10,16,2021

 Machine Learning for Intelligent Optical Networks: A Comprehensive Survey2020-03-11   ${\displaystyle \cong }$ With the rapid development of Internet and communication systems, both in services and technologies, communication networks have been suffering increasing complexity. It is imperative to improve intelligence in communication network, and several aspects have been incorporating with Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML). Optical network, which plays an important role both in core and access network in communication networks, also faces great challenges of system complexity and the requirement of manual operations. To overcome the current limitations and address the issues of future optical networks, it is essential to deploy more intelligence capability to enable autonomous and exible network operations. ML techniques are proved to have superiority on solving complex problems; and thus recently, ML techniques have been used for many optical network applications. In this paper, a detailed survey of existing applications of ML for intelligent optical networks is presented. The applications of ML are classified in terms of their use cases, which are categorized into optical network control and resource management, and optical networks monitoring and survivability. The use cases are analyzed and compared according to the used ML techniques. Besides, a tutorial for ML applications is provided from the aspects of the introduction of common ML algorithms, paradigms of ML, and motivations of applying ML. Lastly, challenges and possible solutions of ML application in optical networks are also discussed, which intends to inspire future innovations in leveraging ML to build intelligent optical networks. Application of Machine Learning in Wireless Networks: Key Techniques and Open Issues2019-02-28   ${\displaystyle \cong }$ As a key technique for enabling artificial intelligence, machine learning (ML) is capable of solving complex problems without explicit programming. Motivated by its successful applications to many practical tasks like image recognition, both industry and the research community have advocated the applications of ML in wireless communication. This paper comprehensively surveys the recent advances of the applications of ML in wireless communication, which are classified as: resource management in the MAC layer, networking and mobility management in the network layer, and localization in the application layer. The applications in resource management further include power control, spectrum management, backhaul management, cache management, beamformer design and computation resource management, while ML based networking focuses on the applications in clustering, base station switching control, user association and routing. Moreover, literatures in each aspect is organized according to the adopted ML techniques. In addition, several conditions for applying ML to wireless communication are identified to help readers decide whether to use ML and which kind of ML techniques to use, and traditional approaches are also summarized together with their performance comparison with ML based approaches, based on which the motivations of surveyed literatures to adopt ML are clarified. Given the extensiveness of the research area, challenges and unresolved issues are presented to facilitate future studies, where ML based network slicing, infrastructure update to support ML based paradigms, open data sets and platforms for researchers, theoretical guidance for ML implementation and so on are discussed. Strategies and Principles of Distributed Machine Learning on Big Data2015-12-31   ${\displaystyle \cong }$ The rise of Big Data has led to new demands for Machine Learning (ML) systems to learn complex models with millions to billions of parameters, that promise adequate capacity to digest massive datasets and offer powerful predictive analytics thereupon. In order to run ML algorithms at such scales, on a distributed cluster with 10s to 1000s of machines, it is often the case that significant engineering efforts are required --- and one might fairly ask if such engineering truly falls within the domain of ML research or not. Taking the view that Big ML systems can benefit greatly from ML-rooted statistical and algorithmic insights --- and that ML researchers should therefore not shy away from such systems design --- we discuss a series of principles and strategies distilled from our recent efforts on industrial-scale ML solutions. These principles and strategies span a continuum from application, to engineering, and to theoretical research and development of Big ML systems and architectures, with the goal of understanding how to make them efficient, generally-applicable, and supported with convergence and scaling guarantees. They concern four key questions which traditionally receive little attention in ML research: How to distribute an ML program over a cluster? How to bridge ML computation with inter-machine communication? How to perform such communication? What should be communicated between machines? By exposing underlying statistical and algorithmic characteristics unique to ML programs but not typically seen in traditional computer programs, and by dissecting successful cases to reveal how we have harnessed these principles to design and develop both high-performance distributed ML software as well as general-purpose ML frameworks, we present opportunities for ML researchers and practitioners to further shape and grow the area that