A communication means is presented for patients with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis in totally locked-in state who are completely unable to move any part of the body and have no usual communication means. The method utilizes changes in cerebral blood volume accompanied with changes in brain activity. When a patient is asked a question and the answer to it is 'yes', the patient makes his or her brain active. The change in blood volume at the frontal lobe is detected with near-infrared light. The instantaneous amplitude and phase of the change are calculated, and the maximum amplitude and phase change are obtained. The answer 'yes' or 'no' of the patient is detected using a discriminant analysis with these two quantities as variables. The rate of correct detection is 80% on average.

Bursty traffic is dominant in modern communication networks and keeps the call-level QoS assessment an open issue. ON-OFF traffic models are commonly used to describe bursty traffic. We propose an ON-OFF traffic model of a single link which accommodates service-classes of finite population (f-ON-OFF). Calls compete for the available link bandwidth under the complete sharing policy. Accepted calls enter the system via state ON and then may alternate between ON-OFF states. When a call is transferred to state OFF it releases the bandwidth held in state ON, while when a call tries to return to state ON, it re-requests its bandwidth. If it is available a new ON-period (burst) begins; otherwise the call remains in state OFF (burst blocking). We prove that the proposed f-ON-OFF model has a product form solution, and we provide an accurate recursive formula for the call blocking probabilities calculation. For the burst blocking probabilities calculation we propose an approximate but robust formula. In addition, we show the relation between the f-ON-OFF model and other call-level loss models. Furthermore, we generalize the f-ON-OFF model to include service-classes of both finite and infinite population. Simulation results validate our analytical methodology.

Multicast delivery in heterogeneous wireless networks requires careful coordination, in order to take full advantage of the resources such an interworking network environment can offer. Effective coordination, however, may require interworking signaling from coordinating network entities to receivers of a multicast service. Scalable delivery of such signaling is of great importance, since a large number of receivers may be interested in a multicast service. This paper therefore investigates the use of a multicast signaling channel (MSCH) to carry such interworking signaling in a scalable manner. Applications of interworking signaling for multicast service delivery in heterogeneous wireless networks are presented, motivating the need for an MSCH. Then a comparative study is performed analysing potential benefits of employing an MSCH for signaling message delivery compared to conventional unicast signaling. The analysis reveals that the benefits of the MSCH depend mainly on the selection of an appropriate signaling network to carry the MSCH and also on efficient addressing of a subset of receivers within the MSCH. Based on the findings, guidelines for the selection of a suitable signaling network are provided. Furthermore a novel approach is proposed that allows efficient addressing of a subset of receivers within a multicast group. The approach minimizes the required signaling load on the MSCH by reducing the size of the required addressing information. This is achieved by an aggregation of receivers with common context information. To demonstrate the concept, a prototype of the MSCH has been developed and is presented in the paper.

We propose a robust iterative multiuser receiver for decoding convolutional coded code-division multiple access (CDMA) signals in both Gaussian and non-Gaussian channel noise. The receiver is derived from a modified maximum a-posteriori (MAP) algorithm called the max-log-MAP algorithm for robustness against erroneous channel variance estimation. Furthermore, the effect of destructive outliers arising from impulsive noise is mitigated in the proposed receiver by incorporating the robust Huber penalty function into the multiuser detector. The proposed receiver is shown to perform satisfactorily over Gaussian and non-Gaussian impulsive channels. In every iteration, cumulative improvement in the quality of the a-posteriori probabilities is also demonstrated.

There are two interesting phenomena for the electrical contact characteristics of YBCO bulk. One is the transition between low and high contact resistance states at a threshold current value which is called a transfer current; the other is the forming reason of the residual resistance when the carrying current is lower than the transfer current. In this paper, an axial symmetric model is constructed to investigate these two phenomena. During the calculation, the thermal field, the electrical field and the self magnetic field are coupled with each other. The detailed fields' distributions are obtained. The calculation results are accordance with the experimental results. And some useful conclusions are drawn based on the numerical analyses.

