Low-density parity-check (LDPC) codes are one of the most powerful error correcting codes and are attracting much attention these days. LDPC codes are promising for communications and broadcasting as well where the use of error correcting codes are essential. LDPC codes have been standardized in some communication standards, such as, IEEE802.16e, DVB-S2, IEEE802.3an (10BASE-T), and so on. The performance of LDPC codes largely depend on their code structure and decoding algorithm. In this paper, we present the basics of LDPC codes and their decoding algorithms. We also present some LDPC codes that have good performance and are receiving much attention particularly in communication systems. We also overview some standardized LDPC codes, the LDPC codes standardized in DVB-S2 and the IEEE802.16e standard LDPC codes. Moreover, we present some research on LDPC coded MIMO systems and HARQ using LDPC codes.

The transport network paradigm is changing as evidenced by IP convergence and the divergence of architectures and technologies. Harnessing the full power of light will spur the creation of new broadband and ubiquitous services networks. To attain this, however, not only must photonic technologies be optimized, but they must also be coordinated with complementary electrical technologies. With regard to photonic network design technologies, further developments are necessary including very large scale network design, quasi-dynamic network design, and multi-layer optical path network design.

This paper surveys and introduces propagation studies and models that are expected to contribute to the development of broadband wireless systems. The survey focused on theory-based propagation models, experimental measurement data useful for modeling, and transmission characteristic evaluations using propagation models. The survey did not attempt to cover all papers in the research fields, but rather took key papers for various relevant subjects and described them in some detail. The basic characteristics of multipath propagation are summarized from the viewpoints of narrow-band (NB), wide-band (WB), and ultra wide-band (UWB). Recent studies on spatio-temporal propagation models and the relationship between models and systems are introduced. To clarify the relationship between OFDM, which is a representative of wideband data transmission schemes, and wave propagation factors, problems due to large delay spread and large Doppler spread are highlighted. Finally, studies on UWB propagation measurement and propagation models are introduced.

We propose a new cyclic postfix based orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) system. The proposed system shows superior performance in symbol time synchronization while achieving channel estimation performance comparable to that of conventional cyclic prefix based OFDM system. In the proposed system, an identical postfix is generated at the end of each OFDM symbol by inserting pilot values amongst the data symbols in a frequency domain and performing Inverse Fast Fourier Transform (IFFT) operation on it. Robust time synchronization is achieved by auto- and cross-correlating the postfix. Also, time or frequency domain channel estimation can be realized by using properly designed postfix according to channel estimation method.

This paper investigates the dynamic spectrum management problem for digital subscriber lines. Two new distributed dynamic spectrum management algorithms, which improve upon the existing iterative water-filling algorithm, are proposed. Unlike the iterative water-filling algorithm, in which crosstalk interference is reduced by using adaptive power backoff, the new algorithms employ full power and mitigate crosstalk interference by shifting one user's spectrum away from the other's. Simulation results show that the new algorithms achieve significant performance gains over the iterative water-filling algorithm in mixed central office/remote terminal (CO/RT) deployment asymmetric digital subscriber line (ADSL) and upstream very-high bit-rate digital subscriber line (VDSL).

One of the important issues of future convergence service design in access networks is the ability to support different kinds of video delivery services for high quality IP-TV and multicast Video on Demand (VoD). In this paper, we address how to efficiently allocate video transmission channels based on multicast management technology in shared wavelength division multiplexed-passive optical network (WDM-PON). The shared WDM-PON introduces a broadcast downstream wavelength to support multicast videos in the point-to-point WDM-PON. Based on the shared architecture and multicast management technologies, the proposed dynamic channel scheduling arbitrates transmission channels of videos. It uses the information of broadcast video share to maximize traffic share in the optical layer. By maintaining high video share, proposed algorithm supports the maximum number of high quality multicast videos without serious service interference to real-time videos, delay-able videos, and internet services. In addition, it also reduces the packet processing burden and buffer size of the optical line termination (OLT). The analytic and simulation results validate the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm.

