This special issue contains nine research papers presented at a two-day National Conference on Recent Advancement in Electronics (NCRAE-2016) at Hyderabad on January 22-23, 2016. The discussion and deliberation theme of the conference was the evolving technologies and advancements made in the areas of Electronic Devices, Instrumentation, Power Electronics and Communication Engineering. Most of the selected papers present the research developments and innovations happening in the field of wireless communication networks and modern antenna design.

The first four papers of this special issue discuss the research, developments and challenges encountered in the development of high-speed wireless networks and the next five papers are related to microstrip antenna design and image processing.

The first paper, “Future Wireless Communication Networks: Prospects and Challenges”, by R K Chaurasia, A K Saini, V Mathur and R Mukherji, is a review paper which deals with the current scenario and the future prospects of the 5G wireless system. The paper addresses some challenges that could not be solved even in 4G such as spectrum availability, power consumption and poor coverage. This includes mobile television support to receive live programmed, multi-user networked three-dimension games, realistic 3D scene rendering and high definition visuals.

The growing demand for customized services in wireless communication consumes a significant amount of network resources and thus compromises the network throughput and efficiency. The second paper, “Network Technology Trend for Next-Generation Wireless Communication“, by Subrat Kumar Sethi and Saswati Paramita, outlines different network technologies for the next-generation wireless communication to support the conventional voice and data services applicable to customized communication paradigms, such as IoT and Device-to-Device (D2D) services, in a fully automated fashion.

The third paper, “Location Prediction Using Legendre Technique for Wireless Network“, by S Parija, P K Sahu and S S Singh, proposes an Artificial Neural Network (ANN) structure based on Multi-Layer Perceptron with Back Propagation (MLP-BP) and Legendre Neural Network (LeNN) to address the location management problem in the cellular system. The proposed LeNN nonlinear neural network solution is computationally efficient and solves the issues associated with the location management.

In wireless technology, the Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) also plays an important role in developing the interfaces between industrial, medical and scientific machines. In such networks, the used nodes have limited mobility and also lesser energy resources for computation and intelligence operations. Researchers have made modifications in communication protocols to achieve specific optimized goals employing “Cross-Layer Design (CLD)”. The fourth paper, “Cross-Layer Design in Wireless Sensor Network: A Review“, by Rakesh Kumar Saini, Ritika and Sandip Vijay, is a review paper which presents a detailed investigation of CLD and also discusses different cross-layer proposals given in literature.

The fifth paper, “Experimental Studies on Microstrip Patch Antenna with Superstrate”, by V Saidulu and K Srinivasa Rao, reports the design and performance analysis of a microstrip patch antenna with superstrate. The paper evaluates the influence of the dielectric superstrates on bandwidth, beamwidth, gain, resonant frequency, input impedance, return loss, VSWR and radiation pattern of rectangular microstrip patch antenna.

The miniaturization of microstrip antenna and improvement in bandwidth can be achieved by etching the slot in ground and developing a patch of microstrip antenna of proper length and width. A compact triple band antenna using a combination of both T-shaped and S-shaped forming comblike structure becomes important in such antenna design. The sixth paper, “A Microstrip Patch Antenna p and T-Shaped Slot for X-Band Application“, by Archana Negi, Brajlata Chauhan and Sandip Vijay, presents the design of a microstrip patch antenna having p and T-shaped slot. The proposed antenna is printed on FR4 substrate having dielectric constant of 4.3 and thickness of 1.6 mm that can operate on band 8.357 GHz, 10.97 GHz and 13.154 GHz. The structure has been simulated using CST microwave studio.

The seventh paper, “Design and Analysis of Electromagnetic Band Gap (EBG) Square Notch Rectangular Microstrip Antenna for Dual Frequency Using IE3D“, by Virendra Kumar and Sandip Vijay, reports the design and analysis of a square notch rectangular microstrip antenna developed over an FR4 substrate of permittivity of 4.4 and thickness of 1.6 mm with the rectangular patch dimension of 25.5 mm ´ 33.2 mm. An EBG structure is introduced on the other side of substrate to suppress the surface wave excited by radiating patch, thereby enhancing the gain and efficiency of EBGRMA antenna.

The eighth paper, “An Analysis of Sample Matrix Algorithm for Smart Antenna Applications“, by V Ayyem Pillai, K Sri Chandana and G V Subba Reddy, examines how weight vector and beam pattern of the smart antenna system are changing for different angles of arrival of desired signal. The work also uses Sample Matrix Inversion (SMI) algorithm for interference rejection at the adaptive antenna array comprising five elements. The effect of number of elements in the array of antenna on the interference rejection has been simulated to confirm the superior null depth performance of the SMI algorithm over the LMS algorithm.

The final paper, “Implementation of 2D Discrete Cosine Transform Using Vedic Mathematic Algorithm“, by R Mukherji, A K Saini, R K Chaurasia, V Mathur, P Bhardwaj and M Mukherji, presents the architecture and realization of a cost-effective FPGA realization of a Two-Dimensional Discrete Cosine Transform (2D DCT) for JPEG image compression. The architecture utilizes row-column decomposition of a fast 1D DCT algorithm implemented.

--V K Chaubey
Consulting Editor