In this work, we demonstrate the offline FPGA realization of both recurrent and feedforward neural network (NN)-based equalizers for nonlinearity compensation in coherent optical transmission systems. First, we present a realization pipeline showing the conversion of the models from Python libraries to the FPGA chip synthesis and implementation. Then, we review the main alternatives for the hardware implementation of nonlinear activation functions. The main results are divided into three parts: a performance comparison, an analysis of how activation functions are implemented, and a report on the complexity of the hardware. The performance in Q-factor is presented for the cases of bidirectional long-short-term memory coupled with convolutional NN (biLSTM + CNN) equalizer, CNN equalizer, and standard 1-StpS digital back-propagation (DBP) for the simulation and experiment propagation of a single channel dual-polarization (SC-DP) 16QAM at 34 GBd along 17x70km of LEAF. The biLSTM+CNN equalizer provides a similar result to DBP and a 1.7 dB Q-factor gain compared with the chromatic dispersion compensation baseline in the experimental dataset. After that, we assess the Q-factor and the impact of hardware utilization when approximating the activation functions of NN using Taylor series, piecewise linear, and look-up table (LUT) approximations. We also show how to mitigate the approximation errors with extra training and provide some insights into possible gradient problems in the LUT approximation. Finally, to evaluate the complexity of hardware implementation to achieve 400G throughput, fixed-point NN-based equalizers with approximated activation functions are developed and implemented in an FPGA.

To circumvent the non-parallelizability of recurrent neural network-based equalizers, we propose knowledge distillation to recast the RNN into a parallelizable feedforward structure. The latter shows 38\% latency decrease, while impacting the Q-factor by only 0.5dB.

在本文中，提出了一种新的方法，该方法允许基于神经网络（NN）均衡器的低复杂性发展，以缓解高速相干光学传输系统中的损伤。在这项工作中，我们提供了已应用于馈电和经常性NN设计的各种深层模型压缩方法的全面描述和比较。此外，我们评估了这些策略对每个NN均衡器的性能的影响。考虑量化，重量聚类，修剪和其他用于模型压缩的尖端策略。在这项工作中，我们提出并评估贝叶斯优化辅助压缩，其中选择了压缩的超参数以同时降低复杂性并提高性能。总之，通过使用模拟和实验数据来评估每种压缩方法的复杂性及其性能之间的权衡，以完成分析。通过利用最佳压缩方法，我们表明可以设计基于NN的均衡器，该均衡器比传统的数字背部传播（DBP）均衡器具有更好的性能，并且只有一个步骤。这是通过减少使用加权聚类和修剪算法后在NN均衡器中使用的乘数数量来完成的。此外，我们证明了基于NN的均衡器也可以实现卓越的性能，同时仍然保持与完整的电子色色散补偿块相同的复杂性。我们通过强调开放问题和现有挑战以及未来的研究方向来结束分析。

在本文中，我们提供了一种系统的方法来评估和比较数字信号处理中神经网络层的计算复杂性。我们提供并链接四个软件到硬件的复杂性度量，定义了不同的复杂度指标与层的超参数的关系。本文解释了如何计算这四个指标以进行馈送和经常性层，并定义在这种情况下，我们应该根据我们是否表征了面向更软件或硬件的应用程序来使用特定的度量。新引入的四个指标之一，称为“添加和位移位数（NAB）”，用于异质量化。 NABS不仅表征了操作中使用的位宽的影响，还表征了算术操作中使用的量化类型。我们打算这项工作作为与神经网络在实时数字信号处理中应用相关的复杂性估计级别（目的）的基线，旨在统一计算复杂性估计。

FPGA中首次实施了针对非线性补偿的经常性和前馈神经网络均衡器，其复杂度与分散均衡器的复杂度相当。我们证明，基于NN的均衡器可以胜过1个速度的DBP。

人工神经网络的许多现代应用随之而来的是大量层，使传统的数字实施越来越复杂。光学神经网络在高带宽处提供并行处理，但面临噪声积累的挑战。我们在这里提出了一种新型的神经网络，使用随机共振作为体系结构的固有部分，并证明了以给定性能准确性大量减少所需神经元数量的可能性。我们还表明，这种神经网络对噪声的影响更强大。

