Rung-Ji Shang

A bipartition-codec architecture to reduce power in pipelined circuits

This paper proposes a new bipatition-codec architecture that may reduce power consumption of pipelined circuits. We treat each output value of a pipelined circuit as one state of a FSM. If the output of a pipelined circuit transit mainly among few states, we could partition the combinational portion of a pipelined circuit into two blocks: one that contains the few states of high activity is small and the other that contains the remainder of low activity is big. Consequently, the state transitions will be confined to the small block in most of the time. Then we replace the small block with a codec circuit, which consists of an encoder and a decoder, to reduce the internal switching activity of the block. The encoder minimizes the number of bit changes during state transitions thus the switching which propagates into decoder is reduced considerably. We present experimental results on several MCNC benchmarks and get up to 63.7% power savings by using our new architecture.

An Information Technology Framework for Strengthening Telehealthcare Service Delivery

OBJECTIVE Telehealthcare has been used to provide healthcare service, and information technology infrastructure appears to be essential while providing telehealthcare service. Insufficiencies have been identified, such as lack of integration, need of accommodation of diverse biometric sensors, and accessing diverse networks as different houses have varying facilities, which challenge the promotion of telehealthcare. This study designs an information technology framework to strengthen telehealthcare delivery. MATERIALS AND METHODS The proposed framework consists of a system architecture design and a network transmission design. The aim of the framework is to integrate data from existing information systems, to adopt medical informatics standards, to integrate diverse biometric sensors, and to provide different data transmission networks to support a patients house network despite the facilities. The proposed framework has been evaluated with a case study of two telehealthcare programs, with and without the adoption of the framework. RESULTS The proposed framework facilitates the functionality of the program and enables steady patient enrollments. The overall patient participations are increased, and the patient outcomes appear positive. The attitudes toward the service and self-improvement also are positive. CONCLUSIONS The findings of this study add up to the construction of a telehealthcare system. Implementing the proposed framework further assists the functionality of the service and enhances the availability of the service and patient acceptances.

Communications over two-way waveform channels in wireless networks

Two-way channels appear in wireless cellular networks as the duplexing between the base station and the mobile users and in wireless local area networks as the peer-to-peer communications. We examine the two-way channel capacity and find that the capacity of two-way discrete channels and waveform channels without the knowledge of self-interference is the same as that of one-way channels. With the knowledge of self-interference, the capacity of a waveform two-way channel is twice that of a one-way channel.

Performance analysis of broadcast in mobile ad hoc networks with synchronized and non-synchronized reception

Analyzing the performance of broadcast in mobile ad hoc networks is necessary because of the importance of broadcast in multiuser communications and the characteristic difference between wireless communications and wired communications. If the time lag between collided packets is small on the order of a symbol, the reception is synchronized; otherwise, the reception is non-synchronized. We find that there is a time complexity gap exponential with the degree of the network between the performance of synchronized and non-synchronized reception. Besides, we also take into account the possibility that a processor is busy with other tasks, and we find that allowing the processors to be temporarily busy with other tasks will not degrade the performance significantly.

Efficient parallel timing simulation of synchronous models on networks of workstations

In this paper we address the parallel timing simulation of synchronous VLSI designs on a network of workstations (NOWs). We suggest combining cycle based and conventional timing simulation techniques to achieve fast timing simulation even on NOWs which are typically characterized by low bandwidth and high communication latency. In particular we execute a timing simulator on each node of the NOW and use cycle based simulation to produce synchronization information required by the timing simulators. As synchronization information is generated exclusively by the cycle based simulator there is no need for any communication between the timing simulators. To verify the feasibility and performance of our approach we simulated several circuits using our approach. The results show that a significant speedup can be achieved even for very small circuits.

Performance Analysis of Broadcast in Synchronized Multihop Wireless Networks

Analyzing the performance of broadcast in wireless networks is imperative because of the importance of broadcast and the difference between wireless communications and wired communications. In a practical system, the transmitted packets might arrive at the receiver later than desired. Thus, synchronization is an important issue to be analyzed. In this paper, we analyze the performance of broadcast with consideration of such imperfect synchronization. We find that randomized distributed broadcast algorithm provides guaranteed performance even with imperfect synchronization.

Characteristics of 5-year surveillance system with synchronous telehealthcare in Taiwan

Many studies have revealed that telehealthcare enables the implementation of effective disease management programs for improving patient health. To provide enhanced healthcare, we implemented a telesurveillance system equipped with continuous biometric monitoring and automatic alarm mechanisms. The round-the-clock presence of medical practitioners can constantly monitor synchronous data and provide feedback to patients instantly. The aims of this study were to elucidate a clear understanding of patient behavior and report the main achievements of the telehealthcare service over the past 5 years. Overall, our telehealthcare program has served 2,362 patients, derived and monitored 1,352,424 physical data points, and conducted 207,731 interviews. The average age of patients was 63 years, 64% were male, and 76% had at least one type of comorbidity. Notably, we can provide feedback within four minutes of patients measuring their biometric data. Furthermore, ninety-six percent of users provided positive feedback about the service.

Hybrid Parallel Circuit Simulation Approaches

In this paper we address the parallel timing simulation of synchronous VLSI designs on networks of workstations (NOWs). Our approaches exploit the performance gap between cycle based simulators and timing simulator techniques and combine both methods to speedup timing simulation. Based on this technique we developed four different simulation methods which are characterized by removing some communication between the timing simulators. In particular we execute a timing simulator on each node of the NOW and use cycle based simulation to produce synchronization information required by the timing simulators. One of our methods even does not need any communication at all and is hence well suited for parallel simulation on NOWs which are typically characterized by low bandwidth and high communication latency. Simulation results show that a significant speedup can be achieved even for very small circuits.

The impacts of synchronized and non-synchronized reception on broadcast in multihop radio networks

If the time lag between collided packets is small on the order of a symbol, the reception is synchronized; otherwise, the reception is non-synchronized. We find that there is a time complexity gap exponential with the degree of the network between the performance of synchronized and non-synchronized reception.