Soft error modeling and remediation techniques in ASIC designs

Soft errors due to cosmic radiations are the main reliability threat during lifetime operation of digital systems. Fast and accurate estimation of soft error rate (SER) is essential in obtaining the reliability parameters of a digital system in order to balance reliability, performance, and cost of the system. Previous techniques for SER estimation are mainly based on fault injection and random simulations. In this paper, we present an analytical SER modeling technique for ASIC designs that can significantly reduce SER estimation time while achieving very high accuracy. This technique can be used for both combinational and sequential circuits. We also present an approach to obtain uncertainty bounds on estimated error propagation probability (EPP) values used in our SER modeling framework. Comparison of this method with the Monte-Carlo fault injection and simulation approach confirms the accuracy and speed-up of the presented technique for both the computed EPP values and uncertainty bounds.Based on our SER estimation framework, we also present efficient soft error hardening techniques based on selective gate resizing to maximize soft error suppression for the entire logic-level design while minimizing area and delay penalties. Experimental results confirm that these techniques are able to significantly reduce soft error rate with modest area and delay overhead.     

All two-input logic gates by a single-stage single electron box

In this paper, the design of all two-input logic gates is presented by only a single-stage single electron box (SEB) for the first time. All gates are constructed based on a same circuit. We have used unique periodic characteristics of SEB to design these gates and present all two-input logic gates (monotonic/non-monotonic, symmetric/non-symmetric) by a single-stage design. In conventional monotonic devices, such as MOSFETs, implementing non-monotonic logic gates such as XOR and XNOR is impossible by only a single-stage design, and a multistage design is required which leads to more complexity, higher power consumption and less speed of the gates. We present qualitative design at first and then detailed designs are investigated and optimised by using our previous works. All designs are verified by a single electron simulator which shows correct operation of the gates.     

Automatic facial expression recognition: feature extraction and selection

In this paper, we investigate feature extraction and feature selection methods as well as classification methods for automatic facial expression recognition (FER) system. The FER system is fully automatic and consists of the following modules: face detection, facial detection, feature extraction, selection of optimal features, and classification. Face detection is based on AdaBoost algorithm and is followed by the extraction of frame with the maximum intensity of emotion using the inter-frame mutual information criterion. The selected frames are then processed to generate characteristic features using different methods including: Gabor filters, log Gabor filter, local binary pattern (LBP) operator, higher-order local autocorrelation (HLAC) and a recent proposed method called HLAC-like features (HLACLF). The most informative features are selected based on both wrapper and filter feature selection methods. Experiments on several facial expression databases show comparisons of different methods.     

Engineering ATM networks for congestion avoidance

With the combination of telecommunication, entertainment and computer industries, computer networking is adopting a new method called Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) networking. Congestion control plays an important role in the effective and stable operation of ATM networks. Traffic management concerns with the design of a set of mechanisms which ensure that the network bandwidth, buffer and computational resources are efficiently utilized while meeting the various Quality of Service (QoS) guarantees given to sources as part of a traffic contract. In this paper, the most widely recognized congestion control schemes for ABR service are investigated. Some of these schemes show either lack of scalability or fairness while other well‐behaved schemes may require a highly complex switch algorithm that is unsuitable for implementation in cell‐switching high‐speed ATM networks. A new and improved congestion control scheme is proposed to support the best‐effort ABR traffic. This algorithm provides the congestion avoidance ability with high throughput and low delay, in addition to achieving the max–min fairness allocation. This revised version was published online in June 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Joint routing and channel assignment using online learning in cognitive radio networks

