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Abstract-The characteristics of the power line communication (PLC) channel are difficult to model due to the heterogeneity of the networks and the lack of common wiring practices. To get the full variability of the PLC channel, random channel generators are of great importance for the design and testing of communication algorithms.In this respect, we propose a random channel generator that is based on the top-down approach. Basically, we describe the multipath propagation and the coupling effects with an analytical model. We introduce the variability into a restricted set of parameters, and, finally, we fit the model to a set of measured channels. The proposed model enables a closed-form description of both the mean path loss profile and the statistical correlation function of the channel frequency response.As an example of application, we apply the procedure to a set of in-home measured channels in the band 2-100 MHz whose statistics is available in the literature. The measured channels are divided into nine classes according to their channel capacity. We provide the parameters for the random generation of channels for all nine classes, and we show that the results are consistent with the experimental ones.Finally, we merge the classes to capture the whole heterogeneity of in-home PLC channels. In detail, we introduce the class occurrence probability, and we present a random channel generator that targets the ensemble of all nine classes. The statistics of the composite set of channels is also studied, and it is compared to the results of experimental measurement campaigns in the literature.

The growing availability of data from robotic and laparoscopic surgery has created new opportunities to investigate the modeling and assessment of surgical technical performance and skill. However, previously published methods for modeling and assessment have not proven to scale well to large and diverse data sets. In this paper, we describe a new approach for simultaneous detection of gestures and skill that can be generalized to different surgical tasks. It consists of two parts: (1) descriptive curve coding (DCC), which transforms the surgical tool motion trajectory into a coded string using accumulated Frenet frames, and (2) common string model (CSM), a classification model using a similarity metric computed from longest common string motifs. We apply DCC-CSM method to detect surgical gestures and skill levels in two kinematic datasets (collected from the da Vinci surgical robot). DCC-CSM method classifies gestures and skill with 87.81% and 91.12% accuracy, respectively.

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Background Short-term forecasts of infectious disease burden can contribute to situational awareness and aid capacity planning. Based on best practice in other fields and recent insights in infectious disease epidemiology, one can maximise the predictive performance of such forecasts if multiple models are combined into an ensemble. Here we report on the performance of ensembles in predicting COVID-19 cases and deaths across Europe between 08 March 2021 and 07 March 2022. Methods We used open-source tools to develop a public European COVID-19 Forecast Hub. We invited groups globally to contribute weekly forecasts for COVID-19 cases and deaths reported from a standardised source over the next one to four weeks. Teams submitted forecasts from March 2021 using standardised quantiles of the predictive distribution. Each week we created an ensemble forecast, where each predictive quantile was calculated as the equally-weighted average (initially the mean and then from 26th July the median) of all individual models’ predictive quantiles. We measured the performance of each model using the relative Weighted Interval Score (WIS), comparing models’ forecast accuracy relative to all other models. We retrospectively explored alternative methods for ensemble forecasts, including weighted averages based on models’ past predictive performance. Results Over 52 weeks we collected and combined up to 28 forecast models for 32 countries. We found a weekly ensemble had a consistently strong performance across countries over time. Across all horizons and locations, the ensemble performed better on relative WIS than 84% of participating models’ forecasts of incident cases (with a total N=862), and 92% of participating models’ forecasts of deaths (N=746). Across a one to four week time horizon, ensemble performance declined with longer forecast periods when forecasting cases, but remained stable over four weeks for incident death forecasts. In every forecast across 32 countries, the ensemble outperformed most contributing models when forecasting either cases or deaths, frequently outperforming all of its individual component models. Among several choices of ensemble methods we found that the most influential and best choice was to use a median average of models instead of using the mean, regardless of methods of weighting component forecast models. Conclusions Our results support the use of combining forecasts from individual models into an ensemble in order to improve predictive performance across epidemiological targets and populations during infectious disease epidemics. Our findings further suggest that median ensemble methods yield better predictive performance more than ones based on means. Our findings also highlight that forecast consumers should place more weight on incident death forecasts than incident case forecasts at forecast horizons greater than two weeks. Code and data availability All data and code are publicly available on Github: covid19-forecast-hub-europe/euro-hub-ensemble.