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Test methods for evaluating flashover voltage of ceramic and nonceramic insulators under ice, snow, and cold-fog conditions are recommended. The paper describes the procedure to be followed at various stages of an evaluation test including preparation of the test object, insulator precontamination, ice, snow, and cold-fog deposits as well as voltage applications and flashover voltage evaluation. Some relevant parameters for ice accretion, flashover voltage evaluation, artificial pollution, and power source requirements are taken from IEC 60129, IEC 60507, and IEEE Std.-4-1995 on standard techniques for high-voltage testing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Massive multiple-input–multiple-output (MIMO) systems can suffer from coherent intercell interference due to the phenomenon of pilot contamination. This paper investigates a two-layer decoding method that mitigates both coherent and non-coherent interference in multi-cell Massive MIMO. To this end, each base station (BS) first estimates the channels to intra-cell users using either minimum mean-squared error (MMSE) or element-wise MMSE estimation based on uplink pilots. The estimates are used for local decoding on each BS followed by a second decoding layer where the BSs cooperate to mitigate inter-cell interference. An uplink achievable spectral efficiency (SE) expression is computed for arbitrary two-layer decoding schemes. A closed form expression is then obtained for correlated Rayleigh fading, maximum-ratio combining, and the proposed large-scale fading decoding (LSFD) in the second layer. We also formulate a sum SE maximization problem with both the data power and LSFD vectors as optimization variables. Since this is an NP-hard problem, we develop a low-complexity algorithm based on the weighted MMSE approach to obtain a local optimum. The numerical results show that both data power control and LSFD improve the sum SE performance over single-layer decoding multi-cell Massive MIMO systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the seminal paper by Marzetta from 2010, Massive MIMO has changed from being a theoretical concept with an infinite number of antennas to a practical technology. The key concepts are adopted into the 5G New Radio Standard and base stations (BSs) with $M=64$ fully digital transceivers have been commercially deployed in sub-6GHz bands. The fast progress was enabled by many solid research contributions of which the vast majority assume spatially uncorrelated channels and signal processing schemes developed for single-cell operation. These assumptions make the performance analysis and optimization of Massive MIMO tractable but have three major caveats: 1) practical channels are spatially correlated; 2) large performance gains can be obtained by multicell processing, without BS cooperation; 3) the interference caused by pilot contamination creates a finite capacity limit, as $M\to \infty $. There is a thin line of papers that avoided these caveats, but the results are easily missed. Hence, this tutorial article explains the importance of considering spatial channel correlation and using signal processing schemes designed for multicell networks. We present recent results on the fundamental limits of Massive MIMO, which are not determined by pilot contamination but the ability to acquire channel statistics. These results will guide the journey towards the next level of Massive MIMO, which we call “Massive MIMO 2.0”. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper concerns the uplink of multicell multiuser multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems. To tackle the effect of pilot contamination that is generally viewed as a bottleneck in previous work, this paper presents a superimposed pilot (SP)-aided uplink channel estimation scheme and mathematically characterizes the impact that an SP has on the performance of such a very large MIMO system. It is shown that there are two types of interference components that do not vanish, even when the number of antennas $M$ grows to infinity. The first type, which is referred to as cross-contamination, is due to the correlation between the SP and data among different cells. The second type, which is referred to as self-contamination, is due to the dependence between channel estimation and estimation error. Cross-contamination is, in principle, similar to pilot contamination in a conventional pilot-based multicell MIMO system, whereas self-contamination is unique for the SP-aided scheme. Both theoretical and simulation results demonstrate that the SP-aided scheme can effectively reduce the estimation contamination by increasing the data frame size and, in turn, achieve a significant improvement over the spectral efficiency, in comparison with conventional pilot-based methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In multi-user multiple-input–multiple-output (MU-MIMO) systems that employ pilot-symbol aided channel estimation, the pilot-to-data power ratio (PDPR) has a large impact on the system performance. In this paper, we consider the problem of setting the PDPR in multi-cell MU-MIMO systems in the presence of channel estimation errors, intercell interference and pilot contamination. To analyze and address this problem, we first develop a model of the multi-cell MU-MIMO system and derive a closed-form expression for the mean squared error of the uplink received data symbols. Building on this result, we then propose two decentralized PDPR-setting algorithms based on game theoretic approaches that are applicable in multi-cell systems. We find that both algorithms converge to a Nash equilibrium and provide performance improvements over systems that do not properly set the PDPR, while they maintain different levels of fairness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a time-division duplex multiple antenna system the channel state information (CSI) can be estimated using reverse training. In multi-cell multi-user massive MIMO systems, pilot contamination degrades CSI estimation performance and adversely affects massive MIMO system performance. In this paper we consider a subspace-based semi-blind approach where we have training data as well as information bearing data from various users (both in-cell and neighboring cells) at the base station (BS). Existing semi-blind approaches assume that the interfering users from neighboring cells are always at distinctly lower power levels at the BS compared with the in-cell users. This requires (perfect) power control. In this paper we do not make any such assumption. Unlike existing approaches, the BS estimates the channels of all users: in-cell and significant neighboring cell users, i.e., ones with comparable power levels at the BS. We exploit both subspace method using correlation as well as blind source separation using higher-order statistics. Finally, the estimated channels are used to detect information symbols, which, in turn, are used as pseudo-pilots to re-estimate the in-cell users’ channels. The proposed approach is illustrated via simulation examples and compared with some existing semi-blind methods. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Historically, much attention has been given to the unit processes and the integration of those unit processes to improve product yield. Less attention has been given to the wafer mini environment, either during processing or post processing. This paper contains a detailed discussion on how particles and airborne molecular contaminants (AMCs) from the wafer mini environment interact and produce undesired effects on the wafer which in turn cause devices to fail. Sources of wafer environmental contamination are the processes themselves, ambient environment, outgassing from wafers, and front open unified pod (FOUP) contamination. Establishing a strategy that reduces contamination inside the FOUP mini environment will decrease defect variability and thus increase yield. In manufacturing ecosystem, changing the FOUP or moving the wafers faster or purging with nitrogen to reduce the impact from mini environment is not always an option. Alternative to having a stop gap, it is desired to understand the AMCs and thus exploring sustainable solutions to minimize them below certain thresholds that would cause impact on wafer. NH3-based contamination, extensively discussed in this paper, is observed to cause wafer defects. Thus, explicit knowledge of AMC type is critical, as the most optimized methodology to control various AMCs might not always be the same. Three primary variables that greatly impact this strategy are FOUP contamination mitigation, FOUP material, FOUP metrology, and cleaning method. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Massive MIMO promises large spectral and power efficiency gains. However, pilot contamination limits these aspired gains. In this paper, we propose a structured, i.e., non-random, pilot hopping and a weighted moving average channel estimation for time-varying massive MIMO systems. The proposed algorithm diversifies the contaminating (interfering) sources, such that all the users enjoy the hopping advantages. We analyze the performance of multi-cell network, where the base stations perform matched filtering or zero-forcing for data detection. Using polynomial expansion approximations, we obtain achievable rates that are tight even at finite (not very large) number of antennas. It is shown that the spectral efficiency gain achieved by pilot hopping is not a monotonic function of the pilot reuse factor $\beta $ in some cases and, therefore, brings to attention that careful cell planning is required when applying pilot hopping. Moreover, the proposed algorithm involves a weighted moving average that uses the previously obtained channel estimates (of the preceding blocks) if they are correlated with the current one. Due to the massive MIMO properties, the algorithm is robust to channel time-variations and can be used with any previously proposed channel estimation method. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper studies the impact of additional pilot overhead for covariance matrix estimation in a time-division duplexed (TDD) massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) system. We choose average uplink (UL) and downlink (DL) spectral efficiencies (SEs) as performance metrics for the massive MIMO system, and derive closed form expressions for them in terms of the additional pilot overhead. The expressions are derived by considering linear minimum mean squared error (LMMSE)-type and element-wise LMMSE-type channel estimates that represent LMMSE and element-wise LMMSE with estimated covariance matrices, respectively. Using these expressions, a detailed theoretical analysis of SE behavior as a function of pilot overhead for both LMMSE-type and element-wise LMMSE-type channel estimation are presented, followed by simulations, which also demonstrate and validate theoretical results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates very short duration (<1 ms) flashes caused by rapid discharge arcs from isolated, charged, insulating epoxy “glue dots” to an underlying grounded substrate while under electron bombardment. The possibility that a given arc might stimulate arcs in adjacent “glue dots” was investigated through coincidence correlation analysis, as was the dependence of such correlations with “glue dot” separation. Most arcs were found to be random localized events, which occurred only when accumulated charge produced an electric field large enough for electrostatic breakdown to occur. However, for 40-keV incident beams, significant temporal and spatial correlation were observed. It is hypothesised that at higher energies more samples are charged close to the breakdown field at any given time and that a discharge in one “glue dot” might cause a sudden electric field spike in neighboring “glue dots,” which could trigger premature arcing. Such stimulated arc rates might reasonably be expected to scale with electric field intensity. A power law fit to the arc data found a power of −1.06 ± 0.09, consistent with a field falling off inversely with separation distance for charges spreading out across a 2-D conducting surface. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

By virtue of large antenna arrays, massive MIMO systems have a potential to yield higher spectral and energy efficiency in comparison with the conventional MIMO systems. This paper addresses uplink channel estimation in massive MIMO-OFDM systems with frequency selective channels. We propose an efficient distributed minimum mean square error (MMSE) algorithm that can achieve near optimal channel estimates at low complexity by exploiting the strong spatial correlation among antenna array elements. The proposed method involves solving a reduced dimensional MMSE problem at each antenna followed by a repetitive sharing of information through collaboration among neighboring array elements. To further enhance the channel estimates and/or reduce the number of reserved pilot tones, we propose a data-aided estimation technique that relies on finding a set of most reliable data carriers. Furthermore, we use stochastic geometry to quantify the pilot contamination, and in turn use this information to analyze the effect of pilot contamination on channel MSE. The simulation results validate our analysis and show near optimal performance of the proposed estimation algorithms. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper describes a method for rapid resolution of parametric failure during the development period. Since the number of samples is small, it is not possible to carry out general big data analysis of white defect failures of CMOS image sensors (CISs) during the development period in the same way as can be done during the mass production period. Our feature value analysis of white defects based on device physics revealed that both a development product and mass products using big data show similar fluctuations in dark current spectroscopy and in-plane distribution in the wafer. Process step/tool identification and tool sensor data analysis revealed the degree of vacuum within the implantation tool to have a strong correlation with white defect count. We developed a virtual metrology (VM) model for white defect count and varied the degree of vacuum. As a result of our experiments, we were able to reduce white defect count during the development period by 75%. The time required for resolution of failures was 10% that of the conventional method. This paper describes a detailed explanation of how the potential causative process step/tool was identified in addition to the conference paper presented in ISSM2020. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we study the design of secure communication for time-division duplex multi-cell multi-user massive multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO) systems with active eavesdropping. We assume that the eavesdropper actively attacks the uplink pilot transmission and the uplink data transmission before eavesdropping the downlink data transmission of the users. We exploit both the received pilot’s and the received data signals for uplink channel estimation. We show analytically that when both the number of transmit antennas and the length of the data vector tend to infinity, the signals of the desired user and the eavesdropper lie in different eigenspaces of the received signal matrix at the base station, provided their signal powers are different. This finding reveals that decreasing (instead of increasing) the desired user’s signal power might be an effective approach to combat a strong active attack from an eavesdropper. Inspired by this observation, we propose a data-aided secure downlink transmission scheme and derive an asymptotic achievable secrecy sum-rate expression for the proposed design. For the special case of a single-cell single-user system with independent and identically distributed fading, the obtained expression reveals that the secrecy rate scales logarithmically with the number of transmit antennas. This is the same scaling law as for the achievable rate of a single-user massive MIMO system in the absence of eavesdroppers. The numerical results indicate that the proposed scheme achieves significant secrecy rate gains compared with alternative approaches based on matched filter precoding with artificial noise generation and null space transmission. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Particle contamination in the dry etching chamber is one of the major issues in the semiconductor manufacturing. Particles on the wafer surface may cause wafer defects and yield loss. Therefore, particle monitoring is important to support contamination control and predictive maintenance activities. To achieve this goal, this paper proposes a virtual metrology (VM) method to estimate the deposit accumulation on the chamber wall, which can be a major root cause of the particle contamination. In the proposed method, the piecewise linear approximation (PLA) is employed and modified to derive a general segmentation template for the trace signals. Based on the trace segmentation template, important features that relate to the deposit accumulation are better extracted and modeled. To justify the effectiveness of the proposed method, we validate our method on the etching data from three different maintenance cycles. In the results, the proposed method with trace segmentation has improved performance compared to the VM model that does not segment the data, as well as the VM model that partitions the trace data by step number. The deposit accumulation indicator given by the proposed method demonstrates a slow trend over etching cycles and it matches well with the off-line metrology measurements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we consider the uplink channel parameter estimation problem in the presence of pilot contamination for massive multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO) systems. We propose a parallel factor (PARAFAC)-based estimation scheme, which exploits the low-rank property of massive MIMO channels caused by the finite scattering in a physical environment. Specifically, we first parameterize the channel in terms of three parameters, i.e., fading coefficients, directions of arrival (DOAs), and delays; thereby, the channel is characterized via three equivalent PARAFAC models. Then, the proposed PARAFAC-based scheme is developed, which jointly estimates these three channel parameters using an alternating least squares (ALS) algorithm. Therein, we certify the identifiability of the three channel parameters of the PARAFAC models to mitigate the pilot contamination and state the convergence of the ALS algorithm, which guarantees that the three channel parameters can be uniquely determined with the proposed scheme. Moreover, to further reduce the computational complexity, two advanced schemes are proposed by antenna selection and reducing the estimation frequency of DOAs and delays, respectively. Simulation results show that the proposed schemes can achieve both low computational complexities and close to optimal Cramer–Rao Bound performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, a low complexity channel estimation method is proposed for two-dimensional (2-D) massive MIMO systems with uniform rectangular arrays of antennas. Instead of assuming independent fading between different transmit–receive antenna pairs, an array-structure-based physical channel model that characterizes the realistic scattering environments via the angles and gains associated with different propagation paths is studied. A 2-D Fourier-transform (FT) based on elevation and azimuth steering factors is applied to derive the spatial spectrum of received signals in angular domain at base station. Based on the spectrum analysis, the spatial spectrum of the received data is used to estimate the channel parameters, including direction of arrival (incident azimuth and elevation angles) and the path amplitude of each resolvable path. Since the channel coefficients are estimated in spatial domain and the proposed 2-D FT can be realized by fast-Fourier-transform, the computational complexity is reduced significantly. Simulation results are provided to verify the accuracy and the complexity of the proposed scheme. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper considers a Massive MIMO network with $ {L}$ cells, each comprising a base stations (BS) with $ {M}$ antennas and $K$ single-antenna user equipments. Within this setting, we are interested in deriving approximations of the achievable rates in the uplink and downlink under the assumption that single-cell linear processing is used at each BS and that each intracell link forms an uncorrelated MIMO Rician fading channel matrix; that is, with a deterministic line-of-sight (LoS) path and a stochastic non-LoS component describing a spatial uncorrelated multipath environment. The analysis is conducted assuming that $ {N}$ and $ {K}$ grow large with a given ratio ${\textbf {N/K}}$ under the assumption that the data transmission in each cell is affected by channel estimation errors, pilot contamination, an arbitrary large scale attenuation and LoS components. Numerical results are used to prove that the approximations are asymptotically tight, but accurate for systems with finite dimensions. The asymptotic results are also used to evaluate the impact of LoS components. In particular, we exemplify how the number of antennas for achieving a target rate can be substantially reduced with LoS links of only a few dBs of strength. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we investigate the system performance of a multi-cell multi-user (MU) hybrid millimeter wave communications in a multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) network. Due to the reuse of pilot symbols among different cells, the performance of channel estimation is expected to be degraded by pilot contamination, which is considered as a fundamental performance bottleneck of conventional multi-cell MU massive MIMO networks. To analyze the impact of pilot contamination to the system performance, we first derive the closed-form approximation of the normalized mean-squared error of the channel estimation algorithm proposed by Zhaoet al. over Rician fading channels. Our analytical and simulation results show that the channel estimation error incurred by the impact of pilot contamination and noise vanishes asymptotically with an increasing number of antennas equipped at each radio frequency chain at the desired BS. Furthermore, by adopting zero-forcing precoding in each cell for downlink transmission, we derive a tight closed-form approximation of the average achievable rate per user. Our results unveil that the intra-cell interference and inter-cell interference caused by pilot contamination over Rician fading channels can be mitigated effectively by simply increasing the number of antennas equipped at the desired BS. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To be differentiated from the literature, in this paper, we aim to alleviate the impact of pilot contamination (PC) on the massive MIMO systems by cooperatively scheduling users (rather than just assigning) among neighboring cells to share the limited orthogonal pilots. To this end, we develop the multi-cell cooperative scheduling (MCCS) algorithm together with the cooperative scheduling indexes (COSIs) for maximizing the data rate, maximizing the Jain's fairness index and reaching a better tradeoff in-between. For convenience, they are denoted by the COSIs for the CMDR, CMMF and CPF schedulers, respectively. However, its high computational complexity may somehow resists its from practical applications. Thus, a low-complexity cooperative proportional fairness (LC-CPF) algorithm is designed to well approach the MCCS algorithm using the CPF COSI; and at the meantime, the order of computational complexity can be significantly reduced. Moreover, its ability to reach a better tradeoff can still be maintained under the impact of high spectrum-sharing interference. In addition, it is interesting to find that using the proposed cooperative scheduling methods, the open-loop power control mechanism is no longer required for compensating the differences of received signal quality between users. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Pilot contamination is a limiting factor in multicell massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems because it can severely impair channel estimation. Prior works have suggested coordinating pilot design across cells in order to reduce the channel estimation error caused by pilot contamination. In this paper, we propose a method for coordinated pilot design using fractional programming to minimize the weighted mean squared-error (MSE) in channel estimation. In particular, we apply the recently proposed quadratic transform to the MSE expression which allows the effect of pilot contamination to be decoupled. The resulting problem reformulation enables the pilots to be optimized in closed form if they can be designed arbitrarily. When the pilots are restricted to a given set of orthogonal sequences, pilot optimization reduces to an assignment problem which can be solved by weighted bipartite matching. Furthermore, we consider the max-min fairness of data rates with orthogonal pilots and obtain an extension of the proposed method to correlated Rayleigh fading. Finally, simulations demonstrate the advantage of the proposed (orthogonal and nonorthogonal) pilot designs as compared with state-of-the-art methods in combating pilot contamination. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In multi-cell massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems, channel estimation is deteriorated by pilot contamination and the effects of pilot contamination become more severe due to hardware impairments. In this paper, we propose a joint pilot design and channel estimation based on deep residual learning in order to mitigate the effects of pilot contamination under the consideration of hardware impairments. We first investigate a conventional linear minimum mean square error (LMMSE) based channel estimator to suppress the interference caused by pilot contamination. After that, a deep learning based pilot design is proposed to minimize the mean square error (MSE) of LMMSE channel estimation, which is utilized to the joint pilot design and channel estimator for transfer learning approach. For the channel estimator, we use a deep residual learning which extracts the features of interference caused by pilot contamination and eliminates them to estimate the channel information. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed joint pilot design and channel estimation method can effectively reduce the effect of pilot contamination as well as outperforms the conventional approach in multi-cell massive MIMO scenarios. Moreover, the joint pilot design and channel estimation method using transfer learning further enhances the estimation performance when the prior knowledge of pilot contamination cannot be exploited. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A major consideration for utilities applying composite insulators on overhead lines and substations is the aging of the polymer materials used for insulator housing. Historically, a primary driver for composite insulator development was to achieve a good contamination of flashover and aging performance. However, the application of composite insulators is not only limited to highly contaminated areas since large numbers are now also installed in locations with low contamination severities. The study of the long-term aging and life expectancy of composite insulators in clean environments is, therefore, of fundamental importance. Recent work at the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) and STRI has identified water-induced discharge activity as an important aging mechanism in these environments. This paper summarizes the findings of the extensive research carried out by these two organizations to determine a practical limit for the permissible E-field on insulator surfaces for design purposes. The initial work by the EPRI to determine e-field thresholds for water-induced corona, published in 1999, is expanded on the basis of small- and full-scale tests by both organizations to refine threshold levels and determine the influence of insulator parameters, such as hydrophobicity and shed profile. The influence of water-induced corona on the aging performance of insulators is also investigated on the basis of in-service inspections, accelerated aging tests, and natural exposure tests. The implications of this work on the need and dimensioning procedures for grading rings are also discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes a novel joint channel estimation and beamforming approach for multicell wideband massive multiple input multiple output (MIMO) systems. With the proposed channel estimation and beamforming approach, we determine the number of cells $N_{c}$ that can utilize the same time and frequency resource while mitigating the effect of pilot contamination. The proposed approach exploits the multipath characteristics of wideband channels. Specifically, when the channel has a maximum of $L$ uncorrelated multipath taps (or correlated multipath taps satisfying modest criteria which is valid in most practical scenarios), it is shown that $N_{c}=L$ cells can estimate the channels of their user equipments (UEs) and perform beamforming while mitigating the effect of pilot contamination. The proposed approach can also be applied for general correlated multipath taps, and achieves good performance for this scenario as well. In a typical long term evolution (LTE) channel environment having delay spread $T_{d}=4.69\,\,\mu \text{s}$ and channel bandwidth $B=5$ MHz, we have found that $L=36$ cells can use this band. In practice, $T_{d}$ is constant for a particular environment and carrier frequency, and hence $L$ increases as the bandwidth increases. All the analytical expressions have been validated, and the superiority of the proposed design over the existing ones is demonstrated using extensive numerical simulations both for correlated and uncorrelated channels. The proposed channel estimation and beamforming design is linear and simple to implement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, the achievable rate of the multi-cell multi-user generalized spatial modulation uplink is analyzed in the presence of realistic pilot contamination. A practical