This letter presents a new probability expression for a multi-carrier (MC) DS/CDMA acquisition system with a reference matched filter (RMF). To evaluate the mean acquisition time (MAT) as a measure of the system performance, the probabilities of detection, miss, and false alarm are derived. From the results, it is shown that the MAT of the MC-CDMA hybrid system with RMF is comparable to the optimum mean acquisition time of the conventional MC-CDMA hybrid system, maintaining approximately the same degree of structuring complexity.

This paper presents a new template matching method based on marker-controlled watershed segmentation (TMCWS). It is applied to recognize numbers on special metal plates in production lines where traditional image recognition methods do not work well. TMCWS is a shape based matching method that uses different pattern images and their corresponding marker images as probes to explore a gradient space of an unknown image to determine which pattern best matches a target object in it. Different from other matching algorithms, TMCWS firstly creates a marker image for each pattern, and then takes both the pattern image and its corresponding marker image as a template window and shifts this window across a gradient space pixel by pixel to do a search. At each position, the marker image is used to try to extract the contour of the target object with the help of marker-controlled watershed segmentation, and the pattern image is employed to evaluate the extracted shape in each trial. All of the pattern images and their corresponding marker images are tried and the pattern that best matches the target object is the recognition result. TMCWS contains shape extraction procedures and it is a high-level template matching method. Experiments are performed with this method on nearly 400 images of metal plates and the test results show its effectiveness in recognizing numbers in noisy images.

One of the categories of decoding techniques for DFT codes in erasure channels is the class of iterative algorithms. Iterative algorithms can be considered as kind of alternating mapping methods using the given information in a repetitive way. In this paper, we propose a new iterative method for decoding DFT codes. It will be shown that the proposed method outperforms the well-known methods such as Wiley/Marvasti, and ADPW methods in the decoding of DFT codes in erasure channels.

Estimating the parameters of a statistical distribution from measured sample values forms an essential part of many signal processing tasks. K-distribution has been proven to be an appropriate model for characterising the amplitude of sea clutter. In this paper, a new method for estimating the parameters of K-Distribution is proposed. The method greatly lowers the computational requirement and variance of parameter estimates when compared with the existing non-maximum likelihood methods.

In this paper, we presented a new interference suppression method based on groupwise decorrelation for the multirate wideband-code division multiple access (W-CDMA) downlink. Code grouping in the proposed method is performed according to the correlation property between the mother code and the child code in the orthogonal variable spreading factor (OVSF) code tree. The decorrelation process based on the grouped codes, so called groupwise decorrelation, is then performed to suppress the interference induced in the downlink propagation. We demonstrate that the proposed method can enhance the performance significantly, with lower computational complexity and higher operational efficiency in which any information about interference users (code, data, amplitude) is not required to know in prior at the detection stage.

Density evolution has recently been used to analyze the iterative decoding of Low Density Parity Check (LDPC) codes, Turbo codes, and Serially Concatenated Convolutional Codes (SCCC). The density evolution technique makes it possible to explain many characteristics of iterative decoding including convergence of performance and preferred structures for the constituent codes. While the analytic density evolution methods were applied to LDPC codes, the simulation based density evolution methods were used for Turbo codes and SCCC due to analytic difficulties. In this paper, several density evolution ideas in the literature are used to analyze common code structures and it is shown that those ideas yield consistent results. In order to do that, we derive expressions for density evolution of SCCC with a simple 2-state constituent code. The analytic expressions are based on the sum-product and min-sum algorithms, and the thresholds are evaluated for both message passing algorithms. Particularly, for the min-sum algorithm, the density evolution with Gaussian approximation is derived and used to analyze the effect of scaling soft information. The scaling of extrinsic information slows down the convergence of soft information or avoids an overestimation effect of it and results in better performance, and its gain is maximized in particular constituent codes. Similar approaches are made for LDPC code. We show that the scaling gain is noticeable in the LDPC code as well. This scaling gain is analyzed with both density evolution and simulation performance. The expected scaling gain by density evolution matches well with the achievable scaling gain from simulation results. These results can be extended to the irregular LDPC codes based on the degree distribution for the min-sum algorithm. All density evolution algorithms used in this paper are based on the Gaussian approximation for the exchanged messages.

Efficient schemes to enhance the performance of the optimum beamforming for DS/CDMA systems are proposed. The main focus of the proposed schemes is to enhance the practical estimation of an array response vector used at the weight vector for the optimum beamforming. The proposed schemes for the performance enhancement of the optimum beamforming are the Complex Toeplitz Approximation (CTA) and the real Toeplitz-plus-Hankel Approximation (RTHA) which have the theoretical property of an overall noise-free signal. It is shown through several simulation results that the performance of the optimum beamforming using the proposed schemes is much superior to that of a system using the conventional method under several simulation environments, i.e., the number of users, the SNR value, the number of antenna elements, the angular spread, and Nakagami fading parameter.

