Frequency-modulated differential chaos shift keying (FM-DCSK) is essentially a technique that combines modulation with a spread-spectrum property for communications. It is also an effective technique similar to recent multiantenna methodologies that can make use of multipath effects, thereby achieving an excellent anti-multipath fading capability. Through analysis and simulation, this paper reports some essential characteristics and advantages in the system performance of the newly proposed M-ary FM-DCSK technology. The basic design of the M-ary FM-DCSK-based chaotic spread-spectrum communication system and a comparison with its conventional equivalent are presented. It is shown that the former is not only robust in multipath fading environments and simple in implementation, but also flexible in adjusting system parameters and trading-off several effects among bandwidth efficiency, energy efficiency, data rate, and error performance. It is demonstrated that the FM-DCSK technique is promising for the next generation of wireless communication systems as an excellent modulation and spread-spectrum scheme candidate.

This study aimed to evaluate the effects of washed cardiopulmonary (CPB) circuit residual blood reinfusion on the postoperative clinical outcome for pediatric patients undergoing cardiac surgery. A total of 309 consecutive Chinese cardiac patients receiving CPB between October 2010 and April 2011 were prospectively analyzed. For 217 patients, CPB circuit residual blood was reinfused after the cell-saving procedure [cell-salvage group (CS)]. The remaining 92 patients were directly transfused with allogenic red blood cells (RBCs) after their operation [control group (CON)]. Assessment included perioperative transfusion of RBCs, postoperative hematocrit (HCT), chest tube drainage during the first 24 h after the operation, intrahospital mortality, respiratory morbidity, and renal dysfunction. The two groups were well matched in terms of demographics, CPB data, and complexity of surgical procedure. The patients in the CS group had a significantly higher HCT level postoperatively (p = 0.018) and a less allogenic RBCs transfusion (p = 0.000). The two groups did not differ in terms of chest tube drainage during the first 24 h postoperatively, intrahospital mortality, or respiratory morbidity. The incidence of serum creatinine (≥ 2-folds) during the first 72 h after the operation was significantly lower in the CS group (2.3 %) than in the CON group (8.7 %) (p = 0.010). Reinfusion of washed CPB circuit residual blood significantly raised the postoperative HCT level, reduced the allogeneic blood transfusion, decreased the incidence of early postoperative renal dysfunction, and did not increase the chest tube drainage after the operation in pediatric cardiac surgery.

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Except reducing postoperative bleeding, we did not find other benefits of aprotinin. However, much higher postoperative creatinine levels, longer duration of mechanical ventilation, not less postoperative RBCs transfusion, and a 0.55% increased clinical mortality (although not statistically significant) were found in the aprotinin populations.