The Familial Grotesque in the Poetry of Shirley Geok-lin Lim

Framing the representation of the family in Shirley Lim’s poetry against the concept of the grotesque, this essay aims to demonstrate how the aesthetic category is arguably enlisted as a symbol referring to the trope – or more accurately, with particular members of the family– in order to mount a criticism against it, or less directly, the Confucian, male-biased symbolic order that underscores it. That the maternal-figure is most often transfigured as a grotesque embodiment in Lim’s poems is telling in its implication of the poet’s own ambivalent feelings towards her own mother whom she recognizes as a woman who illustrates empowering individualism but also reprehensibility. As such, while some of her poems express affirmation of the grotesque’s capacity for transgressing ideological borders and confusing distinctions, others are less celebratory of the concept, which they evoke explicitly to clarify the family’s monstrous dimensions

Relay-Induced Error Propagation Reduction for Decode-and-Forward Cooperative Communications

An attractive hybrid method of mitigating the effects of error propagation that may be imposed by the relay node (RN) on the destination node (DN) is proposed. We selected the most appropriate relay location for achieving a specific target Bit Error Ratio (BER) at the relay and signalled the RN-BER to the DN. The knowledge of this BER was then exploited by the decoder at the destination. Our simulation results show that when the BER at the RN is low, we do not have to activate the RN-BER aided decoder at the DN. However, when the RN-BER is high, significant system performance improvements may be achieved by activating the proposed RN-BER based decoding technique at the DN. For example, a power-reduction of up to about 19dB was recorded at a DN BER of 10-4

Near-Capacity Turbo Coded Soft-decision Aided DAPSK/Star-QAM

Low-complexity non-coherently detected Differential Amplitude and Phase-Shift Keying (DAPSK) schemes constitute an ideal candidate for wireless communications. In this paper, we derive the soft-output probability formulas required for the soft-decision based demodulation of DAPSK, which are then invoked for Turbo Coded (TC) transmissions. Furthermore, the achievable throughput characteristics of the family of M-ary DAPSK schemes are provided. It is shown that the proposed 4-ring based TC assisted 64-ary DAPSK scheme achieves a coding gain of about 4.2 dBs in comparison to the identical-throughput TC assisted 64-ary Differential Phase-Shift Keying (64-DPSK) scheme at a bit error ratio of 10?5

Distributed convolutional-coded differential space-time block coding for cooperative communications

A low complexity distributed coding scheme is proposed for communications over Rayleigh fading channels. Convolutional Coding (CC) assisted Differential Phase-Shift Keying (DPSK) modulation is employed at the source node for conveying the source signals to two relay nodes as well as to the destination node during the first transmission period. Iterative detection exchanging extrinsic information between the DPSK demapper and CC decoder is carried out at each relay node in order to recover the source signals. Then, the CC-encoded bits are re-encoded by the two relays to generate Differential Space-Time Block Coding (DSTBC) symbols for transmission to the destination node during the second transmission period. At the destination node, iterative decoding exchanging extrinsic information is invoked between the DPSK demapper and the concatenated CC-DSTBC decoder, where the later is viewed as a single amalgamated decoder. The relay and destination nodes do not have to estimate the channel’s fading coefficients due to the employment of DPSK and DSTBC schemes. Our design requires only two decoding iterations between the DPSK and CC decoders at each relay in order to further reduce the complexity of the relay nodes. Our distributed coding scheme assisted by two low-complexity relay nodes outperforms the non-cooperative benchmarker scheme by about 8 dBs, when aiming for a bit error ratio of 10-5

NI USRP Lab: DQPSK Receiver Design

Design a DQPSK receiver using LabVIEW for implementation on NI USRP

Fixed-complexity quantum-assisted multi-user detection for CDMA and SDMA

In a system supporting numerous users the complexity of the optimal Maximum Likelihood Multi-User Detector (ML MUD) becomes excessive. Based on the superimposed constellations of K users, the ML MUD outputs the specific multilevel K-user symbol that minimizes the Euclidean distance with respect to the faded and noise-contaminated received multi-level symbol. Explicitly, the Euclidean distance is considered as the Cost Function (CF). In a system supporting K users employing M-ary modulation, the ML MUD uses MK CF evaluations (CFE) per time slot. In this contribution we propose an Early Stopping-aided Durr-Høyer algorithm-based Quantum-assisted MUD (ES-DHA QMUD) based on two techniques for achieving optimal ML detection at a low complexity. Our solution is also capable of flexibly adjusting the QMUD's performance and complexity trade-off, depending on the computing power available at the base station. We conclude by proposing a general design methodology for the ES-DHA QMUD in the context of both CDMA and SDMA systems

EXIT-chart aided near-capacity quantum turbo code design

High detection complexity is the main impediment in future Gigabit-wireless systems. However, a quantum-based detector is capable of simultaneously detecting hundreds of user signals by virtue of its inherent parallel nature. This in turn requires near-capacity quantum error correction codes for protecting the constituent qubits of the quantum detector against the undesirable environmental decoherence. In this quest, we appropriately adapt the conventional non-binary EXtrinsic Information Transfer (EXIT) charts for quantum turbo codes by exploiting the intrinsic quantum-to-classical isomorphism. The EXIT chart analysis not only allows us to dispense with the time-consuming Monte-Carlo simulations, but also facilitates the design of near-capacity codes without resorting to the analysis of their distance spectra. We have demonstrated that our EXIT chart predictions are in line with the Monte-Carlo simulations results. We have also optimized the entanglement-assisted QTC using EXIT charts, which outperforms the existing distance spectra based QTCs. More explicitly, the performance of our optimized QTC is as close as 0.3 dB to the corresponding hashing bound

Introduction to LabVIEW

Basic step-by-step instruction for a beginner in LabVIEW

Self-concatenated code design and its application in power-efficient cooperative communications

In this tutorial, we have focused on the design of binary self-concatenated coding schemes with the help of EXtrinsic Information Transfer (EXIT) charts and Union bound analysis. The design methodology of future iteratively decoded self-concatenated aided cooperative communication schemes is presented. In doing so, we will identify the most important milestones in the area of channel coding, concatenated coding schemes and cooperative communication systems till date and suggest future research directions

Quantum search algorithms, quantum wireless, and a low-complexity maximum likelihood iterative quantum multi-user detector design

The high complexity of numerous optimal classic communication schemes, such as the maximum likelihood (ML) multiuser detector (MUD), often prevents their practical implementation. In this paper, we present an extensive review and tutorial on quantum search algorithms (QSA) and their potential applications, and we employ a QSA that finds the minimum of a function in order to perform optimal hard MUD with a quadratic reduction in the computational complexity when compared to that of the ML MUD. Furthermore, we follow a quantum approach to achieve the same performance as the optimal soft-input soft-output classic detectors by replacing them with a quantum algorithm, which estimates the weighted sum of a function’s evaluations. We propose a soft-input soft-output quantum-assisted MUD (QMUD) scheme, which is the quantum-domain equivalent of the ML MUD. We then demonstrate its application using the design example of a direct-sequence code division multiple access system employing bit-interleaved coded modulation relying on iterative decoding, and compare it with the optimal ML MUD in terms of its performance and complexity. Both our extrinsic information transfer charts and bit error ratio curves show that the performance of the proposed QMUD and that of the optimal classic MUD are equivalent, but the QMUD’s computational complexity is significantly lower