A new digital controller for a single-phase boost power factor correction (PFC) converter operating at a discontinuous conduction mode (DCM), is presented to achieve high input power factor over wide input voltage and load range. A method of duty cycle modulation is proposed to reduce the line harmonic distortion and improve the power factor. The loop regulation scheme is adopted to further improve the system stability and the power factor simultaneously. Meanwhile, a novel digital pulse width modulator (DPWM) based on the delay lock loop technique, is realized to improve the regulation linearity of duty cycle and reduce the regulation deviation. The single-phase DCM boost PFC converter with the proposed digital controller based on the field programmable gate array (FPGA) has been implemented. Experimental results indicate that the proposed digital controller can achieve high power factor more than 0.99 over wide input voltage and load range, the output voltage deviation is less than 3V, and the peak conversion efficiency is 96.2% in the case of a full load.

The notion of multiple constant multiplication (MCM) is extensively adopted in digital signal processing (DSP) applications such as finite impulse filter (FIR) designs. A set of adders is utilized to replace regular multipliers for the multiplications between input data and constant filter coefficients. Though many algorithms have been proposed to reduce the total number of adders in an MCM block for area minimization, they do not consider the actual bitwidth of each adder, which may not estimate the hardware cost well enough. Therefore, in this article we propose a bitwidth-aware MCM optimization algorithm that focuses on minimizing the total number of adder bits rather than the adder count. It first builds a subexpression graph based on the given coefficients, derives a set of constraints for adder bitwidth minimization, and then optimally solves the problem through integer linear programming (ILP). Experimental results show that the proposed algorithm can effectively reduce the required adder bit count and outperforms the existing state-of-the-art techniques.

In this paper, we study an objective quality measure that approximates the subjective mean opinion score (MOS) for bandwidth-extended wideband speech with respect to narrowband speech. Bandwidth-extended speech should be widely evaluated by a subjective quality assessment such as MOS. However, such subjective quality assessments are expensive and time-consuming. This paper proposes a new objective quality measure that combines the perceptual evaluation of speech quality (PESQ) and spectral-distortion. We evaluated the correlation between our proposed scheme and MOS using AMR and AMR-WB speech codecs. The coefficient of correlation between the proposed scheme and the MOS value was found to be 0.973. We concluded that the proposed scheme is a valid and effective objective quality measure.

Suppose that each arc in a digraph D = (V,A) has two costs of non-negative integers, called a spine cost and a leaf cost. A caterpillar is a directed tree consisting of a single directed path (of spine arcs) and leaf vertices each of which is incident to the directed path by exactly one incoming arc (leaf arc). For a given terminal set K ⊆ V, we study the problem of finding a caterpillar in D such that it contains all terminals in K and its total cost is minimized, where the cost of each arc in the caterpillar depends on whether it is used as a spine arc or a leaf arc. In this paper, we first show that the problem is NP-hard for any fixed constant number of terminals with |K| ≥ 3, while it is solvable in polynomial time for at most two terminals. We also give an inapproximability result for any fixed constant number of terminals with |K| ≥ 3. Finally, we give a linear-time algorithm to solve the problem for digraphs with bounded treewidth, where the treewidth for a digraph D is defined as the one for the underlying graph of D. Our algorithm runs in linear time even if |K| = O(|V|), and the hidden constant factor of the running time is just a single exponential of the treewidth.

Silicon photonics Network-on-Chips (NoCs) have emerged as an attractive solution to alleviate the high power consumption of traditional electronic interconnects. In this paper, we propose a fully optical ring NoC that combines static and dynamic wavelength allocation communication mechanisms. A different wavelength-channel is statically allocated to each destination node for light weight communication. Contention of simultaneous communication requests from multiple source nodes to the destination is solved by a token based arbitration for the particular wavelength-channel. For heavy load communication, a multiwavelength-channel is available by requesting it in execution time from source node to a special node that manages dynamic allocation of the shared multiwavelength-channel among all nodes. We combine these static and dynamic communication mechanisms in a same network that introduces selection techniques based on message size and congestion information. Using a photonic NoC simulator based on Phoenixsim, we evaluate our architecture under uniform random, neighbor, and hotspot traffic patterns. Simulation results show that our proposed fully optical ring NoC presents a good performance by utilizing adequate static and dynamic channels based on the selection techniques. We also show that our architecture can reduce by more than half, the energy consumption necessary for arbitration compared to hybrid photonic ring and mesh NoCs. A comparison with several previous works in term of architecture hardware cost shows that our architecture can be an attractive cost-performance efficient interconnection infrastructure for future SoCs and CMPs.

