The present paper reports a robust projection onto eigenspace that is based on iterative projection. The fundamental method proposed in Shakunaga and Sakaue and involves iterative analysis of relative residual and projection. The present paper refines the projection method by solving linear equations while taking noise ratio into account. The refinement improves both the efficiency and robustness of the projection. Experimental results indicate that the proposed method works well for various kinds of noise, including shadows, reflections and occlusions. The proposed method can be applied to a wide variety of computer vision problems, which include object/face recognition and image-based rendering.

In this paper, we propose a new method of automatic speech summarization for each utterance, where a set of words that maximizes a summarization score is extracted from automatic speech transcriptions. The summarization score indicates the appropriateness of summarized sentences. This extraction is achieved by using a dynamic programming technique according to a target summarization ratio. This ratio is the number of characters/words in the summarized sentence divided by the number of characters/words in the original sentence. The extracted set of words is then connected to build a summarized sentence. The summarization score consists of a word significance measure, linguistic likelihood, and a confidence measure. This paper also proposes a new method of measuring summarization accuracy based on a word network expressing manual summarization results. The summarization accuracy of each automatic summarization is calculated by comparing it with the most similar word string in the network. Japanese broadcast-news speech, transcribed using a large-vocabulary continuous-speech recognition (LVCSR) system, is summarized and evaluated using our proposed method with 20, 40, 60, 70 and 80% summarization ratios. Experimental results reveal that the proposed method can effectively extract relatively important information by removing redundant or irrelevant information.

In this paper, a fragment-processing solution in 3D graphics rendering algorithms based on fragment lists (i.e. A-buffer) for minimizing loss of image quality is described. While all fragment information should be preserved for exact hidden surface removal, this places additional strain on hardware in terms of silicon gates and clock cycles. Therefore, we propose a fragment processing technique that can effectively merge fragments in order to decrease the depth of fragment lists. It renders scenes quite accurately even in the case when three fragments intersect each other. This algorithm improves hardware acceleration without deteriorating image quality.

The classic light field and lumigraph are two well-known approaches to image-based rendering, and subsequently many new rendering techniques and representations have been proposed based on them. Nevertheless the main limitation remains that in almost all of them only static scenes are considered. In this contribution we describe a method for calibrating a scene which includes moving or deforming objects from multiple image sequences taken with a hand-held camera. For each image sequence the scene is assumed to be static, which allows the reconstruction of a conventional static light field. The dynamic light field is thus composed of multiple static light fields, each of which describes the state of the scene at a certain point in time. This allows not only the modeling of rigid moving objects, but any kind of motion including deformations. In order to facilitate the automatic calibration, some assumptions are made for the scene and input data, such as that the image sequences for each respective time step share one common camera pose and that only the minor part of the scene is actually in motion.

Linking schemes have been proposed assuming the model where the time-stamp issuer need not be trusted. However, in that environment, a fake chain attack and forward or backward dating attacks are still a residual risk in Time-Stamping services (TSS). In this paper, we propose a new time-stamping scheme that focuses on these problems. In our scheme, we use pseudonyms to prevent the time-stamp issuer from dating the time that the specific entity requests. Our scheme doesn't rely on only one trustworthy entity, and uses mutual communication between each entity. Two types of entities, server and clients without any trustworthy entities are configured in our system. The server provides an anonymous communication channel, but doesn't provide TSS, and the clients are not only time-stamp requesters but also issuers. So, when a client requests a time-stamp from the system, it is issued by one of the other clients.

The baby-step giant-step algorithm, BSGS for short, was proposed by Shanks in order to compute the class number of an imaginary quadratic field. This algorithm is at present known as a very useful tool for computing with respect to finite groups such as the discrete logarithms and counting the number of the elements. Especially, the BSGS is normally made use of counting the rational points on the Jacobian of a hyperelliptic curve over a finite field. Indeed, research on the practical improvement of the BSGS has recently received a lot of attention from a cryptographic viewpoint. In this paper, we explicitly analyze the modified BSGS, which is for non-uniform distributions of the group order, proposed by Blackburn and Teske. More precisely, we refine the Blackburn-Teske algorithm, and also propose a criterion for the decision of the effectiveness of their algorithm; namely, our proposed criterion explicitly shows that what distribution is needed in order that their proposed algorithm is faster than the original BSGS. That is, we for the first time present a necessary and sufficient condition under which the modified BSGS is effective.

