Comparative physical and electrical metrology of ultrathin oxidesin the 6 to 1.5 nm regime

In this work, five methods for measuring the thickness of ultra-thin gate oxide layers in MOS structures were compared experimentally on n⁺ poly-SiO₂-p-Si structures. Three methods are based on electrical capacitance-voltage (C-V) and current-voltage (I-V) data and the other two methods are HRTEM and optical measurement. MOS capacitors with oxide thickness in the range 17-55 Å have been used in this study. We found that thickness extracted using QM C-V and HRTEM agree within 1.0 Å over the whole thickness range when a dielectric constant of 3.9 was used. Comparison between thickness extracted using quantum interference (QI) I-V technique and optical measurement were also within 1.0 Å for thickness 31-47 Å. However, optical oxide thickness was consistently lower than the TEM thickness by about 2 Å over the thickness range under consideration. Both optical measurement and QM C-V modeling yield the same thickness as the nominal oxide thickness increases (>50 Å)     

Information theoretic considerations for coded modulation overfading channels

We compute the random coding error exponent for coded modulation transmitted over a flat, memoryless, Rayleigh fading channel. In addition, estimates of code lengths required to achieve a certain error probability are determined and compared to those required for the additive white Gaussian noise channel. Finally, the effect of receiver antenna diversity is also considered as a method to compensate for fading and is shown to have a significant, positive impact on the error exponent. The results we obtain represent an information theoretic view that complements the existing literature on the performance of coded modulation over fading channels with receiver diversity     

Best Minimum Summation Scheduler for Long Term Evolution

Resource scheduling in Long Term Evolution (LTE) is an open and rising issue. It has an enormous impact on the entire system performance. Due to the nature of LTE system, the scheduler has to be designed carefully. It has to overcome many challenges such as limited processing time and the high dynamic behavior. This paper proposes a novel scheduling policy for the MAC layer in LTE called the Best Minimum Summation (BMS). The main aim of this scheduling policy is to achieve high performance with low complexity. Three sub-schedulers have been developed. Each one of these schedulers deals with scheduling table in different dimension. The first one operates on the scheduling table through the user dimension (BMS.UE); while the second one operates on the scheduling table through the resource block dimension (BMS.RB). The third scheduler operates on the scheduling table correlating both of these dimensions (BMS.2D). All of the proposed solutions were intensively evaluated in a system level simulator. Three performance metrics were used which are throughput, error rate and fairness. The results have shown that the ability of the BMS.UE scheduler to outperform other existing schedulers of LTE.     

Cons and pros: prison education through the eyes of the prison educated*

ABSTRACT

While much has been written within academic journals about prisoners, rarely is there anything written by prisoners. In this essay, we, a group of prisoners who are earning or have earned college degrees while incarcerated in Texas, address the purpose, merits, and pitfalls of prison education and reform. Written as a response to the essays appearing in this special issue, we discuss our experiences of being othered as inmates, the impact of societal bias against us, our perspectives on prison education, and our own ideas for reforming prisons and making them more humane.     

A statistical trust system in wireless mesh networks

Most trust and reputation solutions in wireless mesh networks (WMNs) rely on the intrusion detection system (IDS) Watchdog. Nevertheless, Watchdog does not consider packet loss on wireless links and may generate false positives. Consequently, a node that suffers from packet loss on one of its links may be accused wrongly, by Watchdog, of misbehaving. To deal with this issue, we propose in this paper a novel trust system which considers packet loss of links. Our trust system is based on a statistical detection method (SDM) implemented on each node of the network. Firstly, the SDM, via CUSUM test, analyzes the behavior of the packets loss in order to detect a dropping attack. Secondly, the SDM, through the Kolmogorov-Smirnov test, compares the behavior of the total packets loss with that of the control packets in order to identify the attack type. Our system allows every WMN’s node to assign to each of its neighbors, a trust value which reflects its real behavior. We have validated the proposed SDM method via extensive simulations on ns2 and have compared our trust system with an existing solution. The results display that our SDM solution offers better performance.     

UNICORE 6 — Recent and Future Advancements

UNICORE is a European Grid Technology with more than 10 years of history. Originating from the Supercomputing domain, the latest version UNICORE 6 has turned into a general-purpose Grid technology that follows established standards and offers a rich set of features to its users. The paper starts with an architectural insight into UNICORE 6, highlighting the workflow features, standards and the different clients. Next, the current state of advancement is presented by describing recent developments. The paper closes with an outlook on future planned developments.     

Interference coordination for LTE-Advanced and FM broadcasting interoperability

The surest way to guarantee that multiple wireless systems can concurrently exist harmlessly, when operating in the same or adjacent channel, is by analyzing spectrum overlapping. This paper proposes a more accurate model to evaluate the interference power from co-channel and adjacent channel of orthogonal frequency division multiplexing-based long term evolution-advanced (LTE-Advanced) towards broadcasting frequency modulation systems at 800?MHz. Power spectral density overlapping factor is employed, and closed form of the interference power loss is derived. Numerical results demonstrate that the proposed method evaluates more exact interference power than the advanced minimum coupling loss (A-MCL) method, where the co-channel and adjacent channel interference powers are reduced by 1.3 and 3?dB, correspondingly, compared to that obtained using the A-MCL method. This decreases the minimum separation distance between the two systems, which can eventually lead to efficient radio spectrum resources utilization.     

Propagation Path Loss and Materials Insertion Loss in Indoor Environment at WiMAX Band of 3.3 to 3.6?GHz

The purpose of this study is to characterize the indoor channel for IEEE 802.16 (WiMAX) at 3.3?C3.6?GHz frequency. This work presents a channel model based on measurements conducted in commonly found scenarios in buildings. These scenarios include closed corridor, wide corridor and semi open corridor. Path loss equations are determined using log-distance path loss model and a Rayleigh multipath induced fading, Normal multipath induced fading or a combination of both. A numerical analysis of measurements in each scenario was conducted and the study determined equations that describe path loss for each scenario. Propagation loss is given for 300?MHz bandwidth. This work also represents the insertion loss of different materials and the obstruction loss due the existence of human beings between the transmitting antenna and the receiving one.     

WCDMA Uplink Capacity of Highways Cigar-Shaped Microcells with Incorporated HSUPA Service

The multi-service (voice, data and HSUPA) uplink capacity and the interference statistics of the sectors of the cigar-shaped WCDMA microcell are studied using a model of 5 highway microcells. The two-slope propagation loss model with lognormal shadowing is used in the analysis. It is concluded that the voice and data service are significantly affected by HSUPA users and sector capacity decreases dramatically when one of these users gets connected to a given sector or to one next to it. Also it has been concluded that the capacity decrement is highly sensitive to the location of the HSUPA users. Thus, no more than one HSUPA with a process gain of 16 can be connected to a given base station. In this case, the HSUPA user should interrupt its transmission when it is near to the sector border. No more than one HSUPA user with a process gain of 8 is permitted in a given sector and the sector next to it. When the HSUPA user is at the sector border, its transmission should be disabled.