In this paper, we propose a novel iterative transmit/receive equalization technique for single-carrier (SC) block transmission in a severe frequency-selective fading channel. Iterative frequency-domain inter-symbol interference (ISI) cancellation (FDIC) is introduced to the previously proposed joint iterative transmit/receive frequency-domain equalization (FDE) based on the minimum mean square error (MMSE) criterion. 1-tap FDE is employed at the transmitter. At the receiver, a 1-tap FDE and FDIC are jointly used and they are updated in an iterative manner. The transmit FDE weight is derived based on the MMSE criterion by taking into account the reduction of residual ISI in the receiver. To derive the weight, the transmitter assumes that the receiver can partially reduce the residual ISI after the FDIC. We conduct a computer simulation to investigate the achievable bit error rate (BER) performance to confirm the effectiveness of our proposed technique.

This work focuses on a study of strain effects in resistor stress sensors fabricated on (001) silicon and their influences on the determination of piezoresistive (pi) coefficients for the precise measurements of die stresses in electronic packages. We obtained the corrected values of the pi-coefficients by considering the strain effects, without which more than 50% discrepancies may be induced.

We report on the fabrication of coplanar dual-gate ZnO thin-film transistors with 200-nm thickness SiNx for both top and bottom dielectrics. The ZnO film was deposited by RF magnetron sputtering on SiO2/Si substrates at 100. And the thickness of ZnO film is compared with 100-nm and 40-nm. This TFT has a channel width of 100-µm and channel length of 5-µm. The fabricated coplanar dual-gate ZnO TFTs of 40-nm-thickness exhibits a field effect mobility of about 0.29 cm2/V s, a subthreshold swing 420 mV/decade, an on-off ratio 2.7107, and a threshold voltage 0.9 V, which are greatly improved characteristics, compared with conventional bottom-gate ZnO TFTs.

We present a design optimization method of H-plane waveguide components, based on the level set method with the finite element method. In this paper, we propose a new formulation for the improvement of a level set function, which describes shape, location, and connectivity of dielectric in a design region. Employing the optimization procedure, we demonstrate that optimized structures of an H-plane waveguide filter and T-junction are obtained from an initial structure composed of several circular blocks of dielectric.

We present a review of several types of microwave antennas made of metamaterials, including the resonant electrically small antennas, metamaterial-substrate patch antennas, metamaterial flat-lens antennas, and Luneburg lens antennas. In particular, we propose a new type of conformal antennas using anisotropic zero-index metamaterials, which have high gains and low sidelobes. Numerical simulations and experimental results show that metamaterials have unique properties to design new antennas with high performance.

Wireless body area network for sensing and monitoring of vital signs is the one of most rapidly growing wireless communication system and Ultra Wide-Band (UWB) is a favorable technology for wearable medical sensors. The wireless body area networks promise to revolutionize health monitoring. However, designers of such systems face a number of challenging tasks. Efficient transceiver design requires in-depth understanding of the propagation media which in this case is the human body surface. The human body is not an ideal medium for RF wave transmission; it is partially conductive and consists of materials of different dielectric constants, thickness and characteristic impedance. The results of the few measurement experiments in recent publications point to varying conclusions in the derived parameters of the channel model. As obtaining large amount of data for many scenarios and use-cases is difficult for this channel, a detailed simulation platform can be extremely beneficial in highlighting the propagation behavior of the body surface and determining the best scenarios for limited physical measurements. In this paper, an immersive visualization environment is presented, which is used as a scientific instrument that gives us the ability to observe three-dimensional RF propagation from wearable medical sensors around a human body. We have used this virtual environment to further study UWB channels over the surface of a human body. Parameters of a simple statistical path-loss model and their sensitivity to frequency and the location of the sensors on the body are discussed.

Frequency-domain equalization (FDE) based on minimum mean square error (MMSE) is considered as a promising equalization technique for a broadband single-carrier (SC) transmission. When a square-root Nyquist filter is used at a transmitter and receiver to limit the signal bandwidth, the presence of timing offset produces the inter-symbol interference (ISI) and degrades the bit error rate (BER) performance using MMSE-FDE. In this paper, we discuss the mechanism of the BER performance degradation in the presence of timing offset. Then, we propose joint MMSE-FDE & spectrum combining which can make use the excess bandwidth introduced by transmit filter to achieve larger frequency diversity gain while suppressing the negative effect of the timing offset.

Let p be an odd prime number. We define a family of quaternary sequences of period 2p using generalized cyclotomic classes over the residue class ring modulo 2p. We compute exact values of the linear complexity, which are larger than half of the period. Such sequences are 'good' enough from the viewpoint of linear complexity.