Motion estimation (ME) is a computation intensive procedure in H.264. In ME for variable block sizes, an effective scan ordering method has been devised for early termination of absolute difference computation when the termination does not affect the performance. The new ME circuit with effective scan ordering can reduce the amount of computation by 70% compared to JM8.2 and by 30% compared to the disable approximation unit (DAU) approach.

Internet access traffic follows hourly patterns that depend on various factors, such as the periods users stay on-line at the access point (e.g. at home or in the office) or their preferences for applications. The clustering of Internet users may provide important information for traffic engineering and billing. For example, it can be used to set up service differentiation according to hourly behavior, resource optimization based on multi-hour routing and definition of tariffs that promote Internet access in low busy hours. In this work, we propose a methodology for clustering Internet users with similar patterns of Internet utilization, according to their hourly traffic utilization. The methodology resorts to three statistical multivariate analysis techniques: cluster analysis, principal component analysis and discriminant analysis. The methodology is illustrated through measured data from two distinct ISPs, one using a CATV access network and the other an ADSL one, offering distinct traffic contracts. Principal component analysis is used as an exploratory tool. Cluster analysis is used to identify the relevant Internet usage profiles, with the partitioning around medoids and Ward's method being the preferred clustering methods. For the two data sets, these methods lead to the choice of 3 clusters with different hourly traffic utilization profiles. The cluster structure is validated through discriminant analysis. It is also evaluated in terms of several characteristics of the user traffic not used in the cluster analysis, such as the type of applications, the amount of downloaded traffic, the activity duration and the transfer rate, resulting in coherent outcomes.

We propose the "Two-Step Search scheme with Linear search based Second step (TSS-LS)" by improving the conventional "Two-Step Search scheme with Bit reversal search based Second step (TSS-BS)" for reliable as well as rapid acquisition of Ultra Wide Band (UWB) signals in multipath channels. The proposed TSS-LS utilizes two different thresholds and search windows to achieve fast acquisition. Furthermore, unlike the TSS-BS in which the bit reversal algorithm is applied in both steps, the linear search is adopted for the second step in the proposed TSS-LS to correctly find the starting point in the range of effective delay spread of the multipath channels, and to obtain reliable bit error rate performance of the UWB systems.

The performance of TCP data transmission deteriorates significantly when a TCP connection traverses a heterogeneous network consisting of wired and wireless links. This is mainly because of packet losses caused by the high bit error rate of wireless links. We proposed receiver-based ACK splitting mechanism in [1]. It is a new mechanism to improve the performance of TCP over wired and wireless heterogeneous networks. Our mechanism employs a receiver-based approach, which does not need modifications to be made to the sender TCP or the base station. It uses the ACK-splitting method for increasing the congestion window size quickly in order to restrain the throughput degradation caused by packet losses due to the high bit error rate of wireless links. In this paper, we develop a mathematical analysis method to derive the throughput of a TCP connection, with/without our mechanism, which traverses wired and wireless heterogeneous networks. By using the analysis results, we evaluate the effectiveness of our mechanism in the network where both of packet losses due to network congestion and those caused by the high bit error rate of wireless links take place. Through An evaluation of the proposed method shows that it can give a good estimation of TCP throughput under the mixture networks of wired/wireless links. We also find that the larger the bandwidth of the wireless link is, the more effective our mechanism becomes, therefore, the mechanism's usability will increase in the future as wireless networks become faster.

The present paper proposes two novel and practical schemes for distributed and asynchronous power control in wireless ad hoc networks, in which users dynamically share several frequency bands as in "cognitive radio" networks. These schemes iteratively adjust transmit powers of individual network transmitters with respect to mutually caused interference in the shared bands. Their most attractive feature is that they find network-wide acceptable trade-offs to diverse signal-to-noise and interference (SINR) requirements and efficiently use techniques of stochastic approximation and time-averaging to guarantee a robust performance in random channels. Advantageously, both proposed algorithms do not assume any particular modulation, coding, QoS measure definition or network architecture, which assures their high applicability in the industry and research. Moreover, the broad definition and non-linear nature of these schemes mathematically generalize and thus encompass as a special case many widely deployed power control schemes such as e.g. those for achieving fixed SINR targets or using game-theoretic utility maximization. Simulations are provided to illustrate our approach and its better performance compared to standard algorithms.

