The traditional approach of fixed spectrum allocation to licensed networks has resulted in spectrum underutilisation. Cognitive radio technology is envisioned as a promising solution that can be used to resolve the ineffectiveness of the fixed spectrum allocation policy by accessing the underutilised spectrum of existing technologies opportunistically. The implementation of cognitive radio networks (CRNs) faces distinct challenges due to the fact that two systems (i.e., cognitive radio (CR) and primary users (PUs)) with conflicting interests interact with each other. Specially, in self-organised systems such as ad-hoc CRNs (AHCRNs), the coordination of spectrum access introduces challenges to researchers due to rapid utilisation changes in the available spectrum, as well as the multi-hop nature of ad-hoc networks, which creates additional challenges in the analysis of resource allocation (e.g., power control, channel and rate allocation). Instead, game theory has been adopted as a powerful mathematical tool in analysing and modelling the interaction processes of AHCRNs. In this survey, we first review the most fundamental concepts and architectures of CRNs and AHCRNs. We then introduce the concepts of game theory, utility function, Nash equilibrium and pricing techniques. Finally, we survey the recent literature on the game theoretic analysis of AHCRNs, highlighting its applicability to the physical layer PHY, the MAC layer and the network layer.

The problem of optimal channel sensing in heterogeneous cognitive networks is considered to maximize the system throughput performance. The characteristics of an optimal operating sensing point maximizing the overall system rate are investigated under several rate criteria including the sum rate, the minimum of the primary and secondary rates, and the secondary rate with a guaranteed primary rate. Under the sum rate criterion, it is shown that the loss by imperfect sensing is no greater than half of the sum rate achieved by the perfect time sharing approach in a two user case if the sensing point is optimally designed.

In this paper, we investigate the outage performance of a cognitive relay network. We consider mutual interference in an independent, non-identically distributed Nakagmai-m fading environment. We first derive the close-form outage probability expression, which provides an efficient means to evaluate the effects of several parameters. This allows us to study the impact of several parameters on the network's performance. We then derive the asymptotic expression and reveal that the diversity order is strictly determined by the fading severity of the cognitive system. It is not affected by the primary network. Moreover, the primary network only affects the coding gain of the cognitive system. Finally, Monte Carlo simulations are provided, which corroborate the analytical results.

In this paper, we investigate power allocation scheme and outage performance for a physical-layer network coding (PNC) relay based secondary user (SU) communication in cognitive multi-antenna relay networks (CMRNs), in which two secondary transceivers exchange their information via a multi-antenna relay using PNC protocol. We propose an optimal energy-efficient power allocation (OE-PA) scheme to minimize total energy consumption per bit under the sum rate constraint and interference power threshold (IPT) constraints. A closed-form solution for optimal allocation of transmit power among the SU nodes, as well as the outage probability of the cognitive relay system, are then derived analytically and confirmed by numerical results. Numerical simulations demonstrate the PNC protocol has superiority in energy efficiency performance over conventional direct transmission protocol and Four-Time-Slot (4TS) Decode-and-Forward (DF) relay protocol, and the proposed system has the optimal outage performance when the relay is located at the center of two secondary transceivers.

Interference between primary user (PU) and secondary user (SU) transceivers should be mitigated in order to implement underlay spectrum sharing in cognitive radio networks (CRN). Considering this scenario, an improved joint subcarrier and bit allocation scheme for cognitive user with primary users' cooperation (PU Coop) in CRN is proposed. In this scheme, the optimization problem is formulated to minimize the average interference power level at the PU receiver via PU Coop, which guarantees a higher primary signal to interference plus noise ratio (SINR) while maintaining the secondary user total rate constraint. The joint optimal scheme is separated into subcarrier allocation and bit assignment in each subcarrier via arith-metric geo-metric (AM-GM) inequality with asymptotical optimization solution. Moreover, the joint subcarrier and bit optimization scheme, which is evaluated by the available SU subcarriers and the allocated bits, is analyzed in the proposed PU Coop model. The performance of cognitive spectral efficiency and the average interference power level are investigated. Numerical analysis indicates that the SU's spectral efficiency increases significantly compared with the PU non-cooperation scenario. Moreover, the interference power level decreases dramatically for the proposed scheme compared with the traditional Hughes-Hartogs bit allocation scheme.

