This paper focuses on underwater wireless power transfer with electric coupling. First, the maximum available efficiency is derived by using the S-parameters of the parallel plate coupler. The frequency which represents the maximal value of the efficiency is revealed. Further, the elevation in the efficiency in association with a reduction of the electrode size is found. It is clarified that the elevation depends on the characteristic of the water dielectric loss. From these results, the optimal electrode size that obtains the maximal value of the efficiency is provided. Finally, we fabricate the couplers by utilizing the optimal frequency and the electrode size. The efficiency of 75.8% under water is achieved.

We consider a multirate loss system that accommodates several service-classes with cooperative and non-cooperative users, which generate random or quasi-random arriving calls (depending on the users population). The term “ cooperative” refers to users that can retry (with a certain probability, when the total occupied bandwidth of the system is below a predefined threshold) to be connected in the system with a reduced bandwidth, if they are blocked with their initial peak-bandwidth requirement. This behavior increases the quality of service (QoS) perceived by other users. Due to the retries, the system model does not have a product form solution for the steady state distribution. However, we propose an efficient calculation of system's occupancy distribution, congestion probabilities and system's utilization, while avoiding complex state space enumeration and processing. As it is shown through simulation, the proposed recursive formulas are consistent and quite accurate. For evaluation, we use the conventional trunk/bandwidth reservation control to equalize the congestion probabilities and compare them with the results of the proposed models. Besides, we generalize the proposed models by considering the coexistence of random and quasi-random arrivals. Furthermore, we propose (a) a heuristic method for the determination of desired retry probabilities according to a fairness index and (b) an optimization procedure whereby we assess the retry threshold so that the QoS of the least speed non-cooperative calls is guaranteed for certain retry probabilities of cooperative calls.

A Wiener-based inpainting quality prediction method is presented in this paper. The proposed method is the first method that can predict inpainting quality both before and after the intensities have become missing even if their inpainting methods are unknown. Thus, when the target image does not include any missing areas, the proposed method estimates the importance of intensities for all pixels, and then we can know which areas should not be removed. Interestingly, since this measure can be also derived in the same manner for its corrupted image already including missing areas, the expected difficulty in reconstruction of these missing pixels is predicted, i.e., we can know which missing areas can be successfully reconstructed. The proposed method focuses on expected errors derived from the Wiener filter, which enables least-squares reconstruction, to predict the inpainting quality. The greatest advantage of the proposed method is that the same inpainting quality prediction scheme can be used in the above two different situations, and their results have common trends. Experimental results show that the inpainting quality predicted by the proposed method can be successfully used as a universal quality measure.

The Long Term Evolution (LTE) of mobile communication standard was designed by the 3rd generation partnership project (3GPP) to serve the requirements. Nowadays, the combining of the orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) and the multiple input multiple output (MIMO) is supported in LTE system. The MIMO-OFDM is considered to improve data rate and channel capacity without additional bandwidth. Because the receivers get all transmission signals from all transmitters at the same time, many detection schemes have been developed for accurate estimation and low complexity. Among the detection schemes, the QR decomposition with M algorithm (QRD-M) achieves optimal error performance with low complexity. Nevertheless, the conventional QRD-M has high complexity for implementation. To overcome the problem, this letter proposes the low complexity QRD-M detection scheme in MIMO-OFDM systems. The proposed scheme has two elements which decide layer value and the limited candidates. The two elements are defined by the number of transmit antennas and the cardinality of modulation set respectively. From simulation results, the proposed scheme has the same error performance with the conventional QRD-M and very lower complexity than the conventional QRD-M.

In this letter, an effective algorithm is proposed to improve the performance of relay enhanced cellular networks, which is to allocate appropriate resources to each access point with quality of service constraint. First we derive the ergodic rate for backhaul link based on a poison point process model, and then allocate resources to each link according to the quality of service requirements and ergodic rate of links. Numerical results show that the proposed algorithm can not only improve system throughput but also improve the rate distribution of user equipment.

A widely-used query on a graph is a regular path query (RPQ) whose answer is a set of tuples of nodes connected by paths corresponding to a given regular expression. Traditionally, evaluating an RPQ on a large graph takes substantial memory spaces and long response time. Recently, several studies have focused on improving response time for evaluating an RPQ by splitting an original RPQ into smaller subqueries, evaluating them in parallel and combining partial answers. In these works, how to choose split labels in an RPQ is one of key points of the performance of RPQ evaluation, and rare labels of a graph can be used as split labels. However there is still a room for improvement, because a rare label cannot guarantee the minimum evaluation cost all the time. In this paper, we propose a novel approach of selecting split labels by estimating evaluation cost of each split subquery with a unit-subquery cost matrix (USCM), which can be obtained from a graph in prior to evaluate an RPQ. USCM presents the evaluation cost of a unit-subquery which is the smallest possible subquery, and we can estimate the evaluation cost of an RPQ by decomposing into a set of unit-subqueries. Experimental results show that our proposed approach outperforms rare label based approaches.

