In an approximately synchronized (AS) code-division multiple-access (CDMA) communication system, zero correlation zone (ZCZ) sequences can be used as its spreading sequences so that the system suppresses multiple access interference (MAI) and multi-path interference (MPI) fully and synchronously. In this letter, the mutually orthogonal (MO) ZCZ polyphase sequence sets proposed by one of the authors are improved, and the resultant ZCZ sequences in each set arrive at the theoretical bound regarding ZCZ sequences under some conditions. Therefore, the improved MO ZCZ sequence sets are optimal.

This paper investigates construction methods of perfect 16-QAM sequences and arrays, since such sequences and arrays play quite an important role in synchronization of communication systems making use of 16-QAM signals. The method used for obtaining the results is to establish a relationship between the known perfect quaternary sequences/arrays and the required ones so that the former is transformed into the latter. Consequently, the sufficient conditions for implementing the required transformations are derived, and several examples are given. Our methods can provide perfect 16-QAM sequences with lengths 2, 4, 8, and 16, which are given in Table A·1 and infinite families of perfect 16-QAM arrays, whose existing sizes up to dimension 5 and volume 2304 are listed in Tables A·2 and A·3.

This paper proposes a new algorithm named Adaptive Running Spectrum Filtering (ARSF) to restore the amplitude spectra of speech corrupted by additive noises. Based on the pre-hand noise estimation, adaptive filtering is used in speech modulation spectra according to the noise conditions. The periodic structures in the amplitude spectra are kept against noise distortion. Since the amplitude spectral structures contain the information of fundamental frequency, which is the inverse of pitch period, ARSF algorithm is added into robust pitch detection to increase the accuracy. Compared with the conventional methods, experimental results show that the proposed method significantly improves the robustness of pitch detection against noise conditions with several types and SNRs.

In an orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) communication system, two users use the same frequencies and number of sub-carriers so as to increase spectrum efficiency. When the codewords employed by them form a Golay complementary sequence (CS) mate, this system enjoys the upper bound of peak-to-mean envelope power ratio (PMEPR) as low as 4. This letter presents a construction method for producing S16-QAM and A16-QAM Golay CS mates, which arrives at the upper bound 4 of PMEPR. And when used as a Golay CS pair, they have an upper bound 2 of PMEPR, which is the same ones in both [18] and [17]. However, both cannot produce such mates.

This letter presents a framework, including two constructions, for yielding several types of sequences with optimal autocorrelation properties. Only by simply choosing proper coefficients in constructions and optimal known sequences, two constructions transform the chosen sequences into optimally required ones with two or four times periods as long as the original sequences', respectively. These two constructions result in binary and quaternary sequences with optimal autocorrelation values (OAVs), perfect QPSK+ sequences, and multilevel perfect sequences, depending on choices of the known sequences employed. In addition, Construction 2 is a generalization of Construction B in [5] so that the number of distinct sequences from the former is larger than the one from the latter.

Based on the number of cyclotomy of order eight, a class of balanced almost 8-QAM sequences with odd prime periods is presented. The resultant sequences have low two-level nontrivial autocorrelation values, and their distribution is determined. Furthermore, the smallest possible absolute sidelobes (SPASs) of autocorrelation functions of balanced almost 8-QAM sequences are derived. Compared with the obtained SPASs, some of the proposed sequences is optimal or suboptimal.

The approximately synchronized code-division multiple-access (CDMA) communication system, using the QAM sequences with zero correlation zone (ZCZ) as its spreading sequences, not only can remove the multiple access interference (MAI) and multi-path interference (MPI) synchronously, but also has a higher transmission data rate than the one using traditional ZCZ sequences with the same sequence length. Based on Gray mapping and the known binary ZCZ sequences, in this letter, six families of 16-QAM sequences with ZCZ are presented. When the binary ZCZ sequences employed by this letter arrive at the theoretical bound on the binary ZCZ sequences, and their family size is a multiple of 4 or 2, two of the resultant six 16-QAM sequence sets satisfy the bound referred to above as well.

A novel construction of complementary sequences with multi-width zero cross-correlation zone (ZCCZ) is presented based on the interleaving iteration of a basic kernel set. The presented multi-width ZCCZ complementary (MWZC) sequences can be divided into multiple sequence groups, the correlation functions of which possess one-width intragroup ZCCZ and multi-width intergroup ZCCZ. When an arbitrary orthogonal sequence set with set size equal to sequence length is used as a basic kernel set, the constructed MWZC sequence set and the combination sets of specific subsets with each subset including several groups can be optimal with respect to the theoretical bound on set size. In addition, the MWZC sequence set includes complementary sequence sets with one-width or two-width ZCCZ as special subsets, and allows a more flexible choice of sequence parameters.

