In this letter, pilot-assisted adaptive prediction iterative channel estimation in frequency-domain is presented for the antenna diversity reception of orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) signals. A frequency-domain adaptive prediction filtering is applied to iterative channel estimation for improving the tracking capability against frequency-domain variations in a severe frequency-selective fading channel. Also, in order to track the changing fading environment, the tap weights of frequency-domain prediction filter are updated using the simple NLMS algorithm. Updating of tap weights is incorporated into the iterative channel estimation loop to achieve faster convergence rate. The average bit error rate (BER) performance in a frequency-selective Rayleigh fading channel is evaluated by computer simulation. It is confirmed that the frequency-domain adaptive prediction iterative channel estimation provides better BER performance than the conventional iterative channel estimation schemes.

This paper presents a novel approach to improving the IDDQ-based diagnosability of a CMOS circuit by dividing the circuit into independent partitions and using a separate power supply for each partition. This technique makes it possible to implement multiple IDDQ measurement points, resulting in improved IDDQ-based diagnosability. The paper formalizes the problem of partitioning a circuit for this purpose and proposes optimal and heuristic based solutions. The effectiveness of the proposed approach is demonstrated through experimental results.

Fair scheduling algorithms have been proposed to tackle the problem of bursty and location-dependent errors in wireless packet networks. Most of those algorithms ensure the fairness property and guarantee the QoS of all sessions in a large-scale cellular network such as GSM or GPRS. In this paper, we propose the Weighted-Sacrificing Fair Queueing (WSFQ) scheduling algorithm for small-area and device-limited wireless networks. WSFQ slows down the growth of queue length in limited-buffer devices, still maintains the properties of fairness, and guarantees the throughputs of the system. Moreover, WSFQ can easily adapt itself to various kinds of traffic load. We also implement a packet-based scheduling algorithm, the Packetized Weighted Sacrificing Fair Queueing (PWSFQ), to approach the WSFQ. WSFQ and PWSFQ are evaluated by comparing with other algorithms by mathematical analysis and simulations.

A Realization of mobile All-IP networks calls not only for seamless handover protocols, but also fast processing, especially for real-time IP traffic flows. In this paper, we propose to exploit pre-established label switched paths with the aim to reduce handover processing latency which is one of the most critical performance metrics in micro-mobility environment. Thus, our proposed scheme has an advantage of offering micro-mobility to Mobile IP (MIP) with lower-latency handover as compared with the several existing MPLS-based MIP approaches. A detailed analytic model of setting up LSPs for fast handover processing is presented. Further, we do not only investigate the performance of our model but also propose detailed signaling steps so that our proposed scheme could be run on MPLS-based MIP system.

We analyze the performance of an adaptive hybrid search code acquisition algorithm for direct-sequence code division multiple access (DS-CDMA) systems under slowly-moving mobile environments. The code acquisition algorithm is designed to provide the desired feature of constant false alarm rate (CFAR) to cope with nonstationarity of interference in CDMA forward links. An analytical expression for the mean acquisition time is first derived and the probabilities of detection, miss, and false alarm are then obtained for frequency-selective Rayleigh fading environments. The fading envelope of a received signal is assumed to be constant over the duration of post-detection integration (PDI), which is most reasonable, especially for slowly-moving mobile environments. The performance of the designed code acquisition algorithm shall be evaluated numerically to examine the effect of some design parameters, such as the sub-window size, the size of the PDI, the decision thresholds in search and verification modes, and so on, considering IMT-2000 environments.

This paper provides algorithms in order to solve an interval implicit function of the Poincare map generated by a continuous piece-wise linear (CPWL) vector field, with the use of interval arithmetic. The algorithms are implemented with the use of MATLAB and INTLAB. We present an application to verification of canards in two-dimensional CPWL vector field appearing in nonlinear piecewise linear circuits frequently, and confirm that the algorithms are effective.

This letter presents a timing synchronization method of high-rate wireless personal area network (WPAN) systems encountered with a multipath fading channel. Two-stage timing synchronization using constant amplitude zero auto-correlation (CAZAC) training symbols and correlation techniques is adopted. At the same time, a simple way of setting a reliable threshold used to estimate WPAN timing is provided.

A diagnosis technique is presented to locate at least one fault in a scan chain with multiple timing faults. This diagnosis technique applies Single Excitation (SE) patterns of which only one bit can be flipped even in the presence of multiple faults. By applying the SE patterns, the problem of simulations with unknown values is eliminated. The diagnosis result is therefore deterministic, not probabilistic. Experiments on the ISCAS benchmark circuits show that the average diagnosis resolution is less than ten scan cells.

