• The Journal of Korean Institute of Communications and Information Sciences
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• v.35 no.4A
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• pp.360-370
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• 2010

In this paper, a distributed beamforming problem is considered in an amplify-and-forward (AF) wireless relay network consist of multiple source-destination pairs and relaying nodes. To exploit degree of freedom of the number of beamformers, in the first step, we proposed that the sources transmit their signals through orthogonal channels. During the second step, the relays transmit their received signals multiplied by complex weights to amplify and compensate for phase changes introduced by the backward channels through one common channel. The optimal beamforming vectors are obtained through minimization of the total relay transmit power while the signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratios (SINRs) at the destinations are above certain thresholds to meet a quality of services (QoSs) level. In the numerical example, it is shown that the proposed scheme needs less transmit power for moderate network data rates than other schemes, such as space division multiplexing or time-division multiplexing scheme.

• Journal of the Computational Structural Engineering Institute of Korea
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• v.13 no.4
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• pp.395-404
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• 2000

A damage detection and assessment algorithm is developed by measuring accelerations at limited locations of a structure under forced vibrations. The developed algorithm applies a time-domain system identification (SI) method that identifies a structure by solving a linearly constrained nonlinear optimization problem for optimal structural parameters. An equation error of the dynamic equilibrium of motion is minimized to estimate optimal parameters. An adaptive parameter grouping scheme is applied to localize damaged members with sparse measured accelerations. Damage is assessed in a statistical manner by applying a time-windowing technique to the measured time history of acceleration. Displacements and velocities at the measured degrees of freedom (DOF) are computed by integrating the measured accelerations. The displacements at the unmeasured DOF are estimated as additional unknowns to the unknown structural parameters, and the corresponding velocities and accelerations we computed by a numerical differentiation. A numerical simulation study with a truss structure is carried out to examine the efficiency of the algorithm. A data perturbation scheme is applied to determine the thresholds lot damage indices and to compute the damage possibility of each member.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.81 no.2
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• pp.219-230
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• 2022

Due to the large number of railway bridges along China's high-speed railway (HSR) lines, which cover a wide area with many lines crossing the seismic zone, the possibility of a HSR train running over a bridge when an earthquake occurs is relatively high. Since the safety performance of the train will be threatened, it is necessary to study the safety of trains running over HSR bridges during earthquakes. However, ground motion (GM) is highly random and selecting the appropriate ground-motion intensity measures (IMs) for train running safety analysis is not trivial. To deal this problem, a model of a coupled train-bridge system under seismic excitation was established and 104 GM samples were selected to evaluate the correlation between 16 different IMs and train running safety over HSR bridges during earthquakes. The results show that spectral velocity (SvT₁) and displacement (SdT₁) at the fundamental period of the structure have good correlation with train running safety for medium-and long-period HSR bridges, and velocity spectrum intensity (VSI) and Housner intensity (HI) have good correlation for a wide range of structural periods. Overall, VSI and HI are the optimal IMs for safety analysis of trains running over HSR bridges during earthquakes. Finally, based on VSI and HI, the IM thresholds of an HSR bridge at different speed were analyzed.

• Korean Journal of Radiology
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• v.22 no.4
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• pp.624-633
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• 2021

