Electronics and automobiles were bound together by the introduction of emission regulations in the 1970's. The rapid progress of control technology and semiconductors that typify microcomputers has brought still closer relations between them. Without electronics, it would be impossible to realize features such as pursuit of comfort and environmental and safety measures which should be added to the automobile's fundamental features. In looking ahead to the future, the role of electronics in achieving electric automobiles and the ultimate goal of "automatic driving" is ever-increasing. Everyone knows that automobiles have become indispensable in our lives. In the future, the role of electronics will become increasingly important in order to evolve automobiles even further to allow harmonization with society.

In order to develop silicon ICs operating up to above 450, Integrated Injection Logic (IIL) was chosen. A new structure for IIL was designed through experimental and theoretical studies of pn junctions, transistors, and IIL at high temperatures. A 5-µm design rule was used. The new IIL was fabricated by a specially developed combined process of ion implantation and low temperature epitaxy. The IIL was fully operational from room temperature to 454, and the output amplitude of a nine-stage ring oscillator was about 30 mV at 454. The minimum delay time of the IIL was 22 nsec at 454. The minimum power-delay product was 11 pJ and was one-third of that for IILs fabricated by 10-µm rule at 50.

Automotive electronics technology has become extremely advanced in the regions of automotive engine control, anti-skid brake control, and others. These control systems require highly advanced control performance and high speed microprocessors which can rapidly execute interrupt processing. Automotive engine control systems are now widely utilized in cars with high speed, high power engines. At present, it is generally acknowledged that such high performance engine control for the 10,000 rpm, 12 cylinder engines requires three or more conventional microprocessors. We fabricated an engine control system prototype incorporating the data-driven processor under development, which was installed in an actual automobile. In this paper, the characteristics of the engine control program and simulation results are firstly discussed. Secondly, the structure of the engine control system prototype and the control performance applied to the actual automobile are shown. Finally, from the results of software simulation and the installation of the engine control system prototype with the data-driven processor, we conclude that a single chip data-driven microprocessor can control a high speed, high power, 10,000 rpm, 12 cylinder automobile engine.

With the evolution of semiconductor technology, automotive electronics has made tremendous progress. The aim of automotive electronics is to improve the basic automotive functions of vehicles (running, turning, and stopping) from the standpoint of environmental protection, energy conservation, and transportation efficiency. This paper introduces the process of automotive electronics with an emphasis on major control systems such as engines and brakes. The role of ASICs in automotive control systems is also presented with actual examples of ASICs that are used in these systems.

This paper describes our recent developments of ASICs for automotive multiplexing and data communications to implement in-vehicle networks. With the advancement of automotive electronics, there are ever growing needs for in-vehicle networks. One need is associated with solving the problem of an increasing number of electrical signal wires that inevitably accompany the increasing applications of automotive electronics. Another kind of need is concerned with sharing vehicle control data among several electronic control units such as engine, brake, suspension, and steering electronic control units to achieve an integrated vehicle control system for the purpose of obtaining higher performances in vehicle dynamics. In order to reduce the number of signal wires and share the control data, in-vehicle networks based on multiplexing and data communications are required. In this paper, two original communication protocols are presented to respectively cover low- and highi-speed multiplexing and data communications that are two most needed communication speed areas in our present and future automobiles. ASICs for the presented communication protoclos were designed and fabricated, using 2 µm COMS process. They have the chip size of 3.2 mm2.7 mm with 5,000 transistors and 6.9 mm4.9 mm with 18,000 transistors respectively for low- and high-speed multiplexing and data communications. An elaborate bus driver/receiver ASIC required for high-speed multiplexing and data communications was also designed and fabricated, using 35 V DC bipolar process. As one of its distinctive features, it can greatly suppress radio frequency noise radiated from a communication bus. It has the chip size of 4.8 mm3.8 mm that contains 570 device elements. The features of the protocols are given in detail with the descriptions of the developed ASICs.

This paper describes and analyzed several indices in assessing algorithms of data compression of electrocardiograms, such as the cross correlation (CC), the percent root mean square difference (PRD), and a new measure of standardized root mean square difference (SRD). Although these indices are helpful to objectively evaluate the algorithms, the visual examination of the reconstructed waveform is indispensable to decide the optimal compression ratio. This paper presents the clinical significance of selected waveforms which are prone to be distorted or neglected in the restored waveforms but are crucial for cardiologists to diagnose the patient. A database of electrocardiograms is also proposed for the comparative evaluation of compression algorithms.