Joint frequency-domain equalization (FDE) and antenna diversity combining is applied to the reception of multi-rate DS-CDMA signals to achieve the frequency diversity effect while suppressing inter-path interference (IPI) resulting from the asynchronism of different propagation paths. At a receiver, fast Fourier transform (FFT) is applied for FDE and then inverse FFT (IFFT) is used to obtain a frequency-domain equalized DS-CDMA chip sequence for the succeeding despreading operation. An arbitrary spreading factor SF can be used for the given value of FFT window size; an extreme case is the nonspread SC system with SF=1. This property allows a flexible design of multi-rate DS-CDMA systems. Three types of FDE are considered; minimum mean square error (MMSE) equalization, maximal-ratio combining (MRC) equalization and zero-forcing (ZF) equalization. Matched filter bound analysis for achievable BER performance is presented. The improvement in the BER performance in a frequency-selective Rayleigh fading channel is evaluated by computer simulation. First, we consider the single-user case and compare the BER performances achievable with MMSE, MRC and ZF equalizations. How the fading rate and the spreading factor affect the BER performance is also evaluated. Furthermore, the BER performance comparison between FDE and rake combining is presented for various values of SF and also performance comparison between DS-CDMA and SC signal transmissions, both using FDE, is presented. Finally, we extend our evaluation to the multi-user case. Both downlink and uplink are considered and how the BER performances of downlink and uplink differ is discussed.

This paper investigates the parameter tying structures of a mixture of factor analyzers (MFA) and discriminative training of MFA for speaker identification. The parameters of factor loading matrices or diagonal matrices are shared in different mixtures of MFA. Then, minimum classification error (MCE) training is applied to the MFA parameters to enhance the discrimination ability. The result of a text-independent speaker identification experiment shows that MFA outperforms the conventional Gaussian mixture model (GMM) with diagonal or full covariance matrices and achieves the best performance when sharing the diagonal matrices, resulting in a relative gain of 26% over the GMM with diagonal covariance matrices. The improvement is more significant especially in sparse training data condition. The recognition performance is further improved by MCE training with an additional gain of 3% error reduction.

This paper proposes an efficient methodology of delay fault testing of processor cores using their instruction sets. These test vectors can be applied in the functional mode of operation, hence, self-testing of processor core becomes possible for path delay fault testing. The proposed approach uses a graph theoretic model (represented as an Instruction Execution Graph) of the datapath and a finite state machine model of the controller for the elimination of functionally untestable paths at the early stage without looking into the circuit details and extraction of constraints for the paths that can potentially be tested. Parwan and DLX processors are used to demonstrate the effectiveness of our method.

This paper presents a modification of kernel-based Fisher discriminant analysis (FDA) to design one-class classifier for face detection. In face detection, it is reasonable to assume "face" images to cluster in certain way, but "non face" images usually do not cluster since different kinds of images are included. It is difficult to model "non face" images as a single distribution in the discriminant space constructed by the usual two-class FDA. Also the dimension of the discriminant space constructed by the usual two-class FDA is bounded by 1. This means that we can not obtain higher dimensional discriminant space. To overcome these drawbacks of the usual two-class FDA, the discriminant criterion of FDA is modified such that the trace of covariance matrix of "face" class is minimized and the sum of squared errors between the average vector of "face" class and feature vectors of "non face" images are maximized. By this modification a higher dimensional discriminant space can be obtained. Experiments are conducted on "face" and "non face" classification using face images gathered from the available face databases and many face images on the Web. The results show that the proposed method can outperform the support vector machine (SVM). A close relationship between the proposed kernel-based FDA and kernel-based Principal Component Analysis (PCA) is also discussed.

The problem of estimating code timings in DS-CDMA systems with multiple antennas is considered in the presence of multipath time-varying fading channels and near-far environments. We present an efficient algorithm for an approximate maximum likelihood approach of jointly estimating the multipath timings of a desired user for DS-CDMA systems that consist of multiple antennas either uncorrelated or fully correlated in space. The procedures of the algorithm to estimate code-timings are developed in order to better exploit the time-varying characteristics of the fading process. In the multipath fading channels, the solution of the proposed algorithms is based on successively optimizing the criterion for increasing numbers of multipath delays. It is shown via simulation results that the modified approaches of the approximate maximum likelihood algorithm much more improve its acquisition performance in the time-varying fading channels. It is seen that the acquisition performance of multiple antennas based acquisition scheme is much better than that of a single antenna based timing estimator in the presence of multipath fading channels and the near-far problem. Furthermore, it is observed that the proposed algorithms outperform the correlator and MUSIC estimator in the multiuser environments with near-far situation on time-varying Rayleigh fading channels.

In this paper, we propose a spatio-temporal equalizer for the space-time block coded transmission over the frequency selective fading channels with the presence of co-channel interference (CCI). The proposed equalizer, based on the tapped delay line adaptive array (TDLAA), performs signal equalization and CCI suppression simultaneously using the minimum mean square error (MMSE) method. It is to show that our scheme outperforms the previous two-stage combined adaptive antenna and delayed decision feedback sequence estimator (DDFSE) approach. We also show that performance can be further improved if the synchronization between the preceding and delayed paths is achieved.

