The article describes recent adaptive estimation algorithms over distributed networks. The algorithms rely on local collaborations and exploit the space-time structure of the data. Each node is allowed to communicate with its neighbors in order to exploit the spatial dimension, while it also evolves locally to account for the time dimension. Algorithms of the least-mean-squares and least-squares types are described. Both incremental and diffusion strategies are considered.

This paper reports a novel design in Photonic Crystal Fibers (PCFs) with nearly zero ultra-flattened dispersion characteristics. We describe the chromatic dispersion controllability taking non-uniform air hole structures into consideration. Through optimizing non-uniform air hole structures, the ultra-flattened zero dispersion PCFs can be efficiently designed. We show numerically that the proposed non-uniform air cladding structures successfully archive flat dispersion characteristics as well as extremely low confinement losses. As an example, the proposed PCF with flattened dispersion of 0.27 ps/(nmkm) from 1.5 µm to 1.8 µm wavelength with confinement losses of less than 10-11 dB/m. Finally, we point out that full controllability of the chromatic dispersion and confinement losses, along with the fabrication technique, are the main advantages of the proposed PCF structure.

It is predicted that there will be a high demand for video applications in future wireless networks including wireless ad hoc networks. However, supporting video applications over mobile ad hoc networks is more complicated than with other networks due to the lack of support from a preinstalled infrastructure. In this paper, we tackle this problem by adopting the concept of multipoint-to-point video transmission used in wire-line networks. A novel framework designed with features to accommodate the characteristics of ad hoc networks is presented. There are two key features in our proposal. First, Multiple Description Coding (MDC) scheme is used for video coding to reduce the redundancy by avoiding the transmission of duplicate video frames. Second, the routing protocol is expanded to include finding disjoint routes from video sources to the receiver so that a single link breakage or a single intermediate node failure affects transmission from only the minimum number of nodes. Furthermore, the use of disjoint routes also enables the workload to be distributed more evenly within the network. A simulation study was carried out using NS-2 to demonstrate the performance of the proposed mechanism. We show that the proposed mechanism outperforms conventional point-to-point transmission, especially under conditions of high mobility.

Pole-tip-driven structure, which is composed of a coil wounded at the main pole tip, is favorable for obtaining a sharp and strong head field as a single-pole-type head. Three kinds of pole-tip-driven-type heads with different yoke and coil structures are investigated in terms of magnetomotive force dependence of head field and effect of coil recession. Field calculation by finite-element method (FEM) showed that the three heads exhibited the same field sensitivity in spite of the difference in distribution of coil exciting field and magnetization of the main pole. In a lower range of magnetomotive force the heads showed different dependence of field sensitivity on the coil recession. However, there was not much difference in degradation of sensitivity in a region near the saturation of field. Thus, the importance of reducing coil recession was confirmed as reported earlier.

Test compression / decompression using variable-length coding is an efficient method for reducing the test application cost, i.e., test application time and the size of the storage of an LSI tester. However, some coding techniques impose slow test application, and consequently a large test application time is required despite the high compression. In this paper, we clarify the fact that test application time depends on the compression ratio and the length of codewords and then propose a new Huffman-based coding method for achieving small test application time in a given test environment. The proposed coding method adjusts both of the compression ratio and the minimum length of the codewords to the test environment. Experimental results show that the proposed method can achieve small test application time while keeping high compression ratio.

As the amount of recorded TV content is increasing rapidly, people need active and interactive browsing methods. In this paper, we use both text information from closed captions and visual information from video frames to generate links to enable users to easily explore not only the original video content but also augmented information from the Web. This solution especially shows its superiority when the video content cannot be fully represented by closed captions. A prototype system was implemented and some experiments were carried out to prove its effectiveness and efficiency.

We propose an N-channel power-compensated reconfigurable optical add/drop multiplexer (ROADM) based on using fiber Bragg gratings (FBGs). Both tunable FBGs and wavelength-fixed FBGs are used in this ROADM. By using the dual-pass amplification scheme with two pieces of erbium doped fibers, an 8.0 dB optical net gain has been achieved with a gain variation less than 0.5 dB for each add/drop/pass-through channel. System performance was studied for a four-WDM-channel 10 Gb/s100-km lightwave transmission trial network and bit error rate of 10-9 is observed for the 50 km added signal, 100 km pass-through signal and 50 km dropped signal at -18.3, -19.4 and -18.9 dBm received power, respectively. Only 1.1 dB of power penalty was observed compared to the back-to-back transmission.

