Penn State College of Communications

About: Penn State College of Communications is a based out in . It is known for research contribution in the topics: Relay & Cognitive radio. The organization has 2106 authors who have published 2119 publications receiving 24693 citations.

Data-Driven Deployment and Cooperative Self-Organization in Ultra-Dense Small Cell Networks

Abstract: Ultra-dense small-cell network is widely acknowledged as a key enabler for high capacity wireless networks. Some of the key challenges that ultra-dense networks face are profitable deployment distribution under complex traffic loads and efficient radio resource management (RRM) in excessive interference environments. Poor small-cell deployment locations can lead to excessive interference without clear profit margins and inefficient resource utilization. As such, data-driven small-cell deployment and self-organizing RRM of small-cell clusters are regarded as the two main technologies that can improve ultra-dense small-cell services. This paper first reviews the latest research in data-driven small-cell deployment using structured and unstructured social media data. A combination of irregular clustering techniques is used to identify hotspots, and natural language processing algorithms are used to identify blackspots. This paper then reviews recent advances in self-organization of small-cell RRM and analyzes how data can improve self-organization performance. Moreover, the idea of cooperative self-organization is introduced to further promote the self-organization capability. Finally, two ultra-dense small-cell RRM case studies are presented to demonstrate the performance which improves of cooperative self-organization.

Dynamic User Demand Driven Online Network Selection

Abstract: Network selection plays a key role in reaping the potential benefit of heterogeneous wireless networks. Aiming at improving the user's quality of experience, we study the network selection problem with time-varying user demand and non-uniform network handoff costs in a dynamic environment. One appealing solution in converging the time-vary user demand and the diverse network performance is dynamic network selection, which, however, poses the dilemma between satisfying user demand and controlling the network handoff cost. To get around this problem, we propose an online network selection algorithm to learn the optimal network selection policy with network handoff cost consideration. In addition, we exploit the inherent dependency in the problem and derive another two algorithms with much faster convergence speed. Simulations reveal that the proposed algorithms can achieve 10%~ performance gain over existing methods.

Auction-Based Multichannel Cooperative Spectrum Sharing in Hybrid Satellite-Terrestrial IoT Networks

Abstract: In this article, we investigate the multichannel cooperative spectrum sharing in hybrid satellite-terrestrial Internet of Things (IoT) networks with the auction mechanism, which is designed to reduce the operational expenditure of the satellite-based IoT (S-IoT) network while alleviating the spectrum scarcity issues of terrestrial-based IoT (T-IoT) network. The cluster heads of selected T-IoT networks assist the primary satellite users transmission through cooperative relaying techniques in exchange for spectrum access. We propose an auction-based optimization problem to maximize the sum transmission rate of all primary S-IoT receivers with the appropriate secondary network selection and corresponding radio resource allocation profile by the distributed implementation while meeting the minimum transmission rate of secondary receivers of each T-IoT network. Specifically, the one-shot Vickrey–Clarke–Groves (VCG) auction is introduced to obtain the maximum social welfare, where the winner determination problem is transformed into an assignment problem and solved by the Hungarian algorithm. To further reduce the primary satellite network decision complexity, the sequential Vickrey auction is implemented by sequential fashion until all channels are auctioned. Due to incentive compatibility with those two auction mechanisms, the secondary T-IoT cluster yields the true bids of each channel, where both the nonorthogonal multiple access (NOMA) and time division multiple access (TDMA) schemes are implemented in cooperative communication. Finally, simulation results validate the effectiveness and fairness of the proposed auction-based approach as well as the superiority of the NOMA scheme in secondary relays selection. Moreover, the influence of key factors on the performance of the proposed scheme is analyzed in detail.

Short-time fourier transform analysis of the phonocardiogram signal

Abstract: Heart sound is a highly nonstationary signal, and the Short-time Fourier Transform ation(STFT) is an effective method for this kind of signal to be analysed. Because of the nonstationarity of the phonocardiogram, it is important to maintain an analysing time window as short as possible to guaranty the stationarity hypothesis over small analysed segments. This will reduce the frequency resolution of the resulting spectrogram. However by adjusting the sliding time window, we can reach an acceptable result. The spectrogram is caculated by using first, short length sliding window to generate a temporal representation of the PCG, then longer length sliding window in order to generate a spectral representation of the PCG power. The resolution in such representations depend directly on the sliding window length. The temporal representation allows heart sounds and cardiac cycle durations to be measured. Whereas the spectrum, assuming a good frequency resolution, allows spectral characterization of each heart sound. The results we obtained on normal PCG signal show that the STFT analysis with different scale basis provides a clear comprehension of the cardiac events in both time and frequency domain.

Consequences of Being the “Team Mom”: Women in Sports Information and the Friendliness Trap

Abstract: In an effort to move beyond relying solely on institutional critiques in explaining women’s marginalized status in the sports media workplace and to expand our understanding of gendered meaning-making in such organizations, we employ feminist scholar Romy Frohlich’s notion of the “friendliness trap” in the analysis of focus groups with women who work in college sports public relations, commonly called sports information. The friendliness trap is a term used to describe the faulty belief that women, by virtue of their feminine qualities, possess an advantage in communication-related fields. Our findings suggest, however, that women in sports information may be frustrated by the failure of “the female advantage” to provide them with opportunities for promotion. The friendliness trap obscures workplace realities, including the structural barriers to women’s advancement, and may divert the energy of women in ways that have no career benefit. Once the trap is exposed, however, women may be more able to challen...