Objective: To evaluate the reliability of CT measurements of muscle quantity and quality using variable CT parameters. Materials and Methods: A phantom, simulating the L2-4 vertebral levels, was used for this study. CT images were repeatedly acquired with modulation of tube voltage, tube current, slice thickness, and the image reconstruction algorithm. Reference standard muscle compartments were obtained from the reference maps of the phantom. Cross-sectional area based on the Hounsfield unit (HU) thresholds of muscle and its components, and the mean density of the reference standard muscle compartment, were used to measure the muscle quantity and quality using different CT protocols. Signal-to-noise ratios (SNRs) were calculated in the images acquired with different settings. Results: The skeletal muscle area (threshold, -29 to 150 HU) was constant, regardless of the protocol, occupying at least 91.7% of the reference standard muscle compartment. Conversely, normal attenuation muscle area (30-150 HU) was not constant in the different protocols, varying between 59.7% and 81.7% of the reference standard muscle compartment. The mean density was lower than the target density stated by the manufacturer (45 HU) in all cases (range, 39.0-44.9 HU). The SNR decreased with low tube voltage, low tube current, and in sections with thin slices, whereas it increased when the iterative reconstruction algorithm was used. Conclusion: Measurement of muscle quantity using HU threshold was reliable, regardless of the CT protocol used. Conversely, the measurement of muscle quality using the mean density and narrow HU thresholds were inconsistent and inaccurate across different CT protocols. Therefore, further studies are warranted in future to determine the optimal CT protocols for reliable measurements of muscle quality.

• Progress in Medical Physics
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• v.21 no.2
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• pp.209-217
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• 2010

Retinal prostheses are being developed to restore vision for the blind with retinal diseases such as retinitis pigmentosa (RP) or age-related macular degeneration (AMD). Since retinal prostheses depend upon electrical stimulation to control neural activity, optimal stimulation parameters for successful encoding of visual information are one of the most important requirements to enable visual perception. Therefore, in this paper, we focused on retinal ganglion cell (RGC) responses to different voltage stimulation parameters and compared threshold charge densities in normal and rd1 mice. For this purpose, we used in vitro preparation for the retina of normal and rd1 mice on micro-electrode arrays. When the neural network of rd1 mouse retinas is stimulated with voltage-controlled pulses, RGCs in degenerated retina also respond to voltage amplitude or voltage duration modulation as well in wild-type RGCs. But the temporal pattern of RGCs response is very different; in wild-type RGCs, single peak within 100 ms appears while in RGCs in degenerated retina multiple peaks (~4 peaks) with ~10 Hz rhythm within 400 ms appear. The thresholds for electrical activation of RGCs are overall more elevated in rd1 mouse retinas compared to wild-type mouse retinas: The thresholds for activation of RGCs in rd1 mouse retinas were on average two times higher ($70.50{\sim}99.87\;{\mu}C/cm^2$ vs. $37.23{\sim}61.65\;{\mu}C/cm^2$) in the experiment of voltage amplitude modulation and five times higher ($120.5{\sim}170.6\;{\mu}C/cm^2$ vs. $22.69{\sim}37.57\;{\mu}C/cm^2$) in the experiment of voltage duration modulation than those in wild-type mouse retinas. This is compatible with the findings from human studies that the currents required for evoking visual percepts in RP patients is much higher than those needed in healthy individuals. These results will be used as a guideline for optimal stimulation parameters for upcoming Korean-type retinal prosthesis.

• Journal of Soil and Groundwater Environment
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• v.20 no.7
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• pp.34-42
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• 2015

Feasibility tests for the hydraulic fracturing were conducted in order to secure additional saline groundwater for irrigating to the land-based aquaculture farm. Two boreholes were placed to the aquaculture farm A and B, respectively. A hydraulic fracturing using single packer was applied to major fracture zones within two boreholes. To identify effects of hydraulic fracturing on securing additional saline groundwater, some selective methods including well logging methods, pumping tests, and groundwater quality analysis were commonly applied to the boreholes before and after the hydraulic fracturing. Enlarging/creating fracture zones, increasing water contents in bedrock near boreholes, and increasing transmissivity were observed after the hydraulic fracturing. Even though the hydraulic fracturing could be an alternative to secure additional saline groundwater to the land-based aquaculture farm, salinity of the groundwater did not meet optimal thresholds for each fingerling in two farms: Fresh submarine groundwater discharge flowed the more into borehole of the farm A that resulted in decreasing a salinity value. Increased saline groundwater quantity in the borehole of the farm B rarely affect to the salinity. Although salinity problem of groundwater limited its direct use for the farms, the mixing with seawater could be effectively used for the fingerlings during the early stage. A horizontal radial collector well placed in the alluvial layer could be an alternative for the farms as well.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Intelligent Systems
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• v.17 no.6
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• pp.725-730
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• 2007