Range resolution is one of the metrics of radar performance. Synthetic bandwidth radar has been proposed for high-range-resolution. The transmitted frequency and down-conversion frequency of this type of radar are shifted by fixed amounts from pulse to pulse. Received signals are synthesized by taking IFFT for high-range-resolution. However, this type of radar has a problem with second-time-around echoes since multiple pulses are utilized. Moreover, a range shift occurs due to Doppler velocity. Thus second-time-around echo suppression and Doppler velocity compensation are required for accurate target range measurement. We show in this paper a Doppler velocity measurement method with second-time-around echo suppression for synthetic bandwidth radars. Our proposed method interleaves the transmission of ascending and descending frequency sequences. The Doppler velocity is measured by using a Fourier transform of the multiplication of the signals received using both sequences. The transmitted frequency difference of the adjacent pulses is wider than the bandwidth of the matched filter, so the second-time-around echoes are down-converted to the outside band of the matched filter and suppressed. We verify the principle of the proposed method using numerical simulations and experiments. The results show that second-time-around echoes were suppressed by 7.8dB, the Doppler velocity could be obtained and the range shift due to Doppler velocity was reduced by 7.37 times compared to the conventional SBR.

We proposed and theoretically discussed a polarization switch based on a multiple quantum well (MQW) microring resonator (MRR) with an L-shaped waveguide as a dynamic polarization control device. The L-shaped waveguide was useful to obtain the rotation angle of the principal axis of 45° even when the core layer has form birefringence such as an MQW. The MRR functions as both a polarization converter and a wavelength filter. As an MQW core layer, a multiple five-layer asymmetric coupled quantum well (FACQW) was assumed. Polarization switching of an inputted light with a selected wavelength was successfully demonstrated at an operation voltage as low as 0.2 V using the electrorefractive index change in the MRR waveguide. The maximum polarization extinction ratio was more than 35 dB. The high-speed and low-voltage polarization switching can be realized with the proposed MRR polarization switch.

This article proposes a simply structured transverse slot linear array antenna with a low cross-polarization in X band on a quasi-TEM (transverse electromagnetic) mode waveguide. The fabrication technology of this antenna is very simple and suitable for mass production. A center fed linear slot array has been designed and measured. The quasi-TEM wave is propagating in the conventional waveguide with dielectrics at sidewalls. The simulation and the measurement results show that the baffle plates enhance the gain and reduce the beamwidth effectively. The uncertainties of the electric properties of the dielectric and fabrication errors are also discussed.

In this paper, we applied cavity resonator wireless power transfer (CR WPT) to an enclosed space with scatterers and revealed that high transfer efficiency at line-of-sight (LOS) and non-line-of-sight (NLOS) position in the power transmitter can be achieved by this method. In addition, we propose a method for limiting the wireless power transfer space utilizing metal mesh and show its effectiveness by experiment. First, we confirm that the constructed experimental model is working as a cavity resonator by theoretical formula and electromagnetic field analysis. Next, we calculate the maximum power transfer efficiency using a model including a plurality of scatterers by installing a power receiver at LOS and NLOS positions in the power transmitter, and it was confirmed that transfer efficiency of 30% or more could be expected even at the NLOS position. Then, we measured the frequency characteristics of a model in which one surface of the outer wall was replaced with a metal mesh, and it was clarified that the characteristics hardly changed in the power transfer frequency band. Finally, we confirmed that simultaneous communication can be performed with driving of the battery-less sensor by CR WPT, and clarify effectiveness of the proposed method.

