• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.49 no.6
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• pp.1172-1180
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• 2017

The application of Monte Carlo (MC) to large-scale fixed-source problems has recently become possible with new hybrid methods that automate generation of parameters for variance reduction techniques. Two common variance reduction techniques, weight windows and source biasing, have been automated and popularized by the consistent adjoint-driven importance sampling (CADIS) method. This method uses the adjoint solution from an inexpensive deterministic calculation to define a consistent set of weight windows and source particles for a subsequent MC calculation. One of the motivations for source consistency is to avoid the splitting or rouletting of particles at birth, which requires computational resources. However, it is not always possible or desirable to implement such consistency, which results in inconsistent source biasing. This paper develops an original framework that mathematically expresses the coupling of the weight window and source biasing techniques, allowing the authors to explore the impact of inconsistent source sampling on the variance of MC results. A numerical experiment supports this new framework and suggests that certain classes of problems may be relatively insensitive to inconsistent source sampling schemes with moderate levels of splitting and rouletting.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.38 no.3
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• pp.225-230
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• 2006

With the advent of inexpensive computing power over the past two decades, applications of Monte Carlo radiation transport techniques have proliferated dramatically. At Los Alamos, the Monte Carlo codes MCNP5 and MCNPX are used routinely on personal computer platforms for radiation shielding analysis and dosimetry calculations. These codes feature a rich palette of variance reduction (VR) techniques. The motivation of VR is to exchange user efficiency for computational efficiency. It has been said that a few hours of user time often reduces computational time by several orders of magnitude. Unfortunately, user time can stretch into the many hours as most VR techniques require significant user experience and intervention for proper optimization. It is the purpose of this paper to outline VR strategies, tested in practice, optimized for several common radiation shielding tasks, with the hope of reducing user setup time for similar problems. A strategy is defined in this context to mean a collection of MCNP radiation transport physics options and VR techniques that work synergistically to optimize a particular shielding task. Examples are offered in the areas of source definition, skyshine, streaming, and transmission.

• Journal of the Korea Society for Simulation
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• v.10 no.2
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• pp.61-74
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• 2001

The reliability evaluation of the large scale network becomes very complicate according to the growing size of network. Moreover if the reliability is not constant but follows probability distribution function, it is almost impossible to compute them in theory. This paper studies the network evaluation methods in order to overcome such difficulties. For this an efficient path set algorithm which seeks the path set connecting the start and terminal nodes efficiently is developed. Also, various variance reduction techniques are applied to compute the system reliability to enhance the simulation performance. As a numerical example, a large scale network is given. The comparisons of the path set algorithm and the variance reduction techniques are discussed.

• Proceedings of the KIEE Conference
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• 1996.07b
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• pp.887-889
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• 1996

This paper presents Variance Reduction Techniques of the Monte Carlo Simulation considering Non-Exponential Distribution for Power System Reliability Evaluation. Generally, the components consisting of power system are assumed to be exponentially distributed in their state residence time. Sometimes, however, this assumption may cause a lot of errors in the reliability index evaluation. Non-exponential distribution can be approximated by a sum of several Erlangian distributions, whose inverse transform is easily calculated by using composition method. This paper proposes a new approach to deal with the non-exponential distribution and to reduce the simulation time by virtue of Variance Reduction Techniques such as Control Variate and Antithetic Variate.

• Journal of the Korea Society for Simulation
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• v.14 no.3
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• pp.129-136
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• 2005

We develop a variance reduction technique applicable in one simulation experiment whose purpose is to estimate the parameters of a first order linear model. This method utilizes the control variates obtained during the course of simulation run under Schruben and Margolin's method (S-M method). The performance of this method is shown to be similar in estimating the main effects, and to be superior to S-M method in estimating the overall mean response in a given model. We consider that a proposed method may yield a better result than S-M method if selected control variates are highly correlated with the response at each design point.

