I report modulation format conversion technology that maps on-off keying to 4-level pulse amplitude modulation signals. The conversion technology is based on balanced detection and intensity modulation. Two input optical on-off keying signals into a balanced photo detector produce an electrical signal that drives an intensity modulator to generate an optical pulse amplitude modulation signal. Two 20Gbit/s on-off keying signals were successfully converted into a 40Gbit/s pulse amplitude modulation signal.

In this paper, we study the power allocation problem in a relay assisted multi-band underlay cognitive radio network. Such a network allows unlicensed users (secondary users) to access the spectrum bands under a transmission power constraint. Due to the concave increasing property of logarithm function, it is not always wise for secondary users to expend all the transmission power in one band if their aim is to maximize achievable data rate. In particular, we study a scenario where two secondary users and a half-duplexing relay exist with two available bands. The two users choose different bands for direct data transmission and use the other band for relay transmission. By properly allocating the power on two bands, each user may be able to increase its total achievable data rate while satisfying the power constraint. We formulate the power allocation problem as a non-cooperative game and investigate its Nash equilibria. We prove the power allocation game is a supermodular game and that Nash equilibria exist. We further find the best response function of users and propose a best response update algorithm to solve the corresponding dynamic game. Numerical results show the overall performance in terms of achievable rates is improved through our proposed transmission scheme and power allocation algorithm. Our proposed algorithm also shows satisfactory performance in terms of convergence speed.

The power grid defines one of the most important technological networks of our times and has been widely studied as a kind of complex network. It has been developed for more than one century and becomes an extremely huge and seemingly robust system. But it becomes extremely fragile as well because some unexpected minimal failures may lead to sudden and massive blackouts. Many works have been carried out to investigate the structural vulnerability of power grids from the topological point of view based on the complex network theory. This Letter focuses on the structural vulnerability of the power grid under the effect of selective node removal. We propose a new kind of node centrality called overall information centrality (OIC) to guide the node removal attack. We test the effectiveness of our centrality in guiding the node removal based on several IEEE power grids. Simulation results show that, compared with other node centralities such as degree centrality (DC), betweenness centrality (BC) and closeness centrality (CC), our OIC is more effective to guide the node removal and can destroy the power grid in less steps.

We developed an electrically driven near-infrared broadband light source based on self-assembled InAs quantum dots (QDs). By combining emissions from four InAs QD ensembles with controlled emission center wavelengths, electro-luminescence (EL) with a Gaussian-like spectral shape and approximately 85-nm bandwidth was obtained. The peak wavelength of the EL was blue-shifted from approximately 1230 to 1200 nm with increased injection current density (J). This was due to the state-filling effect: sequential filling of the discrete QD electron/hole states by supplied carriers from lower (ground state; GS) to higher (excited state; ES) energy states. The EL intensities of the ES and GS emissions exhibited different J dependence, also because of the state-filling effect. The point-spread function (PSF) deduced from the Fourier-transformed EL spectrum exhibited a peak without apparent side lobes. The half width at half maximum of the PSF was 6.5 µm, which corresponds to the estimated axial resolution of the optical coherence tomography (OCT) image obtained with this light source. These results demonstrate the effectiveness of the QD-based device for realizing noise-reduced high-resolution OCT.

In this paper we present a novel treatment of cellular automata (CA) from an algebraic point of view. CA on monoids associated with Σ-algebras are introduced. Then an extension of Hedlund's theorem which connects CA associated with Σ-algebras and continuous functions between prodiscrete topological spaces on the set of configurations are discussed.

Suppose that we are given two vertex covers C0 and Ct of a graph G, together with an integer threshold k ≥ max{|C0|, |Ct|}. Then, the vertex cover reconfiguration problem is to determine whether there exists a sequence of vertex covers of G which transforms C0 into Ct such that each vertex cover in the sequence is of cardinality at most k and is obtained from the previous one by either adding or deleting exactly one vertex. This problem is PSPACE-complete even for planar graphs. In this paper, we first give a linear-time algorithm to solve the problem for even-hole-free graphs, which include several well-known graphs, such as trees, interval graphs and chordal graphs. We then give an upper bound on k for which any pair of vertex covers in a graph G has a desired sequence. Our upper bound is best possible in some sense.

