• Journal of KIISE:Software and Applications
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• v.34 no.3
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• pp.226-234
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• 2007

In this paper, we develop a speech recognition system using a throat microphone. The use of this kind of microphone minimizes the impact of environmental noise. However, because of the absence of high frequencies and the partially loss of formant frequencies, previous systems developed with those devices have shown a lower recognition rate than systems which use standard microphone signals. This problem has led to researchers using throat microphone signals as supplementary data sources supporting standard microphone signals. In this paper, we present a high performance ASR system which we developed using only a throat microphone by taking advantage of Korean Phonological Feature Theory and a detailed throat signal analysis. Analyzing the spectrum and the result of FFT of the throat microphone signal, we find that the conventional MFCC feature vector that uses a critical pass filter does not characterize the throat microphone signals well. We also describe the conditions of the feature extraction algorithm which make it best suited for throat microphone signal analysis. The conditions involve (1) a sensitive band-pass filter and (2) use of feature vector which is suitable for voice/non-voice classification. We experimentally show that the ZCPA algorithm designed to meet these conditions improves the recognizer's performance by approximately 16%. And we find that an additional noise-canceling algorithm such as RAST A results in 2% more performance improvement.

• Molecules and Cells
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• v.19 no.3
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• pp.402-407
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• 2005

Bone marrow mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) have shown potential for cardiac repair following myocardial injury, but this approach is limited by their poor viability after transplantation. To reduce cell loss after transplantation, we introduced the fibroblast growth factor-2 (FGF-2) gene ex vivo before transplantation. The isolated MSCs produced colonies with a fibroblast-like morphology in 2 weeks; over 95% expressed CD71, and 28% expressed the cardiomyocyte-specific transcription factor, Nkx2.5, as well as ${\alpha}$-skeletal actin, Nkx2.5, and GATA4. In hypoxic culture, the FGF-2-transfected MSCs (FGF-2-MSCs) secreted increased levels of FGF-2 and displayed a threefold increase in viability, as well as increased expression of the anti-apoptotic gene, Bcl2, and reduced DNA laddering. They had functional adrenergic receptors, like cardiomyocytes, and exposure to norepinephrine led to phosphorylation of ERK1/2. Viable cells persisted 4 weeks after implantation of $5.0{\times}10^5$ FGF-2-MSCs into infarcted myocardia. Expression of cardiac troponin T (CTn T) and a voltage-gated $Ca^{2+}$ channel (CaV2.1) increased, and new blood vessels formed. These data suggest that genetic modification of MSCs before transplantation could be useful for treating myocardial infarction and end-stage cardiac failure.

• Journal of the Institute of Electronics Engineers of Korea TC
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• v.45 no.4
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• pp.31-37
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• 2008

Conventional cooperative communications can attain gain of spatial diversity and path loss reduction because destination node independently received same signal from source node and relay node located between source node and destination node. However, these techniques bring about decreased spectral efficiency with relay node and increased complexity of receiver by using maximal ratio combining (MRC). This paper has proposed cooperative ARQ protocol that can improve the above problems and can get the better performance. This method can increase the spectral efficiency than conventional cooperative communication because if the received signal from source node is satisfied by the destination preferentially, the destination transmits ACK message to both relay node and source node and then recovers the received signal. In addition, if ARQ message indicates NACK relay node operates selective retransmission and we can increase reliability of system compared with that of general ARQ protocol in which source node retransmits data. In the proposed protocol, the selective retransmission and ARQ message are to be determined by comparing log-likelihood ratio (LLR) computation of received signal from source node with predetermined threshold values. Therefore, this protocol don't waste redundant bandwidth with CRC code and can reduce complexity of receiver without MRC. We verified spectral efficiency and BER performance for the proposed protocol through Monte-Carlo simulation over Rayleigh fading plus AWGN.

• Journal of the Institute of Electronics and Information Engineers
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• v.51 no.12
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• pp.210-216
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• 2014

In this paper, it was proposed to develop front and rear image monitoring system for vehicle that help a driver to cope with urgent situation about a dangerous element. When parking a vehicle, the risk factors to be formed by the dead zone can be resolved by using anterior and posterior cameras of the vehicle. In embedded system environment, a SoC(System on Chip) and two high-resolution CMOS (Complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor) image sensors were used to transfer two high-resolution image data through he TCP/ IP-based network. To transfer image data through he TCP/ IP-based network, the images received by two cameras were compressed by using H.264 and they were transmitted with wireless method(Wi-Fi) by using real-time transport protocol (Real-time Transport Protocol). Transmission loss, transmission delay and transmission limit were solved in wireless (Wi-Fi) environment and the bit-rate of two image data compressed by H.264 was adjusted. And the system for the optimal transmission in wireless (Wi-Fi) environment was materialized and experimented.

• Journal of the Korean Geotechnical Society
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• v.29 no.5
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• pp.29-38
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• 2013

The G-class cement is commonly used in practice for geothermal well cementing in order to protect a steel casing that is designed to transport hot water/steam from deep subsurface to ground surface during operating a geothermal power plant. In order to maintain optimal performance of geothermal wells, physical properties of the cementing material should be satisfactory. In this paper, relevant factors (i.e., groutability, uniaxial compression strength, thermal conductivity and free fluid content) of the G-class cement were experimentally examined with consideration of various water-cement (w/c) ratios. Important findings through the experiments herein are as follows. (1) Groutability of the G-class cement increases by adding a small dose of retarder. (2) There would be a structural defect caused when the w/c ratio is kept higher in order to secure groutability. (3) Thermal conductivity of the G-class cement is small enough to prevent heat loss from hot steam or water to the outer ground formation during generating electricity. (4) The G-class cement does not form free water channel in cementing a geothermal well. (5) The Phenolphthalein indicator is applicable to the distinction of the G-class cement from the drilling mud.

