We propose a blind dereverberation method based on spectral subtraction using a multi-channel least mean squares (MCLMS) algorithm for distant-talking speech recognition. In a distant-talking environment, the channel impulse response is longer than the short-term spectral analysis window. By treating the late reverberation as additive noise, a noise reduction technique based on spectral subtraction was proposed to estimate the power spectrum of the clean speech using power spectra of the distorted speech and the unknown impulse responses. To estimate the power spectra of the impulse responses, a variable step-size unconstrained MCLMS (VSS-UMCLMS) algorithm for identifying the impulse responses in a time domain is extended to a frequency domain. To reduce the effect of the estimation error of the channel impulse response, we normalize the early reverberation by cepstral mean normalization (CMN) instead of spectral subtraction using the estimated impulse response. Furthermore, our proposed method is combined with conventional delay-and-sum beamforming. We conducted recognition experiments on a distorted speech signal simulated by convolving multi-channel impulse responses with clean speech. The proposed method achieved a relative error reduction rate of 22.4% in relation to conventional CMN. By combining the proposed method with beamforming, a relative error reduction rate of 24.5% in relation to the conventional CMN with beamforming was achieved using only an isolated word (with duration of about 0.6 s) to estimate the spectrum of the impulse response.

The diffraction by a composite wedge composed of a perfect conductor and a lossy dielectric is investigated using the hidden rays of diffraction (HRD) method. The usual principle of geometrical optics is employed to trace not only ordinary rays incident on the lit boundary but also hidden rays incident on the shadow boundary. The modified propagation constants are adopted to represent the non-uniform plane wave transmission through the lossy dielectric. The HRD diffraction coefficients are constructed routinely by the sum of the cotangent functions, which have one-to-one correspondence with both ordinary and hidden rays. The angular period of the cotangent functions is adjusted to satisfy the edge condition at the tip of the composite wedge. The accuracy of the HRD diffraction coefficients in the physical region is checked by showing how closely the diffraction coefficients in the complementary region satisfy the null-field condition.

The nanoporosity installed in conjugated polymer films prepared by electrophoretic deposition makes it difficult to measure the amount of polymer deposited on a substrate. Here, an alternative approach, the estimation of material efficiency of the electrophoretic deposition from the optical absorption spectra of the residual suspensions has been studied. The ultimate recovery rate, which becomes smaller in suspensions with lower acetonitrile content, does not depend on the deposition voltage. The light scattering by the colloidal particles seems to be absent in residual suspensions after a deposition long enough to reach the ultimate recovery rate, indicating the exhaustion of the colloidal particles. Although the deposition rate of the polymer markedly lowers upon coating of the deposition electrode with PEDOT, the ultimate recovery rate remains unchanged. These results suggest that the material efficiency in this deposition method is limited by the generation rate of the colloidal particles in the suspension.

The Towers of Hanoi problem is a classical problem in puzzles, games, mathematics, data structures, and algorithms. In this letter, a least memory used algorithm is proposed by combining the source array and target array for comparing the sizes of disk and labeling the disks in the towers of Hanoi problem. As a result, the proposed algorithm reduces the space needed from 2n+2 to n+5, where n represents the disks number.

Some new generalized cyclotomic sequences defined by C. Ding and T. Helleseth are proven to exhibit a number of good randomness properties. In this paper, we determine the defining pairs of these sequences of length pm (p prime, m ≥ 2) with order two, then from which we obtain their trace representation. Thus their linear complexity can be derived using Key's method.

This letter proposes a simple k-hop flooding scheme for the temporarily lost child node of a multicast tree in a mobile ad hoc network where a group of nodes move together within a bound. Through simulation, we show that our scheme improves the packet delivery ratio of MAODV to be comparable to the epidemic routing with only small additional duplicate packets.

A solution-processed red-sensitive organic photoconductive device was demonstrated by using soluble nickel-phthalocyanine. We found that a ratio of four nickel-phthalocyanine regioisomers was important factor for the high optical-electrical conversion efficiency. A maximum external quantum efficiency of device of 0.83% was achieved by optimizing the device structure.

