Software Fault-Proneness Analysis based on Composite Developer-Module Networks

Existing software fault-proneness analysis and prediction models can be categorized into software metrics and visualized approaches. However, the studies of the software metrics solely rely on the quantified data, while the latter fails to reflect the human aspect, which is proven to be a main cause of many failures in various domains. In this paper, we proposed a new analysis model with an improved software network called Composite Developer-Module Network. The network is composed of the linkage of both developers to software modules and software modules to modules to reflect the characteristics and interaction between developers. After the networks of the research objects are built, several different sub-graphs in the networks are derived from analyzing the structures of the sub-graphs that are more fault-prone and further determine whether the software development is in a bad structure, thus predicting the fault-proneness. Our research shows that the different sub-structures are not only a factor in fault-proneness, but also that the complexity of the sub-structure can affect the production of bugs.

*Published in the IEEE Reliability Society Section within IEEE Access.

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A Comprehensive Survey on Cooperative Intersection Management for Heterogeneous Connected Vehicles

Nowadays, with the advancement of technology, world is trending toward high mobility and dynamics. In this context, intersection management (IM) as one of the most crucial elements of the transportation sector demands high attention. Today, road entities including infrastructures, vulnerable road users (VRUs) such as motorcycles, moped, scooters, pedestrians, bicycles, and other types of vehicles such as trucks, buses, cars, emergency vehicles, and railway vehicles like trains or trams are able to communicate cooperatively using vehicle-to-everything (V2X) communications and provide traffic safety, efficiency, infotainment and ecological improvements. In this paper, we take into account different types of intersections in terms of signalized, semi-autonomous (hybrid) and autonomous intersections and conduct a comprehensive survey on various intersection management methods for heterogeneous connected vehicles (CVs). We consider heterogeneous classes of vehicles such as road and rail vehicles as well as VRUs including bicycles, scooters and motorcycles. All kinds of intersection goals, modeling, coordination architectures, scheduling policies are thoroughly discussed. Signalized and semi-autonomous intersections are assessed with respect to these parameters. We especially focus on autonomous intersection management (AIM) and categorize this section based on four major goals involving safety, efficiency, infotainment and environment. Each intersection goal provides an in-depth investigation on the corresponding literature from the aforementioned perspectives. Moreover, robustness and resiliency of IM are explored from diverse points of view encompassing sensors, information management and sharing, planning universal scheme, heterogeneous collaboration, vehicle classification, quality measurement, external factors, intersection types, localization faults, communication anomalies and channel optimization, synchronization, vehicle dynamics and model mismatch, model uncertainties, recovery, security and privacy.

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The Cubli: Modeling and Nonlinear Attitude Control Utilizing Quaternions

This paper covers the modeling and nonlinear attitude control of the Cubli, a cube with three reaction wheels mounted on orthogonal faces that becomes a reaction wheel based 3D inverted pendulum when positioned in one of its vertices. The proposed approach utilizes quaternions instead of Euler angles as feedback control states. A nice advantage of quaternions, besides the usual arguments to avoid singularities and trigonometric functions, is that it allows working out quite complex dynamic equations completely by hand utilizing vector notation. Modeling is performed utilizing Lagrange equations and it is validated through computer simulations and Poinsot trajectories analysis. The derived nonlinear control law is based on feedback linearization technique, thus being time-invariant and equivalent to a linear one dynamically linearized at the given reference. Moreover, it is characterized by only three straightforward tuning parameters. Experimental results are presented.

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IEEE Author Portal Saves IEEE Access Authors Time and Effort

Submitting your article to IEEE Access is now easier than ever. In a few short steps and without having to copy and paste or retype entire sections of your manuscript, what used to take a few hours can now be accomplished in as little as 15-20 minutes for most users. Sign in to the IEEE Author Portal using your IEEE Account. Upload your article, review what’s been captured to confirm the details, and submit it to IEEE Access for peer review. 

Creating an IEEE Account is easy if you happen to need one. Your IEEE Account will also be used for all production-related processes, creating a more streamlined author experience from the point of peer review all the way through to the publication of your article in IEEE Xplore. Author login credentials on any other type of peer review system (ScholarOne, PaperPlaza, PaperCept, etc.) will not grant you access to the IEEE Author Portal; please use your IEEE Account.

Start a new submission to IEEE Access.

Reviewer Best Practices

What should I consider before accepting an invitation to review?

