We propose an asynchronous variable-length optical packet switch that is based on a packet compression scheme and delay-line loop buffers, and evaluate the packet loss probability of the proposed switch through simulation and analysis. Simulation results well the analytical results and show the accuracy of our analysis. When the packet compression ratio is low, optical packet interval regulators are useful to improve the packet loss probability characteristics.

This paper discusses the behavior of the second-order modes (Hankel singular values) of linear continuous-time systems under variable transformations with positive-real functions. That is, given a transfer function H(s) and its second-order modes, we analyze the second-order modes of transformed systems H(F(s)), where 1/F(s) is an arbitrary positive-real function. We first discuss the case of lossless positive-real transformations, and show that the second-order modes are invariant under any lossless positive-real transformation. We next consider the case of general positive-real transformations, and reveal that the values of the second-order modes are decreased under any general positive-real transformation. We achieve the derivation of these results by describing the controllability/observability Gramians of transformed systems, with the help of the lossless positive-real lemma, the positive-real lemma, and state-space formulation of transformed systems.

In this paper we analyze the characteristics of vehicle mobility and propose a novel Mobility Prediction Progressive Routing (MP2R) protocol for Inter-Vehicle Communication (IVC) that is based on cross-layer design. MP2R utilizes the additional gain provided by the directional antennas to improve link quality and connectivity; interference is reduced by the directional transmission. Each node learns its own position and speed and that of other nodes, and performs position prediction. (i) With the predicted progress and link quality, the forwarding decision of a packet is locally made, just before the packet is actually transmitted. In addition the load at the forwarder is considered in order to avoid congestion. (ii) The predicted geographic direction is used to control the beam of the directional antenna. The proposed MP2R protocol is especially suitable for forwarding burst traffic in highly mobile environments. Simulation results show that MP2R effectively reduces Packet Error Ratio (PER) compared with both topology-based routing (AODV [1], FSR [2]) and normal progressive routing (NADV [18]) in the IVC scenarios.

In this paper, we propose a soft decision based cooperative sensing method for cognitive radio (CR) networks for opportunistic frequency usage. To identify unused frequency, CR should exploit sensing technique to detect presence or absence of primary user and use this information to opportunistically provide communication among secondary users while performance of primary user should not be deteriorated by the secondary users. Because of multipath fading or shadowing, the detection of primary users may be significantly difficult. For this problem, cooperative sensing (CS), where gathered observations obtained by multiple secondary users is utilized to achieve higher performance of detection, has been investigated. We design a soft decision based CS analytically and analyze the detector in several situations, i.e., signal model where single-carrier case and multi-carrier case are assumed and two scenarios; in the first scenario, SNR values of secondary users are totally equal and in the second scenario, a certain SNR difference between secondary users is assumed. We present numerical results as follows. The first scenario shows that there is little difference between the signal models in terms of detection performance. The second scenario shows that CS is superior to non-cooperative sensing. In addition, we presents that detection performance of soft decision based CS outperform detection performance of hard decision based CS.

This paper presents an RK-means clustering algorithm which is developed for reliable data grouping by introducing a new reliability evaluation to the K-means clustering algorithm. The conventional K-means clustering algorithm has two shortfalls: 1) the clustering result will become unreliable if the assumed number of the clusters is incorrect; 2) during the update of a cluster center, all the data points belong to that cluster are used equally without considering how distant they are to the cluster center. In this paper, we introduce a new reliability evaluation to K-means clustering algorithm by considering the triangular relationship among each data point and its two nearest cluster centers. We applied the proposed algorithm to track objects in video sequence and confirmed its effectiveness and advantages.

In this paper, a fiber with two inhomogeneous sector holes around the core is proposed, and propagation characteristics of polarization maintaining region and single-polarization region are numerically analyzed by circular Fourier expansion method. In each case of the single-polarization region and the polarization maintaining region, a fiber is designed so as to satisfy the zero total dispersion at wavelength of 1.55 µm. Then, the single-polarization bandwidth for the single-polarization region and the modal birefringence for the polarization maintaining region are examined as the specific characteristics in each region. In addition, the power concentrating into the core region and distributions of Poynting vector is also discussed.

In one-cell-frequency-reuse Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiple Access based Time Division Multiple Access (OF/TDMA) systems, communication is blocked by interference from adjacent cells. The most promising solution would be an adaptive modulation and coding scheme that is controlled by estimating the signal-to-interference ratio (SIR). However, there has so far been no way to accurately estimate the SIR using the spreading codes for OF/TDMA systems, because of the asynchronous fast Fourier transform (FFT). In this paper, we propose a novel SIR estimation method that uses a spread pulse-wave symbol and carrier interferometry. Moreover, to introduce multi- input multi-output systems, we modify the proposed method by allocating a different spreading code to each cell. Computer simulation confirmed that the SIR is estimated accurately even if the FFT is asynchronous. On cell boundaries, the average estimation errors that are a ratio between accurate and estimated propagation characteristics are less than 2 dB.

