In this paper, the authors propose a novel static random access memory (SRAM) that employs the adiabatic logic principle. To reduce energy dissipation, the proposed adiabatic SRAM is driven by two trapezoidal-wave pulses. The cell structure of the proposed SRAM has two high-value resistors based on a p-type metal-oxide semiconductor transistor, a cross-coupled n-type metal-oxide semiconductor (NMOS) pair and an NMOS switch to reduce the short-circuit current. The inclusion of a transmission-gate controlled by a write word line signal allows the proposed circuit to operate as an adiabatic SRAM during data writing. Simulation results show that the energy dissipation of the proposed SRAM is lower than that of a conventional adiabatic SRAM.

For mobile user equipments (UEs), a careful power management is essential. Despite this fact, quite an amount of energy is wasted in today's UEs’ analogue (AFEs) and digital frontends (DFEs). These are engineered for extracting the wanted signal from a spectral environment defined in the corresponding communication standards with their extremely tough requirements. These requirements define a worst-case scenario still ensuring reliable communication. In a typical receiving process the actual requirements can be considered as less critical. Knowledge about the actual environmental spectral conditions allows to reconfigure both frontends to the actual needs and to save energy. In this paper, the authors present a highly efficient generic spectrum sensing approach, which allows to collect information about the actual spectral environment of an UE. This information can be used to reconfigure both the AFE and DFE, thus endowing them with increased intelligence. A low-complex multiplier free filter bank extended by an efficient power calculation unit will be introduced. They also present simulation results, which illustrate the performance of the spectrum sensing approach and a complexity comparison with different well-known implementations is given. Furthermore, estimates on the chip area and power consumption based on a 65 nm CMOS technology database are provided, considering the Smarti4G chip as a reference.

A novel integrated motor drive and non-isolated battery charger based on a split-phase permanent magnet (PM) motor is presented and described for a plug-in vehicle. The motor windings are reconfigured by a relay for the traction and charging operation. In traction mode, the motor is like a normal three-phase motor, whereas in the charging mode, after windings reconnection, the system is a three-phase Boost rectifier. One important challenge to use the motor as three inductors in charger circuit is to have it in standstill during the battery charging. Based on the presented mathematical model of a split-phase PM motor, the zero-torque condition of the motor is explained which led to a proper windings reconnection for the charging. Simulation and experimental results of two separate practical systems are provided to verify the proposed integrated battery charger. Some practical limitations and design recommendations are provided to achieve a more realistic practical system.

In this paper, the author presents an optimised parallel implementation of a flexible maximum a-posteriori decoder for synchronisation error correcting codes, supporting a very wide range of code sizes and channel conditions. On mid-range GPUs the author demonstrates decoding speedups of more than two orders of magnitude over a central processing unit implementation of the same optimised algorithm, and more than an order of magnitude over the author's earlier GPU implementation. The prominent challenge is to maintain high parallelisation efficiency over a wide range of code sizes and channel conditions, and different execution hardware. The author ensures this with a dynamic strategy for choosing parallel execution parameters at run-time. They also present a variant that trades off some decoding speed for significantly reduced memory requirement, with no loss to the decoder's error correction performance. The increased throughput of their implementation and its ability to work with less memory allow us to analyse larger codes and poorer channel conditions, and makes practical use of such codes more feasible.

Simple, low-cost and stable passive Q-switched thulium-doped fibre lasers (TDFLs) operating at 1892.4 and 1910.8 nm are demonstrated using 802 and 1552 nm pumping schemes, respectively, in conjunction with a multi-walled carbon nanotubes (MWCNTs) saturable absorber (SA). The MWCNTs composite is prepared by mixing the MWCNTs homogeneous solution into a dilute polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) polymer solution before it is left to dry at room temperature to produce thin film. Then the film is sandwiched between two FC/PC fibre connectors and integrated into the laser cavity for Q-switching pulse generation. The pulse repetition rate of the TDFL configured with 802 nm pump can be tuned from 3.8 to 4.6 kHz, whereas the corresponding pulse width reduces from 22.1 to 18.3 μs as the pump power is increased from 187.3 to 194.2 mW. On the other hand, with 1552 nm pumping, the TDFL generates optical pulse train with a repetition rate ranging from 13.1 to 21.7 kHz with a pulse width of 11.5–7.9 μs when the pump power is tuned from 302.2 to 382.1 mW. A higher performance Q-switched TDFL is expected to be achieved with the optimisation of the MWCNT-SA saturable absorber and laser cavity.