Gray-level histogram-based threshold selection methods such as Otsu's method, Huang and Wang's method, and etc. have been widely used for the threshold selection in image processing. They are simple and effective, but take too much time to determine the optimal multilevel threshold values as the number of thresholds are increased. In this paper, we measure correlation between gray-levels by using the Gaussian function and define a Gaussian-type finite mixture distribution which is combination of the Gaussian distribution function with the gray-level histogram, and propose a fast and effective threshold selection method using it. We show the effectiveness of the proposed through experimental results applied it to three images and the efficiency though comparison of the computational complexity of the proposed with that of Otsu's method.

• The Journal of Korean Institute of Communications and Information Sciences
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• v.27 no.6A
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• pp.524-532
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• 2002

This paper reports that the Lambert W function applies to a non-iterative design of minimum mean square-error scalar quantizers for a Laplacian source. Specifically, it considers a non-iterative design algorithm for optimum quantizers for a Laplacian source; it finds that the solution of the recursive nonlinear equation in the non-iterative design is elegantly expressed in term of the principal branch of the Lambert W function in a closed form; and it proves that the non-iterative algorithm applies only to exponential or Laplacian sources. The contribution of the paper is in the reduction of the time needed for the design and the increased accuracy in resulting quantization points and thresholds, because the algorithm is non-iterative and the Lambert W function can be evaluated as accurately as desired. Also, numerical results show how optimal quantization distortion converges monotonically to the Panter-Dite constant and help derive an approximation formula for the key parameters of optimum quantizers.

• KSII Transactions on Internet and Information Systems (TIIS)
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• v.11 no.7
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• pp.3370-3392
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• 2017

Next Generation Beyond 4G/5G systems will rely on the deployment of small cells over conventional macrocells for achieving high spectral efficiency and improved coverage performance, especially for indoor and hotspot environments. In such heterogeneous networks, the expected performance gains can only be derived with the use of efficient interference coordination schemes, such as Fractional Frequency Reuse (FFR), which is very attractive for its simplicity and effectiveness. In this work, femtocells are deployed according to a spatial Poisson Point Process (PPP) over hexagonally shaped, 6-sector macro base stations (MeNBs) in an uncoordinated manner, operating in hybrid mode. A newly introduced intermediary region prevents cross-tier, cross-boundary interference and improves user equipment (UE) performance at the boundary of cell center and cell edge. With tools of stochastic geometry, an analytical framework for the signal-to-interference-plus-noise-ratio (SINR) distribution is developed to evaluate the performance of all UEs in different spatial locations, with consideration to both co-tier and cross-tier interference. Using the SINR distribution framework, average network throughput per tier is derived together with a newly proposed harmonic mean, which ensures fairness in resource allocation amongst all UEs. Finally, the FFR network parameters are optimized for maximizing average network throughput, and the harmonic mean using a fair resource assignment constraint. Numerical results verify the proposed analytical framework, and provide insights into design trade-offs between maximizing throughput and user fairness by appropriately adjusting the spatial partitioning thresholds, the spectrum allocation factor, and the femtocell density.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Intelligent Systems
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• v.20 no.2
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• pp.279-284
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• 2010

The plane curve approach which was proposed by Boukharouba et. al. is a multi-threshold selection method through searching peak-valley based on histogram cumulative distribution function. However the method is required to select parameters to compose plane curve, and the shape of plane curve is affected according to parameters. Therefore detection of peak-valley is effected by parameters. In this paper, we propose an entropy maximizing-based method to select optimal plane curve parameters, and propose a multi-thresholding method based on the selected parameters. The effectiveness of the proposed method is demonstrated by multi-thresholding experiments on various images and comparison with other conventional thresholding methods based on histogram.