It is known that a heterodyne multimode receiver implemented with a single RF (Radio Frequency) receiver suffers from image-band interference due to imbalance, i.e. the phase error and the gain imbalance of the RF Hilbert transformer. The blind image band interference canceler with deterministic imbalance estimation that has been proposed mitigates the image-band interference. This performance of the image-band interference canceler is analyzed theoretically in this paper. As a result, it is revealed that estimation accuracy of the deterministic imbalance estimation is improved slightly as the imbalance becomes greater. In addition, it is also shown that the deterministic estimation achieves better performance as the power of image-band interference increases. The performance is confirmed by computer simulation.

In this paper, we propose a full-duplex relay (FDR) based on a zero-forcing beamforming (ZFBF) for a multiuser MIMO system. The ZFBF is employed at the base station to suppress both the self-interference of the relay and the multiuser interference at the same time. Numerical results show that the proposed FDR can enhance the sum rate performance as compared to the half-duplex relay (HDR), if sufficient isolation between the transmit and receive antennas is ensured at the relay.

In this paper, we address adaptive link switching over heterogeneous wireless access networks including IEEE 802.11. When an IEEE 802.11 link is congested, the transmission link of a terminal with multi-RATs (radio access technologies) is switched to another radio access systems. To this end, we propose link-level metrics of LC (link cost) and AC (access cost) for quantifying TCP congestion over IEEE 802.11 networks. The proposed metric can be easily measured at a local wireless terminal, and that enables each multi-RAT terminal to work in a distributed way. Through various indoor and outdoor experiments using a test-bed system, we verify that the proposed link level metrics are good indicators of TCP traffic congestion. Experimental results show that the proposed metrics can detect congestion occurrence quickly, and avoid the TCP throughput degradation of other neighboring terminals, when they are used for transmission link switching.

Based on the known quadriphase zero correlation zone (ZCZ) sequences ZCZ4(N,M,T), four families of 16-QAM sequences with ZCZ are presented, where the term "QAM sequences" means the sequences over the quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM) constellation. When the quadriphase ZCZ sequences employed by this letter arrive at the theoretical bound on the ZCZ sequences, and are of the even family size M or the odd width T of ZCZ, two of the resulting four 16-QAM sequence sets satisfy the bound referred to above. The proposed sequences can be potentially applied to communication systems using 16-QAM constellation as spreading sequences so that the multiple access interference (MAI) and multi-path interference (MPI) are removed synchronously.

The H.264/AVC standard achieves significantly high coding efficiency if multiple block size Motion Estimation is adopted. However, the complexity of Motion Estimation and DCT is dramatically increased as a result. In previous work we propose an early mode decision algorithm to control the complexity, based on all-zero-blocks detection in 1616 size. In this paper, we improve the algorithm. Firstly, we propose to detect all-zero blocks in 1616, 88 and 44 sizes to simplify the course of mode decision. Secondly, we define the thresholds which are used to terminate motion estimation and mode decision in advance for these sizes. Last, we present the whole proposed algorithm. Experiments show that about 77% encoding time and 85% motion estimation time can be saved on average, which is better than state-of-the-art approaches.

A two-dimensional microarray of ten thousand (100100) hepatocyte hetero-spheroids, underlaid with non-parenchymal cells, was successfully constructed with a 100-µm spacing on micro-fabricated glass substrates that were coated with poly(ethylene glycol) (PEG). Co-cultivation of hepatocytes with endothelial cells was essential to stabilize hepatocyte viability and liver-specific functions, allowing us to obtain hepatocyte spheroids with a diameter of 100-µm, functioning as a miniaturized liver to secrete albumin for at least 1 month. The most important feature of this study is that these substrates are defined to provide an unprecedented control of substrate properties for modulating cell behavior, employing both surface engineering and synthetic polymer chemistry. The spheroid array constructed here is highly useful as a platform of tissue and cell-based biosensors (TBB and CBB), detecting a wide variety of clinically, pharmacologically, and toxicologically active compounds through a cellular physiological response.

Sequences with good correlation properties are of substantial interest in many applications. By interleaving a perfect array with shift sequences, a new method of constructing binary array set with zero correlation zone (ZCZ) is presented. The interleaving operation can be performed not only row-by-row but also column-by-column on the perfect array. The resultant ZCZ binary array set is optimal or almost optimal with respect to the theoretical bound. The new method provides a flexible choice for the rectangular ZCZ and the set size.

IP Fast Reroute techniques have been proposed to achieve fast failure recovery, just a few milliseconds. The basic idea of IP Fast Reroute is to reduce recovery time by precomputing backup routes. The multiple routing configurations (MRC) algorithm was proposed to implement IP Fast Reroute. MRC prepares backup configurations, which are used for finding a detour route after a failure. However, this algorithm establishes too many backup configurations to recover from failures. We propose a new backup configuration computation algorithm that creates the fewest possible configurations. The basic idea is to construct a spanning tree that excludes failure links in each backup configuration. We show that the effectiveness of our algorithm is especially high in large-scale power-law networks.

