Electrical contacts are separated at constant speed and break arcs are generated in nitrogen or air in a 200V-450VDC/10A resistive circuit. The break arcs are extinguished by magnetic blow-out. Arc duration for the silver and copper contact pairs is investigated for each supply voltage. Following results are shown. The arc duration for Cu contacts in nitrogen is the shortest. For Cu contacts, the arc dwell time in air was considerably longer than that of nitrogen. For Ag contacts, the arc duration in nitrogen was almost the same as that in air.

We propose a cooperative cognitive radio network (CCRN) with secondary users (SUs) employing two simultaneous transmit and receive (STAR) antennas. In the proposed framework of full-duplex (FD) multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO) CCRN, the region of achievable rate is expanded via FD communication among SUs enabled by the STAR antennas adopted for the SUs. The link capacity of the proposed framework is analyzed theoretically. It is shown through numerical analysis that the proposed FD MIMO-CCRN framework can provide a considerable performance gain over the conventional frameworks of CCRN and MIMO-CCRN.

In this paper, we study simultaneous wireless information and power transfer (SWIPT) in two-way relay channels where two users exchange information with each other via a multi-antenna relay node. The signals forwarded by the relay node are also used to supply the power to two users. We formulate a max-min optimization problem aiming to maximize the minimum harvested energy between two users to achieve fairness. We jointly optimize the relay beamforming matrix and allocating powers at the two users subject to the quality of service (QoS) constraints. To be specific, we consider the amplify-and-forward (AF) relay strategy and the time splitting SWIPT strategy. To this end, we propose two different time splitting protocols to enable relay to supply power to two users. To solve the non-convex joint optimization problem, we propose to split the original optimization problem into two subproblems and solving them iteratively to obtain the final solution. It is shown that the first subproblem dealing with the beamforming matrix can be optimally solved by using the technique of relaxed semidefinite programming (SDR), and the second subproblem, which deals with the power allocation, can be solved via linear programming. The performance comparison of two schemes as well as the one-way relaying scheme are provided and the effectiveness of the proposed schemes is verified.

We consider a physical-layer network coding (PNC) scheme based on M-ary continuous phase frequency shift keying (M-CPFSK) modulation for a bidirectional relay network. In this scheme, the maximum-likelihood sequence detection (MLSD) algorithm for the relay receiver over Rayleigh fading channels is discussed. Moreover, an upper bound on the minimum Euclidean distance for the superimposed signals is analyzed and the corresponding lower bound for the average symbol error rate (SER) at the relay is derived. Numerical results are also sustained by simulations which corroborate the exactness of the theoretical analysis.

This letter studies secure transmission design with finite alphabet input for cooperative jamming network under individual power constraint. By adopting the zero-force scheme, where the jamming signal is fully laid in the null space of the relay-destination channel, the problem of enhancing the achievable secrecy rate is decomposed into two independent subproblems: relay weights design and power control. We reveal that the problem of relay weights design is identical to the problem of minimizing the maximal equivalent source-eavesdropper channel gain, which can be transformed into a semi-definite programming (SDP) problem and thus is tackled using interior point method. Besides, the problem of power control is solved with the fundamental relation between mutual information and minimum mean square error (MMSE). Numerical results show that the proposed scheme achieves significant performance gains compared to the conventional Gaussian design.

Public safety networks need to more effectively meet the increasing demands for images or videos to be shared among first responders and incident commanders. Long term evolution (LTE) networks are considered to be candidates to achieve such broadband services. Capital expenditures in deploying base stations need to be decreased to introduce LTE for public safety. However, out-of-coverage areas tend to occur in cell edge areas or inside buildings because the cell areas of base stations for public safety networks are larger than those for commercial networks. The 3rd Generation Partnership Program (3GPP) in Release 13 has investigated device-to-device (D2D) based relay communication as a means to fill out-of-coverage areas in public safety LTE (PS-LTE). This paper proposes a relay selection scheme based on effective path throughput from an out-of-coverage terminal to a base station via an in-coverage relay terminal, which enables the optimal relay terminal to be selected. System level simulation results assuming on radii of 20km or less revealed that the proposed scheme could provide better user ratios that satisfied the throughput requirements for video transmission than the scheme standardized in 3GPP. Additionally, an evaluation that replicates actual group of fire-fighters indicated that the proposed scheme enabled 90% of out-of-coverage users to achieve the required throughput, i.e., 1.0Mbps, to transmit video images.

