Design and Implementation of a Reconfigurable Mobile Game Controller on Smartphone

Expansion of games industry came in modern life, accompanied with innovative features in a game controller. Nowadays mobile industry is booming with the expansion of the variety of novel technologies, such as the use of 3D accelerometer sensors, high resolution cameras, the capability of connecting to wireless networks and so on. Therefore, a smartphone can be added with the game control functions to become a mobile game controller. In this paper, we propose the design and implementation of making a mobile phone as a game controller using User Datagram Protocol socket programming. This system is developed by Java 2 Standard Edition and Google Android Software Development Kits which has already provided sensor and multi-touch APIs. We successfully realize a reconfigurable mobile game controller on a mobile smartphone to interact with the existing digital games by mapping control functions on the server. Acceptable performance is shown to validate the effectiveness of our solution.     

A fully scalable motion model for scalable video coding.

Motion information scalability is an important requirement for a fully scalable video codec, especially for decoding scenarios of low bit rate or small image size. So far, several scalable coding techniques on motion information have been proposed, including progressive motion vector precision coding and motion vector field layered coding. However, it is still vague on the required functionalities of motion scalability and how it collaborates flawlessly with other scalabilities, such as spatial, temporal, and quality, in a scalable video codec. In this paper, we first define the functionalities required for motion scalability. Based on these requirements, a fully scalable motion model is proposed along with tailored encoding techniques to minimize the coding overhead of scalability. Moreover, the associated rate distortion optimized motion estimation algorithm will be provided to achieve better efficiency throughout various decoding scenarios. Simulation results will be presented to verify the superiorities of proposed scalable motion model over nonscalable ones.     

Constraints on the cutoff frequencies of Mth-band linear-phase FIRfilters

Constraints are derived for the cutoff frequencies of linear-phase FIR Mth-band filters such that the filters have good passband and stopband characteristics, i.e. ones that very closely approximate an ordinary (non Mth-band) filter designed using some optimal method. Constraints on lowpass filters are first considered, and the results are extended to multiband filters     

Interpolated LIR Mth-band filter design with allpass subfilters

We propose a new allpass-based structure for the IIR Mth-and 2Mth-band filters. These filters consist of M allpass filters and an interpolation filter (sum of two allpasses). Consequently, the proposed structure is very efficient in implementation. By choosing the allpass phase appropriately, the resulting phase response of the IIR Mth-band filter becomes approximately linear. An example is designed and compared with FIR Mth-band filters     

Photonic Hydrogels from Chiral Nematic Mesoporous Chitosan Nanofibril Assemblies

Iridescence in animals and plants often arises from structural coloration, which involves hierarchical organization of minerals and biopolymers over length scales of the visible spectrum, leading to diffraction of light. In this work, discarded crustacean shells that are not known for their structural colors are used to produce photonic nanostructures of large, freestanding chiral nematic mesoporous chitosan membranes with tunable iridescent color. Bioinspired by colorful nanostructures in nature, photonic hydrogels with Bouligand‐type organization are fabricated from the twisted mesoporous membranes, where the chitosan nanofibrils are a novel precursor for surface acetylation and are also a biotemplate for polymerizing methyl methacrylate. The colors of the hydrogels can be tailored by swelling as they show large volume changes in response to changes in solvent environment.     

Dependable Traffic Control Strategies for Urban and Freeway Networks

Traffic congestion is a growing problem in many countries around the world. It has been recognized that instead of constructing more roads and freeways to counter this problem it is prudent to improve the utilization of existing road network through a judicious combination of advances in control engineering, communication and information technology. The traffic control architecture proposed in this paper is a combination of communicating Urban Traffic Control Architecture (UTCA) and Freeway Traffic Control Architecture (FTCA). The UTCA combines context-awareness, Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS) principles, and Autonomic Computing System (ACS) principles to optimize traffic congestion and enforce safety in urban traffic network. The UTCA includes a network of adaptive intersection traffic controllers and their immediate supervisory systems, who are also networked. The central piece of each traffic controller is an arbiter, which is a mini CPS. It is aware of the traffic dynamics at the intersection managed by it, by virtue of continuous input from monitoring sensors. Due to this context-awareness ability and its communication ability to exchange traffic information with its neighbors, it can execute policy-based reactions in order to enable safe and efficient traffic throughput at its intersection. Each urban traffic supervisory system is designed with ACS principles in order to minimize downtime caused by environmental emergencies and maximize security of the subsystem under it. A supervisory subsystem will also collect global traffic flow information and contextual constraints from its neighbors. Based on this input it will modify policies and communicate them to its traffic controller for timely adaptation. The urban traffic flowing into freeway traffic will be mediated by Intelligent Ramp Meters (IRM). An IRM interacts with the urban traffic control system and its nearest Intelligent Roadside Unit (IRSU) to regulate the flow of traffic from urban to freeway network. The FTCA consists of a network of mutually interacting IRSUs which monitor traffic flow, communicate with IRMs for providing traffic guidance for freeway drivers. An IRSU will communicate with the vehicles in the zone managed by it in order to provide information on rerouting when road and weather conditions warrant it. It also facilitates exchange of information between vehicles, guide them in lane changes and maintaining safe distance in order to avoid collision.     

