An incremental relaying protocol is a promising scheme for preventing the inefficient use of resources in half-duplex cooperative relay networks. In particular, the incremental selection amplify-and-forward (ISAF) relaying scheme is a well-designed protocol under the condition that the source-to-destination (SD) link is static during the two transmission phases. However, from a practical viewpoint, the SD link is not static but varies with time, and thus the ISAF relaying scheme may not work well in the field. In this work, we first show that the outage performance of the ISAF relaying scheme may decrease when the SD link is not static during the two transmission phases. We then propose a modified version of the ISAF relaying scheme which overcomes such a limitation of the ISAF relaying scheme under time-varying environments. Finally, numerical and simulation results are provided to support our findings.

The amount of seasonings used during food preparation is quite important information for modern people to enable them to cook delicious dishes as well as to take care for their health. In this paper, we propose a near real-time automated system for measuring and recording the amount of seasonings used during food preparation. Our proposed system is equipped with two devices: electronic scales and a camera. Seasoning bottles are basically placed on the electronic scales in the proposed system, and the scales continually measure the total weight of the bottles placed on them. When a chef uses a certain seasoning, he/she first picks up the bottle containing it from the scales, then adds the seasoning to a dish, and then returns the bottle to the scales. In this process, the chef's picking and returning actions are monitored by the camera. The consumed amount of each seasoning is calculated as the difference in weight between before and after it is used. We evaluated the performance of the proposed system with experiments in 301 trials in actual food preparation performed by seven participants. The results revealed that our system successfully measured the consumption of seasonings in 60.1% of all the trials.

A low-complexity time-frequency multiplex estimator and low-complexity equalizer transceiver design are proposed to combat the problems of RF impairment associated with zero-IF transceiver of multi-carrier systems. Moreover, the proposed preambles can estimate the transmitter (TX) in-phase and quadrature-phase (IQ) imbalance, carrier frequency offset (CFO), and channel impulse response parameters. The proposed system has two parts. First, all parameters of the impairments are estimated by the designed time-frequency multiplex estimator. Second, the estimated parameters are used to compensate the above problems and detect the transmitted signal with low complexity. Simulation results confirm that the proposed estimator performs reliably with respect to IQ imbalance, CFO, and multipath fading channel effects.

This letter presents a two-stage method to extend the degenerate unmixing estimation technique (DUET) for reverberant speech separation. First, frequency-bin-wise attenuation and delay parameters are introduced and estimated by online update rules, to handle early reflections. Next, a mask reestimation algorithm based on the precedence effect is developed to detect and fix the errors on binary masks caused by late reflections. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed method improves separation performance significantly.

In this paper, we consider a distributed power control scheme that can maximize overall capacity of an interference-limited wireless system in which the same radio resource is spatially reused among different transmitter-receiver pairs. This power control scheme employs a gradient-descent method in each transmitter, which adapts its own transmit power to co-channel interference dynamically to maximize the total weighted sum rate (WSR) of the system over a given interval. The key contribution in this paper is to propose a common feedback channel, over which a backward physical signal is accumulated for computing the gradient of the transmit power in each transmitter, thereby significantly reducing signaling overhead for the distributed power control. We show that the proposed power control scheme can achieve almost 95% of its theoretical upper WSR bound, while outperforming the non-power-controlled system by roughly 63% on average.

