Evaluation of addition coefficients introduced by the addition theorems for vector spherical harmonics is one of the most intractable problems in electromagnetic scattering by multi-sphere systems. The derivation of the analytical expressions for the addition coefficients is lengthy and complex while the computation of the addition coefficients is annoyingly time-consuming even with the reasonably fast computers available nowadays. This paper presents an efficient algorithm for calculating addition coefficients which is based on the recursive relations of scalar addition coefficients. Numerical results from the formulation derived in this paper agree with those of previous published results but the algorithm proposed here reduces the computational time considerably. This paper also discusses the strengths and limitations of other formulations and numerical techniques found in the literature.

In this paper, a simple type of printed dipole is proposed for Multi-Input Multi-Output (MIMO) applications in cognitive radio. The antenna is composed of a transmission line and a dipole. Some examinations of key factors and optimized parameters of the antenna are presented. The measured results illustrate that the proposed antenna offers a bandwidth of over 50% for Voltage Standing Wave Ratio (VSWR) less than 2, extending from 2.4 GHz to 4.0 GHz. The antenna peak gain in E-plane and radiation patterns at different frequencies are also explored. In addition, based on the proposed antenna, we introduce two simple broadband arrays for MIMO applications in cognitive radio. One has two ports and the other has four ports. Measurement results indicate that the arrays also work in a broad bandwidth. Mutual couplings between ports in each array are kept under -10 dB at the low frequencies and under -20 dB at the high frequencies of bandwidth of the arrays. Furthermore, we utilized the antenna arrays for some MIMO experiments to estimate the channel capacity in a wide frequency range.

The social network model has been regarded as a promising mechanism to defend against Sybil attack. This model assumes that honest peers and Sybil peers are connected by only a small number of attack edges. Detection of the attack edges plays a key role in restraining the power of Sybil peers. In this paper, an attack-resisting, distributed algorithm, named Random walk and Social network model-based clustering (RSC), is proposed to detect the attack edges. In RSC, peers disseminate random walk packets to each other. For each edge, the number of times that the packets pass this edge reflects the betweenness of this edge. RSC observes that the betweennesses of attack edges are higher than those of the non-attack edges. In this way, the attack edges can be identified. To show the effectiveness of RSC, RSC is integrated into an existing social network model-based algorithm called SOHL. The results of simulations with real world social network datasets show that RSC remarkably improves the performance of SOHL.

The digital logic rewiring technique has been shown to be one of the most powerful logic transformation methods. It has been proven that rewiring is able to further improve some already excellent results on many EDA problems, ranging from logic minimization, partitioning, FPGA technology mappings to final routings. Previous studies have shown that ATPG-based rewiring is one of the most powerful tools for logic perturbation while a graph-based rewiring engine is able to cover nearly one fifth of the target wires with 50 times runtime speedup. For some problems that only require good-enough and very quick solutions, this new rewiring technique may serve as a useful and more practical alternative. In this work, essential elements in graph-based rewiring such as rewiring patterns, pattern size and locality, etc., have been studied to understand their relationship with rewiring performance. A structural analysis on the target-alternative wire pairs discovered by ATPG-based and graph-based engines has also been conducted to analyze the structural characteristics that favor the identification of alternative wires. We have also developed a hybrid rewiring approach that can take the advantages from both ATPG-based and graph-based rewiring. Experimental results suggest that our hybrid engine is able to achieve about 50% of alternative wire coverage when compared with the state-of-the-art ATPG-based rewiring engine with only 4% of the runtime. Through applying our hybrid rewiring approach to the FGPA technology mapping problem, we could achieve similar depth level and look-up table number reductions with much shorter runtime. This shows that the fast runtime of our hybrid approach does not sacrifice the quality of certain rewiring applications.

This paper presents an interconnect resilient (IR) methodology with maximal interconnect fault tolerance, yield, and reliability for both single and multiple interconnect faults under stuck-at and open fault models. By exploiting multiple routes inherent in an interconnect structure, this method can tolerate faulty connections by efficiently finding alternative paths. The proposed approach is compatible with previous interconnect detection and diagnosis methods under oscillation ring schemes, and together they can be applied to implement a robust interconnect structure that may still provide correct communication even under multiple link faults in Network-on-Chips (NoCs). With such knowledge, designers can significantly improve interconnect reliability by augmenting vulnerable interconnect structures in NoCs. As a result, the experimental results show that alternative paths in NoCs can be found for almost all paths. Hence, the proposed method provides a good way to achieve fault tolerance and reliability/yield improvement.