The performance of a new APSK receiver is analyzed using numerical simulation. The proposed receiver eliminates the penalty caused by SPM-induced phase-shift of optical pulses by employing three sub-modules and an amplitude-pattern controlled switch for each DPSK tributary. The interplay between SPM, IXPM, and XPM determines the performance of the proposed receiver for single-channel and WDM transmission.

A critical design issue of Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) is its congestion control that allows the protocol to adjust the end-to-end communication rate based on the detection of packet loss. However, TCP congestion control may function poorly during its slow start and congestion avoidance phases. This is because TCP sends bursts of packets with the fast window increase and the ACK-clock based transmission in slow start, and respond slowly with large congestion windows especially in high bandwidth-delay product (BDP) networks during congestion avoidance. In this article, we propose an improved version of TCP, TCP-Ho, that uses an efficient congestion window control algorithm for a TCP source. According to the estimated available bandwidth and measured round-trip times (RTTs), the proposed algorithm adjusts the congestion window size with a rate between exponential growth and linear growth intelligently. Our extensive simulation results show that TCP-Ho significantly improves the performance of connections as well as remaining fair and stable when the BDP increases. Furthermore, it is feasible to implement because only sending part needs to be modified.

In this paper, we address how to construct efficient retransmission trees for reliable multicast. Efficiency of retransmission trees mainly depends on locations of repairers, which are in charge of retransmitting lost packets. We propose an algorithm for each receiver to find a repairer for efficient recovery. The resulting tree for retransmission is organized by pairs of a receiver and a repairer which is the host "nearest" to the receiver among the multicast group members "nearer" to the sender. We formally prove that the proposed algorithm realizes reliable multicast with only constant times of a lower bound cost achievable through impractical router support. We also evaluate the algorithm through extensive simulations.

IEEE 802.11 DCF is an asynchronous and distributed MAC protocol which does not require the existence of a central controller for medium access coordination. This flexibility, which is due to DCF's contention-based nature, comes at the expense of the overhead associated with contention resolution. The overhead consists of frame collision time and channel idle time, which is particularly severe when channel is saturated. In this paper, we present an enhancement of DCF which aims at reducing its contention resolution overhead by equipping it with a distributed reservation mechanism. The proposed reservation mechanism enhances collision avoidance mechanism of DCF by enforcing a partially ordered medium access through an implicit agreement between neighboring nodes. Simulation results, using ns-2 network simulator, show that the added reservation scheme 1) effectively reduces DCF's overhead and improves channel utilization particularly when node density and traffic load is high, 2) significantly enhance DCF's fairness.

This paper addresses the problem of inter-domain QoS routing with Service Level Agreements (SLA) for data transport between peering domains, using virtual-trunk type aggregates. The problem is formally stated and formulated in Integer Linear Programming. As a practical solution, we define the QoS_INFO extension to the BGP routing protocol, conveying three different QoS metrics (light load delay, assigned bandwidth and a congestion alarm), and a path selection algorithm using a combination of these metrics. We present simulation results of QoS_INFO, standard BGP, and BGP with the QoS_NLRI extension, and compare them with the optimal route set provided by the ILP formulation. The results show that our proposal yields better QoS than standard BGP or BGP with the QoS_NLRI extension, since it is able to efficiently avoid congested paths, and that the impact of QoS_INFO in route stability is relatively low.

Parallel TCP is one possible approach to increasing throughput of data transfer in Long Fat Networks (LFNs). Using parallel TCP is something of black art. As high-speed transport-layer protocols appear, e.g. HSTCP, it is necessary to reinvestigate the performance of parallel TCP, because a choice has to be make among them for the system. In this paper, the performance of parallel TCP is evaluated by mathematical analysis based on a simple dumbbell topology. Packet drop rate and aggregate goodput are used as two metrics to characterize the performance of parallel TCP. Two cases, namely synchronization and non-synchronization, are analyzed in detail when DropTail is deployed on routers. The synchronization case is common in using parallel TCP, but the goodput deteriorates seriously. The non-synchronization case may benefit parallel TCP, but extra mechanisms are required, and it is not easy to implement in the real world. The problem also remains even if Random Early Detection (RED) queue management is employed on routers. The analysis results show the difficulty in using parallel TCP in practice.

