A facial components based facial expression recognition algorithm with sparse representation classifier is proposed. Sparse representation classifier is based on sparse representation and computed by L1-norm minimization problem on facial components. The features of “important” training samples are selected to represent test sample. Furthermore, fuzzy integral is utilized to fuse individual classifiers for facial components. Experiments for frontal views and partially occluded facial images show that this method is efficient and robust to partial occlusion on facial images.

A novel long-term sub-band entropy (LT-SubEntropy) measure, which uses improved long-term spectral analysis and sub-band entropy, is proposed for voice activity detection (VAD). Based on the measure, we can accurately exploit the inherent nature of the formant structure on speech spectrogram (the well-known as voiceprint). Results show that the proposed VAD is superior to existing standard VAD methods at low SNR levels, especially at variable-level noise.

Robustness is one of the significant properties in wireless sensor networks because sensor nodes and wireless links are subjected to frequent failures. Once these failures occur, system performance falls into critical condition due to increases in traffic and losses of connectivity and reachability. Most of the existing studies on sensor networks, however, do not conduct quantitative evaluation on robustness and do not discuss what brings in robustness. In this paper, we define and evaluate robustness of wireless sensor networks and show how to improve them. By computer simulation, we show that receiver-initiated MAC protocols are more robust than sender-initiated ones and a simple detour-routing algorithm has more than tripled robustness than the simple minimum-hop routing algorithm.

Entangled states play crucial roles in quantum information theory and its applied technologies. In various protocols such as quantum teleportation and quantum key distribution, a good entangled state shared by a pair of distant players is indispensable. In this paper, we numerically examine entanglement sharing protocols using quantum LDPC CSS codes. The sum-product decoding method enables us to detect uncorrectable errors, and thus, two protocols, Detection and Resending (DR) protocol and Non-Detection (ND) protocol are considered. In DR protocol, the players abort the protocol and repeat it if they detect the uncorrectable errors, whereas in ND protocol they do not abort the protocol. We show that DR protocol yields smaller error rate than ND protocol. In addition, it is shown that rather high reliability can be achieved by DR protocol with quantum LDPC CSS codes.

It is shown that simple preprocessing on the reference signals in multichannel feedforward ANC system can improve the convergence performance of the adaptive ANC algorithm. A fast and efficient blind preprocessing algorithm in frequency domain is proposed to reduce the computational complexity even that the reference sensors are located far from the noise sources. The permutation problem at different frequency bin is also addressed and solved by an independent vector analysis algorithm. The basic principle and performance comparison are given to verify our conclusion.

In this paper, we propose a successive signal-to-leakage-plus-noise ratio (SLNR) based precoding with geometric mean decomposition (GMD) for the downlink multi-user multiple-input multiple-output (MU-MIMO) systems. The known leakages are canceled at the transmit side, and SLNR is calculated with the unknown leakages. GMD is applied to cancel the known leakages, so the subchannels for each receiver have equal gain. We further improve the proposed precoding scheme by ordering users. Simulation results show that the proposed schemes have a considerable bit error rate (BER) improvement over the original SLNR scheme.

In this letter a general admission control strategy is proposed and mathematically analyzed. Fractional buffering finely adjusts different QoS metrics allowing them to simultaneously achieve their maximum acceptable values, maximizing system capacity. Fractional buffering also allows the adequate and fair performance comparison among different resource management strategies and/or evaluation scenarios.

Based on a reverse converter algorithm derived from the New Chinese Remainder Theorem I, an algorithm for sign detection of RNS {2n-1, 2n, 2n+1} is presented in this paper. The hardware of proposed algorithm can be implemented using two n-bit additions and one (n+1)-bit comparator. Comparing with the previous paper, the proposed algorithm has reduced the number of additions used in the circuit. The experimental results show that the proposed circuit achieves 17.3% savings in area for small moduli and 10.5% savings in area for large moduli on an average, with almost the same speed. The power dissipations obtain 12.6% savings in average.

Question and Answering (Q&A) sites are recently gaining popularity on the Web. People using such sites are like a community-anyone can ask, anyone can answer, and everyone can share, since all of the questions and answers are public and searchable immediately. This mechanism can reduce the time and effort to find the most relevant answer. Unfortunately, the users suffer from answer quality problem due to several reasons including limited knowledge about the question domain, bad intentions (e.g. spam, making fun of others), limited time to prepare good answers, etc. In order to identify the credible users to help people find relevant answer, in this paper, we propose a ranking algorithm, InfluenceRank, which is basis of analyzing relationship in terms of users' activities and their mutual trusts. Our experimental studies show that the proposed algorithm significantly outperforms the baseline algorithms.

