A partial transmit sequence technique with error correction capability and low computation

Orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) is a popular transmission technique in wireless communication. Although already widely addressed in many studies, OFDM still has flaws, one of which is the occurrence of high peak‐to‐average power ratio (PAPR) in the transmission signal. The partial transmit sequence (PTS) technique is one method adopted to reduce high PAPR in OFDM systems. However, as PTS utilizes phase factors to generate multiple candidate signals, large amounts of calculation and time are required to search the candidate signal with the minimal PAPR, which will then be adopted as the final transmission signal. This paper proposes a novel PAPR reduction method, which can be applied in OFDM systems with M‐ary phase‐shift keying modulation. It not only requires less computation but also possesses error correction capabilities. More precisely, the proposed method is to divide a block‐coded modulation code into the direct sum of a correcting subcode for encoding information bits and a scrambling subcode for generating phase factors. Our proposed method is a suboptimal technique with low computation, because it uses a genetic algorithm with a partheno‐crossover operator as the transmitted signal selection mechanism. Simulation results show our proposed method has better PAPR performance than the GA‐PTS scheme. Based on the simulation results in Figures 5 and 6, it is evident that our proposed method can be employed in any OFDM system by using M‐PSK modulation.Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A novel low‐complexity transmission power adaptation in MC‐CDMA systems with a‐MRC receiver over Nakagami‐m fading channels

In this paper, we propose a novel low‐complexity transmission power adaptation with good bit error rate (BER) performance for multicarrier code‐division multiple‐access (MC‐CDMA) systems over Nakagami‐m fading channels. We first propose a new receiver called ath‐order‐maximal‐ratio‐combining (a‐MRC) receiver with which the receiver power gain for the nth subcarrier is the ath (a?1) power of the corresponding channel gain. Incorporating the a‐MRC receiver, we then propose a new transmission power adaptation scheme where the transmission power is allocated over all the N subcarriers according to the subchannel gains and the transmitter adapts its power to maintain a constant signal‐to‐interference‐plus‐noise (SINR) at the receiver. The proposed scheme has a significant performance gain over the nonadaptive transmission scheme over both independent and correlated fading channels. Moreover, the proposed scheme keeps good BER performance while it is much simpler than the previous power control/adaptation schemes. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Adaptive Channel‐Matched Extended Alamouti Space‐Time Code Exploiting Partial Feedback

Since the publication of Alamouti's famous space‐time block code, various quasi‐orthogonal space‐time block codes (QSTBC) for multi‐input multi‐output (MIMO) fading channels for more than two transmit antennas have been proposed. It has been shown that these codes cannot achieve full diversity at full rate. In this paper, we present a simple feedback scheme for rich scattering (flat Rayleigh fading) MIMO channels that improves the coding gain and diversity of a QSTBC for 2ⁿ (n = 3, 4,…) transmit antennas. The relevant channel state information is sent back from the receiver to the transmitter quantized to one or two bits per code block. In this way, signal transmission with an improved coding gain and diversity near to the maximum diversity order is achieved. Such high diversity can be exploited with either a maximum‐likelihood receiver or low‐complexity zero‐forcing receiver.     

Selected mapping technique for reducing PAPR of single‐carrier signals

Single‐carrier transmission with frequency‐domain equalization (SC‐FDE) is widely known as a promising transmission technique providing low error probability with low peak‐to‐average power ratio (PAPR) of transmit signal. However, the low‐PAPR property of SC‐FDE cannot be maintained if multi‐level data modulation is introduced. The low‐PAPR property of SC‐FDE can be maintained by applying transmit filtering with roll‐off factor at the expense of spectrum efficiency. In this paper, we propose two types of selected mapping (SLM) to reduce the PAPR of SC‐FDE transmit signal. The first SLM technique is conducted in the frequency domain, where the phase rotation is applied to subcarriers similar to the SLM technique for orthogonal frequency division multiplexing transmission. The second SLM technique is conducted in the time domain, where the phase rotation is applied directly to data‐modulated symbol sequence. Computer simulation confirms that both SLM techniques are able to reduce the PAPR of SC‐FDE signal without significant degradation of bit‐error rate performance and spectrum efficiency. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Peak‐to‐average power ratio reduction in space frequency block coding multi‐input multi‐output orthogonal frequency division multiplexing systems by tone reservation

