LiNbO3 optical modulators for band-operation with a resonant modulating electrode are investigated in this paper. We propose an asymmetric resonant structure consisting of two arms of modulating electrodes, where one arm is open-ended and the other arm is short-ended. The voltage standingwave was enhanced by the resonance of the electrodes, so that effective optical modulation was achieved, while the length of the modulating electrode was much shorter than the conventional travelingwave-type electrodes. The optical response at 6.2 GHz of a resonant modulator designed by maximizing the normalized induced phase was 4.94 of the response at dc with a non-resonant modulator.

In order to navigate a mobile robot or an autonomous vehicle in indoor environment, which includes several kinds of obstacles such as walls, furniture, and humans, the distance between the mobile robot and the obstacles have to be determined. These obstacles can be considered as walls with complicated edges. This paper proposes a mobile-robot-navigation method by using the polar coordinate transformation from an omnidirectional image. The omnidirectional image is obtained from a hyperboloidal mirror, which has the prominent feature in sensing the surrounding image at the same time. When the wall image from the camera is transformed by the transformation, the straight lines between the wall and the floor appear in the curve line after transformation. The peak point represents the distance and the direction between the robot and the wall. In addition, the wall types can be classified by the pattern and number of peak points. They are one side wall, corridor and corner. To navigate the mobile robot, in this paper, it starts with comparing a peak point obtained from the real image with the reference point determined by designed distance and direction. If there is a difference between the two points, the system will compute appropriate wheel angle to adjust the distance and direction against the wall by keeping the peak point in the same position as the reference point. The experiments are performed on the prototype mobile robot. The results show that for the determining distance from the robot to the wall between 70-290 cm, the average error is 6.23 percent. For three types of the wall classification, this method can correctly classify 86.67 percent of 15 image samples. In the robot movement alongside the wall, the system approximately consumes the 3 frame/s processing time at 10 cm/s motion speed. The mobile robot can maintain its motion alongside the wall with the average error 12 cm from reference distance.

A novel sensor system of denture base type was developed for simultaneous monitoring of salivary pH and tissue temperature in the oral cavity. Fundamental components of the monitoring system, sensor devices and sensor configuration are showed in this paper. The sensor units consist of IrO2 electrode and thermistor circuit implanted in the denture base that is tightly fixed in the oral cavity. The signals are transmitted by PFM-FM telemeter system that can be used for health care of the aged people without restraint of their daily behavior while at work, sleeping and even at exercise. Some of results concerning the basic characteristics of the sensor system and continuously monitored physiological data were obtained from the preliminary experiments. Availability of the whole system and monitoring method was discussed.

A new objective speech quality measure, Bark Coherence Function is presented. The Coherence Function was used for evaluating the non-linear distortion of low-to-medium rate speech coders. However, it is not well suited for quality estimation in modern speech transmission, especially, CDMA mobile communication system. In the proposed method, Coherence Function is newly defined in psycho-acoustic domain as the cognition module of perceptual speech quality measure and evaluates the perceptual non-linear distortion of mobile system. The experimental results showed that the proposed method has good performance over CDMA PCS and digital cellular system.

In this paper, we propose a method to reconstruct current distributions in the human brain from neuromagnetic measurements. The proposed method is based on the weighted lead-field synthetic (WLFS) filtering technique with the weighting factors calculated from the results of previous source space scanning. In this method, in addition to the depth normalization technique, weighting factors of the WLFS are determined by the cost values previously calculated based on the multiple signal classification (MUSIC) scan. We performed computer simulations of this method under noisy measurement conditions and compared the results to those obtained with the conventional WLFS method. The results of the simulations indicate that the proposed method is effective for the reconstruction of the current distributions in the human brain using magnetoencephalographic (MEG) measurements, even if the signal-to-noise ratio of the measured data is relatively low. We applied the proposed method to the magnetoencephalographic data obtained during a mental image processing task that included object recognition and mental rotation operations. The results suggest that the proposed method can extract the neural activity in the extrastriate visual region and the parietal region. These results are in agreement with the results of previous positron emission tomography (PET) and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies.

In this paper, we review recent developments in the field of optical regeneration for both ultra long-haul transmission and terrestrial networking applications. Different techniques (2R/3R) using nonlinear properties of materials and/or devices are proposed such as saturable absorber or InP based interferometer structures showing regenerative capabilities. Principles of operation as well as system experiments are described.

Time stamping is a technique used to prove the existence of certain digital data prior to a specific point in time. With the recent expansion of electronic commerce, it has been widely recognized as an important technique for ensuring the integrity of digital data for a long time period. Recently, various time stamping schemes have been proposed. However, a framework for evaluating their security and cost has not yet been established. Therefore, it has been difficult for users and system designers to select appropriate time stamping schemes. This paper presents a new framework for evaluating the security and cost of time stamping schemes. Our framework classifies time stamping schemes into 108 categories and clarifies their characteristics with regard to security and cost. By applying our framework to a certain scheme, we can easily evaluate its security and cost without discussing details of its specification. In this paper, we explain the basic idea of our framework and show how to use it by applying it to four existing schemes: Digital Notary/SecureSeal, PKITS, TIMESEC and Cuculus.

