Reliability issues such as a soft error and NBTI (negative bias temperature instability) have become a matter of concern as integrated circuits continue to shrink. It is getting more and more important to take reliability requirements into account even for consumer products. This paper presents a dynamic continuous signature monitoring (DCSM) technique for high reliable computer systems. The DCSM technique dynamically generates reference signatures as well as runtime ones during executing a program. The DCSM technique stores the generated signatures in a signature table, which is a small storage circuit in a microprocessor, unlike the conventional static continuous signature monitoring techniques and contributes to saving program or data memory space that stores the signatures. Our experiments showed that our DCSM technique protected 1.4-100.0% of executed instructions depending on the size of signature tables.

In this paper, accuracy or error in permeability measurement using a combined microstrip line-coaxial conductor method was investigated. The measurement circuit used in this study is composed of a microstrip line (MSL) circuit and a grounded metal pipe with a center conductor passing through it coaxially. A sample is placed between the metal pipe and the center conductor. We evaluated the measurement accuracy for this measurement arrangement with electromagnetic simulation for the case where there are gaps between the sample and the holder. As a result, it has been shown that the normalized errors for this method have similar gap size dependence to the conventional coaxial method, but are about 10 to 20 percent greater than the coaxial method. With a view to improving the measurement accuracy, a correction method for the error is also discussed.

A critical problem with wireless LAN-based positioning systems is the degradation in position estimation accuracy due to complex variation in the strength of the received signal, which originates in the nature of the underlying wireless channel. Handling such variation effectively is essential for the creation of practical wireless LAN-based positioning systems. In this paper, we propose a collaborative mechanism for correcting position estimation errors. The main objective is to assist users in correcting estimation errors manually by providing access to a shared body of accumulated information on corrections made by many other users. In particular, the mechanism is designed to enable any group of users to collaboratively build upon this body of information. Finally, we evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed mechanism through experiments. The results confirm that the proposed mechanism can provide effective estimation error correction in a realistic environment.

This letter deals with eigenspace-based (ESB) beamforming based on the decision-directed (DD) correction with robust capability. It has been shown that the output of the ESB beamformer includes the desired signal and noise under small pointing errors. In conjugation with DD and soft decision decoding scheme, the proposed approach can be used to form a robust DD-ESB beamformer without any specific training sequence. Computer simulations are provided to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed beamformer.

The extended binary phase shift keying (EBPSK) transmission system with ultra narrow bandwidth has excellent BER performance, which raises many doubts with the researchers. Therefore, on the premise of the existence of a special filter that can transform the modulated phase information into amplitude information, the theoretical BER formula of EBPSK system in Additive White Gaussian Noise (AWGN) channel has been deduced. This paper gives the theoretical values of the parameters in the above BER formula and discusses the effects of parameters on BER firstly. Then the paper shows that the special impacting filter satisfies the above assumption, therefore, in the frame of binary detection theory, the excellent performance of high-efficiency EBPSK system can be explained and the correction of the theoretical BER formula can be validated.

In the paper, a technique of the numerical inversion of multidimensional Laplace transforms (nD NILT), based on a complex Fourier series approximation is elaborated in light of a possible ralative error achievable. The detailed error analysis shows a relationship between the numerical integration of a multifold Bromwich integral and a complex Fourier series approximation, and leads to a novel formula relating the limiting relative error to the nD NILT technique parameters.

Joint source-channel coding (JSCC) is a method to jointly allocate the given total transmission bitrate to the source coding and channel coding to maximize the video quality at the receiving end. In this paper, we propose a practical model for efficiently determining a near-optimal code rate for JSCC in real-time video communications. The conventional code rate decision schemes using analytical source coding distortion model and channel-induced distortion model are usually complex, and typically employ the process of model parameter training which involves potentially high computational complexity and implementation cost. To avoid the complex modeling procedure, we introduce a very simple video quality model based on the playable bitrate which is defined as the total bit amount per unit time that is not affected by the channel loss during transmission including correctly recovered bits by the channel decoder. Because the video quality at the receiving end is clearly commensurate with the playable bitrate, we can easily determine the quality-oriented near-optimal code rate by finding the code rate that maximizes the playable bitrate at the sender side. The proposed playable bitrate model is very simple because it does not require the complex training procedure for obtaining model parameters, which is usually required in the conventional code rate decision method. It is shown by simulations that the proposed code rate decision scheme based on the playable bitrate model can efficiently determine the near-optimal code rate for JSCC in terms of high accuracy on the optimal code rate.

