This paper proposes a novel method for two-dimensional (2-D) direction-of-arrival (DOA) estimation of multiple signals employing a sparse L-shaped array structured by a sparse linear array (SLA), a sparse uniform linear array (SULA) and an auxiliary sensor. In this method, the elevation angles are estimated by using the SLA and an efficient search approach, while the azimuth angle estimation is performed in two stages. In the first stage, the rough azimuth angle estimates are obtained by utilizing a noise-free cross-covariance matrix (CCM), the estimated elevation angles and data from three sensors including the auxiliary sensor. In the second stage, the fine azimuth angle estimates can be achieved by using the shift-invariance property of the SULA and the rough azimuth angle estimates. Without extra pair-matching process, the proposed method can achieve automatic pairing of the 2-D DOA estimates. Simulation results show that our approach outperforms the compared methods, especially in the cases of low SNR, snapshot deficiency and multiple sources.

In this paper, the problem of target detection and tracking utilizing the single frequency network (SFN) is addressed. Specifically, by exploiting the characteristics of the signal in SFN, a novel likelihood model which avoids the measurement origin uncertain problem in the point measurement model is proposed. The particle filter based track-before-detect (PF-TBD) algorithm is adopted for the proposed SFN likelihood to detect and track the possibly existed target. The advantage of using TBD algorithm is that it is suitable for the condition of low SNR, and specially, in SFN, it can avoid the data association between the measurement and the transmitters. The performance of the adopted algorithm is examined via simulations.

Multiple Subcarrier Multiple Access (MSMA) enables concurrent sensor data streamings from multiple wireless and batteryless sensors using the principle of subcarrier backscatter used extensively in passive RFID. Since the interference cancellation performance of MSMA depends on the Signal to Interference plus Noise Ratio of each subcarrier, the choice of channel allocation scheme is essential. Since the channel allocation is a combinatorial problem, obtaining the true optimal allocation requires a vast amount of examinations which is impracticable in a system where we have tens of sensor RF tags. It is particularly true when we have variable distance and variable bandwidth sensor RF tags. This paper proposes a channel allocation scheme in the variable distance and variable bandwidth MSMA system based on a newly introduced performance index, total contamination power, to prioritize indecision cases. The performance of the proposal is evaluated with existing methods in terms of average communication capacity and system fairness using MATLAB Monte Carlo simulation to reveal its advantage. The accuracy of the simulation is also verified with the result obtained from the brute force method.

This paper studies a simultaneous wireless information and power transfer (SWIPT) system in which the transmitter not only sends data and energy to many types of wireless users, such as multiple information decoding users, multiple hybrid power-splitting users (i.e., users with a power-splitting structure to receive both information and energy), and multiple energy harvesting users, but also prevents information from being intercepted by a passive eavesdropper. The transmitter is equipped with multiple antennas, whereas all users and the eavesdropper are assumed to be equipped with a single antenna. Since the transmitter does not have any channel state information (CSI) about the eavesdropper, artificial noise (AN) power is maximized to mask information as well as to interfere with the eavesdropper as much as possible. The non-convex optimization problem is formulated to minimize the transmit power satisfying all signal-to-interference-plus-noise (SINR) and harvested energy requirements for all users so that the remaining power for generating AN is maximized. With perfect CSI, a semidefinite relaxation (SDR) technique is applied, and the optimal solution is proven to be tight. With imperfect CSI, SDR and a Gaussian randomization algorithm are proposed to find the suboptimal solution. Finally, numerical performance with respect to the maximum SINR at the eavesdropper is determined by a Monte-Carlo simulation to compare the proposed AN scenario with a no-AN scenario, as well as to compare perfect CSI with imperfect CSI.

This paper proposes a method for reducing the peak-to-average power ratio (PAPR) at the output signal of a digital predistortion linearizer (DPDL) that compensates for frequency dependent intermodulation distortion (IMD) components. The proposed method controls the amplitude and phase values of the frequency components corresponding to the transmission bandwidth of the output signal. A DPDL employing the proposed method simultaneously provides IMD component cancellation of out-of-band components and PAPR reduction at the output signal. This paper identifies the amplitude and phase conditions to minimize the PAPR. Experimental results based on a 2-GHz band 1-W class power amplifier show that the proposed method improves the drain efficiency of the power amplifier when degradation is allowed in the error vector magnitude. To the best knowledge of the authors, this is the first PAPR reduction method for DPDL that reduces the PAPR while simultaneously compensating for IMD components.

This paper describes analytical results obtained for floor penetration loss characteristics and their frequency dependency by measurements in multiple frequency bands, including those above 6GHz, in an indoor office environment. Measurement and analysis results confirm that the floor penetration loss depends on two dominant components: the transmission path through floors, and the path traveling through the outside building. We also clarify that these dominant paths have different path loss characteristics and frequency dependency. The transmission path through floors rapidly attenuates with large inter-floor offsets and in high frequency bands. On the other hand, the path traveling through outside of the building attenuates monotonically as the frequency increases. Therefore, the transmission path is dominant at short inter-floor offsets and low frequencies, and the path traveling through the outside is dominant at high number of floors or high frequency. Finally, we clarify that the floor penetration loss depends on the frequency dependency of the dominant path on the basis of the path loss characteristics of each dominant path.

