What's in a name?

Just lately it has become popular to rename your semiconductor company. Everyone seems to be re-badging themselves with names that dare to be different but that are less meaningful than their old ones. Some very sensible companies are discarding their brand-names in a vogue-ish streamlining and restructuring that is leaving many of us puzzled. Why cast off well-known and trusted names for the like of Agilent, Conexant, Infineon, Lucent, or simply ‘ON’? Interestingly, most of these companies have some association with III–Vs products and so they will be of great interest to our readers.     

Pictures worth a thousand words?

Readers will have noticed the presence of colour figures in Microelectronics journal recent issues. This is but the tip of an iceberg as your journal evolves in the computer-aided age. I thought that it would make an interesting editorial to pontificate on the impact that some of the various computer aided publishing processes are already having on this and other journals. As with all new things, there are advantages and disadvantages. Moreover, whenever these developments are implemented on the grounds of saving time and money, circumstances nearly always contrive to confound this expectation.     

Subjective QoE analysis of VoIP applications in?a?wireless?campus?environment

The quality perceived by the user, a concept known as Quality of user Experience (QoE), is gaining momentum. Together with the efforts of providing appropriate architectures able to deliver the expected level of Quality of Service (QoS), users’ perception of the level of quality could play a key role in making a VoIP multimedia application to succeed or to fail. QoE can be measured from different approaches; subjective ones are based on polls while objective ones are mainly based on QoS network performance parameters. Although a subjective evaluation could be costly and time consuming, it gives the most accurate results. Moreover, wireless environments incorporate new challenges in terms of QoS and QoE because of inherent wireless communication characteristics. In this way, our contribution is twofold. First, we carry out a subjective QoE assessment for VoIP applications in a real wireless environment. Skype, Gizmo5, ooVoo, and Damaka are the selected VoIP applications under study. Next, we contrast QoE results with QoS evaluation from the captured video calls made during the poll. Results show that there is no precise match on both assessments, because of QoE parameters that cannot be inferred from QoS analysis, because of the different effect of some QoS parameters which prevail, or even because of the popularity of the VoIP application.     

Pricing under information asymmetry for?a?large population of?users

In this paper, we study optimal nonlinear pricing policy design for a monopolistic network service provider in the face of a large population of users of different types described by a given probability distribution. In an earlier work (Shen and Ba?ar in IEEE J. Sel. Areas Commun. 25(6):1216?C1223, 2007), we had considered games with symmetric information, in the sense that either users?? true types are public information available to all parties, or each user??s true type is private information known only to that user. In this paper, we study the intermediate case with information asymmetry; that is, users?? true types are shared information among the users themselves, but are not disclosed to the service provider. The problem can be formulated as an incentive-design problem, for which an ??-team optimal incentive (pricing) policy has been obtained, which almost achieves Pareto optimality for the service provider. A comparative study between games with information symmetry and asymmetry are conducted as well to evaluate the service provider??s game preferences.     

Mutual Information Analysis: a?Comprehensive Study

Mutual Information Analysis is a generic side-channel distinguisher that has been introduced at CHES 2008. It aims to allow successful attacks requiring minimum assumptions and knowledge of the target device by the adversary. In this paper, we compile recent contributions and applications of MIA in a comprehensive study. From a theoretical point of view, we carefully discuss its statistical properties and relationship with probability density estimation tools. From a practical point of view, we apply MIA in two of the most investigated contexts for side-channel attacks. Namely, we consider first-order attacks against an unprotected implementation of the DES in a full custom IC and second-order attacks against a masked implementation of the DES in an 8-bit microcontroller. These experiments allow to put forward the strengths and weaknesses of this new distinguisher and to compare it with standard power analysis attacks using the correlation coefficient.     

Mediator accreditation: Is it a risk? Or quality enhancement?

Tony Willis, of London, contrasts, compares and criticizes past and present initiatives designed to provide more information to the public about the mediators they hire. Accrediting neutrals across jurisdictions is difficult, he writes, and bears little relationship to improving practice quality.     

Silicon-germanium—a promise into the future?

Comparing different semiconductor technologies and taking into account their actual performance/cost ratio, the current understanding is that the silicon technology is and will be the basis of IC fabrication also in the beginning of the next century. Due to new applications there is, however, a market’s demand to overcome the cutoff frequency limit inherent to silicon technology. Hitherto obtained results suggest that existing solutions may be challenged by SiGe or other silicon-based heterostructure devices. As an example of such heterostructure devices, in general, the first practical bandgap-engineered silicon device, namely, the SiGe heterojunction bipolar transistor, is discussed in more detail. However, to succeed commercially, the SiGe technology has to outperform the silicon technology and undersell the III–V technologies. To this end, the development of a heterojunction silicon-based CMOS technology will be of utmost importance. First results are encouraging and, hence, the very near future will probably show whether or not SiGe is a promise into the future. Fiz. Tekh. Poluprovodn. 33, 1032–1034 (September 1999) This paper was presented at the anniversary meeting of the scientific council of the A. F. Ioffe Physiotechnical Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences on the occasion of selecting the author an honorary member of the Institute (September 28, 1998). This article was published in English in the original Russian journal. Reproduced here with stylistic changes by the Translation Editor.     

