This paper describes a method of age-group classification of young males based on their facial images. The facial shapes of males and females are mostly formed by age 20 and 15, respectively. Our study only considered young males as they have a longer period during which facial shape is a determining factor in age estimation. Age classification was carried out using artificial neural networks. We employed 440 facial images in our experiment, composed of 4 different photographic images taken at ages 12, 15, 18 and 22 of 110 young males. Two methods of age classification were used, each employing different features extracted from the facial images, namely, "mosaic features" and "KL features. " As a result, we obtained about an 80% successful classification rate using mosaic features, and a slightly lower rate using KL features. We also analyzed the connection weights between the hidden and input layers of the trained networks, and examined facial features characteristic to each age group.

Two-dimensional (2-D) codes for optical code-division multiple access (O-CDMA) systems can increase the number of subscribers and simultaneous users as compared to one-dimensional time-spreading codes. Multiple-wavelength optical orthogonal code (MWOOC), which is one of the 2-D codes, uses prime sequences as a wavelength-hopping code and an optical orthogonal code (OOC) as a time-spreading code. MWOOCs have some advantages over other 2-D codes especially in high bit-rate O-CDMA systems. The only drawback of MWOOC is that the performance degrades significantly when the number of wavelengths is not prime. Recently a generalized class of modified prime sequence codes (MPSCs), which includes the class of original MPSCs as its subclass, was presented. An important property of generalized MPSCs is that the codes can be constructed over not only prime fields but also extension fields. It has been shown that the correlation property of generalized MPSCs is the same as that of the original MPSCs. This paper investigates MWOOC with generalized prime sequences, which can be obtained in the process of generating the generalized MPSCs, as a wavelength-hopping code. Use of the generalized prime sequences can solve the nonprime problem of MWOOCs. The average error probability of the proposed MWOOCs is formulated theoretically and numerical results are compared with that of the original schemes. It is shown that nonprime numbers, such as 2m, 3m and 5m, can be also taken as the number of wavelengths without degrading the system performance in the proposed systems.

Several kinds of techniques for excellent multi-user interference (MUI) cancellation have been proposed for direct-detection synchronous optical code division multiple access (OCDMA) systems. All these techniques utilize modified prime sequence codes (MPSCs) as signature codes and can remove MUI errors efficiently. In this paper, the features of three typical MUI cancellers are studied and compared in detail. The authors defined the parameter “decision distance” to show the feature of MUI cancellers. The bit error rate performance of each canceller is investigated by computer simulation and compared with that of the basic on-off keying (OOK) scheme without cancellation. Then, we investigate the relationship between the decision distance and the bit error rate performance. It is shown that every canceller has a better bit error rate performance than the basic OOK scheme. Especially, the equal weight orthogonal (EWO) scheme, whose decision distance is the largest, has the best error resistance property of the three MUI cancellers. The results show that the decision distance is a useful index to evaluate the error resistance property of MUI cancellation schemes.