Tin (Sn) contacts are widely applied to connector contacts. Surfaces of plated tin layer are covered with an oxide film that results in high contact resistance. However, it is possible to obtain low contact resistance by using high contact load. Current downsizing trends often make it difficult to obtain high contact loads. Therefore, it is important to conduct basic studies of the contacts resistance characteristics under low contact load conditions. In this study, relationships between contact resistance and the changes of contact traces were examined. When a platinum (Pt) hemisphere contacted to tin plated flat coupon, it was found that the hemisphere surface sank into the softer tin plated flat surface during loading resulting in a piling up tin crystal grains along the periphery of the contact trace. During this process, sudden decrease in contact resistance was observed. To clarify the phenomenon, morphology changes of contact traces were observed by AFM, SEM and EBSD. FEM analysis was also used to analyze the mechanical stress distribution in the tin plated layer. Due to the peculiar distribution of stress, the crystal grains are separated and push out the contact area. This phenomenon is very different from commonly observed decrease in contact resistance due to elastic and plastic deformation inducing mechanical fracture of the surface oxide film.

Decision tree-based clustering and parameter estimation are essential steps in the training part of an HMM-based speech synthesis system. These two steps are usually performed based on the maximum likelihood (ML) criterion. However, one of the drawbacks of the ML criterion is that it is sensitive to outliers which usually result in quality degradation of the synthesized speech. In this letter, we propose an approach to detect and remove outliers for HMM-based speech synthesis. Experimental results show that the proposed approach can improve the synthetic speech, particularly when the available training speech database is insufficient.

We consider wireless secure communications between a source and a destination aided by a multi-antenna relay, in the presence of an eavesdropper. In particular, two cooperation schemes of the relay are explored: cooperative relaying (CR) and cooperative jamming (CJ). We first investigate the transmit weight optimization of CR and CJ, for both cases with and without the eavesdropper's channel state information (ECSI). Then, for the case with ECSI, we derive the conditions under which CR achieves a higher secrecy rate than CJ; for the case without ECSI, we compare the secrecy rates of CR and CJ in high transmit power regimes. Building on this, we propose a novel hybrid scheme in which the relay utilizes both CR and CJ, and study the power allocation of the relay between CR and CJ for maximizing the secrecy rate under individual power constraints. Further, we study the case with imperfect channel state information (CSI) for both CR and CJ. At last, extensive numerical results are provided.

An exponential regression-based model with stochastic intensity is developed to describe the software reliability growth phenomena, where the software testing metrics depend on the intensity process. For such a generalized modeling framework, the common maximum likelihood method cannot be applied any more to the parameter estimation. In this paper, we propose to use the pseudo maximum likelihood method for the parameter estimation and to seek not only the model parameters but also the software reliability measures approximately. It is shown in numerical experiments with real software fault data that the resulting software reliability models based on four parametric approximations provide the better goodness-of-fit performance than the common non-homogeneous Poisson process models without testing metric information.

The location-based routing protocol has proven to be scalable and efficient in large wireless sensor networks with mobile sinks. A great challenge in location-based routing protocols is the design of scalable distributed location service that tracks the current locations of mobile sinks. Although various location services have been proposed in the literature, hierarchical-based location services have the significant advantage of high scalability. However, most of them depend on a global hierarchy of grids. A major disadvantage of this design is that high control overhead occurs when mobile sinks cross the boundaries of the top level grids. In this paper, we introduce Hierarchical Ring Location Service (HRLS) protocol, a practical distributed location service that provides sink location information in a scalable and distributed manner. In contrast to existing hierarchical-based location services, each sink in HRLS constructs its own hierarchy of grid rings distributively. To reduce the communication overhead of location update, sinks utilize the lazy update mechanism with their indirect location. Once a sensor node detects a target, it queries the location of a sink by sending request packets in eight directions. HRLS is evaluated through mathematical analysis and simulations. Compared with a well-known hierarchical-based location service, our results show that HRLS provides a more scalable and efficient distributed location service in scenarios with various network size, sink mobility and increasing number of source nodes.

A low complexity log-likelihood ratio (LLR) calculation for high-order amplitude phase shift keying (APSK) signals is proposed. Using proper constellation partitioning together with a look-up table, the number of terms for the comparison of Euclidean distances can be significantly reduced. Compared with the log-sum LLR approximation, the proposed method reduces the computational complexity by more than 65% and 75% for 16-APSK and 32-APSK signals, respectively, with very small bit error rate performance degradation.

