This paper proposes a scalable active optical access network using high-speed Plumbum Lanthanum Zirconate Titanate (PLZT) optical switch/splitter. The Active Optical Network, called ActiON, using PLZT switching technology has been presented to increase the number of subscribers and the maximum transmission distance, compared to the Passive Optical Network (PON). ActiON supports the multicast slot allocation realized by running the PLZT switch elements in the splitter mode, which forces the switch to behave as an optical splitter. However, the previous ActiON creates a tradeoff between the network scalability and the power loss experienced by the optical signal to each user. It does not use the optical power efficiently because the optical power is simply divided into 0.5 to 0.5 without considering transmission distance from OLT to each ONU. The proposed network adopts PLZT switch elements in the variable splitter mode, which controls the split ratio of the optical power considering the transmission distance from OLT to each ONU, in addition to PLZT switch elements in existing two modes, the switching mode and the splitter mode. The proposed network introduces the flexible multicast slot allocation according to the transmission distance from OLT to each user and the number of required users using three modes, while keeping the advantages of ActiON, which are to support scalable and secure access services. Numerical results show that the proposed network dramatically reduces the required number of slots and supports high bandwidth efficiency services and extends the coverage of access network, compared to the previous ActiON, and the required computation time for selecting multicast users is less than 30 msec, which is acceptable for on-demand broadcast services.

Axial and transverse magnetic fields are widely used in many kinds of switches to decrease the arc erosion. In this paper, the influence of these two kinds of magnetic fields on the arc phase transition was studied particularly for AgSnO2 contacts breaking a 28 V/25 A circuit. The experiments were carried out under resistive and inductive loads in an atmospheric environment. The relationships between flux densities ranging from 0 to 200 mT and the arc duration were obtained. It was found that the transverse magnetic field was more efficient in balancing the arc phases and decreasing the arc erosion. The results can be used to guide the design of arc extinguishment systems in DC high power relays.

This paper presents an elastic optical path network architecture as a novel networking framework to address the looming capacity crunch problem in internet protocol (IP) and optical networks. The basic idea is to introduce elasticity and adaptation into the optical domain to yield spectrally-efficient optical path accommodation, heightened network scalability through IP traffic offloading to the elastic optical layer, and enhanced survivability for serious disasters.

We have proposed a novel call admission control (CAC) for maximizing total user satisfaction in a heterogeneous traffic network and showed the effectiveness of our CAC by using an optimal threshold from numerical analysis [1]. In our previous CAC, when a new broadband flow arrives and the total accommodated bandwidth is more than or equal to the threshold, the arriving new broadband flow is rejected. In actual networks, however, users may agree to wait for a certain period until the broadband flow, such as video, begins to play. In this paper, when total accommodated bandwidth is more than or equal to the threshold, arriving broadband flows wait instead of being rejected. As a result, we can greatly improve total user satisfaction.

In this letter, we propose and analyze a cooperative transmission scheme (CTS) that uses transmission timing control for LTE enterprise femtocells. In our scheme, the user equipment (UE) can receive the desired signal from an adjacent fBS as well as its serving femtocell BS (fBS). Thus, UE achieves an improved signal to interference ratio (SIR) due to the synchronization of the two signals. Analysis and simulation results show that the proposed scheme can reduce the outage probability for enterprise femtocells compared to the conventional system. In particular, a significant performance improvement can be achieved for UEs located at cell edges.

Optical code-division multiple-access (OCDMA) is a promising technique for multimedia transmission in fiber-optic local-area networks (LANs). Variable-weight optical orthogonal codes (OOCs) can be used for OCDMA networks supporting multiple quality of services (QoS). Most constructions for optimal variable-weight OOCs have focused on the case where the number of distinct Hamming weights of all codewords is equal to two, and the codewords of weight 3 are normally included. In this letter, four explicit constructions of optimal (υ,{4,5,6},1,Q)-OOCs are presented, and more new optimal (υ,{4,5,6},1,Q)-OOCs are obtained via recursive constructions. These improve the existing results on optimal variable-weight OOCs with at least three distinct Hamming weights and minimum Hamming weight 4.

