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Indoor positioning plays an important role in various location-based services (LBSs). In conventional systems, the process of constructing radio maps for positioning usually involves labor-intensive manual calibrations, which seriously limits the system’s scalability and adaptiveness. In this paper, we propose an efficient calibration-free method by leveraging on crowdsourced WiFi signal data that are captured passively through a WiFi sensing testbed. Since the ground truths of the crowdsourced data are unavailable, the radio maps cannot be directly constructed. In the proposed method, we adopt the multidimensional scaling (MDS) technique to compute the positions of the unlabeled data thereby generating radio maps. In order to enable MDS, we estimate the pairwise distances among the unlabeled data by using an improved trilateration method and a law of cosine (LoC)-based geometrical algorithm without online pairwise measurements. Experimental results show that the accuracy of the proposed method is higher than trilateration-based method and reasonably lower than that of calibration-based method. Meanwhile, the run time of the proposed method is shorter than previous optimization-based methods. The short run time allows the radio maps to be dynamically updated against the environmental variations.

The platoon control for vehicles can efficiently reduce traffic pressure. Current control schemes are able to achieve stable platoon control, but cannot guarantee collision avoidance, connectivity preservation and convergence time at the same time. In this paper, we propose a novel control scheme that can simultaneously guarantee the safe distance and communication connectivity, which is called flexible safe distance constraint, and also can guarantee the specified convergence time. A dynamic gain based distributed control law is first designed for the vehicle with single-integral model. Using the prescribed transient and steady-state performance control approach, the flexible safe distance constraint can be satisfied. Using the time transformation method and Lyapunov stability theory, the closed-loop systems under the proposed protocols can achieve stable platoon within the specified time. Compared with some existing results, the novelty of this work is that the proposed approaches allow a vehicle to converge with the platoon within any preset time without dependence on the initial conditions or system parameters. Another contribution of this work is to propose specified-time platoon control protocols for the vehicle with double-integral model under a flexible safe distance constraint. Furthermore, in order to get closer to the actual system, the controller is extended to the triple-integral system, and some special cases are also discussed. Finally, some simulations are presented to show the effectiveness of the proposed protocols.

This paper uses a spatial Aloha model to describe a distributed autonomous wireless network in which a group of transmit-receive pairs (users) shares a common collision channel via slotted-Aloha-like random access. The objective of this study is to develop an intelligent algorithm to be embedded into the transceivers so that all users know how to self-tune their medium access probability (MAP) to achieve overall Pareto optimality in terms of network throughput under spatial reuse while maintaining network stability. While the optimal solution requires each user to have complete information about the network, our proposed algorithm only requires users to have local information. The fundamental of our algorithm is that the users will first self-organize into a number of non-overlapping neighborhoods, and the user with the maximum node degree in each neighborhood is elected as the local leader (LL). Each LL then adjusts its MAP according to a parameter R which indicates the radio intensity level in its neighboring region, whereas the remaining users in the neighborhood simply follow the same MAP value. We show that by ensuring R less than or equal to 2 at the LLs, the stability of the entire network can be assured even when each user only has partial network information. For practical implementation, we propose each LL to use R=2 as the constant reference signal to its built-in proportional and integral controller. The settings of the control parameters are discussed and we validate through simulations that the proposed method is able to achieve close-to-Pareto-front throughput., 32 pages, 10 figures, accepted for publication in IEEE Transactions on Vehicular Technology

Inter-user interference occurs when multiple body sensor networks (BSNs) are transmitting simultaneously in close proximity to each other. Interference analysis in BSNs is challenging due to the hybrid medium access control (MAC) and the specific channel characteristics of BSNs. This paper presents a stochastic geometry analysis framework for inter-user interference in IEEE 802.15.6 BSNs. An extended Matern point process is proposed to model the complex spatial distribution of the interfering BSNs caused by the hybrid MAC defined in IEEE 802.15.6. We employ stochastic geometry approach to evaluate the performance of BSNs, considering the specific channel characteristics of BSNs in the vicinity of human body. Performance metrics are derived in terms of outage probability and spatial throughput in the presence of inter-user interference. We conduct performance evaluation through extensive simulations and show that the simulation results fit well with the analytic results. Insights are provided on the determination of the interference detection range, the BSN density, and the design of MAC for BSNs.

