This paper describes a method for recognizing romanized Japanese words in learner English. They become noise and problematic in a variety of systems and tools for language learning and teaching including text analysis, spell checking, and grammatical error detection because they are Japanese words and thus mostly unknown to such systems and tools. A problem one encounters when recognizing romanized Japanese words in learner English is that the spelling rules of romanized Japanese words are often violated. To address this problem, the described method uses a clustering algorithm reinforced by a small set of rules. Experiments show that it achieves an F-measure of 0.879 and outperforms other methods. They also show that it only requires the target text and an English word list of reasonable size.

An image sensor for a use of colorimeter is characterized based on the CIE standard colorimetric observer. We use the method of least squares to derive a colorimetric characterization matrix between RGB output signals and CIE XYZ tristimulus values. This paper proposes an adaptive measuring method to obtain the chromaticity of colored scenes and illumination through a 33 camera transfer matrix under a certain illuminant. Camera RGB outputs, sensor status values, and photoelectric characteristic are used to obtain the chromaticity. Experimental results show that the proposed method is valid in the measuring performance.

This letter studies the tracking error in Multi-input Multi-output Feedback Error Learning (MIMO-FEL) system having insufficient excitation. It is shown that the error converges to zero exponentially even if the reference signal lacks the persistently excitation (PE) condition. Furthermore, by making full use of this fast convergence, we estimate the plant parameter while in operation based on frequency response. Simulation results show the effectiveness of the proposed method compared to a conventional approach.

This paper presents a text-independent speaker verification method using Gaussian mixture models (GMMs), where only utterances of enrolled speakers are required. Artificial cohorts are used instead of those from speaker databases, and GMMs for artificial cohorts are generated by changing model parameters of the GMM for a claimed speaker. Equal error rates by the proposed method are about 60% less than those by a conventional method which also uses only utterances of enrolled speakers.

Under the assumption that the clock can be inputted to each register at an arbitrary timing, the minimum feasible clock period might be reduced by register relocation while maintaining the circuit behavior and topology. However, if the minimum feasible clock period is reduced, then the number of registers tends to be increased. In this paper, we propose a gate-level register relocation method that reduces the number of registers while keeping the target clock period. In experiments, the proposed method reduces the number of registers in the practical time in most circuits.

In multiple input multiple output (MIMO) communication systems, eigenvalues of channel correlation matrices play an essential role for the performance analysis, and particularly the investigation about their behavior under time-variant environment ruled by a certain statistics is an important problem. This paper first gives the theoretical expressions for the marginal distributions of all the ordered eigenvalues of MIMO correlation matrices under i.i.d. (independent and identically distributed) Rayleigh fading environment. Then, an approximation method of those marginal distributions is presented: We show that the theory of SIMO space diversity using maximal ratio combining (MRC) is applicable to the approximation of statistical distributions of all eigenvalues in MIMO systems with the same number of diversity branches. The derived approximation has a monomial form suitable for the calculation of various performance measures utilized in MIMO systems. Through computer simulations, the effectiveness of the proposed method is demonstrated.

To satisfy both the bandwidth efficiency of low-speed mobile hosts (MHs) and seamless handoff of high-speed MHs in cellular networks, this paper proposes a reservation scheme which exploits a dynamic two-tier cell structure and the handoff probability. The dynamic two-tier cell structure determines the reservation and non-reservation zones according to the speed of MHs. The handoff probability is calculated using the moving speed and the direction of MHs.

This letter proposes a UWB signaling localization scheme for indoor multipath channel. It demonstrates that the proposed method does not require LOS path (LP) and is suitable for severe non line-of-sight (NLOS) condition. A low-complexity TOA estimation algorithm, the strongest path (SP) detection by convolution, is designed, which is easier to implement than the LP detection since it dispenses with the process of threshold setting. Experiments under NLOS channels in IEEE.802.15.4a are conducted and the localization influences due to the algorithm parameters are discussed. The results prove the feasibility of the proposed localization scheme under the indoor multipath NLOS environment.

