In this letter, a prerake combining scheme for signal detection in ultra-wideband (UWB) multiple input single output (MISO) systems with a hybrid pulse amplitude and position modulation (PAPM) is analytically examined. For a UWB MISO system, the analytical BER performance of a prerake combining scheme with PAPM is presented in a log-normal multipath fading channel. The analytical BERs are observed to match well the simulated results for the set of parameters chosen. The prerake diversity combining UWB systems, which can significantly reduce the complexity of the receiver side compared to the rake diversity systems, improve the error performance as the number of transmit antennas increases.

The paper is devoted to the experimental study of the arc plasma characteristics in SF6, N2 and CO2. To one flexible model of gas circuit breaker, short circuit experiments have been carried out considering the influence of contact gap (4–12 mm), gas pressure (1–5 atm), short circuit current (1–5 kA effective value) as well as gas species particularly. During the experiments, the arc image, arc current and arc voltage are recorded by the high speed camera, shunt and voltage transducer, respectively. It demonstrates that to the above mentioned three kinds of gases, the arc radius and arc voltage increase with the short circuit current and gas pressure normally; however, under the same experimental conditions, N2 arc holds the minimum arc radius and the maximum arc voltage, and the arc voltage of SF6 arc is the lowest.

We present the recovery of 2.5 Gb/s synchronous 16-point quadrature amplitude modulation data in real-time for an linewidth-times-symbol-duration ratio of 0.00048 after transmission over 1.6 km standard single mode fiber.

In view of the frequent and complex changes of GNSS visible satellite constellation in attitude determination system, an improved attitude signal simulation algorithm for high dynamic satellite signal simulator is proposed. Based on Software Radio architecture, elevation calculation in the antenna coordinate system and channel state control logic under the condition of carrier attitude changes are introduced into the algorithm to implement synchronous scheduling of visible satellite constellation and attitude signal simulation. This work guarantees the simulator to run constantly and stably for a long time with the advantages of high precision and low complexity. Compared with synchronous positioning results from the receiver, the simulation results show that not only can the output signals of the simulator accurately reflect the carrier's attitude characteristics, but also no step error is generated and the positioning precision is not influenced when visible satellite constellation changes.

This paper proposes a new sine wave approximation method for the PAC of DDFS. Sine wave is approximated by removing the harmonic components from trapezoid waveform. Experimental results show that the proposed PAC is advantageous in the SFDR range less than 60 dBc due to its small hardware cost.

We describe a concept and realization of distance-adaptive (DA) resource allocation in spectrum-sliced elastic optical path network (SLICE). We modify the modulation format and cross-connection bandwidth of individual fixed-bit rate optical paths to optimize performance with respect to transmission distance. The shorter paths are allocated a smaller amount of resources which allows reducing the spectrum occupied by the channel. We show in calculation a reduction in required spectral resources of more than 60% when compared to the traditional traffic allocation schemes based on ITU-T grid. The concept is verified experimentally.

We propose a polarization-multiplexing QPSK modulator for synthesis of a 16 QAM signal. The generation mechanism of 16 QAM is based on an electro-optic vector digital-to-analog converter, which can generate optical multilevel signals from binary electric data sequences. A quad-parallel Mach-Zehnder modulator (QPMZM) used in our previous research requires precise control of electric signals or fabrication of a variable optical attenuator, which significantly raises the degree of difficulty to control electric signals or device fabrication. To overcome this difficulty, we developed the polarization-multiplexing QPSK modulator, which improved the method of superposition of QPSK signals. In the polarization-multiplexing QPSK modulator, two QPSK signals are output with orthogonal polarization and superposed through a polarizer. The amplitude ratio between the two QPSK signals can be precisely controlled by rotating the polarizer to arrange the 16 symbols equally. Generation of 16 QAM with 40 Gb/s and a bit error rate of 5.6910-5 was successfully demonstrated using the polarization-multiplexing QPSK modulator. This modulator has simpler configuration than the previous one, utilized a dual-polarization MZM, alleviating complicated control of electric signals.

This paper proposes a system called Neary that detects conversational fields based on similarity of auditory situation among users. The similarity of auditory situation between each pair of the users is measured by the similarity of frequency property of sound captured by head-worn microphones of the individual users. Neary is implemented with a simple algorithm and runs on portable PCs. Experimental result shows Neary can successfully distinguish groups of conversations and track dynamic changes of them. This paper also presents two examples of Neary deployment to detect user contexts during experience sharing in touring at the zoo and attending an academic conference.