In this paper, we investigate the capacity performance of an in-band full-duplex (IBFD) amplify-and-forward two-way relay system under the effect of residual loop-back-interference (LBI). In a two-way IBFD relay system, two IBFD nodes exchange data with each other via an IBFD relay. Both two-way relaying and IBFD one-way relaying could double the spectrum efficiency theoretically. However, due to imperfect channel estimation, the performance of two-way relaying is degraded by self-interference at the receiver. Moreover, the performance of the IBFD relaying is deteriorated by LBI between the transmit antenna and the receive antenna of the node. Different from the IBFD one-way relay scenario, the IBFD two-way relay system will suffer from an extra level of LBI at the destination receiver. We derive accurate approximations of the average end-to-end capacities for both the IBFD and half-duplex modes. We evaluate the impact of the LBI and channel estimation errors on system performance. Monte Carlo simulations verify the validity of analytical results. It can be shown that with certain signal-to-noise ratio values and effective interference cancellation techniques, the IBFD transmission is preferable in terms of capacity. The IBFD two-way relaying is an attractive technique for practical applications.

IEEE 802.11ah is a new wireless standard for large-scale wireless connectivity in IoT and M2M applications. One of the major requirements placed on IEEE 802.11ah is the energy-efficient communication of several thousand stations with a single access point. This is especially difficult to achieve during network initialization, because the several thousand stations must rely on the rudimentary approach of random channel access, and the inevitable increase in channel access contention yields a long association delay. IEEE 802.11ah has introduced an authentication control mechanism that classifies stations into groups, and only a small number of stations in a group are allowed to access the medium at a time. Although the grouping strategy provides fair channel access to a large number of stations, the presence of several thousand stations and limitation that only a group can use the channel at a time, causes the association time to remain excessive. In this paper, we propose a novel block association method that enables simultaneous association of all groups. Our experiments verify that our block association method decreases the total association time by many folds.

This letter presents two outage-optimal relaying schemes to improve the performance of a wireless energy harvesting system in cognitive radio networks. The performance of both schemes is then evaluated and compared by carrying out numerical simulations, and we also derive the analytic expression for the outage probability of the secondary system.

The smart grid is expected to be the next generation electricity grid. It is beneficial for communication systems to improve energy efficiency and reduce carbon emissions. In this paper, we propose a distributed game theoretical framework for decode-and-forward (DF) cooperative relay networks with smart grid. A relay selection and power allocation strategy based on the buyer-seller game is proposed that processes the statistic channel-state information (CSI) available. The user is modeled as a buyer who selects the optimal relay and determines the optimal amount of power to be bought from the relay by the maximum utility criterion. The relay powered by the smart grid is modeled as a seller who determines the price of the power to achieve the maximum profit with its own cost. The equilibrium conditions of the game between the two sides are analyzed. The simulation results verify the existence of a Nash equilibrium point and illustrate that the proposed strategy may guarantee the utility of the source, the relay and the network and increase the energy efficiency.

In cellular network environments, where users are not evenly distributed across cells, overloaded base stations handling many users have difficulties in providing effective and fair services with their limited resources. Additionally, users at the cell edge may suffer from the potential problems resulting from low signal-to-interference ratio owing to the incessant interference from adjacent cells. In this paper, we propose a relay-assisted load balancing scheme to resolve these traffic imbalance. The proposed scheme can improve the performance of the overall network by utilizing relay stations to divert heavy traffic to other cells, and by adopting a partial frequency-reuse scheme to mitigate inter-cell interference. Each user and relay station calculates its own utility influence in the neighboring candidates for reassociation and decides whether to stay or move to another cell presenting the maximum total network utility increment. Simulation results show that the proposed scheme improves the overall network fairness to users by improving the performance of cell boundary users without degrading the total network throughput. We achieve a system performance gain of 16 ∼ 35% when compared with conventional schemes, while ensuring fairness among users.

In this paper, we propose filter-and-forward beamforming (FF-BF) for cognitive two-way relay networks in which secondary users employ an orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) system. Secondary transceivers communicate with each other through multiple relays to obtain BF gain as well as to suppress the interference between the primary and secondary users who share the same spectrum. We consider two FF-BF design methods to optimize the relay filter. The first method enhances the quality of service of the secondary network by maximizing the worst subcarrier signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio (SINR) subject to transmit power constraints. The second method suppresses the interference from the secondary network to the primary network through the minimization of the relay transmission power subject to subcarrier SINR constraints. Simulation results show that the proposed FF-BF improves system performance in comparison to amplify-and-forward relay BF.

A relay assignment scheme is proposed in this paper that minimizes the mean delay of transmission for energy harvesting (EH) cooperative communication systems, whose source node and relay nodes are all equipped with energy harvesters. We jointly consider the long-term channel side information (CSI) and energy side information (ESI) of all nodes, and formulate the delay minimization problem as an integer programming problem. To solve this problem, a refined cyclic coordinate method (RCCM) is proposed that considers the cases of fixed-packet-length (FPL) and variable-packet-length (VPL) transmission. Simulation results show that the proposed scheme achieves performance close to that of the real-time relay selection (RRS) scheme with instantaneous CSI and ESI, which gives upper bound of the performance. Moreover, compared with the simple relay rotation (SRR) scheme where each relay has equal service time, the performance of the proposed scheme is significantly improved.

