Dynamic Range Constraints Research Articles

Designand test of a compact beam current monitor based on a passive RF cavity for a proton therapy linear accelerator.

In a medical accelerator, real-time monitoring systems of the beam and dose delivered to the patient are mandatory. In this work, we present a compact current profile detector that has been designed and tested in the framework of the TOP-IMPLART (Intensity Modulated Proton Linear Accelerator for RadioTerapy) project. This project foresees the realization of a proton linear accelerator, currently under construction at ENEA Frascati, for proton therapy applications. The linac produces a pulsed proton beam with 3 µs duration at 50Hz repetition rate with a pulse current between 0.5 and 50 μA. A large dynamic range and spatial constraints make the use of usual noninterceptive beam diagnostics unfeasible. Therefore, the use of a beam current monitor based on a passive RF cavity working in the TM010 mode has been proposed. This paper reports the electromagnetic designof the device guided by a simplified analytical model. A prototype of such a device has been realized, characterized, and tested on the linac with a 35MeV beam varying the beam current. The test results in air and in vacuum, together with the signal detection systems used, are presented.

Waveform design with controllable modulus dynamic range under spectral constraints

Transmit waveform design under practical temporal and spectral constraints plays a prominent role in determining the performance of active sensing systems. In temporal domain, it is highly desirable to control the variation of waveform modulus within a small range to improve the transmit power efficiency. To this end, we introduce a new constraint, referred to as modulus dynamic range constraint (MDRC), to directly control the waveform magnitude variation, wherein the constant modulus (CM) is a special case. In spectrum domain, we examine the transmit waveform design with a desirable spectral shape under the MDRC. A flat spectrum that corresponds to low auto-correlation sidelobes (ACS) is considered first and then extended to arbitrary-shaped spectrum synthesis. We formulate the design as a least-square minimization of spectrum matching and a phase compensation technique is adopted to transform the non-smooth problem sequentially. A projected-gradient algorithm (PGA) is proposed to solve the first problem and any limit point of PGA is proved to converge to the KKT point. Two fast-version algorithms with a quadratic convergence rate are then developed for large-scale waveform design. Subsequently, PGA is extended to synthesize arbitrary-shaped spectrum. Finally, numerical experiments demonstrate the superiority of the proposed algorithms over the state-of-the-art methods.

Wide-band parametric amplifier readout and resolution of optical microwave kinetic inductance detectors

The energy resolution of a single photon counting microwave kinetic inductance detector can be degraded by noise coming from the primary low temperature amplifier in the detector's readout system. Until recently, quantum limited amplifiers have been incompatible with these detectors due to the dynamic range, power, and bandwidth constraints. However, we show that a kinetic inductance based traveling-wave parametric amplifier can be used for this application and reaches the quantum limit. The total system noise for this readout scheme was equal to ∼2.1 in units of quanta. For incident photons in the 800–1300 nm range, the amplifier increased the average resolving power of the detector from ∼6.7 to 9.3 at which point the resolution becomes limited by noise on the pulse height of the signal. Noise measurements suggest that a resolving power of up to 25 is possible if the redesigned detectors can remove this additional noise source.

A Convex Model for Edge-Histogram Specification with Applications to Edge-Preserving Smoothing

The goal of edge-histogram specification is to find an image whose edge image has a histogram that matches a given edge-histogram as much as possible. Mignotte has proposed a non-convex model for the problem in 2012. In his work, edge magnitudes of an input image are first modified by histogram specification to match the given edge-histogram. Then, a non-convex model is minimized to find an output image whose edge-histogram matches the modified edge-histogram. The non-convexity of the model hinders the computations and the inclusion of useful constraints such as the dynamic range constraint. In this paper, instead of considering edge magnitudes, we directly consider the image gradients and propose a convex model based on them. Furthermore, we include additional constraints in our model based on different applications. The convexity of our model allows us to compute the output image efficiently using either Alternating Direction Method of Multipliers or Fast Iterative Shrinkage-Thresholding Algorithm. We consider several applications in edge-preserving smoothing including image abstraction, edge extraction, details exaggeration, and documents scan-through removal. Numerical results are given to illustrate that our method successfully produces decent results efficiently.

