In this letter, we focus on the selection of the BEM order in the doubly-selective channel estimation. Based on the Jakes' channel model, we take into account the channel spectrum spread caused by observation window effects and the channel estimation error, and propose a method of selecting the optimal BEM order in the sense of minimum mean square error.

This paper considers detection schemes for the combined space-time block coding and spatial multiplexing (STBC-SM) transmission systems. We propose a symbol detection scheme which allows to extend the limit on the number of transmit antennas imposed by the previous group detection scheme. The proposed scheme allows to double multiplexing gain as well as provides better bit error rate (BER) performance over the group detection scheme. It is shown that the proposed QR-SIC (combined QR-decomposition and successive interference cancellation) symbol detector provides good trade-off between the BER and computational complexity performance and, thus, is the most suitable detector for the combined STBC-SM system.

This paper presents a real-time decision support system (RDSS) based on artificial intelligence (AI) for voltage collapse avoidance (VCA) in power supply networks. The RDSS scheme employs a fuzzy hyperrectangular composite neural network (FHRCNN) to carry out voltage risk identification (VRI). In the event that a threat to the security of the power supply network is detected, an evolutionary programming (EP)-based algorithm is triggered to determine the operational settings required to restore the power supply network to a secure condition. The effectiveness of the RDSS methodology is demonstrated through its application to the American Electric Power Provider System (AEP, 30-bus system) under various heavy load conditions and contingency scenarios. In general, the numerical results confirm the ability of the RDSS scheme to minimize the risk of voltage collapse in power supply networks. In other words, RDSS provides Power Provider Enterprises (PPEs) with a viable tool for performing on-line voltage risk assessment and power system security enhancement functions.

In this letter, we propose a coding mode selection method for the AMR-WB+ audio coder based on a decision tree. In order to reduce computation while maintaining good performance, decision tree classifier is adopted with the closed loop mode selection results as the target classification labels. The size of the decision tree is controlled by pruning, so the proposed method does not increase the memory requirement significantly. Through an evaluation test on a database covering both speech and music materials, the proposed method is found to achieve a much better mode selection accuracy compared with the open loop mode selection module in the AMR-WB+.

As a technique for calibrating electric-field probes used in standardized SAR (Specific Absorption Rate) assessment, we have studied the technique using the Friis transmission formula in the tissue-equivalent liquid. It is difficult to measure power transmission between two reference antennas in the far-field region due to large attenuation in the liquid. This means that the conventional Friis transmission formula cannot be applied to our measurement so that we developed an extension of this formula that is valid in the near-field region. In this paper, the method of weighted least squares is introduced to reduce the effect of the noise in the measurement system when the gain of the antenna operated in the liquid is determined by the curve-fitting technique. And we examine how to choose the fitting range to reduce the uncertainty of the estimated gain.

In this paper, we show that motion sharpening phenomenon can be explained as a form of visual masking for a special case where a video sequence is composed of alternate frames with different level of sharpness. A frame of higher sharpness behaves to mask the ambiguity of a subsequent frame of lower sharpness and hence preserves the perceptive quality of the whole sequence. Borrowing the mechanism for visual masking, we formulated a quantitative model for deriving the minimum spatial frequency conditions which preserves the subjective quality of the frames being masked. The quantitative model takes into account three fundamental properties of the video signals, namely the size of motion, average luminance and the power of each frequency components. The psychophysical responses towards the changes of these properties are obtained through subjective assessment tests using video sequences of simple geometrical patterns. Subjective experiments on natural video sequences show that more than 75% of viewers could make no distinction between the original sequence and the one processed using the quantitative model.

This paper presents a triple-band WCDMA direct conversion receiver (DCR) IC that needs a small number of off-chip components and control signals from digital baseband (DBB) IC. The DCR IC consists of 3 quadrature demodulators (QDEMs) with on-chip impedance matching circuit and an analog baseband block (ABB) that contains a low-pass filter (LPF) with fc automatic tuning circuit using no off-chip components and a linear-in-dB variable-gain amplifier (VGA) with on-chip analog high-pass filter (HPF). In order to make use of DBB control-free DC offset canceler, the DCR is designed to avoid large gain change under large interference that causes long transient response. In order to realize that characteristic without increasing quiescent current, the QDEM is used that employs class AB input stage and low-noise common mode feedback (CMFB) output stage. The DCR IC was fabricated in a SiGe BiCMOS process and occupies about 2.9 mm3.0 mm. The DCR needs SAW filters only for off-chip components and a gain control signal from DBB IC for AGC loop. The IIP3 of over -4.4 dBm for small signal input level and that of over +1.9 dBm for large signal input level are achieved. The gain compression of the desired signal is less than 0.3 dB for ACS Case-II condition.