In distributed storage systems, codes with lower repair locality are much more desirable due to their superiority in reducing the disk I/O complexity of each repair process. Motivated partially by both codes with information (r,δ1)c locality and codes with cooperative (r,l) locality, we propose the concept of codes with information (r,l,δ) locality in this paper. For a linear code C with information (r,l,δ) locality, values at arbitrary l information coordinates of an information set I can be recovered by connecting any of δ existing pairwise disjoint local repair sets with size no more than r, where a local repair set of l coordinates is defined as the set of some other coordinates by which one can recover the values at these l coordinates. We derive a lower bound on the codeword length n for [n,k,d] linear codes with information (r,l,δ) locality. Furthermore, we indicate its tightness for some special cases. Particularly, some existing results can be deduced from our bound by restriction on parameters.

Low pin-count testing is an effective method to reduce test cost. Based on this method multi-site testing, i.e., where multiple devices are tested concurrently, can be supported under the limitation on the number of channels provided by ATE. In this work we propose a scalable test module (called STM) design that can support multi-site testing more efficiently when compared with previous work. In the previous work, the total number of devices that can be tested concurrently is usually fixed when the design for testability hardware is designed. For our STM, each STM can deal with a number of circuits to be tested at the same time. Moreover, STM is scalable, i.e., multiple STMs can work collaboratively while the ATE bandwidth still remains the same to further increase the degree of test parallelism. Our STM will be integrated with ATE and serve as an interface between ATE and circuits under test (CUT). Only four pins are required by STM to communicate with ATE, and IEEE 1149.1 Std. ports are employed to transfer test data to/from CUTs. STM has been verified via silicon proof, which contains only about 2,768 logic gates. Experiments results for a number of ISCAS and IWLS'05 benchmark circuits also demonstrate that by making good use of the scalable feature of STM, test efficiency can be enhanced significantly.

In this study, we propose a method for measuring a photoplethysmograph using a complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor image sensor (CMOS) or smartphone camera for the adaptation of a mobile health (m-health) services. The proposed algorithm consists of six procedures. Before measuring the photoplethysmograph, the human fingertip must make contact with the smartphone camera lens and turn on the camera light. The first procedure converts the red-green-blue (RGB) to a gray image from a camera image, Then, region of interest (ROI) must be detected from the obtained image. The third procedure calculates the baseline level to reduce direct current (DC) offset effect, before extracting the photoplethysmograph from the camera image. The baseline is filtered, and the last step oversamples the resulting baseline filtered data using cubic spline interpolation. The proposed algorithm has been tested on six people using CMOS image sensors of several smartphones, which can effectively acquire a PPG signal in any situation. We believe that the proposed algorithm could easily be adapted into any m-health system that used a CMOS image sensor.

Low-temperature bonding methods of optoelectronic chips, such as laser diodes (LD) and photodiode (PD) chips, have been the focus of much interest to develop highly functional and compact optoelectronic devices, such as microsensors and communication modules. In this paper, room-temperature bonding of the optoelectronic chips with Au thin film to coined Au stud bumps with smooth surfaces (Ra: 1.3nm) using argon and hydrogen gas mixture atmospheric-pressure plasma was demonstrated in ambient air. The die-shear strength was high enough to exceed the strength requirement of MIL-STD-883F, method 2019 (×2). The measured results of the light-current-voltage characteristics of the LD chips and the dark current-voltage characteristics of the PD chips indicated no degradation after bonding.

The optical properties of arrays of nanoholes and nanoslits in Al films were investigated both numerically and experimentally. The choice of Al was based on its low cost and ease of processing, in addition to the fact that it has a higher plasma frequency than gold or silver, leading to lower optical losses at wavelengths of 400 to 500nm.

This paper proposes an algorithm that solves the node-to-set disjoint paths problem in an n-Möbius cube in polynomial-order time of n. It also gives a proof of correctness of the algorithm as well as estimating the time complexity, O(n4), and the maximum path length, 2n-1. A computer experiment is conducted for n=1,2,...,31 to measure the average performance of the algorithm. The results show that the average time complexity is gradually approaching to O(n3) and that the maximum path lengths cannot be attained easily over the range of n in the experiment.

Glial cells include several types of cells such as astrocytes, and oligodendrocytes apart from the neurons in the brain. In particular, astrocytes are known to be important in higher brain function and are therefore sometimes simply called glial cells. An astrocyte can transmit signals to other astrocytes and neurons using ion concentrations. Thus, we expect that the functions of an astrocyte can be applied to an artificial neural network. In this study, we propose a multi-layer perceptron (MLP) with a pulse glial chain. The proposed MLP contains glia (astrocytes) in a hidden layer. The glia are connected to neurons and are excited by the outputs of the neurons. The excited glia generate pulses that affect the excitation thresholds of the neurons and their neighboring glia. The glial network provides a type of positional relationship between the neurons in the hidden layer, which can enhance the performance of MLP learning. We confirm through computer simulations that the proposed MLP has better learning performance than a conventional MLP.