This paper investigates the use of the affine transformation matrix when employing principal component analysis (PCA) to compress the data of 3D animation models. Satisfactory results were achieved for the common 3D models by using PCA because it can simplify several related variables to a few independent main factors, in addition to making the animation identical to the original by using linear combinations. The selection of the principal component factor (also known as the base) is still a subject for further research. Selecting a large number of bases could improve the precision of the animation and reduce distortion for a large data volume. Hence, a formula is required for base selection. This study develops an automatic PCA selection method, which includes the selection of suitable bases and a PCA separately on the three axes to select the number of suitable bases for each axis. PCA is more suitable for animation models for apparent stationary movement. If the original animation model is integrated with transformation movements such as translation, rotation, and scaling (RTS), the resulting animation model will have a greater distortion in the case of the same base vector with regard to apparent stationary movement. This paper is the first to extract the model movement characteristics using the affine transformation matrix and then to compress 3D animation using PCA. The affine transformation matrix can record the changes in the geometric transformation by using 44 matrices. The transformed model can eliminate the influences of geometric transformations with the animation model normalized to a limited space. Subsequently, by using PCA, the most suitable base vector (variance) can be selected more precisely.

The possibility of using three kinds of new type composite materials as material for high speed sliding contacts was investigated. The results of this investigation were compared with the results of the low speed tests that were reported earlier. As a result of the above, it was discovered that for high speed rotation in the range from 0.014 m/s to 2 m/s, the order of merit did not significantly change. Based on this, it was concluded that if solid lubricant is effectively supplied to the sliding surface, the influence by frictional heat generated by high speed is slight. Of the three kinds of composite material, it was clarified that composite material (CMML-1) had the lowest contact resistance and Composite Material (CMML-3) had the lowest maximum frictional coefficient of friction. 'CM' and 'ML' are initialisms for 'Composite Material' and 'Material of Lubrication' respectively. The number that is attached to the material name is a numeric value that was set by this laboratory.

A two-dimensional compressible magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) computational model has been developed to study the effect of gassing material on air arc behavior in low voltage circuit breaker. The properties of arc plasma and the electric, magnetic and radiative phenomena have been taken into account in the model. Based on the model, steady state solutions have been performed to study the effect of gassing material on the arc radius and electric field in the arc column. Then, the effect of gassing material on the transient process of arc motion also has been simulated. In addition, using the two-dimensional optical fiber measurement system, experiments have been done to measure the average velocity of arc motion with one model chamber and to verify the simulation model and prediction results. It demonstrates that the action of gassing material may yield the stronger electric field, less arc radius and higher arc motion velocity.

Adaptive hybrid genetic algorithm concatenated with improved parallel interference cancellation, i.e. adaptive hybrid genetic algorithm parallel interference cancellation (AHGAPIC) was proposed. A study is conducted on the application of AHGAPIC to soft decoding high rate multi-user detection with diversity reception for dual-rate wideband DS-CDMA spread spectrum communications, aiming to mitigate the effect of multiple access interference. The relevant research has revealed that the local search capability of hybrid genetic algorithm (HGA) is still not good enough. Therefore, first, two evolutionary operations, i.e. inversion and insertion are merged into HGA to constitute a novel algorithm. With its moderate local search capability, this new algorithm can search for the global optimum region according to the information entropy, and then it is made adaptively vary its probabilities of crossover and mutation depending on the fitness values of the solutions to form the adaptive hybrid genetic algorithm (AHGA). Second, AHGA is utilized to effectively identify the better and better binary string to maximize the log-likelihood function of dual-rate multi-user detection. As AHGA converges to the optimum region, the control factor of the improved parallel interference cancellation (IPIC) detector is set to be the ratio of the average fitness value to the maximum fitness value of the population of AHGA. Finally, equipped with both the control factor and the binary string with the maximum fitness value as the initial data, the IPIC detector can rapidly find out the approximately optimum soft decoding vector. Then, it can obtain the approximately global optimum estimate point on the basis of the soft decoding rule, corresponding to the transmitted data bits. A lower bound of computational complexity has been achieved through simulations and qualitative analyses. The property of the proposed algorithm to converge rapidly leads to lower computational complexity. Emulation results have shown that the AHGAPIC soft decoding high rate multi-user detector is superior to other suboptimum detectors considered in this paper in terms of two points. They are the mitigation of multiple access interference and the resistance to near-far effects. Its performance is close to the sequential group optimum multi-user detector but with a shorter time delay.

