In this paper, we propose a cell synthesis method for a Salicide process. Our method utilizes the local interconnect between adjacent transistors, which is available in some Salicide processes, and optimizes the transistor placement of a cell considering both area and the number of local interconnects. In this way we reduce the number of metal wires and contacts. The circuit model is not restricted to conventional series-parallel CMOS logic, and our method enables us to synthesize CMOS pass-transistor circuits. Experimental results show that our method uses the local interconnect effectively, and optimizes both cell area and metal wire length.

Browsing is an important function supporting efficient access to relevant information in video archives. In this paper, we present PanoramaExcerpts -- a video browsing interface that shows a catalogue of two types of video icons: panoramic and keyframe icons. A panoramic icon is automatically synthesized from a video segment taken with camera pan or tilt using a camera parameter estimation technique. One keyframe icon is extracted for each shot to supplement the panoramic icons. A panoramic icon represents the entire visible contents of a scene extended with a camera pan or tilt, which is difficult to represent using a single keyframe. A graphical representation, called camera-work trajectory, is also proposed to show the direction and the speed of camera operation. For the automatic generation of PanoramaExcerpts, we propose an approach to integrate the following: (a) a shot-change detection method; (b) a method for locating segments that contain smooth camera operations; (c) a layout method for packing icons in a space-efficient manner. In this paper, we mainly describe (b) and (c) with experimental results.

CAM (Content Addressable Memory) units are generally designed so that they can be applied to variety of application programs. However, if a particular application runs on CAM units, some functions in CAM units may be often used and other functions may never be used. We consider that appropriate design for CAM units is required depending on the requirements for a given application program. This paper proposes a CAM processor synthesis system based on behavioral descriptions. The input of the system is an application program written in C including CAM functions, and its output is hardware descriptions of a synthesized processor and a binary code executed on it. Since the system determines functions in CAM units and synthesizes a CAM processor depending on the requirements of an application program, we expect that a synthesized CAM processor can execute the application program with small processor area and delay. Experimental results demonstrate its efficiency and effectiveness.

Spatio-temporal decorrelation is the task of eliminating correlations between associated signals in spatial domain as well as in time domain. In this paper, we present a simple but efficient adaptive algorithm for spatio-temporal decorrelation. For the task of spatio-temporal decorrelation, we consider a dynamic recurrent network and calculate the associated natural gradient for the minimization of an appropriate optimization function. The natural gradient based spatio-temporal decorrelation algorithm is applied to the task of blind deconvolution of linear single input multiple output (SIMO) system and its performance is compared to the spatio-temporal anti-Hebbian learning rule.

Binary Decision Diagrams (BDDs) are graph representation of Boolean functions. In particular, Ordered BDDs (OBDDs) are useful in many situations, because they provide canonical representation and they are manipulated efficiently. BDD packages which automatically generate OBDDs have been developed, and they are now widely used in logic design area, including formal verification and logic synthesis. Synthesis of pass-transistor circuits is one of successful applications of such BDD packages. Pass-transistor circuits are generated from BDDs by mapping each node to a selector which consists of two or four pass transistors. If circuits are generated from smaller BDDs, generated circuits have smaller number of transistors and hence save chip area and power consumption. In this paper, more generic BDDs which have no restrictions in variable ordering and variable appearance count on its paths are called Generic BDDs (GBDDs), and an algorithm for generating GBDDs is proposed for the purpose of synthesis of pass-transistor circuits. The proposed algorithm consists of two steps. At the first step, parse trees (PTs) for given Boolean formulas are generated, where a PT is a directed tree representation of Boolean formula(s) and it consists of literal nodes and operation nodes. In this step, our algorithm attempts to reduce the number of literal nodes of PTs. At the second step, a GBDD is generated for the PTs using Concatenation Method, where Concatenation Method generates a GBDD by connecting GBDDs vertically. In this step, our algorithm attempts to share isomorphic subgraphs. In experiments on ISCAS'89 and MCNC benchmark circuits, our program successfully generated 32 GBDDs out of 680 single-output functions and 4 GBDDs out of 49 multi-output functions whose sizes are smaller than OBDDs. GBDD size is reduced by 23.1% in the best case compared with OBDD.