We contend that context information of Internet clients can help to efficiently manage a variety of underlying resources for different Internet services and systems. We therefore propose a resource distribution framework that provides quality of experience (QoE) aware service differentiation, which means that starving clients are prioritized in resource allocation to enhance the corresponding end-user's QoE. The framework also actively motivates each Internet client to consistently provide its actual context information and to adopt moderate competition policies, given that all clients are selfish but rational in nature. We analyze the Internet client's behavior by formulating a non-cooperative game and prove that the framework guides all clients (game players) towards a unique Nash equilibrium. Furthermore, we prove that the distribution results computed by the framework maximize a social welfare function. Throughout this paper, we demonstrate the motivation, operation and performance of the framework by presenting a Web system example, which leverages on the advanced context information deduced by a context-aware system.

The wireless multihop backhaul is a unique feature of wireless mesh networks (WMNs), which necessitates redesign of association control algorithms. In this paper, we formulate and propose approximation algorithms for the problem of optimal joint association and bandwidth allocation in WMNs, considering max–min fairness (MM) and proportional fairness (PF) objectives. We first relax the integral association constraint and get an optimal fractional association solution. Then, we propose two rounding algorithms, namely, largest fraction rounding and bipartite graph rounding, to get an integral solution and analyze their theoretical approximation ratios. Finally, we propose two approximation ratio improvement algorithms so that the improved approximation ratio can more accurately reflect the true performance gap between the produced solution and the optimal one. Our simulation results show that the proposed algorithms achieve performance that is close to the optimal and outperform popular heuristic algorithms. We also compare the performance of PF and MM in WMNs in terms of network throughput and fairness in user bandwidth. Finally, we compare the performances of the proposed rounding algorithms and show that the approximation ratio can be reduced to 1–2 by the proposed ratio improvement algorithms. Therefore, our proposed algorithm is able to achieve nearly optimal association control, as well as bandwidth allocation, considering MM or PF, with small approximation ratios, in WMNs.

Using the MUSIC (MUltiple SIgnal Classification) algorithm to estimate the angle-of-arrival (AoA), we derive a new asymptotic error variance bound when the transmitted signal can be pre-processed. We next propose a precoder design to achieve this bound. However, such an optimal precoder requires channel state information at the transmitter (CSIT) exclusive of the receiver array which cannot be separately estimated practically. A more feasible precoder design, which leverages on the feedback CSIT estimated at the receiver, is next proposed. Using the performance of the optimal precoder which achieves the bound asymptotically as a benchmark, the practical precoder design performs close to the optimal precoder even in the high-resolution scenario. Both precoder schemes exhibit performance improvement compared with the case when no precoder is used.

In this paper, we consider the medium access control (MAC) protocol design for random access cognitive radio network (CRN). Based on asynchronous spectrum sensing technique and RTS/CTS mechanism, a new MAC protocol, namely, cognitive-radio-based carrier sense medium access with collision avoidance (CR-CSMA/CA) is proposed to coordinate the channel access of secondary network as well as protect the operation of primary network, which applies to both single and multiple channel models. Using the G/G/1 queuing model with consideration of unsaturated and saturated network condition, we develop a framework to analyze the proposed MAC protocol and also derive closed-form expressions of specific performance metrics such as normalized throughput, average packet service time, etc. Performance evaluations illustrate and validate that the performance of CR-CSMA/CA varies with the offered traffic load of secondary network and the spectrum utilization rate of primary network, respectively, and also show that CR-CSMA/CA outperforms other relevant MAC protocols.

Existing approaches to indoor tracking have various limitations. Location-fingerprinting approaches are labor intensive and vulnerable to environmental changes. Trilateration approaches require at least three line-of-sight beacons for coverage at any point in the service area, which results in heavy infrastructure cost. Dead reckoning (DR) approaches rely on knowledge of the initial location and suffer from tracking error accumulation. Despite this, we adopt DR for location tracking because of the recent emergence of affordable hand-held devices equipped with low-cost DR-enabling sensors. In this paper, we propose an indoor pedestrian tracking system that comprises of a DR subsystem implemented on a mobile phone and a ranging subsystem with a sparse infrastructure. A particle-filter-based fusion scheme is applied to bound the accumulated tracking error by fusing DR with sparse range measurements. Experimental results show that the proposed system is able to track users much better than DR alone. The system is robust even when: 1) the initial user location is not available; 2) range updates are noisy; and 3) range updates are intermittent, both temporally and spatially.