lies between ML and systems. Learning by Design: Structuring and Documenting the Human Choices in Machine Learning Development2021-05-03   ${\displaystyle \cong }$ The influence of machine learning (ML) is quickly spreading, and a number of recent technological innovations have applied ML as a central technology. However, ML development still requires a substantial amount of human expertise to be successful. The deliberation and expert judgment applied during ML development cannot be revisited or scrutinized if not properly documented, and this hinders the further adoption of ML technologies--especially in safety critical situations. In this paper, we present a method consisting of eight design questions, that outline the deliberation and normative choices going into creating a ML model. Our method affords several benefits, such as supporting critical assessment through methodological transparency, aiding in model debugging, and anchoring model explanations by committing to a pre hoc expectation of the model's behavior. We believe that our method can help ML practitioners structure and justify their choices and assumptions when developing ML models, and that it can help bridge a gap between those inside and outside the ML field in understanding how and why ML models are designed and developed the way they are. The Adversarial Machine Learning Conundrum: Can The Insecurity of ML Become The Achilles' Heel of Cognitive Networks?2019-06-03   ${\displaystyle \cong }$ The holy grail of networking is to create \textit{cognitive networks} that organize, manage, and drive themselves. Such a vision now seems attainable thanks in large part to the progress in the field of machine learning (ML), which has now already disrupted a number of industries and revolutionized practically all fields of research. But are the ML models foolproof and robust to security attacks to be in charge of managing the network? Unfortunately, many modern ML models are easily misled by simple and easily-crafted adversarial perturbations, which does not bode well for the future of ML-based cognitive networks unless ML vulnerabilities for the cognitive networking environment are identified, addressed, and fixed. The purpose of this article is to highlight the problem of insecure ML and to sensitize the readers to the danger of adversarial ML by showing how an easily-crafted adversarial ML example can compromise the operations of the cognitive self-driving network. In this paper, we demonstrate adversarial attacks on two simple yet representative cognitive networking applications (namely, intrusion detection and network traffic classification). We also provide some guidelines to design secure ML models for cognitive networks that are robust to adversarial attacks on the ML pipeline of cognitive networks. Declarative Machine Learning - A Classification of Basic Properties and Types2016-05-19   ${\displaystyle \cong }$ Declarative machine learning (ML) aims at the high-level specification of ML tasks or algorithms, and automatic generation of optimized execution plans from these specifications. The fundamental goal is to simplify the usage and/or development of ML algorithms, which is especially important in the context of large-scale computations. However, ML systems at different abstraction levels have emerged over time and accordingly there has been a controversy about the meaning of this general definition of declarative ML. Specification alternatives range from ML algorithms expressed in domain-specific languages (DSLs) with optimization for performance, to ML task (learning problem) specifications with optimization for performance and accuracy. We argue that these different types of declarative ML complement each other as they address different users (data scientists and end users). This paper makes an attempt to create a taxonomy for declarative ML, including a definition of essential basic properties and types of declarative ML. Along the way, we provide insights into implications of these properties. We also use this taxonomy to classify existing systems. Finally, we draw conclusions on defining appropriate benchmarks and specification languages for declarative ML. Challenges and Pitfalls of Machine Learning Evaluation and Benchmarking2019-06-25   ${\displaystyle \cong }$ An increasingly complex and diverse collection of Machine Learning (ML) models as well as hardware/software stacks, collectively referred to as "ML artifacts", are being proposed - leading to a diverse landscape of ML. These ML innovations proposed have outpaced researchers' ability to analyze, study and adapt them. This is exacerbated by the complicated and sometimes non-reproducible procedures for ML evaluation. A common practice of sharing ML artifacts is through repositories where artifact authors post ad-hoc code and some documentation, but often fail to reveal critical information for others to reproduce their results. This results in users' inability to compare with artifact authors' claims or adapt the model to his/her own use. This paper discusses common challenges and pitfalls of ML evaluation and benchmarking, which can be used as a guideline for ML model authors when sharing ML artifacts, and for system developers when benchmarking or designing ML systems. Examining Machine Learning for 5G and Beyond through an Adversarial Lens2020-09-05   ${\displaystyle \cong }$ Spurred by the recent advances in deep learning to harness rich information hidden in large volumes of data and to tackle problems that are hard to model/solve (e.g., resource allocation problems), there is currently tremendous excitement in the mobile networks domain around the transformative potential of data-driven AI/ML based network automation, control and analytics for 5G and beyond. In this article, we present a cautionary perspective on the use of AI/ML in the 5G context by highlighting the adversarial dimension spanning multiple types of ML (supervised/unsupervised/RL) and support this through three case studies. We also discuss approaches to mitigate this adversarial ML risk, offer guidelines for evaluating the robustness of ML models, and call attention to issues surrounding ML oriented research in 5G more generally. Visual Machine Learning: Insight through Eigenvectors, Chladni patterns and community detection in 2D particulate structures2020-01-02   ${\displaystyle \cong }$ Machine learning (ML) is quickly emerging as a powerful tool with diverse applications across an extremely broad spectrum of disciplines and commercial endeavors. Typically, ML is used as a black box that provides little illuminating rationalization of its output. In the current work, we aim to better understand the generic intuition underlying unsupervised ML with a focus on physical systems. The systems that are studied here as test cases comprise of six different 2-dimensional (2-D) particulate systems of different complexities. It is noted that the findings of this study are generic to any unsupervised ML problem and are not restricted to materials systems alone. Three rudimentary unsupervised ML techniques are employed on the adjacency (connectivity) matrix of the six studied systems: (i) using principal eigenvalue and eigenvectors of the adjacency matrix, (ii) spectral decomposition, and (iii) a Potts model based community detection technique in which a modularity function is maximized. We demonstrate that, while solving a completely classical problem, ML technique produces features that are distinctly connected to quantum mechanical solutions. Dissecting these features help us to understand the deep connection between the classical non-linear world and the quantum mechanical linear world through the kaleidoscope of ML technique, which might have far reaching consequences both in the arena of physical sciences and ML. Machine Learning Tips and Tricks for Power Line Communications2019-06-06   ${\displaystyle \cong }$ A great deal of attention has been recently given to Machine Learning (ML) techniques in many different application fields. This paper provides a vision of what ML can do in Power Line Communications (PLC). We firstly and briefly describe classical formulations of ML, and distinguish deterministic from statistical learning models with relevance to communications. We then discuss ML applications in PLC for each layer, namely, for characterization and modeling, for the development of physical layer algorithms, for media access control and networking. Finally, other applications of PLC that can benefit from the usage of ML, as grid diagnostics, are analyzed. Illustrative numerical examples are reported to serve the purpose of validating the ideas and motivate future research endeavors in this stimulating signal/data processing field. Insights into Performance Fitness and Error Metrics for Machine Learning2020-05-17   ${\displaystyle \cong }$ Machine learning (ML) is the field of training machines to achieve high level of cognition and perform human-like analysis. Since ML is a data-driven approach, it seemingly fits into our daily lives and operations as well as complex and interdisciplinary fields. With the rise of commercial, open-source and user-catered ML tools, a key question often arises whenever ML is applied to explore a phenomenon or a scenario: what constitutes a good ML model? Keeping in mind that a proper answer to this question depends on a variety of factors, this work presumes that a good ML model is one that optimally performs and best describes the phenomenon on hand. From this perspective, identifying proper assessment metrics to evaluate performance of ML models is not only necessary but is also warranted. As such, this paper examines a number of the most commonly-used performance fitness and error metrics for regression and classification algorithms, with emphasis on engineering applications. Machine Learning in the Air2019-04-28   ${\displaystyle \cong }$ Thanks to the recent advances in processing speed and data acquisition and storage, machine learning (ML) is penetrating every facet of our lives, and transforming research in many areas in a fundamental manner. Wireless communications is another success story -- ubiquitous in our lives, from handheld devices to wearables, smart homes, and automobiles. While recent years have seen a flurry of research activity in exploiting ML tools for various wireless communication problems, the impact of these techniques in practical communication systems and standards is yet to be seen. In this paper, we review some of the major promises and challenges of ML in wireless communication systems, focusing mainly on the physical layer. We present some of the most striking recent accomplishments that ML techniques have achieved with respect to classical approaches, and point to promising research directions where ML is likely to make the biggest impact in the near future. We also highlight the complementary problem of designing physical layer techniques to enable distributed ML at the wireless network edge, which further emphasizes the need to understand and connect