We call a network an anonymous network, if each vertex of the network is given no ID's. For distributed algorithms for anonymous networks, solvable problems depend strongly on the given initial conditions. In the past, initial conditions have been investigated, for example, by computation given the number of vertices as the initial condition, and in terms of what initial condition is needed to elect a leader. In this paper, we study the relations among initial conditions. To achieve this task, we define the relation between initial conditions A and B (denoted by A B) as the relation that some distributed algorithm can compute B on any network satisfying A. Then we show the following property of this relation among initial conditions. The relation is a partial order with respect to equivalence classes. Moreover, over initial conditions, it induces a lattice which has maxima and minima, and contains an infinite number of elements. On the other hand, we give new initial conditions k-LEADER and k-COLOR. k-LEADER denotes the initial condition that gives special condition only to k vertices. k-COLOR denotes the initial condition that divides the vertices into k groups. Then we investigate the property of the relation among these initial conditions.

Several types of coplanar waveguide (CPW) resonator are analyzed by use of the field decay method based on the FDTD algorithm in this paper. Quality (Q) factors of a CPW resonator, including radiation Q, conductor Q, dielectric Q and unloaded Q, are investigated thoroughly. A new procedure to calculate conductor Q is proposed. Some CPW resonators are fabricated and measured in order to validate the analysis method. It is shown that radiation from a CPW resonator can be reduced by means of the stepped impedance technique. It is also seen that miniaturization of CPW resonators can be realized if the stepped impedance structure is adopted.

A method for determination of the location, shape, and material properties of a 3D object from measurements of the scattered field, when the object is successively illuminated by a number of incident fields is presented. This work extends the method previously developed for reconstructions of 2D permittivity and conductivity from electromagnetic measurements to the more complicated full-vector 3D electromagnetic inversion. Furthermore, a frequency hopping strategy to improve the resolution of the unknown objects when the frequency is raised, is underlined. Results of numerical experiments are presented to illustrate both strengths and weaknesses of the method.

The micro positioning systems using magnetic suspension technique, which is one of precision actuating method, have been suggested. Utilizing the various potentials such as the exclusion of a mechanical friction, they are being applied broadly to multi degrees of freedom (d.o.f) system requesting high accuracy or hybrid system requesting to be controlled position and force simultaneously. This paper presents the entire development procedure of a novel six d.o.f micro positioning system using mag-netic levitation, with a repulsive force mechanism covering the all d.o.f. First, the interactions between magnetic elements are modeled and the system design flow by an optimal location of the elements is given. A kinematic relationship between the measuring instruments and the levitated object is derived, and dynamic characteristics are identified by the narrow gap principles. And the main issues for control are discussed.

A signal processing approach is discussed which has the potential for imaging strongly scattering objects from a series of scattering experiments. The method is based on a linear spectral estimation technique to replace the filtered backpropagation for limited discrete data and a subsequent nonlinear signal processing step to remove the contribution of multiple scattering my means of homomorphic filtering. Details of this approach are discussed and illustrated by applying the imaging algorithm to both simulated and real data.

The mean reflection and transmission coefficients of electromagnetic waves incident onto a two-dimensional slightly random dielectric surface are investigated by means of the stochastic functional approach. We discuss the shift of Brewster's scattering angle using the Wiener kernels and numerical calculations. It is also shown that the phase shift at the reflection into Brewster's angle for a flat surface does not depend on the rms height of the surface, but does on the correlation length of the surface.

In this paper we report the results of a study regarding the backscattering from wind-roughened water surfaces. The reference profile data has been deducted by an experiment held at the University of Heidelberg circular wave tank facility. The scattering theory is based on a fractal description of the surface and a combined use of the Kirchhoff approximation and the small perturbation method (SPM). The scattering results are tested versus the ones obtained via the periodic-surface moment method. The study shows the reliability of the novel approach.

To make clear numerically the scattering characteristics for a body embedded in a random medium, we need to analyze the bistatic cross-section (BCS). The scattering problem can be analyzed as a boundary value problem by using current generator method. The fourth moment of Green's functions in the random medium, which is necessary for the analysis, is obtained approximately by two-scale method. We analyze numerically the BCS of conducting circular cylinders in continuous random media, which are assumed to fluctuate about the dielectric constant of free space. The numerical results agree well with the law of energy conservation. The effects of random media on the BCS are also clarified numerically.

In this paper, the electromagnetic scattering from a cylinder with a computer-generated random rough surface is analyzed by a numerical simulation method. The validity of the proposed numerical method is confirmed by comparing the present numerical results with those calculated by the perturbation method to second order and its Pade approximation. It is shown that the present proposed method can be applied to the case where the surface roughness becomes relatively large.