In this letter, we propose an improved global soft decision for noisy speech enhancement. From an investigation of statistical model-based speech enhancement, it is discovered that a global soft decision has a fundamental drawback at the speech tail regions of speech signals. For that reason, we propose a new solution based on a smoothed likelihood ratio for the global soft decision. Performances of the proposed method are evaluated by subjective tests under various environments and show better results compared with the our previous work.

In this paper we propose a cross-layer retransmission control for TCP communication over a wireless link. With our proposed control, a retransmission delay for lost packet is reduced, packet losses in the wireless link are eliminated and all packets are delivered in the correct order. No change is required to TCP itself or to the sender. Our proposed method is implemented in a queue between the media access control (MAC) layer and logical link layer in a base station, and is designed to assist local retransmission control in the MAC layer. Computer simulations show that our proposed method can maximally use the bandwidth of the wireless link under high bit error rates conditions with conventional TCP control. The fairness problem of TCP communication between connections with different bit error rates in a wireless link is also improved, and MAC level fairness is also controllable.

In this paper, a compact ultra-wideband bandpass filter (UWB-BPF) using pseudo-interdigital stepped-impedance resonators (PIDT-SIRs) is designed and implemented on a commercial printed circuit board (PCB) of RT/Duroid 5880 substrate. The first two resonant modes of the SIR are coupled together and they are applied to create a wide passband. The proposed filter at center frequency f0 of 7.1 GHz has very good measured characteristics including the bandwidth of 3.68-10.46 GHz (3-dB fractional bandwidth of 95%), low insertion loss of -0.50.4 dB, sharp rejection due to two transmission zeros in the passband edge created by the inter-stage coupling. Experimental results of the fabricated filter show a good agreement with the predicted results.

Ethical and legal requirements have made accessibility a crucial feature in any information systems. This paper presents a content adaptation framework, based on the MPEG-21 standard, to help low-vision users have better accessibility to visual contents. We first present an overview of MPEG-21 Digital Item Adaptation (DIA) and the low-vision description tool which enables interoperable content adaptation. This description tool lists seven low-vision symptoms, namely loss of fine detail, lack of contrast, central vision loss, peripheral vision loss, hemianopia, light sensitivity, and need of light. Then we propose a systematic contrast-enhancement method to improve the content visibility for low-vision users, focusing on the first two symptoms. The effectiveness of the low-vision description tool and our adaptation framework is verified by some experiments with an adaptation test-bed. The major advantages of the proposed approach include 1) support of a wide range of low-vision conditions, and 2) customized content adaptation to specific characteristics of each user.

Recently, the decision feedback channel estimation based on the minimum mean square error criterion (DF-MMSE-CE) using a fixed DF filter coefficient has been proposed to improve the channel estimation accuracy for DS-CDMA with frequency-domain equalization (FDE). In this paper, we propose adaptive DF (ADF)-MMSE-CE, in which the DF filter coefficient is adapted to changing channel conditions based on a recursive least square (RLS) algorithm. Furthermore, the channel estimate is phase corrected upon the reception of the periodically inserted pilot chip blocks. The average BER performance of DS-CDMA with MMSE-FDE using ADF-MMSE-CE is evaluated by computer simulation in a frequency-selective Rayleigh fading channel and the simulation results show that our proposed scheme is very robust against fast fading.

Effect of dispersions of medium parameters and structure on the recording performance was systematically investigated. Moderately increased M-H loop slope is effective for obtaining higher thermal stability, smaller saturation fields, and higher resolution. It was found that the most influential factor is the dispersion in anisotropy field, Hk. Small Hk dispersion reduced the noise when exchange coupled media were used. Reduced grain size and a stacked structure of the media were expected to give a restricted gain in the signal to noise ratio.

In previous literature on adaptive transmission in multiuser OFDMA systems, only uncoded case or capacity (coded with infinite length of codeword) has been considered. In this paper, an adaptive transmission algorithm for coded OFDMA systems with practical codeword lengths is investigated. Also, in order to keep the feedback overhead within a practical range, a two-step partial CQI scheme is adopted, which has both better performance and reduced feedback overhead compared to conventional partial CQI schemes. By allowing a long codeword block across all allocated sub-bands with appropriate power and modulation order allocation rather than using short codeword blocks to each sub-band, high coding gain can be obtained, which leads to performance improvement.

