Performance modeling and evaluation of data/voice services in wireless networks

Application-level performance is a key to the adoption and success of the CDMA 2000. To predict this performance in advance, a detailed end-to-end simulation model of a CDMA network is built to include application traffic characteristics, network architecture, network element details using the proposed simulation methodology. We assess the user-perceived application performance when a RAN and a CN adopt different transport architectures such as ATM and IP. To evaluate the user-perceived quality of voice service, we compare the end-to-end packet delay for different vocoder schemes such as G.711, G.726 (PCM), G.726 (ADPCM), and vocoder bypass scheme. By the simulation results, the vocoder bypass scenario shows 30% performance improvement over the others. We also compare the quality of voice service with and without DPS scheduling scheme. We know that DPS scheme keep the voice delay bound even if the service traffic is high. For data packet performance, HTTP v.1.1 shows better performance than that of HTTP v.1.0 due to the pipelining and TCP persistent connection. We may conclude that IP transport technology is better solution for higher FER environment since the packet overhead of IP is smaller than that of ATM for web browsing data traffic, while it shows opposite effect to the small size voice packet in RAN architecture. We show that the 3G-1X EV-DO system gives much better packet delay performance than 3G-1X RTT. The main conclusion is that end-to-end application-level performance is affected by various elements and layers of the network and thus it must be considered in all phases of the development process. Jae-Hyun Kim He received the B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. degrees, all in computer science and engineering, from Hanyang University, Ansan, Korea, in 1991, 1993, and 1996 respectively. In 1996, he was with the Communication Research Laboratory, Tokyo, Japan, as a Visiting Scholar. From April 1997 to October 1998, he was a post-doctoral fellow at the department of electrical engineering, University of California, Los Angeles. From November 1998 to February 2003, he worked as a member of technical staff in Performance Modeling and QoS management department, Bell laboratories, Lucent Technologies, Holmdel, NJ. He has been with the department of electrical engineering, Ajou University, Suwon, Korea, as an assistant professor since 2003. His research interests include QoS issues and cross layer optimization for high-speed wireless communication. Dr. Kim was the recipient of the LGIC Thesis Prize and Samsung Human-Tech Thesis Prize in 1993 and 1997, respectively. He is a member of the Korean Institute of Communication Sciences (KICS), Korea Institute of Telematics and Electronis (KITE), Korea Information Science Society (KISS), and IEEE. Hyun-Jin Lee received the B.S. degree in electrical engineering from Ajou University, Suwon, Korea, in 2004, and is working toward the M.S. degree and Ph. D. degree in electrical engineering at Ajou University. He has been awarded Samsung Human-Tech Thesis Prize in 2004. His research interests QoS, especially network optimization and wireless packet scheduling. He is a member of the KICS. Sung-Min Oh received the B.S. and M. S. degrees in electrical engineering form Ajou University, Suwon, Korea, in 2004, and is working toward the Ph. D. degree in electrical engineering at Ajou University. His research interests QoS performance analysis and 4G network. He is a member of the KICS. Sung-Hyun Cho received his B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. in computer science and engineering from Hanyang University, Korea, in 1995, 1997, and 2001, respectively. From 2001 to 2005, he has been with Samsung Advanced Institute of Technology, where he has been engaged in the design and standardization of MAC and upper layers of B3G, IEEE 802.16e, and WiBro systems. He is currently a MAC part leader in the telecommunication R&D center of Samsung Electronics. His research interests include 4G air interface design, radio resource management, cross layer design, and handoff in wireless systems.     

Effects of strontium gallate additions on sintering behavior of gadolinia-doped ceria

The densification behavior and grain growth of Ce_0.8Gd_0.2O_1.9 ceramics were investigated with the strontium gallate concentration ranging from 0 to 5 mol%. Both the sintered density and grain size were found to increase rapidly up to 0.5 mol% Sr₂Ga₂O₅, and then to decrease with further addition. Dense Ce_0.8Gd_0.2O_1.9 ceramics with 97% of the theoretical density could be obtained for 0.5 mol% Sr₂Ga₂O₅-added specimen sintered at 1250^∘C for 5 h, whereas pure Ce_0.8Gd_0.2O_1.9 ceramics needed to be sintered at 1550^∘C in order to obtain an equivalent theoretical density. The addition of Sr₂Ga₂O₅ was found to promote the sintering properties of Gd₂O₃-doped CeO₂.     

Study on the c-axis preferred orientation of ZnO film on various metal electrodes

ZnO thin film was deposited on various metal electrodes by reactive sputtering, and c-axis preferred orientation of the film has been studied. ZnO, which has high piezoelectricity, is promising for oscillators or filter devices such as surface acoustic wave (SAW) device, gas sensor, and film bulk acoustic resonator (FBAR). But, for the application of ZnO film for these devices, the film should be grown with c-axis normal to the electrode. In this study, Pt, Al, and Au were deposited on Si wafer, and the surface roughness and crystal structure of the ZnO film on the electrode were investigated using AFM, scanning electron microscopy (SEM), and X-ray diffraction (XRD). Columnar structures of ZnO films were grown with c-axis normal to all electrodes, and among them Pt electrode showed the highest preferred orientation of ZnO film.     

