Multicell cooperation is a promising technique to mitigate the inter-cell interference and improve the sum rate in cellular systems. Limited feedback design is of great importance to base station cooperation as it provides the quantized channel state information (CSI) of both the desired and interfering channels to the transmitters. Most studies on multicell limited feedback deal with scenarios of a single receive antenna at the mobile user. This paper, however, applies limited feedback to cooperative multicell multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems where both base stations and users are equipped with multiple antennas. An optimized feedback strategy with random vector quantization (RVQ) codebook is proposed for interference aware coordinated beamforming that approximately maximizes the lower bound of the sum rate. By minimizing the upper-bound on the mean sum-rate loss induced by the quantization errors, we present a feedback-bit allocation algorithm to divide the available feedback bits between the desired and interfering channels for arbitrary number of transmit and receive antennas under different interfering signal strengths. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed scheme utilizes the feedback resource effectively and achieves sum-rate performance reasonably close to the full CSI case.

To improve throughput of Electron Beam Direct Writing (EBDW) with Character Projection (CP) method, a structured routing architecture (SRA) has been proposed to restrict VIA placement and wire-track transition. It reduces possible layout patterns in the interconnect layers, and increases VIA and metal figure numbers in the EB shots while suppressing the CP character number explosion. In this paper, we discuss details of the SRA design methodology, and demonstrate the CP performance by SRA in comparison with other EBDW techniques. Our experimental results show viable CP performance for practical use, and prove SRA's feasibility in 14nm mass fabrication.

A challenge faced by the video game industry is to develop believable and more intelligent Non-Playable Characters (NPCs). To tackle this problem a low-cost and simple approach has been proposed in this research, which is the development of a gossip virtual social network for NPCs. The network allows simple individual NPCs to communicate their knowledge amongst themselves. The communication within this social network is governed by social-psychological rules. These rules are categorized into four types: Contact, whether the NPC are within a contactable range of each other; Observation, whether the NPCs actually want to talk to each other based on their personal traits; Status, the current representation of the NPCs; and Relationships which determines the long term ties of the NPCs. Evaluations of the proposed gossip virtual social network was conducted, both through statistical analysis and a survey of real users. Highly satisfactory results have been achieved.

Shadow mapping is an efficient method to generate shadows in real time computer graphics and has broad variations from hard to soft shadow synthesis. Soft shadowing based on shadow mapping is a blurring technique on a shadow map or on screen space. Blurring on screen space has an advantage for efficient sampling on a shadow map, since the blurred target array has exactly the same coordinates as the screen. However, a previous blurring method on screen space has a drawback: the generated shadow is not correct when a view direction has a large angle to the normal of the shadowed plane. In this paper, we introduce a new screen space based method for soft shadowing that is fast and generates soft shadows more accurately than the previous screen space soft shadow mapping method. The resultant images show shadows produced by our method just stand in the same place, while shadows by the previous method change in terms of penumbra while the view moves. Surprisingly, although our method is more complex than the previous method, the measurement results of the calculation time show our method is almost the same performance. This is because it controls the blurring area more accurately and thus successfully reduces multiplications for blurring.

Digital map systems can be categorized, based on the support they provide, into map navigation systems and map touring systems. Map navigation systems put more focus on helping travelers finding routes or directions instantly. By contrast, map touring systems such as Google Maps running on desktop computers are built to support users in developing their routes and survey knowledge before they go for travel. In this paper, traveler conceptual models are proposed as an interaction paradigm to enhance user immersion and interaction experience on map touring systems. A map touring system, MapXplorer, is also introduced as a proof of concept with its system design and implementation explained in detail. Twenty participants were invited to join the user study that investigates users' performance and preferences on navigation and exploration tasks. The results of experiments show that the proposed system surpasses traditional map touring systems on both navigation and exploration tasks for about 50 percent on average, and provides better user experience.

In this paper we present a cognitive architecture inspired on the biological functioning of the motor system in humans. To test the model, we built a robotic hand with a Lego Mindstorms™ kit. Then, through communication between the architecture and the robotic hand, the latter was able to perform the movement of the fingers, which therefore allowed it to perform grasping of some objects. In order to obtain these results, the architecture performed a conversion of the activation of motor neuron pools into specific degrees of servo motor movement. In this case, servo motors acted as muscles, and degrees of movement as exerted muscle force. Finally, this architecture will be integrated with high-order cognitive functions towards getting automatic motor commands generation, through planning and decision making mechanisms.

