We develop an effective algorithm, based on the filtered backprojection (FBP) approach, for the imaging of vegetation. Under the FBP scheme, the reconstruction amounts at a non-trivial Fourier inversion, since the data are Fourier samples arranged on a non-Cartesian grid. The computational issue is efficiently tackled by Non-Uniform Fast Fourier Transforms (NUFFTs), whose complexity grows asymptotically as that of a standard FFT. Furthermore, significant speed-ups, as compared to fast CPU implementations, are obtained by a parallel versions of the NUFFT algorithm, purposely designed to be run on Graphic Processing Units (GPUs) by using the CUDA language. The performance of the parallel algorithm has been assessed in comparison to a CPU-multicore accelerated, Matlab implementation of the same routine, to other CPU-multicore accelerated implementations based on standard FFT and employing linear, cubic, spline and sinc interpolations and to a different, parallel algorithm exploiting a parallel linear interpolation stage. The proposed approach has resulted the most computationally convenient. Furthermore, an indoor, polarimetric experimental setup is developed, capable to isolate and introduce, one at a time, different non-idealities of a real acquisition, as the sources (wind, rain) of temporal decorrelation. Experimental far-field polarimetric measurements on a thuja plicata (western redcedar) tree point out the performance of the set up algorithm, its robustness against data truncation and temporal decorrelation as well as the possibility of discriminating scatterers with different features within the investigated scene.

Existing filtering methods of TCP ACK packets are known to be effective in reducing the required bandwidth, resulting in the improvement of TCP throughput. However, the methods cannot handle the filtering of piggyback ACK packets. Considering that most TCP applications require bidirectional data exchange, the lack of the functionality to deal with the piggyback ACK packets should be addressed. This paper proposes a novel filtering scheme for WiMAX systems that can handle the piggyback ACK packets. The novelty comes from the fact that the proposed method overlaps the processing time of packet merging with the round trip delay of the bandwidth request-and-grant procedure. It is advantageous because it does not require extra time for the merging. The results from an analytical model and simulations show that the required uplink bandwidth is decreased while the downlink throughput is increased.

This paper proposes a technique for two-stage operational amplifiers (OPAMPs) to optimize power consumption according to various channel conditions of wireless communication systems. The proposed OPAMP has the ability of reducing the quiescent current of each stage independently by introducing additional common-mode feedback, therefore more optimization is possible according to the channel conditions than conventional two-stage OPAMPs. The simulations verify the benefits of the technique. As a proof-of-concept topology, the proposed OPAMPs were used in a channel-selection filter for a multi-standard mobile-TV receiver. The power consumption of the filter, 3.4–5.0 mW, was adjustable according to the bandwidth, the noise, and the jammer level. The performance of the filter meets the requirements and verifies the effectiveness of the proposed approach. The filter was fabricated in 0.18-µm CMOS and occupied 0.64 mm2.

Source-follower-based (SFB) continuous-time low-pass filters (LPF) have the advantages of low power and high linearity over other filter topologies. The second-order SFB filter cells, which are key building blocks for high-order SFB filters, are often realized by composite source follower with positive feedback. For a single branch 2nd-order SFB cell, the linearity drops severely at high frequencies in the pass band because its slew-rate is restricted by the Q factor and the pole frequency. The folded 2nd-order SFB cell provides higher linearity because it has two DC branches, and hence has another freedom to increase the slew rate. However, because of the positive feedback, the folded and unfolded 2nd-order SFB cells, especially those with high Q factors, tend to be unstable and act as relaxation oscillators under given circuit parameters. In order to obtain higher Q factor, a new topology for the 2nd-order SFB cell without positive feedback is proposed in this paper, which is unconditionally stable and can provide high linearity. Based on the folded 2nd-order SFB cell and the proposed high-Q SFB cell, a 264 MHz sixth-order LPF with 3 stages for ultra wideband (UWB) applications is designed in 0.18 µm CMOS technology. Simulation results show that the LPF achieves an IIP3 of above 12.5 dBm in the whole pass band. The LPF consumes only 4.1 mA from a 1.8 V power supply, and has a layout area of 200 µm 150 µm.

This paper develops planar circuit filters consisting of arbitrarily-shaped conductor patches and slots on a conductor-backed dielectric substrate, which are designed by an optimization technique based on the genetic algorithm. The developed filter has multiple resonators and their mutual couplings in the limited space by using both sides of the substrate, so that its compactness is realized. We first demonstrate the effectiveness of the present filter structure from some design samples numerically and experimentally. Then as a practical application, we design compact UWB filters, and their filter characteristics are verified from the measurements.

A new compact form of the sliding window recursive least squares (SWRLS) algorithm, the I-SWRLS algorithm, is derived using an indefinite matrix. The resultant algorithm has a form similar to that of the traditional recursive least squares (RLS) algorithm, and is more computationally efficient than the conventional SWRLS algorithm including two Riccati equations. Furthermore, a computationally reduced version of the I-SWRLS algorithm is developed utilizing a shift property of the correlation matrix of input data. The resulting fast algorithm reduces the computational complexity from O(N2) to O(N) per iteration when the filter length (tap number) is N, but retains the same tracking performance as the original algorithm. This fast algorithm is much easier to implement than the existing SWC FTF algorithms.