Recently, non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) has gained a great deal of attention due to its ability to simultaneously transmit multiple streams. Device-to-device (D2D) relaying can increase the spectral efficiency via direct communication between two devices, and extends coverage by relaying signals from the base station. In this letter, we propose applying the NOMA technique for D2D relay where D2D relaying and D2D communication can be done simultaneously in the power domain. The proposed scheme can achieve higher spectral efficiency, and its performance is evaluated through extensive simulations in multiple-cell environments, compared with conventional D2D relay schemes.

In this paper, we propose a relaying strategy for single-carrier relay networks with frequency selective channels, where each relay node delays its received signal before amplify-and-forward processing it. We propose a computationally efficient delay design method which reduces the number of delay candidates. To further reduce computational complexity, we develop a simplified delay design method which reduces the number of weight computations. Also, we extend the design method to the case where only partial channel state information of relay-to-destination channels is available. Simulation results show that the proposed relaying strategy outperforms a conventional amplify-and-forward relaying strategy and achieves the performance close to that of a more complex filter-and-forward relaying strategy. It is also shown that the proposed delay design method achieves near-optimum performance.

To suppress intercell interference for three-cell half-duplex relay systems, joint interference suppression and multiuser detection (MUD) schemes that estimate weight coefficients by the recursive least-squares (RLS) algorithm have been proposed but show much worse bit error rate (BER) performance than maximum likelihood detection (MLD). To improve the BER performance, this paper proposes a joint interference suppression and MUD scheme that estimates the weight coefficients by eigenvalue decomposition. The proposed scheme carries the same advantages as the conventional RLS based schemes; it does not need channel state information (CSI) feedback while incurring much less amount of computational complexity than MLD. In addition, it needs to know only two out of three preambles used in the system. Computer simulations of orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) transmission under three-cell and frequency selective fading conditions are conducted. It is shown that the eigendecomposition-based scheme overwhelmingly outperforms the conventional RLS-based scheme although requiring higher computational complexity.

In this letter, an effective algorithm is proposed to improve the performance of relay enhanced cellular networks, which is to allocate appropriate resources to each access point with quality of service constraint. First we derive the ergodic rate for backhaul link based on a poison point process model, and then allocate resources to each link according to the quality of service requirements and ergodic rate of links. Numerical results show that the proposed algorithm can not only improve system throughput but also improve the rate distribution of user equipment.

This letter proposes a relay selection scheme in order to improve a performance in the wireless cooperative communication system. The cooperative communication uses the relays in order to obtain a improved performance. The relay selection scheme has a great influence on the performance of the wireless cooperative communication. Because the diversity gain is affected by the superposition of the channels, a superposition of the channels is important in the wireless cooperative communication. The constructive superposition of the channels can improve the performance of the wireless cooperative communication. Because the conventional schemes do not consider the superposition of the channels, the conventional schemes are not suitable for the cooperative communication using the multiple relays. The new scheme considers the superposition of channels and selects the relays that can achieve the constructive superposition. Therefore, the new scheme can provide the improved performance by using the phase information between channels. The simulation results show that the bit error performance of the proposed scheme is better than the conventional schemes.

Free-space optical (FSO) communication, which offers better data rate at a lower cost compared to radio-frequency (RF) backhauls, and is much easier to setup and maintain than optical cables, is gaining attention as an attractive substitute. Average capacity is one of the main performances metrics to understand the connectivity and data rates of a communication system but the performance analysis for mixed RF/FSO link is not straightforward as the RF link and the FSO link experiences different atmospheric perturbations. In this paper, we have investigated the ergodic capacity of a dual-hop mixed RF/FSO communication system realized with an average power scaling (APS) based amplify and forward (AF) relay. Assuming moderate to strong atmospheric turbulence, the FSO link is modeled by gamma-gamma distribution while it is assumed that the RF link experiences multipath Rayleigh fading. Simple analytical methods have been devised for obtaining concise closed-form expressions for ergodic capacity under four different rate/ power adaptation policies and are validated through extensive Monte Carlo simulations.

Recently, P2PTV is a popular application to deliver video streaming data over the Internet. On the overlay network, P2PTV applications create logical links between pairs of peers considering round trip time (RTT) without physical network consideration. P2PTV packets are shared over a network without localization awareness which is a serious problem for Internet Service Providers (ISPs). A delay-insertion-based traffic localization scheme was proposed for solving this problem. However, this scheme sometimes leads the newly joining peer to download streaming traffic from a local neighbor peer which has only scarce upload bandwidth. This paper proposes a novel scheme of delay-insertion-based traffic localization in which the router estimates relay capability to each relay peer candidate and leads the newly joining peer to connect to a neighbor peer with sufficient performance for relaying video data. Parameters were evaluated for the optimized condition in the relay capability estimation process. In addition, experiments conducted on a real network show that our proposed scheme can prevent the newly joining peer from downloading video data from peers with insufficient relay capability and maintain video quality close to normal in a P2PTV system while ensuring efficient traffic localization at the level of the Autonomous System (AS) network.