This paper surveys recently proposed works on Intrusion Detection Systems (IDS) in WSNs, and presents a comprehensive classification of various IDS approaches according to their employed detection techniques. The three main categories explored in this paper are anomaly detection, misuse detection, and specification-based detection protocols. We give a description of existing security attacks in WSNs and the corresponding proposed IDS protocols to tackle those attacks. We analyze the works with respect to the network structure of WSNs. In addition, we highlight various critical shortcomings that IDSs currently have and define future research tracks for IDSs in wireless sensor networks. Though a few restricted survey works on this topic have already been done, we feel that there is a great need of performing a detailed and comprehensive study on the vital aspects so that the IDS in WSN could be analyzed from all the `need-to-know' angles. Thus, the paper's main aim is to include the most recent advancements in this area as well as to predict the future course of research so that the general as well as expert readers could be greatly benefited.

We propose a novel algorithm to improve the accuracy in estimating the angle-of-arrival (AoA) when the MUSIC (MUltiple SIgnal Classification) algorithm is used. An optimal precoder, with the objective to minimize the estimation errors of the AoAs, is first derived. However, to compute the optimal precoder requires the channel side information at the transmitter (CSIT) exclusive of the receiver array, which cannot be separately estimated practically. A more practical precoder design approach, which leverages on the feedback CSIT estimated at the receiver, is next proposed. We demonstrate that the practical precoder performs closely to the optimal precoder through simulation, and both precoders exhibit considerable performance improvement compared with the AoA estimation without precoder. Furthermore, the precoder technique is applied to a known AoA-based localization method, and the improvement on the accuracy of the location estimate is studied.

Context awareness, as one of the key techniques applied in ubiquitous computing, makes information technology invisible and seamless to people's daily living. As a result, numerous context frameworks have been developed for simplifying the development of context-aware applications by providing low-level context data operations such as acquisitions and simple aggregations in terms of APIs or toolkits. These frameworks are still falling short in requiring developers to explicitly deal with context-related tasks such as constraint enforcement in the application code. In this article, we present a framework to bridge the gap. More specifically, an application context model (ACM) is proposed for developers to specify their requirements on the context-related tasks. At application runtime, the ACM is instantiated for automatic context realization by the application context engine (ACE), which supports the full life cycle of each ACM instance (initialization, execution, and termination). We validate the concept of the framework through a case study, and present the experimental results based on the system prototype.

In this paper, we consider medium access control (MAC) protocol design for random-access cognitive radio (CR) networks. A two-level opportunistic spectrum access strategy is proposed to optimize the system performance of the secondary network and to adequately protect the operation of the primary network. At the first level, secondary users (SUs) maintain a sufficient detection probability to avoid interference with primary users (PUs), and the spectrum sensing time is optimized to control the total traffic rate of the secondary network allowed for random access when the channel is detected to be available. At the second level, two MAC protocols called the slotted cognitive radio ALOHA (CR-ALOHA) and cognitive-radio-based carrier-sensing multiple access (CR-CSMA) are developed to deal with the packet scheduling of the secondary network. We employ normalized throughput and average packet delay as the network metrics and derive closed-form expressions to evaluate the performance of the secondary network for our proposed protocols. Moreover, we use the interference and agility factors as the performance parameters to measure the protection effects on the primary network. For various frame lengths and numbers of SUs, the optimal performance of throughput and delay can be achieved at the same spectrum sensing time, and there also exists a tradeoff between the achievable performance of the secondary network and the effects of protection on the primary network. Simulation results show that the CR-CSMA protocol outperforms the slotted CR-ALOHA protocol and that the PUs' activities have an influence on the performance of SUs for both the slotted CR-ALOHA and CR-CSMA.

In this paper, we consider the cooperative spectrum sensing problem for a cognitive radio (CR) mesh network, where secondary users (SUs) are allowed to share the spectrum band which is originally allocated to a primary users' (PUs) network. We propose two new cooperative spectrum sensing strategies, called amplify-and-relay (AR) and detect-and-relay (DR), aiming at improving the detection performance with the help of other eligible SUs so as to agilely vacate the channel to the primary network when the neighboring PUs switch to active state. AR and DR strategies are periodically executed during the spectrum sensing phase which is arranged at the beginning of each MAC frame. Based on AR and DR strategies, we derive the closed-form expressions of false alarm probability and detection probability for both single-relay and multi-relay models, with or without channel state information (CSI). Simulation results show that our proposed strategies achieve better performance than a non-cooperative (or non-relay) spectrum sensing method and an existing cooperative detection method. As expected, we observe that the detection performance improves as the number of eligible relay SUs increases, and furthermore, it is better for the known-CSI case than that of the unknown-CSI case.