This paper proposes a new address method to reduce the address power consumption in an AC plasma panel display (AC-PDP). We apply an overlap scan method, in which the scan pulse overlaps with those of the previous scan time and the next scan time. The overlap scan method decreases the address voltage and consequently reduces the address power consumption. However, the drawback of this method is the narrow address voltage margin. This occurs because the maximum address voltage decreases much more than the minimum address voltage does. In order to increase the address voltage margin, we apply a two-step address voltage waveform, in the overlap scan method. In this case, the maximum address voltage increases; however, the minimum address voltage is almost the same. This leads to a wide address voltage margin. Moreover, the two-step address voltage waveform reduces the address power consumption, because the address voltage rises and falls in two steps using an energy recovery capacitor. Consequently, the experimental results show that the new address method reduces the address power consumption by 19.6,Wh (58%) when compared with the conventional method.

When deploying a new mobile technology such as LTE, it is crucial to identify the factors that affect the radio network in terms of capacity and quality of service. In this context, network coverage is arguably the single most influential factor. This work presents a metaheuristic-optimization approach to automatically adapt the signal losses due to clutter, based on a set of field measurements. The optimization procedure is performed regionally, enabling the calculation of accurate radio-propagation predictions. The evaluation of the proposed approach is carried out on three different regions in Slovenia, where Telekom Slovenije, d.d., provides LTE coverage. The results show radio-propagation predictions of improved quality and the benefits of the presented approach over manual methods, both in terms of problem size and solution accuracy.

Because dielectrics between active layers have low thermal conductivities, there is a demand to reduce the temperature increase in three-dimensional integrated circuits (3D ICs). This paper demonstrates that, in the design of 3D ICs, different layer assignments often lead to different temperature increases. Based on this observation, we are motivated to perform temperature-aware layer assignment. Our work includes two parts. Firstly, an integer linear programming (ILP) approach that guarantees a minimum temperature increase is proposed. Secondly, a polynomial-time heuristic algorithm that reduces the temperature increase is proposed. Compared with the previous work, which does not take the temperature increase into account, the experimental results show that both our ILP approach and our heuristic algorithm produce a significant reduction in the temperature increase with a very small area overhead.

We discuss a new high performance computing service (HPCS) platform that has been developed to provide domain-neutral computing service under the governmental support from “EDucation-research Integration through Simulation On the Net” (EDISON) project. With a first focus on technical features, we not only present in-depth explanations of the implementation details, but also describe the strengths of the EDISON platform against the successful nanoHUB.org gateway. To validate the performance and utility of the platform, we provide benchmarking results for the resource virtualization framework, and prove the stability and promptness of the EDISON platform in processing simulation requests by analyzing several statistical datasets obtained from a three-month trial service in the initiative area of computational nanoelectronics. We firmly believe that this work provides a good opportunity for understanding the science gateway project ongoing for the first time in Republic of Korea, and that the technical details presented here can be served as an useful guideline for any potential designs of HPCS platforms.

The increasing demand of indoor location based service (LBS) has promoted the development of localization techniques. As an important alternative, fingerprinting localization technique can achieve higher localization accuracy than traditional trilateration and triangulation algorithms. However, it is computational expensive to construct the fingerprint database in the offline phase, which limits its applications. In this paper, we propose an efficient indoor positioning system that uses a new empirical propagation model, called regional propagation model (RPM), which is based on the cluster based propagation model theory. The system first collects the sparse fingerprints at some certain reference points (RPs) in the whole testing scenario. Then affinity propagation clustering algorithm operates on the sparse fingerprints to automatically divide the whole scenario into several clusters or sub-regions. The parameters of RPM are obtained in the next step and are further used to recover the entire fingerprint database. Finally, the location estimation is obtained through the weighted k-nearest neighbor algorithm (WkNN) in the online localization phase. We also theoretically analyze the localization accuracy of the proposed algorithm. The numerical results demonstrate that the proposed propagation model can predict the received signal strength (RSS) values more accurately than other models. Furthermore, experiments also show that the proposed positioning system achieves higher localization accuracy than other existing systems while cutting workload of fingerprint calibration by more than 50% in the offline phase.

Wireless patient monitoring is an active research area with the goal of ubiquitous health care services. This study presents a novel means of exploiting the distributed source coding (DSC) in low-complexity compression of ECG signals. We first convert the ECG data compression to an equivalent channel coding problem and exploit a linear channel code for the DSC construction. Performance is further enhanced by the use of a correlation channel that more precisely characterizes the statistical dependencies of ECG signals. Also proposed is a modified BCJR algorithm which performs symbol decoding of binary convolutional codes to better exploit the source's a priori information. Finally, a complete setup system for online ambulatory ECG monitoring via mobile cellular networks is presented. Experiments on the MIT-BIH arrhythmia database and real-time acquired ECG signals demonstrate that the proposed system outperforms other schemes in terms of encoder complexity and coding efficiency.

