Multi-view video consists of multiple video sequences which are captured by multiple closely spaced cameras from different angles and positions. It enables each user to freely switch viewpoints by playing different video sequences. However, the transmission of multi-view video requires more bandwidth than conventional multimedia. To reduce the bandwidth, UDMVT (User Dependent Multi-view Video Transmission) based on MVC (Multi-view Video Coding) for a single user has been proposed. In UDMVT, the same frames are encoded into different versions for different users, which increases the redundant transmission. To overcome this problem and extend UDMVT to multiple users' environment, this paper proposes UMSM (User dependent Multi-view video Streaming for Multi-users). UMSM calculates the overlapping and un-overlapping frame area for multiple users from all frames based on feedback information at a server. Proposed UMSM exploits the combination of multicasting overlapping area to multiple users and unicasting un-overlapping area to each user. By means of this concept, UMSM only transmits required frames for each user. To achieve further reduction of the traffic, UMSM combines other two features with this concept. The first one is that offset of the requests from multiple users is aligned periodically to maximize the overlapping frame area. The second one is that the SP-frames standardized in H.264/AVC are exploited as the anchor frame of overlapping frame area to prevent redundant transmissions of overlapping frames. The combination of these three techniques achieves substantial reduction of the transmission bitrate for multiple users in multi-view video streaming. Simulation results using benchmark test sequences provided by MERL show that UMSM decreases the transmission bit-rate 47.2% on average for 4 users are watching the same multi-view video compared to UDMVT.

Estimating the packet loss ratio of TCP transfers is essential for passively measuring Quality of Service (QoS) on the Internet traffic. However, only a few studies have been conducted on this issue. The Benko-Veres algorithm is one technique for estimating the packet loss ratio of two networks separated by a measurement point. However, this study shows that it leads to an estimation error of a few hundred percent in the particular environment where the packet loss probabilities between the two networks are asymmetrical. We propose a passive method for packet loss estimation that offers improved estimation accuracy by introducing classification conditions for the TCP retransmission timeout. An experiment shows that our proposed algorithm suppressed the maximum estimation error to less than 15%.

Rateless erasure code is an error correction code that is able to encode a message of k uncoded symbols into an infinite number of coded symbols. One may reconstruct the original message from any k(1+ε) coded symbols, where ε denotes the decoding inefficiency. This paper proposes a hybrid code that combines the stepping code and random code and name it as Stepping-Random (SR) code. The Part I (first k) coded symbols of SR code are generated with stepping code. The rest of the coded symbols are generated with random code and denoted as Part II coded symbols. The numerical results show that the new hybrid code is able to achieve a complete decoding with no extra coded symbol (ε=0) if all the Part I coded symbols are received without loss. However, if only a portion of Part I coded symbols are received, a high probability of complete decoding is still achievable with k+10 coded symbols from the combination of Part I and II. SR code has a decoding complexity of O(k) in the former and O((βk)3) in the latter, where β ∈ R for 0 ≤ β ≤ 1, is the fraction of uncoded symbols that fails to be reconstructed from Part I coded symbols.

Amplitude phase shift keying (APSK) constellation with Gray mapping was proposed recently. Inspired by the simplified soft demapping for regular Gray-QAM, a simplified soft demapping algorithm for Gray-APSK is proposed in this paper. Compared with conventional soft demapping schemes, its complexity is greatly reduced with only a little SNR loss, which is validated by the complexity analysis and FPGA compilation results.

This paper describes the breathing phantom built to test a six-degree-of freedom sensing device designed for use in Respiratory-Gated Radiotherapy (RGRT). It is focussed on the construction of a test bed that was designed to address tumour motion issues while, at the same time, behaving in much the same way as the human tissues when irradiated. The phantom can produce respiratory movement in three dimensions. Shift differences between the motion axes can be introduced. The position error in the worst case scenario is not greater that 0.4 mm. Emphasis is made on the technical limitations of current sensing technologies, especially with regard to acceleration sensitivity. This study demonstrates that the sensitivity of accelerometers used to sense tumour motion should be 0.05 mG or less.