channel model associated with arbitrary transmit and receive correlation matrices is assumed for each user and base station (BS). Imperfect channel estimation is assumed with pilot contamination. The performance of a single-cell based minimum mean squared error (SMMSE) combiner is analyzed and compared to the ubiquitous zero forcing (ZF) combiner as well as matched filtering (MF). The transmit antenna (TA) index detection and the classic amplitude/phase modulation signal detection process are carried out separately for the sake of low complexity. Moreover, an algorithm based on order statistics is proposed for calculating the antenna detection probability conditioned on the actual TA. Finally, an approximation of the achievable rate is derived by exploiting the characteristics of massive multiple-input multiple-outputs (MIMO). Simulation results show that SMMSE has the best performance, followed by ZF, and then MF. Furthermore, the relationships between the system's achievable rate and three systems’ parameters, namely the number of BS antennas, the signal-to-noise-ratio (SNR), and the interference factor of pilot contamination, are presented. The performance of different number of activated antennas is also compared. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, the receive spatial modulation (RSM) scheme is studied in the downlink of the multi-cell multi-user systems, assuming that the base station (BS) is equipped with a large number of antennas and serves a large number of multi-antenna users, while the user-antenna ratio is bounded. The system model is practical and applicable in a comprehensive manner, accounting for channel estimation, spatially correlated channels, pilot contamination, and path loss. Combining the concepts of RSM and massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO), the spectral efficiency of linear preprocessing zero-forcing (ZF) and regularized ZF (RZF) methods is studied by approximating the probability of antenna detection and deriving a lower bound for the spatial-domain mutual information. With the aid of the large-system analysis, the deterministic equivalent expressions are provided for the achievable rates that are asymptotically exact. The Monte Carlo simulations validate this claim and show that for limited dimensions, the proposed deterministic equivalents yield accurate approximations, even for strongly correlated channels. The results further show that in comparison with the conventional massive MIMO systems with single-antenna users, equipping each user with multiple antennas and applying the RSM scheme enhances the spectral efficiency when each cell is not heavily loaded. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we address the problem of channel estimation in a single cell massive multiple-input multiple-output (mMIMO) system with distributed antenna arrays (DAA) under the availability of limited pilots. Specifically, we propose to use pilots that are not only orthogonal within a cluster but also minimally correlated across clusters. We show that pilot sets that form mutually unbiased orthonormal bases (MUOB) minimize both inter- and intra-cluster pilot contamination. This also allows us to optimally choose the number of pilots needed to serve a given number of user equipments (UEs) within a DAA-mMIMO system. Following this, we develop an access point (AP) centered UE clustering algorithm to optimally cluster UEs for MUOB pilot allocation. Our experiments reveal that in a DAA-mMIMO system, MUOB not only offers better fairness compared to the traditional orthogonal pilot reuse scheme in terms of channel estimation error and per-UE throughput, but also delivers a higher sum system throughput. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper introduces a hybrid pilot-aided channel estimation technique for mitigating the effect of pilot contamination for the uplink of multi-cell multiuser massive MIMO systems. The proposed hybrid pilot is designed such that it enjoys the complementary advantages between time-multiplexed (TM) pilot and time-superimposed (TS) pilot and, thereby, allows superior solution to the conventional pilot schemes. We mathematically characterize the impact of hybrid pilot on the massive MIMO uplink by deriving a closed-form approximation for the uplink achievable rate. In the large-number-of-antennas regime, we obtain the asymptotically optimal solution for the hybrid pilot by jointly designing the TM pilot and the TS pilot. It is shown that either TM pilot or TS pilot has the advantages for large frame-size and limited frame-size transmission, respectively, while the hybrid pilot scheme can offer a superior performance to that employing either TM pilot or TS pilot. Numerical results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed design. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, a cocktail approach is proposed to delicately integrate the two conventional countermeasures, i.e., the fractional pilot reuse and time-shifted pilots (TSP) schemes, for the pilot contamination problem in the full-duplex massive multiple-input multiple-output system. Specifically, the TSP scheme is applied to duplicate for the inner and edge regions of a cell such that the number of accommodated users can be doubled. To achieve this, the base station should operate in the full-duplex mode; also, the pilot symbols rather than the pilot sequences are used to attain the user diversity gain. The simulation results verify the accuracy of the numerical analysis and the remarkably boosted sum rate for both the downlink and uplink cases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems operating within the millimeter wave frequency range offer exciting opportunities for the future fifth-generation (5G) wireless networks. While the increased bandwidth and spectral efficiency are attractive, transitioning to millimeter massive MIMO presents significant challenges with respect to blockages, high attenuation, and channel estimation errors. To address these challenges, this paper evaluates the outage performance of a millimeter wave cellular network using massive MIMO under a stochastic set-up subject to pilot contamination and matched-filter precoding. We model the cellular users and base stations with Poisson point processes. Furthermore, we consider blockages from random objects, and employ different path loss and fading models for the line-of-sight (LOS) and non-line-of-sight scenarios. Moreover, both fixed power transmissions and path loss inversion-based power control are considered along with the sectored antenna patterns. Using stochastic geometry, we derive the moment generating function of the interference experienced by a typical cellular user and its outage probability. It is observed that the environments with different path loss exponents have varying behaviour for similar blockage sizes and densities. In addition, the ratio of the number of cellular users to that of base stations, and the antenna beamwidth are critical parameters affecting the outage performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we investigate physical layer security in a two-tier heterogeneous network with sub-6 GHz massive multi-input multi-output (MIMO) macro cells and millimeter wave (mmWave) small cells. By considering pilot attacks from the eavesdroppers, we analyze the coverage and secrecy performance using stochastic geometry. For the sub-6 GHz tier, we show that increasing the number of BS antennas is more effective than increasing BS density in improving the coverage performance, whereas densifying BS is more effective for security enhancement. For the mmWave tier, we first derive the success probability