Active Learning for High-Dimensional Binary Features

Erbium-doped fiber amplifier (EDFA) is an optical amplifier/repeater device used to boost the intensity of optical signals being carried through fiber optic communication networks. A highly accurate EDFA model – to predict the signal gain for each channel – is required because of its crucial role in optical network management and optimization. EDFA channel inputs (i.e. features) either carry signal or are idle, therefore they can be treated as binary features. However, channel outputs (and the corresponding signal gains) are continuous values. Labeled training data is very expensive to collect for EDFA devices, therefore we devise an active learning strategy suitable for binary features to overcome this issue. We propose to take advantage of sparse linear models to simplify the predictive model. This approach improves signal gain prediction and accelerates active learning query generation. We show the performance of our proposed active learning strategies on simulated data and real EDFA data.