• Journal of the Korea Society of Computer and Information
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• v.23 no.12
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• pp.21-26
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• 2018

As the large amount of data can be efficiently stored, the methods extracting meaningful features from big data has become important. Especially, the techniques of converting high- to low-dimensional data are crucial for the 'Data visualization'. In this study, principal component analysis (PCA; linear dimensionality reduction technique) and Isomap (non-linear dimensionality reduction technique) are introduced and applied to neural big data obtained by the functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). First, we investigate how much the physical properties of stimuli are maintained after the dimensionality reduction processes. We moreover compared the amount of residual variance to quantitatively compare the amount of information that was not explained. As result, the dimensionality reduction using Isomap contains more information than the principal component analysis. Our results demonstrate that it is necessary to consider not only linear but also nonlinear characteristics in the big data analysis.

• Proceedings of the Korea Society for Simulation Conference
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• 2005.05a
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• pp.45-49
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• 2005

본 연구는 시뮬레이션 반응변수가 입력 인자의 선형 1차식으로 표현된 경우에 인자의 파라미터를 효과적으로 추정하기위해 사용될 수 있는 분산감소기법을 제안하였다. 이 기법은 하나의 실험설계에 공통난수와 대조난수를 동시에 사용하는 Schruben과 Margolin의 방법과 시뮬레이션하는 도중에 얻어지는 통제변수를 활용하는 기법을 결합하는 방법으로 시뮬레이션의 효율성을 개선하고자 하였다. 시뮬레이션 결과 제안된 기법은 주어진 모형의 평균 반응치를 추정한 데는 S-M 기법보다 효과적이었으며 인자의 다른 파라미터를 추정하는 데는 S-M 기법과 비슷한 성과를 보이고 있다. 만일 시뮬레이션 과정에서 반응변수와 상관성이 높은 통제변수들을 선택할 수 있는 경우에는 제안된 기법이 S-M 기법보다 보다 파라미터 추정에 효과적일 것으로 판단된다.

• Progress in Medical Physics
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• v.14 no.4
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• pp.240-248
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• 2003

The Monte Carlo calculation is the most accurate means of predicting radiation dose, but its accuracy is accompanied by an increase in the amount of time required to produce a statistically meaningful dose distribution. In this study, the effects on calculation time by introducing variance reduction techniques and increasing computing power, respectively, in the Monte Carlo dose calculation for a 6 MV photon beam from the Varian 600 C/D were estimated when maintaining accuracy of the Monte Carlo calculation results. The EGSnrc­based BEAMnrc code was used to simulate the beam and the EGSnrc­based DOSXYZnrc code to calculate dose distributions. Variance reduction techniques in the codes were used to describe reduced­physics, and a computer cluster consisting of ten PCs was built to execute parallel computing. As a result, time was more reduced by the use of variance reduction techniques than that by the increase of computing power. Because the use of the Monte Carlo dose calculation in clinical practice is yet limited by reducing the computational time only through improvements in computing power, introduction of reduced­physics into the Monte Carlo calculation is inevitable at this point. Therefore, a more active investigation of existing or new reduced­physics approaches is required.

• Journal of the Korea Society for Simulation
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• v.4 no.1
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• pp.25-36
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• 1995

We develop a variance reduction technique in one simulation experiment whose purpose is to estimate the parameters of a first-order linear model. This method utilizes the control variates obtained during the course of simulation run under Schruben and Margolin's method (S-M method). The performance of this method is shown to be similar in estimating the main effects, and to be superior to S-M method in estimating the overall mean response in the hospital simulation experiment. For the general case, we consider that a proposed method may yield a better result than S-M method if selected control variates are highly correlated with the response at each design point.

• Journal of the Korean Data and Information Science Society
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• v.20 no.5
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• pp.869-878
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• 2009

Image restoration techniques such as noise reduction and contrast enhancement have been researched for enhancing a contaminated image by the noise. An image degraded by additive random noise can be enhanced by noise reduction. Sigma filtering is one of the most widely used method to reduce the noise. In this paper, we propose a new sigma filter algorithm based on noise variance estimation which effectively enhances the degraded image by noise. Specifically, the Bartlett test is used to measure the degree of noise with respect to the degree of image feature. Simulation results are also given to show the performance of the proposed algorithm.