• Is this article in my area of expertise?
• Am I able to provide a quality, in-depth review within 1-2 weeks, in line with the expedited peer review process of IEEE Access (i.e., submission-to-publication time of 4 to 6 weeks)?
• Do I have a conflict of interest with the author(s)? For example, have I worked with them on an article in the past, were any of them my advisors or my students, do we share an institution? If so, I should decline to review. Please note that IEEE Access follows a single-blind peer review process, where the identities of the reviewers are not known to the authors, but the reviewers know the identities of the authors.
• Can I keep the confidentiality of the article? As per Section 8.2.2 of the IEEE Publication Services and Products Board Operations Manual, IEEE requires that reviewers treat the contents of articles under review as confidential information not to be disclosed to others before publication.

If I accept to review, what will I be asked to evaluate?

Reviewers will be asked to answer the following questions when completing a review on an article:

1. Does the paper contribute to the body of knowledge?
2. Is the paper technically sound?
3. Is the subject matter presented in a comprehensive manner?
4. Are the references provided applicable and sufficient? *Please note that suggesting one’s own references as a reviewer if not relevant to the article, or at an excessive level, is unethical and is not permitted.
5. Are there references that are not appropriate for the topic being discussed? If there are, then please indicate which references should be removed.

What type of decision should I recommend?

Since IEEE Access uses a binary decision process, you may recommend decisions of either Accept or Reject. However, IEEE Access does offer two reject options, one where resubmission is allowed, and another where it is not. In the case of allowing resubmission, the authors are not required to resubmit to IEEE Access and may choose to submit elsewhere. The decision options you can choose from when reviewing an article are detailed below:

Accept: Reviewers should only recommend accept if there are minor edits required prior to publication (grammar, minor edits to figures or graphs, etc.).  Ideally, the article should be able to be published as is.  Please keep in mind that when you recommend acceptance of an article, the authors will not be expected to show the changes made.  It is also worth noting that you should only recommend accept if the article fits the criteria for an article to be accepted in IEEE Access (listed in the next question).

Reject (updates required before resubmission): You should recommend this decision if the article has merit but requires updates before it can be published.  If this is the final decision made by the Associate Editor, upon resubmission authors will be required to supply a list of changes made, and a “response to reviewers” document that addresses each reviewer’s concern.  You will be invited to review if the authors choose to submit the revised article. *Please note that IEEE Access allows authors to revise and resubmit their article only one time. 

Reject (do not encourage resubmit):  You should recommend this option if you feel the changes needed are too significant, if additional revision would not improve the manuscript, or if the article was previously rejected (updates required before resubmission) but the authors did not sufficiently address the reviewers’ concerns and the article is still not ready for publication. If the Associate Editor follows this recommendation, the authors will not be permitted to resubmit the article to IEEE Access.

Please keep in mind that, while reviewers provide guidance and a recommendation, Associate Editors use their own judgement in conjunction with the reviewers’ comments to make the final decision.

What are the criteria for an article to be accepted in IEEE Access?

The criteria for an article to be accepted for publication in IEEE Access include:

1. The article should be original writing that enhances and contributes to the existing body of knowledge in the given subject area. Original review articles and surveys are acceptable, even if new data/concepts are not presented, but there must be a clear advance over existing work. **If you have any concerns about plagiarism, please alert the Associate Editor or article administrator immediately. Please do not run the manuscript through any plagiarism software.  Each article submitted to IEEE Access is scanned for plagiarism and evaluated during our thorough prescreening process.
2. Results reported have not been submitted or published elsewhere (although expanded versions of conference publications as well as preprints are eligible for submission).
3. Experiments, statistics, and other analyses are performed to a high technical standard and are described in sufficient detail.
4. Conclusions are presented in an appropriate fashion and are supported by the data.
5. The article is written in Standard English with correct grammar.
6. Appropriate references to related prior published works must be included.
7. The article falls within scope of IEEE Access.

What makes a good quality review?

Summarize the work, comment on its overall merits and drawbacks, and provide constructive, substantial feedback.

Consider the strength of the technical content. Does the literature review provide sufficient background and motivation for the work? Review the theoretical/experimental depth, strength of analysis, quality of supporting data and results. Is there sufficient benchmarking and validation, are the conclusions supported by the data and analysis, is the flow of information logical? Is there enough information in this paper for the experiments to be reproducible? If not, comment on what additional or supplementary information is needed. Are there any major technical flaws?

Comment on the article’s technical presentation and organization. Consider things like structure of the paper, language, writing style, quality of figures and tables, typos, formatting.

Can I ask authors to cite specific references?

Suggesting specific references, including articles you have authored, if not relevant to the article or at an excessive level, is not permitted.

You are expected to check if the references are current and relevant to the subject. If you feel that the authors have overlooked important prior research, we encourage you to recommend particular topic areas, rather than specific articles, to improve their literature review and/or better highlight the advantages over the state-of-the-art. If there are any irrelevant, inappropriate, or unnecessary references, be sure to mention this in your comments to the authors.