Recently, cyber attacks have become a serious hindrance to the stability of Internet. These attacks exploit interconnectivity of networks, propagate in an instant, and have become more sophisticated and evolutionary. Traditional Internet security systems such as firewalls, IDS and IPS are limited in terms of detecting recent cyber attacks in advance as these systems respond to Internet attacks only after the attacks inflict serious damage. In this paper, we propose a hybrid intrusion forecasting system framework for an early warning system. The proposed system utilizes three types of forecasting methods: time-series analysis, probabilistic modeling, and data mining method. By combining these methods, it is possible to take advantage of the forecasting technique of each while overcoming their drawbacks. Experimental results show that the hybrid intrusion forecasting method outperforms each of three forecasting methods.

In this paper, a routing protocol referred to as Directed Diffusion with Stepwise Interest Retransmission (DD/SIR) for wireless sensor networks is proposed to mitigate power consumption considering node mobility. In DD/SIR, a sink retransmits interest. The propagation areas of the interest are narrowed stepwisely. In addition, according to the number of hops between the sink and sensor nodes, the data transmission timing is controlled sequentially. By both theoretical analysis and computer simulation, we evaluate the performance of DD/SIR. We show that DD/SIR can mitigate control overhead and realize low power operation without degrading data reachability to the sink. Especially, at a small number of data sending nodes, DD/SIR is more effective than the conventional routing.

Due to the computational complexity of the optimum maximum likelihood detector (OMD) growing exponentially with the number of users, suboptimum techniques have received significant attention. We have proposed the particle swarm optimization (PSO) for the multiuser detection (MUD) in asynchronous multicarrier code division multiple access (MC-CDMA) system. The performance of PSO based MUD is near optimum, while its computational complexity is far less than OMD. Performance of PSO-MUD has also been shown to be better than that of genetic algorithm based MUD (GA-MUD) at practical SNR.

Unforgeability of digital signatures is closely related to the security of hash functions since hashing messages, such as hash-and-sign paradigm, is necessary in order to sign (arbitrarily) long messages. Recent successful collision finding attacks against practical hash functions would indicate that constructing practical collision resistant hash functions is difficult to achieve. Thus, it is worth considering to relax the requirement of collision resistance for hash functions that is used to hash messages in signature schemes. Currently, the most efficient strongly unforgeable signature scheme in the standard model which is based on the CDH assumption (in bilinear groups) is the Boneh-Shen-Waters (BSW) signature proposed in 2006. In their scheme, however, a collision resistant hash function is necessary to prove its security. In this paper, we construct a signature scheme which has the same properties as the BSW scheme but does not rely on collision resistant hash functions. Instead, we use a target collision resistant hash function, which is a strictly weaker primitive than a collision resistant hash function. Our scheme is, in terms of the signature size and the computational cost, as efficient as the BSW scheme.

Vertical handoff is a new type of handoff that is triggered when a mobile node moves over heterogeneous wireless networks with each proving different access bandwidth, transmission latency, and coverage. A mobile node can achieve higher throughput by accessing a higher bandwidth providing wireless network. However, TCP has to experience drastic changes of the bandwidth and the latency due to the vertical handoff which must be recognized as a network congestion, and this degrades end-to-end performance. In this paper, we propose a TCP context switching scheme, named Context-Switching TCP, that maintains TCP variables separately for different types of wireless networks. Through simulations, Context-Switching TCP shows higher performance than TCP SACK for vertical handoff. Especially, it shows much higher performance gain when vertical handoff occurs frequently.

In mobile communications, the channel consists of many resolvable paths with different time delays, resulting in a severely frequency-selective fading channel. The frequency-domain equalization (FDE) can take advantage of the channel selectivity and improve the bit error rate (BER) performance of the single-carrier (SC) transmission. Recently, multi-input multi-output (MIMO) multiplexing is gaining much attention for achieving very high speed data transmissions with the limited bandwidth. Eigenbeam space division multiplexing (E-SDM) is known as one of MIMO multiplexing techniques. In this paper, we propose frequency-domain SC E-SDM for SC transmission. In frequency-domain SC E-SDM, the orthogonal transmission channels to transmit different data in parallel are constructed at each orthogonal frequency. At a receiver, FDE is used to suppress the inter-symbol interference (ISI). In this paper, the transmit power allocation and adaptive modulation based on the equivalent channel gains after performing FDE are applied. The BER performance of the frequency-domain SC E-SDM in a severe frequency-selective Rayleigh fading channel is evaluated by computer simulation.

In this paper, we propose a reduced-complexity radial basis function (RBF)-assisted decision-feedback equalizer (DFE)-based turbo equalization (TEQ) scheme using a novel extended fuzzy c-means (FCM) algorithm, which not only is comparable in performance to the Jacobian RBF DFE-based TEQ but also is low-complexity. Previous TEQ research has shown that the Jacobian RBF DFE TEQ considerably reduces the computational complexity with similar performance, when compared to the logarithmic maximum a posteriori (Log-MAP) TEQ. In this study, the proposed reduced-complexity RBF DFE TEQ further greatly reduces the computational complexity and is capable of attaining a similar performance in contrast to the Jacobian RBF DFE TEQ in the context of both binary phase-shift keying (BPSK) modulation and 4 quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM). With this proposal, the materialization of the RBF-assisted TEQ scheme becomes more feasible.

