Kasami Code-Shift-Keying Modulation for Ultra-Wideband Communication Systems

Ultra-wideband (UWB) communication systems are generally applied to short-range wireless communications. In order to achieve higher rates or to support multiple access capabilities, direct sequence spread spectrum (DSSS) techniques have been introduced to UWB systems, and multiple pulses corresponding to a certain pseudo-noise (PN) code are transmitted to represent a symbol. In addition, the concept of M-ary code shift keying (M-CSK) was introduced into DSSS systems to achieve higher rates. In this work, we propose an M-CSK modulation technique based on the large set of Kasami sequences since it possesses good code properties, including a large code set size and low cross correlations. The modulation and demodulation schemes are developed, and the system performance in additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN) and UWB channels exposed to multiple user interference is investigated thoroughly. It was found that the Kasami M-CSK modulation is superior to other M-CSK modulation schemes in the bandwidth efficiency, and therefore a higher data rate can be achieved. Furthermore, based on our proposed demodulation scheme, the hardware complexity of receivers can be greatly reduced to O(M^1/3), and the implementation of receivers for a very large M becomes feasible.     

Frequency Sensitivity and Electromechanical Propagation Simulation Study in Large Power Systems

A global view of power system's frequency behavior opens up a new window for analyzing system's dynamics. With the aid of global positioning system, measurements from different locations would have synchronous time; therefore a system-wide observation and analysis would be possible. As part of the US-wide power frequency monitoring network project this paper focus on simulation study results of power frequency dynamics of the Eastern U.S. system. The study assesses the frequency measurement accuracy needed to observe frequency dynamics from events such as remote generation drops. Electromechanical-wave propagation phenomena during system disturbances have been observed. The speeds of electromechanical-wave propagation in different areas of the U.S. systems were estimated and their characteristics were discussed.     

Existence of some extremal self-dual codes

Two new singly-even extremal, self-dual codes are constructed: a [52,26,10] code and a [54,27,10] code     

A Distribution Management System for Relational Databases in Cloud Environments

For a transaction processing system to operate effectively and efficiently in cloud environments, it is important to distribute huge amount of data while guaranteeing the ACID (atomic, consistent, isolated, and durable) properties. Moreover, database partition and migration tools can help transplanting conventional relational database systems to the cloud environment rather than rebuilding a new system. This paper proposes a database distribution management (DBDM) system, which partitions or replicates the data according to the transaction behaviors of the application system. The principle strategy of DBDM is to keep together the data used in a single transaction, and thus, avoiding massive transmission of records in join operations. The proposed system has been implemented successfully. The preliminary experiments show that the DBDM performs the database partition and migration effectively. Also, the DBDM system is modularly designed to adapt to different database management system (DBMS) or different partition algorithms.     

Performance comparisons between PCA-EA-LBG and PCA-LBG-EA approaches in VQ codebook generation for image compression

The aim of this study is to generate vector quantisation (VQ) codebooks by integrating principle component analysis (PCA) algorithm, Linde-Buzo-Gray (LBG) algorithm, and evolutionary algorithms (EAs). The EAs include genetic algorithm (GA), particle swarm optimisation (PSO), honey bee mating optimisation (HBMO), and firefly algorithm (FF). The study is to provide performance comparisons between PCA-EA-LBG and PCA-LBG-EA approaches. The PCA-EA-LBG approaches contain PCA-GA-LBG, PCA-PSO-LBG, PCA-HBMO-LBG, and PCA-FF-LBG, while the PCA-LBG-EA approaches contain PCA-LBG, PCA-LBG-GA, PCA-LBG-PSO, PCA-LBG-HBMO, and PCA-LBG-FF. All training vectors of test images are grouped according to PCA. The PCA-EA-LBG used the vectors grouped by PCA as initial individuals, and the best solution gained by the EAs was given for LBG to discover a codebook. The PCA-LBG approach is to use the PCA to select vectors as initial individuals for LBG to find a codebook. The PCA-LBG-EA used the final result of PCA-LBG as an initial individual for EAs to find a codebook. The search schemes in PCA-EA-LBG first used global search and then applied local search skill, while in PCA-LBG-EA first used local search and then employed global search skill. The results verify that the PCA-EA-LBG indeed gain superior results compared to the PCA-LBG-EA, because the PCA-EA-LBG explores a global area to find a solution, and then exploits a better one from the local area of the solution. Furthermore the proposed PCA-EA-LBG approaches in designing VQ codebooks outperform existing approaches shown in the literature.     