We of course realize that sometimes authors may miss crucial references to seminal work, or even very recent publications that the authors would benefit from seeing, so if you are going to recommend specific references while completing the review, please be sure to explain why you believe they are relevant to the work.

What should I consider if I am reviewing a resubmission (i.e., a previously rejected article)?

You should evaluate the updated manuscript, any supplementary information, as well as the authors’ response to reviewers’ document to determine if all your concerns have been addressed, and that you are satisfied with the updates. You may also wish to comment on how well the authors addressed the concerns of the other previous reviewers as well, or if you agree or disagree with the feedback from the other reviewers (based on the response to reviewers provided by the authors).

While we typically ask the original reviewers to take another look at the revised article, sometimes one or more are unavailable. Since IEEE policy requires that every article is reviewed by a minimum of two independent reviewers, we may need to invite a new reviewer on a resubmission. If you are reviewing a previously rejected article and did NOT review an earlier version, we still ask that you evaluate as outlined above and decide whether you have new feedback to provide for the authors.

What is the purpose of “Confidential Comments to Editor”?

If you have thoughts on the article that you prefer the editor not share with the authors, use the space provided.

Can I request a review deadline extension?

Yes, reviewers can request a deadline extension as needed.  Since IEEE Access has an expedited peer review process, we can only provide deadline extensions of 1 – 2 weeks maximum.

What does IEEE Access expect from reviewers?

Reviewers should:

• Be experts of the subject area of the article they agree to review.
• Complete the review within 7 days. Extensions can be given as needed, especially for longer articles.
• Decline the review invitation if they have a conflict of interest (COI) with any of the authors of the article.
• Treat the contents of articles under review as confidential information. Reviewers should not make inappropriate use of the special knowledge that the access to the articles provides.
• Evaluate the unique contributions, technical soundness, and presentation style of the articles. Comment on the overall merits and drawbacks of the manuscript, provide constructive, substantial feedback and make a recommendation (Accept/Reject) to the best of their judgement.
• Judge if the study is well-designed and executed, and if the data provided is sufficient to support the conclusion. Check if the illustrations, tables and graphs support the text.
• Determine if the article makes significant advancement to the field. Please note that IEEE Access articles are not necessarily expected to have a high level of novelty, but they should be distinct from previous publications and technically sound.
• Check if the references are sufficient and applicable. Please note that suggesting one’s own references as a reviewer if not relevant to the article, or at an excessive level, is unethical and is not permitted.
• Alert the Associate Editor, the administrator, or the editorial office if they suspect that any part of the article was plagiarized.
• Practice ethical behavior. Contacting the authors regarding the manuscript while the article is under review is an example of unethical behavior.

Dynamic Network Slice Scaling Assisted by Attention-Based Prediction in 5G Core Network

Network slicing is a key technology in fifth-generation (5G) networks that allows network operators to create multiple logical networks over a shared physical infrastructure to meet the requirements of diverse use cases. Among core functions to implement network slicing, resource management and scaling are difficult challenges. Network operators must ensure the Service Level Agreement (SLA) requirements for latency, bandwidth, resources, etc for each network slice while utilizing the limited resources efficiently, i.e., optimal resource assignment and dynamic resource scaling for each network slice. Existing resource scaling approaches can be classified into reactive and proactive types. The former makes a resource scaling decision when the resource usage of virtual network functions (VNFs) exceeds a predefined threshold, and the latter forecasts the future resource usage of VNFs in network slices by utilizing classical statistical models or deep learning models. However, both have a trade-off between assurance and efficiency. For instance, the lower threshold in the reactive approach or more marginal prediction in the proactive approach can meet the requirements more certainly, but it may cause unnecessary resource wastage. To overcome the trade-off, we first propose a novel and efficient proactive resource forecasting algorithm. The proposed algorithm introduces an attention-based encoder-decoder model for multivariate time series forecasting to achieve high short-term and long-term prediction accuracies. It helps network slices be scaled up and down effectively and reduces the costs of SLA violations and resource overprovisioning. Using the attention mechanism, the model attends to every hidden state of the sequential input at every time step to select the most important time steps affecting the prediction results. We also designed an automated resource configuration mechanism responsible for monitoring resources and automatically adding or removing VNF instances.

