In a proxy re-encryption (PRE) scheme, a delegator gives a re-encryption key to a semi-trusted proxy, then the proxy can transform the delegator's ciphertexts into one that can be decrypted by a delegatee who is appointed by the delegator. The proxy cannot, however, learn anything about the encrypted messages. At CCS 2007, Canetti and Hohenberger left an interesting open problem of how to design a PRE scheme that is simultaneously unidirectional and multi-hop. This is a rather interesting problem since in some applications we may need this feature, such as in the scenario of email forwarding, a delegatee wants forward his emails that received from the delegator to another delegatee. In this work we design an unidirectional and multi-hop PRE scheme by using multilinear maps. A shortcoming of our scheme is that its security relies on some rather strong assumptions in the setting of multilinear groups.

This letter presents a new image watermarking scheme using Polar Sine Transform (PST), a new kind of orthogonal moment defined on a circular domain. The PSTs are easy to compute and have no numerical stability problem, thus are more suitable for watermarking. In the proposed method, the PSTs are modified according to the binary watermark bits, producing a compensation image. The watermarked image is obtained by adding the compensation image to the original image directly. Simulation results show the advantages of the proposed scheme in terms of both watermark capacity and watermark robustness.

Considering an uncertain multi-objective optimization system with interval coefficients, this letter proposes an interval multi-objective particle swarm optimization algorithm. In order to improve its performance, a crowding distance measure based on the distance and the overlap degree of intervals, and a method of updating the archive based on the acceptance coefficient of decision-maker, are employed. Finally, results show that our algorithm is capable of generating excellent approximation of the true Pareto front.

This paper proposes useful circuit structures for achieving a low-voltage/low-power pipelined ADC based on switched-opamp architecture. First, a novel unity-feedback-factor sample-and-hold which manipulates the features of switched-opamp technique is presented. Second, opamp-sharing is merged into switched-opamp structure with a proposed dual-output opamp configuration. A 0.8-V, 9-bit, 10-Msample/s pipelined ADC is designed to verify the proposed circuit. Simulation results using a 0.18-µm CMOS 1P6M process demonstrate the figure-of-merit of this pipelined ADC is only 0.71 pJ/step.

A quantized index for evaluating the pattern similarity of two different datasets is designed by calculating the number of correlated dictionary atoms. Guided by this theory, task-specific biometric recognition model transferred from state-of-the-art DNN models is realized for both face and vein recognition.

In this paper, design of a new analog CMOS rank-order extractor with input expandable capability is described. An rth rank-order extraction is defined that identifies the rth largest magnitude of input variables, which is useful for fuzzy controller and artificial neural networks. The architecture is realized by using maximum circuit, winner-take-all circuit, and some auxiliary circuits. The limitations and design considerations of these circuits are analyzed in this paper. An experimental chip with seven inputs is fabricated using a 0.5 µm CMOS double-poly double-metal technology. The results of measurement show the extractor with 2 µA precision, and each rank-order extraction has about 2 µs response time. The power dissipation of the experiment chip under test includes input/output pads that has 7.2 mW for 3.3 V supply voltage. The chip area of the extractor is 600 µm 700 µm.

This paper presents a voltage-mode WTA/MAX circuit that achieves high-speed and multi-chip features. Based on the efficient averaged-value comparison approach, the time and hardware complexities are proportional to O(log N) and O(N) respectively, where N is the number of inputs. In addition, a voltage comparison element (VCE) circuit is proposed to achieve multi-chip function. In the proposed circuit, the averaged-value calculator is built using resistor array that prevents the matching problem of transistor array. The whole circuit was fabricated with the TSMC 0.35 µm signal-poly quadruple-metal CMOS process. With eight input signals, the measurement results show that the proposed circuit resolved input voltages differing by 10 mV in 30 ns, and the multi-chip capability was also verified.

Recently, machine learning approaches and user movement history analysis on mobile devices have attracted much attention. Generally, we need to apply text data into the word embedding tool for acquiring word vectors as the preprocessing of machine learning approaches. However, it is difficult for mobile devices to afford the huge cost of high-dimensional vector calculation. Thus, a low-cost user behavior and user movement history analysis approach should be considered. To address this issue, firstly, we convert the zip code and street house number into vectors instead of textual address information to reduce the cost of spatial vector calculation. Secondly, we propose a low-cost high-performance semantic and physical distance (real distance) calculation method that applied zip-code-based vectors. Finally, to verify the validity of our proposed method, we utilize the US zip code data to calculate both semantic and physical distances and compare their results with the previous method. The experimental results showed that our proposed method could significantly improve the performance of distance calculation and effectively control the cost to a low level.

