This paper addresses conjugate-gradient (CG) based pilot-assisted channel estimation and equalization in doubly selective channels for orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) block transmissions. With the help of the discrete prolate spheroidal sequence, which shows flat mean-square error (MSE) curves for the reconstructed channels in the presence of Doppler frequency mismatch, a basis expansion model for a parsimonious channel representation over multiple OFDM blocks is developed, a system equation for the least square channel estimation under widely used pilot lattices, where the pilot symbols are irregularly placed in the subcarrier domain, is formulated by introducing carving matrices, and the standard CG method is applied to the system. Relying on the CG method again, the linear minimum mean-square error channel equalization is pursued without performing any matrix inversion, while elevating the convergence speed of the iterative algorithm with a simple preconditioner. Finally, we validate our schemes with numerical experiments on the integrated services digital broadcasting-terrestrial system in doubly-selective channels and determine the normalized MSE and uncoded bit error rate.

For maximum-likelihood (ML) estimation to jointly track carrier frequency offset (CFO) and channel impulse response (CIR) in orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) systems, we present a finite high order approximation method utilizing the MATLAB ‘roots' command on the log-likelihood function derived from the OFDM received signal, coupled with an adaptive iteration algorithm. The tracking performance of this high order approximation algorithm is found to be excellent, and as expected, the algorithm outperforms the other existing first order approximation algorithms.

Sensor networks, in which many small terminals are wirelessly connected, have recently received considerable interest according to the development of wireless technology and electronic circuit. To provide advanced applications and services by the sensor networks, data collection including node location is essential. Hence the location estimation is important and many localization schemes have been proposed. Time of arrival (TOA) localization is one of the popular schemes because of its high estimation accuracy in ultra wide-band (UWB) sensor networks. However, a non-line-of-sight (NLOS) environment between the target and the anchor nodes causes a serious estimation error because the time is delayed more than its true one. Thus, the NLOS nodes should be detected and eliminated for estimation. As a well-known NLOS detection scheme, an iterative minimum residual (IMR) scheme which has low calculation complexity is used for detection. However, the detection error exists in IMR scheme due to the measurement error. Therefore, in this paper, we propose a new IMR-based NLOS detection scheme and show its performance improvement by computer simulations.

This paper describes very compact MIC magic-Ts and their integration with planar array antennas to realize the advanced antenna modules. The orthogonal transmission modes are effectively used to arrange the preferable port layout of magic-Ts. This flexible port layout of magic-Ts is a practical feature for integration with planar array antennas. The integration of magic-Ts and planar array antennas can easily create advanced functions. A couple of array antennas based on the integration advantages are introduced to materialize this technical concept. This integration approach is of big worth to originate various kinds of advanced antennas and the wireless modules in the ubiquitous society.

Establishing peer-to-peer (P2P) live streaming for mobile ad hoc network (MANET) requires an efficient scheme to deliver the real-time data in the infrastructure-less disaster environment. However, P2P membership management is difficult in the dynamic mobility and resource limited MANET. In this paper, we present a cross-layer design for P2P-MANET which integrates P2P DHT-based routing protocol and IPv6 routing protocol. Therefore, the proposed scheme can manage and recover the P2P overlay as well as selecting efficient routing path to multicast video streaming. The simulation results demonstrate that the proposed scheme performs relatively better than the layered approach or the off-the-shelf design in terms of the playback continuity and signaling overhead.

In this letter, we present a general construction of sequence sets with low correlation zone, which is based on finite fields and the balance property of some functions. The construction is more flexible as far as the partition of parameters is concerned. A simple example is also given to interpret the construction.

One of promising application offered by implant body area networks (BANs) is a capsule endoscope localization system. To begin with, this paper performs finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) simulations on implant BAN propagation with a numerical human model, and investigates the propagation characteristics of implant BAN signals at 400 MHz medical implant communication service (MICS) band. Then, the paper presents a capsule endoscope localization system which utilizes only received signal strength indicator (RSSI) and two estimation methods, such as a maximum likelihood (ML) estimation method and a least squares (LS) method. Furthermore, we evaluate the two localization methods by two computer simulation scenarios. Our computer simulation results demonstrate that the ML localization can improve the location estimation accuracy as compared with the LS localization, that is, our performance comparison reveals that a careful consideration the propagation characteristics of implant BANs signals is efficient in terms of estimation performance improvement in capsule endoscope localization.