This paper proposes a robust and fast lyric search method for music information retrieval (MIR). The effectiveness of lyric search systems based on full-text retrieval engines or web search engines is highly compromised when the queries of lyric phrases contain incorrect parts due to mishearing. To improve the robustness of the system, the authors introduce acoustic distance, which is computed based on a confusion matrix of an automatic speech recognition experiment, into Dynamic-Programming (DP)-based phonetic string matching to identify the songs that the misheard lyric phrases refer to. An evaluation experiment verified that the search accuracy is increased by 4.4% compared with the conventional method. Furthermore, in this paper a two-pass search algorithm is proposed to realize real-time execution. The algorithm pre-selects the probable candidates using a rapid index-based search in the first pass and executes a DP-based search process with an adaptive termination strategy in the second pass. Experimental results show that the proposed search method reduced processing time by more than 86.2% compared with the conventional methods for the same search accuracy.

In an OFDM communication system using quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM) signals, peak envelope powers (PEPs) of the transmitted signals can be well controlled by using QAM Golay complementary sequence pairs (CSPs). In this letter, by making use of a new construction, a family of new 16-QAM Golay CSPs of length N=2m (integer m≥2) with binary inputs is presented, and all the resultant pairs have the PEP upper bound 2N. However, in the existing such pairs from other references their PEP upper bounds can arrive at 3.6N when the worst case happens. In this sense, novel pairs are good candidates for OFDM applications.

In contemporary communications, Golay, periodic and Z- complementary sequence sets play a very important role, since such sequence sets possess impulse-like or zero correlation zone (ZCZ) autocorrelation. On the other hand, the advantages of the signals over the quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM) constellation are more and more prominent. Hence, the design of such sequence sets over the QAM constellation has turned into one of the all-important issues in communications. Therefore, the construction methods of such sequence sets over the 16-QAM constellation are investigated, in this letter, and our goals are arrived at by the known quaternary Golay, periodic and Z- complementary sequence sets. Finally, many examples illuminate the validity of the proposed methods.

This paper presents a miniaturized transformer-based ultra-low-power (ULP) LC-VCO with embedded supply pushing reduction techniques for IoT applications in 65-nm CMOS process. To reduce the on-chip area, a compact transformer patterned ground shield (PGS) is implemented. The transistors with switchable capacitor banks and associated components are placed underneath the transformer, which further shrinking the on-chip area. To lower the power consumption of VCO, a gm-stacked LC-VCO using the transformer embedded with PGS is proposed. The transformer is designed to provide large inductance to obtain a robust start-up within limited power consumption. Avoiding implementing an off/on-chip Low-dropout regulator (LDO) which requires additional voltage headroom, a low-power supply pushing reduction feedback loop is integrated to mitigate the current variation and thus the oscillation amplitude and frequency can be stabilized. The proposed ULP TF-based LC-VCO achieves phase noise of -114.8dBc/Hz at 1MHz frequency offset and 16kHz flicker corner with a 103µW power consumption at 2.6GHz oscillation frequency, which corresponds to a -193dBc/Hz VCO figure-of-merit (FoM) and only occupies 0.12mm2 on-chip area. The supply pushing is reduced to 2MHz/V resulting in a -50dBc spur, while 5MHz sinusoidal ripples with 50mVPP are added on the DC supply.

Compressive sensing (CS) shows that a sparse or compressible signal can be exactly recovered from its linear measurements at a rate significantly lower than the Nyquist rate. As an extreme case, 1-bit compressive sensing (1-bit CS) states that an original sparse signal can be recovered from the 1-bit measurements. In this paper, we intrduce a Fast and Accurate Two-Stage (FATS) algorithm for 1-bit compressive sensing. Simulations show that FATS not only significantly increases the signal reconstruction speed but also improves the reconstruction accuracy.

We consider the problem of sparse signal recovery from 1-bit measurements. Due to the noise present in the acquisition and transmission process, some quantized bits may be flipped to their opposite states. These sign flips may result in severe performance degradation. In this study, a novel algorithm, termed HISTORY, is proposed. It consists of Hamming support detection and coefficients recovery. The HISTORY algorithm has high recovery accuracy and is robust to strong measurement noise. Numerical results are provided to demonstrate the effectiveness and superiority of the proposed algorithm.

