The recent progress in sensor and wireless communication technologies has enabled the design and implementation of new applications such as sensor telemetry which is the use of wireless sensors to gather fine-grained information from products, people and places. In this work, we consider a realistic telemetry application in which an area is periodically monitored by a sensor network which gathers data from equally spaced sample points. The objective is to maximize the lifetime of the network by jointly selecting the sensing nodes, the node transmission powers and the route to the base station from each sensing node. We develop an optimization-based algorithm OPT-RE and a low complexity algorithm SP-RE for this purpose and analyze their dynamics through extensive numerical studies. Our results indicate that SP-RE is a promising algorithm which has comparable performance to that of the more computationally intensive OPT-RE algorithm. The energy consumption is significantly affected by the channel access method, and in this paper, we also compare the effects of the collision free TDMA and contention based CSMA/CA methods. We propose practical enhancements to CSMA/CA so that the energy consumption due to collisions is reduced. Our simulation results indicate that with the proposed enhancements contention based channel access can provide comparable performance to that of the collision free methods.

We review practical case studies of a developing method of highly reliable real-time embedded control systems using a CPU model-based hardware/software co-simulation. We take an approach that enables us to fully simulate a virtual mechanical control system including a mechatronics plant, microcontroller hardware, and object code level software. This full virtual system approach simulates control system behavior, especially that of the microcontroller hardware and software. It enables design space exploration of microarchitecture, control design validation, robustness evaluation of the system, software optimization before components design. It also avoids potential problems. The advantage of this work is that it comprises all the components in a typical control system, enabling the designers to analyze effects from different domains, for example mechanical analysis of behavior due to differences in controller microarchitecture. To further improve system design, evaluation and analysis, we implemented an integrated behavior analyzer in the development environment. This analyzer can graphically display the processor behavior during the simulation without affecting simulation results such as task level CPU load, interrupt statistics, and the software variable transition chart. It also provides useful information on the system behavior. This virtual system analysis does not require software modification, does not change the control timing, and does not require any processing power from the target microcontroller. Therefore this method is suitable for real-time embedded control system design, in particular automotive control system design that requires a high level of reliability, robustness, quality, and safety. In this study, a Renesas SH-2A microcontroller model was developed on a CoMETTMplatform from VaST Systems Technology. An electronic throttle control (ETC) system and an engine control system were chosen to prove this concept. The electronic throttle body (ETB) model on the Saber® simulator from Synopsys® and the engine model on MATLAB®/Simulink® simulator from MathWorks can be simulated with the SH-2A model using a newly developed co-simulation interface between MATLAB®/Simulink® and CoMETTM. Though the SH-2A chip was being developed as the project was being executed, we were able to complete the OSEK OS development, control software design, and verification of the entire system using the virtual environment. After releasing a working sample chip in a later stage of the project, we found that such software could run on both actual ETC system and engine control system without critical problem. This demonstrates that our models and simulation environment are sufficiently credible and trustworthy.

A chaotic UWB communication system based on IEEE 802.15.4a is proposed for wireless connectivity applications. A compact and simple architecture is implemented by using a chaotic UWB signal and a non-coherent detection scheme. The chaotic UWB signal has noise-like characteristics in time and frequency domains and naturally wide spectrum within a limited bandwidth. The chaotic UWB signal generator is designed on two methods with the bandwidth of 3.1 to 5.1 GHz, and a baseband process is realized on an FPGA including an adaptive decision and a channel code for non-source coded data stream. The system performance is evaluated by transmitting MP3 audio/voice with 32-byte length PSDUs and measuring PERs for assessing the system sensitivity and the interferer compatibility. The proposed system can be an excellent candidate for short-range connectivity services, as well as an inexpensive system with good capability for narrow-band interferences.

The present paper introduces an integrated construction of binary sequences having a zero-correlation zone. The cross-correlation function and the side-lobe of the auto-correlation function of the proposed sequence set is zero for the phase shifts within the zero-correlation zone. The proposed method enables more flexible design of the binary zero-correlation zone sequence set with respect to its member size, length, and width of zero-correlation zone. Several previously reported sequence construction methods of binary zero-correlation zone sequence sets can be explained as special cases of the proposed method.

It has been shown that the output information produced by the soft output Viterbi algorithm (SOVA) is too optimistic. To compensate for this, the output information should be normalized. This letter proposes a simple normalization technique that extends the existing sign difference ratio (SDR) criterion. The new normalization technique counts the sign differences between the a-priori information and the extrinsic information, and then adaptively determines the corresponding normalization factor for each data block. Simulations comparing the new technique with other well-known normalization techniques show that the proposed normalization technique can achieve about 0.2 dB coding gain improvement on average while reducing up to about 1/2 iteration for decoding.

