In this paper, we propose a reduced-complexity radial basis function (RBF)-assisted decision-feedback equalizer (DFE)-based turbo equalization (TEQ) scheme using a novel extended fuzzy c-means (FCM) algorithm, which not only is comparable in performance to the Jacobian RBF DFE-based TEQ but also is low-complexity. Previous TEQ research has shown that the Jacobian RBF DFE TEQ considerably reduces the computational complexity with similar performance, when compared to the logarithmic maximum a posteriori (Log-MAP) TEQ. In this study, the proposed reduced-complexity RBF DFE TEQ further greatly reduces the computational complexity and is capable of attaining a similar performance in contrast to the Jacobian RBF DFE TEQ in the context of both binary phase-shift keying (BPSK) modulation and 4 quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM). With this proposal, the materialization of the RBF-assisted TEQ scheme becomes more feasible.

In this study, the microwave dielectric properties of the Mg4Ta2O9 and Mg5Ta4O15 ceramics with composition ratio and sintering temperature were investigated and the dielectric resonators with these ceramics were simulated. TiO2 was doped in the Mg4Ta2O9 ceramics for improvement of temperature property. The (1-x)Mg4Ta2O9-xTiO2 and Mg5Ta4O15 ceramics were prepared by solid-state reaction method. According to the X-ray diffraction data, the (1-x)Mg4Ta2O9-xTiO2 ceramics had main phase of the Mg4Ta2O9 and MgTi2O5 peaks were appeared by additions of TiO2. In the Mg5Ta4O15 ceramics, the Mg4Ta2O9 and MgTa2O6 phase were coexisted and Mg5Ta4O15 phase was appeared with increments of sintering temperature. Microwave dielectric properties of (1-x)Mg4Ta2O9-xTiO2 ceramics were affected by MgTi2O5 and TiO2 phase. The quality factor had a little decrement compared to pure Mg4Ta2O9, but there was excellent improvement in TCRF by addition of TiO2. Densifications of the Mg4Ta2O9 and MgTa2O6 and existence of the Mg5Ta4O15 phase had influence on the microwave dielectric properties of the Mg5Ta4O15 ceramics. Dielectric constant, quality factor and TCRF of the (1-x)Mg4Ta2O9-xTiO2 and Mg5Ta4O15 ceramics sintered at 1450 were 11.5622.5, 24980186410 GHz, -36.02+19.72 ppm/ and 8.2, 89473 GHz, -10.91 ppm/, respectively. ADS was used for simulation of DR. The simulated DR with the 0.5Mg4Ta2O9-0.5TiO2 and Mg5Ta4O15 ceramics had the S21 of -35.034 dB at 11.97 GHz and -28.493 dB at 10.50 GHz, respectively.

Device characteristics of In0.5Ga0.5As/GaAs quantum dot infrared detector (QDIP) have been enhanced with hydrogen plasma treatment. After the hydrogen (H) plasma treatment, the dark currents were noticeably decreased and photoluminescence (PL) intensity was increased by H-passivation of interfacial traps between quantum dots and GaAs and of non-radiative defect centers caused during QD growths. Photo response, which could not be observed in as-grown QDIP due to large dark currents which obscured the photocurrent signal, was measured successfully after H-treatment due to H-passivation.

Image quality assessment method is a methodology that measures the difference of quality between the reference image and its distorted one. In this paper, we propose a novel reduced-reference (RR) quality assessment method for JPEG-2000 compressed images, which exploits the statistical characteristics of context information extracted through partial entropy decoding or decoding. These statistical features obtained in the process of JPEG-2000 encoding are transmitted to the receiver as side information and used to estimate the quality of images transmitted over various noisy channels at the decompression side. In the framework of JPEG-2000, the context of a current coefficient is determined depending on the pattern of the significance and/or the sign of its neighbors in three bit-plane coding passes and four coding modes. As the context information represents the local property of images, it can efficiently describe textured pattern and edge orientation. The quality of transmitted images is measured by the difference of entropy of context information between received and original images. Moreover, the proposed quality assessment method can directly process the images in the JPEG-2000 compressed domain without full decompression. Therefore, our proposed can accelerate the work of assessing image quality. Through simulations, we demonstrate that our method achieves fairly good performance in terms of the quality measurement accuracy as well as the computational complexity.

This letter presents a simple joint estimation method for residual frequency offset (RFO) and sampling frequency offset (STO) in OFDM-based digital video broadcasting (DVB) systems. The proposed method selects a continual pilot (CP) subset from an unsymmetrically and non-uniformly distributed CP set to obtain an unbiased estimator. Simulation results show that the proposed method using a properly selected CP subset is unbiased and performs robustly.

