We propose three operation modes, namely, DCF uplink, Downlink, and CTS uplink modes to solve the unfairness problem between uplink and downlink as well as improve the performance of delay and throughput. The proposed scheme only requires modifying AP's functionalities without any changes of STAs, and is fully backward compatible to the legacy DCF. Its analytical result is validated against simulation and performance evaluation shows the proposed scheme is superior to the traditional IEEE 802.11 WLAN.

SRAM-based field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) are vulnerable to a soft-error induced by radiation. Techniques for designing dependable circuits, such as triple modular redundancy (TMR) with scrubbing, have been studied extensively. However, currently available evaluation techniques that can be used to check the dependability of these circuits are inadequate. Further, their results are restrictive because they do not represent the result in terms of general reliability indicator to decide whether the circuit is dependable. In this paper, we propose an evaluation method that provides results in terms of the realistic failure in time (FIT) by using reconfiguration-based fault-injection analysis. Current fault-injection analyses do not consider fault accumulation, and hence, they are not suitable for evaluating the dependability of a circuit such as a TMR circuit. Therefore, we configure an evaluation system that can handle fault-accumulation by using frame-based partial reconfiguration and the bootstrap method. By using the proposed method, we successfully evaluated a TMR circuit and could discuss the result in terms of realistic FIT data. Our method can evaluate the dependability of an actual system, and help with the tuning and selection in dependable system design.

For advanced mobile communication systems that adopt orthogonal frequency-division multiple access (OFDMA) technologies, intercarrier interference (ICI) significantly degrades performance when mobility is high. Standard specifications and concerns about complexity demand low-cost methods with deployment readiness and decent performance. In this paper, novel zero forcing (ZF) and minimum mean-square error (MMSE) equalizers based on per-subcarrier adaptive (PSA) processing and perturbation-based (PB) approximation are introduced. The proposed equalizers strike a good balance between implementation cost and performance; therefore they are especially suitable for OFDMA downlink receivers. Theoretical analysis and simulations are provided to verify our claims.

We study the complexity of finding the minimum number of face guards which can observe the whole surface of a polyhedral terrain. Here, a face guard is allowed to be placed on the faces of a terrain, and the guard can walk around on the allocated face. It is shown that finding the minimum number of face guards is NP-hard.

In this paper, we analyze the existing results to derive the cross-correlation distributions of p-ary m-sequences and their decimated sequences for an odd prime p and various decimations d. Based on the previously known results, a methodology to obtain the distribution of their cross-correlation values is also formulated.

In this paper, we present a method to combine lapped transforms with various downsampling factors. The factor is changed depending on a local feature of a given signal, and it can be realized by using time-domain lapped transforms. In image coding application, our method maintains good image coding performance for a wide range of bitrates and fills the gap between undersampled and critically-/oversampled systems.

A laser irradiation experiment for photocurrent induced failure investigations was described. In order to focus a laser beam on a desired transistor, novel test circuit structures using selectively metal-covered transistors were proposed. Photocurrent induced upset failures were successfully observed in fabricated CMOS SRAM test cells. Results were discussed with SPICE simulations.

An active queue management (AQM) scheme is proposed to reduce throughput bias for UDP flows over TCP. It is argued that existing AQM methods partially involve a flow-indifferent factor that does not take into account of bandwidth usage of flows when they determine packet drop, thus resulting in unfairness. The proposed scheme replaces the flow-indifferent part with a flow-wise one by approximating per-flow fair share, which permits the discrimination of unresponsive flows. Since it is a stateless process, it avoids the overhead of tracking the statistics of flows and implementation is simple. A performance evaluation shows that it effectively limits the bandwidth of unresponsive flows to their fair share of bandwidth. In addition, it can also encourage RTT-fairness among TCP flows with different delays.

In this letter, we propose a new 4-dimensional constellation-rotation (CR) modulation method that achieves diversity gain of 4 in Rayleigh fading channels. The proposed scheme consists of two consecutive CR operations for QAM symbols unlike the conventional 2-dimensional CR method based on only one CR operation. Computer simulation results show that the new method exhibits much better performance than the conventional one in terms of code rate and channel erasure ratio.

In LDMOS devices for high-voltage applications, there appears a notable fingerprint of current-voltage characteristics known as soft breakdown. Its mechanism is analyzed and modeled on LDMOS devices where a high resistive drift region exists. This analysis has revealed that the softness of breakdown, known as the expansion effect, withholding a run-away of current, is contributed by the flux of holes underneath the gate-overlap region originated by impact-ionization. The mechanism of the expansion effect is modeled and implemented into the compact model HiSIM_HV for circuit simulation. A good agreement between simulated characteristics and 2D-device simulation results is verified.

Variable-weight optical orthogonal codes (OOCs) were introduced by Yang for multi-media optical CDMA systems with multiple quality of service (QoS) requirements. Some works had been done on the existence of optimal (υ,W,1,Q)-OOCs for W ∈ {{3,4}, {3,5}, {4,5}}. In this paper, by using quadratic residues, seven new infinite classes of optimal (υ,{k,6},1,Q)-OOCs for k ∈ {3,4} are constructed.

