In this letter, a generalized sidelobe canceller (GSC) with robustness against carrier frequency offset (CFO) is proposed for the uplink MC-CDMA system. It has been shown that a CFO will cause the spreading code mismatch and desired signal cancellation. By incorporating the corrected quiescent weight of the upper branch and blocking matrix of the lower branch, we create an efficient GSC that offers strongly counters the effect of the CFO. Significant performance improvement of the proposed GSC is demonstrated by simulation results.

We propose a novel background and foreground estimation algorithm in MAP-MRF approach for binarization of degraded document image. In the proposed algorithm, an assumption that background whiteness and foreground blackness is not employed differently from the conventional algorithm, and we employ character's irregularities based on local statistics. This makes the method possible to apply to the image with various colored characters, ex. outlined characters by colored background. The effectiveness and the validity are shown by applying the proposed method to various degraded document images.

An infinitely long monopole antenna driven by a coaxial cable is revisited. The associated Weber transform and the mode-matching method are used to obtain simple simultaneous equations for the modal coefficients. Computations are performed to illustrate the behavior of current distribution and antenna admittance in terms of antenna geometries.

We determine the autocorrelations of the quaternary sequence over F4 and its modified version introduced by Du et al. [X.N. Du et al., Linear complexity of quaternary sequences generated using generalized cyclotomic classes modulo 2p, IEICE Trans. Fundamentals, vol.E94-A, no.5, pp.1214–1217, 2011]. Furthermore, we reveal a drawback in the paper aforementioned and remark that the proof in the paper by Kim et al. can be simplified.

Thin-film transistors based on Liquid-crystalline phenylterthiophenes, 3-TTPPh-5 and 3-TTPPhF4-6 are fabricated with a spin-coating method. The devices exhibit p-type operation with the mobility on the order of 10-2 cm2V-1s-1. The field-effect mobilities of the transistors using 3-TTPPh-5 and 3-TTPPhF4-6 are almost independent of the temperature above room temperature. In particular, the temperature range in which the mobility is constant is between 230 and 350 K for 3-TTPPh-5.

In time division multiple access (TDMA)-based wireless mesh networks, interference relationships should be considered when time slots are assigned to links. In graph theory-based time slot assignment algorithms, the protocol interference model is widely used to determine radio interference information, although it is an inaccurate model of actual radio interference. On the other hand, the signal-to-interference-plus-noise-ratio model (SINR model) gives more accurate interference relationships but is difficult to apply to time slot assignment algorithms since the radio interference information cannot be determined before time slot assignment. In this paper, we investigate the effect of the parameters of the protocol interference model on the accuracy of the interference relationships determined using this model. Specifically, after assigning time slots to links based on the protocol interference model with various interference ratios, which is the major parameter of the protocol interference model, we compare the interference relationship among links in the protocol interference and SINR models. Through simulation experiments, we show that accuracy of the protocol interference model is improved by up to 15% by adjusting the interference ratios of the protocol interference model.

For amplify-and-forward (AF) relaying with imperfect channel estimation, we present the average symbol error rate (SER) and the diversity and multiplexing tradeoff (DMT) analysis for both opportunistic relaying (OPR) and all-participate relaying (APR) schemes. SER comparisons show that when the channel estimation quality order is no larger than 1, OPR will perform worse than APR in high SNR region. Moreover, small channel estimation quality orders will also lead to significant DMT loss.

Let (X,Y) be a Rd R-valued random vector. In regression analysis one wants to estimate the regression function m(x):=E(Y|X=x) from a data set. In this paper we consider the convergence rate of the error for the k nearest neighbor estimators in case that m is (p,C)-smooth. It is known that the minimax rate is unachievable by any k nearest neighbor estimator for p > 1.5 and d=1. We generalize this result to any d ≥ 1. Throughout this paper, we assume that the data is independent and identically distributed and as an error criterion we use the expected L2 error.