In this paper, we propose a speech enhancement algorithm by using MAP estimation with variable speech spectral amplitude probability density function (speech PDF). The variable speech PDF has two adaptive shape parameters which affect the quality of enhanced speech. Noise can be efficiently suppressed when these parameters are properly applied so that the variable speech PDF shape fits to the real-speech PDF one. We derive adaptive shape parameters from real-speech PDF in various narrow SNR intervals. The proposed speech enhancement algorithm with adaptive shape parameters is examined and compared to conventional algorithms. The simulation results show that the proposed method improved SegSNR around 6 and 9 dB when the input speech signal was corrupted by white and tunnel noises at 0 dB, respectively.

In this paper, we propose a power amplifier linearization technique combined with iterative noise cancelation. This method alleviates the effect of added noises which prevents the predistorter (PD) from estimating the exact characteristics of the power amplifier (PA). To iteratively cancel the noise added in the feedback signal, the output signal of the power amplifier without noise is reconstructed by applying the inverse characteristics of the PD to the predistorted signals. The noise can be revealed by subtracting the reconstructed signals from the feedback signals. Simulation results based on the mean-square error (MSE) and power spectral density (PSD) criteria are presented to evaluate PD performance. The results show that the iterative noise cancelation significantly enhances the MSE performance, which leads to an improvement of the out-of-band power suppression. The performance of the proposed technique is verified by computer simulation and hardware test results.

In the present paper, we address the problem of extrapolating group proximities from member relations, which we refer to as the group proximity problem. We assume that a relational dataset consists of several groups and that pairwise relations of all members can be measured. Under these assumptions, the goal is to estimate group proximities from pairwise relations. In order to solve the group proximity problem, we present a method based on embedding and distribution mapping, in which all relational data, which consist of pairwise dissimilarities or dissimilarities between members, are transformed into vectorial data by embedding methods. After this process, the distributions of the groups are obtained. Group proximities are estimated as distances between distributions by distribution mapping methods, which generate a map of distributions. As an example, we apply the proposed method to document and bacterial flora datasets. Finally, we confirm the feasibility of using the proposed method to solve the group proximity problem.

In the present paper, we consider fully asynchronous parallelism in membrane computing, and propose two asynchronous P systems for the satisfiability (SAT) and Hamiltonian cycle problem. We first propose an asynchronous P system that solves SAT with n variables and m clauses, and show that the proposed P system computes SAT in O(mn2n) sequential steps or O(mn) parallel steps using O(mn) kinds of objects. We next propose an asynchronous P system that solves the Hamiltonian cycle problem with n nodes, and show that the proposed P system computes the problem in O(n!) sequential steps or O(n2) parallel steps using O(n2) kinds of objects.

This letter studies cellular controlled short-range communication in OFDMA networks. The network needs to decide when to allow direct communication between a closely located device-to-device (D2D) pair instead of conveying data from one device to the other via the base station and when not to, in addition to subchannel and power allocation. Our goal is to maximize the total network throughput while guaranteeing the rate requirements of all users. For that purpose, we formulate an optimization problem subject to subchannel and power constraints. A scheme which combines a joint mode selection and subchannel allocation algorithm based on equal power allocation with a power reallocation scheme is proposed. Simulation results show that our proposed scheme can improve the network throughput and outage probability compared with other schemes.

Substrate noise coupling has been seriously concerned in the design of advanced analog and radio frequency (RF) integrated circuits (ICs). This paper reviews recent advancements in the modeling, analysis, and evaluation of substrate noise coupling at IC chip level. Noise generation from digital circuits and propagation to the area of analog circuits are clearly visualized both by full-chip simulation as well as by on-chip measurements, for silicon test vehicles. The impacts of substrate noise coupling are also in-depth discussed at device, circuit, as well as system levels. Overall understanding of substrate noise coupling will then provide the basics for highly reliable design of analog and RF ICs.

We demonstrate phase demodulation of 10-Gbps DPSK signals using a silicon micro-ring resonator with a radius of 10 µm and with various coupling gaps for light of ∼1550 nm in wavelength. Influence of the Q factors and transmissions of the resonators on the response speed and power balance of the two output ports is discussed. Furthermore, temperature sensitivity on resonance peak was measured and we discuss its effect on practical demodulation application.

We developed advanced techniques for the growth of self-assembled quantum dots (QDs) for fabricating a broadband light source that can be applied to optical coherence tomography (OCT). Four QD ensembles and strain reducing layers (SRLs) were grown in selective areas on a wafer by the use of a 90° rotational metal mask. The SRL thickness was varied to achieve appropriate shifts in the peak wavelength of the QD emission spectrum of up to 120 nm. The four-color QD ensembles were expected to have a broad bandwidth of more than 160 nm due to the combination of excited state emissions when introduced in a current-induced broadband light source such as a superluminescent diode (SLD). Furthermore, a desired shape of the SLD spectrum can be obtained by controlling the injection current applied to each QD ensemble. The broadband and spectrum shape controlled light source is promising for high-resolution and low-noise OCT systems.