This paper introduces a hardware engine for rendering two-dimensional vector graphics based on the OpenVG standard in portable devices. We focus on two design challenges posed by the rendering engines: the number of vertices to represent the images and the amount of memory usage. Redundant vertices are eliminated using adaptive tessellation, in which the redundancy can be judged using a proposed cost-per-quality measure. A simplified edge-flag rendering algorithm and the scanline-based rendering scheme are adopted to reduce external memory access. The designed rendering engine occupies approximately 173 K gates and can satisfy real-time requirements of many applications when it is implemented using a 0.18 µm, 1.8 V CMOS standard cell library. An FPGA prototype using a system-on-a-chip platform has been developed and tested.

Secrecy on the physical layer is receiving increased research interest due to its theoretical and practical importance. In this letter, a subcarrier allocation scheme is proposed for physical-layer security in cooperative orthogonal frequency division multiple access (OFDMA) networks that use the Amplify-and-Forward (AF) strategy. We consider the subcarrier pairing and assignment to maximize overall system rates subject to a secrecy level requirement. Monte Carlo simulations are carried out to validate our analysis.

Device-parameter estimation sensors inside a chip are gaining its importance as the post-fabrication tuning is becoming of a practical use. In estimation of variational parameters using on-chip sensors, it is often assumed that the outputs of variation sensors are not affected by random variations. However, random variations can deteriorate the accuracy of the estimation result. In this paper, we propose a device-parameter estimation method with on-chip variation sensors explicitly considering random variability. The proposed method derives the global variation parameters and the standard deviation of the random variability using the maximum likelihood estimation. We experimentally verified that the proposed method improves the accuracy of device-parameter estimation by 11.1 to 73.4% compared to the conventional method that neglects random variations.

Coscheduling has been gained a resurgence of interest as an effective technique to enhance the performance of parallel applications in multi-programmed clusters. However, existing coscheduling schemes do not adequately handle priority boost conflicts, leading to significantly degraded performance. To address this problem, in our previous study, we devised a novel algorithm that reorders the scheduling sequence of conflicting processes based on the rescheduling latency of their correspondents in remote nodes. In this paper, we exhaustively explore the design issues and implementation details of our contention-aware coscheduling scheme over Myrinet-based cluster system. We also practically analyze the impact of various system parameters and job characteristics on the performance of all considered schemes on a heterogeneous Linux cluster using a generic coscheduling framework. The results show that our approach outperforms existing schemes (by up to 36.6% in avg. job response time), reducing both boost conflict ratio and overall message delay.

In wireless sensor networks constructed from battery driven nodes, it is difficult to supply electric power to the nodes. Because of this, the power consumption must be reduced. To cope with this problem, clustering techniques have been proposed. EACLE is a method that uses a clustering technique. In EACLE, route selection is executed independently after the CH (Cluster Head) selection. This two-phase control approach increases overheads and reduces the battery power, which shortens the lifetime of wireless sensor networks. To cope with this problem, we have proposed a novel routing and clustering method called PARC for wireless sensor networks that reduces these overheads by integrating the cluster selection phase and the route construction phase into a single phase. However, PARC has a weak point in that the batteries of CHs around the sink node are depleted earlier than the other nodes and the sink node cannot collect sensing data. This phenomenon is called the hot spot problem. In order to cope with this problem of PARC, we propose PARC+, which extends the CH selection method of PARC such as more nodes around the sink can be selected as a CH node. We evaluate our proposed methods by simulation experiments and show its effectiveness.

