Recently, network coding has been applied to reliable multicast in wireless networks for packet loss recovery, resulting in significant bandwidth savings. In network-coding-based multicast schemes, once a receiver receives one packet from the source it sends an ACK to acknowledge packet receipt. Such acknowledgment mechanism has the following limitation: when an ACK from one receiver is lost, the source considers the corresponding packet to be lost at this receiver and then conducts unnecessary retransmission. Motivated by this basic observation, we first propose a block-based acknowledgment mechanism, where an ACK now acknowledges all previously received packets in the current block such that the later received ACKs can offset the loss of previous ACKs. To reduce the total amount of feedback overhead, we further propose a more simple feedback mechanism, in which the receivers only start to send acknowledgments from the last two packets (not from the first one as in the first mechanism) of the current block. The first mechanism has the potential to achieve better performance over the latter one in wireless networks with long deep fades (i.e., continuous packet losses) due to its continuous transmissions of ACKs, while the second one is more promising for wireless networks with only random packet losses due to its smaller amount of feedback. Both theoretical and simulation results demonstrate that, compared to the current acknowledgment mechanism in network-coding-based reliable multicast schemes, these two mechanisms can achieve much higher bandwidth efficiency.

3 dB bandwidth enhancement of single mode semiconductor lasers is confirmed numerically and experimentally when they are operated by intensity modulated signal light injection. 3 dB bandwidth is enlarged to 2.5 times of resonant frequency. The numerical analysis of rate equations predicts that the bandwidth enhancement is accomplished by the modal gain control of semiconductor lasers with injected intensity modulated signal light through non-linear gain coefficient term.

In this paper, an improved hybrid LUT-based architecture for low-error and efficient fixed-width squarer circuits is presented in which LUT-based and conventional logic circuits are employed together to achieve the good trade-off between hardware complexity and performance. By exploiting the mathematical identities and hybrid architecture, the mean error and mean squarer error of the proposed squarer are reduced by up to 40%, compared with the best previous method presented in literature. Moreover, the proposed method can improve the speed and reduce the area of the squarer circuit. The implementation and chip measurement results in 0.18-µm CMOS technology are also presented and discussed.

Mel Frequency Cepstral Coefficients (MFCC) are the most popular acoustic features used in automatic speech recognition (ASR), mainly because the coefficients capture the most useful information of the speech and fit well with the assumptions used in hidden Markov models. As is well known, MFCCs already employ several principles which have known counterparts in the peripheral properties of human hearing: decoupling across frequency, mel-warping of the frequency axis, log-compression of energy, etc. It is natural to introduce more mechanisms in the auditory periphery to improve the noise robustness of MFCC. In this paper, a k-nearest neighbors based frequency masking filter is proposed to reduce the audibility of spectra valleys which are sensitive to noise. Besides, Moore and Glasberg's critical band equivalent rectangular bandwidth (ERB) expression is utilized to determine the filter bandwidth. Furthermore, a new bandpass infinite impulse response (IIR) filter is proposed to imitate the temporal masking phenomenon of the human auditory system. These three auditory perceptual mechanisms are combined with the standard MFCC algorithm in order to investigate their effects on ASR performance, and a revised MFCC extraction scheme is presented. Recognition performances with the standard MFCC, RASTA perceptual linear prediction (RASTA-PLP) and the proposed feature extraction scheme are evaluated on a medium-vocabulary isolated-word recognition task and a more complex large vocabulary continuous speech recognition (LVCSR) task. Experimental results show that consistent robustness against background noise is achieved on these two tasks, and the proposed method outperforms both the standard MFCC and RASTA-PLP.

The market growths of smart-phones and thin clients have been significantly increasing communication traffic in mobile networks. To handle the increased traffic, network operators should consider how to leverage distributed wireless resources such as distributed spots of wireless local access networks. In this paper, we consider the system where multiple moving users share distributed wireless access points on their traveling routes between their start and goal points and formulate as an optimization problem. Then, we come up with three algorithms as a solution for the problem. The key idea here is 'longcut route instruction', in which users are instructed to choose a traveling route where less congested access points are available; even if the moving distance increases, the throughput for users in the system would improve. In this paper, we define the gain function. Moreover, we analyze the basic characteristics of the system using as a simple model as possible.

The fringe field effects of nano-electromechanical (NEM) nonvolatile memory cells have been investigated analytically for the accurate evaluation of NEM memory cells. As the beam width is scaled down, fringe field effect becomes more severe. It has been observed that pull-in, release and hysteresis voltage decrease more than our prediction. Also, the fringe field on cell characteristics has been discussed.

A new codebook mapping algorithm for artificial bandwidth extension (ABE) is introduced in this paper. We design a wideband line spectrum pair (LSP) codebook which is coupled with the same index as the LSP codebook of a narrowband speech codec. The received narrowband LSP codebook indices are used to directly induce wideband LSP codewords. Thus, the proposed scheme eliminates codebook search processing to estimate the wideband spectrum envelope. We apply the proposed scheme to bandwidth extension in adaptive multi-rate (AMR) compressed domain. Its performance is assessed via the perceptual evaluation of speech quality (PESQ), informal listening tests, and weighted million operations per second (WMOPS) calculations.