MIMO Transceiver Design in Dynamic-Range-Limited VLC Systems

Recently, multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) has been proposed in visible light communications (VLC) systems to boost the data rate by utilizing spatial multiplexing. Unlike RF systems in VLC, lighting requirements, such as dimming control, should be taken into consideration for the design of a VLC transceiver. Moreover, VLC systems are inherently nonlinear and dynamic-range-limited. To drive an LED transmitter, the signal is bounded by a turn-on value and a saturation value. In this letter, we show how the dynamic-range constraint and dimming control impact the design of MIMO transceiver. Three different MIMO schemes are proposed and studied by theoretical analysis and simulation.

Automatic Adaptation to Fast Input Changes in a Time-Invariant Neural Circuit.

Neurons must faithfully encode signals that can vary over many orders of magnitude despite having only limited dynamic ranges. For a correlated signal, this dynamic range constraint can be relieved by subtracting away components of the signal that can be predicted from the past, a strategy known as predictive coding, that relies on learning the input statistics. However, the statistics of input natural signals can also vary over very short time scales e.g., following saccades across a visual scene. To maintain a reduced transmission cost to signals with rapidly varying statistics, neuronal circuits implementing predictive coding must also rapidly adapt their properties. Experimentally, in different sensory modalities, sensory neurons have shown such adaptations within 100 ms of an input change. Here, we show first that linear neurons connected in a feedback inhibitory circuit can implement predictive coding. We then show that adding a rectification nonlinearity to such a feedback inhibitory circuit allows it to automatically adapt and approximate the performance of an optimal linear predictive coding network, over a wide range of inputs, while keeping its underlying temporal and synaptic properties unchanged. We demonstrate that the resulting changes to the linearized temporal filters of this nonlinear network match the fast adaptations observed experimentally in different sensory modalities, in different vertebrate species. Therefore, the nonlinear feedback inhibitory network can provide automatic adaptation to fast varying signals, maintaining the dynamic range necessary for accurate neuronal transmission of natural inputs.

Insights into the polerovirus-plant interactome revealed by coimmunoprecipitation and mass spectrometry.

Identification of host proteins interacting with the aphidborne Potato leafroll virus (PLRV) from the genus Polerovirus, family Luteoviridae, is a critical step toward understanding how PLRV and related viruses infect plants. However, the tight spatial distribution of PLRV to phloem tissues poses challenges. A polyclonal antibody raised against purified PLRV virions was used to coimmunoprecipitate virus-host protein complexes from Nicotiana benthamiana tissue inoculated with an infectious PLRV cDNA clone using Agrobacterium tumefaciens. A. tumefaciens-mediated delivery of PLRV enabled infection and production of assembled, insect-transmissible virus in most leaf cells, overcoming the dynamic range constraint posed by a systemically infected host. Isolated protein complexes were characterized using high-resolution mass spectrometry and consisted of host proteins interacting directly or indirectly with virions, as well as the nonincorporated readthrough protein (RTP) and three phosphorylated positional isomers of the RTP. A bioinformatics analysis using ClueGO and STRING showed that plant proteins in the PLRV protein interaction network regulate key biochemical processes, including carbon fixation, amino acid biosynthesis, ion transport, protein folding, and trafficking.

Polar-Based OFDM and SC-FDE Links Toward Energy-Efficient Gbps Transmission Under IM-DD Optical System Constraints [Invited