We propose a token-bucket based rate control algorithm that satisfies both maximum and minimum rate constraints with computational complexity of O(1). The proposed algorithm allocates the remaining bandwidth in a strict priority queuing manner to the flows with different priorities and in a weighted fair queuing manner to the flows within the same priority.

The computation involved in multiuser detection (MUD) for multicarrier CDMA (MC-CDMA) based on maximum likelihood (ML) principle grows exponentially with the number of users. Particle swarm optimization (PSO) with soft decisions has been proposed to mitigate this problem. The computational complexity of PSO, is comparable with genetic algorithm (GA), but is much less than the optimal ML detector and yet its performance is much better than GA.

As one of the promising techniques in Broadband Wireless Access (BWA), IEEE 802.16 also namely WiMax provides wide-area, high-speed, and non-line-of-sight wireless transmission to support multimedia services. Four service types are defined in the specification of IEEE 802.16 for QoS support. In order to achieve end-to-end multimedia services, 802.16 QoS must be well integrated with IP QoS. In this paper, we propose a framework of cross-layer QoS support in the IEEE 802.16 network. Two novel mechanisms are proposed in the framework for performance improvement: Fragment Control and Remapping. Fragment Control handles the data frames that belong to the same IP datagram in an atomic manner to reduce useless transmission. Remapping is concerned with the mapping rules from IP QoS to 802.16 QoS and is designed to reduce the impact of traffic burstiness on buffer management. Simulation study has shown that the proposed scheme has higher goodput and throughput, and lower delay than the contrast.

In this letter, we propose a shared adaptive packet loss concealment scheme for the high quality guaranteed Internet telephony service which connects multiple users. In order to recover packet loss efficiently in the all-IP based convergence environment, we provide a robust signal recovery scheme which is based on the shared adaptive both-side information utilization. This scheme is provided according to the average magnitude variation across the frames and the pitch period replication on the 1-port gateway (G/W) system. The simulated performance demonstrates that the proposed scheme has the advantages of low processing times and high recovery rates in the all-IP based ubiquitous environment.

This study is to investigate new schemes for distributing cryptographic keys in sensor networks. Sharing a key is the very first step to realize secure communication over an untrusted network infrastructure, but commonly used cryptographic techniques cannot be employed for sensor networks due to the restriction of computational resources of sensor nodes. A practical solution to this issue is to predistribute cryptographic keys in sensor nodes before they are deployed. A focal point in this solution is the choice of keys that are assigned to a sensor node. Eschenauer et al. considered to choose keys randomly, and Chan et al. also followed the random choice approach. We consider in this paper a new approach in which keys are assigned according to a basic algebraic geometry. The performance of the proposed scheme is investigated analytically.

This paper presents a new QoS model for end-to-end service provisioning in multi-hop wireless networks. In legacy IEEE 802.11e based multi-hop wireless networks, the fixed assignment of service classes according to flow's priority at every node causes priority inversion problem when performing end-to-end service differentiation. Thus, this paper proposes a new QoS provisioning model called Dynamic Hop Service Differentiation (DHSD) to alleviate the problem and support effective service differentiation between end-to-end nodes. Many previous works for QoS model through the 802.11e based service differentiation focus on packet scheduling on several service queues with different service rate and service priority. Our model, however, concentrates on a dynamic class selection scheme, called Per Hop Class Assignment (PHCA), in the node's MAC layer, which selects a proper service class for each packet, in accordance with queue states and service requirement, in every node along the end-to-end route of the packet. The proposed QoS solution is evaluated using the OPNET simulator. The simulation results show that the proposed model outperforms both best-effort and 802.11e based strict priority service models in mobile ad hoc environments.

This paper presents an asynchronous design technique, an enabler for the emerging technology of flexible microelectronics that feature low-temperature processed polysilicon (LTPS) thin-film transistors (TFT) and surface-free technology by laser annealing/ablation (SUFTLA®). The first design instance chosen is an 8-bit microprocessor. LTPS TFTs are good for realizing displays having integrated VLSI circuit at lower costs. However, LTPS TFTs have drawbacks, including substantial deviations in characteristics and the self-heating phenomenon. To solve these problems, the authors adopted the asynchronous circuit design technique and developed an asynchronous design language called Verilog+, which is based on a subset of Verilog HDL® and includes minimal primitives used for describing the communications between modules, and the dedicated tools including a translator called xlator and a synthesizer called ctrlsyn. The flexible 8-bit microprocessor stably operates at 500 kHz, drawing 180 µA from a 5 V power source. The microprocessor's electromagnetic emissions are 21 dB less than those of the synchronous counterpart.

Based on cyclic difference sets, sequences with two-valued autocorrelation can be constructed. Using these constructed sequences, two classes of binary constant weight codes are presented. Some codes proposed in this paper are proven to be optimal.