In P2P applications, networks are formed by devices belonging to independent users. Therefore, routing hotspots or routing congestions are typically created by an unanticipated new event that triggers an unanticipated surge of users to request streaming service from some particular nodes; and a challenging problem is how to provide incentive mechanisms to allocation bandwidth more fairly in order to avoid congestion and other short backs for P2P QoS. In this paper, we study P2P bandwidth game — the bandwidth allocation in P2P networks. Unlike previous works which focus either on routing or on forwarding, this paper investigates the game theoretic mechanism to incentivize node's real bandwidth demands and propose novel method that avoid congestion proactively, that is, prior to a congestion event. More specifically, we define an incentive-compatible pricing vector explicitly and give theoretical proofs to demonstrate that our mechanism can provide incentives for nodes to tell the true bandwidth demand. In order to apply this mechanism to the P2P distribution applications, we evaluate our mechanism by NS-2 simulations. The simulation results show that the incentive pricing mechanism can distribute the bandwidth fairly and effectively and can also avoid the routing hotspot and congestion effectively.

Lattice-reduction (LR) technique has been adopted to improve the performance and reduce the complexity in MIMO data detection. This paper presents an improved quantization scheme for LR aided MIMO detection based on Gram-Schmidt orthogonalization. For the LR aided detection, the quantization step applies the simple rounding operation, which often leads to the quantization errors. Meanwhile, these errors may result in the detection errors. Hence the purpose of the proposed detection is to further solve the problem of degrading the performance due to the quantization errors in the signal estimation. In this paper, the proposed quantization scheme decreases the quantization errors using a simple tree search with a threshold function. Through the analysis and the simulation results, we observe that the proposed detection can achieve the nearly optimal performance with very low complexity, and require a little additional complexity compared to the conventional LR-MMSE detection in the high Eb/N0 region. Furthermore, this quantization error reduction scheme is also efficient even for the high modulation order.

This paper presents an automatic gain control (AGC) system suitable for 60GHz direct conversion receivers. By using a two step gain control algorithm with high-pass filter cutoff frequency switching, the proposed AGC system realizes fast settling time and wide dynamic range simultaneously. The paper also discusses wide-bandwidth variable gain amplifier (VGA) design. By introducing digitally-controlled resistors and gain flattening capacitors, the proposed VGA realizes wide gain range while compensating gain variations due to parasitic capacitance of MOS switches. The AGC system is implemented in a transceiver chipset where RFIC and BBIC are fabricated in 90nm CMOS and 40nm CMOS respectively. The measurement shows excellent dynamic range of 47dB with +/-1dB gain accuracy within 1µs settling time, which satisfies the stringent requirements of the IEEE802.11ad standard.

Folded dipole antenna with feed line (FDAFL) whose relative bandwidth is 65% (VSWR≤3) has been reported as a wideband planar antenna for a small terminal. However, this antenna is constructed outside of the ground plane (50×80mm2) by 12mm. In this study, we analyze the antenna configurations of FDAFL in 3D so that the antenna does not protrude from the ground plane as much as possible. Two different 3D antenna models derived from FDAFL are investigated. The first model is folded over the ground plane, and the second one is folded outside of the ground plane. The relative bandwidth, the VSWR characteristics and radiation patterns are studied. As a result, it is confirmed that antenna prominence could be reduced and broadband characteristics over 74% and 83% are obtained by the 3D models, respectively, which are wider than the bandwidth of conventional 2D model. Thus, FDAFL could be used in both 2D and 3D for a small terminal.

