An efficient and practical algorithm is proposed for finding all DC solutions of nonlinear circuits. This algorithm is based on interval analysis and linear programming techniques. The proposed algorithm is very efficient and can be easily implemented by using the free package GLPK (GNU Linear Programming Kit). By numerical examples, it is shown that the proposed algorithm could find all solutions of a system of 2 000 nonlinear circuit equations in practical computation time.

We demonstrated all-optical demultiplexing of 160-Gb/s signal to 40- and 80-Gb/s by a Mach-Zehnder Interferometric all-optical switch, where the picosecond cross-phase modulation (XPM) induced by intersubband excitation in InGaAs/AlAsSb coupled double quantum wells is utilized. A bi-directional pump configuration, i.e., two control pulses are injected from both sides of a waveguide chip simultaneously, increases a nonlinear phase shift twice in comparison with injection of single pump beam with forward- and backward direction. The bi-directional pump configuration is the effective way to avoid damaging waveguide facets in the case where high optical power of control pulse is necessary to be injected for optical gating at repetition rate of 40/80 GHz. Bit error rate (BER) measurements on 40-Gb/s demultiplexed signal show that the power penalty is decreased slightly for the bi-directional pump case in the BER range less than 10-6. The power penalty is 1.3 dB at BER of 10 - 9 for the bi-directional pump case, while it increases by 0.3-0.6 dB for single pump cases. A power penalty is influenced mainly by signal attenuation at "off" state due to the insufficient nonlinear phase shift, upper limit of which is constrained by the current low XPM efficiency of 0.1 rad/pJ and the damage threshold power of 100 mW in a waveguide facet.

One method for achieving high-speed waveform digitizing uses time-interleaved A-D Converters (ADCs). It is known that, in this method, using multiple ADCs enables sampling at a rate higher than the sampling rate of the ADC being used. Degradation of the dynamic range, however, results from such factors as phase error in the sampling clock applied to the ADC, and mismatched frequency characteristics among the individual ADCs. This paper describes a method for correcting these mismatches using a digital signal processing (DSP) technique for automatic test equipment applications. This method can be applied to any number of interleaved ADCs, and it does not require any additional hardware; good correction and improved accuracy can be obtained simply by adding a little to the computing overhead.

A novel automatic quality factor (Q) tuning scheme for an low-power and wideband active-RC filter is presented. Although Q-tuning is effective to reduce the power consumption of wideband active-RC filters, there are several problems since the Q-tuning normally relies on a magnitude locked loop (MLL). MLL is not accurate due to the amplitude detection circuits, and occupied area and power consumption tends to be large due to its complexity. In addition, flexibility to the reference signal may be the problem, since the reference signal which has a fixed accurate frequency is required. In order to solve these problems, we propose a Q-tuning scheme, which does not require a MLL. Therefore, proposed Q-tuning scheme has good accuracy, small die area, low power consumption and flexibility to the reference signal. In our proposed scheme, Q is tuned by adjusting the phase of an integrator to 90 degrees. The phase of an integrator is adjusted by detecting and controlling the oscillation frequency of a two-stage ring-integrator to the cutoff frequency of a filter, since the phase shift of an integrator is exactly 90 degrees at the oscillation frequency. The frequency is easily detected and controlled by counters and variable resistors, respectively. The Q-tuning circuit with a 5th-order Chebyshev LPF is implemented in a 0.13 µm CMOS technology. The tuning circuit occupies 0.12 mm2 and consumes 2.6 mW from 1.2 V supply.

