We proposed a new motion vector (MV) smoothing using fuzzy weighting and vector median filtering for frame rate up-conversion. A fuzzy reasoning system adjusts the weighting values based on the local characteristics of MV field including block difference and block boundary distortion. The fuzzy weighting removes the affect of outliers and irregular MVs from the MV smoothing process. The simulation results show that the proposed algorithm can efficiently correct wrong MVs and thus improve visual quality of the interpolated frames better than conventional methods.

Energy efficiency is one of the most important attributes in sensor network protocols. In sensor nodes, communication related activities consume the major share of battery energy. Therefore, judicious choice of transmit power and frame size are very important to maximize the energy efficiency and hence the lifetime of nodes. While there have been a few recent studies on transmit power control implementation in sensor nodes, no report has thoroughly investigated transmit power control and the effect of its interplay with frame size on nodal energy saving. In this paper, we report our implementation of automatic transmit power control in wireless sensor nodes based on open loop parameters -- namely, link layer frame size, and close loop parameters -- namely, number of consecutive positive acknowledgments and receive signal strength. Our extensive indoor and outdoor experimental results show that, for low to moderate transmission distances, transmit power control has the energy saving benefit, and the larger the frame size the more the energy saving. At a higher transmission distance or at a more error-prone communication scenario, transmit power control as well as a large frame size are detrimental to energy saving performance. The results from this study could be useful in deciding power control strategies and optimum frame length.

This paper proposes two novel frame resource allocation schemes: Mixed bidirectional allocation scheme and Offset allocation scheme. They improve system capacity and latency performance unlike the conventional time-division duplex relay scheme which divides the frame structure into time segments for the access zone and time segment for the relay zones as in IEEE802.16j (WiMAX) systems. Computer simulations confirm that the two proposed schemes outperform the conventional schemes in terms of throughput and latency. An evaluation of the offset allocation scheme confirms that it improves the total throughput by about 85%, and reduces latency by about 72%, compared to the conventional schemes.

The tiled-display system has been used as a Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) environment, in which multiple local (and/or remote) participants cooperate using some shared applications whose outputs are displayed on a large-scale and high-resolution tiled-display, which is controlled by a cluster of PC's, one PC per display. In order to make the collaboration effective, each remote participant should be aware of all CSCW activities on the titled display system in real-time. This paper presents a capturing and delivering mechanism of all activities on titled-display system to remote participants in real-time. In the proposed mechanism, the screen images of all PC's are periodically captured and delivered to the Merging Server that maintains separate buffers to store the captured images from the PCs. The mechanism selects one tile image from each buffer, merges the images to make a screen shot of the whole tiled-display, clips a Region of Interest (ROI), compresses and streams it to remote participants in real-time. A technical challenge in the proposed mechanism is how to select a set of tile images, one from each buffer, for merging so that the tile images displayed at the same time on the tiled-display can be properly merged together. This paper presents three selection algorithms; a sequential selection algorithm, a capturing time based algorithm, and a capturing time and visual consistency based algorithm. It also proposes a mechanism of providing several virtual cameras on tiled-display system to remote participants by concurrently clipping several different ROI's from the same merged tiled-display images, and delivering them after compressing with video encoders requested by the remote participants. By interactively changing and resizing his/her own ROI, a remote participant can check the activities on the tiled-display effectively. Experiments on a 32 tiled-display system show that the proposed merging algorithm can build a tiled-display image stream synchronously, and the ROI-based clipping and delivering mechanism can provide individual views on the tiled-display system to multiple remote participants in real-time.

In this research, we focus on how to track a target region that lies next to similar regions (e.g. a forearm and an upper arm) in zoom-in images. Many previous tracking methods express the target region (i.e. a part in a human body) with a single model such as an ellipse, a rectangle, and a deformable closed region. With the single model, however, it is difficult to track the target region in zoom-in images without confusing it and its neighboring similar regions (e.g. "a forearm and an upper arm" and "a small region in a torso and its neighboring regions") because they might have the same texture patterns and do not have the detectable border between them. In our method, a group of feature points in a target region is extracted and tracked as the model of the target. Small differences between the neighboring regions can be verified by focusing only on the feature points. In addition, (1) the stability of tracking is improved using particle filtering and (2) tracking robust to occlusions is realized by removing unreliable points using random sampling. Experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of our method even when occlusions occur.

In this article, we propose a new way to estimate fog extinction at night with a camera. We also propose a method for the classification of fog depending on the forward scattering. We show that a characterization of fog based on the atmospheric extinction parameter only is not sufficient, specifically in the perspective of adaptive lighting for road safety. This method has been validated on synthetic images generated with a semi Monte-Carlo ray tracing software dedicated to fog simulation as well as with experiments in a fog chamber, we present the results and discuss the method, its potential applications and its limits.