Block-state realization of state-space digital filters offers reduced implementation complexity relative to canonical state-space filters while filter's internal structure remains accessible. In this paper, we present a quantitative analysis on l2 coefficient sensitivity of block-state digital filters. Based on this, we develop two techniques for minimizing average l2-sensitivity subject to l2-scaling constraints. One of the techniques is based on a Lagrange function and some matrix-theoretic techniques. The other solution method converts the problem at hand into an unconstrained optimization problem which is solved by using an efficient quasi-Newton algorithm where the key gradient evaluation is done in closed-form formulas for fast and accurate execution of quasi-Newton iterations. A case study is presented to demonstrate the validity and effectiveness of the proposed techniques.

In social and information network analysis, ranking has been considered to be one of the most fundamental and important tasks where the goal is to rank the nodes of a given graph according to their importance. For example, the PageRank and the HITS algorithms are well-known ranking methods. While these traditional ranking methods focus only on the structure of the entire network, we propose to incorporate a local view into node ranking by exploiting the clustering structure of real-world networks. We develop localized ranking mechanisms by partitioning the graphs into a set of tightly-knit groups and extracting each of the groups where the localized ranking is computed. Experimental results show that our localized ranking methods rank the nodes quite differently from the traditional global ranking methods, which indicates that our methods provide new insights and meaningful viewpoints for network analysis.

A ripple-free dual-rate control system is designed for a single-input single-output dual-rate system, in which the sampling interval of a plant output is longer than the holding interval of a control input. The dual-rate system is converged to a multi-input single-output single-rate system using the lifting technique, and a control system is designed based on an error system using the steady-state variable. Because the proposed control law is designed so that the control input is constant in the steady state, the intersample output as well as the sampled output converges to the set-point without both steady-state error and intersample ripples when there is neither modeling nor disturbance. Furthermore, in the proposed method, a two-degree-of-freedom integral compensation is designed, and hence, the transient response is not deteriorated by the integral action because the integral action is canceled when there is neither modeling nor disturbance. Moreover, in the presence of the modeling error or disturbance, the integral compensation is revealed, and hence, the steady-state error is eliminated on both the intersample and sampled response.

The method for estimating propagation loss that classifies receiving points into multiple groups by focusing on the number of reflections and diffractions, and applies a separate statistical model to each group was extended from only 2.4 GHz band to both 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz band. The extended statistical model was created from received power measurements. First, an appropriate grouping method was investigated based on the fitting error of statistical model. Non-line-of-sight (NLOS) receiving points were grouped in order of points that a wave reflected one time reaches, points that a wave reflected two times reaches, and points that a wave diffracted one time reaches. Next, the effectiveness of the proposed method was verified by comparison with conventional statistical models (one-slope, dual-slope, multi-wall, partitioned) on three office floors that differ from the environment used to create the statistical model. The average NLOS estimation error for the three evaluation environments was 4.9 dB, demonstrating that the proposed method has accuracy equal to or better than that of conventional methods.

This paper proposes a painterly morphing algorithm for mobile smart devices, where each frame in the morphing sequence looks like an oil-painted picture with brush strokes. It can be presented, for example, during the transition between the main screen and a specific application screen. For this, a novel dissimilarity function and acceleration data structures are developed. The experimental results show that the algorithm produces visually stunning effects at an interactive time.

The main idea of filter methods in feature selection is constructing a feature-assessing criterion and searching for feature subset that optimizes the criterion. The primary principle of designing such criterion is to capture the relevance between feature subset and the class as precisely as possible. It would be difficult to compute the relevance directly due to the computation complexity when the size of feature subset grows. As a result, researchers adopt approximate strategies to measure relevance. Though these strategies worked well in some applications, they suffer from three problems: parameter determination problem, the neglect of feature interaction information and overestimation of some features. We propose a new feature selection algorithm that could compute mutual information between feature subset and the class directly without deteriorating computation complexity based on the computation of partitions. In light of the specific properties of mutual information and partitions, we propose a pruning rule and a stopping criterion to accelerate the searching speed. To evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm, we compare our algorithm to the other five algorithms in terms of the number of selected features and the classification accuracies on three classifiers. The results on the six synthetic datasets show that our algorithm performs well in capturing interaction information. The results on the thirteen real world datasets show that our algorithm selects less yet better feature subset.

