Iranian Journal of Electrical and Electronic Engineering

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The throughput enhancement of Space-Time Spreading (STS)-based Multicarrier Direct Sequence Code Division Multiple Access (MC DS-CDMA) system is investigated in this paper. Variable Spreading Factor (VSF) is utilized to improve the data throughput of the system. In this contribution, an analytical approach is proposed to compute a new expression for the Bit Error Rate (BER) performance of the STS-based MC DS-CDMA system against pre-dispreading Signal-to-Noise Ratio (SNR) for different values of spreading factor (SF). The other contribution of the paper is deriving a new closed form expression for computing the throughput enhancement and the BER performance of the VSF STS-based MC DS-CDMA system over Rayleigh fading channel. It is demonstrated that using VSF method in STS-based MC DS-CDMA system improves the throughput of the system by keeping the BER performance at the target level.

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In this study, a mathematical model is developed based on algebraic equations which is capable of generating artificially normal events of electrocardiogram (ECG) signals such as P-wave, QRS complex, and T-wave. This model can also be implemented for the simulation of abnormal phenomena of electrocardiographic signals such as ST-segment episodes (i.e. depression, elevation, and sloped ascending or descending) and repolarization abnormalities such as T-Wave Alternans (TWA). Event parameters such as amplitude, duration, and incidence time in the conventional ECG leads can be a good reflective of heart electrical activity in specific directions. The presented model can also be used for the simulation of ECG signals on torso plane or limb leads. To meet this end, the amplitude of events in each of the 15-lead ECG waveforms of 80 normal subjects at MIT-BIH Database (www.physionet.org) are derived and recorded. Various statistical analyses such as amplitude mean value, variance and confidence intervals calculations, Anderson-Darling normality test, and Bayesian estimation of events amplitude are then conducted. Heart Rate Variability (HRV) model has also been incorporated to this model with HF/LF and VLF/LF waves power ratios. Eventually, in order to demonstrate the suitable flexibility of the presented model in simulation of ECG signals, fascicular ventricular tachycardia (left septal ventricular tachycardia), rate dependent conduction block (Aberration), and acute Q-wave infarctions of inferior and anterior-lateral walls are finally simulated. The open-source simulation code of above abnormalities will be freely available.

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The aim of this study is to address a new feature extraction method in the area of the heart arrhythmia classification based on a metric with simple mathematical calculation called Curve-Length Method (CLM). In the presented method, curve length of the under study excerpted segment of signal is considered as an informative feature in which the effect of important geometric parameters of the original signal can be found. To show merits of the presented method, first the original electrocardiogram (ECG) in lead I is pre-processed by removing its baseline wander then by scaling it in the [-1,1] interval. In the next step, using a trous method, discrete wavelet scales 23 and 24 and smoothing function scale 22 are extracted. Afterwards, segments including samples of the QRS complex, P and T waves are estimated via an approximation criterion and CLM is implemented to extract corresponding features from aforementioned scales, smoothing function and also from each original segment. The resulted feature vector (including 12 components) is used to tune an Adaptive Network Fuzzy Inference System (ANFIS) classifier. The presented strategy is applied to classify four categories found in the MIT-BIH Arrhythmia Database namely as Atrial Premature Beat (APB), Left Bundle Branch Block (LBBB), Right Bundle Branch Block (RBBB) and Premature Ventricular Contraction (PVC) and average values of Se = 99.81%, P+ = 99.80%, Sp = 99.81% and Acc = 99.72% are obtained for sensitivity, positive predictivity, specifity and accuracy respectively showing marginal improvement of the heart arrhythmia classification performance.

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The aim of this study is to introduce a new methodology for isolation of ectopic rhythms of ambulatory electrocardiogram (ECG) holter data via appropriate statistical analyses imposing reasonable computational burden. First, the events of the ECG signal are detected and delineated using a robust wavelet-based algorithm. Then, using Binary Neyman-Pearson Radius test, an appropriate classifier is designed to categorize ventricular complexes into "Normal + Premature Atrial Contraction (PAC)" and "Premature Ventricular Contraction (PVC)" beats. Afterwards, an innovative measure is defined based on wavelet transform of the delineated P-wave namely as P-Wave Strength Factor (PSF) used for the evaluation of the P-wave power. Finally, ventricular contractions pursuing weak P-waves are categorized as PAC complexes however, those ensuing strong P-waves are specified as normal complexes. The discriminant quality of the PSF-based feature space was evaluated by a modified learning vector quantization (MLVQ) classifier trained with the original QRS complexes and corresponding Discrete Wavelet Transform (DWT) dyadic scale. Also, performance of the proposed Neyman-Pearson Classifier (NPC) is compared with the MLVQ and Support Vector Machine (SVM) classifiers using a common feature space. The processing speed of the proposed algorithm is more than 176,000 samples/sec showing desirable heart arrhythmia classification performance. The performance of the proposed two-lead NPC algorithm is compared with MLVQ and SVM classifiers and the obtained results indicate the validity of the proposed method. To justify the newly defined feature space (σi1, σi2, PSFi), a NPC with the proposed feature space and a MLVQ classification algorithm trained with the original complex and its corresponding DWT as well as RR interval are considered and their performances were compared with each other. An accuracy difference about 0.15% indicates acceptable discriminant quality of the properly selected feature elements. The proposed algorithm was applied to holter data of the DAY general hospital (more than 1,500,000 beats) and the average values of Se = 99.73% and P+ = 99.58% were achieved for sensitivity and positive predictivity, respectively.