Human activity prediction has become a prerequisite for service recommendation and anomaly detection systems in a smart space including ambient assisted living (AAL) and activities of daily living (ADL). In this paper, we present a novel approach to predict the next-activity set in a multi-user smart space. Differing from the majority of the previous studies considering single-user activity patterns, our study considers multi-user activities that occur with a large variety of patterns. Its complexity increases exponentially according to the number of users. In the multi-user smart space, there can be inevitably multiple next-activity candidates after multi-user activities occur. To solve the next-activity problem in a multi-user situation, we propose activity set prediction rather than one activity prediction. We also propose activity sequence partitioning to reduce the complexity of the multi-user activity pattern. This divides an activity sequence into start, ongoing, and finish zones based on the features in the tendency of activity occurrences. The majority of the activities in a multi-user environment occur at the beginning or end, rather than the middle, of an activity sequence. Furthermore, the types of activities typically occurring in each zone can be sufficiently distinguishable. Exploiting these characteristics, we suggest a two-step procedure to predict the next-activity set utilizing a long short-term memory (LSTM) model. The first step identifies the zones to which current activities belong. In the next step, we construct three different LSTM models to predict the next-activity set in each zone. To evaluate the proposed approach, we experimented using a real dataset generated from our campus testbed. Our experiments confirmed the complexity reduction and high accuracy in the next-activity set prediction. Thus, it can be effectively utilized for various applications with context-awareness in a multi-user smart space.

The present paper introduces a novel construction of structured ternary sequences having a zero-correlation zone (ZCZ) for both periodic and aperiodic correlation functions. The cross-correlation function and the side lobe of the auto-correlation function of the proposed sequence set are zero for phase shifts within the ZCZ. The proposed ZCZ sequence set can be generated from an arbitrary Hadamard matrix of order n. The sequence set of order 0 is identical to the r-th row of the Hadamard matrix. For m≥0, the sequence set of order (m+1) is constructed from the sequence set of order m by sequence concatenation and interleaving. The sequence set of order m has 2m subsets of size n. The length of the sequence is equal to n4m+2m+1(2m-1); The phase shift of the ZCZ for the whole sequence set is from -(2m-1) to (2m-1). The sequence set of order 0 is coincident with the rows of the given Hadamard sequence with no ZCZ. The subsets can be associated with a perfect binary tree of height m with 2m leaves. The r-th sequence subset consists of from the nr-th sequence to the ((n+1)r-1)-th sequence. The r-th subset is assigned to the r-th leaf of the perfect binary tree. For a longer distance between the corresponding leaves to the r-th and s-th sequences, the ZCZ of the r-th and s-th sequences is wider. This tree-structured width of ZCZ of a pair of the proposed sequences enables flexible design in applications of the proposed sequence set. The proposed sequence is suitable for a heterogeneous wireless network, which is one of the candidates for the fifth generation of radio access networks.

Timing and frequency offsets are caused by imperfect synchronization at the receiver. These errors degrade the performance of OFDM systems by introducing inter-carrier-interference (ICI) and inter-symbol-interference (ISI). In this paper, we derive signal-to-interference ratio (SIR) analytically with timing and frequency offsets for the case that the sampling rate of analog-to-digital converter (ADC) in OFDM receiver is an integer fraction of the signal bandwidth. We find the exact form of interference power as a function of the fractional sampling rate. Our derived analysis is confirmed by simulations and can be applied to see the exact performance of OFDM systems with fractional sampling rate.

Several kinds of techniques for excellent multi-user interference (MUI) cancellation have been proposed for direct-detection synchronous optical code division multiple access (OCDMA) systems. All these techniques utilize modified prime sequence codes (MPSCs) as signature codes and can remove MUI errors efficiently. In this paper, the features of three typical MUI cancellers are studied and compared in detail. The authors defined the parameter “decision distance” to show the feature of MUI cancellers. The bit error rate performance of each canceller is investigated by computer simulation and compared with that of the basic on-off keying (OOK) scheme without cancellation. Then, we investigate the relationship between the decision distance and the bit error rate performance. It is shown that every canceller has a better bit error rate performance than the basic OOK scheme. Especially, the equal weight orthogonal (EWO) scheme, whose decision distance is the largest, has the best error resistance property of the three MUI cancellers. The results show that the decision distance is a useful index to evaluate the error resistance property of MUI cancellation schemes.

A novel element is proposed for manipulating two orthogonally-polarized electromagnetic waves, resulting in a polarization-reconfigurable flat transmitarray. This element consists of four identical metallic patterns, including a square frame loaded with short stubs and an internal crossed dipole, which are printed on the two sides of three identical flat dielectric slabs, with no air gap among them. With a linearly-polarized (LP) feeder, the flat transmitarray can transform the LP incident wave into a circular, horizontal or vertical polarization wave in a convenient way. By rotating the LP feeder so that the polarization angle is 0°, 45°, 90° or 135°, the waves of linear horizontal, right-handed circular, linear vertical or left-handed circular polarization can be obtained alternately. Simulations and experiments are conducted to validate the performance. The measured axial ratio bandwidths for RHCP and LHCP transmitarrays are about 7.1% and 5.1%, respectively, the 3dB gain bandwidths are 16.19% and 22.4%, and the peak gains are 25.56dBi and 24.2dBi, respectively.