The simple repetitive control system proposed by Yamada et al. is a type of servomechanism for periodic reference inputs. This system follows a periodic reference input with a small steady-state error, even if there is periodic disturbance or uncertainty in the plant. In addition, simple repetitive control systems ensure that transfer functions from the periodic reference input to the output and from the disturbance to the output have finite numbers of poles. Yamada et al. clarified the parameterization of all stabilizing simple repetitive controllers. Recently, Yamada et al. proposed the parameterization of all stabilizing two-degrees-of-freedom (TDOF) simple repetitive controllers that can specify the input-output characteristic and the disturbance attenuation characteristic separately. However, when using the method of Yamada et al., it is complex to specify the low-pass filter in the internal model for the periodic reference input that specifies the frequency characteristics. This paper extends the results of Yamada et al. and proposes the parameterization of all stabilizing TDOF simple repetitive controllers with specified frequency characteristics in which the low-pass filter can be specified beforehand.

This paper presents a 20 GHz push-push VCO realized by a 10 GHz super-harmonic coupled quadrature oscillator for a quadrature 60 GHz frequency synthesizer. The output nodes are peaked by a tunable second harmonic resonator. The proposed VCO is implemented in 65 nm CMOS process. It achieves a tuning range of 3.5 GHz from 16.1 GHz to 19.6 GHz with a phase noise of -106 dBc/Hz at 1 MHz offset. The power consumption of the core oscillators is 10.3 mW and an FoM of -181.3 dBc/Hz is achieved.

Circuit techniques to enhance the linearity of input-voltage-to-current (V/I) conversion and to increase the output impedance of a current source by compensating for the low intrinsic gain of a transistor were introduced to realize a high-frequency operational transconductance amplifier (OTA) for a low supply voltage using sub-100-nm CMOS processes. Applying these techniques, a MOS 7th-order Gm-C linear-phase low-pass filter (LPF) was realized using a 65 nm CMOS process. A simplified biquad LPF that can serve as a component of a 7th-order LPF was newly developed by replacing OTAs with resistors. As a result, the -3 dB frequency bandwidth, group delay ripple, 3rd-order distortion, and 3rd-order input intercept point (IIP3) were 200 MHz, 2.2%, ≤ -55 dB with a 100 MHz input, and +10.3 dBm, respectively, all with a ± 0.1 Vp-p input signal at each input terminal in the pseudodifferential configuration. The LPF including an output buffer dissipated 60 mW in the case of a 1.2 V supply. Wide spurious-free dynamic range (SFDR) characteristics were confirmed up to high frequencies.

The response of differential pairs against low-frequency substrate voltage variation is captured in a combined transistor and substrate network models. The model generation is regularized for variation of transistor geometries including channel sizes, fingering and folding, and the placements of guard bands. The expansion of the models for full-chip substrate noise analysis is also discussed. The substrate sensitivity of differential pairs is evaluated through on-chip substrate coupling measurements in a 90 nm CMOS technology with more than 64 different geometries and operating conditions. The trends and strengths of substrate sensitivity are shown to be well consistent between simulation and measurements.

Recent attempts to directly combine CMOS pixel readout chips with modern gas detectors open the possibility to fully take advantage of gas detectors. Those conventional readout LSIs designed for hybrid semiconductor detectors show some issues when applied to gas detectors. Several new proposed readout LSIs can improve the time and the charge measurement precision. However, the widely used basic charge sensitive amplifier (CSA) has an almost fixed dynamic range. There is a trade-off between the charge measurement resolution and the detectable input charge range. This paper presents a method to apply the folding integration technique to a basic CSA. As a result, the detectable input charge dynamic range is expanded while maintaining all the key merits of a basic CSA. Although folding integration technique has already been successfully applied in CMOS image sensors, the working conditions and the signal characteristics are quite different for pixel readout LSIs for gas particle detectors. The related issues of the folding CSA for pixel readout LSIs, including the charge error due to finite gain of the preamplifier, the calibration method of charge error, and the dynamic range expanding efficiency, are addressed and analyzed. As a design example, this paper also demonstrates the application of the folding integration technique to a Qpix readout chip. This improves the charge measurement resolution and expands the detectable input dynamic range while maintaining all the key features. Calculations with SPICE simulations show that the dynamic range can be improved by 12 dB while the charge measurement resolution is improved by 10 times. The charge error during the folding operation can be corrected to less than 0.5%, which is sufficient for large input charge measurement.

