Quick Response (QR) code is a two dimensional barcode widely used in many applications. A standard QR code consists of black and white square modules, and it appears randomized patterns. By modifying the modules using certain rule, it is possible to display a logo image on the QR code. Such a QR code is called an aesthetic QR code. In this paper, we change the encoding method of the Reed-Solomon (RS) code to produce an aesthetic QR code without sacrificing its error correcting capability. The proposed method randomly produces candidates of RS blocks and finds the best one during encoding. Considering an image to be displayed, we also introduce a weighting function during random selection that classifies the visually important regions in the image. We further investigate the shape of modules which represents the image and consider the trade-off between the visual quality and its readability. As a result, we can produce a beautiful aesthetic QR code, which still can be decoded by standard QR code reader.

An improvement of estimating sound power spectra located in a particular 2-dimensional area is proposed. We previously proposed a conventional method that estimates sound power spectra using multiple fixed beamformings in order to emphasize speech located in a particular 2-dimensional area. However, the method has one drawback that the number of areas where the active sound sources are located must be restricted. This restriction makes the method less effective when many noise source located in different areas are simultaneously active. In this paper, we reveal the cause of this restriction and determine the maximum number of areas for which the method is able to simultaneously estimate sound power spectra. Then we also introduce a procedure for investigating areas that include active sound sources to reduce the number of unknown power spectra to be estimated. The effectiveness of the proposed method is examined by experimental evaluation applied to sounds recorded in a practical environment.

Multiple-access interference (MAI) limits the bit error rate (BER) performance of CDMA uplink transmission. In this paper, we propose a generalized chip-interleaved CDMA with 2-dimensional (2D) spreading using orthogonal variable spreading factor (OVSF) codes to minimize the MAI effects and achieve the maximum available time- and frequency-domain diversity gains. We present the code assignment for 2D spreading to provide users with flexible multi-rate data transmission. A computer simulation shows that by the joint use of 2D OVSF spreading and chip-interleaving, MAI-free transmission is possible for the quasi-synchronous DS- or MC-CDMA uplink, and hence the single-user frequency-domain equalization based on the MMSE criterion can be applied for signal detection. The BER performance in a time- and frequency-selective fading multiuser channel is theoretically analyzed and evaluated by both numerical computation and computer simulation.

In this paper an analysis of component and system reliability for lattice systems is proposed when component failures are not statistically independent. We deal the case that the failure rate of a component depends on the number of the adjacent failed components. And we discuss the maintainability of the system when a failed component is replaced by a spare component. At first we discuss the approximated reliability of each component. Then we estimate the mean number of failed components. Furthermore, the system reliability is approximated by using the component reliability.

In this letter, orthogonal frequency division multiplexing-code division multiplexing (OFDM-CDM) using a novel 2-dimensional spreading scheme is proposed as a candidate for a next-generation multiple access scheme. Full residual frequency diversity gain can be obtained with OFDM-CDM by adapting the proposed 2-dimensional spreading scheme with a novel frequency-hopping technique. Setting the frequency-hopping pattern in proper consideration of the coherent channel bandwidth allows us to exploit both the full frequency diversity and the time diversity in any channel environment.

We propose a new receiving method for an information-providing system that uses LED-based traffic lights as the transmitter. We analyzed the improvements obtained when 2-dimentional image sensor replaced the conventional single-element photodiode. First, we discuss the maximum receiver's field of view (FOV) when using the 2-dimentional image sensor at a particular focal length. We analyzed the best vertical inclination for both lanes and quantified the improvements in terms of the enhancement of received signal-noise ratio (SNR) when different numbers of pixels were applied. Our results indicate that using more pixels increases the received SNR and the service area becomes wider compared to the conventional single-element system. Consequently, receivable information within the service area also increased. We also found that the optimum number of pixels to accomplish a reliable communication system is 5050 because performance degradation occured with a larger number of pixels.

A 2-dimensional cylindrical k-within-consecutive-(r, s)-out-of-(m, n):F system consists of m n components arranged on a cylindrical grid. Each of m circles has n components, and this system fails if and only if there exists a grid of size r s within which at least k components are failed. This system may be used into reliability models of "Feelers for measuring temperature on reaction chamber," "TFT Liquid Crystal Display system with 360 degree wide area" and others. In this paper, first, we propose an efficient algorithm for the reliability of a 2-dimensional cylindrical k-within-consecutive-(r, s)-out-of-(m, n):F system. The feature of this algorithm is calculating their system reliabilities with shorter computing time and smaller memory size than Akiba and Yamamoto. Next, we show some numerical examples so that our proposed algorithm is more effective than Akiba and Yamamoto for systems with large n.

