Epitaxial SrTiO3(STO) film on epitaxial (Ti,Al)N/Si(100) was successfully obtained using a Ti-buffer layer. The SrTiO3 film was (100) oriented and grew in parallel epitaxial relationship (cube-on-cube), i.e., (100)SrTiO3//(100)(Ti,Al)N//(100)Si, <110> SrTiO3//<110> (Ti,Al)N//<110> Si. The Ti-buffer layer was grown on (Ti,Al)N by magnetron sputtering, and the thickness of the buffer layer was 2-10 nm. After the STO film was sputtered, the Ti-buffer layer was changed to polycrystalline anatase-TiO2.

A 2-step deposition technique was introduced in the heteroepitaxial growth of barium titanate (BaTiO3) thin films. Heteroepitaxial BaTiO3 films were prepared on a SrRuO3/SrTiO3 substrate by radio frequency (RF) magnetron sputtering with three kinds of deposition method: low RF-power deposition, 2-step deposition, and high power deposition. The crystallographic and ferroelectric properties were evaluated for the heteroepitaxial films. When the epitaxial capacitor was prepared by the 2-step deposition technique, the ferroelectric remanent polarization, 2Pr, was maximized. The optimized deposition condition to improve the crystal quality is discussed in terms of damage and diffusion, which could be introduced into the oxide films during the epitaxial growth, and controlled by the RF-power and deposition time, respectively.

One drawback of Integrated service architecture is the scaling problem. Therefore, flow aggregation is an important solution for supporting quality of service in large-scale network. In advance reservation, priori information of advance-reserved requests can be used for flow aggregation before their initiation time. However, an impolitic aggregation can lead to violate admission control. In this paper, we propose an effective algorithm to aggregate advance-reserved requests with guaranteed delay. The proposed algorithm not only can reduce the amount of state in core network but also minimize the bandwidth consumption. The simulation result indicates that the state in the core network can be reduced as low as 17.3% even in the worst case.

Matching pursuit is a signal expansion technique whose efficiency for motion compensated residual image has been successfully demonstrated in the MPEG-4 development. However, one of the practical concerns related to applying matching pursuit algorithm to real-time coding of video is its massive computation required for finding atoms. This paper proposes a new fast method based on three properties of basis functions used in the signal expansion. The first one is the symmetry property of the 1-D bases. The second one is that one can preclude many bases that cannot be atom by checking a simple mathematical condition. The last one is the classification property of 2-D bases in a given dictionary. Experimental result shows that our method can perform the same matching pursuit without any image degradation using only about 40% of computational load required by the conventional fast method based on separability of 2-D Gabor dictionary. Furthermore, if negligible quality degradation is allowed, the method can be extended to perform matching pursuit with only about 10% of the computational load required by the conventional fast method. We apply the proposed fast matching pursuit method to scalable coding of video with two layers.

This paper proposes an automatic system which can perform the entire diagnostic process from the extraction of the liver to the recognition of a tumor. In particular, the proposed technique uses shape information to identify and recognize a lesion adjacent to the border of the liver, which can otherwise be missed. Because such an area is concave like a bay, morphological operations can be used to find the bay. In addition, since the intensity of a lesion can vary greatly according to the patient and the slice taken, a decision on the threshold for extraction is not easy. Accordingly, the proposed method extracts the lesion by means of a Fuzzy c-Means clustering technique, which can determine the threshold regardless of a changing intensity. Furthermore, in order to decrease any erroneous diagnoses, the proposed system performs a 3-D consistency check based on three-dimensional information that a lesion mass cannot appear in a single slice independently. Based on experimental results, these processes produced a high recognition rate above 91%.

In QoS networks, routing algorithms for QoS traffic have to provide the transmission path satisfying its QoS requirement while achieving high utilization of network resources. Therefore, server-based QoS routing algorithms would be more effective than distributed routing ones which are very common on the Internet. Furthermore, we believe that rerouting function enhances the advantage of their algorithms in which an already accepted flow with established path is replaced on some other path in order to accept newly arriving transmission request if it can not be accepted without doing so. Thus in this paper, we will propose a rerouting algorithm with the server-based QoS routing and evaluate its performance in terms of the blocking probability by computer simulation. In addition, we will investigate the impact of the amount of traffic with high-priority on the performance in some network topologies. Through some simulation results, we also discuss some issues arising in improving the effectiveness of rerouting.