Navigation systems providing route-guidance and traffic information are one of the most widely used driver-support systems these days. Most navigation systems are based on the map paradigm which plots the driving route in an abstracted version of a two-dimensional electronic map. Recently, a new navigation paradigm was introduced that is based on the augmented reality (AR) paradigm which displays the driving route by superimposing virtual objects on the real scene. These two paradigms have their own innate characteristics from the point of human cognition, and so complement each other rather than compete with each other. Regardless of the paradigm, the role of any navigation system is to support the driver in achieving his driving goals. The objective of this work is to investigate how these map and AR navigation paradigms impact the achievement of the driving goals: productivity and safety. We performed comparative experiments using a driving simulator and computers with 38 subjects. For the effects on productivity, driver's performance on three levels (control level, tactical level, and strategic level) of driving tasks was measured for each map and AR navigation condition. For the effects on safety, driver's situation awareness of safety-related events on the road was measured. To find how these navigation paradigms impose visual cognitive workload on driver, we tracked driver's eye movements. As a special factor of driving performance, route decision making at the complex decision points such as junction, overpass, and underpass was investigated additionally. Participant's subjective workload was assessed using the Driving Activity Load Index (DALI). Results indicated that there was little difference between the two navigation paradigms on driving performance. AR navigation attracted driver's visual attention more frequently than map navigation and then reduces awareness of and proper action for the safety-related events. AR navigation was faster and better to support route decision making at the complex decision points. According to the subjective workload assessment, AR navigation was visually and temporally more demanding.

Actuator-induced disturbances are among the most crucial factors in correct spacecraft attitude pointing and stability for fine attitude control problems. In order to develop a CMG as an actuator for fine controls, CMG-induced disturbances should be analyzed. Therefore, this paper aims to develop an analytic model that predicts the effect of disturbances to CMGs by assuming static and dynamic imbalances. The proposed analytical model with respect to the disturbances of a CMG is derived using the Lagrange energy method based on the small-signal assumption.

To meet the increasing demand to expand wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) transmission capacity, ultrahigh spectral density coherent optical transmission employing multi-level modulation formats has attracted a lot of attention. In particular, ultrahigh multi-level quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM) has an enormous advantage as regards expanding the spectral efficiency to 10 bit/s/Hz and even approaching the Shannon limit. We describe fundamental technologies for ultrahigh spectral density coherent QAM transmission and present experimental results on polarization-multiplexed 256 QAM coherent optical transmission using heterodyne and homodyne detection with a frequency-stabilized laser and an optical phase-locked loop technique. In this experiment, Raman amplifiers are newly adopted to decrease the signal power, which can reduce the fiber nonlinearity. As a result, the power penalty was reduced from 5.3 to 2.0 dB. A 64 Gbit/s data signal is successfully transmitted over 160 km with an optical bandwidth of 5.4 GHz.

This article presents a unified analytical framework to evaluate the bit error probability (BEP) of M-QAM, R-QAM and M-PAM modulation schemes for different types of fading channels, modeled with Hoyt, Rice, Rayleigh, Nakagami and Log-normal distributions. The mathematical development is obtained for maximal-ratio combining multichannel reception and assumes independent fading paths. The new BEP expressions are written in terms of the integral of the moment generating funcion of the instantaneos signal-to-noise ratio. The advantage of this approach is that it can be applied to any type of fading, and the integrals, even though they do not provide exact expressions, can be numerically evaluated.

This paper proposes a method of correcting annotation errors in a treebank. By using a synchronous grammar, the method transforms parse trees containing annotation errors into the ones whose errors are corrected. The synchronous grammar is automatically induced from the treebank. We report an experimental result of applying our method to the Penn Treebank. The result demonstrates that our method corrects syntactic annotation errors with high precision.

This paper shows experimental results of packet error rates (PERs) in wireless-LAN mounted printed circuit boards and gives a discussion on a mechanism of electromagnetic noise coupling that affects the PER. We utilized the amplitude probability distribution to investigate the noise coupling channel. We measured the magnetic near-field distribution to obtain information about noise sources. Based on measurement results, we also performed parallel plate resonance analysis to find out electromagnetic interference antennas. We confirmed that noise radiates from a power supply system of a digital circuit and its coupling to a receiving antenna causes an increase of the PER.