Negative electron affinity (NEA) surfaces can be formed by alternating supply of alkali metals (e.g. Cs, Rb, K) and oxygen on semiconductor surfaces. We have studied adsorption structures of Cs on an As-terminated (2×4) (001) GaAs surface using scanning tunneling microscopy (STM). We found that the initial adsorption of Cs atoms occurs around the step sites in the form of Cs clusters and that the size of clusters is reduced by successive exposure to O2, indicating that As-terminated (2×4) surfaces are relatively stable compared to Ga-terminated surfaces and are not broken by the Cs clusters adsorption.

A projective Reed-Muller (PRM) code, obtained by modifying a Reed-Muller code with respect to a projective space, is a doubly extended Reed-Solomon code when the dimension of the related projective space is equal to 1. The minimum distance and the dual code of a PRM code are known, and some decoding examples have been presented for low-dimensional projective spaces. In this study, we construct a decoding algorithm for all PRM codes by dividing a projective space into a union of affine spaces. In addition, we determine the computational complexity and the number of correctable errors of our algorithm. Finally, we compare the codeword error rate of our algorithm with that of the minimum distance decoding.

Infrastructures for the evaluation of the state of health of individuals using a standardized communication network consisting of advanced instruments and subsequent data analysis have been developed. Here we report that this developed infrastructure has been tested in the field in 100 houses and involving almost 300 users. The communication protocol part of this infrastructure has been standardized as IEEE 11073-20601. Continua Health Alliance, an international not-for-profit industry organization which has nearly 230 member companies, has adopted this IEEE 11073-20601 to establish an ecosystem of interoperable personal connected health systems that empower individuals and organizations to better manage their health and wellness. Currently nearly 100 Continua certified products are available in public including smartphone.

Ultra-wideband (UWB) communications is used for medical information communication technology (MICT) as a dependable and safe communication technology in recent years. On the other hand, there are existing various UWB systems that are not used for MICT. Generally, these UWB systems use almost the same frequency band. Therefore, they interfere to each other in general transmission channel environment. In our previous work, a novel UWB pulse shape modulation using modified Hermite pulse is proposed as a multiple user access scheme. In this paper, we propose a mitigation method for inter-user interference and inter-system interference using combination of orthogonal pulse shape modulation and orthogonal matched filter (OMF) detector. The purposes of our system are to detect all signals of users in the same UWB system and to reduce the unknown interference from other UWB systems at the same time. This paper provides performance evaluation results based on both of analytical and numerical evaluation. Simulation results show that the proposed system can detect the signals that were transmitted from the same UWB system using orthogonal pulse set, while the proposed system can reduce the interference from unknown UWB systems at the same time. The theoretical analysis is expected that noise tolerance of our proposal will be deteriorated in the additive Gaussian noise channel in comparison with the conventional matched filter. It is confirmed that the numerical evaluation illustrates such noise tolerance equivalent to the theoretical analysis result.

We consider a problem of the choice of price plans offered by a telecommunications company: a “pay-as-you-go” plan and a “flat-rate” plan. This problem is formulated as an online optimization problem extending the ski-rental problem, and analyzed using the competitive ratio. We give a lemma for easily calculating the competitive ratio. Based on the lemma, we derive a family of optimal strategies for a realistic class of instances.

The usage of peer-to-peer (P2P) networks that provide sharing of real-time environmental data by internet users is becoming more and more popular. As a result, it's necessary to identify the problems during P2P communication and to develop proper solutions. One of the major problems of P2P communication is that it's not possible to reach the clients behind devices that create private networks like network address translation (NAT) and firewalls from the public network. Among the solutions proposed for this problem, Interactive Connectivity Establishment (ICE) and Real Time Media Flow Protocol (RTMFP) are the methods most preferred in the literature. These methods seem more attractive than other NAT traversal mechanisms since they are independent from internet infrastructure and are also appropriate for dynamic structures. However, they do have some disadvantages. In this study, a new state-based end-to-end communication technique (SBN) for NAT traversal was designed and realized. The performance of the designed method was evaluated against three criteria, connectivity check delay, connection packet count and bandwidth, and compared with the ICE method. The results revealed that the suggested SBN method proved an average of 78% success in connectivity check delay, 69% in the number of packets used and 66% in the consumption of bandwidth over the ICE method.

In this paper, we consider the problem of generating uniformly random mosaic floorplans. We propose a polynomial-time algorithm that generates such floorplans with f faces. Two modified algorithms are created to meet additional criteria.