This report describes face image recognition by 2-dimensional discrete Walsh transform and multi-layer neural networks. Neural network (NN) is one of the powerful tools for pattern recognition. In the previous researches of face image recognition by NN, the gray levels on each pixel of the face image have been used for input data to NN. However, because the face image has usually too many pixels, a variety of approaches have been required to reduce the number of the input data. In this research, 2-dimensional discrete Walsh transform is used for reduction of input data and the recognition is done by multi-layer neural networks. Finally, the validity of our method is varified.

Due to the explosive growth of the network technologies, 3D models and animations have led to a great interest in various media. Especially 3D mesh models (3D meshes), which approximate surfaces by polygonal meshes are widely used to model 3D objects. In 1D and 2D signals such as speech, audio, images, video, etc., the signal values are located on "grids", for example the signals of images are defined on pixels. Thus, the errors of such signals can be explicitly defined by differences of the values on the "grids". However since in the 3D meshes, vertices are located on arbitrary positions in a 3D space and are triangulated in arbitrary ways, the grids cannot be defined. This makes it difficult to measure error on the 3D meshes. In this paper, we propose a new numerical method to measure the errors between two different 3D meshes.

An exact and an approximated reliabilities of a 2-dimensional consecutive k-out-of-n:F system are discussed. Although analysis to obtain exact reliability requires many calculation resources for a system with a large number of components, the proposed method obtains the reliability lower bound by using a combinatorial equation that does not depend on the system size. The method has an assumption on the maximum number of failed components in an operable system. The reliability is exact when the total number of failed components is less than the assumed maximum number. The accuracy of the method is confirmed by numerical examples.

Compatibility of conventional lossless discrete cosine transforms (LDCTs) with the discrete cosine transform (DCT) is not high due to rounding operations. In this paper, we design an LDCT which has high compatibility with the DCT. We first design an 8-point DCT (DCT3) by changing the order of row of the transform matrix and also the way of decomposing the DCT in order to obtain an 8-point LDCT which has high compatibility with the DCT. Next we design an 88-point nonseparable 2D LDCT based on a 4-point lossless Walsh-Hadamard Transform (LWHT) which is multiplier-free. The DCT3 is used, when the nonseparable 2D LDCT is designed. Simulation results show that compatibility of the nonseparable 2D LDCT with the separable 2D DCT is high. We also design an 88-point nonseparable 2D LWHT which is multiplier-free and indicate that its compatibility with the separable 2D Walsh-Hadamard Transform is high.

The conventional synthesis procedure of discrete time sparsely interconnected neural networks (DTSINNs) for associative memories may generate the cells with only self-feedback due to the sparsely interconnected structure. Although this problem is solved by increasing the number of interconnections, hardware implementation becomes very difficult. In this letter, we propose the DTSINN system which stores the 2-dimensional discrete Walsh transforms (DWTs) of memory patterns. As each element of DWT involves the information of whole sample data, our system can associate the desired memory patterns, which the conventional DTSINN fails to do.

In this paper the design of systolic array processors for computing 2-dimensional Discrete Fourier Transform (2-D DFT) is considered. We investigated three different computational schemes for designing systolic array processors using systematic approach. The systematic approach guarantees to find optimal systolic array processors from a large solution space in terms of the number of processing elements and I/O channels, the processing time, topology, pipeline period, etc. The optimal systolic array processors are scalable, modular and suitable for VLSI implementation. An application of the designed systolic array processors to the prime-factor DFT is also presented.

This paper is concened with the design and implementation of a 2-channel, 2-dimensional filter bank using rectangular (analog/digital) and quincunx (digital/digital) sampling. The associated analog low-pass filters are separable where as the digital low-pass filters are non-separable for a minimum sampling density requirement. The digital low-pass filters are Butterworth type filters, N = 9, realized as LWDFs. They, when itterated, approximate a valid scaling function (raised-consine scaling function). The obtained system can be used to compute a discrete wavelet transform.