Universal Plug and Play (UPnP) allows devices automatic discovery and control of services available in those devices connected to a Transmission Control Protocol/ Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) network. Although many products are designed using UPnP, little attention has been given to UPnP related to modeling and performance analysis. This paper uses a framework of Generalized Stochastic Petri Net (GSPN) to model and analyze the behavior of UPnP systems. The framework includes modeling UPnP, reachability decomposition, GSPN analysis, and reward assignment. Then, the Platform Independent Petri net Editor 2 (PIPE2) tool is used to model and evaluate the controllers in terms of power consumption, system utilization and network throughput. Through quantitative analysis, the steady states in the operation and notification stage dominate the system performance, and the control point is better than the device in power consumption but the device outperforms the control point in evaluating utilization. The framework and numerical results are useful to improve the quality of services provided in UPnP devices.

We propose a high-speed and low-complexity architecture for the very large-scale integration (VLSI) implementation of the maximum a posteriori probability (MAP) algorithm suited to the double binary turbo decoder. For this purpose, equation manipulations on the conventional Linear-Log-MAP algorithm and architectural optimization are proposed. It is shown by synthesized simulations that the proposed architecture improves speed, area and power compared with the state-of-the-art Linear-Log-MAP architecture. It is also observed that the proposed architecture shows good overall performance in terms of error correction capability as well as decoder hardware's speed, complexity and throughput.

The on-chip interconnection network (OCIN) is an integrated solution for system-on-chip (SoC) designs. The buffer architecture and size, however, dominate the performance of OCINs and affect the design of routers. This work analyzes different buffer architectures and uses a data-link two-level FIFO (first-in first-out) buffer architecture to implement high-performance routers. The concepts of shared buffers and multiple accesses for buffers are developed using the two-level FIFO buffer architecture. The proposed two-level FIFO buffer architecture increases the utilities of the storage elements via the centralized buffer organization and reduces the area and power consumption of routers to achieve the same performance achieved by other buffer architectures. Depending on a cycle-accurate simulator, the proposed data-link two-level FIFO buffer can realize performance similar to that of the conventional virtual channels, while using 25% of the buffers. Consequently, the two-level FIFO buffer can achieve about 22% power reduction compared with the similar performance of the conventional virtual channels using UMC 65 nm CMOS technology.

This paper presents an adaptive FFE/DFE receiver with an algorithm that measures the data-dependent jitter. The proposed adaptive algorithm determines the compensation level by measuring the input data-dependent jitter. The adaptive algorithm is combined with a clock and data recovery phase detector. The receiver is fabricated in with 0.13 µm CMOS technology, and the compensation range of equalization is up to 26 dB at 2 GHz. The test chip is verified for a 40 inch FR4 trace and a 53 cm flexible printed circuit channel. The receiver occupies an area of 440 µm 520 µm and has a power dissipation of 49 mW (excluding the I/O buffers) from a 1.2 V supply.

Dielectric rod arrays in a metallic waveguide alter the propagation modes and group velocities of electromagnetic waves. We have focused on TE30-to-TE10 mode converters and investigated how their behavior varies with frequency. A mode converter is proposed that passes the TE10 mode at frequencies lower than 2fc, and converts the TE30 mode into the TE10 mode for frequencies higher than 3fc.

Authenticated encryption schemes are very useful for private and authenticated communication. In 2010, Rasslan and Youssef showed that the Hwang et al.'s authenticated encryption scheme is not secure by presenting a message forgery attack. However, Rasslan and Youssef did not give how to solve the security issue. In this letter, we give an improvement of the Hwang et al.'s scheme. The improved scheme not only solves the security issue of the original scheme, but also maintains its efficiency.