Irregular LDPC codes can achieve better error rate performance than regular LDPC codes. However, irregular LDPC codes have higher error floors than regular LDPC codes. The Ordered Statistic Decoding (OSD) algorithm achieves approximate Maximum Likelihood (ML) decoding. ML decoding is effective to lower error floors. However, the OSD estimates satisfy the parity check equation of the LDPC code even the estimates are wrong. Hybrid decoder combining LLR-BP decoding algorithm and the OSD algorithm cannot also lower error floors, because wrong estimates also satisfy the LDPC parity check equation. We proposed the concatenated code constructed with an inner irregular LDPC code and an outer Cyclic Redundancy Check (CRC). Owing to CRC, we can detect wrong codewords from OSD estimates. Our CRC-LDPC code with hybrid decoder can lower error floors in an AWGN channel. In wireless communications, we cannot neglect the effects of the channel. The OSD algorithm needs the ordering of each bit based on the reliability. The Channel State Information (CSI) is used for deciding reliability of each bit. In this paper, we evaluate the Block Error Rate (BLER) of the CRC-LDPC code with hybrid decoder in a fast fading channel with perfect and imperfect CSIs where 'imperfect CSI' means that the distribution of channel and those statistical average of the fading amplitudes are known at the receiver. By computer simulation, we show that the CRC-LDPC code with hybrid decoder can lower error floors than the conventional LDPC code with hybrid decoder in the fast fading channel with perfect and imperfect CSIs. We also show that combining error detection with the OSD algorithm is effective not only for lowering the error floor but also for reducing computational complexity of the OSD algorithm.

Nowadays, MIMO systems are playing an important role in wireless communications. In this paper, we propose a spatial-temporal adaptive MIMO beamforming scheme for single carrier transmission in frequency-selective fading channels with the assumption of perfect channel state information (CSI) at both the transmitter and receiver. The transmit and receive weight vectors for detecting the preceding signal and the receive weight vectors for detecting the delayed signals of the preceding signal are designed by an iterative update algorithm. Based on minimum mean square error (MMSE) method, the delayed versions of the preceding signal are exploited to maximize the output signal to interference and noise ratio (SINR) instead of suppressing them at the receiver. The improvement of output SINR is useful for MIMO systems to enhance the high-quality communication in broadband wireless systems.

We develop a maximum likelihood estimation scheme for correcting the carrier frequency offsets prior to the general intercarrier interference (ICI) self-cancellation in the OFDM systems. Since the same data symbols employed for ICI self-cancellation are also used for frequency offset estimation, the proposed scheme does not consume additional bandwidth. The combined use of the estimation algorithm and ICI self-cancellation scheme provides both frequency offset compensation and ICI reduction hence improves the system performance greatly. The effectiveness of the proposed estimation-cancellation scheme is further verified by calculating the bit error rates of various OFDM receivers, and substantial improvements are found.

Frequency-domain equalization (FDE) can take advantage of the frequency-selectivity of the channel to improve the transmission performance in a frequency selective fading channel. To further improve the transmission performance, the transmit diversity technique can be used. Cyclic delay transmit diversity (CDTD) can strengthen the frequency-selectivity while space-time transmit diversity (STTD) can achieve the antenna diversity gain. In this paper, we propose a 4-antenna space-time cyclic delay transmit diversity (STCDTD), which is a combination of 2-antenna STTD and 2-antenna CDTD schemes, for orthogonal multi-code direct sequence code division multiple access (DS-CDMA) using FDE. We evaluate the BER performance and the throughput performance by computer simulation and compare them with the original CDTD and STTD schemes.