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In this study, a new long-duration holter electrocardiogram (ECG) major events detection-delineation algorithm is described which operates based on the false-alarm error bounded segmentation of a decision statistic with simple mathematical origin. To meet this end, first three-lead holter data is pre-processed by implementation of an appropriate bandpass finite-duration impulse response (FIR) filter and also by calculation of the Euclidean norm between corresponding samples of three leads. Then, a trous discrete wavelet transform (DWT) is applied to the resulted norm and an unscented synthetic measure is calculated between some obtained dyadic scales to magnify the effects of low-power waves such as P or T-waves during occurrence of arrhythmia(s). Afterwards, a uniform length window is slid sample to sample on the synthetic scale and in each slid, six features namely as summation of the nonlinearly amplified Hilbert transform, summation of absolute first order differentiation, summation of absolute second order differentiation, curve length, area and variance of the excerpted segment are calculated. Then all feature trends are normalized and superimposed to yield the newly defined multiple-order derivative wavelet based measure (MDWM) for the detection and delineation of ECG events. In the next step, a α-level Neyman-Pearson classifier (which is a false-alarm probability-FAP controlled tester) is implemented to detect and delineate QRS complexes. To show advantages of the presented method, it is applied to MIT-BIH Arrhythmia Database, QT Database, and T-Wave Alternans Database and as a result, the average values of sensitivity and positive predictivity Se = 99.96% and P+ = 99.96% are obtained for the detection of QRS complexes, with the average maximum delineation error of 5.7 msec, 3.8 msec and 6.1 msec for P-wave, QRS complex and T-wave, respectively showing marginal improvement of detection-delineation performance. In the next step, the proposed method is applied to DAY hospital high resolution holter data (more than 1,500,000 beats including Bundle Branch Blocks-BBB, Premature Ventricular Complex-PVC and Premature Atrial Complex-PAC) and average values of Se=99.98% and P+=99.97% are obtained for QRS detection. In summary, marginal performance improvement of ECG events detection-delineation process in a widespread values of signal to noise ratio (SNR), reliable robustness against strong noise, artifacts and probable severe arrhythmia(s) of high resolution holter data and the processing speed 163,000 samples/sec can be mentioned as important merits and capabilities of the proposed algorithm.

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The paper addresses a new QRS complex geometrical feature extraction technique as well as its application for electrocardiogram (ECG) supervised hybrid (fusion) beat-type classification. To this end, after detection and delineation of the major events of ECG signal via a robust algorithm, each QRS region and also its corresponding discrete wavelet transform (DWT) are supposed as virtual images and each of them is divided into eight polar sectors. Then, the curve length of each excerpted segment is calculated and is used as the element of the feature space. To increase the robustness of the proposed classification algorithm versus noise, artifacts and arrhythmic outliers, a fusion structure consisting of three Multi Layer Perceptron-Back Propagation (MLP-BP) neural networks with different topologies and one Adaptive Network Fuzzy Inference System (ANFIS) were designed and implemented. To show the merit of the new proposed algorithm, it was applied to all MIT-BIH Arrhythmia Database records and the discrimination power of the classifier in isolation of different beat types of each record was assessed and as the result, the average accuracy value Acc=98.27% was obtained. Also, the proposed method was applied to 8 number of arrhythmias (Normal, LBBB, RBBB, PVC, APB, VE, PB, VF) belonging to 19 number of the aforementioned database and the average value of Acc=98.08% was achieved. To evaluate performance quality of the new proposed hybrid learning machine, the obtained results were compared with similar peer-reviewed studies in this area.

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This study focuses on one of the most effective type of capacity markets named Capacity Subscription (CS) market which is predicted to be widely used in the upcoming smart grids. Despite variant researches done about the mechanism and structure of capacity markets, their performances have been rarely tested in the presence of network constraints. Considering this deficiency, we tried to propose a new method to determine capacity prices in the network considering the transmission line flow limitations named Local capacity Prices (LP). This method is quite new and has not been tried before in any other similar researches. The philosophy of the proposed method is to determine capacity prices considering each consumer share of total peak demand. The first advantage of LP is that the consumers who benefit from the transmission facilities and are the responsible for transmission congestions, pay higher capacity prices than those whom their needed electricity is prepared locally. The second advantage of LP is that consumers connected to the same bus do not have to pay same capacity price due to their different shares of total peak demand. For more clarification, two other different methods named Branches Flow limit as a Global Limit (BFGL) and Locational Capacity Prices (LCP) are proposed and compared to the LP method in order to show LP method efficiency. The numerical results obtained from case studies show that the LP method follows more justice market procedure which results in more efficient capacity prices in comparison to BFGL and LCP methods.

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Using mobile phones for medical applications are proliferating due to high-quality embedded sensors. Jaundice, a yellow discoloration of the skin caused by excess bilirubin, is a prevalent physiological problem in newborns. While moderate amounts of bilirubin are safe in healthy newborns, extreme levels are fatal and cause devastating and irreversible brain damage. Accurate tests to measure jaundice require a blood draw or dedicated clinical devices facing difficulty where clinical technology is unavailable. This paper presents a smartphone-based screening tool to detect neonatal hyperbilirubinemia caused by the high bilirubin production rate. A machine learning regression model is trained on a pretty large dataset of images, including 446 samples, taken from newborns' sternum skin in four medical centers in Iran. The learned model is then used to estimate the level of bilirubin. Experimental results show a mean absolute error of 1.807 mg/dl and a correlation of 0.701 between predicted bilirubin by the proposed method and the TSB values as ground truth.