In ubiquitous sensor networks, extra energy savings can be achieved by selecting the filtering solution to counter the attack. This adaptive selection process employs a fuzzy rule-based system for selecting the best solution, as there is uncertainty in the reasoning processes as well as imprecision in the data. In order to maximize the performance of the fuzzy system the membership functions should be optimized. However, the efforts required to perform this optimization manually can be impractical for commonly used applications. This paper presents a GA-based membership function optimizer for fuzzy adaptive filtering (GAOFF) in ubiquitous sensor networks, in which the efficiency of the membership functions is measured based on simulation results and optimized by GA. The proposed optimization consists of three units; the first performs a simulation using a set of membership functions, the second evaluates the performance of the membership functions based on the simulation results, and the third constructs a population representing the membership functions by GA. The proposed method can optimize the membership functions automatically while utilizing minimal human expertise.

A major drawback in OFDM systems is that the transmit-signal exhibits a high Peak-to-Average Power Ratio (PAPR) which causes nonlinear distortion at the output of power amplifier. To achieve high efficiency in OFDM systems, it is important to suppress PAPR of the transmit signal. In IEEE802.16e (mobile WiMAX) based systems, it is desirable to employ a simple PAPR reduction method such as clipping & filtering (C&F) or peak windowing (PW). The purpose of this paper is to evaluate PAPR reduction performance of C&F and PW and compare them in an IEEE802.16e based OFDM system. In addition, we also show a repeated PW method which reduces PAPR by repeatedly applying a smooth window function to the transmit signal. Computer simulation results show that the repeated PW can achieve almost the same PAPR reduction performance as that of the repeated C&F with significantly lower computational complexity.

A fifth-order switched-capacitor (SC) complex filter was implemented in 0.2-µm CMOS technology. A novel SC integrator was developed to reduce the die size and current consumption of the filter. The filter is centered at 24.730.15 kHz (3δ) and has a bandwidth of 20.260.3 kHz (3δ). The image channel is attenuated by more than 42.6 dB. The in-band third-order harmonic input intercept point (IIP3) is 17.3 dBm, and the input referred RMS noise is 34.3 µVrms. The complex filter consumes 350 µA with a 2.0-V power supply. The die size is 0.578 mm2. Owing to the new SC integrator, the filter achieves a 27% reduction in die size without any degradation in its characteristics, including its noise performance, compared with the conventional equivalent.

This paper presents a circuit that improves supply noise rejection using an active inductor circuit. Compared to the conventional designs, the proposed supply noise suppression circuit has better characteristics such as low current consumption and small die size with noise rejection. The circuit was fabricated using 0.13 µm UMC CMOS technology. The experimental results showed that the supply noise was suppressed by 61% with only an increase in size of 20.0 µm 2.5 µm, and the current consumption was under 2 mA.

In this paper, we propose a robust state estimation method using a particle filter (PF) for a class of nonlinear systems which have stochastic parameter uncertainties. A robust PF was designed using prediction and correction structure. The proposed PF draws particles from a simple proposal density function and corrects the particles with particle-wise correction gains. We present a method to obtain an error variance of each particle and its upper bound, which is minimized to determine the correction gain. The proposed method is less restrictive on system nonlinearities and noise statistics; moreover, it can be applied regardless of system stability. The effectiveness of the proposed robust PF is illustrated via an example based on Chua's circuit.

This paper presents an ultra-wideband amplifier embedded with band-pass filter design. The scattering parameters of a frequency-domain GaAs field effect transistor are converted into z-domain representations by employing the weighted linear least squares method. A least squares scheme is employed to obtain characteristic impedances of transmission line elements that form the amplifier having a flat gain in the passband and good fall-off selectivity in the stopband. Experimental results illustrate the validity of the proposed design method.

Recently, assuming ideal brick-wall transmit filtering, we proposed a frequency-domain block signal detection (FDBD) with maximum likelihood detection employing QR decomposition and M-algorithm (called QRM-MLD) for the reception of single-carrier (SC) signals transmitted over a frequency-selective fading channel. QR decomposition (QRD) is applied to a concatenation of the propagation channel and discrete Fourier transform (DFT). However, a large number of surviving paths is required in the M-algorithm to achieve sufficiently improved bit error rate (BER) performance. The introduction of filtering can achieve improved BER performance due to larger frequency diversity gain while keeping a lower peak-to-average power ratio (PAPR) than orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM). In this paper, we develop FDBD with QRM-MLD for filtered SC signal reception. QRD is applied to a concatenation of transmit filter, propagation channel, and DFT. We evaluate BER and throughput performances by computer simulation. From performance evaluation, we discuss how the filter roll-off factor affects the achievable BER and throughput performances and show that as the filter roll-off factor increases, the required number of surviving paths in the M-algorithm can be reduced.

