A 900 MHz Zero‐IF RF Transceiver for IEEE 802.15.4g SUN OFDM Systems

This paper presents a 900 MHz zero‐IF RF transceiver for IEEE 802.15.4g Smart Utility Networks OFDM systems. The proposed RF transceiver comprises an RF front end, a Tx baseband analog circuit, an Rx baseband analog circuit, and a ΔΣ fractional‐N frequency synthesizer. In the RF front end, re‐use of a matching network reduces the chip size of the RF transceiver. Since a T/Rx switch is implemented only at the input of the low‐noise amplifier, the driver amplifier can deliver its output power to an antenna without any signal loss; thus, leading to a low dc power consumption. The proposed current‐driven passive mixer in Rx and voltage‐mode passive mixer in Tx can mitigate the IQ crosstalk problem, while maintaining 50% duty‐cycle in local oscillator clocks. The overall Rx‐baseband circuits can provide a voltage gain of 70 dB with a 1 dB gain control step. The proposed RF transceiver is implemented in a 0.18 μm CMOS technology and consumes 37 mA in Tx mode and 38 mA in Rx mode from a 1.8 V supply voltage. The fabricated chip shows a Tx average power of ?2 dBm, a sensitivity level of ?103 dBm at 100 Kbps with , an Rx input P_1dB of ?11 dBm, and an Rx input IP3 of ?2.3 dBm.     

A Broadband Digital Step Attenuator with Low Phase Error and Low Insertion Loss in 0.18‐μm SOI CMOS Technology

This paper presents a 5‐bit digital step attenuator (DSA) using a commercial 0.18‐μm silicon‐on‐insulator (SOI) process for the wideband phased array antenna. Both low insertion loss and low root mean square (RMS) phase error and amplitude error are achieved employing two attenuation topologies of the switched path attenuator and the switched T‐type attenuator. The attenuation coverage of 31 dB with a least significant bit of 1 dB is achieved at DC to 20 GHz. The RMS phase error and amplitude error are less than 2.5° and less than 0.5 dB, respectively. The measured insertion loss of the reference state is less than 5.5 dB at 10 GHz. The input return loss and output return loss are each less than 12 dB at DC to 20 GHz. The current consumption is nearly zero with a voltage supply of 1.8 V. The chip size is , including pads. To the best of the authors' knowledge, this is the first demonstration of a low phase error DC‐to‐20‐GHz SOI DSA.     

Adaptive Calibration Method in Multiport Amplifier for K‐Band Payload Applications

This letter proposes a novel calibration method for a multiport amplifier (MPA) to achieve optimum port‐to‐port isolation by correcting both the amplitude and phase of the calibration signals. The proposed architecture allows for the detection of the phase error and amplitude error in each RF signal path simultaneously and can enhance the calibrated resolution by controlling the analog phase shifters and attenuators. The designed and MPAs show isolation characteristics of 30 dB and 27 dB over a frequency range of 19.5 GHz to 22.5 GHz, respectively.     

Parachute shape ultra-wideband wearable antenna for remote health care monitoring

Wireless body area networks (WBAN) is used to measure patients' health conditions continuously. Different kinds of sensors are required to measure health conditions. When such types of antennas are used on the human body, they are flexible with the movements. The usage of wearable devices is currently increasing in the biomedical field. The presented wearable antenna is suitable for biomedical applications. The presented ultra-wideband (UWB) flexible parachute shape wearable antenna is fabricated on a jeans textile substrate. The prototype antenna has a −10 dB measured impedance bandwidth of 5800 MHz (7 to 12.8 GHz) with average radiation efficiency of 75.28%. The prototype antenna's size is 40 × 40 mm² (1.32 × 1.32 ${\lambda }_0^2$ at centre frequency 9.9 GHz) and a peak gain of 4.5 dB at 12.33 GHz. The fabricated antenna is suitable for biomedical applications in X-band frequencies and can be implemented with a low-cost manufacturing process. The radiating element is made by conductive copper tape. Muscle-equivalent phantoms are used to analyze the body effect on antenna performance. The radiation effect emitted by the presented antenna on the human body is calculated by the specific absorption rate (SAR) value. The maximum SAR value of the proposed antenna is 1.84 W/kg at 12.33 GHz. This leads to promising results for wearable applications related to remote health care monitoring, such as biotelemetry and mobile health with a sensor-driven approach.     