The advancement of technology is ensured by step-by-step innovation and its implementation into society. Autonomous Decentralized Systems (ADSs) have been growing since first proposed in 1977. Since then, the ADS technologies and their implementations have interacted with the evolving markets, sciences, and technologies. The ADS concept is proposed on biological analogy, and its technologies have been advanced according to changing and expanding requirements. These technologies are now categorized into six generations on the basis of requirements and system structures, but the ADS concept and its system architecture have not changed. The requirements for the system can be divided in operation-oriented, mass service-oriented, and personal service-oriented categories. Moreover, these technologies have been realized in homogeneous system structure and, as the next step, in heterogeneous system structure. These technologies have been widely applied in manufacturing, telecommunications, information provision/utilization, data centers, transportation, and so on. They have been operating successfully throughout the world. In particular, ADS technologies have been applied in Suica, the IC card ticket system (ICCTS) for fare collection and e-commerce. This system is not only expanding in size and functionality but also its components are being modified almost every day without stopping its operation. This system and its technologies are shown here. Finally, the future direction of ADS is discussed, and one of its technologies is presented.

In this paper, a perceptually adaptive watermarking scheme for color images is proposed in order to achieve robustness and transparency. A new just noticeable distortion (JND) estimator for color images is first designed in the wavelet domain. The key issue of the JND model is to effectively integrate visual masking effects. The estimator is an extension to the perceptual model that is used in image coding for grayscale images. Except for the visual masking effects given coefficient by coefficient by taking into account the luminance content and the texture of grayscale images, the crossed masking effect given by the interaction between luminance and chrominance components and the effect given by the variance within the local region of the target coefficient are investigated such that the visibility threshold for the human visual system (HVS) can be evaluated. In a locally adaptive fashion based on the wavelet decomposition, the estimator applies to all subbands of luminance and chrominance components of color images and is used to measure the visibility of wavelet quantization errors. The subband JND profiles are then incorporated into the proposed color image watermarking scheme. Performance in terms of robustness and transparency of the watermarking scheme is obtained by means of the proposed approach to embed the maximum strength watermark while maintaining the perceptually lossless quality of the watermarked color image. Simulation results show that the proposed scheme with inserting watermarks into luminance and chrominance components is more robust than the existing scheme while retaining the watermark transparency.

Trust negotiation is an authorizing technique based on digital credentials, in which both a user and a server gradually establish trust in each other by repeatedly exchanging their credentials. A trust negotiation strategy is a function that answers a set of credentials to disclose to the other party, depending on policies and the set of already disclosed credentials. The disclosure tree strategy (DTS), proposed by Yu et al., is one of the strategies that satisfies preferable properties. DTS in a simple implementation requires exponential time and space; however, neither an efficient algorithm nor the lower-bound of its complexity was known. In this paper, we investigate the computational complexity of DTS. We formulate subproblems of DTS as problems on derivation trees of a context-free grammar (CFG), and analyze the computational complexity of the subproblems using the concepts of CFGs. As a result, we show that two subproblems EVL and MSET of DTS are NP-complete and NP-hard, respectively, while both are solvable in polynomial time if we modify EVL not to require non-redundancy and MSET not to answer any subset useless for leading the negotiation to success.

Two-Terminal Series Parallel (TTSP, for short) graphs are used as data models in applications for electric networks and scheduling problems. We propose a TTSP term graph which is a TTSP graph having structured variables, that is, a graph pattern over a TTSP graph. Let TGTTSP be the set of all TTSP term graphs whose variable labels are mutually distinct. For a TTSP term graph g in TGTTSP, the TTSP graph language of g, denoted by L(g), is the set of all TTSP graphs obtained from g by substituting arbitrary TTSP graphs for all variables in g. Firstly, when a TTSP graph G and a TTSP term graph g are given as inputs, we present a polynomial time matching algorithm which decides whether or not L(g) contains G. The minimal language problem for the class LTTSP={L(g) | g ∈ TGTTSP} is, given a set S of TTSP graphs, to find a TTSP term graph g in TGTTSP such that L(g) is minimal among all TTSP graph languages which contain all TTSP graphs in S. Secondly, we give a polynomial time algorithm for solving the minimal language problem for LTTSP. Finally, we show that LTTSP is polynomial time inductively inferable from positive data.

