This paper addresses the coexistence issue of distributed heterogeneous networks where the network nodes are cognitive radio terminals. These nodes, operating as secondary users (SUs), might interfere with primary users (PUs) who are licensed to use a given frequency band. Further, due to the lack of coordination and the dissimilarity of the radio access technologies (RATs) among these wireless nodes, they might interfere with each other. To solve this coexistence problem, we propose an architecture that enables coordination among the distributed nodes. The architecture provides coexistence solutions and sends reconfiguration commands to SU networks. As an example, time sharing is considered as a solution. Further, the time slot allocation ratios and transmit powers are parameters encapsulated in the reconfiguration commands. The performance of the proposed scheme is evaluated in terms of the coexistence between PUs and SUs, as well as the coexistence among SUs. The former addresses the interference from SUs to PUs, whereas the latter addresses the sharing of an identified spectrum opportunity among heterogeneous SU networks for achieving an efficient spectrum usage. In this study, we first introduce a new parameter named as quality of coexistence (QoC), which is defined as the ratio between the quality of SU transmissions and the negative interference to PUs. In this study we assume that the SUs have multiple antennas and employ fixed transmit power control (fixed-TPC). By using the approximation to the distribution of a weighted sum of chi-square random variables (RVs), we develop an analytical model for the time slot allocation among SU networks. Using this analytical model, we obtain the optimal time slot allocation ratios as well as transmit powers of the SU networks by maximizing the QoC. This leads to an efficient spectrum usage among SUs and a minimized negative influence to the PUs. Results show that in a particular scenario the QoC can be increased by 30%.

From the viewpoint of service availability, which is an important evaluation factor in communication quality, we analytically study the performance improvement of heterogeneous radio networks that cooperatively select one system from among multiple communication systems. It is supposed herein that the heterogeneous network selects one system with the larger throughput or with the smaller time delay. To this end, we firstly derive analytical methods using the probability density function of the performance characteristics of the communication systems consisting of the heterogeneous radio network. The analytical method described here is comparatively general and enables the handling of cases where complete cooperation can and cannot be achieved in the heterogeneous network. As for the performance characteristics, we conduct an experiment using the wireless LAN to establish the probability distribution models of the throughput and time delay in the communication system. Using the analytical method and the experimental model obtained, we calculate the performance improvement by cooperative operation in the heterogeneous network. The equational expression to obtain the theoretical performance improvement limit is also investigated through the analytical equations.

With development of wireless communication technologies, users are no longer satisfied with only a single service provided per time. They are willing to enjoy multiple services simultaneously. Therefore scheduling multiple services per user becomes quite important usability issue in the area of resource management. In this paper, the multiple-service scheduling problem is firstly formulated as an integrated optimization problem based on a utility function in homogeneous service systems. Due to its NP-hard characteristic, a set of low-complexity sub-optimal algorithms is therefore proposed and used to schedule resources for multiple services per user at the downlink of Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) systems. The proposed algorithms are capable to effectively and efficiently distribute assigned resources among multiple services for one user. Moreover the utility of our algorithms is further extended from homogeneous service systems to heterogeneous service systems. And full exploitation of multi-user diversity gain is achieved while guaranteeing quality of service (QoS). The simulation results show that the proposed algorithm outperforms traditional algorithm in terms of system best effort service throughput and fairness criterion.

In practical settings of wireless sensor networks, it is often feasible to consider heterogeneous deployments of devices with different capabilities. Under prescribed cost constraints, we analyze such heterogenous deployments and present how they impact the coverage of a sensor network including spatial correlation effect. We derive expressions for the heterogeneous mixture of devices that maximizes the lifetime coverage in both single-hop direct and multi-hop communication models. Our results show that using an optimal mixture of many inexpensive low-capability devices and some expensive high-capability devices can significantly extend the duration of a network's sensing performance, especially in a network with low spatial correlation.

In a WSAN (Wireless Sensor and Actuator Network), most resources, including sensors and actuators, are designed for certain applications in a dedicated environment. Many researchers have proposed to use of gateways to infer and annotate heterogeneous data; however, such centralized methods produce a bottlenecking network and computation overhead on the gateways that causes longer response time in activity processing, worsening performance. This work proposes two distribution inference mechanisms: regionalized and sequential inference mechanisms to reduce the response time in activity processing. Finally, experimental results for the proposed inference mechanisms are presented, and it shows that our mechanisms outperform the traditional centralized inference mechanism.