We use the B spline function and apply the Oslo algorithm to minimize the number of control points in electrocardiogram (ECG) waveform compression under the limitation of evaluation indexes. This method is based on dynamic programming matching to transfer the control points of a reference ECG waveform to the succeeding ECG waveforms. This reduces the execution time for beat-to-beat processing. We also reduced the processing time at several compression stages. When the difference percent normalized root mean square difference is around 10, our method gives the highest compression ratio at a sampling frequency of 250 Hz.

This letter shows that VEPs can be easily measured by using color cards as the color stimulus, and that the responses evoked by a difference in chroma could be described largely by the value of the first principal component in principal component analysis.

It was more than 10 years ago that the first map navigation system, as an example of invehicle information system, has appeared in the market in Japan. Today's navigation system has been improved to the level that the latest system has 10 micro-processors, 7 MBytes of memories, and 4 GBytes of external data storage for map database. From the viewpoint of the automobile driver, there are still some problems with the system. Major problems in general are a lack of traffic information, better human interface, and a need for cost-reduction. The introduction of application specific ICs (ASICs) is expected to make systems smaller, costless, and give higher speed response. Today's in-vehicle information systems are reviewed function by function to discover what functions need to be implemented into ASICs for future systems, what ASICs will be required, and what technology has to be developed. It is concluded that more integration technology is expected including high parformance CPUs, large capacity memories, interface circuits, and some analog circuits such as DA converter. To develop this technology, some, major problems such as power consumption, number of input/output signals, as well as design aid and process technology are pointed out.

The two-dimensional nested cellular automata array presented here as a method for testing CCD arrays accommodates a set of spatial bilateral inhibition and excitation, and thus generates spatio-temporal artificial chaotic signals. Adequate use of the spatio-temporal pulses achieves exact line detection that is completely different from the template-matching scheme used by conventional methods.

Electromagnetic plane wave scattering by a wide trough on the ground has been analyzed by high frequency asymptotic techniques based on Geometrical Theory of Diffraction. Field in the trough region has been formulated in terms of parallel plane waveguide modes, whose excitation (coupling) coefficients are obtained by ray-mode conversion techniques. Numerical calculation has been done extensively and thus obtained results are then compared with those by other methods. Good agreements have been observed except for oblique incidence case. It is found that first and secondary modal re-radiation fields from the indented trough region play an important role for scattering far field, and primary edge diffracted field contributes mainly to reflection boundary direction.

We extend the concept "optical instanton" to arbitrary dielectric media. For these general cases the exact analytical approach is no longer available. We derive an approximate analytical solution that would be valid in the vicinity of the light cone. A comparison is made between the analytical and the numerical solutions.

We have developed new DMOS FET (DMOS) and intelligent power devices (IPD) specified for automotive load driving. Their features are extra-high surge immunity and low on-resistance. MOS power semiconductor devices are the most suitable for driving high speed and large current loads in future car electronics, but their high cost is the main obstacle preventing their implementation. To cut the total system cost, we have tried to enhance surge immunity of power semiconductor devices, at the same time reducing ON resistance, which enables us to omit external protection. Enhanced avalanche power dissipation also enables us to lower the breakdown voltage of the device, which also brings lower on-resistance. The drain to source avalanche immunity of vertical type DMOS (VDMOS) has been sharply improved by using the parasitic PN junction of the channel diffusion region as the cellular zener diode. Avalanche power dissipation energy per unit area of this durable DMOS is 10 to 100 times higher than that of conventional VDMOSs. Although the breakdown voltage of this device is only 30V, no external protection device is required in automotive applications. Several fault phenomena which might occur in this device are also described. Two types of IPDs are proposed in this paper. One is a durable and low-cost high-side switch IPD, whose enhanced surge immunity of IC section from VDD line transient is verified by prototypes. Simplification of the fabrication process has also been achieved by lowering its breakdown voltage. The other is an extra-low on-resistance H-bridge IPD. Major on-resistance reduction of an output lateral type DMOS (LDMOS) is achieved because the cell-array structure is realized by applying 2-layer electrode technology to the power section. The on-resistance per unit area of this LDMOS is almost equal to that of VDMOSs in the same voltage class.