The paper presents a method for testing transport of composite contacts materials under electrical arc conditions at high currents and for polarized electrodes. Tests and the discussion of results were carried out for silver-metal, silver-metal oxide and silver-tungsten carbide contact materials. Additionally, tungsten electrode was used as the second contact which was either cathode or anode. Spectrometric analysis of arc erosion components transported onto the second electrode and into the surroundings was carried out.

The large PAPR of orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) transmission is one of the serious problems for mobile communications that require severe power saving. Iterative clipping and filtering is an effective method for the PAPR reduction of OFDM signals. This paper evaluates PAPR reduction effect with a graded band-limiting filter in the iterative clipping and filtering method. The evaluation result by computer simulation shows that the excellent peak reduction effect can be obtained in the fewer iteration numbers by using a roll-off filter instead of the conventional rectangular filter, and the iteration number with the roll-off filter achieving the same PAPR is fewer by twice. The result confirms that the clipping and filtering method by using a graded band-limiting filter can achieve low peak OFDM transmission with less computational complexity.

The paper presents a computer program for the calculation of contact mass loss in the case of evaporation, ablation and melting. It makes use of theoretical mathematical equations previously published by a lot of researchers. For the purposes of the program, an expert system algorithm was designed. The paper presents results obtained by means of the proposed program for silver, tungsten and copper.

We present an effective method of collision recovery for orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM)-based communications. For the OFDM system, the modulated message data can be demodulated using the partial time-domain OFDM signal. Therefore, the partial time-domain signal can be adopted to reconstruct the whole OFDM time-domain signal with estimated channel information. This property can be utilized to recover packets from the collisions. Since most collisions are cases in which a long packet collides with a short packet, the collided part is assumed to be short. The simulated results show that the method can recover the two collided packets with a certain probability and can be developed to solve the problem of hidden terminals. This method will dramatically benefit the protocol design of wireless networks, including ad hoc and sensor networks.

Contact resistance is caused by constriction resistance and film resistance through contact layers. It is well known that a surface film causes non-linear voltage and current characteristics. The origin of non-linearity is caused by tunneling electron through thin insulation barrier or jumping over the thick barrier (Shottky barrier) on the contact surface. In this paper, a new idea causing nonlinear property by only current constriction which flows through very small contact spot area, if there is no film layer, is proposed by the two dimensional contact model. The contact model, used in this paper, is a two dimensional type narrow path of contact area (short bridge) made by thin copper foil of 0.035 mm on a glass epoxy resin board. The contact part is made by scraping with an electric drill as a single bridge shape of 0.1 mm wide and 0.3 mm long on the centre of a board (100 mm100 mm). The 3rd harmonic distortion voltage was measured by using a Component Linearity Test Equipment (Type CLT1 made by Radiometer Electronics Company) which the system supplies a pure sine wave current of 10 kHz and detects a distortion voltage of 30 kHz by a narrow band pass filter circuit. The sensitivity of the Component Linearity Test Equipment (CLT1) is under a 10-9 volt. Four bridge samples were examined for the comparison of nonlinear distortion voltage. The distortion voltage of a sample (A) (0.1 mm wide, 0.3 mm long) is too larger than the one of the sample (B) (0.2 mm wide, 0.3 mm long) at the same applied voltage which resistance is not so different each other. It seems that current constriction to the spot (A) may heat up higher and cool down lower than (B). It would be also guessed that the power dissipation of 20 kHz cause temperature oscillation of 20 kHz, then it causes a component of contact resistance of 20 kHz, and therefore the product of 10 kHz current and 20 kHz resistance component cause 30 kHz component distortion voltage.

LDCs system with finite-rate error-free feedback is proposed in this letter. The optimal transmission codeword is selected at the receiver and the codeword index is sent to the transmitter. A simple random search algorithm is introduced for codebook generation. Moreover, the max-min singular value criterion is adopted for codeword selection. Simulation results showed that, with only 3-4 feedback bits, the low-complexity Zero-Forcing receiver can approach the Maximum-Likelihood (ML) performance.