In this letter, a simple but effective antenna selection algorithm for orthogonal space-time block codes with a linear complex precoder (OSTBC-LCP) is proposed and compared with two conventional algorithms in temporally and spatially correlated fading channels. The proposed algorithm, which minimizes pairwise error probability (MinPEP) with an error codebook (EC) constructed from the error vector quantization, is shown to provide nearly the same performance of MinPEP based on all possible error vectors, while keeping the complexity close to that of antenna selection algorithm based on maximum power criterion (Maxpower).

Quantifying user satisfaction is essential, because the results can help service providers deliver better services. In this work, we propose a generalizable methodology, based on survival analysis, to quantify user satisfaction in terms of session times, i.e., the length of time users stay with an application. Unlike subjective human surveys, our methodology is based solely on passive measurement, which is more cost-efficient and better able to capture subconscious reactions. Furthermore, by using session times, rather than a specific performance indicator, such as the level of distortion of voice signals, the effects of other factors like loudness and sidetone, can also be captured by the developed models. Like survival analysis, our methodology is characterized by low complexity and a simple model-developing process. The feasibility of our methodology is demonstrated through case studies of ShenZhou Online, a commercial MMORPG in Taiwan, and the most prevalent VoIP application in the world, namely Skype. Through the model development process, we can also identify the most significant performance factors and their impacts on user satisfaction and discuss how they can be exploited to improve user experience and optimize resource allocation.

In heterogeneous network environments, it is mandatory to measure the grade of the video quality in order to guarantee the optimal quality of the video streaming service. Quality of Service (QoS) has become a key issue for service acceptability and user satisfaction. Although there have been many recent works regarding video quality, most of them have been limited to measuring quality within temporal and Signal-to-Noise Ratio (SNR) scalability. H.264/AVC Scalable Video Coding (SVC) has emerged and has been developed to support full scalability. This includes spatial, temporal, and SNR scalability, each of which shows different visual effects. The aim of this paper is to define and develop a novel video quality metric allowing full scalability. It focuses on the effect of frame rate, SNR, the change of spatial resolution, and motion characteristics using subjective quality assessment. Experimental results show the proposed quality metric has a high correlation to subjective quality and that it is useful in determining the video quality of SVC.

This paper considers the problem of contention resolution algorithm for multi-class with quality of service (QoS) constrained for wireless communication. Five different channel reservation schemes are proposed, namely, UNI+MLA, UNI+DS, UNI+DS+MLA, Partial UNI and Partial UNI+MLA schemes for multimedia traffic, all are extensions of our recently proposed UNI scheme for single-class traffic. The goal is to achieve the highest system performance and enable each traffic type to meet its QoS requirements. We evaluate the performance of each scheme by mathematical analysis. The numerical results show that our proposed schemes are effective in enabling each traffic type to achieve the best successful rate possible in this kind of environment. Finally when comparing between our proposed schemes and conventional technique in terms of both throughput performance and QoS requirements it is found that the UNI+MLA, UNI+DS+MLA and Partial UNI+MLA schemes are relatively efficient and suitable for practical applications.

This paper proposes two traffic control schemes to support the communication quality of multimedia streaming services such as VoIP and audio/video over IEEE 802.11 wireless LAN systems. The main features of the proposed scheme are bandwidth control for each flow of the multimedia streaming service and load balancing between access points (APs) of the wireless LAN by using information of data link, network and transport layers. The proposed schemes are implemented on a Linux machine which is called the wireless traffic controller (WTC). The WTC connects a high capacity backbone network and an access network to which the APs are attached. We evaluated the performance of the proposed WTC and confirmed that the communication quality of the multimedia streaming would be greatly improved by using this technique.

Spectrum and Bit Error Rate (BER) performance of a coded π/2 phase shift Non-Square (NS) 8 Quadrature Amplitude Modulation (QAM) system are studied in this letter. The modulation process of this scheme removes all 180 phase shift between adjacent constellation points and contains inherent memory which can be treated as a type of inner coding in coded system. Simulation results show that this modulation scheme has much lower spectrum regrowth and better BER performance when passing through nonlinear channel compared with conventional mode.

This paper considers numerical methods for stability analyses of periodic solutions of ordinary differential equations. Stability of a periodic solution can be determined by the corresponding monodromy matrix and its eigenvalues. Some commonly used numerical methods can produce inaccurate results of them in some cases, for example, near bifurcation points or when one of the eigenvalues is very large or very small. This work proposes a numerical method using a periodic boundary condition for vector fields, which preserves a critical property of the monodromy matrix. Numerical examples demonstrate effectiveness and a drawback of this method.