High-performance FFT processor is indispensable for real-time OFDM communication systems. This paper presents a CORDIC based design of variable-length FFT processor which can perform various FFT lengths of 64/128/256/512/1024/2048/4096/8192-point. The proposed FFT processor employs memory based architecture in which mixed radix 4/2 algorithm, pipelined CORDIC, and conflict-free parallel memory access scheme are exploited. Besides, the CORDIC rotation angles are generated internally based on the transform of butterfly counter, which eliminates the need of ROM making it memory-efficient. The proposed architecture has a lower hardware complexity because it is ROM-free and with no dedicated complex multiplier. We implemented the proposed FFT processor and verified it on FPGA development platform. Additionally, the processor is also synthesized in 0.18 µm technology, the core area of the processor is 3.47 mm2 and the maximum operating frequency can be up to 500 MHz. The proposed FFT processor is better trade off performance and hardware overhead, and it can meet the speed requirement of most modern OFDM system, such as IEEE 802.11n, WiMax, 3GPP-LTE and DVB-T/H.

In this letter we propose a practical sensing-based opportunistic spectrum sharing scheme for cognitive radio (CR) downlink MIMO systems. Multi-antennas are exploited at the secondary transmitter to opportunistically access the primary spectrum and effectively achieve a balance between secondary throughput maximization and mitigation of interference probably caused to primary radio link. We first introduce a brief secondary frame structure, in which a sensing phase is exploited to estimate the effective interference channel. According to the sensing result and taking the interference caused by the primary link into account, we propose an enhanced signal-to-leakage-and-noise ratio (SLNR)-based precoding scheme for the secondary transmitter. Compared to conventional schemes where perfect knowledge of the channels over which the CR transmitter interferes with the primary receiver (PR) is assumed, our proposed scheme shows its superiority and simulation results validate this.

This paper presents a simple 3-D array configuration for high-resolution 2-D Direction-Of-Arrival (DOA) estimation. Planar array structures like Uniform Rectangular Array (URA) or Uniform Circular Array (UCA) often well estimate azimuth angle but cannot well estimate elevation angle because of short antenna aperture in elevation direction. One may put more number of array elements to improve elevation angle estimation accuracy, however it will require very large hardware and software cost. This paper presents a simple 3-D array structure for high-resolution 2-D DOA estimation only by modifying the height of some array elements in a planar array. Based on the analysis of Cramer-Rao Lower Bound (CRLB) formulation and its dependency on the height of array elements, we develop a simple 3-D array structure which improves elevation angle estimation accuracy while preserving azimuth angle estimation accuracy.

This paper aims at channel modeling and bit error rate (BER) performance improvement with diversity reception for in-body to on-body ultra wideband (UWB) communication for capsule endoscope application. The channel characteristics are firstly extracted from 3.4 to 4.8 GHz by using finite difference time domain (FDTD) simulations incorporated with an anatomical human body model, and then a two-path impulse response channel model is proposed. Based on the two-path channel model, a spatial diversity reception technique is applied to improve the communication performance. Since the received signal power at each receiver location follows a lognormal distribution after summing the two path components, we investigate two methods to approximate the lognormal sum distribution in the combined diversity channel. As a result, the method matching a short Gauss-Hermite approximation of the moment generating function (MGF) of the lognormal sum with that of a lognormal distribution exhibits high accuracy and flexibility. With the derived probability density function (PDF) for the combined diversity signals, the average BER performances for impulse-radio (IR) UWB with non-coherent detection are investigated to clarify the diversity effect by both theoretical analysis and computer simulation. The results realize an improvement around 10 dB on Eb/No at BER of 10-3 for two-branch diversity reception.

Reverse-recovery modeling for p-i-n diodes in the high current-density conditions are discussed. With the dynamic carrier-distribution-based modeling approach, the reverse recovery behaviors are explained in the high current-density conditions, where the nonquasi-static (NQS) behavior of carriers in the drift region is considered. In addition, a specific feature under the high current-density condition is discussed. The proposed model is implemented into a commercial circuit simulator in the Verilog-A language and its reverse recovery modeling ability is verified with a two-dimensional (2D) device simulator, in comparison to the conventional lumped-charge modeling technique.

In this paper, we constructed a class of low correlation zone sequence sets derived from the interleaved technique and DFT matrices. When p is a prime such that p > 3, p-ary LCZ sequence sets with parameters LCZ(pn-1,pm-1,(pn-1)/(pm-1),1) are constructed based on a DFT matrix with order pp, which is optimal with respect to the Tang-Fan-Matsufuji bound. When p is a prime such that p ≥ 2, pk-ary LCZ sequence sets with parameters LCZ(pn-1,pk-1,(pn-1)/(pk-1),1) are constructed based on a DFT matrix with order pkpk, which is also optimal. These sequence sets are useful in certain quasi-synchronous code-division mutiple access (QS-CDMA) communication systems.

A novel online speaker clustering method based on a generative model is proposed. It employs an incremental variant of variational Bayesian learning and provides probabilistic (non-deterministic) decisions for each input utterance, on the basis of the history of preceding utterances. It can be expected to be robust against errors in cluster estimation and the classification of utterances, and hence to be applicable to many real-time applications. Experimental results show that it produces 50% fewer classification errors than does a conventional online method. They also show that it is possible to reduce the number of speech recognition errors by combining the method with unsupervised speaker adaptation.