Many problems can be formulated as maximum clique problems. Hence, it is highly important to develop algorithms that can find a maximum clique very fast in practice. We propose new approximate coloring and other related techniques which markedly improve the run time of the branch-and-bound algorithm MCR (J. Global Optim., 37, pp.95–111, 2007), previously shown to be the fastest maximum-clique-finding algorithm for a large number of graphs. The algorithm obtained by introducing these new techniques in MCR is named MCS. It is shown that MCS is successful in reducing the search space quite efficiently with low overhead. Extensive computational experiments confirm the superiority of MCS over MCR and other existing algorithms. It is faster than the other algorithms by orders of magnitude for several graphs. In particular, it is faster than MCR for difficult graphs of very high density and for very large and sparse graphs, even though MCS is not designed for any particular type of graph. MCS can be faster than MCR by a factor of more than 100,000 for some extremely dense random graphs. This paper demonstrates in detail the effectiveness of each new techniques in MCS, as well as the overall contribution.

In this paper, we present a novel class of long quasi-cyclic low-density parity-check (QC-LDPC) codes. Each of the codes in this class has a structure formed by concatenating single-parity-check codes and QC-LDPC codes of shorter lengths, which allows for efficient, high throughput encoder/decoder implementations. Using a code in this class, we design a forward error correction (FEC) scheme for optical transmission systems and present its high throughput encoder/decoder architecture. In order to demonstrate its feasibility, we implement the architecture on a field programmable gate array (FPGA) platform. We show by both FPGA-based simulations and measurements of an optical transmission system that the FEC scheme can achieve excellent error performance and that there is no significant performance degradation due to the constraint on its structure while getting an efficient, high throughput implementation is feasible.

We consider the problem of detecting and localizing of link quality degradations in transparent wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) networks. In particular, we consider the degradation of the optical signal-to-noise ratio (OSNR), which is a key parameter for link quality monitoring in WDM networks. With transparency in WDM networks, transmission lightpaths can bypass electronic processing at intermediate nodes. Accordingly, links cannot always be monitored by receivers at their end nodes. This paper proposes the use of optical multicast probes to monitor OSNR degradations on optical links. The proposed monitoring scheme consists of two steps. The first step is an off-line process to set up monitoring trees using integer linear programming (ILP). The set of monitoring trees is selected to guarantee that significant OSNR degradations can be identified on any link or links in the network. The second step uses optical performance monitors that are placed at the receivers identified in the first step. The information from these monitors is collected and input to the estimation algorithm to localize the degraded links. Numerical results indicate that the proposed monitoring algorithm is able to detect link degradations that cause significant OSNR changes. In addition, we demonstrate how the information obtained from monitoring can be used to detect a significant end-to-end OSNR degradation even though there is no significant OSNR degradation on individual links.

In maritime networks, the communication links are characterized as high dynamics due to ship mobility and fluctuation of the sea surface. The performance of traditional transmission protocols is poor in maritime networks. Thus, some researchers have considered using Delay Tolerant Network (DTN) to improve the performance of data transmission in maritime environment. Most existing work on maritime DTNs uses simulation to evaluate the transmission performance in maritime DTNs. In this paper, we develop a theoretical model to analyze the performance of data transmission in maritime DTNs. We first construct a model to describe the ship encounter probability. Then, we use this model to analyze the data delivery ratio from ships in the seaway to the base station (BS) on the coast. Based on the data of tracing the ships navigating in a realistic seaway, we develop a simulator and validate the theoretical models. In addition, by comparing the performance of DTN transmission protocol and traditional end-to-end transmission protocol, we confirm that DTN protocol can effectively improve the performance of data transmission in maritime networks.

