Large Scale Indoor Localization System Based on Wireless Sensor Networks for Ubiquitous Computing

The task of formulating an efficient system for determining the location of an object, results in the creation of a wide number of applications and services. For this reason, most wireless sensor network applications assume the availability of sensor location information. In this paper, an indoor localization scheme, which is based on synchronized sensor nodes, is proposed. It is efficient in terms of power consumption and location update rate. Furthermore, it resolves the scalability problem usually found in most conventional indoor localization systems in large scale indoor environments. The performance of the proposed scheme is evaluated through experimental implementation and is compared with the Cricket system. The results demonstrate that the proposed scheme is a promising and feasible localization system for a large scale indoor environment.     

Using Data Contention in Dual-ported Memories for Security Applications

Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGA) provide the invaluable feature of dynamic hardware reconfiguration by loading configuration bit files. However, this flexibility also opens up the threat of theft of Intellectual Property (IP) since these configuration files can be easily extracted and cloned. In this context, the ability to bind an application configuration to a specific device is an important step to prevent product counterfeiting. Furthermore, such a technology can also enable advanced business models such as device-specific feature activation. In this work, we present a new technique to generate entropy on FPGA device—based on data contention in the hardware circuitry. For this entropy, we use the output of intentionally generated write collisions in synchronous dual-ported block RAMs (BRAM). We show that the parts of this output generated by such write collisions can be either probabilistic but also deterministic and device-specific. The characteristics of such an entropy source can be used for a large variety of security applications, such as chip identification and device authentication. In addition to that, we also propose a solution to efficiently create cryptographic keys on-chip at runtime. As a last contribution, we eventually present a strategy how to transform this entropy source into a circuit for True Random Number Generation (TRNG).     

Dynamic Reconfiguration Technologies Based on FPGA in Software Defined Radio System

Partial Reconfiguration (PR) is a method for Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) designs which allows multiple applications to time-share a portion of an FPGA while the rest of the device continues to operate unaffected. Using this strategy, the physical layer processing architecture in Software Defined Radio (SDR) systems can benefit from reduced complexity and increased design flexibility, as different waveform applications can be grouped into one part of a single FPGA. Waveform switching often means not only changing functionality, but also changing the FPGA clock frequency. However, that is beyond the current functionality of PR processes as the clock components (such as Digital Clock Managers (DCMs)) are excluded from the process of partial reconfiguration. In this paper, we present a novel architecture that combines another reconfigurable technology, Dynamic Reconfigurable Port (DRP), with PR based on a single FPGA in order to dynamically change both functionality and also the clock frequency. The architecture is demonstrated to reduce hardware utilization significantly compared with standard, static FPGA design.     

Intermetallic reactions in a Sn-20In-2.8Ag solder ball-grid-array package with Au/Ni/Cu pads

The intermetallic compounds formed during the reflow and aging of Sn-20In-2.8Ag ball-grid-array (BGA) packages are investigated. After reflow, a large number of cubic-shaped AuIn₂ intermetallics accompanied by Ag₂In precipitates appear in the solder matrix, while a Ni(Sn_0.72Ni_0.28)₂ intermetallic layer is formed at the solder/pad interface. With further aging at 100°C, many voids can be observed in the solder matrix and at the solder/pad interface. The continuous distribution of voids at the interface of specimens after prolonged aging at 100°C causes their bonding strength to decrease from 5.03 N (as reflowed) to about 3.50 N. Aging at 150°C induces many column-shaped (Cu_0.74Ni_0.26)₆(Sn_0.92In_0.08)₅ intermetallic compounds to grow rapidly and expand from the solder/pad interface into the solder matrix. The high microhardness of these intermetallic columns causes the bonding strength of the Sn-20In-2.8Ag BGA solder joints to increase to 5.68 N after aging at 150°C for 500 h.     

Dynamic Waveband Switching in WDM Mesh Networks Based on a Generic Auxiliary Graph Model

Waveband switching (WBS) is a promising technique to reduce the switching and transmission costs in the optical domain of a wavelength-division multiplexing (WDM) network. This paper considers the problem of provisioning dynamic traffic using WBS in a WDM mesh network. The network of interest is a homogeneous WBS network, where each node has the functionality of WBS. The problem is called the dynamic WBS problem, which involves searching waveband-routes or wavelength-routes for the dynamically arriving traffic requests. The objective is to minimize the total switching and transmission costs in the optical domain. To solve the dynamic WBS problem, an auxiliary graph model capturing the network state is proposed. Based on the auxiliary graph, two heuristic on-line WBS algorithms with different waveband grouping policies are proposed, namely the wavelength-first WBS algorithm based on the auxiliary graph (WFAUG) and the waveband-first WBS algorithm based on the auxiliary graph (BFAUG). Simulation results indicate that WBS is an attractive technique which reduces the overall switching and transmission costs by up to 30% in the network. The results also show that the WFAUG algorithm outperforms the BFAUG algorithm in terms of port savings and cost savings.     