This paper proposes an improved carrier frequency offset (CFO) and sampling frequency offset (SFO) estimation scheme for orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) based broadcasting system with cyclic delay diversity (CDD) antenna. By exploiting a periodic nature of channel transfer function, cyclic delay and pilot pattern with a maximum channel power are carefully chosen, which helps to enable a robust estimation of CFO and SFO against the frequency selectivity of the channel. As a performance measure, a closed-form expression for the achievable mean square error of the proposed scheme is derived and is verified through simulations using the parameters of the digital radio mondiale standard. The comparison results show that the proposed frequency estimator is shown to benefit from properly selected delay parameter and pilot pattern, with a performance better than the existing estimator.

Configuring optimization of wireless sensor networks, which can improve the network performance such as utilization efficiency and network lifetime with minimal energy, has received considerable attention in recent years. In this paper, a cross layer optimal approach is proposed for multi-source linear network and grid network under Rayleigh block-fading channels, which not only achieves an optimal utility but also guarantees the end-to-end reliability. Specifically, in this paper, we first strictly present the optimization method for optimal nodal number $N^*$, nodal placement $d^*$ and nodal transmission structure $p^*$ under constraints of minimum total energy consumption and minimum unit data transmitting energy consumption. Then, based on the facts that nodal energy consumption is higher for those nodes near the sink and those nodes far from the sink may have remaining energy, a cross layer optimal design is proposed to achieve balanced network energy consumption. The design adopts lower reliability requirement and shorter transmission distance for nodes near the sink, and adopts higher reliability requirement and farther transmission distance for nodes far from the sink, the solvability conditions is given as well. In the end, both the theoretical analysis and experimental results for performance evaluation show that the optimal design indeed can improve the network lifetime by 20-50%, network utility by 20% and guarantee desire level of reliability.

To execute the performance driven Grid applications, an effective and scalable workflow scheduling is seen as an essential. To optimize cost & makespan, in this paper, we propose a Scalable Cost-Time Trade-off (SCTT) model for scheduling workflow tasks. We have developed a heuristic algorithm known as Scalable Cost-Time Trade-off Scheduling (SCTTS) with a lower runtime complexity based on the proposed SCTT model. We have compared the performance of our proposed approach with other heuristic and meta-heuristic based scheduling strategies using simulations. The results show that the proposed approach improves performance and scalability with different workflow sizes, task parallelism and heterogeneous resources. This method, therefore, outperforms other methods.

This paper deliberates for a multimedia transmission scheme combining multiple description coding (MDC) and network coding (NC). Our goal is to take advantage from the property of MDC to provide quantized and compressed independent and identically distributed (iid) descriptions and also from the benefit of network coding, which uses network resources efficiently to recover lost data in the network. Recently, p-cycle NC has been introduced to recover and protect any lost or distorted descriptions at the receiver part exactly without need of retransmission. So far, MDC have not been explored using this type of NC. Compressed and coded descriptions are transmitted through the network where p-cycle NC is applied. P-cycle based algorithm is proposed for single and multiple descriptions lost. Results show that in the fixed bit rate, the PSNR (Peak Signal to Noise Ratio) of our reconstructed image and also subjective evaluation is improved significantly compared to previous work which is averaging method joint with MDC in order to conceal lost descriptions.

The popularization of streaming networks and mobile devices brings a new kind of network called mobile peer-assisted streaming network. In this network, service provider not only offers downloading services, but also pre-pushes resources to users for caching. Users can download their demanded resources while working as servers for uploading the cached data. Also the mobile characteristic makes high package losing probability in this network. So we study how the service provider pre-pushes or the user downloads resources efficiently and effectively while considering the package losing in this paper. We build utility models for service provider and user, and solve the models using Bellman's theory to achieve Nash Equilibrium which shows the service provider's optimal pre-pushing speed and user's optimal downloading speed. The numerical simulation demonstrates the efficiency and effectiveness of our proposed pre-pushing and downloading scheme by comparing to the traditional scheme.

Content based image retrieval is increasingly gaining popularity among image repository systems as images are a big source of digital communication and information sharing. Identification of image content is done through feature extraction which is the key operation for a successful content based image retrieval system. In this paper content based image retrieval system has been developed by adopting a strategy of combining multiple features of shape, color and relevance feedback. Shape is served as a primary operation to identify images whereas color and relevance feedback have been used as supporting features to make the system more efficient and accurate. Shape features are estimated through second derivative, least square polynomial and shapes coding methods. Color is estimated through max-min mean of neighborhood intensities. A new technique has been introduced for relevance feedback without bothering the user.

