Comparative Study of SVD and QRS in Closed-Loop Beamforming Systems

We compare two closed-loop beamforming algorithms, one based on singular value decomposition (SVD) and the other based on equal diagonal QR decomposition (QRS). SVD has the advantage of parallelizing the MIMO channel, but each of the sub-channels has different gain. QRS has the advantage of having equal diagonal value for the decomposed channel, but the subchannels are not fully parallelized, hence requiring successive interference cancellation or other techniques to perform decoding. We consider a closed-loop system where the feedback information is a unitary beamforming matrix. Due to the discrete and limited modulation set, SVD may have inferior performance to QRS when no modulation set selection is performed. However, if the selection of modulation set is performed optimally, we show that SVD can outperform QRS.Comment: Milcom 200

Acoustic Needs of Older People in the Outdoor Environment of Residential Communities: A Case Study in China

This study examines the acoustic needs of older people in an outdoor environment to design outdoor spaces according to their needs. Using the grounded theory approach, we selected and interviewed 16 older people from four residential communities in China. The acoustic needs of older people in an outdoor environment are established in terms of sound preference, quietness, acoustic variability, acoustic comfort, subjective loudness, sound rhythm, sound clarity, and sound sensitivity. The findings show that older people (a) attach importance to quietness when considering sound preference, (b) prefer taking a walk in an overall quiet environment, although sometimes a lively environment, (c) chose to conduct their activities in an environment with low variation in sound, (d) rate the comfort of their overall acoustic environment highly, (e) show little need for subjective loudness as long as the sounds are not ones they dislike, (f) generally prefer relatively rhythmic sound sources, (g) did not have a significant need for sound clarity, and (h) are tolerant of outdoor acoustic environments and did not pay too much attention to certain sounds. These findings can provide direction for better outdoor space designs in communities, to suit older people, and to create age-friendly cities

Design of Block Transceivers with Decision Feedback Detection

This paper presents a method for jointly designing the transmitter-receiver pair in a block-by-block communication system that employs (intra-block) decision feedback detection. We provide closed-form expressions for transmitter-receiver pairs that simultaneously minimize the arithmetic mean squared error (MSE) at the decision point (assuming perfect feedback), the geometric MSE, and the bit error rate of a uniformly bit-loaded system at moderate-to-high signal-to-noise ratios. Separate expressions apply for the ``zero-forcing'' and ``minimum MSE'' (MMSE) decision feedback structures. In the MMSE case, the proposed design also maximizes the Gaussian mutual information and suggests that one can approach the capacity of the block transmission system using (independent instances of) the same (Gaussian) code for each element of the block. Our simulation studies indicate that the proposed transceivers perform significantly better than standard transceivers, and that they retain their performance advantages in the presence of error propagation.Comment: 14 pages, 8 figures, to appear in the IEEE Transactions on Signal Processin

Comparison between perceived and felt emotions in the soundscape evaluation of urban open spaces

In the current study on soundscape, the distinction between felt emotion and perceived emotion in soundscape measurement has not been addressed as much as that in music studies. This research was conducted to investigate perceived and felt emotions associated with soundscape evaluation in urban open spaces through a laboratory audio-visual experiment using photographs and binaural recordings of 16 urban open locations across Harbin, China. In total, 46 participants were required to assess both the “perceived emotion” and “felt emotion” of the soundscapes using a questionnaire (in Chinese). First, five felt emotions and seven perceived emotions associated with the soundscape were identified, among which the dominant factors were enjoyment and excitement for felt emotions and comfortable and festive for perceived emotions. Second, when comparing perceived and felt emotions, the holistic soundscape descriptor “preference” is more suitable for predicting through felt emotion, while the holistic soundscape descriptor “appropriateness” is more suitable for predicting through perceived emotion. Third, preference is a more stringent soundscape descriptor than appropriateness, indicating a higher level of requirement in its definition. Meanwhile, preference is a more emotional soundscape descriptor than appropriateness. It may be inferred that for evaluating soundscapes, the more emotional the descriptor, the greater its stringency

Development and Application of Chemical EOR Technologies in China Offshore Oil Fields

At present, polymer flooding as the most effective chemical EOR technique is widely used in onshore oil fields in the world. Also, it has been successfully applied in China offshore oil fields as a major EOR technology. CNOOC has preliminarily established a chemical flooding (polymer, polymer-surfactant, weak gel, etc.) technology system including high-efficiency chemical flooding agents, platform injection facilities, and produced liquid treatment technology. Since 2003, pilot tests and field applications were carried out in S, L, and JW oil fields, and predicted oil increment and good economic benefits have been achieved, which proved that offshore chemical EOR technology is feasible and economical. It has explored a new road for increasing the recovery of offshore oil fields and provided a solid technical guarantee for their economic and efficient development