In this paper, we propose a generic construction of one-round attribute-based (implicitly) authenticated key exchange (ABAKE). The construction is based on a chosen-ciphertext (CCA) secure attribute-based KEM and the decisional Diffie-Hellman (DDH) assumption. If an underlying attribute-based KEM scheme allows expressive access controls and is secure in the standard model (StdM), an instantiated ABAKE scheme also achieves them. Our scheme enjoys the best of both worlds: efficiency and security. The number of rounds is one (optimal) while the known secure scheme in the StdM is not one-round protocol. Our scheme is comparable in communication complexity with the most efficient known scheme that is not proved in the StdM. Also, our scheme is proved to satisfy security against advanced attacks like key compromise impersonation.

Given a binary image I and a threshold t, the size-thresholded binary image I(t) defined by I and t is the binary image after removing all connected components consisting of at most t pixels. This paper presents space-efficient algorithms for computing a size-thresholded binary image for a binary image of n pixels, assuming that the image is stored in a read-only array with random-access. With regard to the problem, there are two cases depending on how large the threshold t is, namely, Relatively large threshold where t = Ω(), and Relatively small threshold where t = O(). In this paper, a new algorithmic framework for the problem is presented. From an algorithmic point of view, the problem can be solved in O() time and O() work space. We propose new algorithms for both the above cases which compute the size-threshold binary image for any binary image of n pixels in O(nlog n) time using only O() work space.

This paper presents an efficient algorithm for reporting all intersections among n given segments in the plane using work space of arbitrarily given size. More exactly, given a parameter s which is between Ω(1) and O(n) specifying the size of work space, the algorithm reports all the segment intersections in roughly O(n2/+ K) time using O(s) words of O(log n) bits, where K is the total number of intersecting pairs. The time complexity can be improved to O((n2/s) log s + K) when input segments have only some number of different slopes.

Forward secrecy (FS) is a central security requirement of authenticated key exchange (AKE). Especially, strong FS (sFS) is desirable because it can guarantee security against a very realistic attack scenario that an adversary is allowed to be active in the target session. However, most of AKE schemes cannot achieve sFS, and currently known schemes with sFS are only proved in the random oracle model. In this paper, we propose a generic construction of AKE protocol with sFS in the standard model against a constrained adversary. The constraint is that session-specific intermediate computation results (i.e., session state) cannot be revealed to the adversary for achieving sFS, that is shown to be inevitable by Boyd and González Nieto. However, our scheme maintains weak FS (wFS) if session state is available to the adversary. Thus, our scheme satisfies one of strongest security definitions, the CK+ model, which includes wFS and session state reveal. The main idea to achieve sFS is to use signcryption KEM while the previous CK+ secure construction uses ordinary KEM. We show a possible instantiation of our construction from Diffie-Hellman problems.

In this paper, we propose an identity-based authenticated key exchange (ID-AKE) protocol that is secure in the identity-based extended Canetti-Krawczyk (id-eCK) model in the random oracle model under the gap Bilinear Diffie-Hellman assumption. The proposed ID-AKE protocol is the most efficient among the existing ID-AKE protocols that is id-eCK secure, and it can be extended to use in asymmetric pairing.

Corpus-based concatenative speech synthesis has been widely investigated and deployed in recent years since it provides a highly natural synthesized speech quality. The amount of computation required in the run time, however, can often be quite large. In this paper, we propose early stopping schemes for Viterbi beam search in the unit selection, with which we can stop early in the local Viterbi minimization for each unit as well as in the exploration of candidate units for a given target. It takes advantage of the fact that the space of the acoustic parameters of the database units is fixed and certain lower bounds of the concatenation costs can be precomputed. The proposed method for early stopping is admissible in that it does not change the result of the Viterbi beam search. Experiments using probability-based concatenation costs as well as distance-based costs show that the proposed methods of admissible stopping effectively reduce the amount of computation required in the Viterbi beam search while keeping its result unchanged. Furthermore, the reduction effect of computation turned out to be much larger if the available lower bound for concatenation costs is tighter.