ML with fundamental concepts in wireless communications. Towards a Robust and Trustworthy Machine Learning System Development2021-01-08   ${\displaystyle \cong }$ Machine Learning (ML) technologies have been widely adopted in many mission critical fields, such as cyber security, autonomous vehicle control, healthcare, etc. to support intelligent decision-making. While ML has demonstrated impressive performance over conventional methods in these applications, concerns arose with respect to system resilience against ML-specific security attacks and privacy breaches as well as the trust that users have in these systems. In this article, firstly we present our recent systematic and comprehensive survey on the state-of-the-art ML robustness and trustworthiness technologies from a security engineering perspective, which covers all aspects of secure ML system development including threat modeling, common offensive and defensive technologies, privacy-preserving machine learning, user trust in the context of machine learning, and empirical evaluation for ML model robustness. Secondly, we then push our studies forward above and beyond a survey by describing a metamodel we created that represents the body of knowledge in a standard and visualized way for ML practitioners. We further illustrate how to leverage the metamodel to guide a systematic threat analysis and security design process in a context of generic ML system development, which extends and scales up the classic process. Thirdly, we propose future research directions motivated by our findings to advance the development of robust and trustworthy ML systems. Our work differs from existing surveys in this area in that, to the best of our knowledge, it is the first of its kind of engineering effort to (i) explore the fundamental principles and best practices to support robust and trustworthy ML system development; and (ii) study the interplay of robustness and user trust in the context of ML systems. MLSys: The New Frontier of Machine Learning Systems2019-12-01   ${\displaystyle \cong }$ Machine learning (ML) techniques are enjoying rapidly increasing adoption. However, designing and implementing the systems that support ML models in real-world deployments remains a significant obstacle, in large part due to the radically different development and deployment profile of modern ML methods, and the range of practical concerns that come with broader adoption. We propose to foster a new systems machine learning research community at the intersection of the traditional systems and ML communities, focused on topics such as hardware systems for ML, software systems for ML, and ML optimized for metrics beyond predictive accuracy. To do this, we describe a new conference, MLSys, that explicitly targets research at the intersection of systems and machine learning with a program committee split evenly between experts in systems and ML, and an explicit focus on topics at the intersection of the two. Proposed Guidelines for the Responsible Use of Explainable Machine Learning2019-11-29   ${\displaystyle \cong }$ Explainable machine learning (ML) enables human learning from ML, human appeal of automated model decisions, regulatory compliance, and security audits of ML models. Explainable ML (i.e. explainable artificial intelligence or XAI) has been implemented in numerous open source and commercial packages and explainable ML is also an important, mandatory, or embedded aspect of commercial predictive modeling in industries like financial services. However, like many technologies, explainable ML can be misused, particularly as a faulty safeguard for harmful black-boxes, e.g. fairwashing or scaffolding, and for other malevolent purposes like stealing models and sensitive training data. To promote best-practice discussions for this already in-flight technology, this short text presents internal definitions and a few examples before covering the proposed guidelines. This text concludes with a seemingly natural argument for the use of interpretable models and explanatory, debugging, and disparate impact testing methods in life- or mission-critical ML systems. Kafka-ML: connecting the data stream with ML/AI frameworks2020-07-16   ${\displaystyle \cong }$ Machine Learning (ML) and Artificial Intelligence (AI) have a dependency on data sources to train, improve and make predictions through their algorithms. With the digital revolution and current paradigms like the Internet of Things, this information is turning from static data into continuous data streams. However, most of the ML/AI frameworks used nowadays are not fully prepared for this revolution. In this paper, we proposed Kafka-ML, an open-source framework that enables the management of TensorFlow ML/AI pipelines through data streams (Apache Kafka). Kafka-ML provides an accessible and user-friendly Web User Interface where users can easily define ML models, to then train, evaluate and deploy them for inference. Kafka-ML itself and its deployed components are fully managed through containerization technologies, which ensure its portability and easy distribution and other features such as fault-tolerance and high availability. Finally, a novel approach has been introduced to manage and reuse data streams, which may lead to the (no) utilization of data storage and file systems. Usage of Network Simulators in Machine-Learning-Assisted 5G/6G Networks2020-05-17   ${\displaystyle \cong }$ Without any doubt, Machine Learning (ML) will be an important driver of future communications due to