In this work, the metal-oxide-metal (MOM) capacitor in the scaled CMOS process has been modeled at high frequencies using an EM simulator, and its layout has been optimized. The modeled parasitic resistance consists of four components, and the modeled parasitic inductance consists of the comb inductance and many mutual inductances. Each component of the parasitic resistance and inductance show different degrees of dependence on the finger length and on the number of fingers. The substrate network parameters also have optimum points. As such, the geometric dependence of the characteristics of the MOM capacitor is investigated and the optimum layout in the constant-capacitance case is proposed by calculating the results of the model. The proposed MOM capacitor structures for 50fF at f =60GHz are L =5μm with M =3, and, L =2μm with M =5 and that for 100fF at f =30GHz are L =9μm with M =3, and L =4μm with M =5. The target process is 65-nm CMOS.

Precise determination of antenna phase centers is crucial to reduce the uncertainty in gain when employing the three-antenna method, particularly when the range distances are short-such as a 3-m radio anechoic chamber, where the distance between the phase centers and the open ends of an aperture antenna (the most commonly-used reference) is not negligible compared with the propagation distance. An automatic system to determine the phase centers of aperture antennas in a radio anechoic chamber is developed. In addition, the absolute gain of horn antennas is evaluated using the three-antenna method. The phase centers of X-band pyramidal horns were found to migrate up to 18mm from the open end. Uncertainties in the gain were evaluated in accordance with ISO/IEC Guide 93-3: 2008. The 95% confidence interval of the horn antenna gain was reduced from 0.57 to 0.25dB, when using the phase center location instead of the open end. The phase centers, gains, polarization, and radiation patterns of space-borne antennas are measured: low and medium-gain X-band antennas for an ultra small deep space probe employing the polarization pattern method with use of the horn antenna. The 95% confidence interval in the antenna gain decreased from 0.74 to 0.47dB.

Aiming at solving the performance degradation caused by the covariance matrix mismatch in wideband beamforming for conformal arrays, a novel adaptive beamforming algorithm is proposed in this paper. In this algorithm, the interference-plus-noise covariance matrix is firstly reconstructed to solve the desired signal contamination problem. Then, a sparse reconstruction method is utilized to reduce the high computational cost and the requirement of sampling data. A novel cost function is formulated by the focusing matrix and singular value decomposition. Finally, the optimization problem is efficiently solved in a second-order cone programming framework. Simulation results using a cylindrical array demonstrate the effectiveness and robustness of the proposed algorithm and prove that this algorithm can achieve superior performance over the existing wideband beamforming methods for conformal arrays.

In this paper, we consider wireless powered sensor networks. In these networks, the energy access point (EAP) transmits the energy packets to the sensor nodes and then, the sensor nodes send their sensing data to the information access point (IAP) by exploiting the harvested energy. Because the sensor nodes have a limited information queue (data storage) and energy queue (battery), energy packet/data packet scheduling is important. Accordingly, to reduce the total energy required to support the associated sensor network and simultaneously avoid sensing data loss, the energy packet/data packet transmission periods are jointly optimized. Furthermore, analyses identify the optimal location of EAP which will yield energy-efficient wireless powered sensor networks. Through the computer simulations, the performance of the proposed packet scheduling and deployment policy is demonstrated.

The illegal parking of bicycles is a serious urban problem in Tokyo. The purpose of this study was to sustainably build Linked Open Data (LOD) to assist in solving the problem of illegally parked bicycles (IPBs) by raising social awareness, in cooperation with the Office for Youth Affairs and Public Safety of the Tokyo Metropolitan Government (Tokyo Bureau). We first extracted information on the problem factors and designed LOD schema for IPBs. Then we collected pieces of data from the Social Networking Service (SNS) and the websites of municipalities to build the illegally parked bicycle LOD (IPBLOD) with more than 200,000 triples. We then estimated the temporal missing data in the LOD based on the causal relations from the problem factors and estimated spatial missing data based on geospatial features. As a result, the number of IPBs can be inferred with about 70% accuracy, and places where bicycles might be illegally parked are estimated with about 31% accuracy. Then we published the complemented LOD and a Web application to visualize the distribution of IPBs in the city. Finally, we applied IPBLOD to large social activity in order to raise social awareness of the IPB issues and to remove IPBs, in cooperation with the Tokyo Bureau.

Space optical communication has been considered one of the major candidates for high-rate data transmission and it reaches the practical stage to operate as a high-rate data transmission system. In this paper, the author reports the latest situation of space optical communication around the world, flight demonstrations, technological research and standardization. Research and development activities at Japan aerospace exploration agency (JAXA) are also presented.

Gender classification with hand-dorsa vein information, a new soft biometric trait, is solved with the proposed unsupervised sparse feature learning model, state-of-the-art accuracy demonstrates the effectiveness of the proposed model. Besides, we also argue that the proposed data reconstruction model is also applicable to age estimation when comprehensive database differing in age is accessible.

In this paper, we present a new three-way split formula for binary polynomial multiplication (PM) with five recursive multiplications. The scheme is based on a recently proposed multievaluation and interpolation approach using field extension. The proposed PM formula achieves the smallest space complexity. Moreover, it has about 40% reduced time complexity compared to best known results. In addition, using developed techniques for PM formulas, we propose a three-way split formula for Toeplitz matrix vector product with five recursive products which has a considerably improved complexity compared to previous known one.