The sparse representation models have been widely applied in image super-resolution. The certain optimization problem is supposed and can be solved by the iterative shrinkage algorithm. During iteration, the update of dictionaries and similar patches is necessary to obtain prior knowledge to better solve such ill-conditioned problem as image super-resolution. However, both the processes of iteration and update often spend a lot of time, which will be a bottleneck in practice. To solve it, in this paper, we present the concept of image quality difference based on generalized Gaussian distribution feature which has the same trend with the variation of Peak Signal to Noise Ratio (PSNR), and we update dictionaries or similar patches from the termination strategy according to the adaptive threshold of the image quality difference. Based on this point, we present two sparse representation algorithms for image super-resolution, one achieves the further improvement in image quality and the other decreases running time on the basis of image quality assurance. Experimental results also show that our quantitative results on several test datasets are in line with exceptions.

This letter proposes a cooperative communication scheme with pre-coding in order to improve a performance in a wireless communication system. In a conventional scheme, a performance of the system is degraded due to the signal attenuation by the path loss and inter-cell interference (ICI). The proposed scheme uses two relays in order to obtain a diversity gain. Additionally, the proposed scheme uses a constructive spatial phase coding (SPC) using the phase relation of the channels in order to obtain an improved diversity gain. Therefore, the proposed scheme can prevent the performance degradation caused by the path loss. When a mobile is located in the cell edge, the signal suffers from the ICI by the other signals transmitted from a neighboring base station. In the proposed scheme, the other signals broadcast from neighboring base station are destructively superimposed by using the destructive SPC scheme. And then the power of the destructively superimposed signal is reduced. Therefore, the proposed scheme can reduce the ICI effect in the cell edge. Also, the destructively superimposed signal does not cause the performance degradation of other mobiles in the neighboring cell. The simulation results show that the bit error performance of the proposed scheme is better than the conventional scheme.

We propose a new configuration for phased array antennas. The proposal uses radiation pattern reconfigurable antennas as the antenna element to improve the gain on the scanning angle and to suppress the grating lobes of sparse phased array antennas. This configuration can reduce the element number because the desired gain of the total array can be achieved by using fewer elements. We demonstrate the concept by designing a radiation pattern reconfigurable Yagi-Uda antenna. PIN diode switches are added to the parasitic elements to change director and reflector. The switches of multiple array elements are concurrently controlled by just a single one-pair line. This control structure is simple and can be applied to large-scale arrays. The proposed antenna yields an element gain that almost matches the theoretical limit across about half the coverage, even if the element spacing is enlarged to 1λ. If the switch states are interchanged, the gain in the mirror direction can be increased. We design a 48-element array and compare its gain against those of normal dipole antennas. We also fabricate the proposed antenna and demonstrate radiation pattern switching.

This paper proposes a recommendation-based bandwidth calendaring system for packet transport networks. The system provides a user-portal interface with which users can directly reserve packet transport resources. In this regard, the system recommends multi-grade (e.g., multi-price) reservation plans. By adjusting grades of plans in accordance with network resource utilization, this system provides not only reservation flexibility for users but also efficient utilization of network resources. For recommending multi-grade plans, pre-computation of resource allocation is required for every time slot. Because the number of time slots is huge, we also propose an algorithm for fast computation of resource allocation based on time-slot aggregation. Our evaluation suggests that our algorithm can produce a sub-optimal solution within quasi-real time for a large-scale network. We also show that our recommendation-based system can increase the service-provider-revenue in peaky traffic demand environments.

Case studies have reported that pedestrian detection methods using vehicle radar are not complete systems because each system has specific limitations at the cost of the calculating amounts, the system complexity or the range resolution. In this letter, we proposed a novel pedestrian detection method by template matching using Gabor filter bank, which was evaluated based on the data observed by 24GHz UWB radar.

We study a use of Gaussian kernels with a wide range of scales for nonlinear function estimation. The estimation task can then be split into two sub-tasks: (i) model selection and (ii) learning (parameter estimation) under the selected model. We propose a fully-adaptive and all-in-one scheme that jointly carries out the two sub-tasks based on the multikernel adaptive filtering framework. The task is cast as an asymptotic minimization problem of an instantaneous fidelity function penalized by two types of block l1-norm regularizers. Those regularizers enhance the sparsity of the solution in two different block structures, leading to efficient model selection and dictionary refinement. The adaptive generalized forward-backward splitting method is derived to deal with the asymptotic minimization problem. Numerical examples show that the scheme achieves the model selection and learning simultaneously, and demonstrate its striking advantages over the multiple kernel learning (MKL) method called SimpleMKL.