A simple prototype for measuring the properties of dielectric materials is introduced in this Letter. A homogeneous dielectric sample placed in a field produced by a nearby antenna will affect the input impedance of the antenna. The permittivity and the loss of the dielectric sample can then be determined from the change of the input impedance of the antenna. The prototype has been validated by experiments.

This study presents a new ac circuit element – the mutual capacitor, being a dual of the mutual inductor, which is also a new ac transformer. This element is characteristic of the mutual-capacitance coupling of a multi-capacitance system. A unity-coupled mutual capacitor works as an ideal current or voltage transformer, and incidentally acts as waveform separating when inductor employed or waveform converting from square-wave to quasi-sine or waveform filtering, between ports. As a transformer, the mutual capacitor is easy to design, easy for heat cooling, more accurate for current or voltage transformation, dissipating less energy as well as saving materials, suitable for high-power and high-voltage applications. Experiments to demonstrate performances of unity-coupled mutual capacitors are also given.

This study proposes an automatic sign language translator, which is developed as assistive technology to help the hearing/speech impaired communities to communicate with the rest of the world. The system architecture, which includes feature extraction and recognition stages is described in detail. The signs are classified into two types: static and dynamic. Various types of sign features are presented and analysed. Recognition stage considers the hidden Markov model and segmentation signature. Real-time implementation of the system with the use of Windows7 and LINUX Fedora 16 operating systems with VMware workstation is presented in detail. The system has been successfully tested on Malaysian sign language.

It has been shown in two earlier papers published from this study that corresponding to a given single-operational trans-conductance amplifier (single-OTA)-RC and dual-OTA-RC sinusoidal oscillators, there are three other structurally distinct equivalent forms having the same characteristic equation, one of which employs both grounded capacitors (GC). In this study, an earlier nullor-based theory of generating equivalent op-amp oscillator circuits, proposed by the first author, is extended to derive equivalent OTA-RC circuits which discloses the existence of an additional number of equivalent forms for the same given OTA-RC oscillators than those predicted by the quoted earlier works, and thereby considerably enlarging the set of equivalents of a given OTA-RC oscillator. Furthermore, the presented nullor-based theory of generating equivalent OTA-RC oscillators results in three additional interesting outcomes: (i) the revelation that corresponding to any given OTA-RC oscillator there are two ‘both-GC’ oscillators (and not merely one, as derived in the quoted earlier works); (ii) the availability of explicit current outputs in several of the derived equivalents and (iii) the realisability explicit-current-output ‘quadrature oscillators’ in some of the generated equivalent oscillators. The workability of the generated equivalent OTA-RC oscillators has been verified by SPICE simulations, based on CMOS OTAs using 0.18 µm CMOS technology process parameters, and some sample results are given.

In this study, we present SimCommSys, a simulator of communication systems that we are releasing under an open source license. The core of the project is a set of C + + libraries defining communication system components and a distributed Monte Carlo simulator. Of principal interest is the error-control coding component, where various kinds of binary and non-binary codes are implemented, including turbo, LDPC, repeat-accumulate and Reed–Solomon. The project also contains a number of ready-to-build binaries implementing various stages of the communication system (such as the encoder and decoder), a complete simulator and a system benchmark. Finally, SimCommSys also provides a number of shell and python scripts to encapsulate routine use cases. As long as the required components are already available in SimCommSys, the user may simulate complete communication systems of their own design without any additional programming. The strict separation of development (needed only to implement new components) and use (to simulate specific constructions) encourages reproducibility of experimental work and reduces the likelihood of error. Following an overview of the framework, we provide some examples of how to use the framework, including the implementation of a simple codec, the specification of communication systems and their simulation.

In this study, the authors consider time-varying block (TVB) codes, which generalise a number of previous synchronisation error-correcting codes. They also consider various practical issues related to maximum a posteriori (MAP) decoding of these codes. Specifically, they give an expression for the expected distribution of drift between transmitter and receiver because of synchronisation errors. They determine an appropriate choice for state space limits based on the drift probability distribution. In turn, they obtain an expression for the decoder complexity under given channel conditions in terms of the state space limits used. For a given state space, they also give a number of optimisations that reduce the algorithm complexity with no further loss of decoder performance. They also show how the MAP decoder can be used in the absence of known frame boundaries, and demonstrate that an appropriate choice of decoder parameters allows the decoder to approach the performance when frame boundaries are known, at the expense of some increase in complexity. Finally, they express some existing constructions as TVB codes, comparing performance with published results and showing that improved performance is possible by taking advantage of the flexibility of TVB codes.