Polydimethylsiloxane as a macromolecular additive for enhanced performance of molecular bulk heterojunction organic solar cells

The effect of the macromolecular additive, polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS), on the performance of solution processed molecular bulk heterojunction solar cells is investigated, and the addition of PDMS is shown to improve device power conversion efficiency by ～70% and significantly reduce cell-to-cell variation, from a power conversion efficiency of 1.25 ± 0.37% with no PDMS to 2.16 ± 0.09% upon the addition of 0.1 mg/mL PDMS to the casting solution. The cells are based on a thiophene and isoindigo containing oligomer as the electron donor and [6,6]-phenyl-C61 butyric acid methyl ester (PC(61)BM) as the electron acceptor. PDMS is shown to have a strong influence on film morphology, with a significant decrease in film roughness and feature size observed. The morphology change leads to improved performance parameters, most notably an increase in the short circuit current density from 4.3 to 6.8 mA/cm(2) upon addition of 0.1 mg/mL PDMS. The use of PDMS is of particular interest, as this additive appears frequently as a lubricant in plastic syringes commonly used in device fabrication; therefore, PDMS may unintentionally be incorporated into device active layers.     

Joint decoding and carrier phase recovery algorithm for turbo codes

In this letter, we investigate the sensitivity of the iterative maximum a posteriori probability (MAP) decoder to carrier phase offsets and propose simple carrier phase recovery algorithms operating within the iterative MAP decoding iterations. The algorithms exploit the information contained in the extrinsic values generated within the iterative MAP decoder to perform carrier recovery, thus requiring low hardware complexity     

Turbo decoder

We propose an adaptive channel SNR estimation algorithm required for the iterative MAP decoding of turbo decoders. The proposed algorithm uses the extrinsic values generated within the iterative MAP decoder to update the channel SNR estimate toward its optimum value per each decoder iteration or per each turbo code frame     

Performance of FHSS systems employing carrier jitter againstone-dimensional tone jamming

The performance of a frequency-hop spread-spectrum system employing carrier jitter against one-dimensional tone jamming (n=1 band multitone jamming) is investigated. First, noncoherent BFSK signaling under continuous-wave (CW) tone interference with arbitrary frequency offset is analyzed. A closed-form expression is derived for the error probability when there is one interfering CW tone and the background noise is negligible. When the background noise is significant, an expression involving one numerical integration is derived for the probability of error. It is shown that an interfering CW tone with power less than that of the signal can still cause errors with significant probability for certain ranges of carrier offsets. Next, the authors apply these results in analyzing the performance of a FHSS communications system under one-dimensional tone jamming when the communicator pseudorandomly jitters his carrier frequency from hop to hop. Two different methods of carrier jittering are considered. It is found that one of the schemes offers approximately a 3 dB gain in signal-to-noise ratio over a system without carrier jittering while the other scheme offers no significant gain     

Performance of soft metrics for convolutional coded asynchronous fast FHSS-MA networks using BFSK under Rayleigh fading

Performance of robust soft decoding metrics is examined for use in convolutional coded asynchronous fast frequency-hop spread-spectrum multiple-access networks using binary frequency-shift keying under Rayleigh fading channels. For comparison, maximum-likelihood metrics based on a Gaussian approximation are derived. Significant gains are observed compared to hard decision decoding by using appropriate soft metrics.     

Uplink performance of slow frequency-hop multiple-access networks using binary DPSK

The uplink performance of synchronous and asynchronous slow frequency-hop spread-spectrum multiple-access (SFHSS-MA) networks transmitting L bits per hop using binary differential phase shift keying (BDPSK) is analyzed under the additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN) and Rayleigh fading channels. Analytic expressions for the average conditional bit error probabilities given a hop is hit by K' interfering users are derived. Results show that SFHSS-MA networks using BDPSK achieve nearly twice the maximum normalized network throughput compared to networks using BFSK under both AWGN and Rayleigh fading channels.     

Performance of robust metrics with convolutional coding anddiversity in FHSS systems under partial-band noise jamming

The performance of robust metrics (metrics that can be computed from the outputs of the matched filters only) with convolutional coding and diversity under worst-case partial-band noise jamming is analyzed. Both binary and dual-k convolutional codes employing these metrics with diversity are compared via Union-Chernoff bounds. The performances of metrics considered in the literature that assume perfect side-information are given for comparison purposes. It is found that there exist very good robust metrics that provide performance comparable to metrics using perfect side-information. Among the robust metrics considered, the self-normalized metric offers the best performance and achieves performance practically identical to that of the square-law-combining metric with perfect side-information for M=8     

Performance of asynchronous FHSS-MA networks under Rayleigh fadingand tone jamming

The performance of frequency-hop spread-spectrum multiple-access networks using orthogonal M-ary frequency-shift keying modulation with noncoherent detection is analyzed under tone jamming, Rayleigh fading, and additive white Gaussian noise. A simple Gaussian model is derived for the multiple-access interference giving accurate fit to the simulation results with appropriately chosen correction terms. This approximation is then used to analyze the performance of the network under additional tone jamming. Both cases when the jamming tones fade and when they do not are considered     

Performance of asynchronous slow frequency-hop multiple-accessnetworks with MFSK modulation

The performance of asynchronous slow frequency-hop spread-spectrum multiple-access networks where each user transmits L, M-ary symbols per hop using M-ary frequency-shift keying (FSK) modulation with noncoherent demodulation is investigated. Expressions for the decision variables are derived for a given multiple FSK (MFSK) symbol within a hop hit by K' interfering users under additive white Gaussian noise and Rayleigh fading channel models. For the special case when M=2, an accurate analytic approximation for the average error probability is derived as a function of L and K' and semianalytic Monte Carlo simulations are performed to estimate the probability of error for M larger than 2. The results are used to investigate the dependence of the average symbol error probability on L and M. Finally, the effect of enforcing phase transition between the MFSK symbols within a hop is investigated