XTR is one of the most efficient public-key cryptosystems that allow us to compress the communication bandwidth of their ciphertext. The compact representation can be achieved by deploying a subgroup Fq2 of extension field Fq6, so that the compression ratio of XTR cryptosystem is 1/3. On the other hand, Dijk et al. proposed an efficient public-key cryptosystem using a torus over Fq30 whose compression ratio is 4/15. It is an open problem to construct an efficient public-key cryptosystem whose compression ratio is smaller than 4/15. In this paper we propose a new variant of XTR cryptosystem over finite fields with characteristic three whose compression ratio is 1/6. The key observation is that there exists a trace map from Fq6 to Fq in the case of characteristic three. Moreover, the cost of compression and decompression algorithm requires only about 1% overhead compared with the original XTR cryptosystem. Therefore, the proposed variant of XTR cryptosystem is one of the fastest public-key cryptosystems with the smallest compression ratio.

With the ubiquitous application of Internet and wireless networks, H.264 video communication becomes more and more common. However, due to the high-efficiently predictive coding and the variable length entropy coding, it is more sensitive to transmission errors. The current error concealment (EC) scheme, which utilizes the spatial and temporal correlations to conceal the corrupted region, produces unsatisfied boundary artifacts. In this paper, first we propose variable block size error concealment (VBSEC) scheme inspired by variable block size motion estimation (VBSME) in H.264. This scheme provides four EC modes and four sub-block partitions. The whole corrupted macro-block (MB) will be divided into variable block size adaptively according to the actual motion. More precise motion vectors (MV) will be predicted for each sub-block. Then MV refinement (MVR) scheme is proposed to refine the MV of the heterogeneous sub-block by utilizing three step search (TSS) algorithm adaptively. Both VBSEC and MVR are based on our directional spatio-temporal boundary matching algorithm (DSTBMA). By utilizing these schemes, we can reconstruct the corrupted MB in the inter frame more accurately. The experimental results show that our proposed scheme can obtain better objective and subjective EC quality, respectively compared with the boundary matching algorithm (BMA) adopted in the JM11.0 reference software, spatio-temporal boundary matching algorithm (STBMA) and other comparable EC methods.

Transmission of compressed video over error prone channels may result in packet losses or errors, which can significantly degrade the image quality. Therefore an error concealment scheme is applied at the video receiver side to mask the damaged video. Considering there are 3 types of MBs (Macro Blocks) in natural video frame, i.e., Textural MB, Edged MB, and Smooth MB, this paper proposes an adaptive spatial error concealment which can choose 3 different methods for these 3 different MBs. For criteria of choosing appropriate method, 2 factors are taken into consideration. Firstly, standard deviation of our proposed edge statistical model is exploited. Secondly, some new features of latest video compression standard H.264/AVC, i.e., intra prediction mode is also considered for criterion formulation. Compared with previous works, which are only based on deterministic measurement, proposed method achieves the best image recovery. Subjective and objective image quality evaluations in experiments confirmed this.

During the execution of precise ranging in the time domain, the most important fact to consider is how to achieve an accurate estimate of the time corresponding to first arrival of the transmitter. However, it is difficult to extract an estimate of the time-of-arrival (TOA) through use of a simple correlator due to degradation on correlation, and in the case where the pulse repetition interval (PRI) is less than the maximum excess delay (MED). In order to enhance the correlation capability, this paper proposes a TOA estimation method that obeys a threshold predetermined in a non-coherent system using multiple-mask operation (MMO). The performance of the proposed scheme is verified by conducting simulations under two different types of channel situations. The simulation results show that the proposed scheme performs well even in a dense indoor multipath environment and with the existence of multiple simultaneously operating piconets (SOPs).

The frequency domain binaural model (FDBM) has been previously proposed to localize multiple sound sources. Since the method requires only two input signals and uses interaural phase and level differences caused by the diffraction generated by the head, flexibility in application is very high when the head is considered as an object. When an object is symmetric with respect to the two microphones, the performance of sound source localization is degraded, as a human being has front-back confusion due to the symmetry in a median plane. This paper proposes to reduce the degradation of performance on sound source localization by a combination of the microphone pair outputs using the FDBM. The proposed method is evaluated by applying to a security camera system, and the results showed performance improvement in sound source localization because of reducing the number of cones of confusion.

