A 1.44-mW, 1-MHz bandwidth continuous-time Σ∆ modulator with 10-bit ENOB in 130-nm CMOS

A low-power, low-pass continuous-time sigma-delta A/D modulator with 1-MHz bandwidth is implemented in a 130-nm CMOS process. The circuit is targeted for an IEEE 802.15.4 direct conversion receiver operating in the 2.4-GHz band. It has a third-order feedforward single-loop filter and a 1-bit quantizer to minimize power consumption. Non-return-to-zero DAC pulse shaping is used to reduce sensitivity to clock jitter. Clocked at 64 MHz, the prototype chip achieves 62-dB peak SNR, −70-dB peak THD, 63-dB dynamic range with an oversampling ratio of 32. The built-in anti-alias filter provides alias attenuation greater than 57 dB, which improves coexistence of the receiver with other devices that operate in the 2.4-GHz band. The circuit dissipates 1.44 mW from the 1.2-V supply and the active die area is 0.1 mm².     

Integrated circuit design for physical unclonable function using differential amplifiers

A physical unclonable function (PUF) based on process variations on silicon wafers is a very promising technology which finds various applications in identification and authentication, but only a few integrated circuits have been reported so far. As those circuits are vulnerable to power supply noises, switching noises and environmental variations, they lead to a reliability issue such as time-varying or metastable responses. To resolve this issue, this letter proposes a new integrated circuit design for PUFs using differential amplifiers. The feasibility of the proposed circuit has been theoretically analyzed and validated through HSPICE simulations for the previous and proposed circuits.     

An Adaptive Learning Scheme for Medium Access with Channel Reservation in Wireless Networks

Providing effective medium access for wireless networks is a challenging task. Most of the existing protocols of IEEE 802.11 Medium Access Control (MAC) work towards the goal of achieving effective channel access by developing various backoff procedures. In this paper, we make an attempt to develop a new medium access protocol named Learning Automata (LA) based Wireless Channel Reservation (LAWCR). We use an LA approach to implement reservation for channel access for single hop wireless networks. Also, sequence procedure is used to improve the reservation mechanism. The performance of the proposed LAWCR scheme show significant improvements over the legacy DCF protocol with respect to important criteria such as the average time spent in the buffer and the throughput.     

Single Carrier Frequency Domain Equalization Space–Time Block-Spread CDMA with Multiuser Interference-Free Detection

In this paper, we study a single carrier space–time block-spread (STBS) with frequency domain equalization combined with direct-spread code division multiple access (CDMA) which we term, SCFDE-STBS-CDMA. We propose a novel SCFDE space–time scheme for CDMA that achieves multiuser-interference free reception and performs well in both slow and fast fading frequency selective channel. The orthogonality among the users is preserved at the receiver allowing a multiuser-free MUI-free detection in slow fading channel. In fast fading channel, we proposed a MMSE detector that exploits the time diversity of the fast fading channels. In the conventional counterpart scheme proposed in the literature, the length of the spreading factor affect negatively the performance of the system when the channel is fast fading while in the proposed scheme, the spreading factor is an additional degree of freedom that do not degrade the system performance. Since the maximum number of users supported depends on the spreading factor, the proposed scheme can then maintain more users than the conventional one in fast fading channels. The bit-error rate (BER) performance of the proposed scheme is analyzed and compared with the conventional approach in the literature.     

Cross-Layer Design for MRT Systems with Channel Estimation Error and Feedback Delay

Multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) beamforming is a joint spatial diversity scheme applied in frequency selective channels to enhance system performance. In uplink transmission, the impact of correlation of path gains and mutual coupling at transmitters cannot be ignored because of the size constraint on mobile terminals. In this paper, an iterative MIMO beamforming algorithm with maximal ratio transmit-maximal ratio combining (MRT-MRC) strategy is presented to improve the output signal-to-noise and interference ratio in the presence of spatial correlation and mutual coupling between transmit elements. To reduce the complexity of systems, we also propose an equal gain transmit-maximal ratio combining (EGT-MRC) scheme. In contrast to MRT-MRC scheme, this algorithm can provide better system performance. The results of numerical simulations verify the advantages of this scheme.     