This paper proposes a robust method for estimating the fundamental frequency (F0) in real environments. It is assumed that the spectral structure of real environmental noise varies momentarily and its energy does not distribute evenly in the time-frequency domain. Therefore, segmenting a spectrogram of speech mixed with environmental noise into narrow time-frequency regions will produce low-noise regions in which the signal-to-noise ratio is high. The proposed method estimates F0 from the periodic and harmonic features that are clearly observed in the low-noise regions. It first uses two kinds of spectrogram, one with high frequency resolution and another with high temporal resolution, to represent the periodic and harmonic features corresponding to F0. Next, the method segments these two kinds of feature plane into narrow time-frequency regions, and calculates the probability function of F0 for each region. It then utilizes the entropy of the probability function as weight to emphasize the probability function in the low-noise region and to enhance noise robustness. Finally, the probability functions are grouped in each time, and F0 is obtained as the frequency with the highest probability of the function. The experimental results showed that, in comparison with other approaches such as the cepstrum method and the autocorrelation method, the developed method can more robustly estimate F0s from speech in the presence of band-limited noise and car noise.

Faces of a person performing freely in front of the camera can be captured in a sufficient resolution for facial parts recognition by the proposed camera system enhanced with a special PTZ camera. Head region, facial parts regions such as eyes and mouth and the borders of facial parts are extracted hierarchically by being guided by the irises and nostrils preliminarily extracted from the images of PTZ camera. In order to show the effectivity of this system, we proposed a possibility to generate the borders of facial parts of the face for the facial caricaturing and to introduce eye-contacting facial images which can eye-contact bilaterally with each other on the TV conference environment.

Davidson's scheme utilizes the order of basic blocks to embed a digital signature in a computer program. To preserve the function of the original program, additional jump instructions are inserted. This involves some overhead in both size and performance. In our implementation, the increase in size was between 9% and 24%. The performance of benchmark programs was 86-102% of the original.

We studied nitrogen incorporation in Al2O3 gate dielectrics by nitrogen plasma and examined the dependence of the electrical properties on the nitrogen incorporation. We found that the nitrogen concentration and profile in Al2O3 films thinner than 3 nm can be controlled by the substrate temperature and the plasma conditions. The electrical characterization showed that the plasma nitridation suppresses charges in Al2O3 films and prevents dopant penetration through the gate dielectric without increasing the leakage current or the interfacial trap density. We also demonstrated the improved performance of a metal-oxide-semiconductor field effect transistor by using a plasma nitrided Al2O3 gate dielectric. These results indicate that plasma nitridation is a promising method for improving the electrical properties of Al2O3 gate dielectrics.

The recent development of network technology has enabled us to access various information sources easily, and their integration has been studied intensively by the data engineering research community. Although technological advancement has made it possible to integrate existing heterogeneous information sources, we still have to deal with information sources of a new kind--dissemination-based information sources. They actively and autonomously deliver information from server sites to users. Integration of dissemination-based information sources is one of the popular research topics. We have been developing an information integration system in which we employ ECA rules to enable users to define new information delivery services integrating multiple existing dissemination-based information sources. However, it is not easy for users to directly specify ECA rules and to verify them. In this paper, we propose a scheme to specify new dissemination-based information delivery services using the framework of relational algebra. We discuss some important properties of the specification, and show how we can derive ECA rules to implement the services.

This paper discusses far-end crosstalk (FEXT) cancellation methods for multicarrier transmission system. A system arrangement and its tap update method are proposed when FEXT cancelers and a frequency-domain equalizer (FEQ) are jointly adapted to combat channel intersymbol interference, FEXT, and other additive noise. We present mathematical formulation of minimum mean-square error (MSE) and the optimum tap coefficients for the FEXT cancelers and the FEQ when FEXT cancellation techniques are introduced for multiuser discrete multitone (DMT) based very high-speed digital subscriber line (VDSL) transmission. It is shown that FEXT cancellation enhances the achievable bit rate in FEXT-limited systems. Computer simulation and analytical results show that the performance of jointly adapted FEXT cancelers and an FEQ is better than that of separately adapted FEXT cancelers and an FEQ.

We prepared HfO2 films by atomic layer deposition (ALD) on three kinds of silicon substrate surfaces (chemical oxide, HF-last surface and thermal oxide), and characterized their morphologies, structures, compositions, and crystallinities by physical analysis. The results revealed that the as-deposited HfO2 films consisted of nano-crystalline particles with a different crystalline system from that of the annealed films. The size of the nano-crystalline particles on the film on the chemical oxide was smaller than those on the other surfaces. The reason is thought to be the difference in OH concentration on the substrate surface. The predominant crystalline phases of all HfO2 films were monoclinic after annealing. Moreover, the film prepared on the chemical oxide had the smoothest surface after annealing. However, island structures with grain boundaries developed in the films on the other surfaces.

