Multi-cell cooperation is a promising technique to mitigate inter-cell interference arising from universal frequency reuse in cellular networks. Sharing channel state information (CSI) in neighboring cells can help enhance the overall system capacity at the cost of high feedback burden. In this paper, an asymmetric CSI feedback strategy is proposed for multi-cell cooperation beamforming. In order to improve the overall system performance, we optimize the limited feedback bandwidth based on the average received power from both serving and neighboring cells. Simulation results show that the proposed strategy utilizes the limited feedback bandwidth more efficiently, thereby achieving a higher sum rate.

Face recognition plays an important role in security applications, but in real-world conditions face images are typically subject to issues that compromise recognition performance, such as geometric transformations, occlusions and changes in illumination. Most face detection and recognition works to date deal with single face images using global features and supervised learning. Differently from that context, here we propose a multiple face recognition approach based on local features which does not rely on supervised learning. In order to deal with multiple face images under varying conditions, the extraction of invariant and discriminative local features is achieved by using the SURF (Speeded-Up Robust Features) approach, and the search for regions from which optimal features can be extracted is done by an improved ABC (Artificial Bee Colony) algorithm. Thresholds and parameters for SURF and improved ABC algorithms are determined experimentally. The approach was extensively assessed on 99 different still images - more than 400 trials were conducted using 20 target face images and still images under different acquisition conditions. Results show that our approach is promising for real-world face recognition applications concerning different acquisition conditions and transformations.

There have been steady demands for a speech segmentation method to handle various speech applications. Conventional segmentation algorithms show reliable performance but they require a sufficient training database. This letter proposes a manner class segmentation method based on the acoustic event and landmark detection used in the knowledge-based speech recognition system. Measurements of sub-band abruptness and additional parameters are used to detect the acoustic events. Candidates of manner classes are segmented from the acoustic events and determined based on the knowledge of acoustic phonetics and acoustic parameters. Manners of vowel/glide, nasal, fricative, stop burst, stop closure, and silence are segmented in this system. In total, 71% of manner classes are correctly segmented with 20-ms error boundaries.

Massive digital elevation models require a large number of geometric primitives that exceed the throughput of the existing graphics hardware. For the interactive visualization of these datasets, several adaptive reconstruction methods that reduce the number of primitives have been introduced over the decades. Quadtree triangulation, based on subdivision of the terrain into rectangular patches at different resolutions, is the most frequently used terrain reconstruction method. This usually accomplishes the triangulation using LOD (level-of-detail) selection and crack removal based on geometric errors. In this paper, we present bimodal vertex splitting, which performs LOD selection and crack removal concurrently on a GPU. The first mode splits each vertex for LOD selection and the second splits each vertex for crack removal. By performing these two operations concurrently on a GPU, we can efficiently accelerate the rendering speed by reducing the computation time and amount of transmission data in comparison with existing quadtree-based rendering methods.

Recent studies have focused on developing security systems using micro-Doppler radars to detect human bodies. However, the resolution of these conventional methods is unsuitable for identifying bodies and moreover, most of these conventional methods were designed for a solitary or sufficiently well-spaced targets. This paper proposes a solution to these problems with an image separation method for two closely spaced pedestrian targets. The proposed method first develops an image of the targets using ultra-wide-band (UWB) Doppler imaging radar. Next, the targets in the image are separated using a supervised learning-based separation method trained on a data set extracted using a range profile. We experimentally evaluated the performance of the image separation using some representative supervised separation methods and selected the most appropriate method. Finally, we reject false points caused by target interference based on the separation result. The experiment, assuming two pedestrians with a body separation of 0.44m, shows that our method accurately separates their images using a UWB Doppler radar with a nominal down-range resolution of 0.3m. We describe applications using various target positions, establish the performance, and derive optimal settings for our method.

