Performance of handoff algorithm based on distance and RSSI measurements

The performance of a proposed handoff algorithm based on both the distance of a mobile station to neighboring base stations and the relative signal strength measurements is evaluated. The algorithm performs handoff when the measured distance from the serving base station exceeds that from the candidate base station by a given threshold and if the measured signal strength of the adjacent base station exceeds that of the serving base station by a given hysteresis level. The average handoff delay and average number of handoffs are used as criteria for performance. Numerical results are presented to demonstrate the feasibility of the distance-based handoff algorithm, including results for an additional criterion based on relative signal strength. The proposed algorithm is compared with an algorithm based on absolute and relative signal strength measurements and with a solely distance-based algorithm. It is found that the proposed handoff algorithm performs well in a log-normal fading environment when the distance estimate error is modeled by wide-sense stationary additive white Gaussian noise.     

Multiuser detectors for synchronous DS-CDMA systems based on a recursive p-norm convex relaxation approach

Multiuser detectors for direct-sequence code-division multiple-access (DS-CDMA) systems based on a recursive convex programming (RCP) relaxation approach are proposed. In these detectors, maximum likelihood (ML) detection is carried out in two steps: first, the combinatorial problem associated with ML detection is relaxed into a convex programming problem and then a recursive approach is applied to get an approximate solution for ML detection. Computer simulations demonstrate that the bit-error rate performance offered by the new detectors is near-optimal and superior to that offered by many existing suboptimal detectors including some recently proposed semidefinite-programming relaxation (SDPR) detectors. In addition, the amount of computation required by the RCP detectors is much less than that required by SDPR detectors.     

Si-H bond breaking induced retention degradation during packaging process of 256 mbit DRAMs with negative wordline bias

Data retention degradation of a 256-Mbit DRAM during the packaging process is investigated in this paper. Electrical measurement and device simulation show that a trap-assisted leakage degrades the retention time even in packaging process at about 250/spl deg/C. Retention time of the degraded chip is strongly dependent on the negative wordline voltage and operation temperature, but less sensitive to the substrate bias. Trap-assisted gate induced drain leakage is proposed as the mechanism of retention loss in the degraded chip. The degraded chips usually can be repaired by another thermal baking process. We propose Si-H bond breaking and the subsequent trap generation at the gate and drain overlap region as the root cause of retention degradation according to the fact that the Si-H bond density of backend passivation oxide and nitride layers correlate well with the retention performance of DRAM chips with negative wordline bias. Moreover, the packaged chip shows variable retention behavior during a thermal baking of 250/spl deg/C. Theoretical calculation indicates that the trap generation or movement to the high electrical field region beneath the gate can increase the trap-assisted gate induced drain leakage by about an order of magnitude.     

An investigation of surface state capture cross-sections for metal–oxide–semiconductor field-effect transistors using HfO2 gate dielectrics

MOSFETs and MOSCs incorporating HfO₂ gate dielectrics were fabricated. The I_DS–V_DS, I_DS–V_GS, gated-diode and C–V characteristics were investigated. The subthreshold swing and the interface trap density were obtained. The surface recombination velocity and the minority carrier lifetime in the field-induced depletion region measured from the gated diodes were about 2.73 × 10³ cm/s and 1.63 × 10⁻⁶ s, respectively. The effective capture cross section of surface state was determined to be 1.6 × 10⁻¹⁵ cm² using the gated-diode technique in comparison with the subthreshold swing measurement. A comparison with conventional MOSFETs using SiO₂ gate oxide was also made.     

Background removal of multiview images by learning shape priors.

Image-based rendering has been successfully used to display 3-D objects for many applications. A well-known example is the object movie, which is an image-based 3-D object composed of a collection of 2-D images taken from many different viewpoints of a 3-D object. In order to integrate image-based 3-D objects into a chosen scene (e.g., a panorama), one has to meet a hard challenge--to efficiently and effectively remove the background from the foreground object. This problem is referred to as multiview images (MVIs) segmentation. Another task requires MVI segmentation is image-based 3-D reconstruction using multiview images. In this paper, we propose a new method for segmenting MVI, which integrates some useful algorithms, including the well-known graph-cut image segmentation and volumetric graph-cut. The main idea is to incorporate the shape prior into the image segmentation process. The shape prior introduced into every image of the MVI is extracted from the 3-D model reconstructed by using the volumetric graph cuts algorithm. Here, the constraint obtained from the discrete medial axis is adopted to improve the reconstruction algorithm. The proposed MVI segmentation process requires only a small amount of user intervention, which is to select a subset of acceptable segmentations of the MVI after the initial segmentation process. According to our experiments, the proposed method can provide not only good MVI segmentation, but also provide acceptable 3-D reconstructed models for certain less-demanding applications.     