Recently, traffic of real-time communication such as video or IP telephony is increasing in Internet. Low delay and low jitter communication is required to perform these kinds of services smoothly. CoS (Class of Services) scheme which controls traffic by the class unit such as application is currently being paid attention. It is considered to be efficient control mechanism which utilizes characteristics of Internet traffic. One of effective methods for queueing control to realize CoS is CBQ (Class Based Queueing). Efficient and dynamic bandwidth allocation can be realized by using CBQ. However, CBQ mechanism is not necessarily efficient for real-time communication. In this paper, We clarify the effect of dynamic CBQ control scheme on real-time communication by experiment. In addition, we show that low delay and low jitter communication is possible by reducing unnecessary control overhead which is caused by traffic change. We propose new mechanism which changes bandwidth allocation of CBQ dynamically suppressing non real-time traffic and giving priority to real-time traffic on using bandwidth. We also show its efficiency by using real system.

In this paper we propose a new algorithm to approximate the solution of Hamilton-Jacobi-Bellman equation by using a three layer neural network for affine and general nonlinear systems, and the state feedback controller can be obtained which make the closed-loop systems be suboptimal within a restrictive training domain. Matrix calculus theory is used to get the gradients of training error with respect to the weight parameter matrices in neural networks. By using pattern mode learning algorithm, many examples show the effectiveness of the proposed method.

In this paper, multiuser detector (MUD) based on radial basis function (RBF) is proposed and simulated for a multicode DS/CDMA system in an AWGN and a multipath fading channels. The performance of RBF-based MUD is compared with that of many suboptimal multiuser detectors in terms of bit error probability. To obtain simulation results, importance sampling technique is employed. From the simulation results, it is confirmed that the RBF-based MUD outperforms decorrelating detector, and achieves near-optimum performance under various environments. The results in this paper can be applied to design of MUD for a multicode DS/CDMA system.

We propose a two-level hierarchical method for dependability evaluation of distributed systems with replicated programs and data files. Since Markov modeling is limited only to each component in this method, state explosion can be circumvented successfully. Simulation results show that the method can accomplish evaluation even for large systems for which Markov modeling is not feasible.

An optical flow-based motion estimation algorithm is proposed for video coding. The algorithm is based on the fact that true motion vectors have similar characteristics to optical flow vectors. The algorithm uses block matching motion estimation with an adaptive search region. The search region is computed from motion fields that are estimated based on the optical flow. The results obtained using test images show that the proposed algorithm can produce a significant improvement compared with previous optical flow algorithm and block matching algorithm.

An electroretinogram (ERG) represents the global responses of the retina to a visual stimulus and shows accumulated responses of each layer of the retina relative to the signal processing mechanisms occurring within the retina. Thus, investigating the reaction types of each ERG wave provides information required for diagnosis and for identifying the signal processing mechanisms in the retina. In this study, an ERG signal is generated by simulating the volume conductor field response for each retina layer, which are then summed algebraically. The retina model used for the simulation is Shah's Computer Retina model, which is the most reliable model developed so far. When the generated ERG is compared with a typical clinical ERG it exhibits a close similarity. Based on changing the parameters of the ERG model, a diagnostic investigation is performed with a variation in the ERG waveform.

In this paper, we propose an approach to test pattern generation for Speed-Independent (SI) asynchronous control circuits. Test patterns are generated based on a specified sequence, which is derived from the specification of a target circuit in the form of a Signal Transition Graph (STG). Since the sequence represents the behavior of a circuit only with stable states, the state space of the circuit can be represented as reduced one. A product machine, which consists of a fault-free circuit and a faulty circuit, is constructed and then the specified sequence is applied sequentially to the product machine. A fault is detected when the product machine produces inconsistency, i.e., output values of a fault-free circuit and a faulty circuit are different, and the sequentially applied part of the sequence becomes a test pattern to detect the fault. We also propose a test generation method using an undetectable fault identification as well as the specified sequence. Since the reduced state space is a subset of that of a gate level implementation, test patterns based on a specification cannot detect some faults. The proposed method identifies those faults with a circuit topology in advance. BDD is used to implement the proposed methods efficiently, since the proposed methods have a lot of state sets and set operations. Experimental results show that the test generation using a specification achieves high fault coverage over single stuck-at fault model for several synthesized SI circuits. The proposed test generation using a circuit topology as well as a specification decreases execution time for test generation with negligible cost retaining high fault coverage.