A self-calibrating per-pin phase adjuster, which does not require any feedback from the slave chip and a multi-phase clock in the master and slave chips, is proposed for a high speed parallel chip-to-chip interface with a source synchronous double data rate (DDR) signaling. It achieves not only per-pin phase adjustment but also 90° phase shift of a strobe signal for a source synchronous DDR signaling. For this self-calibration, the phase adjuster measures and compensates the only relative mismatched delay among channels by utilizing on-chip time-domain reflectometry (TDR). Thus, variable delay lines, finite state machines, and a test signal generator are additionally required for the proposed phase adjuster. In addition, the power-gating receiver is used to reduce the discontinuity effect of the channel including parasitic components of chip package. To verify the proposed self-calibrating per-pin phase adjuster, the transceivers with 16 data, strobe, and clock signals for the interface with a source synchronous DDR signaling were implemented by using a 60 nm 1-poly 3-metal CMOS DRAM process with a 1.5 V supply. Each phase skew between Strobe and 16 Data was corrected within 0.028UI at 1.6-Gb/s data rate in a point-to-point channel.

The purpose of this study was to clarify whether viewers can perceive a digitally deteriorated image while pursuing a speedily moving digitally compressed image. We studied the perception characteristics of false contours among the various digital deteriorations for the four types of displays i.e. CRT, PDP, EL, LCD by changing the gradation levels and the speed of moving image as parameters. It is known that 8 bits is not high enough resolution for still images, and it is assumed that 8 bits is also not enough for an image moving at less than 5 deg/sec since the tracking accuracy of smooth pursuit eye movement (SPEM) is very high for a target moving at less than 5 deg/sec. Given these facts, we focused on images moving at more than 5 deg/sec. In our results, the images deteriorated by a false contour at a gradation level less than 32 were perceived by every subject at almost all velocities, from 5 degrees/sec to 30 degrees/sec, for all four types of displays we used. However, the perception rate drastically decreased when the gradation levels reached 64, with almost no subjects detecting deterioration for gradation levels more than 64 at any velocity. Compared to other displays, LCDs yielded relatively high recognition rates for gradation levels of 64, especially at lower velocities.

The length dependence of the crosstalk in multi-core fibers has been investigated by introducing random fluctuation along longitudinal direction. The power coupling coefficients in the coupled-power theory in heterogeneous multi-core fiber with seven cores were estimated based on consideration of the power coupling coefficients of the homogeneous multi-core fiber. The crosstalk can be quantitatively evaluated by employing coupled-power theory instead of coupled-mode theory.

In this paper, we analyze the impact of channel estimation errors for both decode-and-forward (DF) and amplify-and-forward (AF) cooperative communication systems over Nakagami-m fading channels. Firstly, we derive the exact one-integral and the approximate expressions of the symbol error rate (SER) for DF and AF relay systems with different modulations. We also present expressions showing the limitations of SER under channel estimation errors. Secondly, in order to quantify the impact of channel estimation errors, the average signal-to-noise-ratio (SNR) gap ratio is investigated for the two types of cooperative communication systems. Numerical results confirm that our theoretical analysis for SER is very efficient and accurate. Comparison of the average SNR gap ratio shows that DF model is less susceptible to channel estimation errors than AF model.

In wireless sensor networks, real-time data delivery schemes typically achieve the desired delivery speed by proactively performing one-hop lookahead. Recently, to reduce the deadline miss ratio with respect to the desired delivery speed, a study has proposed a real-time data delivery scheme based on proactively performing two-hop lookahead. However, the recent proposal might cause heavy message exchange overhead and high computing complexity in order to proactively obtain two-hop neighbor speed information in all sensor nodes whether data are delivered or not. In this paper, we propose a novel real-time data delivery scheme that applies on-demand multi-hop lookahead only around data forwarding paths. Hence, the scheme can provide lower deadline miss ratio for real-time data delivery with low message exchange overhead than existing schemes.

For copyright protection, a watermark signal is embedded in host images with a secret key, and a correlation is applied to judge the presence of watermark signal in the watermark detection. This paper treats a discrete wavelet transform (DWT)-based image watermarking method under specified false positive probability. We propose a new watermarking method to improve the detection performance by using not only positive correlation but also negative correlation. Also we present a statistical analysis for the detection performance with taking into account the false positive probability and prove the effectiveness of the proposed method. By using some experimental results, we verify the statistical analysis and show this method serves to improve the robustness against some attacks.

