To meet the increasing demand to expand wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) transmission capacity, ultrahigh spectral density coherent optical transmission employing multi-level modulation formats has attracted a lot of attention. In particular, ultrahigh multi-level quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM) has an enormous advantage as regards expanding the spectral efficiency to 10 bit/s/Hz and even approaching the Shannon limit. We describe fundamental technologies for ultrahigh spectral density coherent QAM transmission and present experimental results on polarization-multiplexed 256 QAM coherent optical transmission using heterodyne and homodyne detection with a frequency-stabilized laser and an optical phase-locked loop technique. In this experiment, Raman amplifiers are newly adopted to decrease the signal power, which can reduce the fiber nonlinearity. As a result, the power penalty was reduced from 5.3 to 2.0 dB. A 64 Gbit/s data signal is successfully transmitted over 160 km with an optical bandwidth of 5.4 GHz.

The nanoporosity installed in conjugated polymer films prepared by electrophoretic deposition makes it difficult to measure the amount of polymer deposited on a substrate. Here, an alternative approach, the estimation of material efficiency of the electrophoretic deposition from the optical absorption spectra of the residual suspensions has been studied. The ultimate recovery rate, which becomes smaller in suspensions with lower acetonitrile content, does not depend on the deposition voltage. The light scattering by the colloidal particles seems to be absent in residual suspensions after a deposition long enough to reach the ultimate recovery rate, indicating the exhaustion of the colloidal particles. Although the deposition rate of the polymer markedly lowers upon coating of the deposition electrode with PEDOT, the ultimate recovery rate remains unchanged. These results suggest that the material efficiency in this deposition method is limited by the generation rate of the colloidal particles in the suspension.

We review our recent work on ultra-long-haul wavelength division multiplexed (WDM) transmission with high spectral efficiency (SE) employing tight pre-filtering and multi-symbol detection. We start the discussion with a theoretical evaluation of the SE limit of pre-filtered modulation in optical fiber communication systems. We show that pre-filtering induced symbol correlation generates a modulation with memory and thus, a higher SE limit than that of the original memory-less modulation. We also investigate the merits of utilizing the pre-filtering induced symbol correlation with multi-symbol detection to achieve high SE transmission. We demonstrate transoceanic WDM transmission of a pre-filtered polarization division multiplexed return-to-zero quaternary phased shift keying (PDM-RZ-QPSK) modulation format with multi-symbol detection, achieving 419% SE which is higher than the SE limit of the original memory-less PDM-RZ-QPSK format.

We propose, in this letter, a new type of image denoising filter using a data analysis technique. We deal with pixels as data and extract the most dominant cluster from pixels in the filtering window. We output the centroid of the extracted cluster. We demonstrate that this graph-spectral filter can effectively reduce a mixture of Gaussian and random impulsive noise.

We obtained flat optical frequency combs by using the FM laser operation of a fiber ring laser and external intensity modulation. Extremely wide FM spectra can be easily obtained by the moderate internal phase modulation of an FM laser. We used an external intensity modulator to extract a linearly chirped part from the FM light in order to obtain flat spectra. In our experiments, we obtained a flat optical frequency comb with a spectral bandwidth of about 0.5 THz and a power deviation of less than 1.5 dB.

In this paper, we present a hybrid speech emotion recognition system exploiting both spectral and prosodic features in speech. For capturing the emotional information in the spectral domain, we propose a new spectral feature extraction method by applying a novel non-uniform subband processing, instead of the mel-frequency subbands used in Mel-Frequency Cepstral Coefficients (MFCC). For prosodic features, a set of features that are closely correlated with speech emotional states are selected. In the proposed hybrid emotion recognition system, due to the inherently different characteristics of these two kinds of features (e.g., data size), the newly extracted spectral features are modeled by Gaussian Mixture Model (GMM) and the selected prosodic features are modeled by Support Vector Machine (SVM). The final result of the proposed emotion recognition system is obtained by combining the results from these two subsystems. Experimental results show that (1) the proposed non-uniform spectral features are more effective than the traditional MFCC features for emotion recognition; (2) the proposed hybrid emotion recognition system using both spectral and prosodic features yields the relative recognition error reduction rate of 17.0% over the traditional recognition systems using only the spectral features, and 62.3% over those using only the prosodic features.

This paper presents a novel noise-robust feature extraction method for speech recognition. It is based on making the Minimum Variance Distortionless Response (MVDR) power spectrum estimation method robust against noise. This robustness is obtained by modifying the distortionless constraint of the MVDR spectral estimation method via weighting the sub-band power spectrum values based on the sub-band signal to noise ratios. The optimum weighting is obtained by employing the experimental findings of psychoacoustics. According to our experiments, this technique is successful in modifying the power spectrum of speech signals and making it robust against noise. The above method, when evaluated on Aurora 2 task for recognition purposes, outperformed both the MFCC features as the baseline and the MVDR-based features in different noisy conditions.