IP (Intellectual Property) reuse plays an important role in modern IC design so that IP Protection (IPP) technique is get concerned. In this paper, we introduce a new efficient watermarking system for IPP on post-layout design stage. The signature (which indicates the designer) is encrypted with a secret key by DES (Data Encryption Standard) to produce a bit string, which is then embedded into the layout design as constraints by using a specific incremental router. Once the design is watermarked successfully, the signature can be extracted accurately by the system. The system also has a strong resistance to the attack on watermarking due to the DES functionality. This watermarking technique uniquely identifies the circuit origin, yet is difficult to be detected or fabricated without our tool. We evaluated the watermarking system on IBM-PLACE 2.0 benchmark suites. The results show the system robustness and strength: the system success probability achieves 100% in suitable time with no extra area and wire length cost on design performances.

CORDIC (COordinate Rotation DIgital Computer) is a well known algorithm using simple adders and shifters to evaluate various elementary functions. Thus, CORDIC is suitable for the design of high performance chips using VLSI technology. In this paper, a complete analysis of the computation error of both the (conventional) CORDIC algorithm and the CORDIC algorithm with expanded convergence range is derived to facilitate the design task. The resulting formulas regarding the relative and absolute approximation errors and the truncation error are summarized in the tabular form. As the numerical accuracy of CORDIC processors is determined by the word length of operands and the number of iterations, three reference tables are constructed for the optimal choice of these numbers. These tables can be used to facilitate the design of cost-effective CORDIC processors in terms of areas and performances. In addition, two design examples: singular value decomposition (SVD) and lattice filter for digital signal processing systems are given to demonstrate the goal and benefit of the derived numerical analysis of CORDIC.

This paper proposes a new type of compact waveguide directional coupler, which is constructed from two crossed E-plane rectangular waveguide with two metallic posts in the square junction and one metallic post at each port. The metallic posts in the square junction are set symmetrically along a diagonal line to obtain the directivity properties. The metallic post inserted at each input/output waveguide port can realize a matched state. Tight-coupling properties 0.79-6 dB are realized by optimizing the dimension of the junction and the positions/radii of the posts. The design results are verified by an em-simulator (Ansoft HFSS) and experiments.

In the main part of this paper, we present a systematic discussion for the optimum interpolation approximation in a shift-invariant wavelet and/or scaling subspace. In this paper, we suppose that signals are expressed as linear combinations of a large number of base functions having unknown coefficients. Under this assumption, we consider a problem of approximating these linear combinations of higher degree by using a smaller number of sample values. Hence, error of approximation happens in most cases. The presented approximation minimizes various worst-case measures of approximation error at the same time among all the linear and the nonlinear approximations under the same conditions. The presented approximation is quite flexible in choosing the sampling interval. The presented approximation uses a finite number of sample values and satisfies two conditions for the optimum approximation presented in this paper. The optimum approximation presented in this paper uses sample values of signal directly. Hence, the presented result is independent from the so-called initial problem in wavelet theory.

We propose a method to retrieve similar and duplicate images from a JPEG (Joint Photographic Image Group) image database. Similarity level is decided based on the DCT (Discrete Cosine Transform) coefficients signs. The method is simple and fast because it uses the DCT coefficients signs as features, which can be obtained directly after partial decoding of JPEG bitstream. The method is robust to JPEG compression, in which similarity level of duplicate images, i.e., images that are compressed from the same original images with different compression ratios, is not disguised due to JPEG compression. Simulation results showed the superiority of the method compared to previous methods in terms of computational complexity and robustness to JPEG compression.

As a fundamental building block of multirate systems, the downsampler, also known as the decimator, is a periodically time-varying linear system. An eigensignal of the downsampler is defined to be an input signal which appears at the output unaltered or scaled by a non-zero coefficient. In this paper, the eigensignals are studied and characterized in the time and z domains. The time-domain characterization is carried out using number theoretic principles, while the one-sided z-transform and Lambert-form series are used for the transform-domain characterization. Examples of non-trivial eigensignals are provided. These include the special classes of multiplicative and completely multiplicative eigensignals. Moreover, the locus of poles of eigensignals with rational z transforms are identified.

This paper proposes pilot-based channel quality reporting for orthogonal frequency division multiple access/time division duplex (OFDMA/TDD) systems with cochannel interference. In the proposed method, a terminal reports his channel quality in multiple subbands to base station (BS) using channel reciprocity of TDD systems. The terminal transmits uplink pilot signals in the subbands with different transmit power which is inversely proportional to the subband-based interference power. The BS can obtain knowledge of the terminal's received signal-to-interference-plus-noise power ratio on subband basis, measuring the pilot signal power. In performance evaluation, accuracy of channel quality reporting and amount of uplink signalling are examined. From numerical results, it is found that the proposed method becomes effective as the number of subbands and terminals for channel quality reporting increases.

Web services (WS, hereafter) paradigm has attained such a relevance in both the academic and the industry world that the vision of the Internet has evolved from being considered as a mere repository of data to become the underlying infrastructure on which organizations' strategic business operations are being deployed [1]. Security is a key aspect if WS are to be generally accepted and adopted. In fact, over the past years, the most important consortiums of the Internet, like IETF, W3C or OASIS, have produced a huge number of WS-based security standards. Despite this spectacular growth, a development process that facilitates the systematic integration of security into all subprocesses of WS-based software development life-cycle does not exist. Eventually, this process should guide WS-based software developers in the specification of WS-based security requirements, the design of WS-based security architectures, and the deployment of the most suitable WS security standards. In this article, we will briefly present a process of this type, named PWSSec (Process for Web Services Security), and the artifacts used during the elicitation activity, which belongs to the subprocess WSSecReq aimed at producing a WS-based security requirement specification.

