機對無線技術也有殷切的需求。然而，有限的無線電頻譜是無線通訊的其中一個限制。在有限的資源下，如何在壅塞的網絡環境有效地分配無線電頻譜成為一個重要的議題。在這篇論文中，我們會利用博奕論來分析壅塞網絡內用戶的行為和一些嶄新的頻譜共用機制。 / 在論文的首部份，我們會利用壅塞賽局來模擬認知無線電網絡中未授權無線電頻段的使用者(次級用戶)的互動在四個不同的賽局下，我們會評估納殊均衡與社會最優的效能比。此外，我們會鑑別導致嚴重失效能的最壞情況。有見及此，我們提議一個能夠改善壅塞網絡系統吞吐量與資源方配公平性的半合作方案。透過具體指定合作用戶的資源分配，我們論證次級用戶具有真誠合作的動機。除此之外，我們也計算出半合作方案跟完全合作方案在系統吞吐量上比較的下限。從數值結果的觀察中，可見次級用戶的半合作模式已比沒有任何合作的方案更有效地改善系統的吞吐量。另外，在壅塞的網絡環境下，半合作方案的系統效能不僅與最理想的情況相近，而且能夠減低溝通的開銷及演算法的複雜性。 / 在論文的第二部份，我們會考慮流動網絡的壅塞情況。透過使用斯塔克爾伯格模型去模擬網絡供應商和消費者的互動，我們會集中研究兩種不同的收費方法。通過考慮網絡壅塞的負面影響，兩個收費方法在不同的地區會有不同的定價。在特定的網絡資源及消費者功利下，我們證實特定地區收費比無地區區分收費更為可取。特定地區收費不但能增加網絡供應商的收益，也能改善消費者的社會福利。 / Wireless technology has become an inseparable part of our daily lives. In addition to the traditional wireless applications, such as TV broadcast or satellite communication, the demand of wireless access from tablets and smartphones has increased tremendously. One big challenge of wireless communications is that spectrum resource is limited. When the resource is scarce, resource allocation in congested networks is of particular importance. In this thesis, we are interested to investigate the user behavior and new spectrum sharing mechanisms in congested networks using the tool of game theory. / In the first part of the thesis, we model the interaction of secondary users (SUs) in cognitive radio networks as congestion games. We evaluate the inefficiency of the Nash equilibria with the social optimal in four families of games. Most importantly, we identify the worst case scenario which leads to a severe performance loss. In order to tackle the problem, we propose a partial cooperation scheme which provides an alternative to improve the system throughput and fairness of the congested network. By specifying the allocation for cooperating users, we show that SUs have incentive to cooperate truthfully. Moreover, we give the performance bound of system throughput compared with full cooperation scheme. We also observe from the numerical results that the partial cooperation of SUs can greatly improve the system throughput comparing with no cooperation of SUs. In addition, the performance of the partial cooperation scheme is close to optimal in congested networks with a reduced overhead and complexity of the algorithm. / In the second part, we consider the congestion of current mobile networks. By modeling the interaction between a network service provider and the mobile subscribers with the Stackelberg game, we study two pricing schemes which suggested how prices should be set in different regions with the consideration of negative effects of congestion. Under given conditions of resource allocation and utility of subscribers, we show that region- specific pricing is more preferable than region-agnostic pricing which can improve both the revenue of the network service provider and the social welfare of the subscribers. / Detailed summary in vernacular field only. / Detailed summary in vernacular field only. / Detailed summary in vernacular field only. / Law, Lok Man. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2013. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 153-164). / Abstracts also in Chinese. / Abstract --- p.i / Acknowledgement --- p.v / Chapter 1 --- Introduction --- p.1 / Chapter 1.1 --- Motivation --- p.1 / Chapter 1.2 --- Thesis Outline --- p.3 / Chapter 2 --- Congestion Games in Cognitive Radio Networks --- p.6 / Chapter 2.1 --- Introduction --- p.6 / Chapter 2.1.1 --- Overview --- p.6 / Chapter 2.1.2 --- Related Work --- p.10 / Chapter 2.2 --- Game Model --- p.12 / Chapter 2.2.1 --- A Congestion Game Framework --- p.13 / Chapter 2.2.2 --- Price of Anarchy (PoA) --- p.16 / Chapter 2.3 --- PoA Analysis --- p.19 / Chapter 2.3.1 --- Identical Games --- p.20 / Chapter 2.3.2 --- Player-specific Symmetric Games --- p.24 / Chapter 2.3.3 --- Resource-specific Symmetric Games --- p.27 / Chapter 2.3.4 --- Asymmetric Games --- p.32 / Chapter 2.4 --- Applications --- p.41 / Chapter 2.4.1 --- Uniform MAC --- p.41 / Chapter 2.4.2 --- Slotted Aloha --- p.45 / Chapter 2.4.3 --- Insights for System Design --- p.48 / Chapter 2.5 --- Summary --- p.49 / Chapter 2.6 --- Appendix --- p.51 / Chapter 2.7 --- Notations --- p.53 / Chapter 3 --- Partial Cooperation in Cognitive Radio Networks --- p.54 / Chapter 3.1 --- Introduction --- p.54 / Chapter 3.1.1 --- Overview --- p.54 / Chapter 3.1.2 --- Related Work --- p.58 / Chapter 3.2 --- System Model --- p.61 / Chapter 3.3 --- Different Medium Access Control Schemes --- p.63 / Chapter 3.3.1 --- Benchmark MAC Schemes --- p.63 / Chapter 3.3.2 --- Priority-based Partial Cooperation Scheme (PPCS) --- p.66 / Chapter 3.4 --- PPCS with Identical Data Rates --- p.70 / Chapter 3.4.1 --- Random Priority PPCS (PPCS-RP) --- p.71 / Chapter 3.4.2 --- Fixed Priority PPCS (PPCS-FP) --- p.77 / Chapter 3.4.3 --- Numerical Results --- p.80 / Chapter 3.5 --- PPCS with Heterogeneous Data Rates --- p.85 / Chapter 3.5.1 --- Sparsely Populated PUs --- p.87 / Chapter 3.5.2 --- Densely Populated PUs --- p.95 / Chapter 3.6 --- PPCS with incomplete information --- p.98 / Chapter 3.6.1 --- The Allocation Rule --- p.98 / Chapter 3.6.2 --- Incentive for Group Formation --- p.100 / Chapter 3.6.3 --- Truth Revelation --- p.103 / Chapter 3.6.4 --- Numerical Results --- p.105 / Chapter 3.7 --- Summary --- p.111 / Chapter 3.8 --- Notations --- p.114 / Chapter 4 --- Regional Pricing in Mobile Networks --- p.115 / Chapter 4.1 --- Introduction --- p.115 / Chapter 4.1.1 --- Overview --- p.115 / Chapter 4.1.2 --- Related Work --- p.117 / Chapter 4.2 --- System Model --- p.119 / Chapter 4.2.1 --- Stackelberg Game --- p.121 / Chapter 4.2.2 --- Our Model --- p.123 / Chapter 4.3 --- The Two Pricing Schemes --- p.127 / Chapter 4.3.1 --- Region-specific Pricing --- p.127 / Chapter 4.3.2 --- Region-agnostic Pricing --- p.128 / Chapter 4.3.3 --- Extension to Multiple Regions --- p.130 / Chapter 4.4 --- Comparison of Schemes --- p.131 / Chapter 4.4.1 --- Overview of Two-region Case --- p.131 / Chapter 4.4.2 --- Revenue Ratio --- p.135 / Chapter 4.4.3 --- Utilization Ratio --- p.142 / Chapter 4.5 --- Summary --- p.144 / Chapter 4.6 --- Notations --- p.146 / Chapter 5 --- Conclusions and Future Work --- p.147 / Chapter 5.1 --- Conclusion --- p.147 / Chapter 5.2 --- Future Work --- p.148 / Chapter 5.2.1 --- Congestion Games in Cognitive Radio Networks --- p.148 / Chapter 5.2.2 --- Partial Cooperation in Cognitive Radio Networks --- p.149 / Chapter 5.2.3 --- Regional Pricing in Mobile Networks --- p.151 / Bibliography --- p.153