Traditionally, popular synonym acquisition methods are based on the distributional hypothesis, and a metric such as Jaccard coefficients is used to evaluate the similarity between the contexts of words to obtain synonyms for a query. On the other hand, when one tries to compile and clean a thesaurus, one often already has a modest number of synonym relations at hand. Could something be done with a half-built thesaurus alone? We propose the use of spectral methods and discuss their relation to other network-based algorithms in natural language processing (NLP), such as PageRank and Bootstrapping. Since compiling a thesaurus is very laborious, we believe that adding the proposed method to the toolkit of thesaurus constructors would significantly ease the pain in accomplishing this task.

In this letter, we propose an improved speech/ nonspeech classification method to effectively classify a multimedia source. To improve performance, we introduce a feature based on spectral duration analysis, and combine recently proposed features such as high zero crossing rate ratio (HZCRR), low short time energy ratio (LSTER), and pitch ratio (PR). According to the results of our experiments on speech, music, and environmental sounds, the proposed method obtained high classification results when compared with conventional approaches.

Nonlinear distortions in power amplifiers (PAs) generate spectral regrowth at the output, which causes interference to adjacent channels and errors in digitally modulated signals. This paper presents a novel method to evaluate adjacent channel leakage power ratio (ACPR) and error vector magnitude (EVM) from the amplitude-to-amplitude (AM/AM) and amplitude-to-phase (AM/PM) characteristics. The transmitted signal is considered to be complex Gaussian distributed in orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) systems. We use the Mehler formula to derive closed-form expressions of the PAs output power spectral density (PSD), ACPR and EVM for memoryless PA and memory PA respectively. We inspect the derived relationships using an OFDM signal in the IEEE 802.11a WLAN standard. Simulation results show that the proposed method is appropriate to predict the ACPR and EVM values of the nonlinear PA output in OFDM systems, when the AM/AM and AM/PM characteristics are known.

A cooperative relaying system with transmission scheduling is investigated. Cooperative relaying is composed of multiple links because the source sends the data to more than one receiver, and the destination receives multiple data transmitted by more than one transmitter. Therefore, if the source can transmit the data when the channel gains of the links are high, it is not clear which channel gains should be high in order to achieve high spectral efficiency. In the present letter, the spectral efficiency of a cooperative relaying system is theoretically derived under the assumption that the source transmits the data only when the channel gains of links are above certain threshold values. Numerical results reveal that a high spectral efficiency can be achieved by assuring a high channel gain for the link with the highest average received power among links to the destination.

A simple suboptimal power allocation method is proposed for SC-FDMA systems. It is known that the performance of constant power-based allocation methods is close to that of optimal solutions. In this letter, by utilizing the waterfilling condition inequality derived for SC-FDMA systems, a threshold is set to select subcarriers for loading constant power to these selected subcarriers. It offers competitive performance as confirmed by the simulation results.

We analyze the performance of an adaptive communication scheme in which by employing limited feedback, the source will decide to transmit signal to the destination either by the direct link or by the direct and relaying links. Specifically, by using the instantaneous SNR as the metric, if the S-D link is better, the source will transmit to destination directly. Otherwise, the two-phase transmission mode will be triggered in which source cooperates with the relay or transmits twice within two time slots based on the quality of the received signal at the relay. Initially, the spectral efficiency is derived by calculating the probabilities of direct transmission and two-phase transmission mode. Subsequently, the BER performance for the adaptive cooperation schemes is analyzed by considering the BER routines of two events: the source transmits the signal alone or cooperates with the relay. Also, the optimum power allocation is studied based on the BER result. Finally, Monte-Carlo simulation results are presented to confirm the performance enhancement offered by the proposed scheme.

Traditional wavelet-based speech enhancement algorithms are ineffective in the presence of highly non-stationary noise because of the difficulties in the accurate estimation of the local noise spectrum. In this paper, a simple method of noise estimation employing the use of a voice activity detector is proposed. We can improve the output of a wavelet-based speech enhancement algorithm in the presence of random noise bursts according to the results of VAD decision. The noisy speech is first preprocessed using bark-scale wavelet packet decomposition ( BSWPD ) to convert a noisy signal into wavelet coefficients (WCs). It is found that the VAD using bark-scale spectral entropy, called as BS-Entropy, parameter is superior to other energy-based approach especially in variable noise-level. The wavelet coefficient threshold (WCT) of each subband is then temporally adjusted according to the result of VAD approach. In a speech-dominated frame, the speech is categorized into either a voiced frame or an unvoiced frame. A voiced frame possesses a strong tone-like spectrum in lower subbands, so that the WCs of lower-band must be reserved. On the contrary, the WCT tends to increase in lower-band if the speech is categorized as unvoiced. In a noise-dominated frame, the background noise can be almost completely removed by increasing the WCT. The objective and subjective experimental results are then used to evaluate the proposed system. The experiments show that this algorithm is valid on various noise conditions, especially for color noise and non-stationary noise conditions.