EIRP measurement in the direction of maximum radiation has not always been valid to estimate the radiated power from radio equipments integrated with antennas, for example, integrated radiator with antennas shaped like the notebook-sized PC. Therefore, it is recommended that total radiated power (TRP) from equipment under test (EUT) should be estimated by integrating measured EIRPs on the whole surface of the unit sphere. In this paper, a conventional and some novel sampling methods for the TRP estimation, which were proposed to reduce the number of measurement points, are examined by using a measured EIRP data set and compared with each other. For a simulated radio equipment shaped like a notebook-sized PC, it is found that the equi-area and generalized spiral points methods are superior to the equi-angle method in terms of reducing the number of the measurement points and orthogonal three planes method is another candidate in terms of saving measurement time unless the pattern radiated from EUT is not so complicated.

Quantization is an important operation in digital communications systems. It not only introduces quantization noise but also changes the statistical properties of the quantized signal. Furthermore, quantization noise cannot be always considered as an additive source of Gaussian noise as it depends on the input signal probability density function. In orthogonal-frequency-division-multiplexing transmission the signal undergoes different operations which change its statistical properties. In this paper we analyze the statistical transformations of the signal from the transmitter to the receiver and determine how these effect the quantization. The discussed process considers the transceiver parameters and the channel properties to model the quantization noise. Simulation results show that the model agrees well with the simulated transmissions. The effect of system and channel properties on the quantization noise and its effect on bit-error-rate are shown. This enables the design of a quantizer with an optimal resolution for the required performance metrics.

The polarization degrees of freedom (DOF) of the hexapolarized multiple input multiple output (MIMO) system over the ground reflected channel is studied in this paper by the deterministic field solution. Using the simple two-ray model, we could get some basic understandings for the influence of a single reflecting surface on the polarization DOF of the multipolarized MIMO system. Computation results show that the number of parallel independent channels in a multipolarized MIMO system depends mainly on the communication range and the height of antennas. In free space transmission, with equal height of transmitter and receiver antennas, large polarization DOF value only occurs in the near field case and it drops sharply to 2 with the increase of transmission range. Whereas for the ground reflect channel, there will be a polarization DOF larger than 4 occurring at longer communication distance with an unequal transmitter and receiver antenna height.

In the face of constant malicious attacks to network-connected software systems, software vulnerabilities need to be discovered early in the development phase. In this paper, we present AspFuzz, a state-aware protocol fuzzer based on the specifications of application-layer protocols. AspFuzz automatically generates anomalous messages that exploit possible vulnerabilities. The key observation behind AspFuzz is that most attack messages violate the strict specifications of application-layer protocols. For example, they do not conform to the rigid format or syntax required of each message. In addition, some attack messages ignore the protocol states and have incorrect orders of messages. AspFuzz automatically generates a large number of anomalous messages that deliberately violate the specifications of application-layer protocols. To demonstrate the effectiveness of AspFuzz, we conducted experiments with POP3 and HTTP servers. With AspFuzz, we can discover 20 reported and 1 previously unknown vulnerabilities for POP3 servers and 25 reported vulnerabilities for HTTP servers. Two vulnerabilities among these can be discovered by the state-awareness of AspFuzz. It can also find a SIP state-related vulnerability.

Utilizing available channels to improve the network performance is one of the most important targets for the cognitive MAC protocol design. Using antenna technologies is an efficient way to reach this target. Therefore, in this paper, we propose a novel cognitive MAC protocol, called Polarization-based Long-range Communication Directional MAC Protocol (PLRC-DMAC), for Cognitive Ad Hoc Networks (CAHNs). The proposed protocol uses directional antennas to acquire better spatial reuse and establish long-range communication links, which can support more nodes to access the same channel simultaneously. Moreover, the PLRC-DMAC also uses polarization diversity to allow nodes in the CAHN to share the same channel with Primary Users (PUs). Furthermore, we also propose a Long-range Orientation (LRO) algorithm to orient the long-range nodes. Simulation results show that the LRO algorithm can accurately orient the long-range nodes, and the PLRC-DMAC can significantly increase the network throughput as well as reduce the end-to-end delay.