Iris recognition is an important biometric method for personal identification. The accuracy of an iris recognition system highly depends on the success of an iris segmentation step. In this paper, a robust and accurate iris segmentation algorithm for closed-up NIR eye images is developed. The proposed method addressed problems of different characteristics of iris databases using local image properties. A precise pupil boundary is located with an adaptive thresholding combined with a gradient-based refinement approach. A new criteria, called a local signal-to-noise ratio (LSNR) of an edge map of an eye image is proposed for localization of the iris's outer boundary. The boundary is modeled with a weighted circular integral of LSNR optimization technique. The proposed method is experimented with multiple iris databases. The obtained results demonstrated that the proposed iris segmentation method is robust and desirable. The proposed method accurately segments iris region, excluding eyelids, eyelashes and light reflections against multiple iris databases without parameter tunings. The proposed iris segmentation method reduced false negative rate of the iris recognition system by half, compared to results obtained using Masek's method.

A modified proportional fairness (PF) scheduling scheme for OFDMA systems with imperfect channel quality indicator is suggested. It is based on user grouping, and in system level simulations, the proposed scheme improves average user throughput considerably when compared to conventional PF scheduling without grouping.

Four-wave mixing (FWM) compensation using digital coherent detection is experimentally demonstrated. Two lights and the induced FWM components are combined with phase-locked local oscillator lights and received individually. The received signals are combined electrically and the signal-to-FWM crosstalk ratio is improved to more than 30 dB by backward propagation.

This paper describes ultra-high capacity wavelength-division multiplexed (WDM) transmission technologies for 100-Tbit/s-class optical transport networks (OTNs). First, we review recent advances in ultra-high capacity transmission technologies focusing on spectrally-efficient multi-level modulation techniques and ultra-wideband optical amplification techniques. Next, we describe an ultra-high capacity WDM transmission experiment, in which high speed polarization-division multiplexed (PDM) 16-ary quadrature amplitude modulation (16-QAM), generated by an optical synthesis technique, in combination with coherent detection based on digital signal processing with pilotless algorithms, realize the high spectral efficiency (SE) of 6.4 b/s/Hz. Furthermore, ultra-wideband hybrid optical amplification utilizing distributed Raman amplification (DRA) and C- and extended L-band erbium-doped fiber amplifiers (EDFAs) is shown to realize 10.8-THz total signal bandwidth. By using these techniques, 69.1-Tbit/s transmission is demonstrated over 240-km of pure silica-core fibers (PSCFs). Furthermore, we describe PDM 64-QAM transmission over 160 km of PSCFs with the SE of 9.0 b/s/Hz.

In reconstruction-based super resolution, a high-resolution image is estimated using multiple low-resolution images with sub-pixel misalignments. Therefore, when only one low-resolution image is available, it is generally difficult to obtain a favorable image. This letter proposes a method for overcoming this difficulty for single- image super resolution. In our method, after interpolating pixel values at sub-pixel locations on a patch-by-patch basis by support vector regression, in which learning samples are collected within the given image based on local similarities, we solve the regularized reconstruction problem with a sufficient number of constraints. Evaluation experiments were performed for artificial and natural images, and the obtained high-resolution images indicate the high-frequency components favorably along with improved PSNRs.

The traditional spectrum auctions require a central auctioneer. Then, the secondary users (SUs) can bid for spectrum in multiple auction or sealed auction way. In this paper, we address the problem of distributed spectrum sharing in the cognitive networks where multiple owners sell their spare bands to multiple SUs. Each SU equips multi-interface/multi-radio, so that SU can buy spare bands from multiple owners. On the other hand, each owner can sell its spare bands to serval SUs. There are two questions to be addressed for such an environment: the first one is how to select bands/the owners for each SU; the second one is how to decide the competitive prices for the multiple owners and multiple SUs. To this end, we propose a two-side multi-band market game theoretic framework to jointly consider the benefits of all SUs and owners. The equilibrium concept in such games is named core. The outcomes in the core of the game cannot be improved upon by any subset of players. These outcomes correspond exactly to the price-lists that competitively balance the benefits of all SUs and owners. We show that the core in our model is always non-empty. When the measurement of price takes discrete value, the core of the game is defined as discrete core. The Dynamic Multi-band Sharing algorithm (DMS) is proposed to converge to the discrete core of the game. With small enough measurement unit of price, the algorithm can achieve the optimal performance compared with centralized one in terms of the system utility.

In this paper, we propose a novel lattice structure of two dimensional (2D) nonseparable linear-phase paraunitary filter banks (LPPUFBs) called 2D GenLOT. Muramatsu et al. have previously proposed a lattice structure of 2D nonseparable LPPUFBs which have efficient frequency response. However, the proposed structure requires less number of design parameters and computational costs than the conventional one. Through some design examples and simulation results, we show that both filter banks have comparable frequency response and coding gain.