A finite buffer shared by multiple packet queues is considered. Partitioning the buffer to maximize total throughput is formulated as a resource allocation problem, the solution is shown to be achieved by a greedy incremental algorithm in polynomial time. The optimal buffer allocation strategy is applied to different models for a wireless downlink. First, a set of parallel M/M/1/mi queues, corresponding to a downlink with orthogonal channels is considered. It is verified that at high load, optimal buffer partitioning can boost the throughput significantly with respect to complete sharing of the buffer. Next, the problem of optimal combined buffer allocation and channel assignment problems are shown to be separable in an outage scenario. Motivated by this observation, buffer allocation is considered in a system where users need to be multiplexed and scheduled based on channel state. It is observed that under finite buffers in the high load regime, scheduling simply with respect to channel state with a simply partitioned buffer achieves comparable throughput to combined channel and queue-aware scheduling.

With advances in communication technologies, network services provided via the Internet have become widely diversified, and people can use these services not only via wired networks but also via wireless networks. There are several wireless systems in practical use such as cellular, WiMAX and WiFi. Although these wireless network systems have developed independently of each other, they should be integrated for seamless access by users. However, each system uses an individual spectrum prescribed by law to avoid radio interference. To overcome such a situation, dynamic spectrum access technology is receiving much attention. We propose a dynamic spectrum assignment method in which a WiFi system temporarily uses a spectrum band of the WiMAX system in WiFi/WiMAX integrated networks to reduce call blocking probability of multimedia communication services. We confirm the effectiveness of the proposed method by simulation experiments.

Traditional cellular networks suffer the so-called “cell-edge problem” in which the user throughput is deteriorated because of pathloss and inter-cell (co-channel) interference. Recently, Base Station Cooperation (BSC) was proposed as a solution to the cell-edge problem by alleviating the interference and improving diversity and multiplexing gains at the cell-edge. However, it has minimal impact on cell-inner users and increases the complexity of the network. Moreover, static clustering, which fixes the cooperating cells, suffers from inter-cluster interference at the cluster-edge. In this paper, dynamic fractional cooperation is proposed to realize dynamic clustering in a shared RRU network. In the proposed algorithm, base station cooperation is performed dynamically at cell edges for throughput improvement of users located in these areas. To realize such base station cooperation in large scale cellular networks, coordinated scheduling and distributed dynamic cooperation are introduced. The introduction of coordinated scheduling in BSC multi-user MIMO not only maximizes the performance of BSC for cell-edge users but also reduces computational complexity by performing simple single-cell MIMO for cell-inner users. Furthermore, the proposed dynamic clustering employing shared RRU network realizes efficient transmission at all cell edges by forming cooperative cells dynamically with minimal network complexity. Owing to the combinations of the proposed algorithms, dynamic fractional cooperation achieves high network performance at all areas in the cellular network. Simulation results show that the cell-average and the 5% cell-edge user throughput can be significantly increased in practical cellular network scenarios.

In recent Printed Circuit Boards (PCB), the design size and density have increased, and the improvement of routing tools for PCB is required. There are several routing tools which generate high quality routing patterns when connection requirement can be realized by horizontal and vertical segments only. However, in high density PCB, the connection requirements cannot be realized when only horizontal and vertical segments are used. Up to one third nets can not be realized if no non-orthogonal segments are used. In this paper, a routing method for a single-layer routing area that handles higher density designs in which 45-degree segments are used locally to relax the routing density is introduced. In the proposed method, critical zones in which non-orthogonal segments are required in order to realize the connection requirements are extracted, and 45-degree segments are used only in these zones. By extracting minimal critical zones, the other area that can be used to improve the quality of routing pattern without worry about connectivity issues is maximized. Our proposed method can utilize the routing methods which generate high quality routing pattern even if they only handle horizontal and vertical segments as subroutines. Experiments show that the proposed method analyzes a routing problem properly, and that the routing is realized by using 45-degree segments effectively.

The cooperative relay network exploits the space diversity gain by allowing cooperation among users to improve transmission quality. It is an important issue to identify the cluster-head (or relay node) and its members who are to cooperate. The cluster-head consumes more battery power than an ordinary node since it has extra responsibilities, i.e., ensuring the cooperation of its members' transmissions; thereby the cluster-head has a lower throughput than the average. Since users are joining or departing the clusters from time to time, the network topology is changing and the network may not be stable. How to balance the fairness among users and the network stability is a very interesting topic. This paper proposes an adaptive weighted clustering algorithm (AWCA), in which the weight factors are introduced to adaptively control both the stability and fairness according to the number of arrival users. It is shown that when the number of arrival users is large, AWCA has the life time longer than FWCA and similar to SWCA and that when the number of arrival users is small, AWCA provides fairness higher than SWCA and close to FWCA.