This paper proposes an adaptive bandwidth control scheme for the private wireless networks. Carrier sense multiple access with collision avoidance (CSMA/CA), which is commonly used within the private networks, is not efficient in terms of spectral efficiency due to its strict collision avoidance process. In order to relax the collision avoidance rule, this paper employs dynamic spectrum control (DSC), in which a certain number of discrete spectra having the higher channel gain is selected in a selfish manner with each link allowing a partial band interference. Such interference may be suppressed by the equalizer at the receiver. Aiming at optimal selection of the bandwidth for the selfish DSC according to channel realizations, in the sense of throughput maximization, this paper proposes a channel capacity maximization-based BAR control scheme. Computer simulations validate that the proposed scheme achieves high throughput efficiency.

This paper demonstrates a pulse width controlled PLL without using an LPF. A pulse width controlled oscillator accepts the PFD output where its pulse width controls the oscillation frequency. In the pulse width controlled oscillator, the input pulse width is converted into soft thermometer code through a time to soft thermometer code converter and the code controls the ring oscillator frequency. By using this scheme, our PLL realizes LPF-less as well as quantization noise free operation. The prototype chip achieves 60 µm 20 µm layout area using 65 nm CMOS technology along with 1.73 ps rms jitter while consuming 2.81 mW under a 1.2 V supply with 3.125 GHz output frequency.

This paper proposes a low power artificial bandwidth extension (ABE) technique that reduces computational complexity by introducing a fast codebook mapping method. We also introduce a weighted classified codebook mapping method for constructing the spectral envelope of the wideband speech signal. Classified codebooks are used to reduce spectrum mapping errors caused by characteristic difference among voiced, unvoiced and onset sound. The weighted distortion measure is also used to handle the spectral sensibility. The performance of the proposed ABE system is evaluated by a spectral distortion (SD), a perceptual evaluation of speech quality (PESQ), informal listening tests and weighted million operations per second (WMOPS) calculations. With the use of fast codebook mapping, the WMOPS complexity of the codebook mapping module is reduced by 45.17%.

This letter proposes a practical scheme that can estimate ADSL link rates. The proposed scheme allows us to estimate ADSL link rates from measurements made at the NOC using existing communications protocols and network node facilities; it imposes no heavy traffic overhead. The proposed scheme consists of two major steps. The first step is to collect measured data of round trip times (RTT) for both long and short packets to find their minimum values of RTTs by sending Internet Control Message Protocol (ICMP) echo request messages. The second step is to estimate the ADSL down- and up-link rates by using the difference in RTT between long and short packets and the experimentally-obtained correlated relationships between ADSL down- and up-link rates. RTTs are experimentally measured for an IP network, and it is shown that the down- and up-link rates can be obtained in a simple manner.

In multiuser multiple-input multiple-output (MU-MIMO) wireless downlink systems, block diagonalization (BD) is a technique, where the transmit precoding matrix of each user is designed such that its subspace lies in the null space of all the other remaining users, so that multiuser interference (MUI) is completely canceled. In low signal to noise power ratio (SNR) or low signal to interference plus noise power ratio (SINR) environments, regularized BD, that lets some MUI remain and maximizes the sum rate capacity of the BD MIMO channel, was also proposed. One of the problems of both the approaches is high complexity of computation due to a lot of singular value decomposition (SVD) processes. In this paper we propose new BD techniques utilizing QR decomposition (QRD) which can be practically achieved by Gram-Schmidt orthogonalization (GSO) with lower complexity compared to the conventional method employing SVD. We can show that the performance of the proposed approaches is close to the conventional approaches, while the proposed approaches have much lower complexity.

We present an improvement to the existing steganography-based bandwidth extension scheme. Enhanced WB (wideband) speech quality is achieved by embedding multiple highband spectral gains into a G.711 bitstream. The number of spectral gains is selected by optimizing the quantity of the embedding data with respect to the quality of the extended WB speech. Compared to the existing method, the proposed scheme improves the WB PESQ (Perceptual Evaluation of Speech Quality) score by 0.334 with negligible degradation of the embedded narrowband speech.

In multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems, the multiuser MIMO (MU-MIMO) systems have the potential to provide higher channel capacity owing to multiuser and spatial diversity. Block diagonalization (BD) is one of the techniques to realize MU-MIMO systems, where multiuser interference can be completely cancelled and therefore several users can be supported simultaneously. When the number of multiantenna users is larger than the number of simultaneously receiving users, it is necessary to select the users that maximize the system capacity. However, computation complexity becomes prohibitive, especially when the number of multiantenna users is large. Thus simplified user scheduling algorithms are necessary for reducing the complexity of computation. This paper proposes a simplified capacity-based user scheduling algorithm, based on analysis of the capacity-based user selection criterion. We find a new criterion that is simplified by using the properties of Gram-Schmidt orthogonalization (GSO). In simulation results, the proposed algorithm provides higher sum rate capacity than the conventional simplified norm-based algorithm; and when signal-to-noise power ratio (SNR) is high, it provides performance similar to that of the conventional simplified capacity-based algorithm, which still requires high complexity. Fairness of the users is also taken into account. With the proportionally fair (PF) criterion, the proposed algorithm provides better performance (sum rate capacity or fairness of the users) than the conventional algorithms. Simulation results also shows that the proposed algorithm has lower complexity of computation than the conventional algorithms.