This paper reports the effect of corpus size on case frame acquisition for predicate-argument structure analysis in Japanese. For this study, we collect a Japanese corpus consisting of up to 100 billion words, and construct case frames from corpora of six different sizes. Then, we apply these case frames to syntactic and case structure analysis, and zero anaphora resolution, in order to investigate the relationship between the corpus size for case frame acquisition and the performance of predicate-argument structure analysis. We obtained better analyses by using case frames constructed from larger corpora; the performance was not saturated even with a corpus size of 100 billion words.

This paper proposes a de-embedding method for on-chip S-parameter measurements at mm-wave frequency. The proposed method uses only two transmission lines with different length. In the proposed method, a parasitic-component model extracted from two transmission lines can be used for de-embedding for other-type DUTs like transistor, capacitor, inductor, etc. The experimental results show that the error in characteristic impedance between the different-length transmission lines is less than 0.7% above 40 GHz. The extracted pad model is also shown.

Based on game theory, a distributed power control algorithm with sequential subchannel nulling is proposed for ad-hoc networks. It is shown that the proposed method, by sharing subchannels appropriately according to the interference profiles, can reduce the power consumption of the network while satisfying the target rate of each link.

Let V(φ) be a shift invariant subspace of L2(R) with a Riesz or frame generator φ(t). We take φ(t) suitably so that the regular sampling expansion : f(t) = f(n)S(t-n) holds on V(φ). We then find conditions on the generator φ(t) and various bounds of the perturbation {δ n }n∈Z under which an irregular sampling expansion: f(t) = f(n+ δn)Sn(t) holds on V(φ). Some illustrating examples are also provided.

We propose a parametric packet-layer model for monitoring audio quality in multimedia streaming services such as Internet protocol television (IPTV). This model estimates audio quality of experience (QoE) on the basis of quality degradation due to coding and packet loss of an audio sequence. The input parameters of this model are audio bit rate, sampling rate, frame length, packet-loss frequency, and average burst length. Audio bit rate, packet-loss frequency, and average burst length are calculated from header information in received IP packets. For sampling rate, frame length, and audio codec type, the values or the names used in monitored services are input into this model directly. We performed a subjective listening test to examine the relationships between these input parameters and perceived audio quality. The codec used in this test was the Advanced Audio Codec-Low Complexity (AAC-LC), which is one of the international standards for audio coding. On the basis of the test results, we developed an audio quality evaluation model. The verification results indicate that audio quality estimated by the proposed model has a high correlation with perceived audio quality.

We propose a simplified model of real-time joint source-channel coding, which can be used to adaptively determine the quality-optimal code rate of forward error correction (FEC) coding. The objective is to obtain the maximum video quality in the receiver, while taking time-varying packet loss into consideration. To this end, we propose a simplified model of the threshold set of the residual video packet loss rate (RVPLR). The RVPLR is the rate of residual loss of video packets after channel decoding. The threshold set is defined as a set of discrete RVPLRs in which the FEC code rate must be changed in order to maintain minimum distortion during increases or decreases of channel packet loss. Because the closed form of the proposed model is very simple and has one scene-dependent model parameter, a video sender can be easily implemented with the model. To train the scene-dependent model parameters in real-time, we propose a test-run method. This method accelerates the test-run while remaining sufficiently accurate for training the scene-dependent model parameters. By using the proposed model and test-run, the video sender can always find the optimal code rate on the fly whenever there is a change in the packet loss status in the channel. An experiment shows that the proposed model and test-run can efficiently determine the near-optimal code rate in joint source-channel coding.

The downscaling of CMOS technology has resulted in strong improvement in RF performance of bulk and SOI MOSFETs. In order to realize a low-noise RF circuit, a deeper understanding of the noise performance for MOSFETs is required. Thermal noise is the main noise source of the CMOS device for high frequency performance, and is dominated by the drain channel noise, induced gate noise, and their correlation noise. In this work, we measured the RF noise parameter (Fmin, Rn, Γ opt) of 45 nm node MOSFETs from 5 to 15 GHz and extracted noise sources and noise coefficients P, R, and C by using an extended van der Ziel's model. We found, for the first time, that correlation coefficient C decreases from positive to negative values when the gate length is reduced continuously with the gate length of sub-100 nm. We confirmed that Pucel's noise figure model, using noise coefficients P, R, and C, can be considered a good approximation even for sub-50 nm MOSFETs. We also discussed a scaling effect of the noise coefficients, especially the correlation noise coefficient C on the minimum noise figure.

A composite right/left-handed (CRLH) transmission line with demultiplexing property is proposed towards short-range functional wireless interconnects. The CRLH line is designed by analyzing dispersion relation of the microstrip line having a split-ring and a double-stub structure to realize frequency selective properties for leaky wave radiation. A prototype device is fabricated and estimated to study feasibility of the demultiplexing operation around ten GHz.