因為今天四通八達的無線通信網絡對高速高質量通信的要求,加之無線通信資源的稀缺,使得資源分配在無線通信領域的地位越發的重要.多種多樣的無線通信資源和不同的設計要永使得資源分配問題變得很複雜,我們也很難找到一個通用的方法去解決所有的資源分配問題.在本文中, 我們研究一些典型的資源分配問題,通過最優化設計,給出恰當的高效的算法予以解決.本文中將會涉及集中化算法和分佈式算法。 / 在本文中, 我們首先研究協作通信中的功率分配和中繼選擇問題。這個問題因為其問題的組合性而變得很複雜。為了保證系統的性能並且同時避免過量的冗餘信息, 我們提出了一個新的概念"中繼選擇自由度"。更重要的是, 為了使我們的方法能夠適用於集中信息很難的大型通信系統, 我們提出了分佈式的解決方案。該方法在實際中可以比較簡單的實現。 / 我們接著研究多用戶接入網絡的"軟"服務質量控制問題。我們這裡考慮的情形是:用戶們有各自的服務質量要求, 比如有一個目標速率。因為系統的資源總是有限的, 如果有過多用戶, 那麼同時滿足所有用戶的服務質量要求有時候是不可能的。我們的目標是在這種情況發生的時候,優化整個系統的資源分配。我們提出了分佈式算法來解決這一個問題。 / 最後, 我們研究下行鏈中的波束成形問題。這裡我們出於實際情況考慮,系統中存在兩種用戶:優先用戶和非優先用戶。我們想要盡可能最大化的提升非優先用戶的性能,同時必須首先滿足優先用戶的服務質量用要求。我們這裡用不同的波束成形向量來完成這個任務。這個問題是NP問題,我們做了必要的一些放鬆處理來得到有效的較優的解。 / Due to the limited resources and high performance requirements in today’s wireless networks, optimization methods in resource allocation play a significant role in reaping the benefits from wireless communications. Various available resources and different design goals make the resource allocation problem complex and we are unlikely to find a generic approach for all problems. Thus in this thesis, we investigate several resource allocation problems and propose the proper optimization methods and algorithms that can efficiently give us desired solutions. Also, both centralized and distributed methods will be shown in this thesis. / We first study the joint power allocation and relay selection problem in cooperative communication. This problem is complex due to its combinatorial nature. In order to avoid high information overhead and system complexity while at the same time maintain system performance, we introduce a new concept called “relay selection degree bound“. Moreover, since in large scale cooperative communication network, collecting information and centralized control would be very difficult, we resort to distributed algorithms that can be easily implemented in practice. / We further consider the soft QoS control problem in multiple access network. Here we consider the situation where the users have quality of service(QoS) requirements, i.e., each user has a target rate for its application. Since the resources in the system are limited, these requirements will result in the infeasibility of the whole system if there are too many users. We aim at optimizing the performance of the whole system while this kind of infeasibility happens. We will see how distributed algorithms can work for this problem and give us desired results. / We finally consider the downlink beamforming problem where there are two kind of users in the system: priority users and non-priority users. We maximize the non-priority users performance while at the same time satisfying the priority users’ QoS requirements first. Here we adopt heterogeneous beamforming scheme to complete the task. Since the problem is NP hard, relaxation is done for efficient solutions. / Detailed summary in vernacular field only. / Detailed summary in vernacular field only. / Detailed summary in vernacular field only. / Detailed summary in vernacular field only. / Fang, Haoran. / Thesis (M.Phil.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2012. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 76-81). / Abstracts also in Chinese. / Abstract --- p.i / Acknowledgement --- p.iv / Chapter 1 --- Introduction --- p.1 / Chapter 1.1 --- Motivation --- p.1 / Chapter 1.2 --- Background --- p.3 / Chapter 1.2.1 --- Wireless Communication Schemes --- p.3 / Chapter 1.2.2 --- Mathematical Preliminaries --- p.9 / Chapter 1.3 --- Outline of the Thesis --- p.11 / Chapter 2 --- Resource Allocation for Cooperative Communication Networks --- p.13 / Chapter 2.1 --- Chapter Introduction --- p.13 / Chapter 2.2 --- system model and problem