Discrete-Time fractional Brownian motion (DFBM) and its increment process, called discrete-time fractional Gaussian noise (DFGN), are usually used to describe natural and biomedical phenomena. These two processes are dominated by one parameter, called the Hurst exponent, which needs to be estimated in order to capture the characteristics of physical signals. In the previous work, a variance estimator for estimating the Hurst exponent directly via DFBM was provided, and it didn't consider point selection for linear regression. Since physical signals often appear to be DFGN-type, not DFBM-type, it is imperative to first transform DFGN into DFBM in real applications. In this paper, we show that the variance estimator possesses another form, which can be estimated directly via the autocorrelation functions of DFGN. The above extra procedure of transforming DFGN into DFBM can thus be avoided. On the other hand, the point selection for linear regression is also considered. Experimental results show that 4-point linear regression is almost optimal in most cases. Therefore, our proposed variance estimator is more efficient and accurate than the original one mentioned above. Besides, it is also superior to AR and MA methods in speed and accuracy.

A low power and high performance with third order delta-sigma modulator for audio applications, fabricated in a 0.18 µm CMOS process, is presented. The modulator utilizes a third order noise shaping with only one opamp by using an opamp sharing technique. The opamp sharing among three integrator stages is achieved through the optimal operation timing, which makes use of the load capacitance differences between the three integrator stages. The designed modulator achieves 101.1 dB signal-to-noise ratio (A-weighted) and 101.5 dB dynamic range (A-weighted) with 7.5 mW power consumption from a 3.3 V supply. The die area is 1.27 mm2. The fabricated delta-sigma modulator achieves the highest figure-of-merit among published high performance low power audio delta-sigma modulators.

The power of laser radar received echoes varies over a large range due to many factors such as target distance, size, reflection ratio, etc, which leads to the difficulty of decoding codes from the received noise buried signals for spectrum code modulated laser radar. Firstly, a pseudo-random noise (PN) code modulated laser radar model is given, and the problem to be addressed is discussed. Then, a novel method based on Inter Symbol Interference (ISI) is proposed for resolving the problem, providing that only Additive White Gaussian Noise (AWGN) exists. The ISI effect is introduced by using a high pass filter (HPF). The results show that ISI improves laser radar receiver decoding ratio, thus the peak of the correlation function of decoded codes and modulation codes. Finally, the effect of proposed method is verified by a simple experiment.

This paper presents measurement results of bit error rate (BER) and soft error rate (SER) improvement on 150-nm FD-SOI 7T/14T (7-transistor/ 14-transistor) SRAM test chips. The reliability of the 7T/14T SRAM can be dynamically changed by a control signal depending on an operating condition and application. The 14T dependable mode allocates one bit in a 14T cell and improves the BER in a read operation and SER in a retention state, simultaneously. We investigate its error rate mitigating mechanisms using Synopsys TCAD simulator. In our measurements, the minimum operating voltage was improved by 100 mV, the alpha-induced SER was suppressed by 80.0%, and the neutron-induced SER was decreased by 34.4% in the 14T dependable mode over the 7T normal mode.

We propose a methodology of loop design optimization for fourth-order fractional-N phase locked loop (PLL) frequency synthesizers featuring a short settling time of 5 µsec for applications in an active RFID (radio frequency identification) and automobile smart-key systems. To establish the optimized design flow, equations presenting the relationship between the specification and PLL loop parameters in terms of settling time, loop bandwidth, phase margin, and phase noise are summarized. The proposed design flow overcomes the settling time inaccuracy in conventional second-order approximation methods by obtaining the accurate relationship between settling time and loop bandwidth with the MATLAB Control System Toolbox for the fourth-order PLLs. The proposed flow also features the worst-case design by taking account of the process, voltage, and temperature (PVT) variations in loop filter components, and considers the tradeoff between phase noise and area. The three-step optimization process consists of 1) the derivation of the accurate relationship between the settling time and loop bandwidth for various PVT conditions, 2) the derivation of phase noise and area as functions of area-dominant filter capacitance, and 3) the derivation of all PLL loop components values. The optimized design result is compared with circuit simulations using an actually designed fourth-order fractional-N PLL in a 1.8 V 0.18 µm CMOS technology. The error between the design and simulation for the setting time is reduced from 0.63 µsec in the second-order approximation to 0.23 µsec in the fourth-order optimization that proves the validity of the proposed method for the high-speed settling operations.