Evaluating the Performance of Cooperative NOMA with Energy Harvesting Under Physical Layer Security

Wireless Personal Communications - In this paper, we consider a non-orthogonal multiple access system with imperfect successive interference cancellation and physical layer security where the...     

A 5.2-GHz LNA in 0.35-/spl mu/m CMOS utilizing inter-stage series resonance and optimizing the substrate resistance

A current-reused two-stage low-noise amplifier (LNA) topology is proposed, which adopts a series inter-stage resonance and optimized substrate resistance of individual transistors. The characteristics of the series inter-stage resonance in gain enhancement are analyzed and compared with other alternatives. The contradicting effects of substrate resistance on common-source and common-gate amplifiers are analyzed and proposed guidelines for high-gain operation. The LNA is implemented based on a 0.35-/spl mu/m CMOS technology for 5.2-GHz wireless LAN applications. Measurements show 19.3dB of power gain, 2.45 dB of noise figure, and 13.2 dBm of output IP3, respectively, for the dc power supply of 8 mA and 3.3 V.     

Intensity surface stretching technique for contrast enhancement of digital photography

In this paper we propose a contrast enhancement technique which stretches the intensity surfaces of an image to improve the quality of a digital photo. The proposed method enhances the contrast of an image by stretching the intensity surface of the original image to the maximum range of the output image. This is done in proportion to the distances between the original intensity surface, and the upper and lower intensity surfaces respectively. The upper and lower intensity surfaces are generated adaptively from the original intensity surface by gaussian smoothing and gamma transform. In our experiments, digital color images in a variety of illumination conditions were used, and the proposed method was compared with other algorithms such as histogram stretching, histogram equalization, gamma correction, and retinex. From the results of the experiments, it was proven that the proposed algorithm further enhanced the contrast more than other methods and resulted in a more natural image without deterioration of gradation.

Anticipatory I/O Management for Clustered Flash Translation Layer in NAND Flash Memory

Recently, NAND flash memory has emerged as a next generation storage device because it has several advantages, such as low power consumption, shock resistance, and so on. However, it is necessary to use a flash translation layer (FTL) to intermediate between NAND flash memory and conventional file systems because of the unique hardware characteristics of flash memory. This paper proposes a new clustered FTL (CFTL) that uses clustered hash tables and a two‐level software cache technique. The CFTL can anticipate consecutive addresses from the host because the clustered hash table uses the locality of reference in a large address space. It also adaptively switches logical addresses to physical addresses in the flash memory by using block mapping, page mapping, and a two‐level software cache technique. Furthermore, anticipatory I/O management using continuity counters and a prefetch scheme enables fast address translation. Experimental results show that the proposed address translation mechanism for CFTL provides better performance in address translation and memory space usage than the well‐known NAND FTL (NFTL) and adaptive FTL (AFTL).     

Achieving Narrow FWHM and High EQE Over 38% in Blue OLEDs Using Rigid Heteroatom-Based Deep Blue TADF Sensitized Host

Simultaneously obtaining high efficiency and deep blue emission in organic light emitting diodes (OLEDs) remains a challenge. To overcome the demands associated with deep blue thermally activated delayed fluorescence (TADF) emitters, two deep blue TADF materials namely, DBA–BFICz and DBA–BTICz, are designed and synthesized by incorporating oxygen-bridged boron (DBA) acceptor with heteroatoms, oxygen and sulphur-based donors, BFICz and BTICz, respectively. Both TADF materials show deep blue photoluminescence emissions below 450 nm by enhancing the optical band gap over 2.8 eV through deeper highest occupied molecular orbital (HOMO) level of heteroatom based donor moieties. At the same time, the photoluminescence quantum yields (PLQYs) of both TADF materials remain over 94%. The TADF device with DBA–BFICz as an emitter exhibits a good external quantum efficiency (EQE) of 33.2%. Since both new TADF materials show deep blue emissions and high efficiencies, hyperfluorescence (HF) OLED devices are fabricated using ν-DABNA as a fluorescence dopant. DBA–BFICz as a TADF sensitized host in HF–OLED reveals an outstanding EQE of 38.8% along with narrow full width at half maximum of 19 nm in the bottom emission pure blue OLEDs. This study provides an approach to develop deep blue TADF emitters for highly efficient OLEDs.     