An indirectly reactive sputtering coater has been developed to deposit various high quality metallic and metal oxide films at high deposition rate. In this letter, several kinds of filters such as antireflection (AR) coating, IR-cut filter, and Rugate filter were deposited for the benchmark test of implemental capabilities. Our coater was established to be a powerful tool for both discrete multilayer and Rugate filters due to high stability and reproducibility of the refractive index and the deposition rate.

In the execution on a smart card, elliptic curve cryptosystems have to be secure against side channel attacks such as the simple power analysis (SPA), the differential power analysis (DPA), and the refined power analysis (RPA), and so on. MMM-algorithm proposed by Mamiya, Miyaji, and Morimoto is a scalar multiplication algorithm secure against SPA, DPA, and RPA, which can decrease the computational complexity by increasing the size of a pre-computed table. However, it provides only 4 different cases of pre-computed tables. From the practical point of view, a wider range of time-memory tradeoffs is usually desired. This paper generalizes MMM-algorithm to improve the flexibility of tables as well as the computational complexity. Our improved algorithm is secure, efficient and flexible for the storage size.

The performance of the ordered successive interference cancellation (OSIC) signal detection method is well known to depend on the successful detection of the first layer. In a previous work, in an effort to mitigate the error propagation effect, all the constellation points were tried as the first layer symbol, thereby achieving a better performance. In this letter, we show that the selection of the first layer impacts the error performance significantly, and based on the observation, we propose a novel signal detection method QR-LRL. In the proposed work, the least reliable layer (LRL) is chosen to be the first layer, which is shown to be the best choice in terms of noise enhancement in detecting the other layers. Also, we discuss Log Likelihood Ratio (LLR) computation when the proposed method is used. Computer simulations confirm the efficacy of the proposed method.

We propose an effective voice-based gender identification method using a support vector machine (SVM). The SVM is a binary classification algorithm that classifies two groups by finding the voluntary nonlinear boundary in a feature space and is known to yield high classification performance. In the present work, we compare the identification performance of the SVM with that of a Gaussian mixture model (GMM)-based method using the mel frequency cepstral coefficients (MFCC). A novel approach of incorporating a features fusion scheme based on a combination of the MFCC and the fundamental frequency is proposed with the aim of improving the performance of gender identification. Experimental results demonstrate that the gender identification performance using the SVM is significantly better than that of the GMM-based scheme. Moreover, the performance is substantially improved when the proposed features fusion technique is applied.

In this paper, we propose a coding method for camera raw images with high dynamic ranges. Our encoder has two layers. In the first layer, 24 bit low dynamic range image is encoded by a conventional codec, and then the residual image that represents the difference between the raw image and its approximation is encoded in the second layer. The approximation is derived by a polynomial fitting. The main advantage of this approach is that applying the polynomial model reduces the correlation between the raw and 24 bit images, which increases coding efficiency. Experiments shows compression efficiency is significantly improved by taking an inverse tone mapping into account.

In this letter, we investigate the outage performance for decode-and-forward relaying under Rayleigh fading in the presence of multiple unequal-powered Rayleigh co-channel interferers. A close-form expression for the outage probability is derived and simulation results verify the theoretical solution.

Frequency offset estimation is an important technique in receiver design of wireless communications. In many applications, sampled single frequency tone is selected as training symbol/sequence for frequency synchronization. Under this assumption, frequency offset estimation can be regarded as the problem of single carrier frequency offset estimation. In this Letter, an approximate maximum likelihood frequency estimator is proposed. This estimator is efficient at moderate and high SNR's. Compared with other estimators, the proposed estimator is less sensitive to the variance threshold and offers feasible levels of computation complexity. The proposed estimator is suitable for high frequency offset cases and coarse/fine frequency synchronization applications.