In this paper, a tone reservation (TR) method is employed to reduce the peak‐to‐average power ratio (PAPR) in multi‐input multi‐output orthogonal frequency division multiplexing systems with space frequency block coding (SFBC). The key idea of the employed TR method is taking signals on multiple transmit antennas into account to design appropriate peak reduction symbols, which can significantly reduce the PAPR of SFBC multi‐input multi‐output orthogonal frequency division multiplexing signals. With the employed TR scheme, the SFBC structure can be maintained, whereas the traditional TR method would destroy it, resulting in the degradation of bit error rate (BER) performance. Simulation results demonstrate that the employed TR scheme can provide significantly better BER performance than the traditional TR method with slight PAPR reduction degradation. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Initial Timing Acquisition for Binary Phase‐Shift Keying Direct Sequence Ultra‐wideband Transmission

This paper presents a parallel processing searcher structure for the initial synchronization of a direct sequence ultra‐wideband (DS‐UWB) system, which is suitable for the digital implementation of baseband functionalities with a 1.32 Gsample/s chip rate analog‐to‐digital converter. An initial timing acquisition algorithm and a data demodulation method are also studied. The proposed searcher effectively acquires initial symbol and frame timing during the preamble transmission period. A hardware efficient receiver structure using 24 parallel digital correlators for binary phase‐shift keying DS‐UWB transmission is presented. The proposed correlator structure operating at 55 MHz is shared for correlation operations in a searcher, a channel estimator, and the demodulator of a RAKE receiver. We also present a pseudo‐random noise sequence generated with a primitive polynomial, 1+x²+x⁵, for packet detection, automatic gain control, and initial timing acquisition. Simulation results show that the performance of the proposed parallel processing searcher employing the presented pseudo‐random noise sequence outperforms that employing a preamble sequence in the IEEE 802.15.3a DS‐UWB proposal.     

Reducing PAPR of SC‐FDMA Signals through Simple Amplitude Predistortion

A novel peak‐to‐average power ratio (PAPR) reduction method is proposed for single‐carrier frequency‐division multiple access (SC‐FDMA) signals. The proposed method deliberately distorts the amplitude values of a few of the complex modulated symbols that cause peaks beyond a predetermined threshold in the samples of the output signal. The method then marks the location indices of the distorted symbols by using a pilot block at the transmitter without transmitting side information. At the receiver, the method is then able to recover the distorted amplitude values through the marked location indices. Computer simulation results show that when compared to conventional SC‐FDMA signals, the proposed scheme can effectively reduce the PAPR of SC‐FDMA signals with asymptotically consistent bit error rate (BER) performance.     

Selected mapping with symbol re‐mapping for OFDM/TDM using MMSE‐FDE

Orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) signals have a problem with a high peak‐to‐average power ratio (PAPR). A distortionless selected mapping (SLM) has been proposed to reduce the PAPR, but a high computational complexity prohibits its application to an OFDM system with a large number of subcarriers. Recently, we proposed OFDM combined with time division multiplexing (OFDM/TDM) using minimum mean square error frequency‐domain equalization (MMSE‐FDE) to improve the bit error rate (BER) performance of conventional OFDM with a lower PAPR. The PAPR problem, however, cannot be completely eliminated. In this paper, we present an SLM combined with symbol re‐mapping for OFDM/TDM using MMSE‐FDE. Unlike the conventional OFDM, where SLM is applied over subcarriers in the frequency domain, we exploit both time and frequency dimensions of OFDM/TDM signal to improve the performance with respect to PAPR and BER. A mathematical model for PAPR distribution of OFDM/TDM with SLM is presented to complement the computer simulation results. It is shown that proposed SLM can further reduce the PAPR without sacrificing the BER performance with the same or reduced computational complexity. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A novel simplified tone reservation combined with cross antenna rotation and inversion to reduce PAPR for MIMO‐OFDM system

In this paper, we first propose a simplified tone reservation (STR) method with low computational complexity which is based on the Fourier series expansion. Then, we analyze how to combine the STR method with the cross antenna rotation and inversion method to reduce the peak‐to‐average power ratio (PAPR) for multi‐input multi‐output orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (MIMO‐OFDM) system. To validate the analytical results, extensive simulations are conducted and the numerical results show the efficiency of the proposed schemes including the PAPR reduction and low computational complexity for MIMO‐OFDM system. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Nelder‐Mead–based power optimization for secrecy enhancement in amplify‐and‐forward cooperative relay networks