Recently, we proposed space-time block coded-joint transmit/receive antenna diversity (STBC-JTRD) for narrow band transmission in a frequency-nonselective fading channel; it allows an arbitrary number of transmit antennas while limiting the number of receive antennas to 4. In this paper, we extend STBC-JTRD to the case of frequency-selective fading channels and propose frequency-domain STBC-JTRD for broadband direct sequence-spread spectrum (DSSS) signal transmission. A conditional bit error rate (BER) analysis is presented. The average BER performance in a frequency-selective Rayleigh fading is evaluated by Monte-Carlo numerical computation method using the derived conditional BER and is confirmed by computer simulation of the signal transmission. Performance comparison between frequency-domain STBC-JTRD transmission and joint space-time transmit diversity (STTD) and frequency-domain equalization (FDE) reception is also presented.

A new approach for solution of the Tensor-Volume Integral Equation (TVIE) using Galerkin-based moment method (MoM) for three-dimensional dielectric bodies is proposed. Two problems of plane wave scattering by a dielectric sphere and a thin-wire antenna in close proximity to a dielectric body are investigated. In both cases, cubic modeling is applied and a combination of entire-domain and sub-domain basis functions, including three-dimensional polynomial functions with different degrees is utilized for field expansion inside dielectric bodies. Power polynomial is adopted for this purpose and its property is discussed over the proposed mixed-domain MoM formulation. Numerical examples show that based on the proposed method, a relative fast algorithm and suitable accuracy are achieved compared with conventional MoM. The accuracy of the proposed method is verified by comparing it with the Mie theory, conventional MoM and the FDTD method.

In this paper, the authors propose a circularly polarized printed antenna combining a slot array antenna and a patch antenna, with dual-band operation. The proposed antenna has good isolation performance, is compact, and has simple configuration. This antenna is composed of two parts, a patch antenna (for Rx) on the top, and a slot array antenna (for Tx) on the bottom, respectively. The element layout is such that the lower radiation element is not hidden by the upper one for wide observation angle. Hence, both radiation elements can naturally radiate the targeted polarization. Both slot array and patch antenna are fed by electromagnetically coupled microstrip line feed. With such a configuration, it is possible to efficiently obtain good isolation characteristics for both frequency bands. Furthermore, this antenna can be easily composed and it is not necessary to use any feeding pin or via hole. The target of this antenna is mobile communications applications such as mobile satellite communications, base-station of wireless LAN, etc. Here, the design techniques are discussed and the numerical and experimental analyses are presented.

In this paper, Integration of Fractional Gaussian Window transform (IFRGWT) is proposed for the parameter estimation of linear FM (LFM) signal; the proposal is based on the integration of the Fractional Fourier transform modified by Gaussian Window. The peak values can be detected by adjusting the standard deviation of Gaussian function and locating the optimal rotated angles. And also the parameters of the signal can be estimated well. As an application, detection and parameter estimation of multiple LFM signals are investigated in low signal-to-noise ratios (SNRs). The analytic results and simulations clearly demonstrate that the method is effective.

Ultra-wideband pulse radars are promising candidates for 3-dimensional environment measurements by autonomous robots. Estimating 3-dimensional target shapes by scanning with an omni-directional antenna is an ill-posed inverse problem. Conventional algorithms such as the synthetic aperture method or parametric algorithms have a problem in terms of their calculation times. We have clarified the existence of a reversible transform between received data and target shapes for 3-dimensional systems. Calculation times are remarkably reduced by applying this transform because it directly estimates target shapes without iterations. We propose a new algorithm based on the transform and present an application example using numerical simulations. We confirm that the proposed algorithm has sufficient accuracy and a short calculation time.

