In a typical installation of an 802.11 based WLAN (Wireless Local Area Network), mobile hosts would access the network through APs (Access Points), even when two mobile stations communicate within the same WLAN. Effectively, all the packets in a WLAN are required to forward through the AP according to the MAC (Medium Access Control) layer protocol. Since the AP has the same priority as the other mobile stations to access the channel, the AP usually becomes a bottleneck in WLANs and the network performance degrades significantly. In this paper, we propose a new MAC layer protocol for WLANs in order to improve the throughput performance. Theoretical analysis and simulation results show that our new protocol works much better in WLAN than the standard DCF.

A guarantee obligation of keeping a Static-Noise-Margin (SNM), a Write-Margin (WRTM), and a cell current (Icell) even against a simultaneous Read/Write (R/W) disturbed access at the same column is required for a 1R/1W (1R/1W) SRAM. We have verified that it is difficult for the previously proposed techniques [1]-[5] so far to meet all the requirements simultaneously without any decrease in Icell or any significant area penalty. In order to address this issue, a new cell design technique for the 1R/1W SRAM cell with 8Tr's has been proposed and demonstrated in a 65 nm CMOS technology. It has been shown that Icell in the R/W disturbed column can be increased by 77% and 195% at Vdd=0.9 V and 0.6 V, respectively, and a cell size can be reduced by 15%, compared with the conventional column-based cell power-terminal bias (VDDM) control [1],[2] assuming that the same Icell of 9 µA at Vdd=0.9 V has to be provided. Compared with the conventional scheme, it has been found that the proposed Write-Bit-Line precharge level (VWBL) control and column-based cell source-terminal bias (VSSM) control can provide a 1.45-times larger SNM for Write-Word-Line (WWL) disturbed cells and a 1.7-fold larger WRTM while keeping the same Icell, respectively.

In this letter, the effects of transmit beamforming on downlink performance in DS-CDMA communication systems are examined. We present a simple-to-use expression for the conditional instantaneous SINR after Rake combining. Assuming BPSK modulation, the performance of average bit error rate is evaluated. We compare the average BER performance obtained by different beamforming methods under frequency selective multipath fading channels.

In this paper, we examine the Interleaved Polling with Adaptive Cycle Time (IPACT) that was proposed to control upstream traffic for Gigabit Ethernet-PONs, a promising technology for the Fiber To The Home (FTTH). We analyzed the performance for the gated service and the limited service mathematically. To do this, the IPACT protocol was modeled as a polling system and analyzed by using mean-value analysis technique. The traffic arrival rate λ was divided into three regions, and each region was analyzed separately and merged appropriately by using an interpolation method. The average packet delay, average queue size, and average cycle time of both the gated service and the limited service were obtained through the analysis. In order to evaluate the accuracy of the mathematical analysis, discrete event simulation was performed for the IPACT protocol. Simulation results show the accuracy of the mathematical analysis. The analysis results can be widely used in the design of the FTTH system based on EPON, as the performance results in the present study can be obtained in a rather short time. We can design an appropriate system depending on various traffic conditions by adjusting system parameters, such as the number of users N, the maximum transfer window WMAX, and so on.

This paper addresses the issue of deafness in MAC (Medium Access Control) protocols for wireless ad hoc networks using directional antennas. Directional antennas are expected to provide significant improvements over omni-directional antennas in ad hoc networks, such as high spatial reuse and range extension. Recently, several MAC protocols using directional antennas, typically referred to as directional MAC protocols, have been proposed for ad hoc networks. However, directional MAC protocols inherently introduce new kinds of problems arising from directivity. One major problem is deafness, caused by a lack of state information of neighbor nodes, whether idle or busy. This paper proposes DMAC/DA (Directional MAC with Deafness Avoidance) to overcome the deafness problem. DMAC/DA modifies the previously proposed MAC protocol, MDA (MAC protocol for Directional Antennas), to reduce the number of control messages and also maintain the ability to handle deafness. In DMAC/DA, WTS (Wait To Send) frames are simultaneously transmitted by the transmitter and the receiver after the successful exchange of directional RTS (Request To Send) and CTS (Clear To Send) to notify the on-going communication to potential transmitters that may experience deafness. The experimental results show that DMAC/DA outperforms existing directional MAC protocols, such as DMAC (Directional MAC) and MDA, in terms of throughput, control overhead and packet drop ratio under the different values of parameters such as the number of flows and the number of beams. In addition, qualitative evaluation of 9 MAC protocols is presented to highlight the difference between DMAC/DA and existing MAC protocols.