Wireless caching is one of the promising technologies to mitigate the traffic burden of cellular networks and the large cost of deploying a higher volume of wired backhaul by introducing caching storage. In the manner of “cutting” wired equipments, all types of vehicles can be readily leveraged as serving access points with caching storage, where their moving nature should be taken into account to improve latency and data throughput. In this paper, we consider a mobility-aware vehicular caching which has a role in offloading delay-tolerable contents from cellular networks. We first clarify the influence of mobility in cellular caching networks, then set the mobility-aware optimization problem of vehicular caching to carry on delay-tolerable contents. Trace-driven numerical results based on rural and urban topographies show that, in presence of individual demand for delay-tolerable contents, the proposed vehicular caching scheme enhances the quality-of-service (QoS) (maximally twofold) relying on the contents delivery being centrally or distributedly controlled.

In this paper, a new class of low-hit-zone (LHZ) frequency-hopping sequence sets (LHZ FHS sets) is constructed based upon the Cartesian product, and the periodic partial Hamming correlation within its LHZ are studied. Studies have shown that the new LHZ FHS sets are optimal according to the periodic partial Hamming correlation bounds of FHS set, and some known FHS sets are the special cases of this new construction.

Group device-to-device (GD2D) communication is a good solution for data dissemination to devices in proximity without imposing a heavy load on cellular networks. We propose an operating strategy for GD2D communication regarding the mode selection and the power allocation in order to maximize the sum rate of the overall system satisfying QoS requirements of both cellular and D2D links. We derive the maximum sum rate for each class of distance profile of participating devices in the interference-dominant scenario. Using the result, the operating strategy of GD2D communication can be determined in a table-look-up manner.

It is expected that a large number of different objects, such as sensor devices and consumer electronics, will be connected to future networks. For such networks, we propose a name resolution method for directly specifying a condition on a set of attribute-value pairs of real-world information without needing prior knowledge of the uniquely assigned name of a target object, e.g., a URL. For name resolution, we need an algorithm to find the target object(s) satisfying a query condition on multiple attributes. To address the problem that multi-attribute searching algorithms may not work well when the number of attributes (i.e., dimensions) d increases, which is related to the curse of dimensionality, we also propose a probabilistic searching algorithm to reduce searching time at the expense of a small probability of false positives. With this algorithm, we choose permutation pattern(s) of d attributes to use the first K (K « d) ones to search objects so that they contain relevant attributes with a high probability. We argue that our algorithm can identify the target objects at a false positive rate less than 10-6 and a few percentages of tree-searching cost compared with a naive d-dimensional searching under a certain condition.

With the proliferation of hand-held devices in recent years, mobile video streaming has become an extremely popular application. However, Internet video streaming to mobile devices faces several problems, such as unstable connections, long latency, high jitter, etc. We present a system, OptVid, which enhances the user's experiences of video streaming service on cellular networks. OptVid takes the user's profile and provides seamless adaptive bitrate streaming by leveraging the video transcoding solution. It provides very agile bitrate adaptation, especially in the mobile scenario where the wireless channel is not stable. We prototype video transcoding on a WiMAX testbed to bridge the gap between the wireless channel capacity and the video quality. Our evaluations reveal that OptVid provides better user experience than conventional schemes in terms of PSNR, video stalls, and buffering time. OptVid does not require any additional storage since it transcodes videos on-the-fly upon receiving requests and delivers them directly to the client.

This paper proposes novel simplified maximum likelihood detection for XOR physical layer network coding (XOR-PNC) in bi-directional wireless relay systems with Quaternary phase shift keying (QPSK). The proposed detection applies unitary precoding to achieve superior performance without computationally prohibitive exhaustive search. The performance of the XOR employing the proposed simplified MLD with the precoding is analyzed in relay systems with orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM). The performance of the XOR-PNC with the proposed techniques is also evaluated by computer simulation. The XOR-PNC with the proposed techniques achieves about 7dB better performance than the amplify-and-forward physical layer network coding in the 5-path fading channel at BER=10-4. It is also shown that the XOR-PNC with the proposed techniques achieves better performance than that without precoding.

The diffraction by a thin material strip is analyzed for the H-polarized plane wave incidence using the Wiener-Hopf technique together with approximate boundary conditions. An asymptotic solution is obtained for the case where the thickness and the width of the strip are small and large compared with the wavelength, respectively. The scattered field is evaluated asymptotically based on the saddle point method and a far field expression is derived. Scattering characteristics are discussed in detail via numerical results of the radar cross section.

We propose a novel improved characteristic basis function method (IP-CBFM) for accurately analysing the radar cross section (RCS). This new IP-CBFM incorporates the effect of higher-order multiple scattering and has major influences in analyzing monostatic RCS (MRCS) of single incidence and bistatic RCS (BRCS) problems. We calculated the RCS of two scatterers and could confirm that the proposed IP-CBFM provided higher accuracy than the conventional method while significantly reducing the number of CBF.