Partially parallel decoding architectures are widely used in the design of low-density parity-check (LDPC) decoders, especially for quasi-cyclic (QC) LDPC codes. To comply with the code structure of parity-check matrices of QC-LDPC codes, many small memory blocks are conventionally employed in this architecture. The total memory area usually dominates the area requirement of LDPC decoders. This paper proposes a low-complexity memory access architecture that merges small memory blocks into memory groups to relax the effect of peripherals in small memory blocks. A simple but efficient algorithm is also presented to handle the additional delay elements introduced in the memory merging method. Experiment results on a rate-1/2 parity-check matrix defined in the IEEE 802.16e standard show that the LDPC decoder designed using the proposed memory access architecture has the lowest area complexity among related studies. Compared to a design with the same specifications, the decoder implemented using the proposed architecture requires 33% fewer gates and is more power-efficient. The proposed new memory access architecture is thus suitable for the design of low-complexity LDPC decoders.

Delay Tolerant Network (DTN) has been emerged to support the network connectivity of the disruptive networks. A variety of routing methods have been proposed to reduce the latency for message delivery. PROPHET was proposed as a probabilistic routing that utilizes history of encounters and transitivity of nodes, which is computed as contact probability. While PROPHET improves the performance of DTN due to contact probability, contact probability is just one parameter reflecting the mobility pattern of nodes, and further study on utilizing contacting information of mobility pattern is still an important problem. Hence, in this paper, we try to improve routing for DTN by using a novel metric other than contact probability as mobility information. We propose the routing protocol to use mean residual contact time that describes the contact period for a given pair of nodes. The simulation results show that using the mean residual contact time can improve the performance of routing protocols for DTN. In addition, we also show in what situations the proposed method provides more efficient data delivery service. We characterize these situations using a parameter called Variation Metric.

We investigated optical transmission characteristics of aluminum thin films with periodic hole arrays in sub-wavelength. We divided white light into several color spectra using a color filter based on the surface plasmon resonance (SPR) utilizing aluminum showing high plasma frequency. By optimizing a hole-array period, hole shape, polarization and index difference of two surface, transmittance of 30% and full-width at half-maximum of around 100 nm were achieved.

High-performance and low-cost sensors are critical devices for high-throughput analyses of bio-samples in medical diagnoses and life sciences. In this paper, we demonstrate photonic crystal nanolaser sensor, which detects the adsorption of biomolecules from the lasing wavelength shift. It is a promising device, which balances a high sensitivity, high resolution, small size, easy integration, simple setup and low cost. In particular with a nanoslot structure, it achieves a super-sensitivity in protein sensing whose detection limit is three orders of magnitude lower than that of standard surface-plasmon-resonance sensors. Our investigations indicate that the nanoslot acts as a protein condenser powered by the optical gradient force, which arises from the strong localization of laser mode in the nanoslot.

A method for efficiently representing the state equation in a class of max-plus linear systems is proposed. We introduce a construct referred to as 'cell' in which the list of possible longest paths is stored. By imposing interval constraints on the system parameters, we can reduce the complexity of the state equation. The proposed method would be useful in scheduling applications for systems with adjustable system parameters.

In this paper, the charge pump efficiency is discussed, and a dual charge pump circuit with complementary architecture using charge sharing clock scheme is presented. The proposed charge sharing clock generator is able to recover the charge from parasitic-capacitor charging and discharging, so that the dynamic power loss in the pumping process is reduced by a half. To preserve the overlapping period of the four-phase clock used for threshold cancellation technique, two complementary sets of clocks are generated from the proposed clock generator, and each set feeds a certain branch of the dual charge pump to achieve the between-branch charge sharing. A test chip is fabricated in 0.18 µm process, and the area penalty of the proposed charge sharing clock generator is 1%. From the measurement results, the proposed charge pump shows an overall power efficiency increase with a peak value of 63.7% comparing to 52.3% of a conventional single charge pump without charge sharing, and the proposed clock scheme shows no degradation on the driving capability while the output ripple voltage is reduced by 43%.