This letter presents a no-reference blocking artifact measure based on analysis of color discontinuities in YUV color space. Color shift and color disappearance are first analyzed in JPEG images. For color-shifting and color-disappearing areas, the blocking artifact scores are obtained by computing the gradient differences across the block boundaries in U component and Y component, respectively. An overall quality score is then produced as the average of the local ones. Extensive simulations and comparisons demonstrate the efficiency of the proposed method.

Depth-image-based-rendering (DIBR) is a popular technique for view synthesis. The rendering process mainly introduces artifacts around edges, which leads to degraded quality. This letter proposes a DIBR-synthesized image quality metric by measuring the Statistics of both Edge Intensity and Orientation (SEIO). The Canny operator is first used to detect edges. Then the gradient maps are calculated, based on which the intensity and orientation of the edge pixels are computed for both the reference and synthesized images. The distance between the two intensity histograms and that between the two orientation histograms are computed. Finally, the two distances are pooled to obtain the overall quality score. Experimental results demonstrate the advantages of the presented method.

The IEEE 802.11 protocol is one of the most important standards for Wireless Local Area Networks. The primary MAC protocol of 802.11 is the distributed coordination function (DCF), which is Carrier Sense Multiple Access with Collision Avoidance (CSMA/CA) with binary slotted exponential backoff scheme. The basic access and the RTS/CTS access mechanisms are the two channel access methods defined in DCF. In real work environments, the common channel access method of 802.11 is the coexistence of the above two mechanisms, i.e., packets longer than a given threshold RTSthreshold are transmitted according to the RTS/CTS mechanism, otherwise, they are transmitted by means of basic mechanism. The common mechanism is called as hybrid access mechanism in this paper. Few analytical models have been proposed to evaluate the hybrid access mechanism up to now. The necessary condition which enables the hybrid mechanism to work is that the packets must be variable. But, almost all analytical models proposed for 802.11 DCF assume that the packet size is fix, so they can not study the hybrid access method. In this paper, we propose a detailed analytical model to evaluate the saturation performance of the hybrid access mechanism, in the assumption that the packet lengthes are sampled from a general distribution function f(x). Both the throughput and the delay performances are concerned. Our model is validated by extensive simulations. By means of the proposed model, we compare the performances of the above three mechanisms, i.e., basic, RTS/CTS and hybrid, under different network scenarios. Numerical results show that the hybrid access mechanism is the best choice in almost all scenarios.

For battery-powered electronic products, one way to extend battery life is to use a versatile step-up/step-down DC-DC converter. A new versatile step-up/step-down switched-capacitor-based converter structure is proposed, and its efficiency is analyzed. In the step-down case, the efficiency is the same as, or even better than the efficiency of linear regulators.

In a proxy re-signatures (PRS) scheme, a semi-trusted proxy is given some information which allows it to translate a user i's signature on a message m into another user j's signature on the same message m. However, the proxy cannot, on it own, compute signatures for either i or j. This notion introduced by Blaze et a. at EUROCRYPT 1998, and then revisited by Ateniese and Hohenberger at CCS 2005. The existence of multi-use unidirectional PRS scheme is an open problem left by AH05. Whereafter, at CCS 2008, Libert and Vergnaud constructed the first multi-use unidirectional PRS scheme. However, there is a major drawback in the LV08 scheme that the size of the signatures is linear in the number of translations. Hence, Libert and Vergnaud said that a more challenging task would be to find out implementations of such primitives where the size of signatures and the verification cost do not grow linearly with the number of translations. In this work we resolve this task by constructing a such PRS scheme in the standard model by using indistinguishability obfuscation. A shortcoming of our construction is that the security is selective but not full.

In this letter, a novel adaptive total variation (ATV) model is proposed for image inpainting. The classical TV model is a partial differential equation (PDE)-based technique. While the TV model can preserve the image edges well, it has some drawbacks, such as staircase effect in the inpainted image and slow convergence rate. By analyzing the diffusion mechanism of TV model and introducing a new edge detection operator named difference curvature, we propose a novel ATV inpainting model. The proposed ATV model can diffuse the image information smoothly and quickly, namely, this model not only eliminates the staircase effect but also accelerates the convergence rate. Experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed scheme.