Polarimetric coherence strongly relates to the types and orientations of local scatterers. An optimization scheme is proposed to optimize the coherence between two polarimetric channels for polarimetric SAR (PolSAR) data. The coherence magnitude (correlation coefficient) is maximized by rotating a polarimetric coherence matrix in the rotation domain around the radar line of sight. L-band E-SAR and X-band Pi-SAR PolSAR data sets are used for demonstration and validation. The coherence of oriented manmade targets is significantly enhanced while that of forests remains relatively low. Therefore, the proposed technique can effectively discriminate these two land covers which are easily misinterpreted by the conventional model-based decomposition. Moreover, based on an optimized polarimetric coherence parameter and the total backscattered power, a simple manmade target extraction scheme is developed for application demonstration. This approach is applied with the Pi-SAR data. The experimental results validate the effectiveness of the proposed method.

In phrase-based statistical machine translation, long distance reordering problem is one of the most challenging issues when translating syntactically distant language pairs. In this paper, we propose a novel reordering model to solve this problem. In our model, reordering is affected by the overall structures of sentences such as listings, reduplications, and modifications as well as the relationships of adjacent phrases. To this end, we reflect global syntactic contexts including the parts that are not yet translated during the decoding process.

This paper addresses the problems of fingerprint identification and verification when a query fingerprint is taken under conditions that differ from those under which the fingerprint of the same person stored in a database was constructed. This occurs when using a different fingerprint scanner with a different pressure, resulting in a fingerprint impression that is smeared and distorted in accordance with a geometric transformation (e.g., affine or even non-linear). Minutiae points on a query fingerprint are matched and aligned to those on one of the fingerprints in the database, using a set of absolute invariants constructed from the shape and/or size of minutiae triangles depending on the assumed map. Once the best candidate match is declared and the corresponding minutiae points are flagged, the query fingerprint image is warped against the candidate fingerprint image in accordance with the estimated warping map. An identification/verification cost function using a combination of distance map and global directional filterbank (DFB) features is then utilized to verify and identify a query fingerprint against candidate fingerprint(s). Performance of the algorithm yields an area of 0.99967 (perfect classification is a value of 1) under the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve based on a database consisting of a total of 1680 fingerprint images captured from 240 fingers. The average probability of error was found to be 0.713%. Our algorithm also yields the smallest false non-match rate (FNMR) for a comparable false match rate (FMR) when compared to the well-known technique of DFB features and triangulation-based matching integrated with modeling non-linear deformation. This work represents an advance in resolving the fingerprint identification problem beyond the state-of-the-art approaches in both performance and robustness.

A number of well-known learning-based face detectors can achieve extraordinary performance in controlled environments. But face detection under varying illumination is still challenging. Possible solutions to this illumination problem could be creating illumination invariant features or utilizing skin color information. However, the features and skin colors are not sufficiently reliable under difficult lighting conditions. Another possible solution is to do illumination normalization (e.g., Histogram Equalization (HE)) prior to executing face detectors. However, applications of normalization to face detection have not been widely studied in the literature. This paper applies and evaluates various existing normalization methods under the framework of combining the illumination normalization and two learning-based face detectors (Haar-like face detector and LBP face detector). These methods were initially proposed for different purposes (face recognition or image quality enhancement), but some of them significantly improve the original face detectors and lead to better performance than HE according to the results of the comparative experiments on two databases. Meanwhile, we propose a new normalization method called segmentation-based half histogram stretching and truncation (SH) for face detection under varying illumination. It first employs Otsu method to segment the histogram (intensities) of the input image into several spans and then does the redistribution on the segmented spans. In this way, the non-uniform illumination can be efficiently compensated and local facial structures can be appropriately enhanced. Our method obtains good performance according to the experiments.