Cognitive radio networks (CRNs) are the solution for the problem of underutilizing the licensed spectrum for which there are more requests in the last couple of decades. In CRNs, Secondary users (SUs) are permitted to access opportunistically the licensed spectrum owned by primary users (PUs). In this paper, we address the problem of joint routing and channel assignment for several flows generated by source SUs to a given destination. We consider a more realistic model based on Markov modulated Poisson process for modeling the PUs traffic at each channel and the SUs try to exploit short lived spectrum holes between the PUs packets at the selected channel. The SUs want to cooperatively minimize the end-to-end delay of source SUs flows meanwhile the quality of service requirements of the PUs would be met. To consider partial observation of SUs about PUs activity at all channels and quick adaptation of SUs decisions to environment changes and cooperative interaction of SUs, we use decentralized partially observable markov decision process for modeling the problem. Then, an online learning based scheme is proposed for solving the problem. Simulation results show that the performance of the proposed method and the optimal method is close to each other. Also, simulation results show that the proposed method greatly outperforms related works at control of interference to the PUs while maintains the end-to-end delay of SU flows in a low level.

     

An Improvement Energy Consumption Policy Using Communication Reduction in Wireless Body Sensor Network

Dedicated short-range communications (DSRC) is an important wireless technology for current and future automotive safety and mitigation of traffic jams. In this work, we have designed a Coplanar waveguide microstrip patch antenna with linear, upper and bottom and side slots for application in DSRC. The patch antenna was designed using glass epoxy substrate (FR4). Various parametric analyses such as the current distribution, reflection coefficient, radiation pattern on E- and H-plane as well as the realized gain (dB) were performed. The results were obtained by simulation using high-frequency structure simulator tool. The proposed antenna covers a frequency band of 5.8–5.9 GHz which is highly dedicated to the DSRC wireless communication technology for enhancement of safety of the automotive transport system. The designed antenna shows a good return loss of ??19 dB at 5.9 GHz.The designed antenna shows a promising gain, return loss and radiation pattern for use in DSRC for automotive transport systems.

     

Optimal Resource Allocation in Heterogeneous MIMO Cognitive Radio Networks

The optimal resource allocation in MIMO cognitive radio networks with heterogeneous secondary users, centralized and distributed users, is investigated in this work. The core aim of this work is to study the joint problems of transmission time and power allocation in a MIMO cognitive radio scenario. The optimization objective is to maximize the total capacity of the secondary users (SUs) with the constraint of fairness. At first, the joint problems of transmission time and power allocation for centralized SUs in uplink is optimized. Afterwards, for the heterogeneous case with both the centralized and distributed secondary users, the resource allocation problem is formulated and an iterative power water-filling scheme is proposed to achieve the optimal resource allocation for both kinds of SUs. A dynamic optimal joint transmission time and power allocation scheme for heterogeneous cognitive radio networks is proposed. The simulation results illustrate the performance of the proposed scheme and its superiority over other power control schemes.     

IGBDD: Intelligent Grid Based Data Dissemination Protocol for Mobile Sink in Wireless Sensor Networks

Lifetime and energy efficiency are important factors in the design of wireless sensor network. A critical issue during data collection is the formation of energy holes near the sink. Sensors which are located near the sink have to participate in relaying data on behalf of other sensors and thus their energy will be depleted very quickly. Mobile sink movement yields the significant performance gained by decreasing the amount of energy consumption. In this paper, we propose an Intelligent Grid Based Data Disseminating protocol for mobile sink in wireless sensor networks. We have utilized a virtual grid as the protocol’s substructure. In our proposed method, cell heads (CHs) will be selected based on the locations of virtual cross points (CPs) and CPs selection is needless to transfer any required data between neighbor nodes. We have optimized CPs selection using linear programming technique in order to increase network lifetime. By selecting the CHs based on our proposed algorithm, data will be disseminated toward the sink. Our data dissemination protocol is simple and has low overhead to construct and maintain. Also, we have presented a new method for sink location update which leads to the least cost in data transfer. Simulation results illustrate that by utilizing hierarchical functionality and selecting appropriate CPs and consequently selecting CHs, energy consumption will be decreased in comparison with other presented methods which directly lead to network lifetime increment. Also by determining an optimal cell size, packet delivery rate will be improved noticeably.