In a society preoccupied with gradual erosion of electronic privacy, loss of privacy in the current Domain Name System is an important issue worth considering. In this paper, we first review the DNS and some security & privacy threats to make average users begin to concern about the significance of privacy preservation in DNS protocols. Then, by an careful survey of four noise query generation based existing privacy protection approaches, we analyze some benefits and limitations of these proposals in terms of both related performance evaluation results and theoretic proofs. Finally, we point out some problems that still exist for research community's continuing efforts in the future.

System implementation for e-Government initiatives should be reliable. Unreliable system implementation could, on the one hand, be insufficient to fulfill basic system requirements, and more seriously on the other hand, break the trust of citizens on governments. The objective of this paper is to advocate the use of formal methods in general, the OTS/CafeOBJ method in particular in this paper, to help develop reliable system implementation for e-Government initiatives. An experiment with the OTS/CafeOBJ method on an e-Government messaging framework proposed for providing citizens with seamless public services is described to back up our advocation. Two previously not well-clarified problems of the framework and their potential harm realized in this experiment are reported, and possible ways of revisions to the framework are suggested as well. The revisions are proved to be sufficient for making the framework satisfy certain desired properties.

We propose PM (Project Management) patterns to prevent schedule delays caused by changes in requirements on empirical studies. Changes or late elicitation of requirements during the design, coding and test processes are one of the most serious risks, which may delay project schedules. However, changes and late elicitation of requirements are usually accepted during development processes. Therefore, the PM methods for preventing schedule delays caused by changes and late elicitation of requirements during development processes are an important area of study. In this study, we examined the actual conditions of various projects which succeeded in preventing schedule delays resulting from changes and late elicitation of requirements during development processes. We were able to extract various typical PM techniques for preventing these schedule delays. The techniques, known as "PM patterns", were also applied to other projects. The patterns were arranged on a two-dimensional framework. We discuss a framework of PM patterns aimed at solving the problems caused by changes in requirements.

One of the critical issue in framework-based software development is a huge introduction cost caused by technical gap between developers and users of frameworks. This paper proposes a technique for deriving framework usages to implement a given requirements specification. By using the derived usages, the users can use the frameworks without understanding the framework in detail. Requirements specifications which describe definite behavioral requirements cannot be related to frameworks in as-is since the frameworks do not have definite control structure so that the users can customize them to suit given requirements specifications. To cope with this issue, a new technique based on satisfiability problems (SAT) is employed to derive the control structures of the framework model. In the proposed technique, requirements specifications and frameworks are modeled based on Labeled Transition Systems (LTSs) with branch conditions represented by predicates. Truth assignments of the branch conditions in the framework models are not given initially for representing the customizable control structure. The derivation of truth assignments of the branch conditions is regarded as the SAT by assuming relations between termination states of the requirements specification model and ones of the framework model. This derivation technique is incorporated into a technique we have proposed previously for relating actions of requirements specifications to ones of frameworks. Furthermore, this paper discuss a case study of typical use cases in e-commerce systems.

This paper suggests utterance verification system using state-level log-likelihood ratio with frame and state selection. We use hidden Markov models for speech recognition and utterance verification as acoustic models and anti-phone models. The hidden Markov models have three states and each state represents different characteristics of a phone. Thus we propose an algorithm to compute state-level log-likelihood ratio and give weights on states for obtaining more reliable confidence measure of recognized phones. Additionally, we propose a frame selection algorithm to compute confidence measure on frames including proper speech in the input speech. In general, phone segmentation information obtained from speaker-independent speech recognition system is not accurate because triphone-based acoustic models are difficult to effectively train for covering diverse pronunciation and coarticulation effect. So, it is more difficult to find the right matched states when obtaining state segmentation information. A state selection algorithm is suggested for finding valid states. The proposed method using state-level log-likelihood ratio with frame and state selection shows that the relative reduction in equal error rate is 18.1% compared to the baseline system using simple phone-level log-likelihood ratios.

Acquisition of accurate colors is important in the modern era of widespread exchange of electronic multimedia. The variety of device-dependent color spaces causes troubles with accurate color reproduction. In this paper we present the outlines of accomplished digital camera system with device-independent output formed from tristimulus XYZ values. The outstanding accuracy and fidelity of acquired color is achieved in our system by employing an embedded color calibration system based on emissive device generating reference calibration colors with user-defined spectral distribution and chromaticity coordinates. The system was tested by calibrating the camera using 24 reference colors spectrally reproduced from 24 color patches of the Macbeth Chart. The average color difference (CIEDE2000) has been found to be ΔE = 0.83, which is an outstanding result compared to commercially available digital cameras.