We propose a frequency stabilization system for laser diodes (LD's), in which the major parameters in the stabilization process can be controlled in respond to the monitored frequency noise characteristics in real-time basis. The performance of this system was also tested through stabilizing a 35 mW visible LD. The center frequency of the LD has been stabilized by negative electrical feedback based on Pound-Drever-Hall technique. The linewidth of the LD has been reduced by adapting optical feedback from resonant confocal Fabry-Perot (CFP) cavity. The controlling parameters, especially gain levels and frequency responses of the negative electrical feedback loop can be manipulated to remove the instantaneous frequency noise by monitoring power spectral density (PSD) of the frequency error signals in the real-time basis. The achieved PSD of frequency noise of a sample LD stabilized by the present system was less than 1105 Hz2/Hz for the Fourier frequency < 10 MHz. The reduced linewidth was estimated to be narrower than 400 kHz. The achieved minimum square root of the Allan variance was 3.910-11 at τ = 0.1 msec.

The methods for the transverse mode control and temperature characteristics improvement in 850 nm oxide confined vertical cavity surface emitting lasers (VCSELs) were investigated. For transverse mode control, dielectric aperture was demonstrated to suppress higher order modes. Substitution of AlAs for Al0.9Ga0.1As in partial bottom DBR was demonstrated to reduce thermal resistance of the devices and to enable operation in high temperature of 85.

The thermal response of a tunable laser is analyzed by using a mode density method based on a Fourier-Laplace analysis. This method introduces a mode density function for mode distribution of the Fourier-Laplace transform and gives temperature time-dependency in an integral form instead of an infinite weighted summation. When symmetric structures are assumed, the mode density method gives the transient thermal response in a simple form: error functions (spherical-symmetry case) and exponential integral functions (cylindrical-symmetry case). The cylindrical-symmetry analysis was extended to the noncylindrical-symmetry model and the thermal response of the tunable laser was calculated by the mode density method. The result shows good agreement with a Fourier-Laplace analysis (deviation 2%) and experimental results. As a rough estimation, the thermal response of the laser is in proportion to the logarithm of time in some range that depends on the chip and tuning-section size of the laser.

We have developed optical encoding devices for processing femtosecond pulses. These devices are based on spectral separation devices and light modulators with fiber gratings. Experiments were made to encode a light pulse in the spectral domain. These experiments utilize the characteristics that a femtosecond light pulse has a very broad spectrum. An input femtosecond light pulse is decomposed into a series of wavelength components. Each wavelength component with narrow spectra <1 nm width is successfully extracted into a single mode fiber. Light modulators corresponding to wavelength components are assigned to the 1st bit, the 2nd bit, the 3rd bit, , the nth bit, respectively. All of the encoded wavelength components are again recombined into a single time-varying signal and transmitted through an optical fiber. Decoding at receiving site is made by the reverse operation. Encoding and decoding for 2-bit and 4-bit signals were demonstrated for 200 fs input light pulse with about 40 nm spectral width.

We have demonstrated active mode hopping suppression in external-cavity semiconductor lasers including a diffraction grating as a wavelength-selecting device. The feedback control nullifies the difference between the oscillation wavelength and selected wavelength based on observed changes in diffraction angle. The control has suppressed mode hopping over a 7.5 times wider span than without control. And when combined with conventional mode hopping suppression techniques, mode-hop-free oscillation is achieved over 130 nm. Our approach can be used for most Littman-type external-cavity semiconductor lasers with simple attachments; it will be useful for continuous wavelength sweeping and for long-term wavelength stabilization.

We have developed a novel self-alignment process using the surface tension of the liquid resin for assembly of electronic or optoelectronic devices. Though the liquid resins have a characteristics as low as one tenth of the surface tension of solder in general, restoring forces for self-alignment capability can be produced by making it constrained on the 3-dimensional pads on chip and substrate. In this paper, its principle and characteristics are described and the relationship between process parameters and joint geometry were examined. And the possibility of self-alignment process was verified by analytic numerical method and scaled-up experiment. A self-alignment accuracy was examined experimentally and show that it became less than 0.4 µm. It can provide a useful information on various parameters involved in joint geometry and optimal design guideline to generate the proper profiles.

We describe a simple all-optical wavelength converter based on a Fabry-Perot semiconductor optical amplifier (FPSOA). We measure its static characteristics in detail and successfully demonstrate its dynamic wavelength-conversion operation (both inverted and non-inverted) at 2.5 Gbit/s. This is the first demonstration of FPSOA-based wavelength conversion. Quasi-digital response is also observed. Low input power, ease of fabrication and good compatibility with WDM networks are important advantages of FPSOA.