In the present paper, we focus ourselves on the turning point (TP) algorithm proposed by Mueller and evaluate its performance when applied to a Gaussian signal with definite covariance function. Then the ECG wave is modeled by Gaussian signals: namely, the ECG is divided into two segments, the baseline segment and the QRS segment. The baseline segment is modeled by a Gaussian signal with butterworth spectrum and the QRS one by a narrow-band Gaussian signal. Performance of the TP algorithm is evaluated and compared when it is applied to a real ECG signal and its Gaussian model. The compression rate (CR) and the normalized mean square error (NMSE) are used as measures of performance. These measures show good coincidence with each other when applied to Gaussian signals with the mentioned spectra. Our results suggest that performance evaluation of the compression algorithms based on the stochastic-process model of ECG waves may be effective.

Phase noise generation in varactor-tuned oscillators is analyzed by an asymptotic perturbation technique. It is found out that 1/f noise and AM noise are converted into phase noise by first- and higher-order nonlinearities of the varactor. The deduced formula can be utilized in CAD for circuit evaluation/optimization of varactor-tuned osicillators.

An electrocardiogram (ECG) data compression algorithm using a polygonal approximation and the template beat variation method (TBV) has been evaluated by reconstruction error and automatic interpretation. The algorithm combining SAPA3 with TBV (SAPA3/TBV) has superior compression performance in PRD and compression ratio. The reconstruction errors, defined as the difference of the amplitude and the time duration between the original ECG and the reconstructed one, are large at waves with small amplitude and/or gradual slopes such as the P wave. Tracing rebuilt from the compressed ECG has been analysed using the automatic interpretative program, and the diagnostic answers with the realated measurements have been compared with the results obtained on the original ECG. The data compression algorithms (SAPA3 and SAPA3/TBV) have been tested on 100 cases in the data base produced by CSE. The reconstruction errors are related to the diagnostic errors. The TBV method suppresses these errors and more than 90% of diagnostic agreements at the error limit of 15µV can be obtained.

A method for the compression of ECG data is presented. The method is based on the edit distance algorithm developed in the file comparison problems. The edit distance between two sequences of symbols is defined as the number of edit operations required to transform a sequence of symbols into the other. We adopt the edit distance algorithm to obtain a list of edit operations, called edit script, which transforms a reference pulse into a pulse selected from ECG data. If the decoder knows the same reference, it can reproduce the original pulse, only from the edit script. The amount of the edit script is expected to be smaller than that of the original pulse when the two pulses look alike and thereby we can reduce the amount of space to store the data. Applying the proposed scheme to the raw data of ECG, we have achieved a high compression about 14: 1 without losing the significant features of signals.

The performances of BPNN (neural network trained by back propagation) and PCANN (neural network which computes principal component analysis) for ECG data compression have been investigated from several points of view. We have compared them with an existing data compression method TOMEK. We used MIT/BIH arrhythmia database as ECG data. Both BPNN and PCANN showed better results than TOMEK. They showed 1.1 to 1.4 times higher compression than TOMEK to achieve the same accuracy of reproduction (13.0% of PRD and 99.0% of CC). While PCANN showed better learning ability than BPNN in simple learning task, BPNN was a little better than PCANN regarding compression rates. Observing the reproduced waveforms, BPNN and PCANN had almost the same performance, and they were superior to TOMEK. The following characteristics were obtained from the experiments. Since PCANN is sensitive to the learning rate, we had to precisely control the learning rate while the learning is in progress. We also found the tendency that PCANN needs larger amount of iteration in learning than BPNN for getting the same performance. PCANN showed better learning ability than BPNN, however, the total learning cost were almost the same between BPNN and PCANN due to the large amount of iteration. We analyzed the connection weight patterns. Since PCANN has a clear mathematical background, its behavior can be explained theoretically. BPNN sometimes generated the connection weights which were similar to the principal components. We supposed that BPNN may occasionally generate those patterns, and performs well while doing that. Finally we concluded as follows. Although the difference of the performances is smal, it was always observed and PCANN never exceeded BPNN. When the ease of analysis or the relation to mathematics is important, PCANN is suitable. It will be useful for the study of the recorded data such as statistics.

For analyzing the transient electromagnetic fields caused by electrostatic discharge (ESD), a new ESD model is presented here. Numerical calculation is also given to explain the distinctive phenomenon being well-recognized in the ESD event.