Dynamic Waveband Switching in WDM Mesh Networks Based on a Generic Auxiliary Graph Model

Waveband switching (WBS) is a promising technique to reduce the switching and transmission costs in the optical domain of a wavelength-division multiplexing (WDM) network. This paper considers the problem of provisioning dynamic traffic using WBS in a WDM mesh network. The network of interest is a homogeneous WBS network, where each node has the functionality of WBS. The problem is called the dynamic WBS problem, which involves searching waveband-routes or wavelength-routes for the dynamically arriving traffic requests. The objective is to minimize the total switching and transmission costs in the optical domain. To solve the dynamic WBS problem, an auxiliary graph model capturing the network state is proposed. Based on the auxiliary graph, two heuristic on-line WBS algorithms with different waveband grouping policies are proposed, namely the wavelength-first WBS algorithm based on the auxiliary graph (WFAUG) and the waveband-first WBS algorithm based on the auxiliary graph (BFAUG). Simulation results indicate that WBS is an attractive technique which reduces the overall switching and transmission costs by up to 30% in the network. The results also show that the WFAUG algorithm outperforms the BFAUG algorithm in terms of port savings and cost savings.     

Formulation and characterization of anisotropic conductive adhesive paste for microelectronics packaging applications

There has been a steadily increasing interest in using electrically conductive adhesives as interconnecting materials in electronics manufacturing. In this paper, several anisotropic conductive adhesive (ACA) pastes were formulated, which consist of diglycidyl ether of bisphenol F or diglycidyl ether of bisphenol A as polymer matrix, imidazoles as curing agents, and different sizes of silver (Ag) powders or gold (Au)-coated polymer spheres as conductive particles. The effects of ACA resin and different curing agents, as well as different conductive particles, on flexible substrate of the flip-chip joint were studied. The results show that the size and type of different conductive particles have very limited influence on an ACA flip-chip joint. The ACA resin as well as the curing agent can affect the reliability of the joint. The same results can be applied for the failure analysis of ACA flip-chip technology.     

Efficient design of anti-jamming rateless coding in cognitive OFDM

Efficient anti-jamming rateless coding based on cognitive Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) modulation in Cognitive Radio Network (CRN) is mainly discussed. Rateless coding with small redundancy and low complexity is presented, and the optimal design methods of building rateless codes are also proposed. In CRN, anti-jamming rateless coding could recover the lost packets in parallel channels of cognitive OFDM, thus it protects Secondary Users (SUs) from the interference by Primary Users (PUs) efficiently. Frame Error Rate (FER) and throughput performance of SU employing anti-jamming rateless coding are analyzed in detail. Performance comparison between rateless coding and piecewise coding are also presented. It is shown that, anti-jamming rateless coding provides low FER and Word Error Rate (WER) performance with uniform sub-channel selection. Meanwhile, it is also verified that, in higher jamming rate and longer code redundancy scenario, rateless coding method could achieve better FER and throughput performance than another anti-jamming coding schemes.     

An automatic nonrigid registration for stained histological sections.

Automatic computer-based analyses of histological sections which are differently stained require that they are related to each other. Most registration methods are only able to perform rigid-body motion and are sensitive to noise and artifacts. Histological images, however, are accompanied by several artifacts and different contrasts, which require a nonrigid registration. In this paper, we present a hierarchical nonrigid registration algorithm able to align images, which contain minor image artifacts. The algorithm requires no a priori knowledge of the true image. The hierarchical design of the algorithm enhances robustness and accuracy, and saves computational costs. The proposed algorithm is decomposed into a fast, coarse, rigid registration step and a slower, but finer, nonrigid step. For the coarse registration, we use image pyramids, while for the second step, we combine a point-based registration with an elastic thin-plate spline interpolation. Accuracy tests, performed for 20 histological images obtained from human arteries, have shown that the error measure is acceptable, and that the image noise does not cause a problem. The associated convergence rate of the mean pixel displacement error during the rigid and nonrigid registrations is satisfying. The algorithm can be applied to various multicontrast elastic registration problems in medical imaging and may be extended to three dimensions.     