A technique for suppressing the clipping noise of an analogue-to-digital converter (ADC) is proposed to realize a cognitive radio transceiver that offers high sensitivity carrier-sensing. When a large bandwidth cognitive radio transceiver performs carrier-sensing, it must receive a radio wave that includes many primary user transmissions. The radio wave may have high peak-to-average power ratio (PAPR) and clipping noise may be generated. Clipping noise becomes an obstacle to the achievement of high-sensitivity carrier-sensing. In the proposed technique, the original values of the samples clipped by an ADC are estimated by interpolation. Polynomial spline interpolation to the clipped signal is performed in the first step, and then SINC function interpolation is applied to the spline interpolated signal. The performance was evaluated using the signals with various PAPR. It has been found that suppression performance has a dependency on the number of samples clipped at once rather than on PAPR. Although there is an upper limit for the number of samples clipped at once that can be compensated with high accuracy, about 20 dB suppression of clipping noise was achieved with the medium degree of clipping.

This paper describes a smart thermal sensing chip with an integrated vertical bipolar transistor sensor, a Sigma Delta Modulator (SDM), a Micro-Control Unit (MCU), and a bandgap reference voltage generator for biomedical application by using 0.18 µm CMOS process. The npn bipolar transistors with the Deep N-Well (DNW) instead of the pnp bipolar transistor is first adopted as the sensor for good isolation from substrate coupling noise. In addition to data compression, Micro-Control Unit (MCU) plays an important role for executing auto-calibration by digitally trimming the bipolar sensor in parallel to save power consumption and to reduce feedback complexity. It is different from the present analog feedback calibration technologies. Using one sensor, instead of two sensors, to create two differential signals in 180phase difference input to SDM is also a novel design of this work. As a result, in the range of 0 to 80 or body temperature (375), the inaccuracy is less than 0.1 or 0.05 respectively with one-point calibration after packaging. The average power consumption is 268.4 µW with 1.8 V supply voltage.

The reduction of a structural pattern at specific gray levels or at the special condition of image data has mainly been discussed in digital halftone methods. This problem is more severe in some flat panel displays because their black levels typically are brighter than other displays blocks. The authors proposed an advanced confined error diffusion (ACED) algorithm which was a well-organized halftone algorithm for flat panel devices. In this paper, we extend the ACED algorithm to the multi-level systems, which are capable of displaying more than 2 levels. Our extension has two merits for the hardware implementation. First, it can be processed in real time using the look-up table based method. The second one is the flexibility of selecting the used gray level. This paper discusses the performance of the proposed algorithms with experimental results for natural test images.

In a Cognitive Radio system, it is essential to recognize and avoid sources of interference signals. This paper describes a study on a location sensing scheme for interference signals, which utilizes multi-beam phased array antenna for cognitive wireless networks. This paper also elucidates its estimation accuracy of the interference location for the radio communication link using an OFDM signal such as WiMAX. Furthermore, we use the frequency spectrum of the received OFDM interference signal, to create a method that can estimate the propagation status. This spectrum can be monitored by using a software defined radio receiver.

In this paper, we propose and demonstrate a novel type of PCF that has two cladding layers with Ge rods at the center core. We numerically show that it is possible to design a single mode PCF with large effective area greater than 200 µm2 over the whole wavelength above 1.2 µm. The proposed large mode area PCF (LMA-PCF) exhibits a high negative dispersion coefficient from -186 to -158 [ps/(nm-km)] in all wavelengths ranging from 1.2 µm to 1.8 µm. Effective single mode operation of LMA-PCF is confimed for the entire band of interest.

Classification of terrain is one of the most important applications of Polarimetric Synthetic Aperture Radar (POLSAR) image analysis. This paper presents a simple method to classify terrain by the use of the correlation coefficients in the circular polarization basis together with the total power of the scattering matrix in the X-band. The reflection symmetry condition that the co-polarized and the cross-polarized correlations are close to zero for natural distributed scatterers is utilized to extract characteristic parameters of small forests or cluster of trees, and oriented urban building blocks with respect to the direction of the radar illumination. Both of these kinds of scatterers are difficult to identify in high resolution POLSAR images of complex urban areas. The indices employed here are the correlation coefficient, a modified coefficient normalized by the reflection symmetric conditional case, and the total power. It is shown that forest areas and oriented building blocks are easily detected and identified. The terrain classification yielded by these combinations is very accurate as confirmed by photographic ground truth images.