This paper presents an application-level QoS comparison of three inter-destination synchronization schemes: the master-slave destination scheme, the synchronization maestro scheme, and the distributed control scheme. The inter-destination synchronization adjusts the output timing among destinations in a multicast group for live audio and video streaming over the Internet/intranets. We compare the application-level QoS of these schemes by simulation with the Tiers model, which is a sophisticated network topology model and reflects hierarchical structure of the Internet. The comparison clarifies their features and finds the best scheme in the environment. The simulation result shows that the distributed control scheme provides the highest quality of inter-destination synchronization among the three schemes in heavily loaded networks, while in lightly loaded networks the other schemes can have almost the same quality as that of the distributed control scheme.

This paper proposes a new FEC scheme using backup channel to send redundant information instead of piggybacking the main packet. This is particularly applicable to the modern IP networks which are distributed all over the world. In this method only one source coder for both the main and the redundant payload is used to reduce the overall computational complexity. The Gilbert loss model (GLM) is employed to verify the improvement of the packet loss probability in this new method compared with that in a single path FEC scheme. It is shown, through simulation results that using our proposed backup channel can considerably improve the packet loss and delay performance of the VoIP networks.

The PN triangle method has a great significance in processing tessellation at the hardware level without software assistance. Despite its significance, however, the conventional PN triangle method has certain defects such as inefficient GE operation and degradation of visual quality. Because the method tessellates a curved surface according to the user-defined fixed LOD (Level Of Detail). In this paper, we propose adaptive tessellation of PN triangles using minimum-artifact edge linking. Through this method, higher efficiency of tessellation and better quality of scene are obtained by adaptivity and minimum-artifact edge linking, respectively. This paper also presents a hardware architecture of a PN triangle method using adaptive LOD, which is not a burden for overall 3D graphics hardware.

In this paper we study the large deviation property for chaotic binary sequences generated by one-dimensional maps displaying chaos and thresholds functions. We deal with the case when nonlinear maps are the r-adic maps. The large deviation theory for dynamical systems is useful for investigating this problem.

In this paper, we propose a novel traffic engineering architecture for IP networks with MPLS backbones. In this architecture, two link-disjoint label switched paths, namely the primary and secondary paths, are established among every pair of IP routers located at the edges of an MPLS backbone network. As the main building block of this architecture, we propose that primary paths are given higher priority against the secondary paths in the MPLS data plane to cope with the so-called knock-on effect. Inspired by the ABR flow control mechanism in ATM networks, we propose to split traffic between a source-destination pair between the primary and secondary paths using explicit rate feedback from the network. Taking into consideration the performance deteriorating impact of packet reordering in packet-based load balancing schemes, we propose a traffic splitting mechanism that operates on a per-flow basis (i.e., flow-based multipath routing). We show via an extensive simulation study that using flow-based multipath traffic engineering with explicit rate feedback not only provides consistently better throughput than that of a single path but is also void of out-of-order packet delivery.

We have integrated a phase change random access memory (PRAM), completely based on 0.24 µm-CMOS technologies using nitrogen doped GeSbTe films. The Ge2Sb2Te5 (GST) thin films are well known to play a critical role in writing current of PRAM. Through device simulation, we found that high-resistive GST is indispensable to minimize the writing current of PRAM. For the first time, we found the resistivity of GST film can be controlled with nitrogen doping. Doping nitrogen to GST film successfully reduced writing current. A 0.24 µm PRAM using N-doped GST films were demonstrated with writing pulse of 0.8 mA-50 ns for RESET and 0.4 mA-100 ns for SET. Also, the cell endurance has been enhanced with grain growth suppression effect of dopant nitrogen. Endurance performance of fully integrated PRAM using N-doped GST shows no fail bit up to 2E9 cycles. Allowing 1% failures, extrapolation to 85 indicates retention time of 2 years. All the results show that PRAM is one of the most promising candidates in the market for the next generation memories.

This paper proposes a SNR estimation scheme based on Gibbs sampler. This scheme can estimate SNR using a very short received sequence, and does not require any prior information of the transmitted symbol. Compared with the existing estimators, the performance of this method is better when real SNR is larger than 5 dB in both single path channel and multi-path channel.