Lawful Interception (LI) refers to a lawfully authorized process of looking into private communication under a court-issued warrant. Quite a number of countries have been drafting and enacting laws authorizing the LI procedures on packet-switched IP networks including traditional circuit-switched ones. As the IP mobility becomes more ubiquitous, propelled by wireless networks, it becomes an issue in the LI domain to keep track of a migrating target. However, with the world's focus on the current LI architectures, little consideration has been given to a seamless LI triggering, which accommodates IP mobility and vertical handover. Proposed herein are a seamless LI architecture and relevant triggering algorithms for the heterogeneous wireless networks. The simulation results demonstrate that the proposed architecture secures a seamless LI by capturing all the suspected target traffics without any time delay, which usually occurs during an LI triggering between different service providers. Furthermore, when compared with the existing LI architectures, the architecture significantly helps reduce transmission and the time consumed for analysis of the content of communication (CC) and intercept related information (IRI).

This paper considers the problem of target location estimation in heterogeneous wireless sensor networks and proposes a novel algorithm using a factor graph to fuse the heterogeneous measured data. In the proposed algorithm, we map the problem of target location estimation to a factor graph framework and then use the sum-product algorithm to fuse the heterogeneous measured data so that heterogeneous sensors can collaborate to improve the accuracy of target location estimation. Simulation results indicate that the proposed algorithm provides high location estimation accuracy.

Decision diagrams (DDs) are data structures commonly used for representation of discrete functions with large number of variables. Binary DDs (BDDs) are used for representation and manipulation with Boolean functions. Complexity of a BDD is usually measured by its size, that is defined as the number of non-terminal nodes in the BDD. Minimization of the sizes of DDs is a problem greatly considered in literature and many related algorithms (exact and heuristic) have been proposed. However, there are many functions for which BDDs when minimized are still large and can have even an exponential size in the number of variables. An approach to derive compact decision diagram representations for such functions is transformation of BDDs into Multi-valued DDs (MDDs) and Heterogeneous MDDs (HMDDs). Complexity of MDDs and HMDDs is measured by the cost which is a generalization of the notion of the size by taking into account complexity of nodes in MDDs and HMDDs. This paper presents a method for transformation of BDD into HMDD with minimal cost. The proposed method reduces the time for determination of the type of nodes in HMDDs by introducing a matrix expressing dependency (interconnections) among nodes at different levels. Comparing to other methods for conversion of BDDs into HMDDs, the method reduces the number of traverses of a BDD necessary for collecting enough information to construct an equivalent HMDD. For an experimental verification of its efficiency, the method is applied to construction of HMDDs for some benchmark functions and their arithmetic and Walsh spectra.

In this paper, we analyze the stability of XCP (eXplicit Control Protocol) in a network with heterogeneous XCP flows (i.e., XCP flows with different propagation delays). Specifically, we model a network with heterogeneous XCP flows using fluid-flow approximation. We then derive the conditions that XCP control parameters should satisfy for stable XCP operation. Furthermore, through several numerical examples and simulation results, we quantitatively investigate effect of system parameters and XCP control parameters on stability of the XCP protocol. Our findings include: (1) when XCP flows are heterogeneous, XCP operates more stably than the case when XCP flows are homogeneous, (2) conversely, when variation in propagation delays of XCP flows is large, operation of XCP becomes unstable, and (3) the output link bandwidth of an XCP router is independent of stability of the XCP protocol.

The IEEE 802.11 standard has been extensively deployed all over the world. Many studies have been put on its performance, especially throughput. Most research focused on the analysis of saturated throughput, but non-saturated situation is more usual in practice. By extending a saturation throughput model, a concise and novel model is proposed in this paper, which can be used to analyze both saturated and non-saturated conditions. Moreover, the model can also deal with the heterogeneous condition, which allows stations to have different traffic. Different access mechanisms and packet payloads are used in simulation to validate it, and the results show that the model is accurate.