Compact Triple‐Band Monopole Antenna for WLAN/WiMAX‐Band USB Dongle Applications

A miniaturized triple‐band antenna suitable for wireless USB dongle applications is proposed and investigated in this paper. The presented antenna, simply consisting of a circular‐arc‐shaped stub, an L‐shaped stub, a microstrip feed line, and a rectangular ground plane has a compact size of and is capable of generating three separate resonant modes with very good impedance matching. The measurement results show that the antenna has several impedance bandwidths for of 260 MHz (2.24 GHz to 2.5 GHz), 320 MHz (3.4 GHz to 3.72 GHz), and 990 MHz (5.1 GHz to 6.09 GHz), which can be applied to both 2.4/5.2/5.8 GHz WLAN bands and 3.5/5.5 GHz WiMAX bands. Moreover, nearly‐omni‐directional radiation patterns and stable gain across the operating bands can be obtained.     

A reconfigurable wideband MIMO antenna combines RF energy harvesting

This article introduces a novel and groundbreaking approach combining multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO) technology with radio frequency (RF) energy harvesting. The proposed antenna consists of two semi-circular monopole antenna components, optimized with dimensions of 89 × 51.02 × 1.6 mm³, that share a common ground plane to achieve MIMO characteristics. A series of split-ring resonators on the ground plane significantly enhances the isolation between the two radiating components. Band-notched features are performed in the 3.5 GHz WiMAX and 5.5 GHz WLAN bands through modified C-shaped slots in the radiating patch and two rectangular split-ring resonators serving as parasitic devices near the feed line. The reconfiguration of band-notching is made possible by controlling the modes of the embedded PIN diodes. The two antenna elements maintain mutual coupling below −18 dB from 1.5–13 GHz, achieving an impressive 158.62% impedance bandwidth. The antenna's efficiency and gain experience significant drop, indicating effective interference suppression at the center frequencies of the notch bands, and its performance in MIMO systems is assessed through parameters including envelope correlation coefficient, port isolation, radiation patterns, efficiency, gain, and diversity gain. The simulated properties of the designed antenna closely align with the measured outcomes, demonstrating its reliability and consistency. Moreover, the article evaluates the antenna's potential for RF energy harvesting, achieving a maximum harvested energy of 4.88 V. This proposed antenna can be used in multiple applications, like wideband, band-notching MIMO, and RF energy harvesting. This proposed antenna is an efficient, reconfigurable wideband MIMO antenna with novel RF energy harvesting capability.     

Exploiting W. Ellison model for seawater communication at gigahertz frequencies based on world ocean atlas data

Electromagnetic (EM) waves used to send signals under seawater are normally restricted to low frequencies () because of sudden exponential increases of attenuation () at higher . The mathematics of EM wave propagation in seawater demonstrate dependence on relative permeability (), relative permittivity (), conductivity (), and of transmission. Estimation of and based on the W. Ellison interpolation model was performed for averaged real‐time data of temperature () and salinity () from 1955 to 2012 for all oceans with latitude/longitude points and 101 depth points up to 5500 m. Estimation of parameters such as real and imaginary parts of , , , , loss tangent (tan ), propagation velocity (), phase constant (), and contributes to absorption loss () for seawater channels carried out by using normal distribution fit in the 3 GHz–40 GHz range. We also estimated total path loss () in seawater for given transmission power and antenna (dipole) gain. MATLAB is the simulation tool used for analysis.     