In this paper, we study a distributed time-reversal space-time block coded single-carrier (D-TR-STBC-SC) system for amplify-and-forward (AF) half-duplex relaying in frequency-selective Rayleigh fading channels. Under the imperfect channel estimation condition, we analyze the mean-square-error (MSE) performance of the optimal and channel-mismatched frequency domain minimum MSE (FD-MMSE) and least square (LS) equalization. Our analysis results show that, unlike the point-to-point communications, the channel-mismatched FD-MMSE equalization of D-TR-STBC-SC relaying network leads to the ceiling effect that the MSE increases as the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of relay-to-destination link increases. Decomposing the MSE, it is found that the primary cause of the ceiling effect is the source-to-destination link in the first time-slot, which makes the covariance matrix of noise vector ill-conditioned. In order to resolve the channel-mismatching problems in the equalization process, we develop optimum relay power control strategies by considering practical channel estimations, i.e., training-based LS and linear minimum MSE (LMMSE) channel estimations. It is shown that the optimum power control resolves the trade-off between MSE performance and relay power consumption, and improves the robustness against the channel-mismatching. Finally, we introduce a performance evaluation to demonstrate the performance of channel equalization combined with the proposed power controls in D-TR-STBC-SC relaying network.

This paper considers how to evaluate the resiliency for virtualized system with software rejuvenation. The software rejuvenation is a proactive technique to prevent the failure caused by aging phenomenon such as resource exhaustion. In particular, according to Gohsh et al. (2010), we compute a quantitative criterion to evaluate resiliency of system by using continuous-time Markov chains (CTMC). In addition, in order to convert general state-based models to CTMCs, we employ PH (phase-type) expansion technique. In numerical examples, we investigate the resiliency of virtualized system with software rejuvenation under two different rejuvenation policies.

The main purpose of this paper is to propose overtime replacement policies for the system which has a finite life cycle. The newly proposed overtime technique, where the system is replaced preventively at the first completion of some working cycle over a planned time T, is employed into modelings to avoid operational interruptions for successive jobs. We consider two overtime replacement model with finite operating interval which S is given as (i) constant interval, and (ii) random interval. The expected replacement costs per unit of time are obtained and their optimal solutions are discussed analytically. Further, numerical examples are given when the failure time has a Weibull distribution and working cycles are exponentially distributed.

In this paper, we propose a transmit multi-block frequency-domain equalization (MB-FDE) for frequency-domain space-time block coded joint transmit/receive diversity (FD-STBC-JTRD). Noting that a STBC codeword consists of multiple coded blocks, the transmit MB-FDE uses the multiple transmit FDE weight matrices, each associated with each coded block. Both single-carrier (SC) transmission and orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) transmission are considered. For SC transmission, the transmit MB-FDE weight matrices are jointly optimized so as to minimize the mean square error (MSE) between the transmit signal before STBC encoding and the received signal after STBC decoding. For OFDM transmission, they are jointly optimized so as to maximize the received signal-to-noise power ratio (SNR) after STBC decoding. We show by theoretical analysis that the proposed transmit MB-FDE can achieve 1/RSTBC times higher received SNR than the conventional transmit single-block FDE (SB-FDE), where RSTBC represents the code rate of STBC. It is confirmed by computer simulation that, when more than 2 receive antennas are used, MB-FDE can always achieve better BER performance than SB-FDE irrespective of the number of transmit antennas, and the channel frequency-selectivity.

This paper presents a nonlinear model of human brain activity in response to visual stimuli according to Blood-Oxygen-Level-Dependent (BOLD) signals scanned by functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI). A BOLD signal often contains a low frequency signal component (trend), which is usually removed by detrending because it is considered a part of noise. However, such detrending could destroy the dynamics of the BOLD signal and ignore an essential component in the response. This paper shows a model that, in the absence of detrending, can predict the BOLD signal with smaller errors than existing models. The presented model also has low Schwarz information criterion, which implies that it will be less likely to overfit the experimental data. Comparison between the various types of artificial trends suggests that the trends are not merely the result of noise in the BOLD signal.

A simple robust finite-time convergent observer is presented in the presence of unknown input disturbance and measurement noise. In order to achieve the robust estimation and ensure the finite-time convergence, the proposed observer is constructed by using a multiple integral observer scheme in a hybrid system framework. Comparative computer simulations and laboratory experiments have been performed to test the effectiveness of the proposed observer.