In this paper, we first propose a new speech enhancement preprocessing algorithm by combining power subtraction method and maximal ratio combining technique, then apply it to both energy-based and statistical model-based VAD algorithm to improve the performance even in low SNR conditions. We also perform extensive computer simulations to demonstrate the performance improvement of the proposed VAD algorithm employing the proposed speech enhancement preprocessing algorithm under various background noise environments.

This paper describes a realtime 3D sound localization algorithm to be implemented with the use of a low power embedded DSP. A distinctive feature of this implementation approach is that the audible frequency band is divided into three, in accordance with the analysis of the sound reflection and diffraction effects through different media from a certain sound source to human ears. In the low, intermediate, and high frequency subbands, different schemes of the 3D sound localization are devised by means of an IIR filter, parametric equalizers, and a comb filter, respectively, so as to be run realtime on a low power embedded DSP. This algorithm aims at providing a listener with the 3D sound effects through headphones at low cost and low power consumption.

In order to realize automatic-level-controlled (ALC) erbium doped fiber amplifiers (EDFAs) with both wide dynamic range and good noise performance, we propose EDFAs employing the automatic power control (APC) scheme and a variable attenuation slope compensator (VASC). The VASC consists of two asymmetrical Mach-Zehnder interferometers (MZIs) concatenated in series and thermo optic (TO) heaters are attached to the arms of each MZIs. By adjusting the electric power supplied to the TO heaters, an almost linear attenuation slope can be varied by plus minus 5 dB or more over the operational wavelength band of 30 nm. The EDFA employing the APC scheme and the VASC has exhibited a dynamic range as large as 20 dB with the output power variation as small as 0.7 dB, which is as good as that of the EDFA employing the APC scheme and a variable optical attenuator (VOA). The noise figure (NF) of the EDFA employing the VASC was degraded about 4.1 dB with increasing the input power by 20 dB, while it was degraded about 7.3 dB with increasing the input power by only 15 dB in the EDFA employing the VOA. The EDFA employing the VASC can realize the ALC operation over a wider dynamic range with reduced noise figure degradation. In the EDFA employing the VASC, the power excursion was suppressed to less than 1.1 dB, when the input signal level was changed between -23 dBm/ch and -18 dBm/ch with the rise/fall time of 8 ms.

An experimental report was presented on a high temperature performance of a ZrN barrier in the model system of W/ZrN/poly-Si as a poly-metal gate electrode configuration. The absence of interdiffusion, reaction and/or mixing of the ZrN barrier with adjoining W and poly-Si layers resulted in a successful demonstration of the thermally stable poly-metal gate electrode configuration which tolerated annealing at 850 for 1 h.

A wavelength demultiplexer made of 2-D photonic crystal capable of simultaneously separating many channels from WDM light is analyzed in order to study the properties and clarify the design parameters. Numerical analyses are carried out for the optical filter structure and the demultiplexer structure which consists of several filters and waveguides carved in the crystal. The results of this paper show the considerations regarding the frequency tuning, the device size, the bandwidth and integration of filters. Further more, for a photonic crystal filter, a method for realizing a flat-top pass-band generally required from the dense-WDM systems is presented and its property is shown. The calculation method is the scattering matrix method which is proper to the analysis of the frequency domain in a 2-D photonic crystal with finite size and with some defects.

The uniform switching system is the family of non-linear n m binary arrays constrained such that all columns are from the constant weight k vectors and all rows have weights divisible by p > 0. For this system, we present a cardinality formula and an enumerative algorithm.

Chen et al., have proposed a new estimation method for the membership values in fuzzy sets. The proposed scheme takes input from empirical/experimental data, which reflect the expert's knowledge on the relative degree of belonging of the members, and then searches for the best fit membership values of the element. Through the estimation of the practical case (Sect. 3 in [1]) the algorithm suggests to normalize the estimated membership values if there is any among them more than one and change some condition to guarantee its positiveness. In this paper, we show how to use the same imposed condition to guarantee that the estimated membership values will be within the unit interval without normalization.