Adaptive Channel Estimation Scheme Based on LTE Uplink in V2V Environments

Wireless Personal Communications - Vehicle communication can facilitate efficient coordination among vehicles on the road and enable future vehicular applications such as vehicle safety...     

Genotype–Phenotype Association in ABCC2 Exon 18 Missense Mutation Leading to Dubin–Johnson Syndrome: A Case Report

We report a case of a patient with Dubin–Johnson syndrome confirmed by a genetic study. A 50-year-old woman who had symptoms of intermittent right upper quadrant abdominal pain was diagnosed with calculous cholecystitis at another institute and was presented to our hospital for a cholecystectomy. She had no history of liver disease, and her physical examination was normal. Abdominal computed tomography showed a gallbladder stone with chronic cholecystitis. During a laparoscopic cholecystectomy for cholecystitis, a smooth, black-colored liver was noted, and a liver biopsy was performed. The biopsy specimen showed coarse, dark brown granules in centrilobular hepatocytes via hematoxylin and eosin staining. We performed a genetic study using the blood samples of the patient. In the adenosine triphosphate-binding cassette subfamily C member 2 (ABCC2) mutation study, a missense mutation in exon 18 was noted. Based on the black-colored liver without nodularity, conjugated hyperbilirubinemia, the liver biopsy results of the coarse pigment in centrilobular hepatocytes, and the ABCC2 mutation, Dubin–Johnson syndrome was diagnosed. The patient was managed with conservative care using hepatotonics. One month after follow-up, total bilirubin and direct bilirubin remained in a similar range. Another follow-up was planned a month later, and the patient maintained her use of hepatotonics.     

Design and Performance Analysis of Soft Decision-Based Network-Assisted Interference Cancellation and Suppression Scheme

Recently, 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) has developed a network-assisted interference cancellation and suppression scheme to reduce the effect of interference. In this paper, we propose an advanced receiver based on soft decision to reduce the interference from the neighbor cells. The proposed receiver can suppress and cancel the interference by calculating the unbiased estimation value of the interference signal using the minimum mean square error or the interference rejection combining receiver. The interference signal is updated using soft information expressed by the log-likelihood ratio. We perform the system-level simulation based on 20 MHz bandwidth of a 3GPP LTE-Advanced sidelink system. The simulation results show that the proposed receiver can improve the signal-to-noise-plus-interference ratio, throughput, and spectral efficiency of a conventional system.

     

Fingerprint-Based Millimeter-Wave Beam Selection for Interference Mitigation in Beamspace Multi-User MIMO Communications

Millimeter-wave communications are suitable for application to massive multiple-input multiple-output systems in order to satisfy the ever-growing data traffic demands of the next-generation wireless communication. However, their practical deployment is hindered by the high cost of complex hardware, such as radio frequency (RF) chains. To this end, operation in the beamspace domain, through beam selection, is a viable solution. Generally, the conventional beam selection schemes focus on the feedback and exhaustive search techniques. In addition, since the same beam in the beamspace may be assigned to a different user, conventional beam selection schemes suffer serious multi-user interference. In addition, some RF chains may be wasted, since they do not contribute to the sum-rate performance. Thus, a fingerprint-based beam selection scheme is proposed to solve these problems. The proposed scheme conducts offline group-based fingerprint database construction and online beam selection to mitigate multi-user interference. In the offline phase, the contributing users with the same best beam are grouped. After grouping, a fingerprint database is created for each group. In the online phase, beam selection is performed for purposes of interference mitigation using the information contained in the group-based fingerprint database. The simulation results confirm that the proposed beam selection scheme can achieve a signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio and sum-rate performance which is close to those of a fully digital system, and having much higher energy efficiency.     

New Relay Protocols with AMC Scheme for Throughput Enhancement in LTE-Advanced System

We propose an adaptive modulation and coding (AMC) scheme using relay protocols AF, DF and DMF. The AMC scheme is used for improving the throughput and reliability of a communication system, using different modulation and coding schemes. We analyze the performance of relay protocols with the AMC scheme and observe that relay protocols with the AMC scheme are capable of providing better average throughput at a lower signal to noise ratio (SNR) level as compared to the conventional scheme with no AMC. We perform Monte Carlo simulations based on 3GPP long term evolution-advanced parameters to prove the performance comparison of adaptive modulation and coding scheme (MCS) relay protocols with non-adaptive MCS relay protocols. The simulation results of the proposed system with adaptive MCS prove that among the amplify-and-forward (AF), decode-and-forward (DF) and de-modulate-and-forward (DMF), the DMF protocol performs best, at a lower SNR value and higher average throughput.     

Hybrid Multihop Relay Protocol Using Dynamic Power Allocation for LTE-Advanced System

In this paper, an adaptive relay scheme of hybrid relay system is proposed based on channel state information of the received signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) at the relay node. hybrid relay system is comprised of amplify-and-forward, decode-and-forward and demodulate-and-forward together in cooperative networks. The relay protocols are selected adaptively, on the basis of power allocation (PA) constraint, or the SNR value at previous hop. Thus multihop performance of the relay system can be improved by applying PA allocation scheme. The simulation results show that the performance of the novel hybrid relay protocol can be improved significantly compared to the conventional hybrid system in terms of error performance and link efficiency.     

Performance simulation of membrane heat pumps based on vacuum membrane dehumidification system

Journal of Mechanical Science and Technology - An alternative technology that surpasses the efficiency of conventional vapor compression cycle is necessary to meet the increasing demand for air...     

Stepwise Drug‐Release Behavior of Onion‐Like Vesicles Generated from Emulsification‐Induced Assembly of Semicrystalline Polymer Amphiphiles

Tailoring unique nanostructures of biocompatible and degradable polymers and the consequent elucidation of shape effects in drug delivery open tremendous opportunities not only to broaden their biomedical applications but also to identify new directions for the design of nanomedicine. Cellular organelles provide the basic structural and functional motif for the development of novel artificial nanoplatforms. Herein, aqueous onion‐like vesicles structurally mimicking multicompartmentalized cellular organelles by exhibiting exquisite control over the molecular assembly of poly(ethylene oxide)‐block‐poly(ε‐caprolactone) (PEO‐b‐PCL) semicrystalline amphiphiles are reported. Compared to in situ self‐assembly, emulsification‐induced assembly endows the resulting nanoaggregates of PEO‐b‐PCL with structural diversity such as helical ribbons and onion‐like vesicles through the molecular packing modification in the hydrophobic core with a reduction of inherent crystalline character of PCL. In particular, onion‐like vesicles composed of alternating walls and water channels are interpreted by nanometer‐scale 3D visualization via cryogenic‐electron tomo­graphy (cryo‐ET). Interestingly, the nature of the multi‐walled vesicles results in high drug‐loading capacity and stepwise drug release through hydrolytic cleavage of the PCL block. The crystalline arrangement of PCL at the molecular scale and the spatial organization of assembled structure at the nanoscale significantly affect the drug‐release behavior of PEO‐b‐PCL nanovehicles.