Multiple antenna systems are promising architectures for overcoming the effects of multi-path interference and increasing the spectrum efficiency. In order to be able to investigate these systems, in this article, we derive generalized spatial correlation equations of a circular antenna array for two typical angular energy distributions: a Gaussian angle distribution and uniform angular distribution. The generalized spatial correlation equations are investigated carefully by exact and approximate analyses.

We propose a new method for Depth from Defocus (DFD) using wavelet transform. Most of the existing DFD methods use inverse filtering in a transform domain to determine the measure of defocus. These methods suffer from inaccuracies in finding the frequency domain representation due to windowing and border effects. The proposed method uses wavelets that allow performing both the local analysis and windowing with variable-sized regions for images with varying textural properties. Experimental results show that the proposed method gives more accurate depth maps than the previous methods.

In 1999, Boneh et al. proposed the Lattice Factoring Method (LFM) for the integer factoring problem for a composite of the form N = prq by employing the LLL-algorithm. Time complexity of LFM is measured by the number of calls of the LLL-algorithm. In the worst case, the number is 2log p for a certain constant c. In 2001, Uchiyama and Kanayama introduced a novel criterion and provided an improved algorithm which runs (2k-p)/|p-Nr+1| times faster (for certain constants k, Nr+1). In this letter, we note another practical improvement applicable to the original and the improved LFM, which enables to provide about 2 times speed-up.

Recently, Hwang and Li proposed a smartcard-based remote user authentication scheme. Later, Chan and Cheng showed that Hwang and Li's scheme is insecure against a kind of impersonation attack where a legitimate user can create another valid pair of user identity and password without knowing the secret key of the remote system. However, an assumption under Chan and Cheng's attack is that the attacker must be a legal user. In this paper, we further present a more fundamental and efficient impersonation attack on Hwang and Li's scheme. Using our attack, any users (including legal and illegal users) can easily get a specific legal user's password, impersonate this specific user to login to the remote system, and pass the system authentication.

During the period from dusk to dark, when it is difficult for drivers to see other vehicles, or when visibility is poor due to rain, snow, etc., the contrast between nearby vehicles and the background is lower. Under such conditions, conventional surveillance systems have difficulty detecting the outline of nearby vehicles and may thus fail to recognize them. To solve this problem, we have developed a rear and side surveillance system for vehicles that uses image processing. The system uses two stereo cameras to monitor the areas to the rear and sides of a vehicle, i.e., a driver's blind spots, and to detect the positions and relative speeds of other vehicles. The proposed system can estimate the shape of a vehicle from a partial outline of it, thus identifying the vehicle by filling in the missing parts of the vehicle outline. Testing of the system under various environmental conditions showed that the rate of errors (false and missed detection) in detecting approaching vehicles was reduced to less than 10%, even under conditions that are problematic for conventional processing.

This paper deals with a first evaluation of the efficiency and the robustness of the real-time "v-disparity" algorithm in stereovision for generic road obstacles detection towards various types of obstacles (vehicle, pedestrian, motorbike, cyclist, boxes) and under adverse conditions (day, night, rain, glowing effect, noise and false matches in the disparity map). The theoretical good properties of the "v-disparity" algorithm--accuracy, robustness, computational speed--are experimentally confirmed. The good results obtained allow us to use this stereo algorithm as the onboard perception process for Driving Safety Assistance: conductor warning and longitudinal control of a low speed automated vehicle (using a second order sliding mode control) in difficult and original situations, at frame rate using no special hardware. Results of experiments--Vehicle following at low speed, Stop'n'Go, Stop on Obstacle (pedestrian, fallen motorbike, load dropping obstacle)--are presented.

A modified 0.35 µm gate-length MOSFET large-signal microwave device model, based on the widely used BSIM3 model, is presented in this report. This large-signal microwave model includes a BSIM3 model together with the passive components required to fit the device dc and microwave characteristics over a wide range of biasing points and frequency operation. In this report, we propose a methodology to improve the device microwave linearity by controlling a suitable biasing condition, which is based on the predictions of this modified CMOS large-signal model. The input IM3 enhances more than 10 dB at a 2.4 GHz operation. Furthermore, the adjacent channel power ratio also improves 7.5 dB with proper choosing device dc bias.