For realistic scale-free networks, we investigate the traffic properties of stochastic routing inspired by a zero-range process known in statistical physics. By parameters α and δ, this model controls degree-dependent hopping of packets and forwarding of packets with higher performance at more busy nodes. Through a theoretical analysis and numerical simulations, we derive the condition for the concentration of packets at a few hubs. In particular, we show that the optimal α and δ are involved in the trade-off between a detour path for α < 0 and long wait at hubs for α > 0; In the low-performance regime at a small δ, the wandering path for α < 0 better reduces the mean travel time of a packet with high reachability. Although, in the high-performance regime at a large δ, the difference between α > 0 and α < 0 is small, neither the wandering long path with short wait trapped at nodes (α = -1), nor the short hopping path with long wait trapped at hubs (α = 1) is advisable. A uniformly random walk (α = 0) yields slightly better performance. We also discuss the congestion phenomena in a more complicated situation with packet generation at each time step.

In this article, we present a new image-stabilization technology for still images based on blind deconvolution and introduce it to a consumer digital still camera. This technology consists of three features: (1)double-exposure-based PSF detection, (2)efficient image deblurring filter, and (3)edge-based ringing reduction. Without deteriorating the deblurring performance, the new technology allows us to reduce processing time and ringing artifacts, both of which are common problems in image deconvolution.

A small broadband omni-directional printed antenna comprising symmetrically arranged trapezoid elements is investigated for broadband Voltage Standing Wave Ratio (VSWR) and low center frequency characteristics. Two symmetrical trapezoid elements are printed on the bottom side of the substrate and are connected to a small ground plane printed on the same side over two strips. The trapezoid elements and the strips are excited in an electromagnetically coupled manner by the monopole element set between the trapezoid elements. Two resonance characteristics arise because the resonance part changes depending on the frequency, and a broad bandwidth becomes possible. The center frequency can be lowered by changing the shapes of the trapezoid elements. The monopole element length is a very important parameter for impedance matching. The space between the monopole element and the trapezoid elements is an important parameter for the optimization of two resonance characteristics. The proposed antenna is shown to achieve a VSWR bandwidth (≤2) of 28.9%, a low profile, and omni-directional pattern features. The measured and numerical results are in good agreement.

This paper presents an adaptive magnification transformation based particle swarm optimizer (AMT-PSO) that provides an adaptive search strategy for each particle along the search process. Magnification transformation is a simple but very powerful mechanism, which is inspired by using a convex lens to see things much clearer. The essence of this transformation is to set a magnifier around an area we are interested in, so that we could inspect the area of interest more carefully and precisely. An evolutionary factor, which utilizes the information of population distribution in particle swarm, is used as an index to adaptively tune the magnification scale factor for each particle in each dimension. Furthermore, a perturbation-based elitist learning strategy is utilized to help the swarm's best particle to escape the local optimum and explore the potential better space. The AMT-PSO is evaluated on 15 unimodal and multimodal benchmark functions. The effects of the adaptive magnification transformation mechanism and the elitist learning strategy in AMT-PSO are studied. Results show that the adaptive magnification transformation mechanism provides the main contribution to the proposed AMT-PSO in terms of convergence speed and solution accuracy on four categories of benchmark test functions.

The Medium Access Control (MAC) protocol that uses non-overlapping multiple channels, called the multi-channel MAC protocol, was proposed in order to increase the capacity of ad hoc networks. Since the number of packet interfaces on each node is less than the number of channels in ad hoc networks in general, the node needs to select a suitable channel for data transmission. This means that the multi-channel MAC protocol must be provided with a good channel selection algorithm. In this paper, we design a channel selection algorithm called Conditionally Randomized Channel Selection (CRCS) based on Extended Receiver Directed Transmission (xRDT) protocol that only uses one packet interface. Briefly, CRCS uses the acitve channel for data transmission until the amount of data packets reaches a threshold, at which point it selects one of the available channels other than the active channel. Although CRCS is a very simple channel selection algorithm, by using network simulator we find that CRCS is effective to increase the capacity of ad hoc networks and to keep the load balance of all channels compared to the other channel selection algorithms.

In this paper, we propose a reduced complexity algorithm for blind frame synchronization based on code-constraints in a quasi-cyclic low density parity check (QC-LDPC) coded system. It can be used for both hard and soft synchronizers. For soft synchronizers, we present a modified algorithm that achieves better performance at high signal to noise ratio (SNR). Analysis indicates that the proposed algorithm has low complexity for hardware implementation.

In this paper, two constructions of mutually orthogonal zero correlation zone polyphase sequence sets are presented. The first one is based on DFT matrices and interleaving iteration. After each recursive step, the period of sequence and the length of zero-correlation zone are two times larger than that in the last step. The second method, based on DFT matrices and orthogonal matrices, can generate numbers of mutually orthogonal optimal ZCZ sequence sets whose parameters reach the theoretical bounds by using interleaving and shifting techniques. As a result, the algorithms proposed can provide more sequences for the QS-CDMA (quasi-synchronous CDMA) systems.