The digitally controlled dc-dc converter has the advantage of high reliability, high controllability and high flexibility. A new digital controller for the PWM and/or PFM controlled switching dc-dc converters is presented, which is versatile in general use such as the switching frequency from 20 kHz to 70 kHz, the hard-switching and soft-switching and so forth. As an example, we apply this controller to half-bridge type series resonant dc-dc converter with auxiliary switches, in which both PWM and PFM control modes are employed, and the output characteristics of the converter are discussed. As a result, the relationships among circuit parameters of the proposed digital controller, switching frequency of the dc-dc converter, oscillation frequency of the VCO as analog to digital signal converter are defined.

Transmitting multimedia data requires high bandwidth and low delay of the network. Today's wireless networks satisfy these requirements in ideal situations, but in practice multiple devices including those of neighboring networks share the same physical layer channel and the desired speeds in the wireless network can not be achieved. Traffic in one network causes interference to other neighboring networks. In this paper, we evaluate end user's playback quality of video content transmitted over a wireless network. We take into account the influence of interference from a neighboring network and define a multi-layer control strategy to maintain the quality on the network. Through simulations, we have obtained acceptable improvements in video playback quality by controlling the transmission power, the number of retransmissions, and other parameters at various layers.

We propose an incremental redundancy (IR)-hybrid ARQ (HARQ) scheme which uses double binary turbo codes for error correction. The proposed HARQ scheme provides a higher throughput at all E_s/N₀ than the binary turbo IR-HARQ scheme. An extra coding gain is also attained by using the proposed HARQ scheme over turbo codes only.

An optimization model with maximum ratio combining (MRC) diversity soft handover is proposed for WCDMA base station location planning with heuristic algorithm, which can calculate the influence of MRC diversity soft handover directly in the process of base station location planning. Experimental results show that the proposed model can get better capacity and coverage performance in the planning results than the traditional optimization model without MRC diversity.

In this letter, we present a procedure to analyze the delay distribution of data traffic in CDMA systems supporting voice and delay-tolerant data services with a finite buffer. The queueing method using a buffer for a delay-tolerant traffic can be used to improve the system utilization or the availability of system resources. Under the first-come and first-serve (FCFS) service discipline, we present a numerical procedure for the formation of delay distribution that is defined as the probability that a new data call get a service within the maximum tolerable delay requirement, based on a two-dimensional Markov model.

This paper investigates a design and performance of 4-parallel MB-OFDM UWB receiver. The performance of the proposed MB-OFDM UWB receiver using a 4-parallel synchronization structure is degraded by 0.25 dB compared with that of a receiver using a 1-parallel synchronization structure in the maximum frequency/sampling clock offset tolerance in an AWGN channel. Considering other impairments, including imperfect synchronization algorithms, the effect of quantization error by the 4-parallel synchronization structure is negligible in a multi-path channel environment as well as in an AWGN channel, as identified in simulation results.

An interference prediction scheme is proposed for power control in packet-switched TDMA wireless networks. The prediction scheme is based on the interacting multiple model (IMM) estimator, and it is effective to a wide range of nonstationary dynamic characteristics of the interference power. Numerical experiments show that, compared with a scheme based on a Kalman filter, the IMM estimator-based scheme predicts the interference power more accurately and allows us to adjust the transmit power more efficiently in achieving a desired level of signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio (SINR).

An improved signal-to-jamming and noise ratio (SJNR) method is proposed for the linear precoding of multiuser MIMO downlink systems. To well balance suppression of co-channel interference and suppression of noise, the proposed method modifies the noise variance term to argument of a piecewise linear function, and then enhances the suppression of noise. A dynamic power allocation scheme is also introduced to further decrease the overall average bit error rate of the system. Simulation results prove the effectiveness of the proposed scheme.