Recent studies have investigated the use of orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) and single carrier frequency-domain equalization (SC-FDE) for gigabyte per second (Gpbs) short-range optical wired and wireless access networks based on direct intensitymodulation with direct detection (IM-DD). OFDM systems have an inherent high peak-to-average power ratio (PAPR). SC-FDE systems have lower PAPR and thus outperform comparable OFDM systems in terms of bit-error performance under various practical considerations, mainly the limited dynamic range of operation at the transmitter. In RF-based OFDM and SC-FDE systems, the output signal is bipolar, complex, and cannot be transmitted in IM-DD systems. Therefore, several power efficient schemes, however spectrally inefficient, have been proposed to make positive OFDM and SC-FDE signals, e.g., asymmetrically clipped optical OFDM (ACO-OFDM) and repetition and clipping optical SCFDE (RCO-SCFDE). To increase the data rate, novel OFDM and SC-FDE signal formats, called polar OFDM (P-OFDM) and polar SC-FDE (P-SC-FDE), based on a polar representation of complex symbols, are proposed. The proposed format offers twice as much spectral efficiency as state-of-the art unipolar OFDM and SC-FDE formats. Moreover, using a power allocation approach on the time-domain positive samples, the PAPR is further reduced, and the numerical evaluation of the bit-error performance under optical source power and dynamic range constraints demonstrates superior results toward Gpbs transmission.

Vibration‐synchronized magnetic resonance imaging for the detection of myocardial elasticity changes

Vibration synchronized magnetic resonance imaging of harmonically oscillating tissue interfaces is proposed for cardiac magnetic resonance elastography. The new approach exploits cardiac triggered cine imaging synchronized with extrinsic harmonic stimulation (f = 22.83 Hz) to display oscillatory tissue deformations in magnitude images. Oscillations are analyzed by intensity threshold-based image processing to track wave amplitude variations over the cardiac cycle. In agreement to literature data, results in 10 volunteers showed that endocardial wave amplitudes during systole (0.13 ± 0.07 mm) were significantly lower than during diastole (0.34 ± 0.14 mm, P < 0.001). Wave amplitudes were found to decrease 117 ± 40 ms before myocardial contraction and to increase 75 ± 31 ms before myocardial relaxation. Vibration synchronized magnetic resonance imaging improves the temporal resolution of magnetic resonance elastography as it overcomes the use of extra motion encoding gradients, is less sensitive to susceptibility artifacts, and does not suffer from dynamic range constraints frequently encountered in phase-based magnetic resonance elastography.

Charge, junctions, and the scaling of domain wall networks

It has been shown that superconducting domain walls in a model with U(1) x Z2 symmetry can form long-lived loops called kinky vortons from random initial conditions in the broken field and a uniform charged background in (2+1) dimensions. In this paper we investigate a similar model with a hyper-cubic symmetry coupled to an unbroken U(1) in which the domain walls can form junctions and hence a lattice. We call this model the charge-coupled cubic-anisotropy (CCCA) model. First, we present a detailed parametric study of the U(1) x Z2 model; features which we vary include the nature of the initial conditions and the coupling constants. This allows us to identify interesting parameters to vary in the more complicated, and hence more computationally intensive, CCCA models. In particular we find that the coefficient of the interaction term can be used to engineer three separate regimes: phase mixing, condensation and phase separation with the condensation regime corresponding to a single value of the coupling constant defined by the determinant of the quartic interaction terms being zero. We then identify the condensation regime in the CCCA model and show that, in this regime, the number of domain walls does not scale in the standard way if the initial conditions have a sufficiently high background charge. Instead of forming loops of domain wall, we find that, within the constraints of dynamic range, the network appears to be moving toward a glass-like configuration. We find that the results are independent of the dimension of the hyper-cube.

Comprehensive Plasma Thiol Redox Status Determination for Metabolomics

Thiol homeostasis plays an important role in human health and aging by regulation of cellular responses to oxidative stress. Due to major constraints that hamper reliable plasma thiol/disulfide redox status assessment in clinical research, we introduce an improved strategy for comprehensive thiol speciation using capillary electrophoresis-electrospray ionization-mass spectrometry (CE-ESI-MS) that overcomes sensitivity, selectivity and dynamic range constraints of conventional techniques. This method integrates both specific and nonspecific approaches toward sensitivity enhancement for artifact-free quantification of labile plasma thiols without complicated sample handling. A multivariate model was developed to predict increases in ionization efficiency for reduced thiols when conjugated to various maleimide analogs based on their intrinsic physicochemical properties. Optimization of maleimide labeling in conjunction with online sample preconcentration allowed for simultaneous analysis of nanomolar levels of reduced thiols and free oxidized thiols as their intact symmetric or mixed disulfides. Identification of low-abundance thiols and various other polar metabolites detected in plasma was supported by prediction of their relative migration times using CE as a qualitative tool complementary to ESI-MS. Plasma thiol redox status determination together with untargeted metabolite profiling offers a systemic approach for elucidation of the causal role of dysregulated thiol metabolism in the etiology of human diseases.