Dielectric rod arrays in a metallic waveguide alter the propagation modes and group velocities of electromagnetic waves. We have focused on TE30-to-TE10 mode converters and investigated how their behavior varies with frequency. A mode converter is proposed that passes the TE10 mode at frequencies lower than 2fc, and converts the TE30 mode into the TE10 mode for frequencies higher than 3fc.

Support vector clustering (SVC), a recently developed unsupervised learning algorithm, has been successfully applied to solving many real-life data clustering problems. However, its effectiveness and advantages deteriorate when it is applied to solving complex real-world problems, e.g., those with large proportion of noise data points and with connecting clusters. This paper proposes a support vector and K-Means based hybrid algorithm to improve the performance of SVC. A new SVC training method is developed based on analysis of a Gaussian kernel radius function. An empirical study is conducted to guide better selection of the standard deviation of the Gaussian kernel. In the proposed algorithm, firstly, the outliers which increase problem complexity are identified and removed by training a global SVC. The refined data set is then clustered by a kernel-based K-Means algorithm. Finally, several local SVCs are trained for the clusters and then each removed data point is labeled according to the distance from it to the local SVCs. Since it exploits the advantages of both SVC and K-Means, the proposed algorithm is capable of clustering compact and arbitrary organized data sets and of increasing robustness to outliers and connecting clusters. Experiments are conducted on 2-D data sets generated by mixture models and benchmark data sets taken from the UCI machine learning repository. The cluster error rate is lower than 3.0% for all the selected data sets. The results demonstrate that the proposed algorithm compared favorably with existing SVC algorithms.

In this paper, analysis of average bit error ratio (BER) performance of a quadriphase shift keying (QPSK) direct-sequence code-division multiple-access (DS-CDMA) system with narrow-band interference (NBI) suppression complex adaptive infinite-impulse response (IIR) notch filter is presented. QPSK DS-CDMA signal is transmitted over a Rayleigh frequency-nonselective fading channel and the NBI has a randomly-varying frequency. A closed-form expression that relates BER with complex coefficient IIR notch filter parameters, received signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), number of DS-CDMA active users and processing gain is derived. The derivation is based on the Standard Gaussian Approximation (SGA) method. Accuracy of the BER expression is confirmed by computer simulation results.

Recently, the need for multimedia devices, such as mobile phones, digital TV, PMP, digital camcorders, digital cameras has increased. These devices provide various services for multimedia file manipulation, allowing multimedia contents playback, multimedia file editing, etc. Additionally, digital TV provides a recorded multimedia file copy to a portable USB disk. However, Linux Ext3 file system, as employed by these devices, has a lot of drawbacks, as it required a considerable amount of time and disk I/Os to store large-size edited multimedia files, and it is hard to access for typical PC users. Therefore, in this paper a design and implementation of an amortized Ext3 with FWAE (Fast Writing-After-Editing) for WinXP-based multimedia applications is described. The FWAE is a fast and efficient multimedia file editing/storing technique for the Ext3 that exploits inode block pointer re-setting and shared data blocks by simply modifying metadata information. Individual experiments in this research show that the amortized Ext3 with FWAE for WinXP not only dramatically improves written performance of the Ext3 by 16 times on average with various types of edited multimedia files but also notably reduces the amount of consumed disk space through data block sharing. Also, it provides ease and comfort to use for typical PC users unfamiliar with Linux OS.

We have succeeded in developing high-performance p-type of organic semiconductors with phenylethynyl groups, which have high filed-effect mobilities (>3 cm2V-1s-1) by improving molecular planarity. A single crystal of the organic semiconductors has a herringbone structure. It plays an important role for carrier transport. In addition, we found that they had lower contact resistances to Au electrodes as well. Then, we used the materials for the carrier injection layer deposited onto another organic semiconductor we developed recently, which achieved a high field-effect mobility, and a low threshold voltage (Vth).