This work elucidates the evolution of three generations of the laboratory information system in the National Taiwan University Hospital, which were respectively implemented in an IBM Series/1 minicomputer, a client/server and a plug-and-play HL7 interface engine environment respectively. The experience of using the HL7 healthcare information exchange in the hospital information system, laboratory information system, and automatic medical instruments over the past two decades are illustrated and discussed. The latest design challenge in developing intelligent laboratory information services is to organize effectively distributed and heterogeneous medical instruments through the message gateways. Such experiences had spread to some governmental information systems for different purposes in Taiwan; besides, the healthcare information exchange standard, software reuse mechanism, and application service provider adopted in developing the plug-and-play laboratory information system are also illustrated.

Particle Image Velocimetry (PIV) is a widely used tool for the measurement of the different kinematic properties of the fluid flow. In this measurement technique, a pulsed laser light sheet is used to illuminate a flow field seeded with tracer particles and at each instance of illumination, the positions of the particles are recorded on digital CCD cameras. The resulting two camera frames can then be processed by various techniques to obtain the velocity vectors. One such techniques involve the tracking of the individual particles so as to identify the displacement of the every particles present in the flow field. The displacement of individual particles thus determined gives the velocity information if divided by known time interval. The accuracy as well as efficiency of such measurement systems depend upon the reliability of the algorithms to track those particles. In the present work, a cellular neural network based algorithm has been proposed. Performance test has been carried out using the standard flow images. It performs well in comparison to the existing algorithms in terms of reliability, accuracy and processing time.

An elementary formal system, EFS for short, is a kind of logic program over strings, and regarded as a set of rules to generate a language. For an EFS Γ, the language L(Γ) denotes the set of all strings generated by Γ. We consider a new form of EFS, called a restricted two-clause EFS, and denote by rEFS the set of all restricted two-clause EFSs. Then we study the learnability of rEFS in the exact learning model. The class rEFS contains the class of regular patterns, which is extensively studied in Learning Theory. Let Γ* be a target EFS in rEFS of learning. In the exact learning model, an oracle for superset queries answers "yes" for an input EFS Γ in rEFS if L(Γ) is a superset of L(Γ*), and outputs a string in L(Γ*)-L(Γ), otherwise. An oracle for membership queries answers "yes" for an input string w if w is included in L(Γ*), and answers "no", otherwise. We show that any EFS in rEFS is exactly identifiable in polynomial time using membership and superset queries. Moreover, for other types of queries, we show that there exists no polynomial time learning algorithm for rEFS by using the queries. This result indicates the hardness of learning the class rEFS in the exact learning model, in general.

The wireless systems that establish multiple input multiple output (MIMO) channels through multiple antennas at both ends of the communication link, have been proved to have tremendous potential to linearly lift the capacity of conventional scalar channel. In this paper, we present two efficient decision feedback equalization algorithms that achieve optimal and suboptimal detection order in MIMO spatial multiplexing systems. The new algorithms combine the recursive matrix inversion and ordered QR decomposition approaches, which are developed for nulling cancellation interaface Bell Labs layered space time (BLAST) and back substitution interface BLAST. As a result, new algorithms achieve total reduced complexities in frame based transmission with various payload lengths compared with the earlier methods. In addition, they enable shorter detection delay by carrying out a fast hybrid preprocessing. Moreover, the operation precision insensitivity of order optimization greatly relaxes the word length of matrix inversion, which is the most computational intensive part within the MIMO detection task.

An adaptive zero forcing maximum likelihood soft input soft output (AZFML-SISO) detector for multiple input multiple output (MIMO) wireless systems is presented. Its performance in an iterative MIMO receiver is analyzed. The AZFML-SISO detector calculates the soft outputs, applying the ML approach to the list that contains only those signal vectors limited by a hypersphere around the zero forcing (ZF) solution. The performance of the algorithm is evaluated on a communication system based on the standard for single carrier broadband wireless communication IEEE 802.16, with three transmit and three receive antennas. It is shown by computer simulation that the computational complexity in an average sense of the receiver running the AZFML-SISO algorithm is reduced by 90% at the SNR values of 30 dB and by 50% for SNR values of 15 dB in comparison to the receiver with an ML detector, while the system performance degrades by less than 1 dB.