The transmit power of Ultra Wideband (UWB) is limited in short range communications to avoid the interference with existing narrow-band communication systems. Since this limits UWB communication range, this paper proposes a novel relay scheme that uses shared frequency repeaters for impulse UWB signal relay to improve system range. After considering possible problems with the repeater, in particular the coupling interference between the input and output and relay-delay, a switching control method is proposed that offers short relay-delay and suppresses the coupling interference at the repeaters. With respect to the proposed relay scheme, Pulse-Position-Modulation (PPM) UWB-based signal relay is evaluated by analyzing its BER performance using the point-to-point transmission link model.

The paper describes a low complexity tree-structure based user scheduling algorithm in an up-link transmission of MLD-based multi-user multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) wireless systems. An M-branch selection algorithm, which selects M most-possible best branches at each step, is proposed to maximize the whole system sum-rate capacity. To achieve the maximum capacity in multi-user MIMO systems, antennas configuration and user selection are preformed simultaneously. Then according to the selected number of antennas for each user, different transmission schemes are also adopted. Both the theoretical analysis and simulation results show that the proposed algorithms obtain near optimal performance with far low complexity than the full search procedure.

The extened Kalman filter (EKF) and unscented Kalman filter (UKF) have been successively applied in particle filter framework to generate proposal distributions, and shown significantly improving performance of the generic particle filter that uses transition prior, i.e., the system state transition prior distribution, as the proposal distribution. In this paper we propose to use the Gauss-Newton EKF/UKF to replace EKF/UKF for generating proposal distribution in a particle filter. The Gauss-Newton EKF/UKF that uses iterated measurement update can approximate the optimal proposal distribution more closer than EKF/UKF, especially in the case of significant nonlinearity in the measurement function. As a result, the Gauss-Newton EKF/UKF is able to generate and propagate the proposal distribution for each particle much better than EKF/UKF, thus further improving the performance of state estimation. Simulation results for a nonlinear/non-Gaussian time-series demonstrate the superior estimation accuracy of our method compared with state-of-the-art filters.

This paper deals with statistical mechanical characteristics of fuzzy clustering regularized with fuzzy entropy. We obtain the Fermi-Dirac distribution function as a membership function by regularizing the fuzzy c-means with fuzzy entropy. Then we formulate it as a direct annealing clustering, and examine the meanings of Fermi-Dirac function and fuzzy entropy from a statistical mechanical point of view, and show that this fuzzy clustering method is none other than the Fermi-Dirac statistics.

A fast fc automatic tuning circuit suitable for WCDMA systems is proposed. The circuit employs master-slave architecture using digitally controlled Gm-C filter for avoiding long transient response. The tuning feedback loop contains a 2-bit up-down counter ADC for fast tuning operation. Furthermore, to avoid degradation of fc tuning accuracy due to reference feedthrough, an analog loop filter with notch located near reference frequency is used. The fast fc automatic tuning circuit is fabricated in a SiGe BiCMOS process. The tuning time within 200 µs is achieved for 35 chips from 2 lots and the standard deviation of 25.5 kHz is obtained for the average fc of 2.12 MHz.

MIMO systems using a space division multiplexing (SDM) technique in which each transmit antenna sends an independent signal substream have been studied as one of the successful applications to increase data rates in wireless communications. The throughput of a MIMO channel can be maximized by using an eigenbeam-SDM (E-SDM) technique, and this paper investigates the practical performance of 22 and 44 MIMO E-SDM based on indoor measurements. The channel capacity and bit error rate obtained in various uniform linear array configurations are evaluated and are compared with the corresponding values for conventional SDM. Analysis results show that the bit error rate performance of E-SDM is better than that of SDM and that E-SDM gives better performance in line-of-sight (LOS) conditions than in non-LOS ones. They also show that the performance of E-SDM in LOS conditions depends very much on the array configuration.