Background memory-assisted zero-shot video object segmentation for unmanned aerial and ground vehicles

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) and ground vehicles (UGV) require advanced video analytics for various tasks, such as moving object detection and segmentation; this has led to increasing demands for these methods. We propose a zero-shot video object segmentation method specifically designed for UAV and UGV applications that focuses on the discovery of moving objects in challenging scenarios. This method employs a background memory model that enables training from sparse annotations along the time axis, utilizing temporal modeling of the background to detect moving objects effectively. The proposed method addresses the limitations of the existing state-of-the-art methods for detecting salient objects within images, regardless of their movements. In particular, our method achieved mean $J$ and $F$ values of 82.7 and 81.2 on the DAVIS'16, respectively. We also conducted extensive ablation studies that highlighted the contributions of various input compositions and combinations of datasets used for training. In future developments, we will integrate the proposed method with additional systems, such as tracking and obstacle avoidance functionalities.     

Design of compact fractal patch antenna for X/Ku/K-band applications

This paper presents a fractal-based compact new monopole antenna for wideband applications. The miniaturization has been achieved by incorporating Minkowski and Koch-snowflake fractals. The proposed antenna design is etched on top of Rogers RT/5880 dielectric material with a dimension of $8.10\times 8.10$ mm². The antenna is designed, analyzed, fabricated, and tested in the laboratory. The proposed geometry operates over a 8.62–22.40 GHz with fractional bandwidth (FBW) of 88.84% and VSWR is less than 2. The proposed monopole antenna exhibits nearly omnidirectional radiation patterns over the entire resonating band with a gain of 1–2.91 dBi and a radiation efficiency of more than 60.5%. Also, the measured results of the prototype make an excellent agreement with the simulated counterpart. Further, the antenna gives good time-domain characteristics. Therefore, the proposed miniaturized antenna can be used in X/Ku/K-band applications.     

Design and investigations on a compact,UWB, monopole antenna with reconfigurable band notches for 5.2/5.8 GHz WLAN and 5.5 GHz Wi‐MAX bands

This article represents a microstrip line–fed novel circular monopole antenna with ultra‐wideband (UWB) characteristics. The compact antenna provides reconfigurable notches at WLAN (5.2/5.8 GHz) and Wi‐MAX (5.5 GHz) frequency bands. The band rejection is achieved by etching an open‐ended L‐shaped slot in the ground plane, which effectively mitigates the interference between WLAN, Wi‐MAX, and UWB systems with an effective patch area of 36.26%. The proposed antenna operates from 3.05 to 12.11 GHz with VSWR 2 except at stopband (3.89‐5.93 GHz) to filter the WLAN and Wi‐MAX signals. The simulated return loss, gain, and radiation pattern of the proposed antenna has been experimentally verified with the fabricated one which holds a good agreement.     

Microwave Orbital Angular Momentum Mode Generation and Multiplexing Using a Waveguide Butler Matrix

In this paper, we propose a convenient microwave orbital angular momentum (OAM) mode generation and multiplexing method operating in the 18 GHz frequency band, based on a uniform circular array and a Butler matrix. The three OAM modes ?1, 0, and +1 were generated and verified using spatial S‐parameter measurements; the measured back‐to‐back mode isolation was greater than 17 dB in the full 17 GHz to 19 GHz range. However, the radiated OAM beam centers were slightly dislocated and varied with both frequency and the mode index, because of the non‐ideal characteristics of the Butler matrix. This resulted in mode isolation degradation and transmission distance limitations.     

A novel wideband fractal-shaped MIMO antenna for brain and skin implantable biomedical applications

A novel fractal-shaped wideband multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) antenna is proposed for brain and skin implantable applications. This antenna works in the 2.4–2.48 GHz band of industrial, scientific, and medical (ISM) standards. The fractal-shaped wideband MIMO antenna is miniature in size with a footprint of $0.13\mathrm{\lambda }\times 0.06\mathrm{\lambda }\times 0.01\mathrm{\lambda }$. Rogers RT/Duroid 6010 high-dielectric substrate material is used to fabricate the optimized design in order to validate the implantable MIMO antenna structure. The same high-permittivity substrate material has been used as a superstrate. Experiments were carried out in brain and skin-mimicking gel at 2.45 GHz in the ISM band. The proposed antenna has a peak gain of −21.3 dBi at 2.45 GHz. High isolation (>20 dB) between two MIMO ports is attained. The proposed antenna achieves a fractional bandwidth of 36.76% and an impedance bandwidth of 1.02 GHz. According to IEEE safety regulations for 1- and 10-g tissues, the computed maximum specific absorption rate (SAR) is safe bound.     