Preparation of multi-compositional gas sensing films by combinatorial solution deposition

Various compositions of gas sensing films were prepared by the combinatorial deposition of SnO₂, ZnO, and WO₃ sol solutions and their gas sensing behaviors were investigated. The film composition could be manipulated conveniently via the alternate dropping of different oxide sol solutions. From the correlation between film compositions and gas sensitivities, the selective detection of C₂H₅OH and CH₃COCH₃ in the presence of CO, C₃H₈, H₂, and NO₂ could be attained. In addition, the discrimination between C₂H₅OH and CH₃COCH₃, which is a challenging issue due to their similar chemical nature, becomes possible. This research demonstrates the precise design of the sensor-material composition for the selective gas detection via the combinatorial approach.     

Local Strain Measurement within Tendon

Abstract:  Tendon is a dense connective tissue, responsible for transmitting the forces generated by muscles to the skeleton. It is composed of a hierarchical arrangement of crimped collagen fibres, interspersed with proteoglycan matrix and cells, known as tenocytes. During physiological loading, tendons are subjected to strains in the region of 5–6%, which result in the straightening and realignment of the collagen fibres, generating variable local strain fields within the tendon. This study demonstrates a technique for analysing local strains within viable tendon explants, during both loading and unloading of the tissue. Samples were strained in a custom-designed rig, allowing real-time visualisation of cell nuclei, used as local discrete markers, on a confocal microscope. Results indicated that local strains within the fascicle are smaller than the applied strains, never exceeding 1.2%, even at 8% gross applied strain. By contrast, the sliding of adjacent collagen units was recorded at each strain increment in this study, reaching a mean maximum of 3.9% of the applied displacement. Loading–unloading studies indicated that sliding behaviour is reversible up to strains of 5%, and provides the major extension mechanism within the rat-tail tendon. This technique can be extended to further analyse shearing behaviour within the matrix.     

Evaluation of image similarity by histogram intersection

Colour is the most widely used attribute in image retrieval and object recognition. A technique known as histogram intersection has been widely studied and is considered to be effective for color‐image indexing. The key issue of this algorithm is the selection of an appropriate color space and optimal quantization of the selected color space. The goal of this article is to measure the model performance in predicting human judgment in similarity measurement for various images, to explore the capability of the model with a wide set of color spaces, and to find the optimal quantization of the selected color spaces. Six color spaces and twelve quantization levels are involved in evaluating the performance of histogram intersection. The categorical judgment and rank order experiments were conducted to measure image similarity. The CIELAB color space was found to perform at least as good as or better than the other color spaces tested, and the ability to predict image similarity increased with the number of bins used in the histograms, for up to 512 bins (8 per channel). With more than 512 bins, further improvement was negligible for the image datasets used in this study. © 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Col Res Appl, 30, 265–274, 2005; Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com). DOI 10.1002/col.20122     

Similarity retrieval of iconic image database

The perception of spatial relationships among objects in a picture is one of the important selection criteria to discriminate and retrieve the images in an iconic image database system. The data structure called 2D string, proposed by Chang et al., is adopted to represent symbolic pictures. The 2D string preserves the objects' spatial knowledge embedded in images. Since spatial relationship is a fuzzy concept, the capability of similarity retrieval for the retrieval by subpicture is essential. In this paper, similarity measure based on 2D string longest common subsequence is defined. The algorithm for similarity retrieval is also proposed. Similarity retrieval provides the iconic image database with the distinguishing function different from a conventional database.     

The effects of widowhood on physical and mental health, health behaviors, and health outcomes: The Women's Health Initiative.

This study examined whether widowhood was associated with physical and mental health, health behaviors, and health outcomes using a cross-sectional (N=72,247) and prospective (N=55,724) design in women aged 50-79 years participating in the Women's Health Initiative observational study (85.4% White). At baseline, married women reported better physical and mental health and generally better health behaviors than widowed women. Whereas women who remained married over the 3-year period showed stability in mental health, recent widows experienced marked impairments and longer term widows showed stability or slight improvements. Both groups of widows reported more unintentional weight loss over the 3-year period. Changes in physical health and health behaviors were inconsistent, with generally small effect sizes. Findings underscore the resilience of older women and their capacity to reestablish connections, but point to the need for services that strengthen social support among women who have difficulty during this transition. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Anaerobic biodecolorization of textile reactive anthraquinone and phthalocyanine dyebaths under hypersaline conditions.

The biological decolorization of two industrial, spent textile reactive dyebaths was investigated using a suspended-growth, halophilic mixed culture fed with glucose. Dyebath I contained mainly Reactive Blue 19 (RB19), an anthraquinone dye, whereas dyebath II contained mainly Reactive Blue 21 (RB21), a phthalocyanine dye. Batch assays under anaerobic conditions with the two neutralized dyebaths resulted in 87 and 37% extent of decolorization for dyebaths I and II, respectively. The rate of glucose utilization and the extent of acetate production were impacted in the presence of each dyebath as compared to the control culture. However, dyebath decolorization occurred despite moderate culture inhibition. Reuse of a biologically renovated RB19-containing dyebath in the dyeing process resulted in reproducible but not identical cotton fabric shades as compared to a standard dyeing (i.e., control) using fresh water. This difference is attributed to a variable degree of RB19 aggregation during the dyeing process and is not related to the efficiency of the biodecolorization process. Further improvement of the redyeing efficiency will lead to the development of an in-plant, closed-loop decolorization system resulting in significant water conservation and minimization of textile pollutants such as salt and dyes.