Engineering Aspects of Enzymatic Signal Transduction: Photoreceptors in the Retina

Identifying the basic module of enzymatic amplification as an irreversible cycle of messenger activation/deactivation by a “push-pull” pair of opposing enzymes, we analyze it in terms of gain, bandwidth, noise, and power consumption. The enzymatic signal transduction cascade is viewed as an information channel, the design of which is governed by the statistical properties of the input and the noise and dynamic range constraints of the output. With the example of vertebrate phototransduction cascade we demonstrate that all of the relevant engineering parameters are controlled by enzyme concentrations and, from functional considerations, derive bounds on the required protein numbers. Conversely, the ability of enzymatic networks to change their response characteristics by varying only the abundance of different enzymes illustrates how functional diversity may be built from nearly conserved molecular components.

A NEURAL NETWORK MODEL FOR UNEQUALLY DISTRIBUTED NEURON STATES AND ITS OPTICAL IMPLEMENTATION

To avoid the poor performance of the Hopfield model for unequally distributed neuron states and to alleviate the dynamic range constraint of optical system, a clipped model with asymmetric clipping points is proposed. Apart from its easiness for optical implementation, the capacity and capablilty of noisy tolerance are improved greatly, compared with the former clipped model. In addition, a practical encoding method-beam-direction encoding method is proposed to implement the above clipped model. The preliminary experimental results are given.

Amplitude-Modulated Pulse Shapes for the Elimination of Cross Relaxation during Multiple-Pulse NMR Experiments

Abstract New amplitude-modulated windowless multiple-pulse sequences for the elimination of cross-relaxation effects in 2D NMR spectroscopy of macromolecules are described. The sequences remove cross-relaxation responses near resonance by continuous rapid averaging of the transverse and longitudinal cross-relaxation rates, which have opposite signs for large molecules. Experimental results for an application to chemical-exchange spectroscopy, in which both cross-relaxation and J-coupling responses are removed, are presented. Within the working bandwidth, the spins are effectively spin locked along the y axis of the rotating frame, resulting in 2D spectra that are easily phased. For strictly positive wave forms, variational methods are used to obtain analytical solutions for minimum energy deposition per pulse under the additional constraints of minimum dynamic range, specified minimum field, or specified 90° pulse length.

Low roundoff noise augmented IIR filters based on normal realization

As second-order normal subfilters can be expressed as first-order complex subfilters, the authors decompose IIR digital filters into a parallel combination of first-order complex subfilters, in which each subfilter is augmented with one complex pole-zero cancellation pair and realized in complex direct form II. Under the l/sub 2/ dynamic range constraint, explicit expressions for the optimal complex pole-zero cancellation pair and the minimum roundoff noise of complex augmented subfilters are derived. Compared to normal realization, the noise reduction of this optimal complex augmented realization approaches its upper bound of about 6 dB as the desired filter bandwidth decreases. In addition, several suboptimal realizations are investigated and shown to achieve a greater performance-to-cost ratio.< <ETX xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">&gt;</ETX>

Active RC filters with very low sensitivity

In this letter we make use of a novel multiple feedback active RC filter structure in which the feedback path is realized in a parallel form. The parallel feedback structure was originally applied to the design of low-round-off-noise digital filters with dynamic range control. Most of these attractive properties result from the appropriate use of several degrees of freedom that are available in the design process. In the proposed active RC filter implementation scheme we show how to use these degrees of freedom to minimize the sensitivity measure while satisfying the dynamic range constraints

The role of sensory adaptation in the retina.

