Land use induced blurring of forest-grassland transition in north-west Himalaya-A case study using Moving Split Window boundary detection technique

Transition zone or ecotone is a unique community sandwiched between two communities/ecosystems/biomes.These ecotones in Himalaya remained unexplored for many ecological aspects like biodiversity,phyto-sociology,boundary detection and even impact of change in land use pattern(anthropogenic activity).The most accepted and widespread technique called as Moving Split Window(MSW) technique is used for detection of vegetation and environmental boundaries at four different sites in the lesser stratum of north-west Himalaya.All the four sites were at different distances from the nearest human inhabited area.Anthropogenic activities like grazing,herb collection,wood collection etc.were common at proximal sites.Such activities have led to the change in land use pattern.In this study,we have tried to work out the impact of the change in land use pattern(human interference) on the vegetation and basic environmental parameters like soil pH,electrical conductivity and moisture on forestgrassland ecotone in north-west Himalaya.Data on mountain steepness was also collected and analyzed.The dissimilarity profile using the statistical tool Squared Euclidian Distance(SED) indicated that species turnover locations increase with the increase in distance of ecotones from human settlements.The ecotones at distant locations from human villages are characterized with blunt as well as sharp peaks for vegetation data,however,conditions are reverse in case of the proximal sites.The study also reveals that as the distance between the ecotone and human settlements increases,the complex conditions like multiple vegetation boundaries prevails on the transitions.In this regard,land use induced blurring of forest-grassland transition in north-west Himalaya is summed up in the study.

A novel mapping scheme and modified decoding algorithm for BICM-ID

This paper proposes a novel mapping scheme for bit-interleaved coded modulation with iterative decoding(BICM-ID).The symbol mapping is composed of two QPSK with different radiuses and phases,called cross equalization-8PSK-quasi-semi set partitioning(CE-8PSK-Quasi-SSP).Providing the same average power,the proposed scheme can increase the minimum squared Euclidean distance(MSED)and then improve the receiving performance of BICM-ID compared with conventional symbol mapping schemes.Simultaneously,a modified iteration decoding algorithm is proposed in this paper.In the process of iteration decoding,different proportion of the extrinsic information to the systematic observations results in distinct decoding performance.At high SNR(4~9dB),the observation information plays a more important role than the extrinsic information.Simulation results show that the proportion set at 1.2 is more suitable for the novel mapping in BICM-ID.When the BER is 10^(-4),more than 0.9dB coding gain over Rayleigh channels can be achieved for the improved mapping and decoding scheme.

Four-Dimensional Signal Constellations Based on Binary Frequency-Shift Keying and <i>M</i>-ary Amplitude-Phase-Shift Keying

In this article, we give the construction of new four-dimensional signal constellations in the Euclidean space, which represent a certain combination of binary frequency-shift keying (BFSK) and M-ary amplitude-phase-shift keying (MAPSK). Description of such signals and the formulas for calculating the minimum squared Euclidean distance are presented. We have developed an analytic building method for even and odd values of M. Hence, no computer search and no heuristic methods are required. The new optimized BFSK-MAPSK (M = 5,6,···,16) signal constructions are built for the values of modulation indexes h =0.1,0.15,···,0.5 and their parameters are given. The results of computer simulations are also provided. Based on the obtained results we can conclude, that BFSK-MAPSK systems outperform similar four-dimensional systems both in terms of minimum squared Euclidean distance and simulated symbol error rate.

A NEW LABELING SEARCH ALGORITHM FOR BIT-INTERLEAVED CODED MODULATION WITH ITERATIVE DECODING

Bit-Interleaved Coded Modulation with Iterative Decoding (BICM-ID) is a bandwidth ef- ficient transmission, where the bit error rate is reduced through the iterative information exchange between the inner demapper and the outer decoder. The choice of the symbol mapping is the crucial design parameter. This paper indicates that the Harmonic Mean of the Minimum Squared Euclidean (HMMSE) distance is the best criterion for the mapping design. Based on the design criterion of the HMMSE distance, a new search algorithm to find the optimized labeling maps for BICM-ID system is proposed. Numerical results and performance comparison show that the new labeling search method has a low complexity and outperforms other labeling schemes using other design criterion in BICM-ID system, therefore it is an optimized labeling method.