For the purpose of the application of odor to information technology, we have developed an odor-emitting apparatus coupled with chemical capsules made of alginic acid polymer. This apparatus consists of a chemical capsule cartridge including chemical capsules of odor ingredients, valves to control odor emission, and a temperature control unit. Different odors can be easily emitted by using the apparatus. We have developed an integrated system of vision, audio and olfactory information in which odor strength can be controlled coinciding with on-screen moving images based on analytical results from the odor scanner.

The process of designing analogue circuits is formulated as a controlled dynamic system. For analysis of such system's properties it is suggested to use the concept of Lyapunov's function for a dynamic system. Various forms of Lyapunov's function are suggested. Analyzing the behavior of Lyapunov's function and its first derivative allowed us to determine significant correlation between this function's properties and processor time used to design the circuit. Numerical results prove the possibility of forecasting the behavior of various designing strategies and processor time based on the properties of Lyapunov's function for the process of designing the circuit.

Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) have attracted a significant amount of interest from many researchers because they have great potential as a means of obtaining information of various environments remotely. WSNs have a wide range of applications, such as natural environmental monitoring in forest regions and environmental control in office buildings. In WSNs, hundreds or thousands of micro-sensor nodes with such resource limitations as battery capacity, memory, CPU, and communication capacity are deployed without control in a region and used to monitor and gather sensor information of environments. Therefore, a scalable and efficient network control and/or data gathering scheme for saving energy consumption of each sensor node is needed to prolong WSN lifetime. In this paper, assuming that sensor nodes synchronize to intermittently communicate with each other only when they are active for realizing the long-term employment of WSNs, we propose a new synchronization scheme for gathering sensor information using chaotic pulse-coupled neural networks (CPCNN). We evaluate the proposed scheme using computer simulations and discuss its development potential. In simulation experiments, the proposed scheme is compared with a previous synchronization scheme based on a pulse-coupled oscillator model to verify its effectiveness.

The deployment of historical trajectories of moving objects has greatly increased for various applications in road networks. For instance, similar patterns of moving-object trajectories are very useful for designing the transportation network of a new city. In this paper, we define a spatio-temporal similarity measure based on a road network distance, rather than a Euclidean distance. We also propose a new similar trajectory search algorithm based on the spatio-temporal measure by using an efficient pruning mechanism. Finally, we show the efficiency of our algorithm, both in terms of retrieval accuracy and retrieval efficiency.

In this letter, we present an exact analytic expression for the maximum signal-to-interference ratio (SIR) for receivers communicating with multiple transmitting nodes over a general time-varying channel, where one of the nodes is chosen as a desired signal source based on the instantaneous channel condition and the other nodes act as interference sources. As an illustrative example, the maximum SIR distribution of a mobile receiver surrounded by three base stations (BS) is determined in a closed-form formula for Rayleigh fading channels, and its accuracy is confirmed using simulation results.

In this paper, the impacts of using multiple transmit antennas under doubly correlated MIMO channels on CDMA uplink code acquisition is studied. The performance of a MIMO code acquisition system is analyzed by considering spatial fading correlations, which depend on antenna spacing and azimuth spread at both MS and BS. The detection performance and mean acquisition time in the presence of spatially correlated MIMO channel are presented on a frequency selective fading channel and compared with the cases of spatial fading decorrelation via numerical evaluation. It is observed that the acquisition performance relies on the degree of spatial fading correlations. In addition, it is surprisingly seen that a MIMO code acquisition system provides worse performance than SIMO.

This paper deals with a strategic issue in the stable marriage model with complete preference lists (i.e., a preference list of an agent is a permutation of all the members of the opposite sex). Given complete preference lists of n men over n women, and a marriage µ, we consider the problem for finding preference lists of n women over n men such that the men-proposing deferred acceptance algorithm (Gale-Shapley algorithm) adopted to the lists produces µ. We show a simple necessary and sufficient condition for the existence of a set of preference lists of women over men. Our condition directly gives an O(n2) time algorithm for finding a set of preference lists, if it exists.