Utilizing a heterogeneous multiprocessor system has become a popular design paradigm to build an embedded system at a cheap cost within short development time. A reliability issue for embedded systems, which is vulnerability to single event upsets (SEUs), has become a matter of concern as technology proceeds. This paper discusses reliability inherent in heterogeneous multiprocessors and proposes task scheduling for minimizing SEU vulnerability of them. This paper experimentally shows that increasing performance of a CPU core deteriorates its reliability. Based on the experimental observation, we propose task scheduling for reducing SEU vulnerability of a heterogeneous multiprocessor system. The experimental results demonstrate that our task scheduling technique can reduce much of SEU vulnerability under real-time constraints.

The authors propose a user-centric seamless handover (HO) scheme, which is a kind of a vertical HO from a new perspective, toward a next generation network where heterogeneous access networks converge. The users' experience-oriented scheme allows users to enjoy the optimal service quality for real-time applications in respective access networks. In addition, the scheme sustains on-going sessions during the vertical HO. The proposed scheme consists of two methods -- the bicasting of Different Quality-level Streams (DiffQS) and the Delay Difference Absorption (DDA) method. Initially, the authors propose two plausible methods for the SIP-based bicasting of DiffQS. This document introduces a SIP-capable network element named the HO Assistive Server (HOAS). HOAS controls bicasting of DiffQS and provides users with the optimal service quality for real-time applications via respective access networks as well as avoiding packet loss during HO. The DDA method is also proposed to prevent a service interruption and smoothly continue a real-time service during HO. Evaluation results show that the scheme achieves the seamless service continuity from the users' perspective for HO between cellular and high-speed wireless access via the implementation of a prototype system.

In recent years, heterogeneous devices have been employed frequently in mobile storage systems because a combination of such devices can supply a synergistically useful storage solution by taking advantage of each device. One important design constraint in heterogeneous storage systems is to mitigate I/O performance degradation stemming from the difference between access times of different devices. To this end, there has not been much work to devise proper buffer cache management algorithms. This paper presents a novel buffer cache management algorithm which considers both I/O cost per device and workload patterns in mobile computing systems with a heterogeneous storage pair of a hard disk and a NAND flash memory. In order to minimize the total I/O cost under varying workload patterns, the proposed algorithm employs a dynamic cache partitioning technique over different devices and manages each partition according to request patterns and I/O types along with the temporal locality. Trace-based simulations show that the proposed algorithm reduces the total I/O cost and flash write count significantly over the existing buffer cache algorithms on typical mobile traces.

Selecting transparently a proper network connection for voice communication will be a fundamental requirement in future multi-mode heterogeneous wireless network. This paper presented a smart session selection (S3) scheme to meet this requirement. Instead of selecting a best access network as in conventional Always Best Connected (ABC) paradigm, S3 enables users to select a best network connection, which consists of source and destination access network pair, to satisfy quality constraint and users' preference. To support S3, we develop a user profile to specify network connection priority. Meanwhile IP multimedia subsystem (IMS) is extended to make smart decision for users. Finally, Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) is used to recommend a network connection with assistance of user profile and IMS signaling. An example is illustrated to show that AHP can successfully select a good network connection that fulfills the requirement of users.

Sensor networks that carry heterogeneous traffics and are responsible for reporting very time-critical important events necessitate an efficient and robust data dissemination framework. Designing such a framework, that can achieve both the reliability and delay guarantee while preserving the energy efficiency, namely multi-constrained QoS (MCQoS), is a challenging problem. Although there have been many research works on QoS routing for sensor networks, to the best of our knowledge, no one addresses the above three service parameters all together. In this paper, we propose a new aggregate routing model and a distributed aggregate routing algorithm (DARA) that implements the model for achieving MCQoS. DARA is designed for multi-sink, multipath and location aware network architecture. We develop probabilistic models for multipath reliability constraint, sojourn time of a packet at an intermediary node and node energy consumption. Delay-differentiated multi-speed packet forwarding and in-node packet scheduling mechanisms are also incorporated with DARA. The results of the simulations demonstrate that DARA effectively improves the reliability, delay guarantee and energy efficiency.