its foreseen performance in front of complex problems. However, the application of ML to networking systems raises concerns among network operators and other stakeholders, especially regarding trustworthiness and reliability. In this paper, we devise the role of network simulators for bridging the gap between ML and communications systems. Network simulators can facilitate the adoption of ML-based solutions by means of training, testing, and validating ML models before being applied to an operative network. Finally, we showcase the potential benefits of integrating network simulators into ML-assisted communications through a proof-of-concept testbed implementation of a residential Wi-Fi network. Communication-Efficient and Distributed Learning Over Wireless Networks: Principles and Applications2020-08-06   ${\displaystyle \cong }$ Machine learning (ML) is a promising enabler for the fifth generation (5G) communication systems and beyond. By imbuing intelligence into the network edge, edge nodes can proactively carry out decision-making, and thereby react to local environmental changes and disturbances while experiencing zero communication latency. To achieve this goal, it is essential to cater for high ML inference accuracy at scale under time-varying channel and network dynamics, by continuously exchanging fresh data and ML model updates in a distributed way. Taming this new kind of data traffic boils down to improving the communication efficiency of distributed learning by optimizing communication payload types, transmission techniques, and scheduling, as well as ML architectures, algorithms, and data processing methods. To this end, this article aims to provide a holistic overview of relevant communication and ML principles, and thereby present communication-efficient and distributed learning frameworks with selected use cases. Machine Learning in Nano-Scale Biomedical Engineering2020-08-05   ${\displaystyle \cong }$ Machine learning (ML) empowers biomedical systems with the capability to optimize their performance through modeling of the available data extremely well, without using strong assumptions about the modeled system. Especially in nano-scale biosystems, where the generated data sets are too vast and complex to mentally parse without computational assist, ML is instrumental in analyzing and extracting new insights, accelerating material and structure discoveries and designing experience as well as supporting nano-scale communications and networks. However, despite these efforts, the use of ML in nano-scale biomedical engineering remains still under-explored in certain areas and research challenges are still open in fields such as structure and material design and simulations, communications and signal processing, and bio-medicine applications. In this article, we review the existing research regarding the use of ML in nano-scale biomedical engineering. In more detail, we first identify and discuss the main challenges that can be formulated as ML problems. These challenges are classified in the three aforementioned main categories. Next, we discuss the state of the art ML methodologies that are used to countermeasure the aforementioned challenges. For each of the presented methodologies, special emphasis is given to its principles, applications and limitations. Finally, we conclude the article with insightful discussions, that reveals research gaps and highlights possible future research directions. A Rigorous Machine Learning Analysis Pipeline for Biomedical Binary Classification: Application in Pancreatic Cancer Nested Case-control Studies with Implications for Bias Assessments2020-09-08   ${\displaystyle \cong }$ Machine learning (ML) offers a collection of powerful approaches for detecting and modeling associations, often applied to data having a large number of features and/or complex associations. Currently, there are many tools to facilitate implementing custom ML analyses (e.g. scikit-learn). Interest is also increasing in automated ML packages, which can make it easier for non-experts to apply ML and have the potential to improve model performance. ML permeates most subfields of biomedical research with varying levels of rigor and correct usage. Tremendous opportunities offered by ML are frequently offset by the challenge of assembling comprehensive analysis pipelines, and the ease of ML misuse. In this work we have laid out and assembled a complete, rigorous ML analysis pipeline focused on binary classification (i.e. case/control prediction), and applied this pipeline to both simulated and real world data. At a high level, this 'automated' but customizable pipeline includes a) exploratory analysis, b) data cleaning and transformation, c) feature selection, d) model training with 9 established ML algorithms, each with hyperparameter optimization, and e) thorough evaluation, including appropriate metrics, statistical analyses, and novel visualizations. This pipeline organizes the many subtle complexities of ML pipeline assembly to illustrate best practices to avoid bias and ensure reproducibility. Additionally, this pipeline is the first to compare established ML algorithms to 'ExSTraCS', a rule-based ML algorithm with the unique capability of interpretably modeling heterogeneous patterns of association. While designed to be widely applicable we apply this pipeline to an epidemiological investigation of established and newly identified risk factors for pancreatic cancer to evaluate how different sources of bias might be handled by ML algorithms.