E-business technologies for xRM: Exploring the readiness of public broadcasters

This paper examines the possibilities of enhancing relationship management between public service broadcasters and their stakeholders by harnessing the potential of newest e-business technologies and concepts, such as: social media, digital and interactive TV, and mobile computing. In order to facilitate adoption of relationship management strategy, a framework for leveraging relationship management is proposed. Evaluation was performed within the e-business system of a public broadcaster. This empirical study explored the readiness and expected benefits of relationship management implementation. The research results have indicated that a public broadcaster could achieve a higher level of social responsibility, improve business sustainability, and empower communication and collaboration with all the stakeholders by using emerging technologies for relationship management activities.     

Fabrication,characterization, and analysis of photodetectors metal-porous silicon with different geometry and thickness of the porous silicon layer

Porous silicon photodetectors obtained by electrochemical etching of p-type non-polished crystalline silicon were studied. A metal-porous silicon structure was used to obtain the rectifying behavior. The geometry of the metal layer deposited by thermal evaporation on the porous zone was modified with different masks fabricated using a photolithographic method. The samples obtained under different anodization conditions were characterized by PL. The sample that showed the best intensity in photoluminescence, centered on 675 nm, was selected and five samples obtained under these conditions were prepared to compare the difference in the photoresponse because of the geometry of the evaporated metal layer. The responsivities obtained show us an important difference between the devices and allow us to propose a specific geometrical pattern to obtain a better response in this kind of devices.     

Substrate Analysis on the Design of Wide-Band Antenna for Sub-6 GHz 5G Communication

Wireless Personal Communications - A compact triple band antenna with stacked T-shaped strips inside a rectangular ring monopole has been proposed. This novel structure with a slot in the defected...     

Pilot Tones Optimization Using Artificial Bee Colony Algorithm for MIMO–OFDM Systems

How to design the pilot tones that are used in channel estimation has a significant effect on the estimation performance. To achieve good performance in least square (LS) algorithm, we propose the artificial bee colony (ABC) algorithm for optimizing the placement of pilot tones in MIMO–OFDM systems. We also derive the upper bound of mean square error of LS estimation with the help of Gerschgorin disc theorem for fitness function of ABC algorithm. The results show that designing pilot tones using the ABC algorithm outperforms other considered placement strategies in terms of high system performance and low computational complexity.     

Trapping and recombination processes via deep level T3 in semi-insulating gallium arsenide

Trapping and recombination of free carriers by deep level T₃ has been studied. Occupancy of the level by electrons and dynamics of its filling and emptying as a function of illumination with monoenergetic photons in 0.69–1.55 eV range has been monitored by the thermally stimulated currents method. We have found that level T₃ behaves more like a recombination center than like an ordinary electron trap. Besides trapping free electrons from conduction band, this trap can also communicate with valence band, trapping holes. The capture cross section for trapping a hole is estimated to be comparable or even larger than the capture cross section for trapping an electron. However, in many experimental conditions free electrons are generated more abundantly than free holes, and free carrier mobility and thermal velocity are both much higher for electrons than for holes. Therefore, electron trapping often prevails, so that this frequently detected defect, has been up to now most often perceived as a deep electron trap.     

Estimation and setting starting values in ARMA algorithms

For the given observations set of the ARMA (autoregressive moving average) process, the likelihood function depends, not only on model parameters, but on the starting values of the input and output. Therefore, it is called theconditional likelihood function. Theunconditional likelihood function can be obtained in two ways. The first is to set the starting values to zero, as is often done, and the second is to set them to the properly estimated values. The difference between these two types of likelihood functions is significant when the given data sequence is short, and any of the zeros of the moving average part is close to the boundary of the unit circle.In this paper the direct method of starting value estimation and its application to two off-line ARMA estimation algorithms, the maximum likelihood (ML) algorithm and the iterative inverse filtering (ITIF) algorithm, is proposed. Experimental results prove both increased efficiency and stability of these algorithms.The importance of setting the starting values properly is also significant when the recursive algorithm, with previously estimated parameters, has to be restarted. The advantage of the proposed reinitialization method is shown on the recursive lattice algorithm working in the block mode.     

Dielectric integrity of thin thermal oxides on silicon

The role of silicon dioxide layers in microelectronics and the importance of their integrity are undisputable. From passivating coatings and masking layers for diffusion to ultra-thin tunneling films — all the silicon technology could not exist without silicon dioxide. This review deals with some aspects of the integrity of thin silicon dioxide films for VLSI applications. The problems of dielectric strength and wear-out are considered from the point of view of their mechanisms, models, oxide processing dependence, testing, and measuring. A brief presentation of statistical approaches commonly applied to reliability topics is also included.     

A variable rate multipulse speech coder for CDMA cellular systems

Variable Rate (VR) speech coders are classified into: source-controlled VR coders where the rate is selected depending on the local character of the speech, and network-controlled VR coders where an external control signal selects the coding rate. The first category benefits from the variable rate channels used by Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) mobile communications. The second category is indispensable for the right behaviour of the CDMA systems under conditions as high traffic levels. The VR speech coder presented in this communication exhibits both types of control. The source control is achieved by means of a Voice Activity Detector (VAD) and a phonetic classifier. The network control acts on the selection procedure of the multipulse excitation sequence to the synthesis filter. This is the main advantage of our VR MultiPulse speech coder because by means of an external signal the bit rate can be changed only every 4 msec, without transitions or distortions. Considering one-way communication, six different operating rates can be externally selected ranging from 4.8 to 9.1 kbps for the active frames; an average bit rate of 380 bps is required for the noise frames.This work has been partly funded by the Spanish Research National Plan under grant no. TIC92-0800-C05-02 and by Northern Telecom.