A millimeter-wave termination which is tolerant to the resistance error of the embedded resistive film in a multi-layered LTCC substrate has been developed. The tolerance to the resistance error can be accomplished using two bifurcated strip lines overlapping with the resistive film, whose lengths are different form each other. It has been experimentally demonstrated that the proposed termination configuration is effective to enhance the tolerance to resistance error of the embedded resistive film in the LTCC substrate.

In this letter, we study the performance of multi-antenna relay networks with limited feedback beamforming in decode-and-forward (DF) relaying. Closed-form expression for both outage probability and symbol error rate are derived by using the moment generation function (MGF) of the combined signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) at the destination. Subjected to a total power constraint, we also explore adaptive power allocation between source and relay to optimize the performance. Simulations are given to verify the correctness of our theoretical derivations. Results show that the proposed adaptive power allocation solution significantly outperforms the uniform power allocation method.

This study focuses on speaker adaptation techniques for Computer-Assisted Language Learning (CALL). We first investigate the effects and problems of Maximum Likelihood Linear Regression (MLLR) speaker adaptation when used in pronunciation evaluation. Automatic scoring and error detection experiments are conducted on two publicly available databases of Japanese learners' English pronunciation. As we expected, over-adaptation causes misjudgment of pronunciation accuracy. Following the analysis, we propose a novel method, Regularized Maximum Likelihood Regression (Regularized-MLLR) adaptation, to solve the problem of the adverse effects of MLLR adaptation. This method uses a group of teachers' data to regularize learners' transformation matrices so that erroneous pronunciations will not be erroneously transformed as correct ones. We implement this idea in two ways: one is using the average of the teachers' transformation matrices as a constraint to MLLR, and the other is using linear combinations of the teachers' matrices to represent learners' transformations. Experimental results show that the proposed methods can better utilize MLLR adaptation and avoid over-adaptation.

In this paper, we analyze the impact of channel estimation errors for both decode-and-forward (DF) and amplify-and-forward (AF) cooperative communication systems over Nakagami-m fading channels. Firstly, we derive the exact one-integral and the approximate expressions of the symbol error rate (SER) for DF and AF relay systems with different modulations. We also present expressions showing the limitations of SER under channel estimation errors. Secondly, in order to quantify the impact of channel estimation errors, the average signal-to-noise-ratio (SNR) gap ratio is investigated for the two types of cooperative communication systems. Numerical results confirm that our theoretical analysis for SER is very efficient and accurate. Comparison of the average SNR gap ratio shows that DF model is less susceptible to channel estimation errors than AF model.

This letter presents structurally simpler symbol error rate (SER) expressions for Transmit Antenna Selection/Maximal-Ratio Combining (TAS/MRC) scheme in independent Nakagami-m fading channels in a comparison with those in the literature. First, the SER is derived as a single infinite series of simple functions for arbitrary m. For integer m, the SER can be attained as a closed-form expression with a double finite series. Moreover, simple asymptotic SER expressions suggest that the TAS/MRC scheme can achieve a full diversity order at high SNR. Numerical and simulation results verify the conciseness of the derived expressions.

To further suppress the multiple-access interference (MAI) in frequency-hopping multiple-access (FHMA) system, a novel kind of FH sequence set named as no-hit-zone (NHZ) sequence, is proposed for an FHMA system with M-ary FSK modulation (MFSK/FHMA) in this paper. Expressions for the decision variables are derived for the asynchronous MFSK/FHMA system with NHZ sequence set (MFSK/FHMA-NHZ) under a slow Rayleigh-fading channel model. For the special case of M=2, accurate analytic bit error rate (BER) is derived as a function of maximum relative delay D and the number of users K by a characteristic function method. The theoretical results validated by Monte Carlo simulations are used to investigate the dependence of the average BER on D and K. Comparison with the MFSK/FHMA system with Markov hit pattern (MFSK/FHMA-Markov) shows that MFSK/FHMA-NHZ system performs better than Markov hit pattern system as long as D is restricted in a certain range and further, the gain in the performance increases with increase in the value of K.