The problem of conserving energy under multiple constraints of query waiting delays and sensing coverage preservation in query-based wireless sensor networks is addressed. We propose a network architecture based on the cyclic symmetric block design class of wakeup schemes. Using a target tracking application as an example, specific requirements of the application translates to design parameters in our proposed solution. Our proposal demonstrates good delay performances, high target tracking accuracies and low target identification errors, without the need for costly double-radio channels while increasing network lifetimes by a factor of four to eight over traditional methods.

In this paper, we propose a fingerprint-based localization scheme that exploits the location dependency of the channel impulse response (CIR). We approximate the CIR by applying inverse Fourier transform to the receiver's channel estimation. The amplitudes of the approximated CIR (ACIR) vector are further transformed into the logarithmic scale to ensure that elements in the ACIR vector contribute fairly to the location estimation, which is accomplished through nonparametric kernel regression. As shown in our simulations, when both the number of access points and density of training locations are the same, our proposed scheme displays significant advantages in localization accuracy, compared to other fingerprint-based methods found in the literature. Moreover, absolute localization accuracy of the proposed scheme is shown to be resilient to the real time environmental changes caused by human bodies with random positions and orientations.

This paper presents the generalized butterfly graph (GBG) and its application to video stream authentication. Compared with the original butterfly graph, the proposed GBG provides significantly increased flexibility, which is necessary for streaming applications, including supporting arbitrary bit-rate budget for authentication and arbitrary number of video packets. Within the GBG design, the problem of constructing an authentication graph is defined as follows: given the total number of packets to protect, the expected packet loss rate for the network, and the available overhead budget, how should one design the authentication graph to maximize the probability that the received packets are verifiable? Furthermore, given the fact that media packets are typically of unequal importance, we explore two variants of the GBG authentication, packet sorting and unequal authentication protection, which apply unequal treatment to different packets based on their importance. Lastly, we examine how the proposed GBG authentication can be applied within the context of rate-distortion-authentication (R-D-A) optimized streaming: given a media stream protected by GBG authentication, the R-D-A optimized streaming technique computes an optimized transmission schedule by recognizing and accounting for the authentication dependencies in the GBG authentication graph.

In this paper, we present a system model for multiuser multicode code-division multiple access (CDMA) in a multipath fading channel and propose a hybrid receiver scheme for the system. Conventional receivers for CDMA systems utilized interference cancellation (IC) schemes, with the RAKE receiver as an initial data estimator. However, the RAKE receiver generates inaccurate data estimates due the interference that is caused by the cross correlation between the spreading codes. This inaccurate data estimate leads to significant error propagation to the subsequent stages and thus degrades the bit error rate (BER) performance. Our proposed scheme overcomes the problem by using a more accurate initial data estimator. It consists of an equalizer for obtaining initial data estimation, followed by several stages of parallel IC (PIC). Computer simulation results show that the BER curves of our proposed scheme do not encounter an error floor under all channel conditions; in contrast, the BER curves of the conventional RAKE-PIC receiver are constrained by an irreducible error floor. In addition, in an uplink four-path channel and at a BER of 10-3, our simulation results show that a one-stage PIC achieves a 2.5-dB gain over the first stage equalization receiver.

We define authenticated video as decoded video that results from those received packets whose authenticities have been verified. Generic data stream authentication methods usually impose overhead and dependency among packets for verification. Therefore, the conventional rate-distortion (R-D) optimized video streaming techniques produce highly sub-optimal R-D performance for authenticated video, since they do not account for the overhead and additional dependencies for authentication. In this paper, we study this practical problem and propose an Rate-Distortion-Authentication (R-D-A) optimized streaming technique for authenticated video. Based on packets' importance in terms of both video quality and authentication dependencies, the proposed technique computes a packet transmission schedule that minimizes the expected end-to-end distortion of the authenticated video at the receiver subject to a constraint on the average transmission rate. Simulation results based on H.264 JM 10.2 and NS-2 demonstrate that our proposed R-D-A optimized streaming technique substantially outperforms both prior (authentication-unaware) R-D optimized streaming techniques and data stream authentication techniques. In particular, when the channel capacity is below the source rate, the PSNR of authenticated video quickly drops to unacceptable levels using conventional R-D optimized streaming techniques, while the proposed R-D-A Optimization technique still maintains optimized video quality. Furthermore, we examine a low-complexity version of the proposed algorithm, and also an enhanced version which accounts for the multiple deadlines associated with each packet, which is introduced by stream authentication