Recently, Intelligent Transport Systems (ITS) are being researched and developed briskly. As a part of ITS, detecting vehicles from images taken by a camera loaded on a vehicle are conducted. From such backgrounds, authors have been conducting vehicle detection in nighttime. To evaluate the accuracy of this detection, gold standards of the detection are required. At present, gold standards are created manually, but manually detecting vehicles take time. Accordingly, a system which detects vehicles accurately without human help is needed to evaluate the accuracy of the vehicle detection in real time. Therefore the purpose of this study is to automatically detect vehicles in nighttime images, taken by an in-vehicle camera, with high accuracy in offline processing. To detect vehicles we focused on the brightness of the headlights and taillights, because it is difficult to detect vehicles from their shape in nighttime driving scenes. The method we propose uses Center Surround Extremas, called CenSurE for short, to detect blobs. CenSurE is a method that uses the difference in brightness between the lights and the surroundings. However, blobs obtained by CenSurE will also include objects other than headlights and taillights. For example, streetlights and delineators would be detected. To distinguish such blobs, they are tracked in inverse time and vehicles are detected using tags based on the characteristics of each object. Although every object appears from the same point in forward time process, each object appears from different places in images in inverse time processing, allowing it to track and tag blobs easily. To evaluate the effectiveness of this proposed method, experiment of detecting vehicles was conducted using nighttime driving scenes taken by a camera loaded on a vehicle. Experimental results of the proposed method were nearly equivalent to manual detection.

To achieve more accurate measurements of the mobile station (MS) location, it is possible to integrate many kinds of measurements. In this paper we proposed several hybrid methods that utilized time of arrival (TOA) at seven base stations (BSs) and the angle of arrival (AOA) information at the serving BS to give location estimation of the MS in non-line-of-sight (NLOS) environments. Rather than applying the nonlinear circular lines of position (LOP), the proposed methods are easier by using linear LOP to determine the MS. In addition, the proposed methods can mitigate the NLOS effect, simply by applying the weighted sum of the intersections between different linear LOP and the AOA line, without requiring priori knowledge of NLOS error statistics. Simulation results show that the proposed methods can always yield superior performance in comparison with Taylor series algorithm (TSA) and the hybrid lines of position algorithm (HLOP) and the previous proposed methods employing circular LOP.

Range estimation based on time of arrival (TOA) is becoming increasingly important with the emergence of location-based applications and next-generation location-aware wireless sensor networks. For radar and positioning systems, chirp signals have primarily been used due to their inborn signal properties for decomposition. Recently, chirp signal has been selected as the baseline standard of ISO/IEC 24730-5 and IEEE 802.15.4a in 2.4GHz, organized for the development of a real-time accurate positioning system. When estimating the TOA of the received signals in multipath channel, the super-resolution algorithms, known as estimation of signal parameters via rotational invariance techniques (ESPRIT), multiple signal classification method (MUSIC) and matrix pencil (MP), are preferred due to their superiority in decomposing the received paths. For the super-resolution algorithm-based TOA estimation of chirp signals, the received chirp signals must be transformed into a sinusoidal form for the super-resolution algorithm. The conventional transformation, the de-chirping technique, changes the received chirp signals to sinusoids so that the super-resolution algorithms can estimate the TOA of the received chirp signals through a frequency estimation of the transformed sinusoids. In practice, the initial timing synchronizer at receiver tries to find the maximum energy point at which the received paths are overlapped maximally. At this time, the conventional de-chirping yields lossy transformed sinusoids for the first arrival path from the received samples synchronized to the maximum energy point. The first arrival path is not involved in the transformed sinusoids with the conventional transformation, leading to performance degradation. However, the proposed energy efficient time-frequency transformation achieves lossless transformation by using the extended reference chirp signals. The proposed transformation is incorporated with MUSIC-based TOA estimation. The effectiveness of the proposed transformation is analyzed and verified. The root mean squared error (RMSE) of the proposed transformation is compared with Cramer-Rao lower bound and those for the conventional algorithms such as super-resolution, ESPRIT and matrix pencil algorithm in multipath channel.