Divisible Load Theory (DLT) is an established mathematical framework to study Divisible Load Scheduling (DLS). However, traditional DLT does not address the scheduling of results back to source (i.e., result collection), nor does it comprehensively deal with system heterogeneity. In this paper, the DLSRCHETS (DLS with Result Collection on HETerogemeous Systems) problem is addressed. The few papers to date that have dealt with DLSRCHETS, proposed simplistic LIFO (Last In, First Out) and FIFO (First In, First Out) type of schedules as solutions to DLSRCHETS. In this paper, a new polynomial time heuristic algorithm, SPORT (System Parameters based Optimized Result Transfer), is proposed as a solution to the DLSRCHETS problem. With the help of simulations, it is proved that the performance of SPORT is significantly better than existing algorithms. The other major contributions of this paper include, for the first time ever, (a) the derivation of the condition to identify the presence of idle time in a FIFO schedule for two processors, (b) the identification of the limiting condition for the optimality of FIFO and LIFO schedules for two processors, and (c) the introduction of the concept of equivalent processor in DLS for heterogeneous systems with result collection.

This paper proposes a novel MIMO system that introduces a heterogeneous stream (HTS) scheme and a blind signal detection method for mobile radio communications. The HTS scheme utilizes different modulation or coding methods for different MIMO streams, and the blind detection method requires no training sequences for signal separation, detection, and channel estimation. The HTS scheme can remove the ambiguity in identifying separated streams without unique words that are necessary in conventional MIMO blind detection. More specifically, two examples of HTS are considered: modulation type HTS (MHTS) and timing-offset type HTS (THTS). MHTS, which utilizes different modulation constellations with the same bandwidth for different streams, has been previously investigated. This paper proposes THTS which utilizes different transmission timing with the same modulation. THTS can make the blind detection more robust and effective with fractional sampling. The blind joint processing of detection and channel estimation performs adaptive blind MIMO-MLSE and is derived from an adaptive blind MLSE equalizer that employs the recursive channel estimation with the Moore-Penrose generalized inverse. Computer simulations show that the proposed system can achieve superior BER performance with Eb/N0 degradation of 1 dB in THTS and 2.5 dB in MHTS compared with the ideal maximum likelihood detection.

Divisible Load Theory (DLT) is an established framework to study Divisible Load Scheduling (DLS). Traditional DLT ignores the result collection phase, and specifies no solution to the general case where both the network speed and computing capacity of the nodes are heterogeneous. In this paper, the DLS with Rosult Collection on HETerogemeous Systems (DLSRCHETS) problem is formulated as a linear program and analyzed. The papers to date that have dealt with result collection, proposed simplistic LIFO (Last In, First Out) and FIFO (First In, First Out) type of schedules as solutions. The main contributions of this paper are: (a) A proof of the Allocation Precedence Condition, which is inconsequential in LIFO or FIFO, but is important in a general schedule. (b) A proof of the Idle Time Theorem, which states that irrespective of whether load is allocated to all available processors, in the optimal solution to the DLSRCHETS problem, at the most one processor that is allocated load has idle time, and that the idle time exists only when the result collection begins immediately after the completion of load distribution.

The heterogeneous integration of GaAs HEMTs on a polyimide-covered AlN ceramic substrate was demonstrated using a fluidic self-assembly (FSA) technique. We used thin device blocks for the FSA, which have various advantages. In particular, they can reduce the drain-source capacitance Cds of the assembled HEMTs if the substrate has a low dielectric constant. This is a novel kind of semiconductor-on-insulator (SOI) technology. The dc and RF properties of the GaAs HEMTs on the polyimide/AlN substrate were studied and the reduction of Cds was confirmed. This technique was successfully applied to the SPDT switch, where a low Cds is essential for good isolation.

This paper investigates migration effects of parallel genetic algorithms (GAs) on the line topology of heterogeneous computing resources. Evolution process of parallel GAs is evaluated experimentally on two types of arrangements of heterogeneous computing resources: the ascending and descending order arrangements. Migration effects are evaluated from the viewpoints of scalability, chromosome diversity, migration frequency and solution quality. The results reveal that the performance of parallel GAs strongly depends on the design of the chromosome migration in which we need to consider the arrangement of heterogeneous computing resources, the migration frequency and so on. The results contribute to provide referential scheme of implementation of parallel GAs on heterogeneous computing resources.