A broadband approach to estimate the relative permittivity of dielectric cuboids has been proposed for materials of weak frequency dispersive characteristic. Our method involves a numerical iterative scheme with appropriate initial values carefully selected to solve for the relative permittivity in a wide range of frequencies. Good agreements between our method and references have been observed for nylon and acrylic samples. An applicable range relation between the minimal thickness, the frequency range and the dielectric property of the material has also been discussed.

This paper presents a prototype of a 3D imaging step-frequency radar system at 10-20GHz suitable for the nondestructive inspection of the walls of wooden houses. Using this prototype, it is possible to obtain data for 3D imaging with a single simple scan and make 3D volume images of braces — broken or not — in the walls of wooden houses using synthetic aperture radar processing. The system is a multistatic radar composed of a one-dimensional array antenna (32 transmitting and 32 receiving antennas, which are resistively loaded printed bowtie antennas) and is able to acquire frequency domain data for all the transmitting and receiving antenna pairs, i.e., 32×32=1024 pairs, in 33ms per position. On the basis of comparisons between two array antenna prototype designs, we investigated the optimal distance between a transmitting array and a receiving array to reduce the direct coupling effect. We produced a prototype multistatic radar system and used it to measure different types of wooden targets in two experiments. In the first experiment, we measured plywood bars behind a decorated gypsum board, simulating a broken wooden brace inside a house wall. In the second experiment, we measured a wooden brace made of Japanese cypress as a target inside a model of a typical (wooden) Japanese house wall. The results of both experiments demonstrate the imaging capability of the radar prototype for nondestructive inspection of the insides of wooden house walls.

In this paper, a periodic perfect conductor is used to investigate the solution for the metallic scatterer problem in soil. We analyzed the pulse reflection responses from the periodic perfect conductor in two dispersion media by varying the parameters for the permittivity properties of the complex dielectric constants, and also investigated the influence of both the dielectric and conductor using a combination of the fast inversion Laplace transform (FILT) method and the point matching method (PMM). In addition, we verified the accuracy of the present method with exact solutions for the transient scattering problem for a perfect conductor plate in the dispersion media.

We propose a digital image watermarking method satisfying information hiding criteria (IHC) for robustness against JPEG compression, cropping, scaling, and rotation. When a stego-image is cropped, the marking positions of watermarks are unclear. To detect the position in a cropped stego-image, a marker or synchronization code is embedded with the watermarks in a lattice pattern. Attacks by JPEG compression, scaling, and rotation cause errors in extracted watermarks. Against such errors, the same watermarks are repeatedly embedded in several areas. The number of errors in the extracted watermarks can be reduced by using a weighted majority voting (WMV) algorithm. To correct residual errors in output of the WMV algorithm, we use a high-performance error-correcting code: a low-density parity-check (LDPC) code constructed by progressive edge-growth (PEG). In computer simulations using the IHC ver. 4 the proposed method could a bit error rate of 0, the average PSNR was 41.136 dB, and the computational time for synchronization recovery was less than 10 seconds. The proposed method can thus provide high image quality and fast synchronization recovery.

In the evolution of wireless networks such as wireless sensor networks, mobile ad-hoc networks, and delay/disruption tolerant networks, the Store-Carry-Forward (SCF) message relaying paradigm has been commonly featured and studied with much attention. SCF networking is essential for offsetting the deficiencies of intermittent and range limited communication environments because it allows moving wireless communication nodes to act as “mobile relay nodes”. Such relay nodes can store/carry/process messages, wait for a better opportunity for transmission, and finally forward the messages to other nodes. This paper starts with a short overview of SCF routing and then examines two SCF networking scenarios. The first one deals with large content delivery across multiple islands using existing infrastructural transportation networks (e.g., cars and ferries) in which mobility is uncontrollable from an SCF viewpoint. Simulations show how a simple coding technique can improve flooding-based SCF. The other scenario looks at a prototype system of unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) for high-quality video surveillance from the sky in which mobility is partially controllable from an SCF viewpoint. Three requisite techniques in this scenario are highlighted - fast link setup, millimeter wave communications, and use of multiple links. Through these examples, we discuss the benefits and issues of the practical use of SCF networking-based systems.

In this paper, we propose a technique to improve the gain of ultra wide-band (UWB) planar antennas by using low profile reflectors based on frequency selective surfaces (FSS). This technique not only enhances the gain of the planar UWB antennas but also guarantees a constant gain with weak variation across the entire UWB while keeping their attractive merits such as planar structure and easy fabrication. An UWB coplanar waveguide (CPW) fed antenna is installed above the proposed reflectors, to prove the effectiveness of the proposed technique. As a result, a constant gain is achieved across a very large bandwidth.