Cooperative communication based on relaying nodes has been considered as a promising technique to increase the physical layer security (PLS) performance in wireless communications. In this paper, an optimal power allocation (OPA) scheme based on Nelder‐Mead (NM) algorithm is proposed for improving the secrecy rate of amplify‐and‐forward (AF) cooperative relay networks employing cooperative jamming (CJ) scheme. The proposed hybrid jamming scheme allows the source and selected relay to transmit the jamming signal along with the information to confound the eavesdropper. The path selection probability of ant colony optimization (ACO) algorithm is used for selecting the relay for transmission. The performance based on secrecy rate is evaluated for “n” trusted relays distributed dispersedly between the source and destination. Gradient‐based optimization and three‐dimensional exhaustive search methods are used as benchmark schemes for comparison of the proposed power optimization algorithm. The secrecy performance is also compared with conventional AF scheme and CJ scheme without power optimization (EPA). The impact of single and multiple relays on secrecy performance is also evaluated. Numerical results reveal that, compared with the gradient method and exhaustive search algorithm, the proposed power allocation strategy achieves optimal performance. Also, the derived OPA results show a significantly higher secrecy rate than the EPA strategy for both CJ and AF schemes.     

A Modified Method Based on the Discrete Sliding Norm Transform to Reduce the PAPR in OFDM Systems

Orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) is a modulation technique that allows the transmission of high data rates over wideband radio channels subject to frequency selective fading by dividing the data into several narrowband and flat fading channels. OFDM has high spectral efficiency and channel robustness. However, a major drawback of OFDM is that the peak‐to‐average power ratio (PAPR) of the transmitted signals is high, which causes nonlinear distortion in the received data and reduces the efficiency of the high power amplifier in the transmitter. The most straightforward method to solve this problem is to use a nonlinear mapping algorithm to transform the signal into a new signal that has a smaller PAPR. One of the latest nonlinear methods proposed to reduce the PAPR is the L₂‐by‐3 algorithm, which is based on the discrete sliding norm transform. In this paper, a new algorithm based on the L₂‐by‐3 method is proposed. The proposed method is very simple and has a low complexity analysis. Simulation results show that the proposed method performs better, has better power spectral density, and is less sensitive to the modulation type and number of subcarriers than L₂‐by‐3.     

p‐CuO/n‐Si heterojunction solar cells with high open circuit voltage and photocurrent through interfacial engineering

Heterojunction solar cells of p‐type cupric oxide (CuO) and n‐type silicon (Si), p‐CuO/n‐Si, have been fabricated using conventional sputter and rapid thermal annealing techniques. Photovoltaic properties with an open‐circuit voltage (V_oc) of 380 mV, short circuit current (J_sc) of 1.2 mA/cm², and a photocurrent of 2.9 mA/cm² were observed for the solar cell annealed at 300 °C for 1 min. When the annealing duration was increased, the photocurrent increased, but the V_oc was found to reduce because of the degradation of interface quality. An improvement in the V_oc resulting to a record value of 509 mV and J_sc of 4 mA/cm² with a high photocurrent of ~12 mA/cm² was achieved through interface engineering and controlling the phase transformation of CuO film. X‐ray diffraction, X‐ray photoelectron spectroscopy, and high‐resolution transmission electron microscopy analysis have been used to investigate the interface properties and crystal quality of sputter‐deposited CuO thin film. The improvement in V_oc is mainly due to the enhancement of crystal quality of CuO thin film and interface properties between p‐CuO and n‐Si substrate. The enhancement of photocurrent is found to be due to the reduction of carrier recombination rate as revealed by transient photovoltage spectroscopy analysis. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Metastable Copper‐Phthalocyanine Single‐Crystal Nanowires and Their Use in Fabricating High‐Performance Field‐Effect Transistors

This paper describes a simple, vapor‐phase route for the synthesis of metastable α‐phase copper‐phthalocyanine (CuPc) single‐crystal nanowires through control of the growth temperature. The influence of the growth temperature on the crystal structures, morphology, and size of the CuPc nanostructures is explored using X‐ray diffraction (XRD), optical absorption, and transmission electron microscopy (TEM). α‐CuPc nanowires are successfully incorporated as active semiconductors in field‐effect transistors (FETs). Single nanowire devices exhibit carrier mobilities and current on/off ratios as high as 0.4 cm² V^?1 s^?1 and >10⁴, respectively.     