A novel signal enhancement scheme using the rotation of signal subspace (RSS) and Toeplitz matrix approximation (TMA) methods to enhance the performance of an adaptive antenna array in multirate DS/CDMA systems is proposed. The basis of RSS is to find a transformation matrix in order to recover the desired complex array covariance matrix from a sampled complex array covariance matrix which is contaminated by an interference-plus-noise component, which is the total noise. Also, the objective of TMA is to change the output matrix of RSS into a matrix having the theoretical properties of a total noise-free signal. Consequently, the proposed signal enhancement scheme using RSS and TMA methods can greatly improve the performance of an adaptive antenna array by reducing the undesired total noise effect from the sampled complex array covariance matrix of the pre-correlation received signal vector that is used to calculate a weight vector of an adaptive antenna array. It is shown through various simulation results that the system performance using the proposed signal enhancement scheme is much superior to that of the conventional method.

The bandwidth occupied by individual telecommunication devices in the field of mobile radio communication must be narrow in order to effectively exploit the limited frequency band. Therefore, it is necessary to implement low-bit-rate speech coding that is robust against background noise. We examine vector quantization using a neural network (NNVQ) as a robust LSP encoder. In this paper, we compare four types of binary patterns of a hidden layer, and clarify the dependency of quantization distortion on the bit pattern. By delayed decision (selection of low-distortion codes in decoding, i.e., EbD method) the spectral distortion (SD) can be decreased by 0.8 dB (20%). For noisy speech, the performance of the EbD method is better than that of the conventional VQ codebook mapping method. In addition, the SD can be decreased by 2.3 dB (40%) by using a method in which the neural networks for encoding and decoding are combined and re-trained. Finally, we examine the SD for speech having different signal-to-noise ratios (SNRs) from that used in training. The experimental results show that training using SNR between 30 and 40 dB is appropriate.

A bandpass filter (BPF) with shielded inverted microstrip lines (SIMSL), previously demonstrated by the author, has shown the nontrivial asymmetry of filter responses in spite of adopting a conventional filter synthesis procedure. This paper will reveal the mechanism of the asymmetry and propose prescriptions for recovering the defect, in addition to observing the wave propagation property of SIMSL. Firstly, the behavior of phase constants or effective dielectric constants for various modes propagating on single SIMSL are indicated in terms of the line configuration, and the dispersion characteristics of the quasi-TEM mode are interpreted from the point of mode coupling between the pure TEM mode and dielectric slab modes. Then it is shown that the asymmetry is dependent only on the transmission characteristics of SIMSL parallel-coupled lines involved in the filter circuits. Theoretical considerations reveal that the asymmetry is due to the fact that SIMSL has quite different phase constants for the even- and odd-mode. On the basis of these results, the optimized BPF is designed and it is experimentally demonstrated that the symmetry of its responses is notably recovered. Furthermore, this optimization is still quite efficient for achieving high attenuation properties at its harmonics.

A workflow definition containing errors might cause serious problems for an enterprise especially when it involves mission critical business processes or inter-organizational interaction. So workflow definitions should be defined in a strict and rigorous way. In this paper, we develop a workflow definition language and analysis methods for the language to support strict and rigorous workflow definitions. Faults or mistakes causing communication deadlock, access conflicts, and improper exception specification in workflow definitions can be detected and notified automatically using the methods. The proposed workflow definition language borrows structured constructs of conventional programming languages because many good features of conventional programming languages also can be used effectively in expressing workflow processes. With slight modifications and scope restrictions, the developed analysis techniques in this paper can be used in any workflow definition languages and they can help workflow designers define workflow processes in much more safe and reliable manner.

The traditional methods of HMM, although highly successful in 1-D time series analysis, have not yet been successfully extended to 2-D image analysis while fully exploiting the hierarchical design and extension of HMM networks for complex structured signals. Apart from the traditional method off-line training of the Baum-Welch algorithm, we propose a new method of real time creation of word or composite character HMMs for 2-D word/character patterns. Unlike the Latin words in which letters run left-to-right, the composition of word/character components need not be linear, as in Korean Hangul and Chinese characters. The key idea lies in the character composition at the image level and the image-to-model conversion followed by redundancy reduction. Although the resulting model is not optimal, the proposed method has much greater advantage in regard to memory usage and training difficulty. In a series of experiments in character/word spotting in document images, the system recorded the hit ratios of 80% and 67% in Hangul character and word spotting respectively without language models.

This paper proposes a new SSB-QPSK modulation/demodulation method. The present method multiplexes the USB (Upper Side Band) and LSB (Lower Side Band) of a QPSK-modulated SSB (Single Side Band) on the same SSB complex frequency band. The present method thus achieves 2 bit/s/Hz. This method is an orthogonal SSB-QPSK method, because the multiplex signals are orthogonal to each other. The demodulator consists of two SSB demodulators. A simulation result in AWGN conditions, shows that the proposed method has better BER (Bit Error Rate) performance than 16 QAM. The degradation of BER in comparison with QPSK is less than 0.2 dB on Eb/No (bit-energy-to-noise-power ratio). In a fading/Doppler environment, the BER performance of the orthogonal SSB-QPSK is the same as that of QPSK.