Fault tolerant methods using dynamically reconfigurable devices have been studied to overcome wear-out failures. However, quantitative comparisons have not been sufficiently assessed on device lifetime enhancement with these methods, whereas they have mainly been evaluated individually from various viewpoints such as additional hardware overheads, performance, and downtime for fault recovery. This paper presents quantitative lifetime evaluations performed by simulating the fault-avoidance procedures of five representative methods under the same conditions in wear-out scenarios, applications, and device architecture. The simulation results indicated that improvements of up to 70% mean-time-to-failure (MTTF) in comparison with ideal fault avoidance could be achieved by using methods of fault avoidance with ‘row direction shift’ and ‘dynamic partial reconfiguration’. ‘Column shift’, on the other hand, attained a high degree of stability with moderate improvements in MTTF. The experimental results also revealed that spare basic elements (BEs) should be prevented from aging so that improvements in MTTF would not be adversely affected. Moreover, we found that the selection of initial mappings guided by wire utilization could increase the lifetimes of partial reconfiguration based fault avoidance.

Gaussian mixture model (GMM) has recently been applied for image registration given its robustness and efficiency. However, in previous GMM methods, all the feature points are treated identically. By incorporating local class features, this letter proposes a multiple Gaussian mixture models (M-GMM) method for image registration. The proposed method can achieve higher accuracy results with less registration time. Experiments on real image pairs further proved the superiority of the proposed method.

Negative Bias Temperature Instability (NBTI) is one of the serious concerns for long-term circuit performance degradation. NBTI degrades PMOS transistors under negative bias, whereas they recover once negative bias is removed. In this paper, we propose a mitigation method for NBTI-induced performance degradation that exploits the recovery property by shifting random input sequence through scan paths. With this method, we prevent consecutive stress that causes large degradation. Experimental results reveal that random scan-in vectors successfully mitigate NBTI and the path delay degradation is reduced by 71% in a test case when standby mode occupies 10% of total time. We also confirmed that 8-bit LFSR is capable of random number generation for this purpose with low area and power overhead.

In a multi-user multiple-input multiple-output (MU-MIMO) system that adopts zero-forcing (ZF) as a precoder, the best selection is the combination of users who provide the smallest trace of the inverse of the channel auto-correlation matrix. Noting that the trace of the matrix is closely related to the determinant, we search for users that yield the largest determinant of their channel auto-correlation matrix. The proposed technique utilizes the determinant row-exchange criterion (DREC) for computing the determinant-changing ratio, which is generated whenever a user is replaced by one of a group of pre-selected users. Based on the ratio computed by the DREC, the combination of users providing the largest changing ratio is selected. In order to identify the optimal combination, the DREC procedure is repeated until user replacement provides no increase in the determinant. Through computer simulations of four transmit antennas, we show that the bit error rate (BER) per signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) as well as the sum-rate performance provided by the proposed method is comparable to that of the full search method. Furthermore, using the proposed method, a partial replacement of users can be performed easily with a new user who provides the largest determinant.

Most images obtained with imaging sensors contain Bayer patterns and suffer from blurring caused by the lens. In order to convert a blurred Bayer-patterned image into a viewable image, demosaicing and deblurring are needed. These concepts have been major research areas in digital image processing for several decades. Despite their importance, their performance and efficiency are not satisfactory when considered independently. In this paper, we propose a joint deblurring and demosaicing method in which edge direction and edge strength are estimated in the Bayer domain and then edge adaptive deblurring and edge-oriented interpolation are performed simultaneously from the estimated edge information. Experimental results show that the proposed method produces better image quality than conventional algorithms in both objective and subjective terms.

Coalition Structure Generation (CSG) means partitioning agents into exhaustive and disjoint coalitions so that the sum of values of all the coalitions is maximized. Solving this problem could be facilitated by employing some compact representation schemes, such as marginal contribution network (MC-net). In MC-net, the CSG problem is represented by a set of rules where each rule is associated with a real-valued weights, and the goal is to maximize the sum of weights of rules under some constraints. This naturally leads to a combinatorial optimization problem that could be solved with weighted partial MaxSAT (WPM). In general, WPM deals with only positive weights while the weights involved in a CSG problem could be either positive or negative. With this in mind, in this paper, we propose an extension of WPM to handle negative weights and take advantage of the extended WPM to solve the MC-net-based CSG problem. Specifically, we encode the relations between each pair of agents and reform the MC-net as a set of Boolean formulas. Thus, the CSG problem is encoded as an optimization problem for WPM solvers. Furthermore, we apply this agent relation-based WPM with minor revision to solve the extended CSG problem where the value of a coalition is affected by the formation of other coalitions, a coalition known as externality. Experiments demonstrate that, compared to the previous encoding, our proposed method speeds up the process of solving the CSG problem significantly, as it generates fewer number of Boolean variables and clauses that need to be examined by WPM solver.