Filter banks for improved LCD motion

In the past several years much attention has been placed on improving the motion picture quality of liquid crystal displays (LCDs). One pervasive problem is motion blur which occurs due to the inherent sample-and-hold nature of LCD image formation. In this work, we take a signal processing approach to motion blur reduction by pre-processing the data before it is sent to the display. We develop a two-channel non-perfect reconstruction filter bank that is able to reduce the amount of perceivable motion blur. In addition, as in similar works, we discriminate between different regions of the scene and weight the application of the algorithm based on their susceptibility to motion blur. Perceptual tests indicate that our algorithm reduces the amount of perceivable motion blur on LCDs.     

A Binary-Weighted Switching and Reconfiguration-Based Programmable Gain Amplifier

In previous works, the authors reported on binary-weighted switching and reconfiguration techniques to design programmable gain amplifiers (PGAs) with a wide decibel (dB)-linear range, a small gain error, a wide 3-dB bandwidth, and high linearity. In this brief, two techniques are analyzed in more detail. Adopting the two techniques, a new low-voltage PGA version is proposed that offers a precise and process/temperature-insensitive gain and achieves a double dB-linear range with a small gain error while maintaining the same chip size, as compared with those of previous designs. Implemented in 0.18-mum CMOS, from the measurements, the proposed PGA shows a dB-linear gain range of 42 dB (-21 to 21 dB) with a gain error of less than plusmn 0.54 dB, a maximum input-referred third-order intercept point (IIP3) of 14 dBm, and a 3-dB bandwidth of 60 MHz at the maximum gain while consuming only 2.1 mA from a 1.5-V supply.     

HSDN‐GRA: A hybrid software‐defined networking‐based geographic routing protocol with multi‐agent approach

We propose in this paper a Hybrid Software‐Defined Networking‐based Geographical Routing Protocol (HSDN‐GRA) with a clustering approach. It takes into account three different criteria to select the best relay to send data: (1) the contact duration between vehicles, (2) the available load of each vehicle, (3) and the log of encountered communication errors embedded in each cluster head. The multi‐criteria strategy allows the selection of the most reliable vehicles by avoiding communication problems and ensuring connection availability. Once the hybrid control plane has found out the next eligible neighbor, the data plane will be in charge of dividing and sending data. To validate our approach, HSDN‐GRA has been modeled and implemented in JADE, a multi‐agent platform, to be compared to other multi‐agent based protocols. Simulation results show that HSDN‐GRA achieves good performance with respect to the average routing overhead, the packet drop rate, and the throughput.     

Epidemic contact tracing with smartphone sensors

ABSTRACT

Contact tracing is widely considered as an effective procedure in the fight against epidemic diseases. However, one of the challenges for technology based contact tracing is the high number of false positives, questioning its trust-worthiness and efficiency amongst the wider population for mass adoption. To this end, this paper proposes a novel, yet practical smartphone-based contact tracing approach, employing WiFi and acoustic sound for relative distance estimate, in addition to the air pressure and the magnetic field for ambient environment matching. We present a model combining six smartphone sensors, prioritising some of them when certain conditions are met. We empirically verified our approach in various realistic environments to demonstrate an achievement of up to 95% fewer false positives, and 62% more accurate than Bluetooth-only system. To the best of our knowledge, this paper was one of the first work to propose a combination of smartphone sensors for contact tracing.