In this paper, a corpus-based speech synthesis system KB2006 was developed using the speech database provided by Blizzard Challenge 2006. We proposed a novel unit selection method called multi-tier non-uniform unit selection in our corpus-base speech synthesis system. Non-uniform unit (NUU) in our system was defined as a unit sequences that contains one or more joint phoneme units. By using CAR...

Traditional sourcing arrangements for after-sales support of capital-intensive products such as airplanes, weapons systems, and manufacturing equipment have centered around physical assets. Typically, customers would pay the supplier of maintenance and repair services (usually the product manufacturer) for the resources, such as spare parts, that were needed to maintain the products. In recent ...

This paper presents a model of cooperative technology development undertaken by a buyer and a supplier of capital equipment in the semiconductor industry. In order to meet the demanding technical requirements of their production processes, chip producers, the "buyers," often spearhead technology development projects with their equipment suppliers to advance the processing capabilities of their ...

A two-tier UMTS network is considered where a large number of randomly deployed Wideband Code Division Multiple Access (WCDMA) femtocells are laid under macrocells where the spectrum is shared. The cochannel interference between the cells may be a potential limiting factor for the system. We study the uplink of this hybrid network and identify the critical scenarios that give rise to substantia...

This paper analyzes two-tier heterogeneous cellular network with decoupled downlink and uplink access. The basic performance benefits of uplink/downlink decoupling have been recently introduced. Here we provide a more elaborate treatment of the decoupling mechanism by analyzing spectral and energy efficiency of the system, as the joint improvement of these two features is crucial for the upcomi...

There are several shortcomings in the existing data migration techniques in Hierarchical Storage Systems (HSS). The first and the most important among them is that data migration policies are user defined hence static and reactive. Secondly, data migration at the host side is not yet completely explored. The other major drawbacks are that each storage tier is modelled as an agent; the data migr...

Energy efficiency has a vital role to mitigate increased power consumption and carbon dioxide emissions. Future wireless communication systems should be designed in such a way that energy efficiency as an important design rule. Heterogeneous Networks (HetNets) have recently being considered as an effective approach to provide better cellular network coverage and capacity. In the proposed system...

Globalization has added a layer of complexity to the challenge mitigating opportunism in buyer–supplier relationships. When engaging with suppliers different countries, buyers must manage relationships across various cultures. Prior empirical research shown that inter-firm power affects exchange relationships, and conceptual studies suggest national culture is location characteristic could infl...

Dynamic switching base station (BS) to improve the utilization is very important for reducing the energy consumption. Most of existing dynamic switching BS schemes require the switching threshold to be set in advance. The fixed switching threshold, however, fails to apply in practical two-tier femtocell networks, for it is difficult to precisely model that it may result in different switching o...

Femto-cells deployment in today’s cellular networks came into practice to fulfill the increasing demand for data services. It also extends the coverage in the indoor areas. However, interference to other femto and macro-cells users remains an unresolved challenge. In this paper, we propose an interference mitigation scheme to control the cross-tier interference caused by femto-cells to the macr...