Complex-valued Hopfield associative memory (CHAM) is one of the most promising neural network models to deal with multilevel information. CHAM has an inherent property of rotational invariance. Rotational invariance is a factor that reduces a network's robustness to noise, which is a critical problem. Here, we proposed complex-valued bipartite auto-associative memory (CBAAM) to solve this reduction in noise robustness. CBAAM consists of two layers, a visible complex-valued layer and an invisible real-valued layer. The invisible real-valued layer prevents rotational invariance and the resulting reduction in noise robustness. In addition, CBAAM has high parallelism, unlike CHAM. By computer simulations, we show that CBAAM is superior to CHAM in noise robustness. The noise robustness of CHAM decreased as the resolution factor increased. On the other hand, CBAAM provided high noise robustness independent of the resolution factor.

Scheduling is a key problem in high level synthesis, as the scheduling results affect most of the important design metrics. In this paper, we propose a novel scheduling method to simultaneously optimize the leakage power of functional units with dual-Vth techniques and the number of registers under given timing and resource constraints. The mobility overlaps between operations are removed to eliminate data dependencies, and a simulated-annealing-based method is introduced to explore the mobility overlap removal solution space. Given the overlap-free mobilities, the resource usage and register usage in each control step can be accurately estimated. Meanwhile, operations are scheduled so as to optimize the leakage power of functional units with minimal number of registers. Then, a set of operations is iteratively selected, reassigned as low-Vth, and rescheduled until the resource constraints are all satisfied. Experimental results show the efficiency of the proposed algorithm.

We propose a variant of OMP algorithm named BROMP for sparse solution. In our algorithm, the update rule of MP algorithm is employed to reduce the number of least square calculations and the refining strategy is introduced to further improve its performance. Simulations show that the proposed algorithm performs better than the OMP algorithm with significantly lower complexity.

Light source estimation and virtual lighting must be believable in terms of appearance and correctness in augmented reality scenes. As a result of illumination complexity in an outdoor scene, realistic lighting for augmented reality is still a challenging problem. In this paper, we propose a framework based on an estimation of environmental lighting from well-defined objects, specifically human faces. The method is tuned for outdoor use, and the algorithm is further enhanced to illuminate virtual objects exposed to direct sunlight. Our model can be integrated into existing mobile augmented reality frameworks to enhance visual perception.

This paper introduces a novel approach of feature description by integrating the intensity order and textures in different support regions into a compact vector. We first propose the Intensity Order Local Binary Pattern (IO-LBP) operator, which simultaneously encodes the gradient and texture information in the local neighborhood of a pixel. We divide each region of interest into segments according to the order of pixel intensities, build one histogram of IO-LBP patterns for each segment, and then concatenate all histograms to obtain a feature descriptor. Furthermore, multi support regions are adopted to enhance the distinctiveness. The proposed descriptor effectively describes a region at both local and global levels, and thus high performance is expected. Experimental results on the Oxford benchmark and images of cast shadows show that our approach is invariant to common photometric and geometric transformations, such as illumination change and image rotation, and robust to complex lighting effects caused by shadows. It achieves a comparable accuracy to that of state-of-art methods while performs considerably faster.

This paper presents a new, accurate multi-service model of a queueing system with state-dependent distribution of resources for each class of calls. The analysis of the considered queueing system was carried out at both the microstate and macrostate levels. The proposed model makes it possible to evaluate averaged parameters of queues for individual classes of calls that are offered to the system. In addition, the paper proposes a new algorithm for a determination of the occupancy distribution in the queueing system at the microstate level. The results of the calculations are compared with the results of a digital simulation for multi-service queueing systems with state-independent distribution of resources.

The next generation of information technology demands both high capacity and mobility for applications such as high speed wireless access capable of supporting broadband services. The transport of wireless and wireline signals is converging into a common telecommunication infrastructure. In this paper, we will present the Marie Curie Framework Program 7 project “Wireless and wireline service convergence in next generation optical access networks” (WISCON), which focuses on the conception and study of novel architectures for wavelength-division-multiplexing (WDM) optical multi-modulation format radio-over-fiber (RoF) systems; this is a promising solution to implement broadband seamless wireless -wireline access networks. This project successfully concluded in autumn 2013, and is being follow up by another Marie Curie project entitled “flexible edge nodes for dynamic optical interconnection of access and core networks” (FENDOI), which will be also briefly described.

Digital coherent receivers have gained significant attention in the last decade. The reason for this is that coherent detection, along with digital signal processing (DSP) allows for substantial increase of the channel capacity by employing advanced detection techniques. In this paper, we first review coherent detection technique employed in the receiver as well as the required receiver structure. Subsequently, we describe the core part of the receiver — DSP algorithms — that are used for data processing. We cover all basic elements of a conventional coherent receiver DSP chain: deskew, orthonormaliation, chromatic dispersion compensation/nonlinear compensation, resampling and timing recovery, polarization demultiplexing and equalization, frequency and phase recovery, digital demodulation. We also describe novel subsystems of a digital coherent receiver: modulation format recognition and impairment mitigation via expectation maximization, which may gain popularity with increasing importance of autonomous networks.