In this letter, we propose the SNR estimator for multipath fading channels. We employ the least squares estimator for estimating the channel and estimate the SNR using the estimated noise variance. The SNR estimation can be used to adapt the demodulation algorithm to enhance its performance, as well as to provide the channel quality information. Simulation results show the performance of SNR estimator.

Ryu et al.'s recent paper proposed a multiple target angle-tracking algorithm without data association. This algorithm, however, shows degraded performance on evasive maneuvering targets, because the estimated signal subspace is degraded in the algorithm. In this paper, we propose a new algorithm where, VFF-PASTd (Variable Forgetting Factor PASTd) algorithm is applied to the Ryu's algorithm to effectively handle the evasive target tracking with better time-varying signal subspace.

In this paper, we propose a multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) beamforming scheme for a multiuser system in frequency-selective fading channels. The maximum signal-to-noise and interference ratio (MSINR) is adopted as a criterion to determine the transmit and receive weight vectors. In order to maximize the output SINR over all users, two algorithms for base station are considered: the first algorithm is based on the receive weight vector optimization and the second algorithm is based on an iterative update of both transmit and receive weight vectors. Based on the result of single user MIMO beamforming, we analyze the interference channels cancellation ability of multiuser MIMO system. The first algorithm is a simple method and the second algorithm is a performative solution. Through computer simulations, it is shown that multiuser communication system is achievable using the proposed methods in frequency-selective fading condition.

In this paper, we propose an advanced location-based service that we call a direction-based service, which utilizes both the position and direction of a user. The direction-based service enables a user to point to an object of interest for command or investigation. We also describe the design, implementation and evaluations of a direction-based service system named Azim. With this system, the direction of the user can be obtained by a magnetic-based direction sensor. The sensor is also used for azimuth-based position estimation, in which a user's position is estimated by having the user point to and measure azimuths of several markers or objects whose positions are already known. Because this approach does not require any other accurate position sensors or positive beacons, it can be deployed cost-effectively. Also, because the measurements are naturally associated with some degree of error, the position is calculated as a probability distribution. The calculation considers the error of direction measurement and the pre-obtained field information such as obstacles and magnetic field disturbance, which enables robust position measurements even in geomagnetically disturbed environments. For wide-area use, the system also utilizes a wireless LAN to obtain rough position information by identifying base stations. We have implemented a prototype system for the proposed method and some applications for the direction-based services. Furthermore, we have conducted experiments both indoors and outdoors, and exemplified that positioning accuracy by the proposed method is precise enough for a direction-based service.

We have fabricated a multilayer structure for single flux quantum (SFQ) circuit application using a high-temperature superconductor (HTS). La0.2-Y0.9Ba1.9Cu3Ox (La-YBCO) base electrode layers were prepared by a dc or rf magnetron sputtering method. The reproducibility of film quality for dc-sputtered La-YBCO films was better than that for rf-sputtered films, and the dc sputtered films exhibited the average surface roughness Ra less than 1.0 nm and a Tc zero value of 88 K. By using the dc-sputtered La-YBCO films, a multilayer structure of SrSnO3/La-YBCO/SrSnO3/La-YBCO on MgO substrate with Ra below 2.0 nm was obtained. Interface-modified ramp-edge junctions with La0.2-Yb0.9Ba1.9Cu3Ox (La-YbBCO) counter electrodes have been fabricated by using this multilayer structure with dc-sputtered films. The fabricated junctions exhibited RSJ-type I-V characteristics with IcRn products of about 3 mV at 4.2 K. We also obtained a 1-σ Ic spread of 8% for a 1000-junction series-array. The sheet inductance values at 4.2 K for the base and counter electrodes on La-YBCO ground planes were 0.8 pH and 0.7 pH per square, respectively. Operation of several types of elementary SFQ circuits has been successfully demonstrated by using this multilayer structure.

This study was designed to evaluate localized muscular fatigue induced during mouse operation in a VDT task. Ten male undergraduates from 19 to 23 years old participated in the experiment. The subject performed a pointing task with a PC mouse for about 4 hours. The EMG measurements and psychological rating of fatigue were conducted before the experimental task and after each 30-minutes block during the experimental task. The changes in the Mean Power Frequency (MPF) and Percentage Maximum Voluntary Contraction (%MVC)-shift for the constant cumulative probability in the Amplitude Probability Distribution Function (APDF) with time were explored. The correspondence between the index (MPF or APDF) and the subjective rating of localized muscular fatigue was also examined. The performance was nearly constant across all blocks. The psychological rating of fatigue tended to increase with time. The MPF tended to increase with time, although the main effect of block (time) was not statistically significant. The %MVC-shift tended to increase with time. The correspondence with the perceived sensation of localized muscular fatigue was higher when using the %MVC-shift than when using the MPF. Based on the results, the effectiveness of the indexes used for evaluating localized muscular fatigue was discussed. The %MVC-shift obtained from the APDF was found to be a sensitive index of localized muscular fatigue and corresponded well with the subjective rating of localized muscular fatigue.