To control various access privileges in group-oriented applications having multiple data streams, we present a novel reactive key management scheme where each member can obtain the key of a data stream from public parameters only when necessary. Compared with the previous schemes, this scheme significantly reduces the amount of rekey messages for dynamic membership change due to its reactive nature.

To analyze the saturation performance of IEEE 802.11 DCF, several discrete-time Markov chain models for a station and sets of channel equations have been introduced. We take into account a frame retry limit, freezing of backoff counter, and the dependence of backoff procedure on the previous channel status all together. Our method is simple even though it is accurate under the assumption of no consecutive transmissions over the shared channel.

An encryption scheme is proposed that considers hierarchies in media, such as text, images, sound, and so on, in a composite multimedia content to enable versatile access control. In the proposed scheme, a content provider has only one managed key (the master key) for a particular composite multimedia content, and an user who is permitted to access a reserved content entities in the composite content receives only one key that is subordinately generated from the master key. Another key generated from the identical master key is delivered to another user, and this permits the user to access different entities. This scheme introduces a new key concept, namely "unusable key," to keep all entities encrypted in a particular medium and to simultaneously decrypt several entities in other media. The other new key, "numbering key," is also used in this scheme to support simultaneous partial decryption of multiple images that are coded with a scalable coding technology. Simulation results show the effectiveness of the proposed scheme; in particular, the length of the managed master key and that of keys to be delivered to users are small.

This paper proposes new resource management schemes for multiple data streams in an orthogonal frequency and space division multiplex access (OFSDMA) system using Radio-on-Fiber (RoF) ubiquitous antennas. The proposed schemes classify the services into some classes in which the number of sub-carriers is dynamically assigned according to the requested data size. The computer simulation results show that the proposed schemes improve the number of users satisfying the required bit error rate (BER) level as well as the average throughput and also show that the RoF ubiquitous antennas can improve system capacity.

Ad hoc DMAC protocols have been proposed to improve spatial reuse, but directional transmissions have the problem of deafness. In the ToneDMAC protocol [9], an omnidirectional out-of-band tone after transmitting DATA or ACK mitigates deafness, but cannot prevent the interference packets caused by retransmissions to node in deafness. In this paper, we propose a dual-tone DMAC protocol with the out-of-band start-tone and stop-tone. In the proposed MAC protocol, a start-tone prevents retransmissions to node in deafness and decreases the packet collision probability. Throughput performance of the proposed MAC protocol is confirmed by simulations using Qualnet ver. 3.8 simulator.

In CDMA cellular systems, the frequency reuse factor equals one. Therefore, the soft-handoff technology with combining macroscopic diversity was introduced to enhance the link performance. In this work, a novel macroscopic diversity combining scheme is proposed to enhance the link performance of the forward-link. The basic concept of this scheme is to integrate error correction coding into the soft-handoff technology. According to the number of soft-handoff channels, the source information is encoded by a convolutional code with a lower code rate. The coded symbols are then equally distributed to all channels from different BSs to the MS, and each channel carries a disjointed set of coded symbols. For this proposed scheme, no extra transmission power or bandwidth is required. The only cost is a slight increase of the encoding and decoding complexity of the convolutional codes. Numerical and simulation results show that a performance gain of 1 dB in bit energy-to-total noise power density ratio can be obtained as compared with the conventional scheme in the same conditions.

It is known that for any general access structure, a secret sharing scheme (SSS) can be constructed from an (m,m)-threshold scheme by using the so-called cumulative map or from a (t,m)-threshold SSS by a modified cumulative map. However, such constructed SSSs are not efficient generally. In this paper, a new method is proposed to construct a SSS from a (t,m)-threshold scheme for any given general access structure. In the proposed method, integer programming is used to derive the optimal (t,m)-threshold scheme and the optimal distribution of the shares to minimize the average or maximum size of the distributed shares to participants. From the optimality, it can always attain lower coding rate than the cumulative maps because the cumulative maps cannot attain the optimal distribution in many cases. The same method is also applied to construct SSSs for incomplete access structures and/or ramp access structures.

We focus on the overall representation of network user behavior and observe that the number of destinations accessed by a network user is limited, which means users have certain preferential haunts in networks. And the distribution of users closely matches heavy tail distribution instead of Possion Distribution.