Fabrication of Multiscale Gradient Polymer Patterns by Direct Molding and Spatially Controlled Reflow

Size variations of pattern spacing as well as gradient control of the as‐formed polymeric pattern via a spatially controlled reflow process are presented. Micro‐ and nanopatterns of polymethyl methacrylate (PMMA) in the form of line‐and‐space strips are first generated by capillary force lithography (CFL), and the residual layers are removed by ashing process. Subsequently, the exposed PMMA strips underwent a controlled reflow process above the glass transition temperature (T_g) while heating single or both sides of the substrate either in parallel to the line pattern (parallel reflow) or perpendicular to the line pattern (perpendicular reflow). As a result of this controlled reflow, a linear or a parabolic profile of pattern spacing is achieved depending on the heating mode. Furthermore, multiscale gradient patterns are formed with the spacing ranging from 98 nm to 4.23 μm (a difference of two orders of magnitude) in a single patterned layer using the original micropattern of 16 μm width and 8 μm spacing. In order to explain reflow behaviors, a simple theoretical model relating the normalized pattern width to the polymer viscosity is derived based on a leveling kinetics of polymer melt. Also, gradient PMMA channels are fabricated and bonded to a glass substrate, which are used to flow a liquid inside the channels by capillarity‐driven flow.     

A 20 GHz Steerable Array Antenna Using 3-bit Dielectric Slab Phase Shifters on a Coplanar Waveguide

A simple steerable array antenna is designed and developed using a movable dielectric phase shifter. The change of effective dielectric constant at different dielectric slab positions on a coplanar waveguide is used as the phase shifter. The impedance matching and desired phase shift conditions are satisfied at two slab heights, and the reflection is designed to be minimized at these slab positions. The low-loss dielectric material is used as the dielectric slab and is placed close to a coplanar transmission line with airgap. The 4times4 steerable array antenna with the phase shifters is designed and fabricated at 20 GHz. The H-plane radiation patterns are measured at different phase shift positions and compared with the expected results     

Adaptive Kernel Function of SVM for Improving Speech/Music Classification of 3GPP2 SMV

Because a wide variety of multimedia services are provided through personal wireless communication devices, the demand for efficient bandwidth utilization becomes stronger. This demand naturally results in the introduction of the variable bitrate speech coding concept. One exemplary work is the selectable mode vocoder (SMV) that supports speech/music classification. However, because it has severe limitations in its classification performance, a couple of works to improve speech/music classification by introducing support vector machines (SVMs) have been proposed. While these approaches significantly improved classification accuracy, they did not consider correlations commonly found in speech and music frames. In this paper, we propose a novel and orthogonal approach to improve the speech/music classification of SMV codec by adaptively tuning SVMs based on interframe correlations. According to the experimental results, the proposed algorithm yields improved results in classifying speech and music within the SMV framework.     

Thin-Film Thermoelectric Module for Power Generator Applications Using a Screen-Printing Method

A new process for fabricating a low-cost thermoelectric module using a screen-printing method has been developed. Thermoelectric properties of screen-printed ZnSb films were investigated in an effort to develop a thermoelectric module with low cost per watt. The screen-printed Zn _x Sb_1−x films showed a low carrier concentration and high Seebeck coefficient when x was in the range of 0.5 to 0.57 and the annealing temperature was kept below 550°C. When the annealing temperature was higher than 550°C, the carrier concentration of the Zn _x Sb_1−x films reached that of a metal, leading to a decrease of the Seebeck coefficient. In the present experiment, the optimized carrier concentration of screen-printed ZnSb was 7 × 10¹⁸/cm³. The output voltage and power density of the ZnSb film were 10 mV and 0.17 mW/cm², respectively, at ΔT = 50 K. A thermoelectric module was produced using the proposed screen-printing approach with ZnSb and CoSb₃ as p-type and n-type thermoelectric materials, respectively, and copper as the pad metal.     

Power factor correction converter using delay control

A low cost universal input voltage single-controller power factor correction converter for a 200 W power supply is proposed. It consists of the PFC part followed by a DC-DC converter as in a conventional two-stage scheme. However a single PWM controller is used as in a single-stage PFC scheme. The switch in the PFC part is synchronized with the switch in the DC-DC converter and has a fixed frequency. Employing an adaptive delay scheme, the PPC switch is controlled to limit the capacitor voltage within a desired range for optimum efficiency and to reduce input current harmonic distortion. The design procedures of the delay scheme, the feedback loop, and experimented results are presented to verify the performance