The problem of synthesizing a minimum-cost logic network is formulated for a genetic algorithm (GA). When benchmarked against a commercial logic synthesis tool, an odd parity circuit required 24 basic cells (BCs) versus 28 BCs for the design produced by the commercial system. A magnitude comparator required 20 BCs versus 21 BCs for the commercial system's design. Poor temporal performance, however, is the main disadvantage of the GA-based approach. The design of a hardware-based cost function that would accelerate the GA by several thousand times is described.

An 1 V, 50 MHz, 16-bit DSP core was developed using a 0.25-µm Dual Vt library, SRAM, and Mask ROM tailored for 1 V operation. The core speed was 41% enhanced using an alternate MAC and 2-stage execution pipeline. A 1.0 V to 1.5 V voltage up converter with 59% power efficiency and a 450 ps 1 V to 2.5 V level converter were implemented. An new long wire delay estimation method enhanced the synthesis. The measured power consumption at 0.9 V was 8.7 mW, which was 40% less than the power of the normal library's at 1.3 V, when the PSI-CELP CODEC firmware was run at 40 MHz.

We have developed a new method to improve cooperation in concurrent systems for distributed control by using multi-agent (MA) functions. Since field terminals (FTs) work concurrently, cooperation among them is essential to the effectiveness and efficiency of the overall system. When FTs are modeled as agents, it is easy to explicitly deal with the interactions among them because those interactions can be modeled naturally as communication among agents with cooperation and negotiation. In conventional central control systems, the host computer supervises and controls all FTs in accordance with a pre-installed control algorithm. Our method instead uses intelligent field terminals (IFTs) that can evaluate the diverse information from devices of other IFTs autonomously. In the work reported here, we have evaluated the effectiveness and efficiency of our cooperative control method experimentally and have developed a system using this method to control various kinds of water delivery systems. The IFT providing MA functions that can evaluate the control parameters (CPs) and conditions of the other IFTs. If turn-around time is to be shortened, the conflicts that occur when the data processed by different IFTs is inconsistent or irregular must be resolved autonomously. Each IFT therefore cooperates with diverse functional agents (FA)s of other IFTs by using priority levels, conditions, and evaluation points in order to maintain the continuity of water delivery.

In this paper, we present a low-power and area-efficient design method of embedded high-speed A/D converters for mixed analog-digital system LSI's. As the A/D converter topology, a 1.5 bit/stage interleaved pipeline A/D converter is employed, because the basic topology covers a wide range of specifications on the conversion frequency and the resolution. The design method determines the minimum DC supply current, the minimum device sizes and the minimum number of channels to meet the precision given by the specification. This paper also points out that the interleaved pipeline structure is very effective for low-power design of high-speed A/D converters whose sampling frequency is over 100 MHz.

As a preprocessor of the automatic speech recognizer in a noisy environment, a microphone array system has been investigated to reduce the environmental noise. In usual microphone array design, a plane wave is assumed for the sake of simplicity (far-field assumption). However, this far-field assumption does not always hold, resulting in distortion in the array output. In this report, the subspace method, which is one of the high resolution spectrum estimator, is applied to the near-field source localization problem. A high resolution method is necessary especially for the near-field source localization with a small-sized array. By combining the source localization technique with a spatial inverse filter, the signal coming from the multiple sources in the near-field range can be separated. The modified minimum variance beamformer is used to design the spatial inverse filter. As a result of the experiment in a real environment with two sound sources in the near-field range, 60-70% of word recognition rate was achieved.

This paper presents a new neural network structure, called Temporal-CombNET (T-CombNET), dedicated to the time series analysis and classification. It has been developed from a large scale Neural Network structure, CombNET-II, which is designed to deal with a very large vocabulary, such as Japanese character recognition. Our specific modifications of the original CombNET-II model allow it to do temporal analysis, and to be used in large set of human movements recognition system. In T-CombNET structure one of most important parameter to be set is the space division criterion. In this paper we analyze some practical approaches and present an Interclass Distance Measurement based criterion. The T-CombNET performance is analyzed applying to in a practical problem, Japanese Kana finger spelling recognition. The obtained results show a superior recognition rate when compared to different neural network structures, such as Multi-Layer Perceptron, Learning Vector Quantization, Elman and Jordan Partially Recurrent Neural Networks, CombNET-II, k-NN, and the proposed T-CombNET structure.