Energy awareness is a crucial component in the design of wireless sensor networks at all layers. This paper looks into efficient energy utilization of a target-tracking sensor network by predicting a target's trajectory through experience. While this is not new, the chief novelty comes in conserving energy through both dynamic spatial and temporal management of sensors while assuming minimal locality information. We adapted our target trajectory model from the Gauss-Markov mobility model, formulated the tracking problem as a hierarchical Markov decision process (HMDP), and solved it through neurodynamic programming. Our HMDP for target-tracking (HMTT) algorithm conserves energy by reducing the rate of sensing (temporal management) but maintains an acceptable tracking accuracy through trajectory prediction (spatial management) of multiple targets. We derived some theoretical bounds on accuracy and energy utilization of HMTT. Simulation results demonstrated the effectiveness of HMTT in energy conservation and tracking accuracy against two other predictive tracking algorithms, with accuracy of up to 47% higher and energy savings of up to 200%

This paper proposes an optimized content-aware authentication scheme for JPEG-2000 streams over lossy networks, where a received packet is consumed only when it is both decodable and authenticated. In a JPEG-2000 codestream, some packets are more important than others in terms of coding dependency and image quality. This naturally motivates allocating more redundant authentication information for the more important packets in order to maximize their probability of authentication and thereby minimize the distortion at the receiver. Towards this goal, with the awareness of its corresponding image content, we formulate an optimization framework to compute an authentication graph to maximize the expected media quality at the receiver, given specific authentication overhead and knowledge of network loss rate. System analysis and experimental results demonstrate that the proposed scheme achieves our design goal in that the rate-distortion (R-D) curve of the authenticated image is very close to the R-D curve when no authentication is required

This paper studies the performance of overlay device-to-device (D2D) communication links via carrier sense multiple access (CSMA) protocols. We assume that the D2D links have heterogeneous rate requirements and different willingness to pay, and each of them acts non-altruistically to achieve its target rate while maximizing its own payoff. Spatial reuse is allowed if the links are not interfering with each other. A non-cooperative game model is used to address the resource allocation among the D2D links, at the same time leveraging on the ideal CSMA network (ICN) model to address the physical channel access issue. We propose a Stackelberg game in which the base station in the cellular network acts as a Stackelberg leader to regulate the individual payoff by modifying the unit service price so that the total D2D throughput is maximized. The problem is shown to be quasi-convex and can be solved by a sequence of equivalent convex optimization problems. The pricing strategies are designed so that the network always operates within the feasible throughput region. The results are verified by simulations., 32 pages, 11 figures, accepted for publication in IEEE Transactions on Vehicular Technology, Dec 11, 2015

A wearable sensor system enables continuous and remote health monitoring and is widely considered as the next generation of healthcare technology. The performance, the packet error rate (PER) in particular, of a wearable sensor system may deteriorate due to a number of factors, particularly the interference from the other wearable sensor systems in the vicinity. We systematically evaluate the performance of the wearable sensor system in terms of PER in the presence of such interference in this paper. The factors that affect the performance of the wearable sensor system, such as density, traffic load, and transmission power in a realistic moderate-scale deployment case in hospital are all considered. Simulation results show that with 20% duty cycle, only 68.5% of data transmission can achieve the targeted reliability requirement (PER is less than 0.05) even in the off-peak period in hospital. We then suggest some interference mitigation schemes based on the performance evaluation results in the case study.

In this brief, we present an image entropy coder, context-based bit-plane Golomb coder (CB-BPGC), for wavelet-based scalable image coding. CB-BPGC follows the idea of the state-of-the-art image coding standard JPEG2000 entropy coding to apply the rate-distortion optimization algorithm after block coding. However, it explores a more efficient block coding where statistical properties of the block coefficients are considered. Compression ratio and error resilience performances of the proposed coder are evaluated, and the experimental results show that, compared with the JPEG2000, it achieves better lossless and lossy coding performance with lower complexity and greater resilience to transmission errors when simulated on the wireless Rayleigh fading channel

A new packet CDMA network protocol that employs power-controlled transmissions is proposed and analysed. Three types of codes are used, namely base codes as pilot signals, mobile codes for communication purposes, and common codes for registration or location updating. The performance of such a network is analysed for both fading and non-fading channels.