优化在离散变量上的高度复杂的成本/能源功能是不同科学学科和行业的许多公开问题的核心。一个主要障碍是在硬实例中的某些变量子集之间的出现，导致临界减慢或集体冻结了已知的随机本地搜索策略。通常需要指数计算工作来解冻这种变量，并探索配置空间的其他看不见的区域。在这里，我们通过开发自适应梯度的策略来介绍一个量子启发的非本球非识别蒙特卡罗（NMC）算法，可以有效地学习成本函数的关键实例的几何特征。该信息随行使用，以构造空间不均匀的热波动，用于以各种长度尺度集体未填充变量，规避昂贵的勘探与开发权衡。我们将算法应用于两个最具挑战性的组合优化问题：随机k可满足（K-SAT）附近计算阶段转换和二次分配问题（QAP）。我们在专业的确定性求解器和通用随机求解器上观察到显着的加速和鲁棒性。特别是，对于90％的随机4-SAT实例，我们发现了最佳专用确定性算法无法访问的解决方案，该算法（SP）具有最强的10％实例的解决方案质量的大小提高。我们还通过最先进的通用随机求解器（APT）显示出在最先进的通用随机求解器（APT）上的时间到溶液的两个数量级改善。

Designing experiments often requires balancing between learning about the true treatment effects and earning from allocating more samples to the superior treatment. While optimal algorithms for the Multi-Armed Bandit Problem (MABP) provide allocation policies that optimally balance learning and earning, they tend to be computationally expensive. The Gittins Index (GI) is a solution to the MABP that can simultaneously attain optimality and computationally efficiency goals, and it has been recently used in experiments with Bernoulli and Gaussian rewards. For the first time, we present a modification of the GI rule that can be used in experiments with exponentially-distributed rewards. We report its performance in simulated 2- armed and 3-armed experiments. Compared to traditional non-adaptive designs, our novel GI modified design shows operating characteristics comparable in learning (e.g. statistical power) but substantially better in earning (e.g. direct benefits). This illustrates the potential that designs using a GI approach to allocate participants have to improve participant benefits, increase efficiencies, and reduce experimental costs in adaptive multi-armed experiments with exponential rewards.

Modelling and forecasting real-life human behaviour using online social media is an active endeavour of interest in politics, government, academia, and industry. Since its creation in 2006, Twitter has been proposed as a potential laboratory that could be used to gauge and predict social behaviour. During the last decade, the user base of Twitter has been growing and becoming more representative of the general population. Here we analyse this user base in the context of the 2021 Mexican Legislative Election. To do so, we use a dataset of 15 million election-related tweets in the six months preceding election day. We explore different election models that assign political preference to either the ruling parties or the opposition. We find that models using data with geographical attributes determine the results of the election with better precision and accuracy than conventional polling methods. These results demonstrate that analysis of public online data can outperform conventional polling methods, and that political analysis and general forecasting would likely benefit from incorporating such data in the immediate future. Moreover, the same Twitter dataset with geographical attributes is positively correlated with results from official census data on population and internet usage in Mexico. These findings suggest that we have reached a period in time when online activity, appropriately curated, can provide an accurate representation of offline behaviour.

Existing federated classification algorithms typically assume the local annotations at every client cover the same set of classes. In this paper, we aim to lift such an assumption and focus on a more general yet practical non-IID setting where every client can work on non-identical and even disjoint sets of classes (i.e., client-exclusive classes), and the clients have a common goal which is to build a global classification model to identify the union of these classes. Such heterogeneity in client class sets poses a new challenge: how to ensure different clients are operating in the same latent space so as to avoid the drift after aggregation? We observe that the classes can be described in natural languages (i.e., class names) and these names are typically safe to share with all parties. Thus, we formulate the classification problem as a matching process between data representations and class representations and break the classification model into a data encoder and a label encoder. We leverage the natural-language class names as the common ground to anchor the class representations in the label encoder. In each iteration, the label encoder updates the class representations and regulates the data representations through matching. We further use the updated class representations at each round to annotate data samples for locally-unaware classes according to similarity and distill knowledge to local models. Extensive experiments on four real-world datasets show that the proposed method can outperform various classical and state-of-the-art federated learning methods designed for learning with non-IID data.