Highly Simplified and Bandwidth‐Efficient Human Body Communications Based on IEEE 802.15.6 WBAN Standard

This paper presents a transmission method for improving human body communications in terms of spectral efficiency, and the performances of bit‐error‐rate (BER) and frame synchronization, with a highly simplified structure. Compared to the conventional frequency selective digital transmission supporting IEEE standard 802.15.6 for wireless body area networks, the proposed scheme improves the spectral efficiency from 0.25 bps/Hz to 1 bps/Hz based on the 3‐dB bandwidth of the transmit spectral mask, and the signal‐to‐noise‐ratio (SNR) by 0.51 dB at a BER of with an reduction in the detection complexity of the length of the Hamming distance computation. The proposed preamble structure using its customized detection algorithm achieves perfect frame synchronization at the SNR of a BER of by applying the proposed pre‐processing to compensate for the distortions on the preamble signals due to the band‐limit effects by transmit and receive filters.     

Joint routing,link capacity dimensioning,and switch port optimization for dynamic traffic in optical networks

This paper considers a challenging problem: to simultaneously optimize the cost and the quality of service in opaque wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) networks. An optimization problem is proposed that takes the information including network topology, traffic between end nodes, and the target level of congestion at each link/node in WDM networks. The outputs of this problem include routing, link channel capacities, and the optimum number of switch ports locally added/dropped at all switch nodes. The total network cost is reduced to maintain a minimum congestion level on all links, which provides an efficient trade-off solution for the network design problem. The optimal information is utilized for dynamic traffic in WDM networks, which is shown to achieve the desired performance with the guaranteed quality of service in different networks. It was found that for an average link blocking probability equal to 0.015, the proposed model achieves a net channel gain in terms of wavelength channels ( ) equal to 35.72 , 39.09 , and 36.93 compared to shortest path first routing and equal to 29.41 , 37.35 , and 27.47 compared to alternate routing in three different networks.     

Variational autoencoder for prosody-based speaker recognition

This paper describes a novel end-to-end deep generative model-based speaker recognition system using prosodic features. The usefulness of variational autoencoders (VAE) in learning the speaker-specific prosody representations for the speaker recognition task is examined herein for the first time. The speech signal is first automatically segmented into syllable-like units using vowel onset points (VOP) and energy valleys. Prosodic features, such as the dynamics of duration, energy, and fundamental frequency ( $F_0$), are then extracted at the syllable level and used to train/adapt a speaker-dependent VAE from a universal VAE. The initial comparative studies on VAEs and traditional autoencoders (AE) suggest that the former can efficiently learn speaker representations. Investigations on the impact of gender information in speaker recognition also point out that gender-dependent impostor banks lead to higher accuracies. Finally, the evaluation on the NIST SRE 2010 dataset demonstrates the usefulness of the proposed approach for speaker recognition.     

Quantum-based exact pattern matching algorithms for biological sequences

In computational biology, desired patterns are searched in large text databases, and an exact match is preferable. Classical benchmark algorithms obtain competent solutions for pattern matching in time, whereas quantum algorithm design is based on Grover's method, which completes the search in time. This paper briefly explains existing quantum algorithms and defines their processing limitations. Our initial work overcomes existing algorithmic constraints by proposing the quantum-based combined exact (QBCE) algorithm for the pattern-matching problem to process exact patterns. Next, quantum random access memory (QRAM) processing is discussed, and based on it, we propose the QRAM processing-based exact (QPBE) pattern-matching algorithm. We show that to find all occurrences of a pattern, the best case time complexities of the QBCE and QPBE algorithms are , and the exceptional worst case is bounded by . Thus, the proposed quantum algorithms achieve computational speedup. Our work is proved mathematically and validated with simulation, and complexity analysis demonstrates that our quantum algorithms are better than existing pattern-matching methods.     