In this paper, we propose a novel data hiding technique for G.711-coded speech based on the LSB substitution method. The novel feature of the proposed method is that a low-bitrate encoder, G.726 ADPCM, is used as a reference for deciding how many bits can be embedded in a sample. Experiments showed that the method outperformed the simple LSB substitution method and the selective embedding method proposed by Aoki. We achieved 4-kbit/s embedding with almost no subjective degradation of speech quality, and 10 kbit/s while maintaining good quality.

Random substitutions are very useful and practical method for privacy-preserving schemes. In this paper we obtain the exact relationship between the estimation errors and three parameters used in the random substitutions, namely the privacy assurance metric γ, the total number n of data records, and the size N of transition matrix. We also demonstrate some simulations concerning the theoretical result.

This paper describes non-reference objective quality evaluation for noise-reduced speech. First, a subjective test is conducted in accordance with ITU-T Rec. P.835 to obtain the speech quality, the noise quality, and the overall quality of noise-reduced speech. Based on the results, we then propose an overall quality estimation model. The unique point of the proposed model is that the estimation of the overall quality is done only using the previously estimated speech quality and noise quality, in contrast to conventional models, which utilize the acoustical features extracted. Finally, we propose a non-reference objective quality evaluation method using the proposed model. The results of an experiment with different noise reduction algorithms and noise types confirmed that the proposed method gives more accurate estimates of the overall quality compared with the method described in ITU-T Rec. P.563.

Privacy-preserving clustering (PPC in short) is important in publishing sensitive time-series data. Previous PPC solutions, however, have a problem of not preserving distance orders or incurring privacy breach. To solve this problem, we propose a new PPC approach that exploits Fourier magnitudes of time-series. Our magnitude-based method does not cause privacy breach even though its techniques or related parameters are publicly revealed. Using magnitudes only, however, incurs the distance order problem, and we thus present magnitude selection strategies to preserve as many Euclidean distance orders as possible. Through extensive experiments, we showcase the superiority of our magnitude-based approach.

Mobile devices, such as cellular phones and car navigation systems, are essential to daily life. People acquire necessary information and preferred content over communication networks anywhere, anytime. However, usability issues arise from the simplicity of user interfaces themselves. Thus, a recommendation of content that is adapted to a user's preference and situation will help the user select content. In this paper, we describe a method to realize such a system using Bayesian networks. This user-adapted mobile system is based on a user model that provides recommendation of content (i.e., restaurants, shops, and music that are suitable to the user and situation) and that learns incrementally based on accumulated usage history data. However, sufficient samples are not always guaranteed, since a user model would require combined dependency among users, situations, and contents. Therefore, we propose the LK method for modeling, which complements incomplete and insufficient samples using knowledge data, and CPT incremental learning for adaptation based on a small number of samples. In order to evaluate the methods proposed, we applied them to restaurant recommendations made on car navigation systems. The evaluation results confirmed that our model based on the LK method can be expected to provide better generalization performance than that of the conventional method. Furthermore, our system would require much less operation than current car navigation systems from the beginning of use. Our evaluation results also indicate that learning a user's individual preference through CPT incremental learning would be beneficial to many users, even with only a few samples. As a result, we have developed the technology of a system that becomes more adapted to a user the more it is used.

Nonlinear distortions in power amplifiers (PAs) generate spectral regrowth at the output, which causes interference to adjacent channels and errors in digitally modulated signals. This paper presents a novel method to evaluate adjacent channel leakage power ratio (ACPR) and error vector magnitude (EVM) from the amplitude-to-amplitude (AM/AM) and amplitude-to-phase (AM/PM) characteristics. The transmitted signal is considered to be complex Gaussian distributed in orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) systems. We use the Mehler formula to derive closed-form expressions of the PAs output power spectral density (PSD), ACPR and EVM for memoryless PA and memory PA respectively. We inspect the derived relationships using an OFDM signal in the IEEE 802.11a WLAN standard. Simulation results show that the proposed method is appropriate to predict the ACPR and EVM values of the nonlinear PA output in OFDM systems, when the AM/AM and AM/PM characteristics are known.