A Classical Parameter Identification Method and?a?Modern Test Generation Algorithm

Many methods have been presented for the testing and diagnosis of analog circuits. Each of these methods has its advantages and disadvantages. In this paper we propose a novel sensitivity analysis algorithm for the classical parameter identification method and a continuous fault model for the modern test generation algorithm, and we compare the characteristics of these methods. At present, parameter identification based on the component connection model (CCM) cannot ensure that the diagnostic equation is optimal. The sensitivity analysis algorithm proposed in this paper can choose the optimal set of trees to construct an optimal CCM diagnostic equation, and enhance the diagnostic precision. But nowadays increasing attention is being paid to test generation algorithms. Most test generation algorithms use a single value in the fault model. But the single values cannot substitute for the actual faults that may occur, because the possible faulty values vary over a continuous range. To solve this problem, this paper presents a continuous fault model for the test generation algorithm which has a continuous range of parameters. The test generation algorithm with this model can improve the treatment of the tolerance problem, including the tolerances of both normal and faulty parameters, and enhance the fault coverage rate. The two methods can be applied in different situations.     

Employment class arbitration: An oxymoron? Or a matter of contract?

To what extent will courts send employment arbitration cases for class or collective actions? According to Jay W. Waks and William Poorten, of New York, waiving class action arbitrations doesn't impair claimants' substantive rights, and contractual silence means no class actions. The authors analyze the latest case law supporting their positions.     

IMT-Adv: Is There a Role for Satellites?

The present paper is intended to discuss the satellite features which could lead to beneficial integration with IMT-Adv. The satellite roles are consistent with: (1) Navigation for Location Based Services (2) Earth observation for GIS-related applications/solutions and (3) Telecommunication. The development of the market is also boosted by the emerging synergies between navigation, communication and information technology in what is called “info-mobility”. The area of discussion is therefore quite wide and we can offer a survey trying to analyse only the aspect which are pertinent with the title of the paper. We therefore apologise if the reader cannot find all information he could be interested in, but we hope to have been capable to close just a bit of the enlarging gap between terrestrial and satellite interests.

Can One Control the Vibrations of a Drum?

This paper considers the problem of constructing feedback stabilizing controllers for the wave operator on ⁿ (more generally AR systems determined by a hyperbolic operator). In order to accomplish this, it must first clarify the notion of an input-output structure on a distributed system, as well as what it means to interconnect two such systems. Both these notions are shown to be consequences of a structure which generalizes the standard causal structure of lumped systems determined by the flow of time. Given this apparatus, the paper then constructs feedback controllers which stabilize the wave equation along directions given by a proper cone in ⁿ.     

Distance education: Rebottling or a new brew?

Engineering education is undergoing a significant transformation utilizing the very technology that engineers have developed. Many university engineering programs now use the Web as an integral part of both undergraduate and graduate degree programs. A number are delivering "distance education" courses and programs to students who do not have face-to-face contact with any instructor. This paper reviews the educational rationale and the productivity drivers behind this trend and provides some information on related IEEE educational programs. It considers the role of professors; business issues; online course development; lifelong education; universities; electronic publishing; company training; and professional associations     

Codebook Design for Vector Quantization Based on?a?Kernel Fuzzy Learning Algorithm

Vector quantization (VQ) is an efficient technique for data compression and has been successfully used in various applications. The methods most commonly used to generate a codebook are the Linde, Buzo, Gray (LBG) algorithm, fuzzy vector quantization (FVQ) algorithm, Kekre‘s Fast Codebook Generation (KFCG) algorithm, discrete cosine transform based (DCT-based) codebook generation method, and k-principle component analysis (K-PCA) algorithm. However, if the separation boundaries in codebook generation are nonlinear, their performance can degrade fast. In this paper, we present a kernel fuzzy learning (KFL) algorithm, which takes advantages of the distance kernel trick and the gradient-based fuzzy clustering method, to create a codebook automatically. Experiments with real data show that the proposed algorithm is more efficient in its performance compared to that of the LBG, FVQ, KFCG, and DCT-based method, and to the K-PCA algorithm.