Formulation and characterization of anisotropic conductive adhesive paste for microelectronics packaging applications

There has been a steadily increasing interest in using electrically conductive adhesives as interconnecting materials in electronics manufacturing. In this paper, several anisotropic conductive adhesive (ACA) pastes were formulated, which consist of diglycidyl ether of bisphenol F or diglycidyl ether of bisphenol A as polymer matrix, imidazoles as curing agents, and different sizes of silver (Ag) powders or gold (Au)-coated polymer spheres as conductive particles. The effects of ACA resin and different curing agents, as well as different conductive particles, on flexible substrate of the flip-chip joint were studied. The results show that the size and type of different conductive particles have very limited influence on an ACA flip-chip joint. The ACA resin as well as the curing agent can affect the reliability of the joint. The same results can be applied for the failure analysis of ACA flip-chip technology.     

Efficient design of anti-jamming rateless coding in cognitive OFDM

Efficient anti-jamming rateless coding based on cognitive Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) modulation in Cognitive Radio Network (CRN) is mainly discussed. Rateless coding with small redundancy and low complexity is presented, and the optimal design methods of building rateless codes are also proposed. In CRN, anti-jamming rateless coding could recover the lost packets in parallel channels of cognitive OFDM, thus it protects Secondary Users (SUs) from the interference by Primary Users (PUs) efficiently. Frame Error Rate (FER) and throughput performance of SU employing anti-jamming rateless coding are analyzed in detail. Performance comparison between rateless coding and piecewise coding are also presented. It is shown that, anti-jamming rateless coding provides low FER and Word Error Rate (WER) performance with uniform sub-channel selection. Meanwhile, it is also verified that, in higher jamming rate and longer code redundancy scenario, rateless coding method could achieve better FER and throughput performance than another anti-jamming coding schemes.     

A study on photo-induced intramolecular electron-transfer in fullerene-benzothiadiazole-triphenylamine using time-dependent density functional theory

We employed first-principle calculations to study the photo-induced electron transfer (PIET) process of a fullerene-benzothiadiazole-triphenylamine (C60-BTD-TPA), fullerene-diphenylbenzothiadiazole-triphenylamine (C60-PBTD-TPA), and fullerene-triphenylamine (C60-TPA). The ground state geometries of C60-BTD-TPA, C60-PBTD-TPA, and C60-TPA were optimized using density functional theory (DFT). Their excited states were investigated using time-dependent HF, and time-dependent DFT (TDDFT) methods. The long-range corrected CAM-B3LYP functional was found to give the best agreements with the experimentally observed transition energies. CAM-B3LYP-based wave functions were also employed to calculate the charge transfer integrals using generalized Mulliken–Hush (GMH) approach, and the photo-induced charge separation (k_CS) and charge recombination rate constants (k_CR) were calculated using Marcus theory. The results showed the calculated k_CS and observed k_CS of C60-PBTD-TPA and C60-TPA correspond to each other, however, the both of C60-BTD-TPA differ by two orders of magnitude. For k_CR of these compounds, the calculated and observed values were more contrary to each other due to improper application of Marcus electron-transfer theory.     

Error concealment via Kalman filter for heavily corrupted videos in H.264/AVC

Error concealment at the decoder side is an economical approach to ensuring an acceptable and stable video quality in case of packet erasure or loss, and thus it has attracted lots of research interest. Current techniques mainly employ the spatial or temporal correlation to predict the motion vectors (MVs) of the missing blocks, and interpolation, extrapolation or boundary matching schemes are usually effective. However, for heavily corrupted sequences, e.g., with macroblock loss rate beyond 50%, most methods might perform less satisfactorily. Inspired by the tracking efficiency of Kalman filter (KF), in the present work, we adopted it to predict the missing MVs, and the unpredicted ones (minority) were recovered complementarily using the bilinear motion field interpolation (MFI) method. Since the KF prediction is independent of the loss rate, the present framework is especially robust for heavily corrupted videos. Experimental results on typical sequences reveal that the proposed algorithm outperforms the boundary matching algorithm embedded in the H.264/AVC reference code, the MFI algorithm in the literature, and some other existing techniques by up to about 5.68 dB.