Nitride-Based ultraviolet metal-semiconductor-metal photodetectors with a low-temperature GaN layer

The GaN metal-semiconductor-metal (MSM) ultraviolet (UV) photodetectors with a low-temperature (LT)-GaN layer have been demonstrated. It was found that we could achieve a two orders of magnitude smaller, photodetector-dark current by introducing a LT-GaN layer, which could be attributed to the larger Schottky-barrier height between the Ni/Au metal contact and the LT-GaN layer. It was also found that photodetectors with the LT-GaN layer could provide a larger photocurrent to dark-current contrast ratio and a larger UV-to-visible rejection ratio. The maximum responsivity was found to be 3.3 A/W and 0.13 A/W when the photodetector with a LT-GaN layer was biased at 5 V and 1 V, respectively.     

A miniature Q-band low noise amplifier using 0.13-/spl mu/m CMOS technology

A miniature Q-band low noise amplifier (LNA) using 0.13-/spl mu/m standard mixed signal/radio frequency complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) technology is presented in this letter. This three-stage common source thin-film microstrip LNA achieves a peak gain of 20dB at 43GHz with a compact chip size of 0.525mm/sup 2/. The 3-dB frequency bandwidth ranges from 34 to 44GHz and the minimum noise figure is 6.3dB at 41GHz. The LNA outperforms all the reported commercial standard CMOS Q-band LNAs, with the highest gain, highest output IP3, and smallest chip size.     

Database to dynamically aid probe design for virus identification.

Viral infection poses a major problem for public health, horticulture, and animal husbandry, possibly causing severe health crises and economic losses. Viral infections can be identified by the specific detection of viral sequences in many ways. The microarray approach not only tolerates sequence variations of newly evolved virus strains, but can also simultaneously diagnose many viral sequences. Many chips have so far been designed for clinical use. Most are designed for special purposes, such as typing enterovirus infection, and compare fewer than 30 different viral sequences. None considers primer design, increasing the likelihood of cross hybridization to similar sequences from other viruses. To prevent this possibility, this work establishes a platform and database that provides users with specific probes of all known viral genome sequences to facilitate the design of diagnostic chips. This work develops a system for designing probes online. A user can select any number of different viruses and set the experimental conditions such as melting temperature and length of probe. The system then returns the optimal sequences from the database. We have also developed a heuristic algorithm to calculate the probe correctness and show the correctness of the algorithm. (The system that supports probe design for identifying viruses has been published on our web page http://bioinfo.csie.ncu.edu.tw/.)     

A Low-Latency Multi-layer Prefix Grouping Technique for Parallel Huffman Decoding of Multimedia Standards

Huffman coding is a popular and important lossless compression scheme for various multimedia applications. This paper presents a low-latency parallel Huffman decoding technique with efficient memory usage for multimedia standards. First, the multi-layer prefix grouping technique is proposed for sub-group partition. It exploits the prefix characteristic in Huffman codewords to solve the problem of table size explosion. Second, a two-level table lookup approach is introduced which can promptly branch to the correct sub-group by level-1 table lookup and decode the symbols by level-2 table lookup. Third, two optimization approaches are developed; one is to reduce the branch cycles and the other is parallel processing between two-level table lookup and direct table lookup approaches to fully utilize the advantage of VLIW parallel processing. An AAC Huffman decoding example is realized on the Parallel Architecture Core DSP (PAC DSP) processor. The simulation results show that the proposed method can further improve about 89% of decoding cycles and 33% of table size comparing to the linear search method.

K-band MMIC active band-pass filters

Two K-band active band-pass filters using 0.15-/spl mu/m GaAs pHEMT technology, with one fixed-frequency and the other tunable, are designed, fabricated, and tested. The fixed-frequency filter has its central frequency at 22.6 GHz, with 900-MHz bandwidth (4%). The tunable filter can be tuned from 19.5 to 21.5 GHz with the same bandwidth. Both circuits have a common size of 1 mm /spl times/ 1 mm. To our knowledge, the tunable filter is the highest frequency tunable active filter ever reported.