In this paper, we introduce a new general construction of zero correlation zone (ZCZ) sequence set, which is based on two given ZCZ sequence sets. Compared with the two given sequence sets, the resultant sequence set not only has larger family size and longer period, but also provides more flexible choices of basic sequences, ZCZ length and family size.

We present a new methodology for constructing an efficient identification scheme, and based on it, we propose a lightweight identification scheme whose computational and storage costs are sufficiently low even for cheap devices such as RFID tags. First, we point out that the efficiency of a scheme with statistical zero-knowledgeness can be significantly improved by enhancing its zero-knowledgeness to perfect zero-knowledge. Then, we apply this technique to the Girault-Poupard-Stern (GPS) scheme which has been standardized by ISO/IEC. The resulting scheme shows a perfect balance between communication cost, storage cost, and circuit size (computational cost), which are crucial factors for implementation on RFID tags. Compared to GPS, the communication and storage costs are reduced, while the computational cost is kept sufficiently low so that it is implementable on a circuit nearly as small as GPS. Under standard parameters, the prover's response is shortened 80 bits from 275 bits to 195 bits and in application using coupons, storage for one coupon is also reduced 80 bits, whereas the circuit size is estimated to be larger by only 335 gates. Hence, we believe that the new scheme is a perfect solution for fast authentication of RFID tags.

To satisfy the requirement of a unified platform which can flexibly deal with various wireless radio systems, we proposed and implemented a heterogeneous network system composed of distributed flexible access points and a protocol-free signal processing unit. Distributed flexible access points are remote RF devices which perform the reception of multiple types of radio wave data and transfer the received data to the protocol-free signal processing unit through wired access network. The protocol-free signal processing unit performs multiple types of signal analysis by software. To realize a highly flexible and efficient radio wave data reception and transfer, we employ the recently developed compressed sensing technology. Moreover, we propose a combined Nyquist and compressed sampling method for the decoding signals to be sampled at the Nyquist rate and for the sensing signals to be sampled at the compressed rate. For this purpose, the decoding signals and the sensing signals are converted into the intermediate band frequency (IF) and mixed. In the IF band, the decoding signals are set at lower center frequencies than those of the sensing signals. The down converted signals are sampled at the rate of four times of the whole bandwidth of the decoding signals plus two times of the whole bandwidth of the sensing signals. The purpose of above setting is to simultaneously conduct Nyquist rate and compressed rate sampling in a single ADC. Then, all of odd (or even) samples are preserved and some of even (or odd) samples are randomly discarded. This method reduces the data transfer burden in dealing with the sensing signals while guaranteeing the realization of Nyquist-rate decoding performance. Simulation and experiment results validate the efficiency of the proposed method.

Selections of radio access networks by terminals are currently not coordinated and utilizations of the radio resources are not balanced. As a result, radio resources on some radio systems are occupied even though others can afford. In this paper, in order to provide a framework to resolve this issue, Cognitive Wireless Router (CWR) system is proposed for distributed management and independent reconfiguration of heterogeneous wireless networks. The proposed system selects appropriate operational frequency bands and radio systems to connect to the Internet in corporation between the CWRs and a server and therefore can provide optimized wireless Internet access easily even in environments without wired networks. The developed prototype system reconfigures the radio devices to connect to the Internet in 27 seconds at most. It is revealed that this reconfiguration time can be shortened to less than 100 ms by elaborating its procedure. It is also clarified that network data speed required at the server to deal with 10,000 CWRs is only 4.1 Mbps.

We deal with a path selection problem for heterogeneous wireless networks integrated with Frequency Agile Access Points. Our goal is to find the minimum achievable amount of radio resources required to set up a transmission path. We propose to formulate the path selection approach as a minimum cost flow problem.

This paper addresses the coexistence issue of distributed heterogeneous networks where the network nodes are cognitive radio terminals. These nodes, operating as secondary users (SUs), might interfere with primary users (PUs) who are licensed to use a given frequency band. Further, due to the lack of coordination and the dissimilarity of the radio access technologies (RATs) among these wireless nodes, they might interfere with each other. To solve this coexistence problem, we propose an architecture that enables coordination among the distributed nodes. The architecture provides coexistence solutions and sends reconfiguration commands to SU networks. As an example, time sharing is considered as a solution. Further, the time slot allocation ratios and transmit powers are parameters encapsulated in the reconfiguration commands. The performance of the proposed scheme is evaluated in terms of the coexistence between PUs and SUs, as well as the coexistence among SUs. The former addresses the interference from SUs to PUs, whereas the latter addresses the sharing of an identified spectrum opportunity among heterogeneous SU networks for achieving an efficient spectrum usage. In this study, we first introduce a new parameter named as quality of coexistence (QoC), which is defined as the ratio between the quality of SU transmissions and the negative interference to PUs. In this study we assume that the SUs have multiple antennas and employ fixed transmit power control (fixed-TPC). By using the approximation to the distribution of a weighted sum of chi-square random variables (RVs), we develop an analytical model for the time slot allocation among SU networks. Using this analytical model, we obtain the optimal time slot allocation ratios as well as transmit powers of the SU networks by maximizing the QoC. This leads to an efficient spectrum usage among SUs and a minimized negative influence to the PUs. Results show that in a particular scenario the QoC can be increased by 30%.