A dispersion diagram is useful in interpreting the characteristics of a periodic structure. In particular, the fast-wave region, where the wave is radiating, and the slow-wave region, where the wave is guided, can be determined from the dispersion diagram. An electronically-controlled composite right/left-handed (CRLH) transmission line (TL) was previously proposed and utilized as a leaky-wave (LW) antenna operating in the fast-wave region. However, since a guided-wave application operates in the slow-wave region, it is meaningful to study slow-wave effects of the proposed TL. In this paper, the dispersion diagram is used to investigate the slow-wave factor (SWF), which is necessary to understand the fast/slow-wave operations. Furthermore, the frequency characteristics are measured to find the cut-off frequencies in the LH and RH regions. Based on experimental results, it is observed at a fixed frequency, 2.6-GHz, that the phase of a proposed 6-cell structure can be changed by up to 280 in the LH slow-wave region.

The computation involved in multiuser detection (MUD) for multicarrier CDMA (MC-CDMA) based on maximum likelihood (ML) principle grows exponentially with the number of users. Particle swarm optimization (PSO) with soft decisions has been proposed to mitigate this problem. The computational complexity of PSO, is comparable with genetic algorithm (GA), but is much less than the optimal ML detector and yet its performance is much better than GA.

Phased array antennas are attractive in terms of low cost and power consumption. This paper proposes a controlling scheme based on a bisection method for phased array antennas employing phase shifters with slow switching speed, which is typical for Micro Electro Mechanical Systems (MEMS) switches. Computer simulation results, assuming the IEEE 802.11a Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN) standard, show that the proposed scheme has good gain enhancement capability in multipath fading channels.

This paper presents a new QoS model for end-to-end service provisioning in multi-hop wireless networks. In legacy IEEE 802.11e based multi-hop wireless networks, the fixed assignment of service classes according to flow's priority at every node causes priority inversion problem when performing end-to-end service differentiation. Thus, this paper proposes a new QoS provisioning model called Dynamic Hop Service Differentiation (DHSD) to alleviate the problem and support effective service differentiation between end-to-end nodes. Many previous works for QoS model through the 802.11e based service differentiation focus on packet scheduling on several service queues with different service rate and service priority. Our model, however, concentrates on a dynamic class selection scheme, called Per Hop Class Assignment (PHCA), in the node's MAC layer, which selects a proper service class for each packet, in accordance with queue states and service requirement, in every node along the end-to-end route of the packet. The proposed QoS solution is evaluated using the OPNET simulator. The simulation results show that the proposed model outperforms both best-effort and 802.11e based strict priority service models in mobile ad hoc environments.

UHF radio frequency identification (RFID) has gathered significant interest in the field of long-distance automatic identification applications. Since UHF RFID shares the frequency band with other RFID and/or other wireless systems, it is important to determine how much interference can be applied without causing a significant degradation of anti-collision speed. In this paper, the permissible link quality for RFID anti-collision in a practical environment is discussed by considering an erroneous communication link, taking into account of bit encoding and the type of interference. We approach the quantification of permissible link quality experimentally along with protocol simulations and the mathematical analyses. An international standard protocol, employing frame slotted ALOHA, was used as the air protocol. For these investigations, the present authors developed a protocol simulator. The simulation results were compared with analytical values based on Poisson distribution. The investigation in the return (tag to reader) link, and the forward (reader to tag) link, were analyzed separately. As result of the protocol simulation, it is generally important to secure the Pulse Error Rate 10-4 or better in both return and forward links for the anti-collision of 64 or less tags. The quality of the return link may be relaxed when the application does not require fast anti-collision. The degradation of the forward link, on the other hand, may entail loss of important commands, resulting in extremely slow anti-collision. It is measured experimentally that the required link quality can be relaxed by up to 10 dB in the return links and by 5 dB in the forward link when the primary source of interference originates in the interfering readers.

Tag collision is a major problem in the field of multi-tag identification in RFID systems. To solve this problem, many RFID systems adopt their own collision arbitration algorithms based on framed-structure slotted Aloha (FSSA) due to the simplicity of implementation. The frame size, meaning the number of slots in a frame, is a very important factor to inventory tags' responses in the FSSA. How to assign the frame size is therefore crucial to the collision arbitration performance. Since the existing collision arbitration methods do not consider the slot times of each slot when assigning frame size, they may increase overall identification time. By involving the slot times, we improve the collision arbitration performance of the conventional methods. Simulation results show that collision arbitration based on the proposed method is superior to that based on the conventional methods, irrespective of the number of tags.