formulation --- p.16 / Chapter 2.3 --- optimal power allocation scheme for arbitrary configuration --- p.20 / Chapter 2.4 --- Relay selection in the MAC layer --- p.24 / Chapter 2.4.1 --- Algorithm Design --- p.24 / Chapter 2.4.2 --- Distributed Implementation of The Relay Selection Algorithm --- p.29 / Chapter 2.5 --- Numerical Results --- p.33 / Chapter 2.5.1 --- The Convergence of Distributed Power Allocation Algorithm --- p.33 / Chapter 2.5.2 --- Performance of The Overall Cross Layer Solution --- p.34 / Chapter 2.5.3 --- Improvements of Heuristic Markov algorithm --- p.36 / Chapter 2.6 --- Chapter Conclusions --- p.38 / Chapter 3 --- Soft QoS Control in Multiple Access Network --- p.39 / Chapter 3.1 --- Introduction --- p.39 / Chapter 3.2 --- system model --- p.41 / Chapter 3.3 --- Feasibility check and soft QoS control --- p.43 / Chapter 3.3.1 --- Feasibility Check --- p.43 / Chapter 3.3.2 --- Soft QoS Control --- p.45 / Chapter 3.3.3 --- Distributed Soft QoS Control --- p.47 / Chapter 3.3.4 --- Numerical Results --- p.53 / Chapter 3.4 --- Chapter Conclusion --- p.57 / Chapter 4 --- Heterogeneous resource allocation via downlink beamforming --- p.58 / Chapter 4.1 --- Introduction --- p.58 / Chapter 4.2 --- system model --- p.60 / Chapter 4.3 --- heterogeneous resource allocation via beamforming --- p.62 / Chapter 4.3.1 --- Relaxation and problem analysis --- p.62 / Chapter 4.3.2 --- Randomization for final solutions --- p.66 / Chapter 4.4 --- Numerical Results --- p.69 / Chapter 4.5 --- Conclusion --- p.70 / Chapter 5 --- Conclusions and Future Work --- p.73 / Chapter 5.1 --- Conclusions --- p.73 / Chapter 5.2 --- Future Work --- p.74 / Bibliography --- p.76

"We are in an era of big data, sensors, and monitoring technology. One consequence of this technology is the continuous generation of massive volumes of streaming data. To support this, stream processing systems have emerged. These systems must produce results while meeting near-real time response obligations. However, computation intensive processing on high velocity streams is challenging. Stream arrival rates are often unpredictable and can fluctuate. This can cause systems to not always be able to process all incoming data within their required response time.Yet inherently some results may be much more significant than others. The delay or complete neglect of producing certain highly significant results could result in catastrophic consequences. Unfortunately, this critical problem of targeted prioritized processing in overloaded environments remains largely unaddressed to date. In this talk, I will describe four key challenges that my dissertation successfully tackled. First, I address the problem of optimally processing the most significant tuples identified by the user at compile-time before less critical ones. Second, I propose a new aggregate operator that increases the accuracy of aggregate results produced for TP systems. Third, I address the problem of identifying and pulling forward significant tuples at run-time via dynamic determinants. Fourth, I design multi-input operators, such as the join operator, which produce multi-stream results in significance order. My experimental studies explore a rich diversity of workloads, queries, and data sets, including real data streams. The results substantiate that my approaches are a significant improvement over the state-of-the-art approaches."