We propose a surface profiling algorithm by white-light interferometry that extends sampling interval to twice of the widest interval among those used in conventional algorithms. The proposed algorithm uses a novel function called an in-phase component of an interferogram to detect the peak of the interferogram, while conventional algorithms used the squared-envelope function or the envelope function. We show that the in-phase component has the same peak as the corresponding interferogram when an optical filter has a symmetric spectral distribution. We further show that the in-phase component can be reconstructed from sampled values of the interferogram using the so-called quadrature sampling technique. Since reconstruction formulas used in the algorithm are very simple, the proposed algorithm requires low computational costs. Simulation results show the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm.

Recently, a new multi-carrier CDMA (MC-CDMA) system with cyclic-shift orthogonal keying (CSOK) has been proposed and shown to be more spectral and power efficient than conventional MC-CDMA systems. In this paper, a novel extension called the multiplexed CSOK (MCSOK) MC-CDMA system is proposed to further increase the data rate while maintaining a low peak-to-average power ratio (PAPR). First, the data stream is divided into multiple parallel substreams that are mapped into QPSK-CSOK symbols in terms of cyclic shifted Chu sequences. Second, these sequences are repeated, modulated, summed, and placed on IFFT subcarriers, resulting in a constant-modulus multiplexed signal that preserves the desired orthogonality among substreams. The receiver performs frequency-domain equalization and uses efficient demultiplexing, despreading, and demapping schemes to detect the modulation symbols. Furthermore, an alternate MCSOK system configuration with high link quality is also presented. Simulations show that the proposed MCSOK system attains lower PAPR and BER, as compared to conventional MC-CDMA system using Walsh codes. Under a rich multipath environment, the high link quality configuration exhibits excellent performance with both diversity gain and MCSOK modulation gain.

In the present paper, the performance of cooperative relaying networks with adaptive relaying scheme selection is analyzed. Cooperative relaying is a new technique to achieve spatial diversity gain by using neighboring stations. However, when multiple stations transmit simultaneously, the number of interference signals increases. Therefore, the introduction of cooperative relaying in radio communication systems does not always increase the network capacity due to the co-channel interference. Therefore, in order to achieve high spectral efficiency, it is necessary to select cooperative relaying or non-cooperative relaying adaptively. Assuming both centralized and decentralized adaptive controls, the spectrum efficiency is evaluated. The performance under decentralized control is evaluated using a game-theoretic approach. Simulation results show that the introduction of cooperative relaying with centralized control always increases the spectral efficiency. On the other hand, Simulation results also show that, when each source selects a relaying scheme independently and selfishly to maximize its own spectral efficiency, the introduction of the cooperative relaying may reduce the spectral efficiency due to the increase in the number of interference signals.

This letter provides a study on the end-to-end performance of multi-hop wireless communication systems equipped with re-generative (decode-and-forward) relays over Rayleigh fading channels. More specifically, the probability density function (pdf) of the tightly approximated end-to-end signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of the systems is derived. Using this approximation allows us to avoid considering all possible combinations of correct and erroneous decisions at the relays for which the end-to-end transmission is error-free. The proposed analysis offers a simple and unifying approach as well as reduces computation burden in evaluating important multi-hop system's performance metrics. Simulations are performed to verify the accuracy and to show the tightness of the theoretical analysis.

In this Letter, a robust system identification method is proposed for the generalized sidelobe canceller using dual microphones. The conventional transfer-function generalized sidelobe canceller employs the non-stationarity characteristics of the speech signal to estimate the relative transfer function and thus is difficult to apply when the noise is also non-stationary. Under the assumption of W-disjoint orthogonality between the speech and the non-stationary noise, the proposed algorithm finds the speech-dominant time-frequency bins of the input signal by inspecting the system output and the inter-microphone time delay. Only these bins are used to estimate the relative transfer function, so reliable estimates can be obtained under non-stationary noise conditions. The experimental results show that the proposed algorithm significantly improves the performance of the transfer-function generalized sidelobe canceller, while only sustaining a modest estimation error in adverse non-stationary noise environments.

In this paper, a new approach to channel order selection of single-input multiple-output (SIMO), finite impulse response (FIR) channels is proposed for blind channel estimation. The approach utilizes cross spectral density (CSD) of the channel outputs, and minimizes the distance between two CSD's, one calculated non-parametrically from the observed output data, and the other calculated from the blindly estimated channel parameters. The CSD criterion is numerically tested on randomly generated SIMO-FIR channels, and shown to be very effective compared to existing channel order selection methods especially under low SNR settings. Blind estimates of the channels with the selected channel order also show superiority of the CSD criterion.