This study examines the dialog-based language learning game (DB-LLG) realized in a 3D environment built with game contents. We designed the DB-LLG to communicate with users who can conduct interactive conversations with game characters in various immersive environments. From the pilot test, we found that several technologies were identified as essential in the construction of the DB-LLG such as dialog management, hint generation, and grammar error detection and feedback. We describe the technical details of our system POSTECH immersive English study (Pomy). We evaluated the performance of each technology using a simulator and field tests with users.

This paper proposes a so called quasi-linear support vector machine (SVM), which is an SVM with a composite quasi-linear kernel. In the quasi-linear SVM model, the nonlinear separation hyperplane is approximated by multiple local linear models with interpolation. Instead of building multiple local SVM models separately, the quasi-linear SVM realizes the multi local linear model approach in the kernel level. That is, it is built exactly in the same way as a single SVM model, by composing a quasi-linear kernel. A guided partitioning method is proposed to obtain the local partitions for the composition of quasi-linear kernel function. Experiment results on artificial data and benchmark datasets show that the proposed method is effective and improves classification performances.

We propose an accurate modeling of the wavelength conversion process by dynamic tuning of a dielectric cavity. Since the process involves the long-distance propagation of light, the finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) method is not suitable for modeling of the wavelength conversion process owing to the numerical dispersion error of the FDTD method. The proposed modeling is based on the constrained interpolation profile (CIP) method, which was developed in the field of computational fluid dynamics for the purpose of reducing considerably the numerical dispersion error, and is formulated for a one-dimensional problem using an interpolation function of a higher order than that used in the original CIP method. Numerical experiments reveal that the proposed method can achieve accurate prediction of the wavelength conversion process even with a coarse grid model and is superior to both the original CIP method and the FDTD method.

Location fingerprinting utilizes periodic beacons transmitted by Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN) Access Points (APs) to provide localization in indoor environments. Currently no method is able to quantify the effectiveness of localization information provided by individual APs. Such a metric would enable the optimal placement of new APs as well as eliminating redundant APs so as to reduce the resources consumed by indoor localization software in client devices. This paper proposes LocationInfo, a metric that utilizes walk test data for quantifying the localization efficacy of APs. The performance of LocationInfo is evaluated using two experimental settings. First, it is used for identifying the optimal location for new APs. Second, it is used for filtering out excess APs in a crowded WLAN environment. In both experiments, LocationInfo outperforms existing metrics.

An echo-hiding scheme is presented to detect the pitch variation due to playback speed modification. The inserted time-spread echo is obtained by convolving the highpass filtered audio with a gain-controlled pseudo noise sequence. The perceptual evaluation confirms that the embedded echo is virtually imperceptible. Compared with the Fourier magnitude modulation, the proposed scheme attains better detection rates.

Nonlinearity compensation algorithm and soft-decision forward error correction (FEC) are considered as key technologies for future high-capacity and long-haul optical transmission system. In this report, we experimentally demonstrate the following three benefits brought by low complexity perturbation back-propagation nonlinear compensation algorithm in 224Gb/s DP-16QAM transmission over large-Aeff pure silica core fiber; (1) improvement of pre-FEC bit error ratio, (2) reshaping noise distribution to more Gaussian, and (3) reduction of cycle slip probability.

This paper presents a new information-theoretical evaluation method, for the resistance of cryptographic implementation against side-channel attacks. In conventional methods, the results of actual attacks have been often used empirically. However, these experimental methods have some problems. In the proposed method, a side-channel attack is regarded as a communication channel model. Then, a new evaluation index “the amount of leakage information” can be defined. The upper-bound of this index is estimated as the channel capacity. The proposed evaluation using this index can avoid the problems of conventional methods. Consequently, the proposed method provides some benefits: (1) It provides rationale for evaluation; (2) It enables execution of numerical evaluation and mutual evaluation among several kinds of countermeasures. This research achieves a unification of evaluation indexes for resistance against side-channel attack. This paper applies the proposed method to correlation power analysis against implementations of stream cipher Enocoro-128 v2. As a result, we confirmed its effectiveness.