In this letter, a simple dispersion matrix design method for generalized space-time shift keying is presented, in which the dispersion matrices are systematically constructed with cyclic identity matrix, without the need of computer search. The proposed scheme is suitable for any number of transmit antennas greater than two, and can achieve the transmit diversity order of two except two special cases. Simulation results are presented to verify our theoretical analysis and the performance of the proposed scheme.

We propose an energy-efficient real-time scheduling algorithm based on T-L Plane abstraction. The algorithm is designed to exploit Dynamic Power Management and generates a new event called event-s to render longer idle intervals, which increases the chances of switching a processor to the sleep mode. We compare the proposed algorithm with previous work and show that it is effective for energy management.

Open-loop (OL) transmit diversity is more subject to the influence of channel estimation error than closed-loop (CL) transmit diversity, although it has the merit of providing better performance in fast Doppler frequency environments because it doesn't require a feedback signal. This paper proposes an OL transmit diversity scheme combined with intra-subframe frequency hopping (FH) and iterative decision-feedback channel estimation (DFCE) in a shared channel for discrete Fourier transform (DFT)-precoded orthogonal frequency division multiple access (OFDMA). We apply intra-subframe FH to OL transmit diversity to mitigate the reduction in the diversity gain under high fading correlation conditions among antennas and iterative DFCE to improve the channel estimation accuracy. Computer simulation results show that the required average received signal-to-noise power ratio at the average block error rate (BLER) of 10-2 of the space-time block code (STBC) with intra-subframe FH is reduced to within approximately 0.8dB compared to codebook-based CL transmit diversity when using iterative DFCE at the maximum Doppler frequency of fD =5.55Hz. Moreover, it is shown that STBC with intra-subframe FH and iterative DFCE achieves much better BLER performance compared to CL transmit diversity when fD is higher than approximately 30Hz since the tracking ability of the latter degrades due to the fast fading variation in its feedback loop.

In wireless sensor networks, or WSNs, a malicious node is able to cover itself by switching between good and bad behaviors. Even when running under a reputation mechanism, such a node can still behave maliciously now and then so long as its reputation is within the acceptable level. To address this inconsistent behavior issue, a combined approach of statistic reputation and time series is proposed in this study, in which the negative binomial reputation is applied to rate the nodes' reputation and concept of time series is borrowed to analyze the reputation results. Simulations show that the proposed method can effectively counter inconsistent behavior nodes and thus improves the overall system performance.

With the development and diverse use of wireless radio terminals, it is necessary to estimate the specific absorption rate (SAR) of the human body from such devices under various exposure situations. In particular, tablet computers may be used for a long time while placed near the abdomen. There has been insufficient evaluation of the SAR for the human body from tablet computers. Therefore, we investigated the SAR of various configurations of a commercial tablet computer using a numerical model with the anatomical structures of Japanese males and females, respectively. We find that the 10-g-averaged SAR of the tablet computer is strongly altered by the tablet's orientation, i.e., from -7.3dB to -22.6dB. When the tablet computer is moved parallel to the height direction, the relative standard deviations of the 10-g averaged SAR for the male and female models are within 40%. In addition, those for the different tilts of the computer are within 20%. The fluctuations of the 10-g-averaged SAR for the seated human models are within ±1.5dB in all cases.

This paper proposes an updating state dependent disturbance observer (USDDOB) to reject position dependent disturbances when parameters vary slowly, and input and output are time-delayed. To reject the effects of resultant slowly-varying position dependent disturbances, the USDDOB uses the control method of the state dependent disturbance observer (SDDOB) and time-invariance approximation. The USDDOB and a main proportional integral (PI) controller constitute a robust controller. Simulations and experiments using a 1-degree-of-freedom (1-DOF) tilted planar robot show the effectiveness of the proposed method.