In cloud computing, multiple users coexist in one datacenter infrastructure and the network is always shared using VMs. Network bandwidth allocation is necessary for security and performance guarantees in the datacenter. InfiniBand (IB) is more widely applied in the construction of datacenter cluster and attracts more interest from the academic field. In this paper, we propose an IB dynamic bandwidth allocation mechanism IBShare to achieve different Weight-proportional and Min-guarantee requirements of allocation entities. The differentiated IB Congestion Control (CC) configuration is proven to offer the proportional throughput characteristic at the flow level. IBShare leverages distributed congestion detection, global congestion computation and configuration to dynamically provide predictable bandwidth division. The real IB experiment results showed IBShare can promptly adapt to the congestion variation and achieve the above two allocation demands through CC reconfiguration. IBShare improved the network utilization than reservation and its computation/configuration overhead was low.

As the demand for high-throughput communications in wireless LANs (WLAN) increases, the need for expanding channel bandwidth also increases. However, the use of wider band channels results in a decrease in the number of available channels because the total available bandwidth for WLAN is limited. Therefore, if multiple access points (APs) are in proximity and the cells overlap, it is difficult for each AP to use an orthogonal channel and competition increases between APs using the same channel. Coordination of APs is one promising approach; however, it is impractical to control all APs in WLAN systems. To cope with this problem, we proposed to analyze throughput performances of a multibandwidth channel selection by the coordinating APs at Nash equilibria, which can be considered as operating points for independent channel selection by APs. To clarify the effect of coordinating APs, we assume a simple scenario where the cells of three or more APs overlap, and each AP can select multibandwidth channels to maximize their own throughput. Through game-theoretic analysis, we find that the coordinated APs are able to select channels more effectively than if each AP independently selects channels. Consequently, the total throughput of the coordinated APs at Nash equilibria is significantly improved.

This paper proposes a new adaptive comb filter which automatically designs its characteristics. The comb filter is used to eliminate a periodic noise from an observed signal. To design the comb filter, there exists three important factors which are so-called notch frequency, notch gain, and notch bandwidth. The notch frequency is the null frequency which is aligned at equally spaced frequencies. The notch gain controls an elimination quantity of the observed signal at notch frequencies. The notch bandwidth controls an elimination bandwidth of the observed signal at notch frequencies. We have previously proposed a comb filter which can adjust the notch gain adaptively to eliminate the periodic noise. In this paper, to eliminate the periodic noise when its frequencies fluctuate, we propose the comb filter which achieves the adaptive notch gain and the adaptive notch bandwidth, simultaneously. Simulation results show the effectiveness of the proposed adaptive comb filter.

PCA-L1 (principal component analysis based on L1-norm maximization) is an approximate solution of L1-PCA (PCA based on the L1-norm), and has robustness against outliers compared with traditional PCA. However, the more dimensions the feature space has, the more calculation time PCA-L1 consumes. This paper focuses on an initialization procedure of PCA-L1 algorithm, and proposes a fast method of PCA-L1 using Gram-Schmidt orthogonalization. Experimental results on face recognition show that the proposed method works faster than conventional PCA-L1 without decrease of recognition accuracy.

In this paper, we investigate the impact of different sub-band spreading bandwidth (SSBW) on a direct sequence (DS) multiband (MB) ultra wideband (UWB) system in multipath and narrowband interference over realistic UWB channel models based on actual measurements. As an approach to effectively mitigate multipath and narrowband interference, the DS-MB-UWB system employs multiple sub-bands instead of a wide single band for data transmission. By using spreading chips with different duration settings, the SSBW can be manipulated. As a result, it is observed that increasing SSBW does not always improve system performance. Optimum SSBW values exist and are found to vary in accordance to different operating parameters such as the number of sub-bands and types of propagation channel model. Additionally, we have also found that system performance in the presence of narrowband interference is heavily dependent on the number of employed sub-bands.

We suggest a novel digitally-controlled SMPS using a high-resolution DPWM generator. In the proposed circuit, the duty ratio of the DPWM is determined by the voltage slope control of an internal capacitor using a pseudo relaxation-oscillation technique. This new control method has a simpler structure, and consumes less power compared to a conventional digitally-controlled SMPS. Therefore, the proposed circuit is able to operate at a high switching frequency (1 MHz10 MHz) obtained from a relatively low internal operating frequency (10 MHz100 MHz) with a small area. The maximum current of the core circuit is 2.7 mA, and the total current of the entire circuit, including the output buffer driver, is 15 mA at 10 MHz switching frequency. The proposed circuit is designed to supply a maximum 1A with maximum DPWM duty ratio of 90%. The output voltage ripple is 7 mV at 3.3 V output voltage. To verify the operation of the proposed circuit, we performed a simulation with Dongbu Hitek BCD 0.35 µm technology.