In this paper, we propose two approaches to reduce interference in packet-switched TDD systems. The first involves the arranging of a judicious power margin between the BS and MS transmitters with and without power control. The second explores various slot assignment algorithms with and without slot reassignment. Significant improvements in performance can be obtained using such approaches, leading to gains in effective throughput.

In this paper, we derive the theoretical error Probability Density Function (PDF) and Region of Confidence (RoC) conditioned on the on-line signal parameter vector, for a generalized fingerprint-based localization system. As the computations of these terms require the exact expression of the joint PDF for both the device location and the on-line signal parameter vector, which is often not available practically, we propose to approximate this joint PDF by Nonparametric Kernel Density Estimation techniques using the training fingerprints.

When a body sensor network (BSN) that is linked to the backbone via a wireless network interface moves from one coverage zone to another, a handover is required to maintain network connectivity. This paper presents an optimized handover scheme with movement trend awareness for BSNs. The proposed scheme predicts the future position of a BSN user using the movement trend extracted from the historical position, and adjusts the handover decision accordingly. Handover initiation time is optimized when the unnecessary handover rate is estimated to meet the requirement and the outage probability is minimized. The proposed handover scheme is simulated in a BSN deployment area in a hospital environment in UK. Simulation results show that the proposed scheme reduces the outage probability by 22% as compared with the existing hysteresis-based handover scheme under the constraint of acceptable handover rate.

Aloha games study the transmission probabilities of a group of non-cooperative users which share a channel to transmit via the slotted Aloha protocol. This paper extends the Aloha games to spatial reuse scenarios, and studies the system equilibrium and performance. Specifically, fixed point theory and order theory are used to prove the existence of a least fixed point as the unique Nash equilibrium (NE) of the game and the optimal choice of all players. The Krasovskii's method is used to construct a Lyapunov function and obtain the conditions to examine the stability of the NE. Simulations show that the theories derived are applicable to large-scale distributed systems of complicated network topologies. An empirical relationship between the network connectivity and the achievable total throughput is finally obtained through simulations., 26 pages, 9 figures, 1 table, accepted by IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications, June 15, 2013

The greatest single factor in enhancing spectral efficiency of a network is the mass deployment of microcells. By this simple technique we can repeatedly and efficiently reuse the precious spectrum. The number of users a network can support is fundamentally dependent on the common air interface (CAI) over which users communicate. User capacity is dependent on many factors, but the cardinal ones are the amount of spectrum the regulators allocate, the size of the radio coverage area from a base station (BS), and the amount of interference a particular radio link can tolerate. In this article we are primarily concerned with the system aspects associated with the CAI. We focus on the critical importance of BS siting. Starting with existing large cells, we deliberate on the problems that might arise in siting BSs in three dimensional microcells, in order to consider suitable multiple access methods for future cellular environments. >

Various strategies to provide low-delay high-quality digital speech communications in a high-capacity wireless network are examined. Various multiple access schemes based on time-division and packet reservation are compared in terms of their statistical multiplexing capabilities, sensitivity to speech packet dropping, delay, robustness to lossy packet environments, and overhead efficiency. In particular, a low-delay multiple access scheme, called shared time-division duplexing (STDD) is proposed. This scheme allows both the uplink and downlink traffic to share a common channel, thereby achieving high statistical multiplexing gain even with a low population of simultaneous conversations. The authors also propose a choice of low delay, high quality speech coding and digital modulation systems based on adaptive DPCM, with QDPSK or pseudo-analog transmission (skewed DPSK), for use in conjunction with the STDD multiple access protocol. The choice of the alternative systems depends on required end-to-end delay, recovered speech quality and bandwidth efficiency. Typically, with a total capacity of 1 MBaud, 2 ms frame and 8 kBaud speech coding rate, low delay STDD is able to support 48 pairs of users compared to 38, 35, and 16 for TDMA with speech activity detection, basic TDMA and PRMA respectively. This corresponds to respective gains of 26%, 37% and 200%. >