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Orthogonal Chirp-Division Multiplexing for Future Converged Optical/Millimeter-Wave Radio Access Networks

Envisaged network scaling in the beyond 5G and 6G era makes the optical transport of high bandwidth radio signals a critical aspect for future radio access networks (RANs), while the move toward wireless transmission in millimeter-wave (mm-wave) and terahertz (THz) environments is pushing a departure from the currently deployed orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) modulation scheme. In this work, the orthogonal chirp-division multiplexing (OCDM) waveform is experimentally deployed in a converged optical/mm-wave transmission system comprising 10 km analog radio-over-fiber (A-RoF) transmission, remote mm-wave generation and 2 m wireless transmission at 60 GHz. System performance is evaluated in terms of both bit error ratio (BER) and error vector magnitude (EVM) for a wideband 4 GHz 16 Gb/s signal and 128/256-Quadrature Amplitude Modulation (QAM) mobile signals compatible with 5G new radio numerology. OCDM is shown to outperform OFDM by offering enhanced robustness to channel frequency selectivity, enabling performances below the forward error correction (FEC) limit in all cases and exhibiting an EVM as low as 3.4% in the case of the mobile signal transmission.

*Published in the IEEE Photonics Society Section within IEEE Access.

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Doppler Spectrum Measurement Platform for Narrowband V2V Channels

This paper describes the implementation of a Doppler spectrum measurement platform for narrowband frequency-dispersive vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) channels. The platform is based on a continuous-wave (CW) channel sounding approach widely used for path-loss and large-scale fading measurements, but whose effectiveness to measure the Doppler spectrum of V2V channels is not equally known. This channel sounding method is implemented using general-purpose hardware in a configuration that is easy to replicate and that enables a partial characterization of frequency-dispersive V2V channels at a fraction of the cost of a dedicated channel sounder. The platform was assessed in a series of field experiments that collected empirical data of the instantaneous Doppler spectrum, the mean Doppler shift, the Doppler spread, the path-loss profile, and the large-scale fading distribution of V2V channels under realistic driving conditions. These experiments were conducted in a highway scenario near San Luis Potosí, México, at two different carrier frequencies, one at 760MHz and the other at 2,500MHz. The transmitting and receiving vehicles were moving in the same direction at varying speeds, ranging from 20 to 130km/h and dictated by the unpredictable traffic conditions. The obtained results demonstrate that the presented measurement platform enables the spectral characterization of narrowband V2V channels and the identification of their Doppler signatures in relevant road-safety scenarios, such as those involving overtaking maneuvers and rapid vehicles approaching the transmitter and receiver in the opposite direction.

*Published in the IEEE Vehicular Society Section within IEEE Access.

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Rapid and Flexible 3D Printed Finger Prostheses With Soft Fingertips: Technique and Clinical Application

We present a method for fabricating passive finger prostheses with soft fingertips by utilizing 3D scanning and 3D printing with flexible filament. The proposed method uses multi-process printing at varying infill levels to provide soft fingertips to emulate biological fingers. The proposed method also enables rapid prototyping of finger prostheses, and the flexibility to change interphalangeal joint angles to fit the prostheses for different manipulation and occupational therapy tasks. The entire process of designing and fabricating the prostheses can be conducted in one day. The presented technique uses scan data of the intact side fingers to provide the shape and contour of the finger prostheses, while the socket is designed based on the scan data of the amputation side. The paper presents the developed technique and its clinical application. Experiments are conducted to measure the stiffness of the printed material at varying infill levels and the stiffness of the printed fingertips. The results are compared to measurements of biological fingertip stiffness from the literature. The clinical application includes two cases, one case with distal phalanx loss on the thumb, index, and middle fingers, and one case with distal and middle phalanx loss on the middle and ring fingers. Fitting was successful for both recipients and they were both able to use the prostheses successfully.

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A Novel Symmetric Stacked Autoencoder for Adversarial Domain Adaptation Under Variable Speed

At present, most of the fault diagnosis methods with extensive research and good diagnostic effect are based on the premise that the sample distribution is consistent. However, in reality, the sample distribution of rotating machinery is inconsistent due to variable working conditions, and most of the fault diagnosis algorithms have poor diagnostic effects or even invalid. To dispose the above problems, a novel symmetric stacked autoencoder (NSSAE) for adversarial domain adaptation is proposed. Firstly, the symmetric stacked autoencoder network with shared weights is used as the feature extractor to extract features which can better express the original signal. Secondly, adding domain discriminator that constituting adversarial with feature extractor to enhance the ability of feature extractor to extract domain invariant features, thus confusing the domain discriminator and making it unable to correctly distinguish the features of the two domains. Finally, to assist the adversarial training, the maximum mean discrepancy (MMD) is added to the last layer of the feature extractor to align the features of the two domains in the high-dimensional space. The experimental results show that, under the condition of variable speed, the NSSAE model can extract domain invariant features to achieve the transfer between domains, and the transfer diagnosis accuracy is high and the stability is strong.

*Published in the IEEE Reliability Society Section within IEEE Access.

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