Peak‐to‐average power ratio reduction of orthogonal frequency division multiplexing systems using modified tone reservation techniques

This paper proposed a modified tone reservation (TR) technique that can reduce the peak‐to‐average power ratio (PAPR) of the orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) system and is able to correct errors to avoid channel interference. The TR technique is a widely used PAPR reduction technique, which divides subcarriers of the OFDM system into two sets to generate peak‐canceling signals and transmit modulated data. The subcarriers used to reduce the PAPR are called the peak reduction tone sets. The mechanism of peak‐canceling signal generation is a primary factor in determining the quality of the PAPR reduction performance of the TR technique. Currently, two signal generation mechanisms exist: TR‐gradient‐based and TR‐clipping‐based techniques. Although TR techniques can effectively reduce the high PAPR in the OFDM system, TR techniques lack the ability to correct errors. Therefore, this paper combined block coded modulation codes and TR techniques to provide the modified TR techniques with error correction abilities. From the simulation results, the modified TR techniques had a superior effect on PAPR reduction performance compared with the conventional TR technique. The modified TR technique also possessed the ability to correct errors during signal transmission. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A novel search method to reduce PAPR of an OFDM signal using partial transmit sequences

One of the main drawbacks of orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) is the high peak‐to‐average power ratio (PAPR) of the transmitted OFDM signal. Partial transmit sequence (PTS) technique can improve the PAPR statistics of an OFDM signal. As ordinary PTS technique requires an exhaustive search over all combinations of allowed phase factors, the search complexity increases exponentially with the number of sub‐blocks. In this paper, we propose a novel PTS technique with reduced complexity that each level inverts twice of phase factor bits from previous level. Then we also use initial random phase sequence to find the better search way of PAPR reduction. Numerical results show that the proposed method can achieve significant reduction in search complexity with little performance degradation. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Combination of PAPR reduction and linearization for the OFDM communication system

Orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) has been widely used in many kinds of communication systems. However, OFDM signal has serious problem of high peak‐to‐average‐power ratio (PAPR) due to so many sub‐carriers. So, OFDM signal has very wide dynamic range. Therefore, the bit error rate (BER) performance may be degraded because of the nonlinear devices like the high power amplifier (HPA). Even if the linearization and large back‐off are used to compensate for the HPA nonlinearity, the power efficiency of the HPA is still very low since the PAPR is very high. Therefore, the PAPR reduction of the OFDM signal before the linearization would be more reasonable to improve the power efficiency and nonlinear compensation at the same time. In this paper, we propose a new combined method of SPW (sub‐block phase weighting) for PAPR reduction and linearization technique for the improvement of the power efficiency and for the nonlinear compensation of HPA. An updated SPW method is proposed to use a novel weighting factor multiplication of the complementary sequence characteristic and PAPR threshold technique. From the simulation results, it can be confirmed that BER performance is significantly improved and out‐of‐band spectrum radiations are much mitigated. Power efficiency of HPA can be enhanced since we can set small IBO (input back‐off) due to the PAPR reduction. The proposed system shows about 3 and 1 dB performance improvement than the LCP (linearized constant peak‐power)‐OFDM and LCP‐OFDM plus SPW at BER = 10⁻⁴. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Self‐Additive Low‐Dimensional Ruddlesden–Popper Perovskite by the Incorporation of Glycine Hydrochloride for High‐Performance and Stable Solar Cells

The recent rise of low‐dimensional Ruddlesden–Popper (RP) perovskites is notable for superior humidity stability, however they suffer from low power conversion efficiency (PCE). Suitable organic spacer cations with special properties display a critical effect on the performance and stability of perovskite solar cells (PSCs). Herein, a new strategy of designing self‐additive low‐dimensional RP perovskites is first proposed by employing a glycine salt (Gly⁺) with outstanding additive effect to improve the photovoltaic performance. Due to the strong interaction between C?O and Pb²⁺, the Gly⁺ can become a nucleation center and be beneficial to uniform and fast growth of the Gly‐based RP perovskites with larger grain sizes, leading to reduced grain boundary and increased carrier transport. As a result, the Gly‐based self‐additive low‐dimensional RP perovskites exhibit remarkable photoelectric properties, yielding the highest PCE of 18.06% for Gly (n = 8) devices and 15.61% for Gly (n = 4) devices with negligible hysteresis. Furthermore, the Gly‐based devices without encapsulation show excellent long‐term stability against humidity, heat, and UV light in comparison to BA‐based low‐dimensional PSCs. This approach provides a feasible design strategy of new‐type low‐dimensional RP perovskites to obtain highly efficient and stable devices for next‐generation photovoltaic applications.     