Human motion capture technologies have been widely used in a wide spectrum of applications, including interactive game and learning, animation, film special effects, health care, navigation, and so on. The existing human motion capture techniques, which use structured multiple high-resolution cameras in a dedicated studio, are complicated and expensive. With the rapid development of microsensors-on-chip, human motion capture using wearable microsensors has become an active research topic. Because of the agility in movement, upper-limb motion estimation has been regarded as the most difficult problem in human motion capture. In this paper, we take the upper limb as our research subject and propose a novel ubiquitous upper-limb motion estimation algorithm, which concentrates on modeling the relationship between upper-arm movement and forearm movement. A link structure with 5 degrees of freedom (DOF) is proposed to model the human upper-limb skeleton structure. Parameters are defined according to Denavit-Hartenberg convention, forward kinematics equations are derived, and an unscented Kalman filter is deployed to estimate the defined parameters. The experimental results have shown that the proposed upper-limb motion capture and analysis algorithm outperforms other fusion methods and provides accurate results in comparison to the BTS optical motion tracker.

The author examines the performance of a packet reservation multiple access (PRMA) protocol in a metropolitan microcellular radio environment using computer simulations. Call characteristics, mobility, and channel conditions have an impact on PRMA performance which is measured in terms of the average packet dropping rate per call. In order to maintain a reasonable level of service quality for calls in progress, teletraffic loading can be controlled by introducing a call setup queue and limiting the number of active subscribers. Call mobility is found to have a minor impact on PRMA performance. PRMA is also fairly robust against adverse channel conditions with a drop in performance of about 15% when the channel packet loss rate is less than 0.01. Performance comparisons to other protocols are also carried out. >

The author studies the performance of a high capacity metropolitan microcellular radio network using computer simulation. Packet reservation multiple access carriers are dynamically assigned or released depending on current teletraffic loading conditions. Significant performance improvements are obtained using a 2-stage costing strategy which attempts to balance call blocking probabilities against packet dropping rate, thereby leading to more efficient utilisation of channel resources. The author achieves 40 to 50% improvements over a fixed allocation scheme in terms of the blocking probability performance, by soft assigning carriers to the microcells and performing a 2-stage dynamic carrier allocation procedure based on a simple costing algorithm which attempts to pack co-carrier cells as closely as possible. >

In a metropolitan microcellular environment, the cell coverage zone can be highly irregular. Thus highly overlapping areas can result due to an attempt to achieve ubiquitous coverage. The authors propose a predictive load sharing (PLS) scheme to alleviate localised congestion by using the knowledge of users potentially entering and leaving a cell. They study the system in a linear bidirectional highway environment. Results show that load carried is increased and the handoff failure rate is lowered compared to the fixed channel assignment (FCA) scheme. A lower handoff failure rate is a desirable feature since the forced termination of an existing call can be very annoying to a user. >

This paper studies the dynamic behaviour of a non-persistent CSMA/CD local area network when the loading changes between a high and low load state in a stochastic manner. The investigation starts with a description of the mathematical model used for characterizing the network and its operating environment. Based on this model, equations for the state transition probabilities and system equilibrium probabilites are formulated. Finally, by solving these equations, the throughput and delay performance of the system are numerically obtained and studied. It is found that when the average load period is longer than a few tens of packet lengths, the dynamic environment starts to degenerate into two non-interacting alternating static environments. On the other hand, when the average load period is shorter than a few packet lengths, the two loading environments start to merge to become a static one with an average constant load. These results serve to confirm that conventional investigations assuming constant load...

The authors propose an ordered dynamic channel assignment with reassignment (ODCAR) scheme and study its performance in a highway microcellular radio environment where the microcells are shaped to segments of the highway. Channels are assigned on an ordered basis in conjunction with a minimax algorithm to provide high capacity and to alleviate worst case channel congestion in each microcell. Simulation results show significant performance improvements in terms of channel utilization and probability of call failure. The load sharing feature of this improved scheme is demonstrated in a highway microcellular radio network with an asymmetrical teletraffic load condition. The authors examine how load sharing is accomplished under such circumstances. >

This letter proposes a 4-kb/s multimode code-excited linear prediction (CELP) coder with pitch synchronous extended excitation. Three modes are used for the short-term excitation, namely algebraic, extended, or stochastic excitations, together with an adaptive codebook for the long-term excitation. Comparisons with the FS-1016 and ITU-T G.723.1 coders show a performance level between these standards.