Previous inter-domain fast authentication schemes only realize the authentication of user identity. We propose a trusted inter-domain fast authentication scheme based on the split mechanism network. The proposed scheme can realize proof of identity and integrity verification of the platform as well as proof of the user identity. In our scheme, when the mobile terminal moves to a new domain, the visited domain directly authenticates the mobile terminal using the ticket issued by the home domain rather than authenticating it through its home domain. We demonstrate that the proposed scheme is highly effective and more secure than contemporary inter-domain fast authentication schemes.

Optical orthogonal codes (OOCs) were introduced by Salehi, as signature sequences to facilitate multiple access in optical fibre networks. The existence of optimal (υ,3,1)-OOCs had been solved completely. Although there are some partial results, the existence of optimal (υ, 4, 1)-OOCs is far from settled. In this letter, three general constructions for (υ, 4, 1)-OOCs via perfect difference families are presented, new infinite classes of (υ, 4, 1)-OOCs are then obtained.

Existing forwarding strategies for delay tolerant networks aim at network throughput maximization. They provide forwarding opportunities to more reachable destinations. This results in the long end-to-end delay and low throughput of less reachable destinations. In this paper, we propose two forwarding strategies to improve the throughput of less reachable nodes with little throughput degradation of more reachable nodes. Evaluation results show that the proposed forwarding strategies can control the levels of fairness among the destinations while maintaining high throughput, compared with the legacy forwarding strategies.

In this paper, new design of optimal frequency hopping sequences (FHSs) with low hit zone (LHZ) with respect to the Peng-Fan-Lee bound is presented based on interleaving techniques. By the new design, new classes of optimal LHZ FHS sets with large family size are obtained. It is shown that all the sequences in the proposed FHS sets are shift distinct. The proposed FHS sets are suitable for quasi-synchronous time/frequency hopping code division multiple access systems to eliminate multiple-access interference.

In this paper, a block-constrained trellis coded vector quantization (BC-TCVQ) algorithm is combined with an algebraic codebook to produce an algebraic trellis vector code (ATVC) to be used in ACELP coding. ATVC expands the set of allowed algebraic codebook pulse position, and the trellis branches are labeled with these subsets. The Viterbi algorithm is used to select the excitation codevector. A fast codebook search method using an efficient non-exhaustive search technique is also proposed to reduce the complexity of the ATVC search procedure while maintaining the quality of the reconstructed speech. The ATVC block code is used as the fixed codebook of AMR-NB (12.2 kbps), which reduces the computational complexity compared to the conventional algebraic codebook.

A one-dimensional ad hoc network with a single active source–destination pair is analyzed in terms of transport capacity, where each node uses multiple antennas. The analysis is based on using a multi-hop opportunistic routing transmission in the presence of fading. Specifically, the lower and upper bounds on the transport capacity are derived and their scaling law is analyzed as the node density, λ, is assumed to be infinitely large. The lower and upper bounds are shown to have the same scaling (ln λ)1/α, where α denotes the path-loss exponent. We also show that using multiple antennas at each node does not fundamentally change the scaling law.

In this paper, effects of the parasite elements on an antenna impedance of a UHF RFID tag put on a high impedance surface (HIS) are experimentally studied in detail. It is shown that small parasite elements on a mushroom HIS structure can help to recover a mismatch of the impedance and this impedance recovery is brought by an in-phase frequency shift of the HIS due to a mutual coupling between the HIS and the parasite elements. The technique is applied to a commercial 953 MHz band RFID tag inlet antenna on a 53-cell HIS with the total dimension of 125751.5 mm3 and it is demonstrated that the impedance mismatch is successfully recovered and the tag operates with a reading range of 3 m even on a 2003002 mm3 aluminum plate.

In this paper, we present a new fault-tolerant, large-scale star network scheme called Scalable Autonomous Fault-tolerant Ethernet (SAFE). The primary goal of a SAFE scheme is to provide network scalability and autonomous fault detection and recovery. SAFE divides a large-scale, mission-critical network, such as the naval combatant network, into several subnets by limiting the number of nodes in each subnet. This network can be easily configured as a star network in order to meet fault recovery time requirements. For SAFE, we developed a novel mechanism for inter-subnet fault detection and recovery; a conventional Ethernet-based heartbeat mechanism is used in each subnet. Theoretical and experimental performance analyses of SAFE in terms of fail-over time were conducted under various network failure scenarios. The results validate our scheme.

The research on body-centric wireless communications (BCWCs) is becoming very hot because of numerous applications, especially the application of E-health systems. Therefore, a small multi-band and low-profile planar inverted-F antenna (PIFA) with tuning function is presented for BCWCs in this paper. In order to achieve multi-band operation, there are two branches in the antenna: the longer branch low frequency band (950–956 MHz), and the shorter branch with a varactor diode embedded for high frequency bands. By supplying different DC voltages, the capacitance of the varactor diode varies, so the resonant frequency can be tuned without changing the dimension of the antenna. While the bias is set at 6 V and 14 V, WiMAX and ISM bands can be covered, respectively. From the radiation patterns, at 950 MHz, the proposed antenna is suitable for on-body communications, and in WiMAX and ISM bands, they are suitable for both on-body and off-body communications.