Utilizing a heterogeneous multiprocessor system has become a popular design paradigm to build an embedded system at a cheap cost. A reliability issue, which is vulnerability to soft errors, has not been taken into account in the conventional IC (integrated circuit) design flow, while chip area, performance, and power consumption have been done. This paper presents a system design paradigm in which a heterogeneous multiprocessor system is synthesized and its chip area is minimized under real-time and reliability constraints. First we define an SEU vulnerability factor as a vulnerability measure for computer systems so that we evaluate task-wise reliability over various processor structures. Next we build a mixed integer linear programming (MILP) model for minimizing the chip area of a heterogeneous multiprocessor system under real-time and SEU vulnerability constraints. Finally, we show several experimental results on our synthesis approach. Experimental results show that our design paradigm has achieved automatic generation of cost-competitive and reliable heterogeneous multiprocessor systems.

Heterogeneous multi-core processors are attracted by the media processing applications due to their capability of drawing strengths of different cores to improve the overall performance. However, the data transfer bottlenecks and limitations in the task allocation due to the accelerator-incompatible operations prevents us from gaining full potential of the heterogeneous multi-core processors. This paper presents a task allocation method based on algorithm transformation to increase the freedom of task allocation. We use approximation methods such as CORDIC algorithms to map the accelerator-incompatible operations to accelerator cores. According to the experimental results using HOG descriptor computation, the proposed task allocation method reduces the data transfer time by more than 82% and the total processing time by more than 79% compared to the conventional task allocation method.

This paper proposes a concept for a new technical field called wireless distributed network (WDN) as a strategic technical field to enable flexible networking and radio resource management (RRM) to cope with dynamic variation of spatially distributed traffic demands. As the core technical subject areas for the WDN, this paper identifies distributed networking for flexible network creation, cooperative transmission and reception for flexible link creation, and dynamic spectrum access for flexible radio resource management, and explains their technical features and challenges for constructing the WDN. This paper also discusses some already being studied application fields as well as potential future directions of the WDN applications.

From the viewpoint of service availability, which is an important evaluation factor in communication quality, we analytically study the performance improvement of heterogeneous radio networks that cooperatively select one system from among multiple communication systems. It is supposed herein that the heterogeneous network selects one system with the larger throughput or with the smaller time delay. To this end, we firstly derive analytical methods using the probability density function of the performance characteristics of the communication systems consisting of the heterogeneous radio network. The analytical method described here is comparatively general and enables the handling of cases where complete cooperation can and cannot be achieved in the heterogeneous network. As for the performance characteristics, we conduct an experiment using the wireless LAN to establish the probability distribution models of the throughput and time delay in the communication system. Using the analytical method and the experimental model obtained, we calculate the performance improvement by cooperative operation in the heterogeneous network. The equational expression to obtain the theoretical performance improvement limit is also investigated through the analytical equations.

With development of wireless communication technologies, users are no longer satisfied with only a single service provided per time. They are willing to enjoy multiple services simultaneously. Therefore scheduling multiple services per user becomes quite important usability issue in the area of resource management. In this paper, the multiple-service scheduling problem is firstly formulated as an integrated optimization problem based on a utility function in homogeneous service systems. Due to its NP-hard characteristic, a set of low-complexity sub-optimal algorithms is therefore proposed and used to schedule resources for multiple services per user at the downlink of Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) systems. The proposed algorithms are capable to effectively and efficiently distribute assigned resources among multiple services for one user. Moreover the utility of our algorithms is further extended from homogeneous service systems to heterogeneous service systems. And full exploitation of multi-user diversity gain is achieved while guaranteeing quality of service (QoS). The simulation results show that the proposed algorithm outperforms traditional algorithm in terms of system best effort service throughput and fairness criterion.

Aperiodic quadriphase Z-complementary sequences, which include the conventional complementary sequences as special cases, are introduced. It is shown that, the aperiodic quadriphase Z-complementary pairs are normally better than binary ones of the same length, in terms of the number of Z-complementary pairs, and the maximum zero correlation zone. New notions of elementary transformations on quadriphase sequences and elementary operations on sets of quadriphase Z-complementary sequences are presented. In particular, new methods for analyzing the relations among the formulas relative to sets of quadriphase Z-complementary sequences and for describing the sets are proposed. The existence problem of Z-complementary pairs of quadriphase sequences with zero correlation zone equal to 2, 3, and 4 is investigated. Constructions of sets of quadriphase Z-complementary sequences and their mates are given.