A wideband high gain dielectric resonator antenna for RF energy harvesting application

A novel high gain and broadband hybrid dielectric resonator antenna (DRA) is designed and experimentally validated. To obtain the wide impedance bandwidth, the proposed antenna geometry combines the dielectric resonator antenna and an underlying slot with a narrow rectangular notch, which effectively broadens the impedance bandwidth by merging the resonances of the slot and DRA. An inverted T-shaped feed line is used to excite both antennas, simultaneously. It supports amalgamation of different resonant modes of the both, DRA and slot antenna. The measured results show that the proposed antenna offers an impedance bandwidth of 120% from 1.67 to 6.7 GHz. The antenna gain is next enhanced by a reflector placed below the antenna at an optimum distance. On engineering the height and dimension of this reflector the antenna gain is improved from 2.2 dBi to 8.7 dBi at 1.7 GHz. Finally, antenna operation is attested experimentally with a rectifier circuit in the frequency range of 1.8–3.6 GHz, where various strong radio signals are freely available for RF energy harvesting. The measured maximum efficiency of the rectifier and rectenna circuit were found to be 74.4% and 61.4%, respectively.     

Cost Effective Silica‐Based 100 G DP‐QPSK Coherent Receiver

We present a cost‐effective dual polarization quadrature phase‐shift coherent receiver module using a silica planar lightwave circuit (PLC) hybrid assembly. Two polarization beam splitters and two 90° optical hybrids are monolithically integrated in one silica PLC chip with an index contrast of 2%‐Δ. Two four‐channel spot‐size converter integrated waveguide‐photodetector (PD) arrays are bonded on PD carriers for transverse‐electric/transverse‐magnetic polarization, and butt‐coupled to a polished facet of the PLC using a simple chip‐to‐chip bonding method. Instead of a ceramic sub‐mount, a low‐cost printed circuit board is applied in the module. A stepped CuW block is used to dissipate the heat generated from trans‐impedance amplifiers and to vertically align RF transmission lines. The fabricated coherent receiver shows a 3‐dB bandwidth of 26 GHz and a common mode rejection ratio of 16 dB at 22 GHz for a local oscillator optical input. A bit error rate of is achieved at a 112‐Gbps back‐to‐back transmission with off‐line digital signal processing.     

An improved sparsity-aware normalized least-mean-square scheme for underwater communication

Underwater communication (UWC) is widely used in coastal surveillance and early warning systems. Precise channel estimation is vital for efficient and reliable UWC. The sparse direct-adaptive filtering algorithms have become popular in UWC. Herein, we present an improved adaptive convex-combination method for the identification of sparse structures using a reweighted normalized least-mean-square (RNLMS) algorithm. Moreover, to make RNLMS algorithm independent of the reweighted $l_1$-norm parameter, a modified sparsity-aware adaptive zero-attracting RNLMS (AZA-RNLMS) algorithm is introduced to ensure accurate modeling. In addition, we present a quantitative analysis of this algorithm to evaluate the convergence speed and accuracy. Furthermore, we derive an excess mean-square-error expression that proves that the AZA-RNLMS algorithm performs better for the harsh underwater channel. The measured data from the experimental channel of SPACE08 is used for simulation, and results are presented to verify the performance of the proposed algorithm. The simulation results confirm that the proposed algorithm for underwater channel estimation performs better than the earlier schemes.     

Passive parasitic UWB antenna capable of switched beam‐forming in the WLAN frequency band using an optimal reactance load algorithm

We propose a switched beam‐forming antenna that satisfies not only ultra‐wideband characteristics but also beam‐forming in the WLAN frequency band using an ultra‐wideband antenna and passive parasitic elements applying a broadband optimal reactance load algorithm. We design a power and phase estimation function and an error correction function by re‐analyzing and normalizing all the components of the parasitic array using control system engineering. The proposed antenna is compared with an antenna with a pin diode and reactance load value, respectively. The pin diode is located between the passive parasitic elements and ground plane. An antenna beam can be formed in eight directions according to the pin diode ON (reflector)/OFF (director) state. The antenna with a reactance load value achieves a better VSWR and gain than the antenna with a pin diode. We confirm that a beam is formed in eight directions owing to the RF switch operation, and the measured peak gain is 7 dBi at 2.45 GHz and 10 dBi at 5.8 GHz.