Time-frequency-selective, equivalently time-variant multipath, fading channels in orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) systems introduce intercarrier interference (ICI), resulting in severe performance degradation. To suppress the effect of ICI, several symbol detection methods have been proposed, all of which are based on the observation that most of the ICI's power is distributed near the desired subcarrier. However, these methods usually ignore the channel variation in a OFDM symbol block by fixing the number of considered ICI terms. Therefore, we propose a novel frequency-domain symbol detection method with moderate complexity, which adaptively determines the number of ICI terms within each OFDM symbol block.

In this letter, we propose a limited feedback precoding scheme based upon grassmannian beamforming and user selection for downlink multiuser MIMO systems. Conventional random beamforming scheme only enjoys significant performance gains with a large number of users, which limits its practical application. With proper codebook size the proposed scheme outperforms conventional random beamforming scheme when the number of users is small or moderate.

Multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) multiplexing is an attractive technique to achieve very high-speed transmission with a limited bandwidth. Recently, we proposed an iterative frequency-domain interference cancellation (FDIC) for single-carrier MIMO (SC-MIMO) multiplexing. In our previous work, assuming that the interference from the other antennas can be perfectly cancelled in FDIC, one-dimensional minimum mean square error (1D-MMSE) frequency-domain equalization (FDE) was used. However, the residual interference remains after performing FDIC. In this paper, to improve the transmission performance with iterative FDIC, we replace 1D-MMSE FDE by 2D-MMSE FDE, which takes the residual interference from the other antennas after FDIC into account. We investigate, by computer simulation, the throughput performance of rate compatible punctured turbo coded hybrid ARQ (RCPT-HARQ) with MIMO multiplexing in a frequency-selective Rayleigh fading channel.

Wireless LAN (WLAN) has greatly benefited from the introduction of various technologies, such as MAC protocol and scheduling algorithm. The majority of these technologies focus on fairness or service differentiation. However, current WLAN technologies do not provide many benefits to WLAN because most previous literature only focuses on the provision of a single aspect of QoS. Unfortunately, multimedia applications require both service differentiation and fairness. Therefore, this paper combines Distributed Fair Scheduling (DFS) and Enhanced Distributed Coordinate Function (EDCF), to simultaneously provide both fairness and service differentiation. The simulation results demonstrate that F-EDCF outperforms the EDCF, in terms of throughput, fairness, and delay viewpoints.

To analyze the saturation performance of IEEE 802.11 DCF, several discrete-time Markov chain models for a station and sets of channel equations have been introduced. We take into account a frame retry limit, freezing of backoff counter, and the dependence of backoff procedure on the previous channel status all together. Our method is simple even though it is accurate under the assumption of no consecutive transmissions over the shared channel.

The effects of wall reflection on indoor MIMO channel capacity are statistically investigated with consideration of the average received power, the effective degrees of freedom (EDOF) of multipaths and the eigenvalues of transfer channel covariance matrix. It is found that the stronger wall reflection can lead to higher MIMO channel capacity.

In this research, a sub-array preconditioner is applied to improve the convergence of conjugate gradient (CG) iterative solver in the fast multipole method and fast Fourier transform (FMM-FFT) implementation on a large-scale finite periodic array antenna with arbitrary geometry elements. The performance of the sub-array preconditioner is compared with the near-group preconditioner in the array antenna analysis. It is found that the near-group preconditioner achieves a little better convergence, while the sub-array preconditioner can be easily constructed and programmed with less CPU-time. The efficiency of the CG-FMM-FFT with high efficient preconditioner has been demonstrated in numerical analysis of a finite periodic array antenna.

The electromagnetic disturbance that leaks from ICT (information and communications technology) equipment might contain important information. Our measurements show that the information hidden inside of the electromagnetic disturbance can be monitored. First, we measured the level of the electromagnetic disturbance that leaks from laser printers and collected the waveform in the time domain. Then, we reconstructed the printed image from the data. As a result of our measurements, we found that at points 200 cm away or beyond it is difficult to reconstruct the printed image, and therefore the threat to electromagnetic security is not significant.