Modern microprocessors employ caches to bridge the great speed variance between a main memory and a central processing unit, but these caches consume a larger and larger proportion of the total power consumption. In fact, many values in a processor rarely need the full-bit dynamic range supported by a cache. The narrow-width value occupies a large portion of the cache access and storage. In view of these observations, this paper proposes an Adaptive Various-width Data Cache (AVDC) to reduce the power consumption in a cache, which exploits the popularity of narrow-width value stored in the cache. In AVDC, the data storage unit consists of three sub-arrays to store data of different widths. When high sub-arrays are not used, they are closed to save its dynamic and static power consumption through the modified high-bit SRAM cell. The main advantages of AVDC are: 1) Both the dynamic and static power consumption can be reduced. 2) Low power consumption is achieved by the modification of the data storage unit with less hardware modification. 3) We exploit the redundancy of narrow-width values instead of compressed values, thus cache access latency does not increase. Experimental results using SPEC 2000 benchmarks show that our proposed AVDC can reduce the power consumption, by 34.83% for dynamic power saving and by 42.87% for static power saving on average, compared with a cache without AVDC.

In this letter, we propose a simple but effective buffer management scheme to achieve fair bandwidth sharing with a FIFO scheduling algorithm, that is, Dynamic Detection and Expulsion (DDE). The DDE scheme dynamically detects buffer occupancy and then precisely expels resided packets on demand through simple comparisons. Simulation results under various traffic conditions show that DDE can arrive at more robust and better fairness, and lower implementation complexity than that of a well-known Pushout (PO) scheme.

In this paper, a novel switched-capacitor DC-DC converter with pulse density and width modulation (PDWM) is proposed with reduced output ripple at variable output voltages. While performing pulse density modulation (PDM), the proposed PDWM modulates the pulse width at the same time to reduce the output ripple with high power efficiency. The prototype chip was implemented using 65 nm CMOS process. The switched-capacitor DC-DC converter has 0.2-V to 0.47-V output voltage and delivers 0.25-mA to 10-mA output current from a 1-V input supply with a peak efficiency of 87%. Compared with the conventional PDM scheme, the proposed switched-capacitor DC-DC converter with PDWM reduces the output ripple by 57% in the low output voltage region with the efficiency penalty of 2%.

Video applications such as video conferencing among multiple users and video surveillance systems require multiple video connections and QoS guarantee. These days the video systems equipped with IEEE 802.11 LAN interfaces allows a broadband wireless access to the Internet at a reasonable price. However, according to the current IEEE 802.11e HCCA standard, if more than two video sessions are to be established simultaneously, some of them must share the TXOP because the available number of TSIDs for video transmission is restricted to two. In order to resolve this problem, we devise a scheme which can establish up to 13 video sessions by slightly modifying the frame structure while maintaining the compatibility with the current standard. Our scheme is implemented on the NCTUns 4.0 network simulator, and evaluated numerically in terms of throughput, delay, and PSNR. Also real video clips are used as input to our simulation. The results showed that our scheme guarantees the transmission bandwidth requested by each video session.

This letter proposes a new scheduling method to improve scheduling efficiency of EPON. The proposed method uses a credit pool for each optical network unit (ONU) and for each service class. For high scheduling efficiency, the credit pool of an ONU can be negative amount to utilize the unused ONU credits. Also the proposed method dynamically excludes the lowest service class from scheduling to decrease a transmission cycle length. Using simulations, we show that the proposed method is better than the existing methods in mean delay.

Network on Chip (NoC) is proposed as a new intra-chip communication infrastructure. In current NoC design, one related problem is mapping IP cores onto NoC architectures. In this paper, we propose a performance-aware hybrid algorithm (PHA) for mesh-based NoC to optimize performance indexes such as latency, energy consumption and maximal link bandwidth. The PHA is a hybrid algorithm, which integrates the advantages of Greedy Algorithm, Genetic Algorithm and Simulated Annealing Algorithm. In the PHA, there are three features. First, it generates a fine initial population efficiently in a greedy swap way. Second, effective global parallel search is implemented by genetic operations such as crossover and mutation, which are implemented with adaptive probabilities according to the diversity of population. Third, probabilistic acceptance of a worse solution using simulated annealing method greatly improves the performance of local search. Compared with several previous mapping algorithms such as MOGA and TGA, simulation results show that our algorithm enhances the performance by 30.7%, 23.1% and 25.2% in energy consumption, latency and maximal link bandwidth respectively. Moreover, simulation results demonstrate that our PHA approach has the highest convergence speed among the three algorithms. These results show that our proposed mapping algorithm is more effective and efficient.