In OFDM systems, in-phase and quadrature (I/Q) imbalances generated in the analog front-end introduce inter-channel interference and, consequently, error performance degradation. This letter provides an exact expression involving the two-dimensional (2-D) Gaussian Q-function for the error probability of an arbitrary 2-D modulated OFDM signal with I/Q imbalances. The effects of I/Q imbalances on the distribution of an AWGN and the error performance are analyzed.

The objective of this study is to investigate the feasibility of an ultra wideband (UWB) impulse radio system for in-body to off-body wireless communication for biomedical applications. At first, a UWB antenna is designed in the UWB low band for implant use in the chest. Then the channel model is extracted and established based on the finite difference time domain (FDTD) simulation with an anatomical human body model. The established channel model consists of a small set of parameters for generating discrete time impulse responses. The generated model shows good agreement with the FDTD-calculated result in terms of key communication metrics. For effective communication over the multipath-affected channel, the pulse position modulation is employed and a 2-finger RAKE structure with a constant temporal delay is proposed in the receiver. The bit error rate performance has shown the validity of the system in the in-body to off-body chest channel.

In this letter, the performance of opportunistic-based two-way relaying with beamforming over Nakagami-m fading channels is investigated. We provide an approximate expression for the cumulative distribution function of the end-to-end signal-to-noise ratio to derive the closed-form lower bounds for the outage probability and average bit error probability as well as the closed-form upper bound for the ergodic capacity. Simulation results demonstrate the tightness of the derived bounds.

In this paper, we propose an error diagnosis technique based on clustering LUT elements to shorten the processing time. By grouping some elements as a cluster, our technique reduces the number of elements to be considered, which is effective to shorten the processing time for screening error location sets. First, the proposed technique partitions the circuit into FFR (fanout-free region) called cluster, which is a subcircuit composed of LUT elements without fanout. After screening the set of clusters including error locations, this technique screens error location sets composed of elements in the remaining set of clusters, where corrections should be made. Experimental results with benchmark circuits have shown that our technique shortens the processing time to 1/170 in the best case, and rectifies circuits including 6 errors which cannot be rectified by the conventional technique.

This paper presents a construction of a single-event-upset (SEU) tolerant reset-set (RS) flip-flop (FF). The proposed RS-FF consists of four identical parts which form an interlocking feedback loop just like DICE. The area and average power consumption of the proposed RS-FFs are 1.101.48 and 1.201.63 times smaller than those of the conventional SEU tolerant RS-FFs, respectively.

In this letter, we propose a simple distributed space-frequency code with both timing errors and multiple carrier frequency offsets (CFO) in asynchronous cooperative communications. By employing both the Alamouti coding approach and the transmit repetition diversity technique, full diversity gain can be achieved by the fast symbol-wise maximum likelihood (ML) decoding at the destination node. Analysis and simulations demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method.

This paper presents a quantitative analysis and design methodology of resistor-based phase error averaging scheme for precise multiphase generation. Unlike the previously reported works stating that more averaging simply achieves better linearity, the proposed analysis leads to the existence of the optimum number of averaging contributions by including the effect of the signal transition time. The developed model shows a good agreement with a Monte-Carlo circuit simulation. A test PLL with a 32-phase two-dimensional ring VCO, implemented in a 0.18 µm CMOS, generates monotonous 32 phases with the best linearity performance, showing an INL of +0.27/-1.0 LSB and a DNL of +0.37/-0.27 LSB at 1.2 GHz, and an INL of +0.23/-1.57 LSB and a DNL of +0.44/-0.44 LSB at 1.6 GHz.