This paper proposes a contention-free burst scheduling scheme for optically burst-switched WDM networks. We construct contention-free wavelength planes (λ-planes) by assigning dedicated wavelengths to each ingress node. Bursts are transmitted to their egress nodes on λ-planes, along routes forming a spanning tree. As a result, contention at intermediate core nodes is completely eliminated, and contention at ingress nodes is resolved by means of electric buffers. This paper develops a spanning tree construction algorithm, aiming at balancing input loads among output ports at each ingress node. Furthermore, a wavelength assignment algorithm is proposed, which is based on the amount of traffic lost at ingress nodes. We show that the proposed scheme can decrease the burst loss probability drastically, even if traffic intensities at ingress nodes are different.

Previously Verifier-Local Revocation (VLR) group signature schemes from bilinear maps were proposed. In VLR schemes, only verifiers are involved in the revocation of a member, while signers are not. Thus, the VLR schemes are suitable for mobile environments. Furthermore, the previously proposed schemes satisfy the important backward unlinkability. This means that even after a member is revoked, signatures produced by the member before the revocation remain anonymous. This property is needed in case of a voluntary leave of a member or in case of a key loss. However, in the previous schemes, signatures become long, due to the adopted assumption, which should be improved in order to apply the schemes to the mobile environments. In this paper an improved VLR scheme is proposed with the shorter group signatures. This is achieved by using a different assumption, DLDH assumption, and improving zero-knowledge proofs in the group signatures. The length of the proposed group signatures is reduced to about 53% of that of the previous ones.

In this paper, we analyse Ma signcryption scheme [4] proposed in Inscrypt'2006. Although Ma signcryption scheme [4] is probably secure against adaptive chosen ciphertext attacks and forgery, we show that Ma signcryption scheme is easily forgeable by the receiver and the receiver can impersonate the sender to forge any valid signcryption to any receiver.

Various trajectories of design, arising from the new methodology of analog network design, are analyzed. Several major criteria suggested for optimal selection of initial approximation to the design process permit the minimization of computer time. The initial approximation point is selected with regard to the previously revealed effect of acceleration of the design process. The concept of separatrix is defined making it possible to determine the optimal position of the initial approximation. The numerical results obtained for passive and active networks prove the possibility of optimal choice of the initial point in design process.

This paper proposes a novel robust fundamental frequency (F0) estimation algorithm based on complex-valued speech analysis for an analytic speech signal. Since analytic signal provides spectra only over positive frequencies, spectra can be accurately estimated in low frequencies. Consequently, it is considered that F0 estimation using the residual signal extracted by complex-valued speech analysis can perform better for F0 estimation than that for the residual signal extracted by conventional real-valued LPC analysis. In this paper, the autocorrelation function weighted by AMDF is adopted for the F0 estimation criterion and four signals; speech signal, analytic speech signal, LPC residual and complex LPC residual, are evaluated for the F0 estimation. Speech signals used in the experiments were an IRS filtered speech corrupted by adding white Gaussian noise or Pink noise whose noise levels are 10, 5, 0, -5 [dB]. The experimental results demonstrate that the proposed algorithm based on complex LPC residual can perform better than other methods in noisy environment.

The specification of a Multi-Agent System (MAS) involves the identification of a large number of entities and their relationships. This is a non-trivial task that requires managing different views of the system. Many problems concerning this issue originate in the presence of contradictory goals and tasks, inconsistencies, and unexpected behaviours. Such troublesome configurations should be detected and prevented during the development process in order to study alternative ways to cope with them. In this paper, we present methods and tools that support the management of contradictions during the analysis and design of MAS. Contradiction management in MAS has to consider both individual (i.e. agent) and social (i.e. organization) aspects, and their dynamics. Such issues have already been considered in social sciences, and more concretely in the Activity Theory, a social framework for the study of interactions in activity systems. Our approach applies knowledge from Activity Theory in MAS, especially its base of contradiction patterns. That requires a formalization of this social theory in order to be applicable in a software engineering context and its adaptation to agent-oriented methodologies. Then, it will be possible to check the occurrence of contradiction patterns in a MAS specification and provide solutions to those situations. This technique has been validated by implementing an assistant for the INGENIAS Development Kit and has been tested with several case studies. This paper shows part of one of these experiments for a web application.

An explicit expression for the impulse response coefficients of the predictive FIR digital filters is derived. The formula specifies a four-parameter family of smoothing FIR digital filters containing the Savitsky-Goaly filters, the Heinonen-Neuvo polynomial predictors, and the smoothing differentiators of arbitrary integer orders. The Hahn polynomials, which are orthogonal with respect to a discrete variable, are the main tool employed in the derivation of the formula. A recursive formula for the computation of the transfer function of the filters, which is the z-transform of a terminated sequence of polynomial ordinates, is also introduced. The formula can be used to design structures with low computational complexity for filters of any order.