In this paper we propose low-delay techniques for coding 7 kHz speech using subband coding together with code-excited linear predictive coding (CELP). We compare the use of separate as well as joint index codebooks. Specifically, the joint index subband CELP (JISBC) algorithm is found to provide good quality with processing delay in the range of 2.375 ms to 3.375 ms at corresponding bitrates of 16 kbit/s to 8 kbits/s.

The performance of a synchronised call handoff algorithm called the 'hierarchical optimisation handoff algorithm' (HOHA) is analysed. New results are presented with the derivation of an analytical model which describes the behaviour of the HOHA and provides an upper bound on its performance.

An approximate analysis for a dynamic-channel-assignment (DCA) scheme with handoffs is proposed. In a DCA scheme, there is no fixed relationship between channels and cells. Channel usage in a cell is subject to cochannel-interference constraints owing to the shared use of the same channel in nearby cells. This causes exact analysis of DCA schemes to be highly complex even in the absence of handoffs. An approximate analysis for a DCA scheme, called the ordered dynamic-channel-assignment (ODCAR) scheme, is proposed which takes into consideration handoff calls. The analysis results are compared with simulation results for a linear-highway microcellular system. The analysis proposed is simple and shows good approximation to the simulation results for the system parameters used. It is shown, also, that the ODCAR scheme performs close to a full-access system.

An analytical model to describe the statistical multiplexing performance in a variable partition duplexing (VPD) multiple access scheme is described. The analytical and simulation results are shown to agree closely for a variety of conditions.

The effect of queuing on an ordered dynamic channel assignment with reassignment (QODCAR) scheme in a highway microcellular environment are studied. Results show that queuing improves channel use by approximately 9-43%, and significantly lowers the probability of call failure. >

A hybrid approach in determining the excitation vector in a low-delay code excited linear predictive coder is proposed. By a judicious division of the composite excitation vector into long-term and short-term components, and the use of switched quantisation, substantial improvement in coding quality is obtained.

In a highway microcellular structure, accidents and road works result in localised congestions contributing to asymmetrical teletraffic load situations. A dynamic load-sharing scheme based on a reconfigurable overlapped cellular coverage is investigated for various teletraffic conditions. System performance in terms of the probabilities of new calls blocked and handoff failure are improved significantly with this scheme.

In pulse code modulation of speech, transmission errors cause changes in the statistical properties of the received samples. Recently published work describes computer simulations of a difference detection and correction (DDC) system which detect errors on the basis of these changes. The system examines the differences between adjacent received samples. If a particular difference exceeds a threshold, which is dependent on the rms value of a block of 64 differences, the quantized sample responsible for this large difference is deemed to be erroneous. A nonlinear filter of the median type is then introduced as a corrector. We now present a comprehensive description of the hardware realization of this system, and present measured results of signal-to-noise ratio (snr) as a function of bit error rate, input power and the error criterion for narrow-band white noise input signals. An improvement of 6 dB in snr is achieved for error rates between 0.2 and 2.0%. The snr results are consistent with subjective impressions of the quality of speech processed by the DDC system.

The teletraffic performance of a highway microcellular digital mobile radio system having an oversailing macrocell that spans many microcells is presented. The microcellular cluster is composed of concatenated segments of the highway where each segment is a microcell, typically 500-2000 m in length, with the base stations located at lamp-post elevations. A narrowband time-division-multiple-access arrangement supporting ten channels per carrier and one carrier per base station is used. The teletraffic analysis assumes there are n-up and n-down lanes, and that the vehicular speeds conform to a truncated Gaussian distribution whose mean speed is 100 or 50 km/h when the vehicular traffic is free-flowing or in traffic-congested conditions, respectively. >

To increase the capacity of blank and burst transmission of control information in cellular communication systems, the authors explore the application of a speech segment reconstruction technique. The transmitter selects a blanking interval on the basis of a segment classification measure, while the receiver replaces the missing speech with an estimate based on previously received speech. Using this approach, approximately 3.2 data bursts per second, each lasting 16 ms may be sent without degrading speech quality.

A new scheme to transmit data and analogue speech simultaneously over an analogue transmission line is presented. The transmitter simply combines speech and modulated voice-band data signals together while the receiver uses an adaptive cancelling technique to recover these signals from the received composite. The scheme works for phase-dispersive channels and without bandwidth expansion.