This paper deals with the configuration of a wireless network with the aim of minimizing the overall cost of both operation and network installation. The trade-off between the operation cost and the installation cost is the key consideration when designing cellular telecommunication networks, and can save costs and improve the performance of the network. In this paper, we propose an integrated framework for selecting Mobile Switching Center (MSC) among the candidate MSCs and assigning Base Stations (BSs) to the selected MSCs with the objective function of minimizing the cost of MSC setup, BS to MSC cabling, as well as the cost of handover. Capacity constraint for the selected MSC is also considered in the problem. The problem is expressed in an integer programming model and the Lagrangian relaxation method is proposed to solve the problem by dualizing some constraints. The Lagrangian relaxed problem is decomposed into subproblems that can be resolved optimally. The Lagrangian heuristic algorithm is suggested to find feasible solutions to the original problem. Computational experiments are performed to test the effectiveness and efficiency of the proposed heuristic algorithm. In the experiments, Lagrangian bounds on the optimal solution are used to show the effectiveness of the algorithm. The results of the proposed algorithm are also compared with those of some conventional meta-heuristics, Tabu search (TS) and Genetic algorithm (GA). The computational experiments show that the performance of the proposed heuristics is satisfactory in both the speed and the quality of the solution generated.

A novel grouping approach to segment text lines from handwritten documents is presented. In this text line segmentation algorithm, for each text line, a text string that connects the center points of the characters in this text line is built. The text lines are then segmented using the resulting text strings. Since the characters of the same text line are situated close together and aligned on a smooth curve, 2D tensor voting is used to reduce the conflicts when building these text strings. First, the text lines are represented by separate connected components. The center points of these connected components are then encoded by second order tensors. Finally, a voting process is applied to extract the curve saliency values and normal vectors, which are used to remove outliers and build the text strings. The experimental results obtained from the test dataset of the ICDAR 2009 Handwriting Segmentation Contest show that the proposed method generates high detection rate and recognition accuracy.

Adaptive interference suppression strategies based on the transform domain approach are proposed for a satellite on-board filter bank under tone-type interferences. In the proposed methods, the three kinds of algorithms to compute the threshold level are jointly employed with the notch filter or the clipper. Simulation results show that the proposed schemes significantly improve performance under interfering environments, compared to the no suppression case.

In this paper, we propose an energy efficient MAC protocol for wireless sensor networks. In sensor networks, reducing energy consumption is one of the critical issues for extending network lifetime. One good solution to resolve this issue is introducing listen-sleep cycles, allowing sensor nodes to turn their transceiver off during sleep periods, which was adopted by S-MAC [1]. However, in S-MAC, due to the synchronized scheduling, transmission collisions will increase in heavy traffic situations, resulting in energy waste and low throughput. Hence, in this paper, we propose probabilistic scheduled MAC (PS-MAC), in which each node determines ‘listen’ or ‘sleep’ pseudo-randomly based on its own pre-wakeup probability and pre-wakeup probabilities of its neighbor nodes in each time slot. This allows the listen-sleep schedule of nodes in each transmitter and receiver pair to be synchronized, while maintaining those of the rest of nodes to be asynchronous. Therefore, collisions can be reduced even under heavy traffic conditions, resulting in reduced energy waste and high throughput. In addition, by dynamically adjusting the pre-wakeup probabilities of sensor nodes based on the change of the network environment, system throughput and latency can be further improved. Simulation results show that PS-MAC provides significant energy savings, low delay, and high network throughput.

In order to detect snow and ice on a road surface, the microwave measurement method of dielectric constants are presented. And some examples of measurements for artificial and natural snow and ice using the method are introduced. The results show reasonable estimations of the dielectric constants, and they indicate that the method could be utilized for the snow and ice detection.

In this paper, an active control scheme is designed for the hybrid direct methanol fuel cell (DMFC) system to achieve the following three objectives simultaneously: (i) maximize the power produced by the DMFC stack in the stable operation as high loading (for avoiding the operation of DMFC in diffusion region), (ii) keep the power produced by the DMFC stack with the high efficiency as low loading, (iii) prevent the problem of methanol crossover at a very low load. Considering the characteristics of DMFC stack during actual operation, the states VP (t) and P (t) are utilized as the linguistic variables. Also considering the fuel efficiency of DMFC stack ηfuel as the linguistic variable, the active control scheme is designed to achieve the above multiple objectives. To clarify the reliability and stability of the proposed control scheme, an experiment is performed. Its results show that the proposed control scheme can achieve above multiple objectives efficiently.