Wireless communication devices have become an essential part of our lives and new ubiquitous applications are evolving rapidly. The spectrum of wireless links is limited and its efficient utilization via smart technology is very crucial to fulfill the ever increasing demand. Femtocell using a low-power home base station is a promising technique for serving indoor quasi-immobile users. It has the potential to provide better coverage and increased data rate to indoor users and to support more users/services by offloading the major traffic from the macrocell to the underlay femtocells.
As data transmission rates increase, transmission quality over existing channels degrades. Advanced signal processing techniques to compensate for the mechanisms which degrade transmission quality are known. Simulations studies conducted at the data rates proposed for next generation data communication products show that pre-cursor inter-symbol interference (ISI) is becoming a significant contributor to degradation in transmission quality.
Location information is an important enabler for context-aware services and communication system improvement. Localization can be performed by comparing the power readings of all surrounding wireless transmitters to a database of these readings at all possible locations, known as the radio map. For this localization process to work, the system requires accurate radio maps. Our industrial partner, Siradel, have designed a software to create modeled estimates of radio maps for any site, which need to be refined with measurements.
This proposal describes a research project towards a spoken dialog translation system that holds a broad range of potential applications. In particular, the proposal describes a system that will be developed and can be integrated in hand-held devices where a user may talk to the system in ones preferred language and the system produces a spoken translation of what is said in another language (e.g. Japanese to English or vice versa). The language barrier between any two dialog partners speaking different languages can be bridged with the help of such a system.
In general, if a user is not willing/able to implement himself the solution, attaching sensor and actuator equipment to a computer typically leads to disproportionately expensive purchases of proprietary hardware or software, which often still requires a considerable time investment. The goal of our planned company is to provide affordable computer-attached electronic equipment to individuals and businesses worldwide. Our devices will: (1) perform data acquisition and control of external hardware, i.e. input/output (I/O) operations; or (2) speed-up compute-intensive calculations.
The ever growing market demands for higher data rates and more reliable communication are the main drivers behind the technological growth in the wireless telecommunications industry. This R&D project aims to address an innovative technological shift from conventional wireless cellular networks to a paradigm of cooperative cellular networks that can potentially provide multiple-fold improvements in terms of the total data rates.
One of the proposed benefits of adopting electronic health records is the development of a comprehensive database which can be used for epidemiological, clinical, and health services research. The main purpose of this project is to develop strategies and provide case examples of how data from these extensive electronic databases can be used to improve healthcare services outcomes. TELUS Health Solutions’ Oacis (i.e., Open Architecture Clinical Information System) has been in use in a large health care organization for approximately 15 years.
Micro-electromechanical systems (MEMS) refer to integrated mechanical & electrical systems in micron scale that are now growing in numbers due to a miniaturization trend. An advanced actuation method proposed for MEMS in University of Toronto and Ryerson University will be applied for an auto-focus mechanism in cell phone cameras. This research will build on work conducted by a six-member research team in both universities. The proposed MEMS autofocus not only has larger depth of focus, but also is faster than the current technologies, and is easier to implement.
Recently, a new kind of cell phones known as “smartphones” is introduced and sold to the public in great numbers. A smartphone generally refers to a cell phone that is capable of communicating through the internet (via wireless internet or data network), determining its current positions (with Global Positioning System, GPS), and taking photos (with high resolution cameras) in addition to the classic voice communications. Most smartphones are also equipped with touch screens that provide a user-friendly intuitive interface.
