In the realm of wireless communication, stochastic modeling of channels is instrumental for the assessment and design of operational systems. Deep learning neural networks (DLNN), including generative adversarial networks (GANs), are being used to approximate wireless Orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) channels with fading and noise, using real measurement data. These models primarily focus on channel output distribution given input, limiting their application scope. DLNN channel models have been tested predominantly on simple simulated channels. In this paper, we build both GANs and feedforward neural networks (FNN) to approximate a more general channel model, which is represented by a conditional probability density function (PDF) of receiving signal or power of node receiving power, where d is communication distance. The stochastic models are trained and tested for the impact of fading channels on transmissions of OFDM QAM modulated signal and transmissions of general signal regardless of modulations. New metrics are proposed for evaluation of modeling accuracy and comparisons of the GAN-based model with the FNN-based model. Extensive experiments on Nakagami fading channel show accuracy and the effectiveness of the approaches.

The real-time quantification of the effect of a wireless channel on the transmitting signal is crucial for the analysis and the intelligent design of wireless communication systems for various services. Recent mechanisms to model channel characteristics independent of coding, modulation, signal processing, etc., using deep learning neural networks are promising solutions. However, the current approaches are neither statistically accurate nor able to adapt to the changing environment. In this paper, we propose a new approach that combines a deep learning neural network with a mixture density network model to derive the conditional probability density function (PDF) of receiving power given a communication distance in general wireless communication systems. Furthermore, a deep transfer learning scheme is designed and implemented to allow the channel model to dynamically adapt to changes in communication environments. Extensive experiments on Nakagami fading channel model and Lognormal shadowing channel model with path loss and noise show that the new approach is more statistically accurate, faster, and more robust than the previous deep learning-based channel models.

Knowledge tracing is the task of understanding student’s knowledge acquisition processes by estimating whether to solve the next question correctly or not. Most deep learning-based methods tackle this problem by identifying hidden representations of knowledge states from learning histories. However, due to the sparse interactions between students and questions, the hidden representations can be easily over-fitted and often fail to capture student’s knowledge states accurately. This paper introduces a contrastive learning framework for knowledge tracing that reveals semantically similar or dissimilar examples of a learning history and stimulates to learn their relationships. To deal with the complexity of knowledge acquisition during learning, we carefully design the components of contrastive learning, such as architectures, data augmentation methods, and hard negatives, taking into account pedagogical rationales. Our extensive experiments on six benchmarks show statistically significant improvements from the previous methods. Further analysis shows how our methods contribute to improving knowledge tracing performances.

We propose a new architecture of the capsule network called the ladder capsule network, which has an alternative building block to the dynamic routing algorithm in the capsule network (Sabour et al., 2017). Motivated by the need for using only important capsules during training for robust performance, we first introduce a new layer called the pruning layer, which removes irrelevant capsules. Based on the selected capsules, we construct higher-level capsule outputs. Subsequently, to capture the part-whole spatial relationships, we introduce another new layer called the ladder layer, the outputs of which are regressed lower-level capsule outputs from higher-level capsules. Unlike the capsule network adopting the routing-by-agreement, the ladder capsule network uses backpropagation from a loss function to reconstruct the lower-level capsule outputs from higher-level capsules; thus, the ladder layer implements the reverse directional inference of the agreement/disagreement mechanism of the capsule network. The experiments on MNIST demonstrate that the ladder capsule network learns an equivariant representation and improves the capability to extrapolate or generalize to pose variations.