Browsing by Author "August, Nathaniel J."

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    Medium Access Control in Impulse-Based Ultra Wideband Ad Hoc and Sensor Networks
    August, Nathaniel J. (Virginia Tech, 2005-05-05)
    This thesis investigates distributed medium access control (MAC) protocols custom tailored to both impulse-based ultra wideband (I-UWB) radios and to large ad hoc and sensor networks. I-UWB is an attractive radio technology for large ad hoc and sensor networks due to its robustness to multipath fading effects, sub-centimeter ranging ability, and low-cost, low-power hardware. Current medium access control (MAC) protocols for I-UWB target small wireless personal area networks (WPANs) and cellular networks, but they are not suitable for large, multihop ad hoc and sensor networks. Therefore, this paper proposes a new type of MAC protocol that enables ad hoc and sensor networks to realize the benefits of I-UWB radios. First, we propose a method to overcome the challenges of quickly, reliably, and efficiently sensing medium activity in an ultra wideband network. This provides a base MAC protocol similar to carrier sense multiple access (CSMA) in narrowband systems. Next, we propose to exploit the unique signaling of I-UWB to improve performance over the base MAC protocol without the associated overhead of similar improvements in narrowband systems. I-UWB enables a distributed multichannel MAC protocol, which improves throughput. I-UWB also facilitates a busy signal MAC protocol, which reduces wasted energy from corrupt packets. Finally, because the I-UWB Physical Layer and MAC Layer affect the network and application layers, we propose a cross-layer adaptive system that optimizes performance. Physical Layer simulations show that both the base protocol and the improvements are practical for an I-UWB radio. Networks level simulations characterize the performance of the proposed MAC protocols and compare them to existing MAC protocols.
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    On the Low Power Design of DCT and IDCT for Low Bit Rate Video Codecs
    August, Nathaniel J. (Virginia Tech, 2001-04-24)
    Wireless video systems have applications in cellular videophones, surveillance systems, and mobile patrols. The design of a wireless video system must consider two important constraints: low bit rate and low power dissipation. The ITU-T H.263 video codec standard is suitable for low bit rate wireless video systems, however it is computationally intensive. Some of the most computationally intensive operations in H.263 are the Discrete Cosine Transform (DCT) and the Inverse Discrete Cosine Transform (IDCT), which perform spatial compression and decompression of the data. In an ASIC implementation of H.263, the high computational complexity of the DCT and IDCT leads to high power dissipation of the blocks. Low power design of the DCT and IDCT is essential in a portable wireless video system. This paper examines low power design techniques for DCT and IDCT circuits applicable for low bit rate wireless video systems. Five low power techniques are applied to baseline reference DCT and IDCT circuits. The techniques include skipping low energy DCT input, skipping all-zero IDCT input, low precision constant multipliers, clock gating, and a low transition data path. Gate-level simulations characterize the effectiveness of each technique. The combination of all techniques reduces average power dissipation by 95% over the baseline reference DCT and IDCT blocks.