Wavelet based image compression is getting popular due to its promising compaction properties at low bitrate. Zerotree wavelet image coding scheme efficiently exploits multi-level redundancy present in transformed data to minimize coding bits. In this paper, a new technique is proposed to achieve high compression by adding new zerotree and significant symbols to original EZW coder. Contrary to four symbols present in basic EZW scheme, the modified algorithm uses eight symbols to generate fewer bits for a given data. Subordinate pass of EZW is eliminated and replaced with fixed residual value transmission for easy implementation. This modification simplifies the coding technique as well and speeds up the process, retaining the property of embeddedness.

Recently a high-resolution image that has more than one million pixels is available easily. However, such an image requires much processing time and memory for an image understanding system. In this paper, we propose an integrated image understanding system of multi-resolution analysis and multi-agent-based architecture for high-resolution images. The system we propose in this paper has capability to treat with a high-resolution image effectively without much extra cost. We implemented an experimental system for images of indoor scenes.

This paper investigates the interference suppression effect from much higher rate dedicated physical channels (DPCHs) of a parallel-type coherent multistage interference canceller (COMSIC) with iterative channel estimation (ICE) by laboratory experiments in the transmit-power-controlled W-CDMA reverse link. The experimental results elucidate that when two interfering DPCHs exist with the spreading factor (SF) of 8 and with the ratio of the target signal energy per bit-to-interference power spectrum density ratio (Eb/I0) of fast transmit power control, ΔEb/I0, of -6 dB (which corresponds to 64 simultaneous DPCHs with SF = 64, i.e., the same symbol rate as the desired DPCH), the implemented COMSIC receiver with ICE exhibits a significant decrease in the required transmit signal energy per bit-to-background noise power spectrum density ratio (Eb/N0) at the average bit error rate (BER) of 10-3 (while the matched filter (MF)-based Rake receiver could not realize the average BER of 10-3 due to severe multiple access interference (MAI)). It is also found that the achieved BER performance at the average BER of 10-3 of the COMSIC receiver with the A/D converter quantization of 8 bits in the laboratory experiments is degraded by approximately 1.0 dB and 4.0 dB compared to the computer simulation results, when ΔEb/I0=-6 dB and -9 dB, respectively, due to the quantization error of the desired signal and path search error for the Rake combiner. Finally, we show that the required transmit Eb/N0 at the average BER of 10-3 of the third-stage COMSIC with ICE is decreased by approximately 0.3 and 0.5 dB compared to that of COMSIC with decision-feedback type channel estimation (DFCE) with and without antenna diversity reception, respectively.

The recent progress of the performance of a CMOS-LSI is rapid and continuous, and the required bandwidth for communication between chips will be enormous. Dense optical interconnects by smart pixels may be used to such an application because it would have enough bandwidth and short delay of signaling. On-chip and chip-to-chip optical interconnects and electrical interconnects were compared and the advantages of the use of optics were indicated. For on-chip communication, high-speed (70% of the velocity of the light) propagation of signals by optical interconnects are useful and it enables whole chip synchronization. The considerable reduction of power dissipation using optics was estimated for chip-to-chip interconnects. The effect of hybrid integration with small parasitic capacitance was simulated and the sensitivity improvement of more than 13 dB was expected. How to fabricate a smart pixel is the most difficult subject. We had successfully fabricated smart pixels with VCSELs and PDs using polyimide bonding technique. CW lasing of the VCSEL was observed and it proved that the polyimide bonding technique was useful to making smart pixels. The integrated receiver was also fabricated in the same manner. It showed a high sensitivity of -9.2 dBm for a bit-rate of 622 Mbit/s. High-performance characteristics of the receiver resulted from the low parasitic integration with polyimide bonding technique.

This paper gives an overview of recent progress in radar polarimetry and radar polarimetric interferometry. Both techniques are of special importance for the inversion of physical scatterer parameters from radar remote sensing data. A unified treatment of polarisation effects in radar polarimetry and polarimetric interferometry based on eigenvalue processing is addressed providing a link between signal processing techniques and coherent electromagnetic models for random media scattering. In this context, the main applications of polarimetry in radar remote sensing such as single and multi-frequency polarimetric classification, the estimation of surface roughness and moisture content and vegetation structure estimation are reviewed.

A micro reactor array for biochemical or biomedical use was developed. Conceptof this development is to get as much as biological data at the same time. Ninety-six micro reaction wells, volume of each well was 1.5 µl, were integrated in the array. The micro reactor array was fabricated on 1 mm thick silicon wafer and twelve pairs of a temperature sensor and a heater were formed on the backside. A tiny transparent window for optical measurement was formed at the center of bottom wall on each well. Several temperature gradients were applied to the array by means of few heaters and compared with simulation results to optimize the parameters. Finally, performance of the array was evaluated by basic DNA reaction. Advantages of the array system are the fast thermal response due to the small heat capacity and easy to make several reaction conditions in parallel.