Learning-Based Data Envelopment Analysis for External Cloud Resource Allocation

A mature cloud system needs a complete resource allocation policy which includes internal and external allocation. They not only enable users to have better experiences, but also allows the cloud provider to cut costs. In the other words, internal and external allocation are indispensable since a combination of them is only a total solution for whole cloud system. In this paper, we clearly explain the difference between internal allocation (IA) and external allocation (EA) as well as defining the explicit IA and EA problem for the follow up research. Although many researchers have proposed resource allocation methods, they are just based on subjective observations which lead to an imbalance of the overall cloud architecture, and cloud computing resources to operate se-quentially. In order to avoid an imbalanced situation, in previous work, we proposed Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) to solve this problem; it considers all of a user’s demands to evaluate the overall cloud parameters. However, although DEA can provide a higher quality solution, it requires more time. So we use the Q-learning and Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) to solve the imbalance problem and reduce computing time. As our simulation results show, the proposed DEA+Qlearning will provide almost best quality but too much calculating time.     

Channel‐switching and power control mechanisms for improving network connectivity in wireless mesh networks

A Wireless Mesh Network (WMN) consists of fixed wireless routers, each of which provides service for mobile clients within its coverage area and inter‐connects mesh routers to form a connected mesh backbone. Wireless mesh routers are assigned with a channel or a code to prevent collisions in transmission. With a power control mechanism, each router could be assigned with a power level to control connectivity, interference, spectrum spatial reuse, and topology. Assigning high transmitting power level to a router can enhance the network connectivity but may increase the number of neighbors and worsen the collision problem. How to assign an appropriate power level to each router to improve the network connectivity with a constraint of limited channels is one of the most important issues in WMNs. Given a network topology and a set of channels that has been assigned to mesh routers, the proposed channel‐switching mechanism further reassigns each router with a power level and switches channels of routers to optimize both power efficiency and connectivity. A matrix‐based presentation and operations are proposed to respectively identify and resolve the channel switching problems. Simulation study reveals that the proposed mechanisms increase network throughput and provides a variety of route selection, and thus improves the performance of a given WMN. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Wetting interaction between Sn-Zn-Ag solders and Cu

The wetting interaction of Sn-(7.1–9)Zn-(0–3)Ag solders with Cu was investigated from 230°C to 300°C. The wetting time, wetting forces, and activation energy of the wetting reaction were studied. The wetting time decreases with increasing temperature and increases with Ag content. The wetting force exhibits a disproportional correlation to temperature rise, while no trend was observed with respect to Ag content. The wetting behavior was ascribed to the interaction between Cu and Zn. The AgZn₃ compound was formed at the interface when the solder contains 0.3% Ag and above, while it was formed within the bulk solder at 2% Ag and above.     

Arsenic-doped mid-wavelength infrared HgCdTe photodiodes

The recently developed Te-rich, liquid-phase-epitaxy growth technology for low arsenic-doped mid-wavelength infrared (MWIR) HgCdTe with p-type doping concentrations <10¹⁵ cm⁻³ has enabled the fabrication of n⁺/p photodiodes using the damage associated with a boron ion implantation. The diode properties are presented and compared to similar diodes fabricated in p-HgCdTe doped with Group IBs. The attraction of the arsenic-doped diode technology is associated with the fact that the arsenic resides on the Te sublattice and is immune to the Hg interstitial fluxes that are present in the diode-formation process. This leads to minimal diode spread, limited primarily to the n⁺ region and, hence, a potential for use in really high-density infrared focal planes. At the same time, the Hg interstitials generated in the diode-formation process should purge the photodiode volume of fast diffusing species, resulting in a high-quality, diode-depletion region devoid of many Shockley-Read recombination centers. These aspects of diode formation in this material are discussed.