This paper proposes a dynamic bandwidth allocation algorithm that improves the network performance and bandwidth sharing efficiency in the upstream channels of a hybrid passive optical network (PON) that combines a fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) access network and wireless sensor networks (WSNs). The algorithm is called the adaptive limited dynamic bandwidth allocation (ALDBA) algorithm. Unlike existing algorithms, the ALDBA algorithm is not limited to controlling just FTTH access networks, it also supports WSNs. For the proposed algorithm, we investigate the difference in the lengths of generated data packets between the FTTH terminals and sensor nodes of WSN to effectively evaluate the end-to-end average packet delay, bandwidth utilization, time jitter, and upstream efficiency. Two variants of the proposed algorithm and a limited service (LS) scheme, which is an existing well-known algorithm, are compared under non-uniform traffic conditions without taking into consideration priority scheduling. We demonstrate the proposed scheme through simulation by generating a realistic network traffic model, called self-similar network traffic. We conducted a detailed simulation using several performance parameters to validate the effectiveness of the proposed scheme. The results of the simulation showed that both ALDBA variants outperformed the existing LS scheme in terms of average packet delay, bandwidth utilization, jitter, and upstream efficiency for both low and high traffic loads.

A dual-band dual-polarization array antenna with improved bandwidth for an advanced multi-function radio function concept (AMRFC) radar application is proposed. To improve the S-band impedance bandwidth, the proposed antenna uses modified coupling feed patch. The measured bandwidth of the prototype array is 19.8% and 25.7% for the S- and X-band, respectively. The isolation between the two orthogonal polarizations is higher than 15 dB and cross-polarization level is less than -17 dB for both S- and X-bands.

In this paper, a new bandwidth allocation scheme is proposed based on the Mechanism Design (MD); MD is a branch of game theory that stimulates rational users to behave cooperatively for a global goal. The proposed scheme consists of bandwidth adaptation, call admission control and pricing computation algorithms to improve network performance. These algorithms are designed based on the adaptive online approach and work together to maximize bandwidth efficiency economically. A simulation shows that the proposed scheme can satisfy contradictory requirements and so provide well-balanced network performance.

This paper presents a compact metal plate lens antenna for evaluating a wave absorber placed on ceiling of the ETC gate. The focal distance of the lens was derived to be 129 cm by the geometrical optics procedure. By arranging the lens in front of a horn antenna, the gain and beamwidth characteristics were improved from 18 dBi to 26 dBi and from 22 degrees to 7 degrees, respectively. Then the antenna characteristics were evaluated when the distance between the antenna and the lens was changed in order to miniaturize the lens antenna. As the result, the changes in beamwidth were held to within 1 dB when the lens came close to the horn antenna. Scattering, phase and electric field intensity of electromagnetic wave were evaluated to clarify the foundation of the given characteristics. It was found that the field intensity for the miniaturized lens antenna is stronger than that for GO designed one though the phase uniformity is worse. The distance between the horn antenna and lens can be reduced to 80 cm. The absorption characteristics for the arranged absorbers which have different absorptions were measured, and it was shown that the proposed method was suitable for specifying the deteriorated absorber in the ETC system.

The Hilbert-Schmidt independence criterion (HSIC) is a kernel-based statistical independence measure that can be computed very efficiently. However, it requires us to determine the kernel parameters heuristically because no objective model selection method is available. Least-squares mutual information (LSMI) is another statistical independence measure that is based on direct density-ratio estimation. Although LSMI is computationally more expensive than HSIC, LSMI is equipped with cross-validation, and thus the kernel parameter can be determined objectively. In this paper, we show that HSIC can actually be regarded as an approximation to LSMI, which allows us to utilize cross-validation of LSMI for determining kernel parameters in HSIC. Consequently, both computational efficiency and cross-validation can be achieved.