Packet acquisition in upstream transmission of the DOCSIS standard

In upstream transmission of the DOCSIS (data over cable service interface specification) 1.0/1.1 and the TDMA mode of DOCSIS 2.0 standard, a packet begins with a preamble, the length and value of which are programmable by the headend. The acquisition process includes packet detection, symbol timing estimation, carrier frequency offset estimation and carrier phase estimation by means of the preamble so that the following information packet can be correctly demodulated. Methods to solve these tasks are not subject to standardization and are left to the system designer. However, they have a great impact on the system performance and thus are key elements for implementation. We present dedicated algorithms. A specific preamble is created and the corresponding scheme for packet acquisition is described in some detail. The packet detecting algorithm is independent of the carrier and symbol timing. The symbol timing estimate is obtained by using the minimum mean square algorithm regardless of the carrier frequency deviation and carrier phase. Algorithms for estimating the carrier frequency offset and carrier phase are proposed. Computer simulation results are given for all algorithms presented.     

Effective improvement of high-k Hf-silicate/silicon interface with thermal nitridation

The electrical properties of polysilicon gate MOS capacitors with hafnium silicate (HfSiO) dielectric, with and without NH/sub 3/ nitridation, were investigated. The results show that with NH/sub 3/ nitridation prior to deposition of HfSiO can effectively tune the flatband voltage close to that of conventional oxide and significantly improve the leakage properties over SiO/sub 2/ (three orders reduction). Furthermore, the excellent interface quality has been evidenced by the result of immunity against soft breakdown with NH/sub 3/ nitridation.     

Spectral efficiency of distributed antenna system with random antenna layout

The downlink capacity potential of a distributed antenna system (DAS) with random antenna layout is investigated. A low complexity sub-optimal power allocation scheme among transmit antennas is proposed. Simulation results show that with the same antenna density DAS outperforms a co-located antenna system (CAS) in terms of average and outage spectral efficiency.     

Modeling frame synchronization for UMTS high-speed downlink packet access

Third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) specification TR 25.950 proposed high-speed downlink packet access for the Universal Mobile Telecommunication System (UMTS). In this mechanism, an active set of cells is defined for every user equipment (UE) communication session. The cell with the best wireless link quality (called the serving cell) in the active set is selected for communication with the UE. When the wireless link quality of the old serving cell degrades below some threshold, a new serving cell in the active set is selected to continue the communication session. Our previous work proposed a high-speed downlink packet access (HSDPA) overflow control scheme with four frame synchronization algorithms to switch the serving cell, and formally proved the correctness of the scheme. We propose an analytic model to investigate the performance of these frame synchronization algorithms, and show how the user movement patterns affect the control message delivery costs of these algorithms.     

Threshold-based selective drop for shared buffer packet switches

We propose a novel buffer management scheme called threshold-based selective drop (TSD) to improve the overall loss performance and fairness by regulating the buffer sharing in a packet switch. A transient analysis of TSD is derived to prove the fairness of buffer allocation. Computer simulation shows that the overall loss performance of TSD approaches to the pushout (PO) scheme, which is considered as an optimal solution with implementation difficulties in high-speed Internet. However, unlike the PO, the TSD will block the unwanted packets before they enter the queue, and does not need to pre-empty the queue for accepting new packets.     

Fabrication and characteristics of high-speed implant-confined index-guided lateral-current 850-nm vertical cavity surface-emitting lasers

Process technology of high-speed implant-apertured index-guide lateral-current-injection top dielectric-mirror quantum-well 850-nm vertical cavity surface-emitting lasers (VCSELs) has been developed. Oxygen and helium implantation for aperture definition and extrinsic capacitance reduction, dielectric mirror formation, p- and n-ohmic contact formation, VCSEL resistance, and thermal analysis were investigated. Employing this technology, GaAs/AlGaAs-based 850-nm VCSELs with small signal modulation bandwidths up to 11.5 Gb/s and an eye diagram generated at 12 Gb/s by a pseudorandom bit sequence of 2/sup 31/-1 were achieved. The bit-error rates were below 10/sup -13/. The threshold current is as low as 0.8 mA for 7-/spl mu/m-diameter current apertures and typical slope efficiencies of 0.45-0.5 mA/mW were obtained.     

Cramer-Rao bounds for parametric shape estimation in inverse problems

We address the problem of computing fundamental performance bounds for estimation of object boundaries from noisy measurements in inverse problems, when the boundaries are parameterized by a finite number of unknown variables. Our model applies to multiple unknown objects, each with its own unknown gray level, or color, and boundary parameterization, on an arbitrary known background. While such fundamental bounds on the performance of shape estimation algorithms can in principle be derived from the Cramer-Rao lower bounds, very few results have been reported due to the difficulty of computing the derivatives of a functional with respect to shape deformation. We provide a general formula for computing Cramer-Rao lower bounds in inverse problems where the observations are related to the object by a general linear transform, followed by a possibly nonlinear and noisy measurement system. As an illustration, we derive explicit formulas for computed tomography, Fourier imaging, and deconvolution problems. The bounds reveal that highly accurate parametric reconstructions are possible in these examples, using severely limited and noisy data.     

A push mechanism for GPRS supporting private IP addresses

The General Packet Radio Service (GPRS) provides a packet switched data service for mobile users. However, the existing GPRS specification does not provide the push mechanism and it is difficult to support GPRS services such as call termination (incoming call) for wireless voice over IP (VoIP). Based on the short message service, this paper proposes a push mechanism for GPRS supporting private IP addresses. Our approach does not need to modify the existing GPRS structure.     

Virtual fine delay line using one-stage inverter delay

A virtual fine delay line (VFDL) using only two ring oscillators and counters can cover a wide frequency operation range clock without adding any additional delay line stage. The proposed ring oscillator can easily make a unit delay as a one-stage inverter. The VFDL achieves fine resolution of less than 60 ps and small circuit area with two clock cycles lock-in time.     

Spectral shape tunable band-rejection filter using a long-period fiber grating with divided coil heaters

We have developed a new type of tunable band rejection filter, which provides high spectral-shaping flexibility in a wide tuning range. The filter consists of a long-period fiber grating (LPFG) with divided coil heaters. Each of the divided coil heaters is controlled individually to adjust a temperature distribution along the LPFG and to modify the spectral shape of the LPFG filter. The tunable band rejection filter is demonstrated to function properly when applied as an erbium-doped fiber amplifier gain-flattening filter.