In camera-based object recognition and classification, surface color is one of the most important characteristics. However, apparent object color may differ significantly according to the illumination and surface conditions. Such a variation can be an obstacle in utilizing color features. Geusebroek et al.'s color invariants can be a powerful tool for characterizing the object color regardless of illumination and surface conditions. In this work, we analyze the estimation process of the color invariants from RGB images, and propose a novel invariant feature of color based on the elementary invariants to meet the circular continuity residing in the mapping between colors and their invariants. Experiments show that the use of the proposed invariant in combination with luminance, contributes to improve the retrieval performances of partial object image matching under varying illumination conditions.

This paper proposes a virtual layered successive detector with adaptive transmit signal phase rotation for quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM) that enables high speed communication even in downlinks of wireless communication systems. It is shown that the detection performance is degraded when the eigenvalue of a virtual channel becomes close to the power of the additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN). Therefore, adaptive transmit signal phase rotation is introduced for the detector to improve the transmission performance. For the transmit phase rotation, three techniques to search the rotation angles are proposed, which can reduce the feedback information from the receiver to the transmitter. Among the three proposed techniques, the technique called “iterative variable step step search” is shown to achieve the best performance. Actually, it is confirmed by computer simulation that the variable step search makes the detector attain about 17 dB of a gain at the bit error rate (BER) of 10-5 in 42 multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO) systems.

In this paper, we propose a novel texture analysis method capable of estimating multiple primitives, which are elements repetitively arranged to compose a texture, in multi-structured textures. The approach is based on a texture description model that uses mathematical morphology, called the “Primitive, Grain, and Point Configuration (PGPC)” texture model. The estimation of primitives based on the PGPC texture model involves searching the optimal structuring element for primitives according to a size distribution function and a magnification. The proposed method achieves the following two improvements: (1) the simultaneous estimation of a multiple number of primitives in multi-structured textures with a ranking of primitives on the basis of their significance. and (2) the introduction of flexibility in the process of magnification to obtain a higher degree of fitness of large grains. With a computational combination of different primitives, the method provides an ordered priority to denote the significance of elements. The promising performance of the proposed method is experimentally shown by a comparison with conventional methods.

Reinforcement learning (RL) is a flexible framework for learning a decision rule in an unknown environment. However, a large number of samples are often required for finding a useful decision rule. To mitigate this problem, the concept of transfer learning has been employed to utilize knowledge obtained from similar RL tasks. However, most approaches developed so far are useful only in low-dimensional settings. In this paper, we propose a novel transfer learning idea that targets problems with high-dimensional states. Our idea is to transfer knowledge between state factors (e.g., interacting objects) within a single RL task. This allows the agent to learn the system dynamics of the target RL task with fewer data samples. The effectiveness of the proposed method is demonstrated through experiments.

This paper investigates the use of cooperative spectrum sensing (CSS) to detect primary user (PU) signals during spectrum sharing between the PU and the secondary user (SU). In particular, we employ a variant of CSS (which achieves space diversity), called weighted gain combining CSS (W-CSS), which has the potential to achieve increased diversity gain and enhance detection performance. In a typical W-CSS system, the SU needs to obtain the PU signal power information in order to set the proper weight value. However, as it is hard for the SU to ascertain whether the PU is present or absent, this is difficult to obtain. To address this problem, a PU signal power estimation algorithm is introduced. In addition, we also analyze the statistics of the estimator and derive the detection probability of the W-CSS when the PU signal power estimation algorithm is applied. The analysis and related simulation results reveal that the detection probability of the proposed W-CSS under time-variant Rayleigh fading asymptotically approaches the detection probability in an additive white Gaussian noise channel as the number of antennas is increased. This also follows results from our Monte Carlo simulations, showing that multiple antenna elements could suppress the effect of Rayleigh fading. In short, the accuracy of the estimation algorithm is affected by channel variation (especially in the case of fast Rayleigh fading). Hence, to address this problem, we employ multiple antenna elements with a square-law combining energy detector in the W-CSS.

A 60 GHz direct conversion transceiver which employs amplitude/phase imbalance cancellation technique is newly proposed. By using the proposed technique, the receive path of the transceiver achieves less than 0.2 dB of amplitude error and less than 3 of phase error at 60 GHz bands over a 10 GHz bandwidth, which relaxes the design accuracy required for baluns used in the transceiver. It also employs a simple and fast calibration algorithm to adjust the locking range of the divide-by-3 injection locked divider in the phase locked loop. Fabricated in 90 nm CMOS technology, the transceiver achieves a low power consumption of 230 mW in transmit mode and 173 mW in receive mode. The output spectrum of 1.76 Gsps π/2-BPSK/QPSK modulation shows the excellent distortion and spurious suppression that meet the IEEE802.11ad draft standard.