Frequency-domain equalization (FDE) based on minimum mean square error (MMSE) is considered as a promising equalization technique for a broadband single-carrier (SC) transmission. When a square-root Nyquist filter is used at a transmitter and receiver to limit the signal bandwidth, the presence of timing offset produces the inter-symbol interference (ISI) and degrades the bit error rate (BER) performance using MMSE-FDE. In this paper, we discuss the mechanism of the BER performance degradation in the presence of timing offset. Then, we propose joint MMSE-FDE & spectrum combining which can make use the excess bandwidth introduced by transmit filter to achieve larger frequency diversity gain while suppressing the negative effect of the timing offset.

A low-loss ultra-wide band (UWB) filter is presented, which uses miniaturized parallel coupled line along with an standard printed circuit board (PCB) technology. By analyzing even- and odd-mode impedances (in comparison with conventional parallel coupled lines) of miniaturized parallel coupled line, this structure provides tight coupling, thus, relaxing the requirements on physical dimensions width and spacing when designing broadband filters. A bandpass filter for Mode 1 (the first 3 sub-bands) in the 3.1-5 GHz band for Multi-Band Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (MB-OFDM) UWB is realized and compared with a conventional parallel coupled line filter. The experimental results show as much as 0.9 dB insertion loss improvement over the conventional counterpart.

In this paper, we present a numerical method for the equiripple approximation of IIR digital filters. The conventional rational Remez algorithm quickly finds the squared magnitude response of the optimal IIR digital filters, and then by factorizing it the equiripple filter is obtained. Unlike the original Remez algorithm for FIR filters, it is difficult for the rational Remez algorithm to explicitly control the ratio of ripples between different bands. In the conventional lowpass filter design, for example, when different weights are given for its passband and stopband, one needs to iteratively design the filter by manually changing the weights in order to achieve the ratio of the weights exactly. To address this problem, we modify the conventional algorithm and make it possible to directly control the ripple ratio. The method iteratively solves eigenvalue problems with controlling the ripple ratio. Using this method, the equiripple solutions with desired weights are obtained automatically.

This paper introduces a practical color filter array (CFA) interpolation technique. Among the many technologies proposed in this field, the inter-color methods that exploit correlation between color planes generally outperform the intra-color approaches. We have found that the filtering direction, e.g., horizontal or vertical, is among the most decisive factors for the performance of the CFA interpolation. However, most of the state-of-the-art technologies are not flexible enough in determining the filtering direction. For example, filtering only in the upper direction is not usually supported. In this context, we propose an inter-color CFA interpolation using a local map called unified geometry map (UGM). In this method, the filtering direction is determined based on the similarity of the local map data. Thus, it provides more choices of the filtering directions, which enhances the probability of finding the most appropriate direction. It is confirmed through simulations that the proposal outperforms the state-of-the-art algorithms in terms of objective quality measures. In addition, the proposed scheme is as inexpensive as the conventional methods with regard to resource consumption.

In JPEG2000, the Cohen-Daubechies-Feauveau (CDF) 9/7-tap wavelet filter was implemented by using the conventional lifting scheme. However, the filter coefficients remain complex, and the conventional lifting scheme disregards image edges in the coding process. In order to solve these issues, we propose a lifting scheme in two steps. In the first step, we select the appropriate filter coefficients; in the second step, we employ a median operator to regard image edges. Experimental results show that the peak signal-to-noise ratio (PSNR) value of the proposed lifting scheme is significantly improved, by up to 0.75 dB on average, compared to that of the conventional lifting scheme in the CDF 9/7-tap wavelet filter of JPEG2000.

With the emergence of Web 2.0, social tagging systems become highly popular in recent years and thus form the so-called folksonomies. Personalized tag recommendation in social tagging systems is to provide a user with a ranked list of tags for a specific resource that best serves the user's needs. Many existing tag recommendation approaches assume that users are independent and identically distributed. This assumption ignores the social relations between users, which are increasingly popular nowadays. In this paper, we investigate the role of social relations in the task of tag recommendation and propose a personalized collaborative filtering algorithm. In addition to the social annotations made by collaborative users, we inject the social relations between users and the content similarities between resources into a graph representation of folksonomies. To fully explore the structure of this graph, instead of computing similarities between objects using feature vectors, we exploit the method of random-walk computation of similarities, which furthermore enable us to model a user's tag preferences with the similarities between the user and all the tags. We combine both the collaborative information and the tag preferences to recommend personalized tags to users. We conduct experiments on a dataset collected from a real-world system. The results of comparative experiments show that the proposed algorithm outperforms state-of-the-art tag recommendation algorithms in terms of prediction quality measured by precision, recall and NDCG.

The extended binary phase shift keying (EBPSK) transmission system with ultra narrow bandwidth has excellent BER performance, which raises many doubts with the researchers. Therefore, on the premise of the existence of a special filter that can transform the modulated phase information into amplitude information, the theoretical BER formula of EBPSK system in Additive White Gaussian Noise (AWGN) channel has been deduced. This paper gives the theoretical values of the parameters in the above BER formula and discusses the effects of parameters on BER firstly. Then the paper shows that the special impacting filter satisfies the above assumption, therefore, in the frame of binary detection theory, the excellent performance of high-efficiency EBPSK system can be explained and the correction of the theoretical BER formula can be validated.