We propose a method to prevent the degradation of decoded MPEG pictures caused by video transmission over error-prone networks. In this paper, we focus on the error concealment that is processed at the decoder without using any backchannels. Though there have been various approaches to this problem, they generally focus on minimizing the degradation measured frame by frame. Although this frame-level approach is effective in evaluating individual frame quality, in the sense of human perception, the most noticeable feature is the spatio-temporal discontinuity of the image feature in the decoded video image. We propose a novel error concealment algorithm comprising the combination of i) A spatio-temporal error recovery function with low processing cost, ii) A MB-based image fidelity tracking scheme, and iii) An adaptive post-filter using the fidelity information. It is demonstrated by experimental results that the proposed algorithm can significantly reduce the subjective degradation of corrupted MPEG video quality with about 30 % of additional decoding processing power.

We propose a simple asynchronous UWB (Ultra Wide Band) position location algorithm with low complexity, power consumption and processing delay. In the proposed algorithm, only a single RTTX (Round-Trip Transmission) of UWB pulses is utilized based on the ToA (Time of Arrival) principle. Hence, the proposed algorithm decreases power consumption and processing delay as compared to the basic ToA based on triple RTTXs. Moreover, unlike the TDoA (Time Difference of Arrival) algorithm, the proposed algorithm can perform the position location with low complexity since it does not require strict synchronization between multiple beacons. Simulation results using IEEE 802.15.4a UWB channel models reveal that the proposed algorithm achieves closely comparable position location performance of the basic ToA and TDoA algorithms.

At the behavioral level, large power savings are possible by shutting down unused operations, which is commonly referred to as power management. However, operation scheduling has a significant impact on the potential for power saving via power management. In this paper, we present an integer linear programming (ILP) model to formally formulate the simultaneous application of operation scheduling and power management in high level synthesis. Our objective is to maximize the power saving under both the timing constraints and the resource constraints. Note that our approach guarantees solving the problem optimally. Compared with previous work, experimental data consistently show that our approach has significant relative improvement in the power savings.

Human's ability to perceive elevation of a sound and distinguish whether a sound is coming from the front or rear strongly depends on the monaural spectral features of the pinnae. In order to realize an effective virtual auditory display by HRTF (head-related transfer function) customization, the pinna responses were isolated from the median HRIRs (head-related impulse responses) of 45 individual HRIRs in the CIPIC HRTF database and modeled as linear combinations of 4 or 5 basic temporal shapes (basis functions) per each elevation on the median plane by PCA (principal components analysis) in the time domain. By tuning the weight of each basis function computed for a specific height to replace the pinna response in the KEMAR HRIR at the same height with the resulting customized pinna response and listening to the filtered stimuli over headphones, 4 individuals with normal hearing sensitivity were able to create a set of HRIRs that outperformed the KEMAR HRIRs in producing vertical effects with reduced front/back ambiguity in the median plane. Since the monaural spectral features of the pinnae are almost independent of azimuthal variation of the source direction, similar vertical effects could also be generated at different azimuthal directions simply by varying the ITD (interaural time difference) according to the direction as well as the size of each individual's own head.

In this study, we propose a method of classifying a spontaneous electroencephalogram (EEG) approach to a brain-computer interface. Ten subjects, aged 21-32 years, volunteered to imagine left- and right-hand movements. An independent component analysis based on a fixed-point algorithm is used to eliminate the activities found in the EEG signals. We use a fractal dimension value to reveal the embedded potential responses in the human brain. The different fractal dimension values between the relaxing and imaging periods are computed. Featured data is classified by a three-layer feed-forward neural network based on a simple backpropagation algorithm. Two conventional methods, namely, the use of the autoregressive (AR) model and the band power estimation (BPE) as features, and the linear discriminant analysis (LDA) as a classifier, are selected for comparison in this study. Experimental results show that the proposed method is more effective than the conventional methods.

Reliable detection of other radio systems is crucial for systems that share the same frequency band. In wireless communication channels, there is uncertainty in the received signal level due to multipath fading and shadowing. Cooperative sensing techniques in which radio stations share their sensing information can improve the detection probability of other systems. In this paper, a new cooperative sensing scheme that reduces the false detection probability while maintaining the outage probability of other systems is investigated. In the proposed system, sensing information is collected using multi-hop transmission from all sensing stations that detect other systems, and transmission decisions are based on the received sensing information. The proposed system also controls the transmit power based on the received CINRs from the sensing stations. Simulation results reveal that the proposed system can reduce the outage probability of other systems, or improve its link success probability.

In this paper, we consider a network of N identical IEEE 802.11 DCF (Distributed Coordination Function) terminals with RTS/CTS mechanism, each of which is assumed to be saturated. For performance analysis, we propose a simple and efficient mathematical model to derive the statistical characteristics of the network such as the inter-transmission time of packets in the network and the service time (the inter-transmission time of successful packet transmissions) of the network. Numerical results and simulations are provided to validate the accuracy of our model and to study the performance of the IEEE 802.11 DCF network.