Efficient cross-layer protocol for bandwidth-satisfied multicast in multi-rate MANETs

Since the multi-rate enhancements have been implemented in 802.11 wireless networks, QoS-constrained multicast protocols for multimedia communication should be adapted to exploit them fully. This work proposes a multicast protocol for data rate selection and bandwidth-satisfied multicast tree determination with an efficient cross-layer design based on the integration of PHY and MAC layers into the network layer. To use bandwidth efficiently and increase network capacity (which is the number of multicast flows supported by the network), we aim to select the combination of data rates and a multicast tree whose total amount of bandwidth consumption to the network is minimal in order to maximize the network capacity. The performance of the proposed protocol is compared with two existing protocols. Simulation results indicate that the proposed protocol has the ability to admit more multicast flows.     

Sleep scheduling with expected common coverage in wireless sensor networks

Sleep scheduling, which is putting some sensor nodes into sleep mode without harming network functionality, is a common method to reduce energy consumption in dense wireless sensor networks. This paper proposes a distributed and energy efficient sleep scheduling and routing scheme that can be used to extend the lifetime of a sensor network while maintaining a user defined coverage and connectivity. The scheme can activate and deactivate the three basic units of a sensor node (sensing, processing, and communication units) independently. The paper also provides a probabilistic method to estimate how much the sensing area of a node is covered by other active nodes in its neighborhood. The method is utilized by the proposed scheduling and routing scheme to reduce the control message overhead while deciding the next modes (full-active, semi-active, inactive/sleeping) of sensor nodes. We evaluated our estimation method and scheduling scheme via simulation experiments and compared our scheme also with another scheme. The results validate our probabilistic method for coverage estimation and show that our sleep scheduling and routing scheme can significantly increase the network lifetime while keeping the message complexity low and preserving both connectivity and coverage.     

Design and implementation of multicasting for multi-channel multi-interface wireless mesh networks

Multicasting is a useful communication method in wireless mesh networks (WMNs). Many applications in WMNs require efficient and reliable multicast communications, i.e., high delivery ratio with low overhead among a group of recipients. In spite of its significance, little work has been done on providing such multicast service in multi-channel WMNs. Traditional multicast protocols for wireless and multi-hop networks tend to assume that all nodes, each of which is equipped with a single interface, collaborate on the same channel. This single-channel assumption is not always true, as WMNs often provide nodes with multiple interfaces to enhance performance. In multi-channel and multi-interface (MCMI) WMNs, the same multicast data must be sent multiple times by a sender node if its neighboring nodes operate on different channels. In this paper, we try to tackle the challenging issue of how to design a multicast protocol more suitable for MCMI WMNs. Our multicast protocol builds multicast paths while inviting multicast members, and tries to allocate the same channel to neighboring members in a bottom-up manner. By unifying fixed channels of one-hop multicast neighbors, the proposed algorithm can improve the performance such as reducing multicast data transmission overhead and delay, while managing a successful delivery ratio. In order to prove such expectation on the performance, we have implemented and evaluated the proposed solution on the real testbed having the maximum 24 nodes, each of which is equipped with two IEEE 802.11a Atheros WLAN cards.     

Method of Passive MMW Image Detection and Identification for Close Target

This paper mainly deals with the problem of detecting and identifying target in close range, the performance of which will be effected by the radiometer’s parameters and target’s characteristics. According to the relationship between the range equation of the Passive Millimeter Wave (PMMW) and these parameters, we present a convenient statistical method based on PMMW image detection to solve the inherent problem by statistical radiometer parameters, which can be achieved by the W band radiometer experimental data. Finally, we validate the method by simulation and experiment. The results show that the method is convenient for detecting and identifying target in close range.     

A New Flexible Filter Bank for Low Complexity Spectrum Sensing in Cognitive Radios

Conventional filter bank-based spectrum sensing methods employ uniform discrete Fourier transform filter bank (DFTFB). In this paper, we propose a multi-stage coefficient decimation filter bank (MS-CDFB) for wideband spectrum sensing in cognitive radios. From an initial fixed-coefficient modal filter, a filter bank that has multiple passbands of either uniform or different passband widths can be obtained using coefficient decimation. Design examples show that proposed MS-CDFB offers a complexity reduction of about 30% over the DFTFB while giving a superior sensing accuracy than the latter. The complexity reduction of MS-CDFB over the DFTFB is 85%, if both the spectrum sensors are designed to produce identical sensing accuracies.