New computer viruses are continually being generated and they cause damage all over the world. In general, current anti-virus software detects viruses by matching a pattern based on the signature; thus, unknown viruses without any signature cannot be detected. Although there are some static analysis technologies that do not depend on signatures, virus writers often use code obfuscation techniques, which make it difficult to execute a code analysis. As is generally known, unknown viruses and known viruses share a common feature. In this paper we propose a new static analysis technology that can circumvent code obfuscation to extract the common feature and detect unknown viruses based on similarity. The results of evaluation experiments demonstrated that this technique is able to detect unknown viruses without false positives.

This paper proposes a third-order low-distortion delta-sigma modulator (DSM). The third-order noise shaping is achieved by a single opamp (excluding the quantizer). In the proposed DSM structure, the timing limitation on the quantizer and dynamic element matching (DEM) logic in a conventional low-distortion structure can be relaxed from a non-overlapping interval to half of the clock period. A cyclic analog-to-digital converter with a loading-free technique is utilized as a quantizer, which shares an opamp with the active adder. The signal transfer function (STF) is preserved as unity, which means that the integrators process only the quantization noise component. As a result, the opamp used for the integrators has lower requirements, as low-distortion DSMs, on slew rate, output swing, and power consumption. The proposed third-order DSM with a 4-bit cyclic-type quantizer is implemented in a 90-nm CMOS process. Under a sampling rate of 80 MHz and oversampling ratio of 16, simulation results show that an 81.97-dB signal-to-noise and distortion ratio and an 80-dB dynamic range are achieved with 4.17-mW total power consumption. The resulting figure of merit (FOM) is 81.5 fJ/conversion-step.

Blur is one of the most common distortion type and greatly impacts image quality. Most existing no-reference (NR) image blur metrics produce scores without a fixed range, so it is hard to judge the extent of blur directly. This letter presents a NR perceptual blur metric using Saliency Guided Gradient Similarity (SGGS), which produces blur scores with a fixed range of (0,1). A blurred image is first reblurred using a Gaussian low-pass filter, producing a heavily blurred image. With this reblurred image as reference, a local blur map is generated by computing the gradient similarity. Finally, visual saliency is employed in the pooling to adapt to the characteristics of the human visual system (HVS). The proposed metric features fixed range, fast computation and better consistency with the HVS. Experiments demonstrate its advantages.

This letter presents an objective quality index for benchmarking image inpainting algorithms. Under the guidance of the masks of damaged areas, the boundary region and the inpainting region are first located. Then, the statistical features are extracted from the boundary and inpainting regions respectively. For the boundary region, we utilize Weibull distribution to fit the gradient magnitude histograms of the exterior and interior regions around the boundary, and the Kullback-Leibler Divergence (KLD) is calculated to measure the boundary distortions caused by imperfect inpainting. Meanwhile, the quality of the inpainting region is measured by comparing the naturalness factors between the inpainted image and the reference image. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed metric outperforms the relevant state-of-the-art quality metrics.

The skeleton and the skeleton function of an object are important representations for shape analysis and recognition. They contain enough information to recognize an object and to reconstruct its original shape. However, they are sensitive to distortion caused by rotation and noise. This paper presents another approach for binary object representation called a modified exoskeleton(mES) that combines the previously defined exoskeleton with the use of symmetric object whose dominant property is rotation invariant. The mES is the skeleton of a circular background around the object that preserves the skeleton properties including significant information about the object for use in object recognition. Then the matching algorithm for object recognition based on the mES is presented. We applied the matching algorithm to evaluate the mES against the skeleton obtained from using 4-neighbor distance transformation on a set of artificial objects, and the experimental results reveal that the mES is more robust to distortion caused by rotation and noise than the skeleton and that the matching algorithm is capable of recognizing objects effectively regardless of their size and orientation.

This letter presents a novel robust video watermarking scheme based on space-time interest points. These points correspond to inherent structures of the video so that they can be used as synchronization signals for watermark embedding and extraction. In the proposed scheme, local regions are generated using the space-time interest points, and the watermark is embedded into all the regions by quantization. It is a blind scheme and the watermark can be extracted from any position of the video. Experimental results show that the watermark is invisible and it can robustly survive traditional signal processing attacks and video-oriented attacks.