Adaptation, a change in response to a sustained stimulus, is a widespread property of sensory systems, occurring at many stages, from the most peripheral energy-gathering structures to neural networks. Adaptation is also implemented at many levels of biological organization, from the molecule to the organ. Despite adaptation's diversity, it is fruitful to extract some unifying principles by considering well-characterized components of the insect visual system. A major function of adaptation is to increase the amount of sensory information an organism uses. The amount of information available to an organism is ultimately defined by its environment and its size. The amount of information collected depends upon the ways in which an organism samples and transduces signals. The amount of information that is used is further limited by internal losses during transmission and processing. Adaptation can increase information capture and reduce internal losses by minimizing the effects of physical and biophysical constraints. Optical adaptation mechanisms in compound eyes illustrate a common trade-off between energy (quantum catch) and acuity (sensitivity to changes in the distribution of energy). This trade-off can be carefully regulated to maximize the information gathered (i.e. the number of pictures an eye can reconstruct). Similar trade-offs can be performed neurally by area summation mechanisms. Light adaptation in photoreceptors introduces the roles played by cellular constraints in limiting the available information. Adaptation mechanisms prevent saturation and, by trading gain for temporal acuity, increase the rate of information uptake. By minimizing the constraint of nonlinear summation (imposed by membrane conductance mechanisms) a cell's sensitivity follows the Weber-Fechner law. Thus, a computationally advantageous transformation is generated in response to a cellular constraint. The synaptic transfer of signals from photoreceptors to second-order neurones emphasizes that the cellular constraints of nonlinearity, noise and dynamic range limit the transmission of information from cell to cell. Synaptic amplification is increased to reduce the effects of noise but this resurrects the constraint of dynamic range. Adaptation mechanisms, both confined to single synapses and distributed in networks, remove spatially and temporally redundant signal components to help accommodate more information within a single cell. The net effect is a computationally advantageous removal of the background signal. Again, the cellular constraints on information transfer have dictated a computationally advantageous operation.

A 10.7-MHz switched-capacitor bandpass filter

An experimental 10.7-MHz switched-capacitor bandpass filter is demonstrated that exhibits a 400-kHz bandwidth with a 42-MHz sampling rate. Basic design issues of such high-frequency filters are also addressed with emphasis on dynamic range and power constraints. A theoretical square relation between power and center frequency agrees well with experimental results. The sixth-order differential bandpass filter chip occupies 2 mm/sup 2/ using a 2.25- mu m gate double-poly CMOS technology. >

Analysis and minimization of roundoff noise in separable denominator multidimensional digital filters

AbstractThis paper studies the analysis and minimization of roundoff noise in separable denominator multidimensional (SD M‐D) digital filters on the basis of state‐space representations. First, the roundoff noise in SD M‐D digital filters is analyzed and the l2‐norm dynamic range constraint is discussed. Using the results, a synthesis method of optimal realizations (with respect to roundoff noise) is proposed. Further, the simple relation between balanced realizations and optimal realizations of SD M‐D digital filters is obtained and an efficient method for synthesizing optimal realizations from balanced realizations is proposed. In addition, this paper also proves that optimal realizations are free of overflow oscillations under zero input conditions. Finally, the synthesis procedure is illustrated by a numerical example.

Block realization of multidimensional IIR digital filters and its finite word effects

This paper describes the formulation and realization of multidimensional block systems and investigates their stability and numerical performance. The block system can be constructed by the concept of block shift invariance. It possesses the general property that if (\lambda_1,\lambda_2,\cdots,\lambda_N) is a pole of the original scalar system, then (\lambda^{L_1}_{1},\lambda^{L_2}_{2},\cdots,\lambda^{L_N}_{N} will be a pole of the block system, where L_i , is the block length in the i th tuple. Thus, a stable scalar system will guarantee that its extended block systems are stable. Two methods of deriving block transfer functions from a given scalar transfer function are proposed. Moreover, it is shown that the scalar transfer function can be derived from its extended block transfer function. Based on Givone-Roesser's model, a unified approach of establishing 1-D to N -D block state-space models is presented. It is shown for the proposed block model that the dynamic range constraint in each tuple is invariant under block extension. In addition, the average roundoff noise variance due to the rounding errors in the i th tuple is reduced by a factor equal to the block length in this tuple when compared with its scalar counterpart.