Donor–Acceptor Poly(3‐hexylthiophene)‐block‐Pendent Poly(isoindigo) with Dual Roles of Charge Transporting and Storage Layer for High‐Performance Transistor‐Type Memory Applications

Field‐effect transistor memories usually require one additional charge storage layer between the gate contact and organic semiconductor channel. To avoid such complication, new donor–acceptor rod–coil diblock copolymers (P3HT₄₄‐b‐Piso_n) of poly(3‐hexylthiophene) (P3HT)‐block‐poly(pendent isoindigo) (Piso) are designed, which exhibit high performance transistor memory characteristics without additional charge storage layer. The P3HT and Piso blocks are acted as the charge transporting and storage elements, respectively. The prepared P3HT₄₄‐b‐Piso_n can be self‐assembled into fibrillar‐like nanostructures after the thermal annealing process, confirmed by atomic force microscopy and grazing‐incidence X‐ray diffraction. The lowest‐unoccupied molecular orbital levels of the studied polymers are significantly lowered as the block length of Piso increases, leading to a stronger electron affinity as well as charge storage capability. The field‐effect transistors (FETs) fabricated from P3HT₄₄‐b‐Piso_n possess p‐type mobilities up to 4.56 × 10^?2 cm² V^?1 s^?1, similar to that of the regioregular P3HT. More interestingly, the FET memory devices fabricated from P3HT₄₄‐b‐Piso_n exhibit a memory window ranging from 26 to 79 V by manipulating the block length of Piso, and showed stable long‐term data endurance. The results suggest that the FET characteristics and data storage capability can be effectively tuned simultaneously through donor/acceptor ratio and thin film morphology in the block copolymer system.     

Efficient programmable power‐of‐two scaler for the three‐moduli set {2n+p, 2n − 1, 2n+1 − 1}

Scaling is an important operation because of the iterative nature of arithmetic processes in digital signal processors (DSPs). In residue number system (RNS)–based DSPs, scaling represents a performance bottleneck based on the complexity of inter‐modulo operations. To design an efficient RNS scaler for special moduli sets, a body of literature has been dedicated to the study of the well‐known moduli sets {2ⁿ ? 1, 2ⁿ, 2ⁿ + 1} and {2ⁿ, 2ⁿ ? 1, 2ⁿ⁺¹ ? 1}, and their extension in vertical or horizontal forms. In this study, we propose an efficient programmable RNS scaler for the arithmetic‐friendly moduli set {2^n+p, 2ⁿ ? 1, 2ⁿ⁺¹ ? 1}. The proposed algorithm yields high speed and energy‐efficient realization of an RNS programmable scaler based on the effective exploitation of the mixed‐radix representation, parallelism, and a hardware sharing technique. Experimental results obtained for a 130 nm CMOS ASIC technology demonstrate the superiority of the proposed programmable scaler compared to the only available and highly effective hybrid programmable scaler for an identical moduli set. The proposed scaler provides 43.28% less power consumption, 33.27% faster execution, and 28.55% more area saving on average compared to the hybrid programmable scaler.     

Solution‐Processed Small‐Molecule Bulk Heterojunction Ambipolar Transistors

Solution‐processed small‐molecule bulk heterojunction (BHJ) ambipolar organic thin‐film transistors are fabricated based on a combination of [2‐phenylbenzo[d,d']thieno[3,2‐b;4,5‐b']dithiophene (P‐BTDT) : 2‐(4‐n‐octylphenyl)benzo[d,d ']thieno[3,2‐b;4,5‐b']dithiophene (OP‐BTDT)] and C₆₀. Treating high electrical performance vacuum‐deposited P‐BTDT organic semiconductors with a newly developed solution‐processed organic semiconductor material, OP‐BTDT, in an optimized ratio yields a solution‐processed p‐channel organic semiconductor blend with carrier mobility as high as 0.65 cm² V^?1 s^?1. An optimized blending of P‐BTDT:OP‐BTDT with the n‐channel semiconductor, C₆₀, results in a BHJ ambipolar transistor with balanced carrier mobilities for holes and electrons of 0.03 and 0.02 cm² V^?1 s^?1, respectively. Furthermore, a complementary‐like inverter composed of two ambipolar thin‐film transistors is demonstrated, which achieves a gain of 115.