Wireless connections between computers and devices introduce a new problem called device migration, which is the dynamic switching of a connection between a computer and a device. This paper describes a new system called the Network Extended Device Management System (NextD), which enables users to continue using a device even if device migration occurs. NextD's functions are device tracking, remote device access, seamless switching, and providing services over network boundaries. The system supports many device types, including a human interface device (HID) and audio and voice devices over both wireless and wired connections. We have implemented NextD on Linux. Experimental results showed that NextD is capable of supporting HIDs, and audio and voice devices, and that its processing time for a device migration is sufficient enough for actual use.

In this paper, we apply iterative detection to typical time hopping (TH) pulse position modulation (PPM) ultra wideband (UWB) spread spectrum systems. Unlike a typical TH-PPM UWB which employs repetition code, the proposed system uses self-encoded code which is updated by user information itself. To take advantage of self-encoded spread spectrum, we apply iterative detection to the TH-PPM UWB system. Simulations are conducted to investigate the bit error rate (BER) performance of the proposed system in additive white gaussian noise (AWGN) channels as well as in fading and multipath channels. We observe a significant BER performance improvement over conventional TH-PPM UWB systems.

An intermittent wireless communication system has been developed for low-power sensor networks that improves sensor network efficiency by promoting cooperative optimization among the hardware architecture, communication protocol, and multiple access scheme. The intermittent communication protocol together with hardware for intermittent function contributed to reduce power consumption and extended sensor-node battery lifetime. A multiple access scheme based on the R-ALOHA protocol is used for the wireless link; it works efficiently with the protocol and hardware. Due to its inter-layer optimization, the system has low power consumption regardless of the traffic load and is thus flexible enough to support a wide range of sensor network applications.

In this paper, we propose a novel spatial filtering technique for orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) signals called "VIrtual Subcarrier Assignment (VISA)." Here, virtual subcarrier is a subcarrier which is not used for data transmission. When a wireless terminal is equipped with multiple antennas, VISA can easily achieve a space division multiple access (SDMA) by assigning a different spectral position of virtual subcarrier to a different user. To realize VISA in an already-existing OFDM-based wireless local area network (WLAN), we discuss an antenna weight control method in the preamble of a signal burst format designed for the IEEE802.11a standard and evaluate the bit error rate (BER) performance in typical indoor wireless environments.

In this paper, a multiuser receiver based on a Gaussian Mixture Sigma Point Particle Filter (GMSPPF), which can be used for joint channel coefficient estimation and time delay tracking in CDMA communication systems, is introduced. The proposed algorithm has better improved estimation performance than either Extended Kalman Filter (EKF) or Particle Filter (PF). The Cramer-Rao Lower Bound (CRLB) is derived for the estimator, and the simulation result demonstrates that it is almost completely near-far resistant. For this reason, it is believed that the proposed estimator can replace well-known filters such as the EKF or PF.

The Erlang capacity of multi-service multi-access systems supporting several different radio access technologies was analyzed and compared according to two different operation methods: the separate and common operation methods, by simultaneously considering the link capacity limit per sector as well as channel element (CE) limit in a base station (BS). In a numerical example with GSM-like and WCDMA-like sub-systems, it is shown that we can get up to 60% Erlang capacity improvement through the common operation method using a near optimum so-called service-based user assignment scheme when there is no CE limit in BS. Even with the worst-case assignment scheme, we can still get about 15% capacity improvement over the separate operation method. However, a limited number of CEs in BS reduces the capacity gains of multi-service multi-access systems in both the common operation and separate operation. In order to fully extract the Erlang capacity of multi-service multi-access systems, an efficient method is needed in order to select a proper number of CE in BS while minimizing the equipment cost.

This paper introduces the design of an Optical Switching Module (OSM) for our newly proposed Gigabit Ethernet Optical Switched Access Network (GE-OSAN) architecture that uses the Multi-Point Control Protocol (MPCP), defined in IEEE 802.3ah. We outline the GE-OSAN architecture to clarify OSM's role in the network. We offer an OSM configuration that has the basic functions needed to realize downstream and upstream high-speed data services in GE-OSAN. We clarify the OSM optical switching time that allows GE-OSAN to achieve the same throughput as GE-PON. Our survey of currently available optical switches identifies the optical packet switches that can meet this switching time requirement. We evaluate OSM insertion loss with these switches. We propose an OSM configuration that has a regeneration function as well as the basic ones to realize wider network configurations that can lead to a reduction in overall system costs. In addition, we present OSM configurations that have broadcast and multicast functions as well as the basic ones so that GE-OSAN can support broadcast and multicast video services to equal and exceed GE-PON.