of beam alignment based on a beam sweeping-based channel training model. It is shown that the mmWave tier may outperform the sub-6 GHz counterpart in terms of both coverage and secrecy through densifying the base stations. Our results also reveal that the mmWave small cell can provide better coverage performance in the high transmission rate region, and can achieve higher security in the low redundant rate region, which reveals the advantage of using mmWave for secure communication. Numerical results verify the analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Anomaly detection is one of the practical applications in hyperspectral imagery (HSI) over the last two decades. In this paper, we propose a combined similarity criterion anomaly detector (CSCAD) method for HSI anomaly detection. The proposed method approximates the background using the surrounding neighbor pixels. Then, the residual error is obtained by subtracting the approximated background from the original data. Similarity criterion between the central and the adjacent pixels is applied simultaneously to detect anomalies more precisely. Finally, the criterion number is calculated for each pair of the central-adjacent pixels in the dual window, and then anomalies are detected. The main contribution of the paper is removing the noise and outlier, employing an efficient method that conducts us to more accurate detection performance. Contamination of the noise and outlier is reduced by the residual error and similarity criterion values. So, applying the criterion numbers is an accurate method for removing the outliers and noise without any need to use an additive stage that was introduced in our previous work. We implement the proposed method on three real hyperspectral images. CSCAD outputs are depicted by receiver operating characteristic curves, area under curve values, and intuitive images. Comparing the results of the proposed method with eight popular and the state-of-the-art methods proves that the CSCAD is an accurate and effective method to detect anomalies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We consider a single-cell downlink time-division duplex-based massive MIMO communication in the presence of an adversary capable of jamming and eavesdropping simultaneously. We show that the massive MIMO communication is naturally resilient to no training-phase jamming attack in which the adversary jams only the data communication and eavesdrops both the data communication and the training. Specifically, we show that the secure degrees of freedom (SDoF) attained in the presence of such an attack are identical to the maximum DoF attainable under no attack. Furthermore, we evaluate the number of base station (BS) antennas necessary in order to establish information theoretic security without even a need for Wyner encoding for a given rate of information leakage to the attacker. Next, we show that things are completely different once the adversary starts jamming the training phase. Specifically, we consider the pilot contamination attack, called training-phase jamming in which the adversary jams and eavesdrops both the training and the data communication. We show that under such an attack, the maximum achieved SDoF is identical to zero. Furthermore, the maximum achievable secure rates of users also vanish, even in the asymptotic regime in the number of the BS antennas. We finally address this attack and show that, under training-phase jamming, if the number of pilot signals is scaled in a certain way and the pilot signal assignments can be hidden from the adversary, the users achieve an SDoF identical to the maximum achievable DoF under no attack. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Non-cooperative cellular massive MIMO, combined with power control, is known to lead to significant improvements in per-user throughput compared with conventional LTE technology. In this paper, we investigate further refinements to massive MIMO, first, in the form of three-fold sectorization, and second, coordinated multi-point operation (with and without sectorization), in which the three base stations cooperate in the joint service of their users. For these scenarios, we analyze the downlink performance for both maximum-ratio and zero-forcing precoding and derive closed-form lower-bound expressions on the achievable rate of the users. These expressions are then used to formulate power optimization problems with two throughput fairness criteria: ${i}$) network-wide max-min fairness, and ii) per-cell max-min fairness. Furthermore, we provide centralized and decentralized power control strategies to optimize the transmit powers in the network. We demonstrate that employing sectorized antenna elements mitigates the detrimental effects of pilot contamination by rejecting a portion of interfering pilots in the spatial domain during channel estimation phase. Simulation results with practical sectorized antennas reveal that sectorization and multi-point coordination combined with sectorization lead to more than $1.7\times $ and $2.6\times $ improvements in the 95%-likely per-user throughput, respectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Digital microfluidic biochips (DMFBs) are gaining increasing attention with promising applications for automating and miniaturizing laboratory procedures in biochemistry. In DMFBs, cross-contamination of droplets with different biomolecules is a major issue, which causes significant errors in bioassays. Washing operations are introduced to clean the cross-contamination spots. However, existing works have oversimplified assumptions on the washing behavior, which either assume infinite washing capacity, or ignore the routing conflicts between functional and washing droplets. This paper proposes the first integrated functional and washing droplet routing flow, which considers practical issues including the finite washing capacity constraint, and the routing conflicts between functional and washing droplets. Washing droplets of different sizes are also proposed to wash the congested cross-contamination spots. Effectiveness of the proposed method is validated by real-life biochemical applications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we investigate secure and reliable transmission strategies for multi-cell multi-user massive multiple-input multiple-output systems with a multi-antenna active eavesdropper. We consider a time-division duplex system where uplink training is required and an active eavesdropper can attack the training phase to cause pilot contamination at the transmitter. This forces the precoder used in the subsequent downlink transmission phase to implicitly beamform toward the eavesdropper, thus increasing its received signal power. Assuming matched filter precoding and artificial noise (AN) generation at the transmitter, we derive an asymptotic achievable secrecy rate when the number of transmit antennas approaches infinity. For the case of a single-antenna active eavesdropper, we obtain a closed-form expression for the optimal power allocation policy for the transmit signal and the AN, and find the minimum transmit power required to ensure reliable secure communication. Furthermore, we show that the transmit antenna correlation diversity of the intended users and the eavesdropper can be exploited in order to improve the secrecy rate. In fact, under certain orthogonality conditions of the channel covariance matrices, the secrecy rate loss introduced by the eavesdropper can be completely mitigated. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper investigates the performance of massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) cellular systems with pilot contamination. We derive a closed-form approximation of the area spectral efficiency (ASE) for uplink multicell multiuser massive MIMO systems by using a uniformly distributed user location model. Considering a practical power consumption model, we obtain the area energy efficiency (AEE) in a cell. The theoretical results of ASE and AEE can be used to investigate some system parameters of massive MIMO cellular systems, such as the number of antennas at the base station, the number of users, and the number of symbols over which the channel remains constant. We also study the optimal pilot-to-data power ratio for both ASE maximization and AEE maximization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent advances in flow-based microfluidics have enabled the emergence of biochemistry-on-a-chip as a new paradigm in drug discovery, point-of-care disease diagnosis, and biomolecular recognition. However, these applications in biology and biochemistry require high precision to avoid erroneous assay outcomes and, therefore, are vulnerable to contamination between two fluidic flows with different biochemistries. Moreover, to wash contaminated sites, the buffer solution in flow-based biochips has to be guided along pre-etched channel networks. In this paper, we propose the first approach for automated wash optimization for contamination removal in flow-based microfluidic biochips. The proposed approach targets the generation of washing pathways to clean all contaminated microchannels with minimum execution time under physical constraints. Two representative and fabricated biochips are used to evaluate the proposed washing method. Compared with a baseline approach, the proposed approach leads to more efficient washing in all cases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A study to determine radio-frequency interference (RFI) in low-frequency passive microwave observations of the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer-2 (AMSR2) is performed. RFI detection methods, such as the spectral difference method, have already been applied on microwave satellite sensors. However, these methods may result in false RFI detection, particularly in zones with extreme environmental conditions. To overcome this problem, this paper proposes an approach that uses the additional 7.3-GHz channel of the AMSR2 sensor in a new RFI detection method. This method uses calculated standard errors of estimate to detect RFI contamination in 6.9- and 7.3-GHz observations. It was found that 6.9-GHz observations are mainly contaminated in the USA, India, Japan, and parts of Europe. The 7.3-GHz observations are contaminated in South America, Ukraine, the Middle East, Southeast Asia, and Russia. The fact that these channels are not affected by RFI in exactly the same regions is useful for studies that prefer C-band brightness temperature observations (e.g., soil moisture retrieval algorithms). Therefore, a decision tree approach was set up to determine RFI and to select reliable brightness temperature observations in the lowest frequency free of any man-made contamination. The result is a reduction of the total contaminated pixels in the 6.9-GHz observations of 66% for horizontal observations and even 85% for vertical observations when 7.3 and 10.7 GHz are used. By linking RFI maps with civilization maps, this paper further shows that RFI sources at the C-band frequency are mainly located in urbanized areas. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper proposes a flexible pilot assignment method to jointly optimize the uplink and downlink data transmission in multi-cell Massive multiple input multiple output (MIMO) systems with correlated Rayleigh fading channels. By utilizing a closed-form expression of the ergodic spectral efficiency (SE) achieved with maximum ratio processing, we formulate an optimization problem for maximizing the minimum weighted sum of the uplink and downlink SEs subject to the transmit powers and pilot assignment sets. This combinatiorial optimization problem is solved by two sequential algorithms: a heuristic pilot assignment is first proposed to obtain a good pilot reuse set and the data power control is then implemented. Numerical results manifest that the proposed algorithm converges fast to a better minimum sum SE per user than the algorithms in previous works. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Pilot contamination resulting from pilot reuse seriously restricts the communication performance of the cell-free massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) networks. To deal with this problem, an efficient pilot assignment scheme using a weighted graphic framework is proposed in this correspondence paper. Specifically, a novel metric is first introduced for capturing the severity of potential mutual pilot contamination in cell-free topology. On this basis, the weighted pilot contamination graph is constructed to depict the dynamic interference relationship corresponding to the network. Then, the pilot assignment optimization is mapped to the Max k-Cut problem, and a heuristic algorithm is exploited to realize pilot decontamination. Numerical simulation results reveal the superior performance of the proposed scheme, which is capable of achieving a significant improvement in throughput with low complexity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Arc rated flame resistant (FR) protective clothing and fabrics are most often tested in a new and laundered condition to remove surface contaminants. Manufacturers recommend keeping such clothing in a clean condition at all times. However, through daily use, protective clothing may be soiled or stained with industrial contaminants. The effect of specific mining industry contaminants on protective properties of an arc rated FR fabric is described in this report. A method and approach to quantify the contamination for a number of different contaminants was developed and described herein. The baseline contaminant was a 1% saline solution to simulate body sweat. It is generally accepted that water absorbed into the fabric will change the insulation and protective characteristics of the fabric. In this paper, other contaminants used included diesel fuel (to represent lighter hydrocarbons such as gasoline and other lighter fuel oils), dry lime, nickel dust palladium dust, sodium hydroxide slurry, carbon black dust, dry and wet cement, a flocculent slime, hydraulic fluid (hydraulic jack oil), and transformer oil. Reduction in protective properties of arc rated FR clothing was observed for wet contaminations. Dry contaminants have less of an effect, and some improved the protection level. Conductivity of the cloth was also measured using a high-voltage megohmmeter. These readings were performed with and without contaminants applied. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Pilot contamination attack is an important activity of active eavesdropping conducted by a malicious user during channel training phase. This attack is potentially harmful to the physical layer security. In this paper, motivated by the fact that frequency asynchronism could introduce divergence of the transmitted pilot signals between intended user and attacker, we propose a new uncoordinated frequency shift (UFS) scheme for detecting pilot contamination attack in multiple antenna system. During the reverse training phase of the UFS scheme, the legitimate user Bob deliberately introduces multiple random frequency shifts in the publicly known pilot sequence. Since eavesdropper Eve has no knowledge of these random frequency shifts, it is almost impossible for her to pretend exactly like Bob. This provides the opportunity to detect the presence of Eve. An attack detection algorithm is then developed based on source enumeration method. Both the asymptotic performance analysis and numerical results are provided to verify the proposed detection scheme. The proposed scheme is also enhanced based on noise power estimation to cope with attacks from a multi-antenna Eve. Furthermore, the proposed UFS scheme is extended by introducing general parameterized phase shifts. It is demonstrated that the proposed UFS scheme can achieve comparable detection performance as the existing superimposed random sequence based scheme, without sacrifice of legitimate channel estimation performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we provide a robust framework to detect anomalous electromyographic (EMG) signals and identify contamination types. As a first step for feature selection, optimally selected Lawton wavelets transform is applied. Robust principal component analysis (rPCA) is then performed on these wavelet coefficients to obtain features in a lower dimension. The rPCA based features are used for constructing a self-organizing map (SOM). Finally, hierarchical clustering is applied on the SOM that separates anomalous signals residing in the smaller clusters and breaks them into logical units for contamination identification. The proposed methodology is tested using synthetic and real world EMG signals. The synthetic EMG signals are generated using a heteroscedastic process mimicking desired experimental setups. A sub-part of these synthetic signals is introduced with anomalies. These results are followed with real EMG signals introduced with synthetic anomalies. Finally, a heterogeneous real world data set is used with known quality issues under an unsupervised setting. The framework provides recall of 90% (± 3.3) and precision of 99%(±0.4). [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Contamination in a wafer transportation box [e.g., a front-opening unified pod (FOUP)] can influence device yield and performance. Additional precautions might be required to prevent outside contamination during FOUP door opening. This paper experimentally examines moisture evolution in a pre-purged FOUP with an open door in a mini-environment. Air curtains of different widths ( WA ) were employed to prevent outside moisture intrusion, and their performance was compared with that of a conventional purge method. Clean dry air was used as the supplied gas in experiments. A moisture prevention index (MPI) was further introduced as a tool for interpreting results. When the conventional purge method was used, moisture in the mini-environment was rapidly transferred into the FOUP, and relative humidity (RH) reached approximately the same levels as the mini-environment, indicating poor moisture prevention performance. RH values were much lower when the air curtain was used. The best moisture prevention performance was observed for a system using an air curtain with WA\,\,{=}\,\,50 mm. The MPIs for the conventional purge method were approximately 8.0%–8.4%, whereas those for the air curtain application ranged from 40%–100%. Most importantly, the MPIs for ${{W}}_{A} {=} {{50}}$ and 70 mm reached or exceeded 90%. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

When there exists a malicious attacker in the network, we need to be careful of eavesdropping and contamination. This problem is crucial for network communication when the network is realized by a partially trusted relay of quantum key distribution. We discuss the asymptotic rate in a linear network with the secrecy and robustness conditions when the above type of attacker exists. Also, under the same setting, we discuss the asymptotic rate in a linear network when we impose the secrecy condition alone. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The inner area close to cap and pin of insulator is sometimes heavier polluted than the outer area, causing the contamination pattern on insulator surface look like ring-shape. This kind of non-uniform pollution may affect insulator flashover voltage. In this paper, artificial pollution tests of 4 types of porcelain and glass insulators with ring-shaped non-uniform pollution were carried out. Experimental results indicate that the SDD (salt deposit density), the non-uniform pollution degree K (the SDD ratio of inner part to outer part), the heavily polluted area with radius r, and the insulator profile all have significant effects on insulator flashover performance. The effects of K and r on flashover performance can be reflected by the change of pollution layer conductivity during flashover. Under ring-shaped non-uniform pollution, the relationship between Uso and SDD can still be expressed by negative power function, while coefficient a varies obviously with pollution non-uniformity, but exponent n does not. Finally the correction coefficients of flashover voltage considering non-uniform pollution degree K were also calculated for outdoor insulation design. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Electrical insulation performance of compressed gas insulated switchgear (GIS) is adversely affected by metallic particle contaminants with a loss of up to 90% of the gas dielectric strength. Such particles play a crucial role in determining the system insulation integrity. Coating of the inside surface of GIS enclosures with a dielectric material such as epoxy resin can alleviate the adverse effect of contaminating metallic particles on the insulation, as the coated electrodes in compressed gas result in a somewhat higher breakdown voltage. Such coatings have the effect of "smoothing" the surface and reducing the pre-breakdown current in the gas gap. Also, in the presence of metallic particles, the electrostatic particle charging is impeded; hence, the maximum particle excursion in a coaxial GIS is significantly reduced for a given applied AC voltage. In this paper, the effect of the dielectric coatings is analyzed with a theoretical model which is confirmed in the high-voltage experiments. The results show the effectiveness of dielectric coating in mitigating the contamination due to the particles. The influence of other factors such as gas pressure and particle size are also discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Discriminatory channel estimation (DCE) is a recently developed strategy to enlarge the performance difference between a legitimate receiver (LR) and an unauthorized receiver (UR) in a multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) wireless system. Specifically, it makes use of properly designed training signals to degrade channel estimation at the UR, which in turn limits the UR's eavesdropping capability during data transmission. In this paper, we propose a new two-way training scheme for DCE through exploiting a whitening-rotation (WR) based semiblind method. To characterize the performance of DCE, a closed-form expression of the normalized mean squared error (NMSE) of the channel estimation is derived for both the LR and the UR. Furthermore, the developed analytical results on NMSE are utilized to perform optimal power allocation between the training signal and artificial noise (AN). The advantages of our proposed DCE scheme are twofold: 1) Compared with the existing DCE scheme based on the linear minimum mean square error (LMMSE) channel estimator, the proposed scheme adopts a semiblind approach and achieves better DCE performance; and 2) the proposed scheme is robust against active eavesdropping with the pilot contamination attack, whereas the existing scheme fails under such an attack. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]