A pre-processing system for adaptive noise removal is proposed based on the principle of identifying and filtering object regions and background regions. Human perception of images depends on bright, well-focused object regions; these regions can be treated with the best filters, while simpler filters can be applied to other regions to reduce overall computational complexity. In the proposed method, bright region segmentation is performed, followed by segmentation of object and background regions. Noise in dark, background, and object regions is then removed by the median, fast bilateral, and bilateral filters, respectively. Simulations show that the proposed algorithm is much faster than and performs nearly as well as the bilateral filter (which is considered a powerful noise removal algorithm); it reduces computation time by 19.4 % while reducing PSNR by only 1.57 % relative to bilateral filtering. Thus, the proposed algorithm remarkably reduces computation while maintaining accuracy.

While non-predefined object segmentation (NDOS) distinguishes an arbitrary self-assumed object from its background, predefined object segmentation (DOS) pre-specifies the target object. In this paper, a new and novel method to segment predefined objects is presented, by globally optimizing an orientation-based objective function that measures the fitness of the object boundary, in a discretized parameter space. A specific object is explicitly described by normalized discrete sets of boundary points and corresponding normal vectors with respect to its plane shape. The orientation factor provides robust distinctness for target objects. By considering the order of transformation elements, and their dependency on the derived over-segmentation outcome, the domain of translations and scales is efficiently discretized. A branch and bound algorithm is used to determine the transformation parameters of a shape model corresponding to a target object in an image. The results tested on the PASCAL dataset show a considerable achievement in solving complex backgrounds and unclear boundary images.

This paper proposes an adaptive combined scalable video coding (CSVC) system for video transmission over MIMO-OFDM (Multiple-Input Multiple-Output-Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing) broadband wireless communication systems. The scalable combination method of CSVC adaptively combines the medium grain scalable (MGS), the coarse grain scalable (CGS) and the scalable spatial modes with the limited feedback partially from channel state information (CSI) of MIMO-OFDM systems. The objective is to improve the average of peak signal-to-noise ratio (PSNR) and bit error rate (BER) of the received video stream by exploiting partial CSI of video sources and channel condition. Experimental results show that the delivered quality using the proposed adaptive CSVC over MIMO-OFDM system performs better than those proposed previously in the literature.

A three-party password-based authenticated key exchange (PAKE) protocol allows two clients registered with a trusted server to generate a common cryptographic key from their individual passwords shared only with the server. A key requirement for three-party PAKE protocols is to prevent an adversary from mounting a dictionary attack. This requirement must be met even when the adversary is a malicious (registered) client who can set up normal protocol sessions with other clients. This work revisits three existing three-party PAKE protocols, namely, Guo et al.'s (2008) protocol, Huang's (2009) protocol, and Lee and Hwang's (2010) protocol, and demonstrates that these protocols are not secure against offline and/or (undetectable) online dictionary attacks in the presence of a malicious client. The offline dictionary attack we present against Guo et al.'s protocol also applies to other similar protocols including Lee and Hwang's protocol. We conclude with some suggestions on how to design a three-party PAKE protocol that is resistant against dictionary attacks.

In the paper, we propose a novel adaptively secure hierarchical identity-based signature scheme from lattices. The size of signatures in our scheme is shortest among the existing hierarchical identity-based signature schemes from lattices. Our scheme is motivated by Gentry et al.'s signature scheme and Agrawal et al.'s hierarchical identity-based encryption scheme.

Unsupervised methods for image segmentation are recently drawing attention because most images do not have labels or tags. A topic model is such an unsupervised probabilistic method that captures latent aspects of data, where each latent aspect, or a topic, is associated with one homogeneous region. The results of topic models, however, usually have noises, which decreases the overall segmentation performance. In this paper, to improve the performance of image segmentation using topic models, we propose two topic masks applicable to topic assignments of homogeneous regions obtained from topic models. The topic masks capture the noises among the assigned topic assignments or topic labels, and remove the noises by replacements, just like image masks for pixels. However, as the nature of topic assignments is different from image pixels, the topic masks have properties that are different from the existing image masks for pixels. There are two contributions of this paper. First, the topic masks can be used to reduce the noises of topic assignments obtained from topic models for image segmentation tasks. Second, we test the effectiveness of the topic masks by applying them to segmented images obtained from the Latent Dirichlet Allocation model and the Spatial Latent Dirichlet Allocation model upon the MSRC image dataset. The empirical results show that one of the masks successfully reduces the topic noises.