We present a new simple Internet of Things (IoT) device that we call “Smart Bottle Cap”, which enables a standard bottle to become a user-controllable liquid pouring system. It consists of a mini vacuum pump to start the liquid flowing, a microcontroller to control the liquid flow, a BLE module to connect it to a smartphone, an accelerometer to detect the tilt angle of the bottle, an LED for drawing the attention of users, and a 3.7 V LiPo battery. The device's novel point is that a flow control mechanism built into a standard bottle cap makes the system suitable for general use and enables it to be easily extended.

The purpose of this research is to support learners in self-directed learning on the Internet using automatically generated support using the current state of the semantic web. The main issue of creating meaningful content-dependent questions automatically is that it requires the machine to understand the concepts in the learning domain. The originality of this work is that it uses Linked Open Data (LOD) to enable meaningful content-dependent support in open learning space. Learners are supported by a learning environment, the Semantic Open Learning Space (SOLS). Learners use the system to build a concept map representing their knowledge. SOLS supports learners following the principle of inquiry-based learning. Learners that request help are provided with automatically generated questions that give them learning objectives. To verify whether the current system can support learners with fully automatically generated support, we evaluated the system with three objectives: judge whether the LOD based support was feasible and useful, whether the question support improved the development of historical considerations in the learners' mind and whether the engagement of learners was improved by the question support. The results showed that LOD based support was feasible. Learners felt that the support provided was useful and helped them learn. The question support succeeded in improving the development of learners' deep historical considerations. In addition, the engagement and interest in history of learners was improved by the questions. The results are meaningful because they show that LOD based question support can be a viable tool to support self-directed learning in open learning space.

This paper presents a low-latency, low-cost architecture for computing square and cube roots in the fixed-point format. The proposed architecture is designed based on a non-iterative root calculation scheme to achieve fast computations. While previous non-iterative root calculators are restricted to a square-root operation due to the limitation of their mathematical property, the root computation is generalized in this paper to apply an approximation method to the non-iterative scheme. On top of that, a recurrent method is proposed to select parameters, which enables us to reduce the table size while keeping the maximum relative error value low. Consequently, the proposed root calculator can support both square and cube roots at the expense of small delay and low area overheads. This extension can be generalized to compute the nth roots, where n is a positive integer.

Pseudorandom number generators have been widely used in Monte Carlo methods, communication systems, cryptography and so on. For cryptographic applications, pseudorandom number generators are required to generate sequences which have good statistical properties, long period and unpredictability. A Dickson generator is a nonlinear congruential generator whose recurrence function is the Dickson polynomial. Aly and Winterhof obtained a lower bound on the linear complexity profile of a Dickson generator. Moreover Vasiga and Shallit studied the state diagram given by the Dickson polynomial of degree two. However, they do not specify sets of initial values which generate a long period sequence. In this paper, we show conditions for parameters and initial values to generate long period sequences, and asymptotic properties for periods by numerical experiments. We specify sets of initial values which generate a long period sequence. For suitable parameters, every element of this set occurs exactly once as a component of generating sequence in one period. In order to obtain sets of initial values, we consider a logistic generator proposed by Miyazaki, Araki, Uehara and Nogami, which is obtained from a Dickson generator of degree two with a linear transformation. Moreover, we remark on the linear complexity profile of the logistic generator. The sets of initial values are described by values of the Legendre symbol. The main idea is to introduce a structure of a hyperbola to the sets of initial values. Our results ensure that generating sequences of Dickson generator of degree two have long period. As a consequence, the Dickson generator of degree two has some good properties for cryptographic applications.

We propose a framework called “QoE-centric Service Operation,” with which we attempt to implement a means to enable the collaboration of end-users, service providers, and network providers to achieve better QoE of telecommunication services. First, we give an overview of the transition in the quality factors of voice, video, and web-browsing applications. Then, taking into account the fact that many quality factors exist not only in networks, but also in servers and terminals, we discuss how to measure, assess, analyze, and control QoE and the technical requirements in each component. We also propose approaches to meet these requirements: packet- and KPI-based QoE estimation, compensation of sparse measurement, and quality prediction based on human behavior and traffic estimation. Finally, we explain the results of our proof-of-concept study using an actual video delivery service in Japan.