The body-of-revolution finite-difference time-domain method (BOR-FDTD) based on the locally one-dimensional (LOD) scheme is extended to a frequency-dependent version for the analysis of the Drude and Drude-Lorentz models. The formulation is simplified with a fundamental scheme, in which the number of arithmetic operations is reduced by 40% in the right-hand sides of the resultant equations. Efficiency improvement of the LOD-BOR-FDTD is discussed through the analysis of a plasmonic rod waveguide and a plasmonic grating.

Many fatal accidents involving safety-critical reactive systems have occurred in unexpected situations that were not considered during the design and test phases of development. To prevent such accidents, reactive systems should be designed to respond appropriately to any request from an environment at any time. Verifying this property during the specification phase reduces development reworking. This property of a specification is commonly known as realizability. Realizability checking for reactive system specifications involves complex and intricate analysis. The complexity of realizability problems is 2EXPTIME-complete. To detect typical simple deficiencies in specifications efficiently, we introduce the notion of bounded strong satisfiability (a necessary condition for realizability), and present a method for checking this property. Bounded strong satisfiability is the property that, for all input patterns represented by loop structures of a given size k, there is a response that satisfies a given specification. We report a checking method based on a satisfiability solver, and show that the complexity of the bounded strong satisfiability problem is co-NEXPTIME-complete. Moreover, we report experimental results showing that our method is more efficient than existing approaches.

A build system converts source code, libraries and other data into executable programs by orchestrating the execution of compilers and other tools. The whole building process is managed by a software build system, such as Make, Ant, CMake, Maven, Scons, and QMake. Many studies have investigated bugs and fixes in several systems, but to our best knowledge, none focused on bugs in build systems. One significant feature of software build systems is that they should work on various platforms, i.e., various operating systems (e.g., Windows, Linux), various development environments (e.g., Eclipse, Visual Studio), and various programming languages (e.g., C, C++, Java, C#), so the study of software build systems deserves special consideration. In this paper, we perform an empirical study on bugs in software build systems. We analyze four software build systems, Ant, Maven, CMake and QMake, which are four typical and widely-used software build systems, and can be used to build Java, C, C++ systems. We investigate their bug database and code repositories, randomly sample a set of bug reports and their fixes (800 bugs reports totally, and 199, 250, 200, and 151 bug reports for Ant, Maven, CMake and QMake, respectively), and manually assign them into various categories. We find that 21.35% of the bugs belong to the external interface category, 18.23% of the bugs belong to the logic category, and 12.86% of the bugs belong to the configuration category. We also investigate the relationship between bug categories and bug severities, bug fixing time, and number of bug comments.

Currently, a correspondent host will have difficulties in establishing a direct session path to a mobile host because of the partial deployment of MIPv6-aware mobile hosts. Even MIPv6-aware hosts will spend up to several seconds to obtain the new location of the mobile host during Layer 3 (L3) handover. This paper proposes an application-level mobility management scheme that can solve the problems related to the increase of Internet traffic end-to-end delay under the current situation that most of the mobile devices are MIPv6-non-aware. The proposed Secure Mobility Management Application (SMMA) enables the updates of care-of address to be faster and more reliable even when L3 handovers occur frequently. SMMA uses a cross-layer approach for session mobility management with the support of Binding Updates to the home agent via IPSec tunnels. The main feature of SMMA is to handle the session-related mobility management for which operation starts just after the completion of name resolution as a pre-call mobility management, which operates in conjunction with the DNS. Our session-related mobility management introduces three new signaling messages: SS-Create for session state creation, SS-Refresh for session state extension and SS-Renewal for updating new care-of address at the mid-session. Finally, this paper analyzes the work load imposed on a mobile host to create a session state and the security strength of the SS-Renewal message, which depends on the key size used.

In this paper, we study conjunctive decentralized diagnosis of discrete event systems (DESs). In most existing works on decentralized diagnosis of DESs, it is implicitly assumed that diagnosis decisions of all local diagnosers are available to detect a failure. However, it may be possible that some local diagnosis decisions are not available, due to some reasons. Letting n be the number of local diagnosers, the notion of (n,k)-conjunctive codiagnosability guarantees that the occurrence of any failure is detected in the conjunctive architecture as long as at least k of the n local diagnosis decisions are available. We propose an algorithm for verifying (n,k)-conjunctive codiagnosability. To construct a reliable conjunctive decentralized diagnoser, we need to compute the delay bound within which the occurrence of any failure can be detected as long as at least k of the n local diagnosis decisions are available. We show how to compute the delay bound.