Abstract
We have investigated the sensitivity of arc-induced long-period gratings to changes of ambient refractive index. Two pure-silica-core fibres with different cladding diameters and a standard fibre were used in this study. For a 6 x 10(-3) change of the refractive index, a 240 pm shift of the resonant wavelength was achieved with long-period gratings written in the 125 mu m cladding diameter pure-silica-core fibre.

Abstract
All-optical switching devices based on fibre Bragg grating (FBG) structures written on a standard single-mode fibre and in an erbium-doped fibre have been experimentally demonstrated in the third telecommunication window. The switching devices work due to the thermal changes induced by a high-power continuous-wave laser diode. The filters tunability characteristics have been demonstrated for different pump powers (up to 900 mW) and different pump laser wavelengths (at 980 and 1480 nm), presenting different thermal absorption behaviour within different working regimes. (c) 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Abstract
The effective use of dynamic reconfiguration requires the designer to address many implementation issues. The market introduction of feature-full platform FPGAs equipped with embedded CPU blocks expands the number of situations where dynamic reconfiguration may be applied to improve overall performance and logic utilization. The paper compares the design of two similar systems supporting dynamic reconfiguration and the issues that were addressed in their implementation. The first system supports 32-bit data transfers between CPU and the dynamically reconfigurable circuits. The other implementation supports 64-bit transfers, but its effective use is more complicated and several restrictions must be taken into account. The work includes a performance comparison of the two designs on several simple tasks, including pattern matching, image processing and hashing. © 2006 IEEE.

Abstract
Run-time partial reconfiguration of programmable hardware devices can be applied to enhance many applications in high-end embedded systems, particularly those that employ recent platform FPGAs. The effective use of this approach is often hampered by the complexity added to the system development process and by limited tool support. The paper is concerned with several aspects related to the effective exploitation of run-time partial reconfiguration, with particular emphasis on the generation of partial configurations and the run-time utilisation of the reconfigurable resources. The paper presents an approach inspired by the traditional software development: partial configurations are produced by assembling components from a previously created library, thus enabling the embedded application developer to produce the configuration data required for run-time modifications with less effort than is needed with the conventional design flow. A tool that supports this approach is also described. A second set of issues is addressed by a run-time support library that provides facilities for managing the hardware reconfiguration process and the communication with the reconfigured circuits. The use of run-time partial reconfiguration requires a high level of system support. The paper describes one possible approach, presenting a demonstration system developed to support the present work and characterising its performance. In order to clarify the advantages of the approach to run-time reconfigiaration discussed in the paper, two small case studies are described, the first on the use of dedicated datapaths for subword operations and the second on two-dimensional pattern-matching for bilevel images. Timing measurements for both cases are included.

Abstract
Multichannel audio is increasingly ubiquitous in consumer audio applications such as satellite radio broadcast systems; surround sound playback systems, multichannel audio streaming and other emerging applications. These applications often present challenging bandwidth constraints making parametric multichannel coding schemes attractive. Several techniques have been proposed recently to address this problem. Here we present a novel low bit rate five channel encoding system that has shown promising results. This technique called the Immersive Soundfield Rendition (ISR) System emphasizes accurate reproduction of multi-band temporal envelope. The ISR system also incorporates a very low over-head (blind upmixing) mode. The proposed multichannel coding system has yielded promising results for multi-channel coding in 0-12 kbps range. More information and audio demos are available at http://ww.atc-labs.com/isr.

Abstract
Bandwidth Extension has emerged as an important tool for the satisfactory performance of low bit rate audio and speech codecs. In this paper we describe the components of a novel integrated audio bandwidth extension toolkit (ABET). The ABET toolkit is a combination of two bandwidth extension tools: (i) The Fractal Self-Similarity Model (FSSM) for signal spectrum; and, (ii) Accurate Spectral Replacement (ASR). Combination of these two tools, which are applied directly to high frequency resolution representation of the signal such as the Modified Cosine Transform (MDCT), has several benefits for increased accuracy and coding efficiency of the high frequency signal components. At the same time the combination of the two tools entails a number of important algorithmic and perceptual considerations. In this paper we describe the components of the ABET bandwidth extension toolkit in detail. Algorithmic details, audio demonstrations, and, ABET configuration details are presented. Additional information and audio samples are available at http://www.atc-labs.com/abet/.