A unified construction for transforming binary sequences of balance or unbalance into quaternary sequences is presented. On the one hand, when optimal and balanced binary sequences with even period are employed, our construction is exactly the same Jang, et al.'s and Chung, et al.'s ones, which result in balanced quaternary sequences with optimal autocorrelation magnitude. On the other hand, when ideal and balanced binary sequences with odd period N are made use of, our construction produces new balanced quaternary sequences with optimal autocorrelation value (OAV), in which there are N distinct sequences in terms of cyclic shift equivalence, and includes Tang, et al.'s and Jang, et al.'s ones as special cases. In addition, when binary sequences without period 2n-1 or balance are employed, the transformation of Jang, et al.'s method is invalid, however, the proposed construction works very good. As a consequence, this unified construction allows us to construct optimal and balanced quaternary sequences from ideal/optimal balanced binary sequences with arbitrary period.

This letter presents three methods for producing 8-QAM+ sequences. The first method transforms a ternary complementary sequence set (CSS) with even number of sub-sequences into an 8-QAM+ periodic CSS with both of the period and the number of sub-sequences unaltered. The second method results in an 8-QAM+ aperiodic CSS with confining neither the period nor the number of sub-sequences. The third method produces 8-QAM+ periodic sequences having ideal autocorrelation property on the real part of the autocorrelation function. The proposed sequences can be potentially applied to suppression of multiple access interference or synchronization in a communication system.

Based on quadriphase perfect sequences and their cyclical shift versions, three families of almost perfect 16-QAM sequences are presented. When one of two time shifts chosen equals half a period of quadriphase sequence employed and another is zero, two of the proposed three sequence families possess the property that their out-of-phase autocorrelation function values vanish except one. At the same time, to the other time shifts, the nontrivial autocorrelation function values in three families are zero except two or four. In addition, two classes of periodic complementary sequence (PCS) pairs over the 16-QAM constellation, whose autocorrelation is similar to the one of conventional PCS pairs, are constructed as well.

This paper improves the family size of quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM) complementary sequences with binary inputs. By employing new mathematical description: B-type-2 of 4q-QAM constellation (integer q ≥ 2), a new construction yielding 4q-QAM complementary sequences (CSs) with length 2m (integer m ≥ 2) is developed. The resultant sequences include the known QAM CSs with binary inputs as special cases, and the family sizes of new sequences are approximately 22·2q-4q-1(22·2q-3-1) times as many as the known. Also, both new sequences and the known have the same the peak envelope power (PEP) upper bounds, when they are used in an orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing communication system.

This paper presents a high jitter performance injection-locked clock multiplier (ILCM) using an ultra-low power (ULP) voltage-controlled oscillator (VCO) for IoT application in 65-nm CMOS. The proposed transformer-based VCO achieves low flicker noise corner and sub-100µW power consumption. Double cross-coupled NMOS transistors sharing the same current provide high transconductance. The network using high-Q factor transformer (TF) provides a large tank impedance to minimize the current requirement. Thanks to the low current bias with a small conduction angle in the ULP VCO design, the proposed TF-based VCO's flicker noise can be suppressed, and a good PN can be achieved in flicker region (1/f3) with sub-100µW power consumption. Thus, a high figure-of-merit (FoM) can be obtained at both 100kHz and 1MHz without additional inductor. The proposed VCO achieves phase noise of -94.5/-115.3dBc/Hz at 100kHz/1MHz frequency offset with a 97µW power consumption, which corresponds to a -193/-194dBc/Hz VCO FoM at 2.62GHz oscillation frequency. The measurement results show that the 1/f3 corner is below 60kHz over the tuning range from 2.57GHz to 3.40GHz. Thanks to the proposed low power VCO, the total ILCM achieves 78 fs RMS jitter while using a high reference clock. A 960 fs RMS jitter can be achieved with a 40MHz common reference and 107µW corresponding power.

In wireless sensor networks (WSN), communication interference and the energy limitation of sensor nodes seriously hamper the network performance such as throughput and network lifetime. In this paper, we focus on the Successive Interference Cancellation (SIC) and Wireless Energy Transmission (WET) technology aiming to design a heuristic power control algorithm and an efficient cross-layer strategy to realize concurrency communication and improve the network throughput, channel utilization ratio and network lifetime. We realize that the challenge of this problem is that joint consideration of communication interference and energy shortage makes the problem model more complicated. To solve the problem efficiently, we adopt link scheduling strategy, time-slice scheduling scheme and energy consumption optimization protocol to construct a cross-layer optimization problem, then use an approximate linearization method to transform it into a linear problem which yields identical optimal value and solve it to obtain the optimal work strategy of wireless charging equipment (WCE). Simulation results show that adopting SIC and WCE can greatly improve communication capability and channel utilization ratio, and increase throughput by 200% to 500% while prolonging the network lifetime.