This study proposes a variable selection linear regression (VSLR) adaptation framework to improve the accuracy of automatic speech recognition (ASR) with only limited and unlabeled adaptation data. The proposed framework can be divided into three phases. The first phase prepares multiple variable subsets by applying a ranking filter to the original regression variable set. The second phase determines the best variable subset based on a pre-determined performance evaluation criterion and computes a linear regression (LR) mapping function based on the determined subset. The third phase performs adaptation in either model or feature spaces. The three phases can select the optimal components and remove redundancies in the LR mapping function effectively and thus enable VSLR to provide satisfactory adaptation performance even with a very limited number of adaptation statistics. We formulate model space VSLR and feature space VSLR by integrating the VS techniques into the conventional LR adaptation systems. Experimental results on the Aurora-4 task show that model space VSLR and feature space VSLR, respectively, outperform standard maximum likelihood linear regression (MLLR) and feature space MLLR (fMLLR) and their extensions, with notable word error rate (WER) reductions in a per-utterance unsupervised adaptation manner.

Information Security Management Systems (ISMSs) play important roles in helping organizations to manage their information securely. However, establishing, managing, and maintaining ISMSs is not an easy task for most organizations because an ISMS has many participants and tasks, and requires many kinds of documents. Therefore, organizations with ISMSs demand tools that can support them to perform all tasks in ISMS lifecycle processes consistently and continuously. To realize such support tools, a database system that manages ISO/IEC 27000 series, which are international standards for ISMSs, and ISMS documents, which are the products of tasks in ISMS lifecycle processes, is indispensable. The database system should manage data of the standards and documents for all available versions and translations, relationship among the standards and documents, authorization to access the standards and documents, and metadata of the standards and documents. No such database system has existed until now. This paper presents an information security management database system (ISMDS) that manages ISO/IEC 27000 series and ISMS documents. ISMDS is a meta-database system that manages several databases of standards and documents. ISMDS is used by participants in ISMS as well as tools supporting the participants to perform tasks in ISMS lifecycle processes. The users or tools can retrieve data from all versions and translations of the standards and documents. The paper also presents some use cases to show the effectiveness of ISMDS.

In this study, we have developed a translation repair method to automatically improve the accuracy of translations. Machine translation (MT) supports multilingual communication; however, it cannot achieve high accuracy. MT creates only one translated sentence; therefore, it is difficult to improve the accuracy of translated sentences. Our method creates multiple translations by adding personal pronouns to the source sentence and by using a word dictionary and a parallel corpus. In addition, it selects an accurate translation from among the multiple translations using the results of a Web search. As a result, the translation repair method improved the accuracy of translated sentences, and its accuracy is greater than that of MT.

In the paper [4], the authors generalized the Cipolla-Lehmer method [2][5] for computing square roots in finite fields to the case of r-th roots with r prime, and compared it with the Adleman-Manders-Miller method [1] from the experimental point of view. In this paper, we compare these two methods from the theoretical point of view.

Lossy identification schemes are used to construct tightly secure signature schemes via the Fiat-Shamir heuristic in the random oracle model. Several lossy identification schemes are instantiated by using the short discrete logarithm assumption, the ring-LWE assumption and the subset sum assumption, respectively. For assumptions concerning the integer factoring, Abdalla, Ben Hamouda and Pointcheval [3] recently presented lossy identification schemes based on the φ-hiding assumption, the QR assumption and the DCR assumption, respectively. In this paper, we propose new instantiations of lossy identification schemes. We first construct a variant of the Schnorr's identification scheme, and show its lossiness under the subgroup decision assumption. We also construct a lossy identification scheme which is based on the DCR assumption. Our DCR-based scheme has an advantage relative to the ABP's DCR-based scheme since our scheme needs no modular exponentiation in the response phase. Therefore our scheme is suitable when it is transformed to an online/offline signature.