A safe transmission line for MRI

Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) has been established as a reliable and safe imaging method for the human body. However, electric conductors, such as cables situated near or in the human body, should be avoided because induced currents in the cables can cause hazardous heating in the surrounding tissue. In this paper, a new principle for the design of a transmission line is introduced and demonstrated, which is capable of avoiding dangerous heating of cables. The principle is based on transformers placed along the line, splitting the long line into several short not resonant and thus safe sections. A transformer design is introduced along with the theoretical aspects for both the avoidance of the undesired induced currents and the reduction of signal attenuation. Furthermore, the design fulfills the geometrical requirements of the side lumen of a standard catheter. Matching networks, whose elements are determined by power matching, are used to reduce signal attenuation by the transformers. A prototype was built to validate both theory and the simulations. As demonstrated in this work, it is possible to build safe transmission lines for MRI, making applications such as active catheter tracking possible. We expect that even new applications, such as safe intravascular imaging will be possible in a safe manner in the future.     

Automated design of robust discriminant analysis classifier for foot pressure lesions using kinematic data

In the recent years, the use of motion tracking systems for acquisition of functional biomechanical gait data, has received increasing interest due to the richness and accuracy of the measured kinematic information. However, costs frequently restrict the number of subjects employed, and this makes the dimensionality of the collected data far higher than the available samples. This paper applies discriminant analysis algorithms to the classification of patients with different types of foot lesions, in order to establish an association between foot motion and lesion formation. With primary attention to small sample size situations, we compare different types of Bayesian classifiers and evaluate their performance with various dimensionality reduction techniques for feature extraction, as well as search methods for selection of raw kinematic variables. Finally, we propose a novel integrated method which fine-tunes the classifier parameters and selects the most relevant kinematic variables simultaneously. Performance comparisons are using robust resampling techniques such as Bootstrap 632+ and k-fold cross-validation. Results from experimentations with lesion subjects suffering from pathological plantar hyperkeratosis, show that the proposed method can lead to approximately 96% correct classification rates with less than 10% of the original features.     

High SNR sum capacity analysis of BD MIMO BC systems with imperfect CSI

We investigate the sum capacity of Block Diagonalization precoding Multiple Input Multiple Output Broadcast Channels (BD MIMO BC) with imperfect Channel State Information (CSI) at the base station. Since it is difficult to obtain the exact expression, a lower and an upper bounds of the sum capacity under Gaussian channel estimation errors are drived instead. Analyses show that the gap between two bounds is considerably tight at all Signal to Noise Ratio (SNR) region. From the lower bound of the sum capacity, we can see that the multiplexing gain tends to be zero at high SNR region, which indicates that the BD MIMO BC system with channel estimation errors is interference-limited at high SNR.     

Inverse QR iterative method for subspace tracking

The Bi-LS method based on QR decomposition provides a convenient framework for developing efficient subspace tracking algorithms. To overcome the shortcoming of the backsubstitution step and improve the parallel architecture of the Bi-LS algorithms, a Bi-LS subspace tracking algorithm based on Inverse QR (IQR) decomposition is developed. The proposed IQR iterative algorithm for subspace tracking is well suited for the parallel implementation in the systolic array. Simulation results are presented to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed IQR subspace tracking algorithm.     

An adaptive digital image watermark algorithm based on gray-scale morphology

An adaptive digital image watermark algorithm with strong robustness based on gray-scale morphology is proposed in this paper. The embedded strategies include: The algorithm seeks and ex-tracts adaptively the image strong texture regions. The algorithm maps the image strong texture region to the wavelet tree structures, and embeds adaptively watermark into the wavelet coefficients corre-sponding to the image’s strong texture regions. According to the visual masking features, the algorithm adjusts adaptively the watermark-embedding intensity. Experimental results show the algorithm is robust to compression, filtering, noise as well as strong shear attacks. The algorithm is blind watermark scheme. The image strong texture region extraction method based on morphology in this algorithm is simple and effective and adaptive to various images.