• Journal of the Institute of Electronics Engineers of Korea CI
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• v.38 no.6
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• pp.106-112
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• 2001

Unfortunately, the area without economical efficiency, especially the far distance sea, is much lower than that of a urban area-built-up area. It should be promoted the equivalent level to a urban area in the light of future-oriented universal service. Actually, Because propagation environment of mobile communication in the sea is greatly different from that for inland focused on built-up area, a propagation prediction model in the sea should be distinguished from inland-based one. Accordingly, the purpose of this study is to suggest the propagation prediction model for the sea service as a method to minimize unnecessary facilities investment and maintenance caused by additional or new building of a base station. If mobile phone service for far distance sea is provided by expanding limited communication zone of narrow band CDMA mobile communication whose spread band FA is 1.2288MHz. Suggested propagation prediction model includes five parameters to minimize facilities investment of a base station and maximize channel capacity: equivalent line of sight, chip delay by PN code, antenna altitude, power of base station and gain of antennas. Finally, suggested propagation prediction model is simulated and, the results are examined for its utility by comparing with loss of free space.

• Journal of the Institute of Electronics Engineers of Korea SP
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• v.45 no.1
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• pp.11-21
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• 2008

In conventional video coding, the complexity of encoder is much higher than that of decoder. However, as more needs arises for extremely simple encoder in environments having constrained energy such as sensor network, much investigation has been carried out for eliminating motion prediction/compensation claiming most complexity and energy in encoder. The Wyner-Ziv coding, one of the representative schemes for the problem, reconstructs video at decoder by correcting noise on side information using channel coding technique such as turbo code. Since the encoder generates only parity bits without performing any type of processes extracting correlation information between frames, it has an extremely simple structure. However, turbo decoding errors occur in noisy side information. When there are high-motion or occlusion between frames, more turbo decoding errors appear in reconstructed frame and look like Salt & Pepper noise. This severely deteriorates subjective video quality even though such noise rarely occurs. In this paper, we propose a computationally extremely light encoder based on symbol-level Wyner-Ziv coding technique and a new corresponding decoder which, based on a decision whether a pixel has error or not, applies median filter selectively in order to minimize loss of texture detail from filtering. The proposed method claims extremely low encoder complexity and shows improvements both in subjective quality and PSNR. Our experiments have verified average PSNR gain of up to 0.8dB.

• Korean Journal of Optics and Photonics
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• v.18 no.3
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• pp.185-189
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• 2007

A novel technology for CWDM (Coarse Wavelength Division Multiplexer) utilizing a PLC (Planar Lightwave Circuit)-AWG (Arrayed Waveguide Grating) fabrication process is proposed. BPM (Beam Propagation Method) Simulation results on the employed parabolic-horn-type input slab waveguide of AWG and the performance of the 20 nm-channel spacing CWDM with flattened passband are presented. Waveguides of $0.75{\triangle}%$ have been used in this experiment and the insertion loss at the peak wavelength is 3.5 dB for a Gaussian spectrum and is 4.8 dB for a flat-top spectrum. The bandwidth at 3 dB is better than 10 nm and 13 nm for Gaussian and flat-top spectra, respectively.

• The Journal of Korean Institute of Communications and Information Sciences
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• v.29 no.9B
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• pp.778-790
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• 2004

In this paper, we propose the functional models of optical burst switching (OBS) routers to apply GMPLS (Generalized Multiprotocol Label Switching) to optical networks based on OBS. In addition, we introduce a connection admission control (CAC) algorithms which are operated in this models and can accommodate the required QoS. Firstly, the characteristics of current GMPLS and OBS for the optical Internet are basically considered. With this consideration, the models are proposed to accept OBS features which include the recognition of data bounda η with control information and the statistical multiplexing in terms of bursts. Secondly, we use an offset time decision (OTD) algorithm on behalf of controlling the connection admission with taking QoS parameters such as burst loss rate(BLR) and service-differentiation ratio(SDR) into consideration. The proposed CAC algorithms use the offered load of LSP (Label Switched Path), wavelength information, and QoS parame ‘ ers as inputs of OTD algorithm. A call setup request will be accepted when the offset time decided by OTD algorithm is reasonable for guaranteeing its requested QoS. Simulation is used for performance evaluation Results show the proposed schemes can guarantee the required QoS and those are better than the previous one in terms of channel utilization.

• The Journal of Korean Institute of Communications and Information Sciences
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• v.35 no.6A
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• pp.555-567
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• 2010

Unlike single-hop systems, multi-hop systems that use relay nodes assign a part of the overall resources to relay communications. If efficient resource allocation schemes are not adopted, this leads to a loss of resources. Moreover, because we may not be able to guarantee high-link performance due to the adjacent-cell interference in relay-based cellular systems, resource efficiency can be severely decreased. In this paper, we propose efficient resource allocation schemes for downlink relay-based networks in 3GPP (3rd Generation Partnership Project) LTE (Long Term Evolution)-Advanced systems. Unlike conventional schemes that have static resource regions for each data link, the proposed schemes dynamically allocate the resources of each link to resource blocks, by considering the channel state and the capacity of each link. We also propose resource overlapping schemes in which two different links overlap at the same resource region, so as to improve cell or user throughput performance. The proposed resource overlapping schemes do not require additional processes such as interference cancellation in users, thank to considering additional interference from resource overlapping in advance.