It is well known that solving randomly chosen Multivariate Quadratic equations over a finite field (MQ-Problem) is NP-hard, and the security of Multivariate Public Key Cryptosystems (MPKCs) is based on the MQ-Problem. However, this problem can be solved efficiently when the number of unknowns n is sufficiently greater than that of equations m (This is called “Underdefined”). Indeed, the algorithm by Kipnis et al. (Eurocrypt'99) can solve the MQ-Problem over a finite field of even characteristic in a polynomial-time of n when n ≥ m(m+1). Therefore, it is important to estimate the hardness of the MQ-Problem to evaluate the security of Multivariate Public Key Cryptosystems. We propose an algorithm in this paper that can solve the MQ-Problem in a polynomial-time of n when n ≥ m(m+3)/2, which has a wider applicable range than that by Kipnis et al. We will also compare our proposed algorithm with other known algorithms. Moreover, we implemented this algorithm with Magma and solved the MQ-Problem of m=28 and n=504, and it takes 78.7 seconds on a common PC.

For frequency hopping spread spectrum communication systems, the average Hamming correlation (AHC) among frequency hopping sequences (FHSs) is an important performance indicator. In this letter, a sufficient and necessary condition for a set of FHSs with optimal AHC is given. Based on interleaved technique, a new construction for optimal AHC FHS sets is also proposed, which generalizes the construction of Chung and Yang. Several optimal AHC FHS sets with more flexible parameters not covered in the literature are obtained by the new construction, which are summarized in Table 1.

A whitelisting approach is a promising solution to prevent unwanted processes (e.g., malware) getting executed. However, previous solutions suffer from limitations in that: 1) Most methods place the whitelist information in the kernel space, which could be tempered by attackers; 2) Most methods cannot prevent the execution of kernel processes. In this paper, we present VAW, a novel application whitelisting system by using the virtualization technology. Our system is able to block the execution of unauthorized user and kernel processes. Compared with the previous solutions, our approach can achieve stronger security guarantees. The experiments show that VAW can deny the execution of unwanted processes effectively with a little performance overhead.

Wireless body area networks (BANs) are attracting great attention as a future technology of wireless networks for healthcare and medical applications. Wireless BANs can generally be divided into two categories, i.e., wearable BANs and implant BANs. However, the performance requirements and channel propagation characteristics of these two kinds of BANs are quite different from each other, that is, wireless signals are approximately transmitted along the human body as a surface wave in wearable BANs, on the other hand, the signals are transmitted through the human tissues in implant BANs. As an effective solution for this problem, this paper first introduces a dual-mode communication system, which is composed of transmitters for in-body and on-body communications and a receiver for both communications. Then, we evaluate the bit error rate (BER) performance of the dual-mode communication system via computer simulations based on realistic channel models, which can reasonably represent the propagation characteristics of on-body and in-body communications. Finally, we conduct a link budget analysis based on the derived BER performances and discuss the link parameters including system margin, maximum link distance, data rate and required transmit power. Our computer simulation results and analysis results demonstrate the feasibility of the dual-mode communication system in wireless BANs.

A ladder lottery, known as the “Amidakuji” in Japan, is a network with n vertical lines and many horizontal lines each of which connects two consecutive vertical lines. Each ladder lottery corresponds to a permutation. Ladder lotteries are frequently used as natural models in many areas. Given a permutation π, an algorithm to enumerate all ladder lotteries of π with the minimum number of horizontal lines is known. In this paper, given a permutation π and an integer k, we design an algorithm to enumerate all ladder lotteries of π with exactly k horizontal lines.

We consider the problem of optimizing the quantizer design for distributed estimation systems where all nodes located at different sites collect measurements and transmit quantized data to a fusion node, which then produces an estimate of the parameter of interest. For this problem, the goal is to minimize the amount of information that the nodes have to transmit in order to attain a certain application accuracy. We propose an iterative quantizer design algorithm that seeks to find a non-regular mapping between quantization partitions and their codewords so as to minimize global distortion such as the estimation error. We apply the proposed algorithm to a system where an acoustic amplitude sensor model is employed at each node for source localization. Our experiments demonstrate that a significant performance gain can be achieved by our technique as compared with standard typical designs and even with distributed novel designs recently published.