The N-dimensional (N-D) Hilbert curve is a one-to-one mapping between N-D space and one-dimensional (1-D) space. It is studied actively in the area of digital image processing as a scan technique (Hilbert scan) because of its property of preserving the spatial relationship of the N-D patterns. Currently there exist several Hilbert scan algorithms. However, these algorithms have two strict restrictions in implementation. First, recursive functions are used to generate a Hilbert curve, which makes the algorithms complex and computationally expensive. Second, all the sides of the scanned region must have the same size and the length must be a power of two, which limits the application of the Hilbert scan greatly. Thus in order to remove these constraints and improve the Hilbert scan for general application, a nonrecursive N-D Pseudo-Hilbert scan algorithm based on two look-up tables is proposed in this paper. The merit of the proposed algorithm is that implementation is much easier than the original one while preserving the original characteristics. The experimental results indicate that the Pseudo-Hilbert scan can preserve point neighborhoods as much as possible and take advantage of the high correlation between neighboring lattice points, and it also shows the competitive performance of the Pseudo-Hilbert scan in comparison with other common scan techniques. We believe that this novel scan technique undoubtedly leads to many new applications in those areas can benefit from reducing the dimensionality of the problem.

This paper describes a robust automatic speech recognition (ASR) system with less computation. Acoustic models of a hidden Markov model (HMM)-based classifier include various types of hidden factors such as speaker-specific characteristics, coarticulation, and an acoustic environment, etc. If there exists a canonicalization process that can recover the degraded margin of acoustic likelihoods between correct phonemes and other ones caused by hidden factors, the robustness of ASR systems can be improved. In this paper, we introduce a canonicalization method that is composed of multiple distinctive phonetic feature (DPF) extractors corresponding to each hidden factor canonicalization, and a DPF selector which selects an optimum DPF vector as an input of the HMM-based classifier. The proposed method resolves gender factors and speaker variability, and eliminates noise factors by applying the canonicalzation based on the DPF extractors and two-stage Wiener filtering. In the experiment on AURORA-2J, the proposed method provides higher word accuracy under clean training and significant improvement of word accuracy in low signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) under multi-condition training compared to a standard ASR system with mel frequency ceptral coeffient (MFCC) parameters. Moreover, the proposed method requires a reduced, two-fifth, Gaussian mixture components and less memory to achieve accurate ASR.

We propose a new broadcast strategy for a multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) system with N transmit antennas at the transmitter and M≤N single antenna receivers. The proposed method, based on dirty-paper coding (DPC), spatially separates the M users but does not suffer from the power loss of classical spatial division multiple access (SDMA). For the special case of M=N=2 and when the two single antenna receivers are assumed to be co-located, the proposed scheme produces a 2 transmit, 2 receiver antenna MIMO transmission system that doubles the symbol rate of MIMO space-time block code (STBC) systems from one to two symbol per transmission time. It is proved theoretically and experimentally that the proposed scheme provides the same performance level as that of MIMO STBC systems (i.e., the Alamouti scheme) for the first symbol, and the same performance as the Bell labs layered space-time (BLAST) system for the second symbol. When compared to the BLAST system, the proposed scheme has the same symbol rate, but achieves significantly better performance, since it provides 2 level diversity per symbol on the first symbol while the BLAST system does not provide any diversity.

This letter deals with blind multiuser detection based on the multi-channel linearly constrained constant modulus algorithm (MLCCMA) for asynchronous code division multiple access (CDMA) systems over frequency-selective Rayleigh fading channels. In conjunction with the decision-feedback generalized sidelobe canceller (DFGSC), we present an efficient approach to combat multiple access interference and intersymbol interference. Computer simulations confirm that the proposed MLCCMA-based DFGSC can significantly speed up convergence and improve the output performance.

In this paper, an architecture of MIMO mesh network which avoids co-channel interference and supplies link multiplexing simultaneously, namely MIMO spatial spectrum sharing, is proposed. As a MIMO transmission scheme, linear (such as zero-forcing) and nonlinear (such as dirty paper coding and successive interference cancellation) MIMO algorithm are developed for the proposed mesh network. It is found from numerical analysis that the proposed MIMO mesh network achieves significantly higher channel capacity than that of conventional mesh networks.

Instead of pilot tones, the impulse sample is exploited for channel estimation in Impulse Postfix OFDM systems [1]. As the magnitude of impulse sample is increased, the accuracy of channel estimation can be enhanced, but it may significantly increase the PAPR of generated OFDM symbols. In this letter, based on the statistical analysis of the generated OFDM symbol, we propose a decision scheme for determining the magnitude of impulse sample. By using the proposed scheme, we can determine the magnitude of impulse sample that provides the enhancement of BER performance as well as the avoidance of PAPR increase. The validation of the proposed scheme is demonstrated by computer simulations.

This letter describes a millimeter wave slot array antenna using a rectangular waveguide and a ferrite. The radiation direction of the leaky wave from the slot array can be scanned by applying a dc bias magnetic field parallel to the ferrite. The radiation pattern of a prototype antenna has been measured at 40 GHz. The main beam direction changes from 10 to 3 degree by the bias magnetic field of 0.73 T.

Scene changes occur frequently in film broadcasting, and tend to destabilize the performance with blurred, jagged, and artifacts effects when de-interlacing methods are utilized. This paper presents an efficient VLSI architecture of video de-interlacing with considering scene change to improve the quality of video results. This de-interlacing architecture contains three main parts. The first is scene change detection, which is designed based on examining the absolute pixel difference value of two adjacent even or odd fields. The second is background index mechanism for classifying motion and non-motion pixels of input field. The third component, spatial-temporal edge-based median filter, is used to deal with the interpolation for those motion pixels. Comparing with the existed de-interlacing approaches, our architecture design can significantly ameliorate the PSNRs of the video sequences with various scene changes; for other situations, it also maintains better performances. The proposed architecture has been implemented as a VLSI chip based on UMC 0.18-µm CMOS technology process. The total gate count is 30114 and its layout area is about 710 710-µm. The power consumption is 39.78 mW at working frequency 128.2 MHz, which is able to process de-interlacing for HDTV in real-time.

A novel low-complexity iterative receiver for coded multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) systems is proposed in this letter. The iterative receiver uses the parallel interference cancellation (PIC)-maximum ratio combining (MRC) detector for MIMO-OFDM detection, which is a popular alternative to the minimum mean square error (MMSE) detector due to its lower computational complexity. However, we have found that the conventional PIC-MRC detector tends to underestimate the magnitude of its output log likelihood ratios (LLRs). Based on this discovery, we propose to multiply these LLRs by a constant factor, which is optimized according to the extrinsic information transfer (EXIT) chart of the soft-in soft-out (SISO) detector. Simulation results show that the proposed scheme significantly improves the performance of the PIC-MRC-based receiver with little additional cost in computational complexity, allowing it to closely approach the performance of receiver using the much more complex MMSE detector.

This letter presents an adaptive H∞ array beamforming scheme based on a generalized sidelobe canceller with lower computational load. It is shown that the adaptive H∞-based beamformer offers the advantages of faster convergence speed, insensitivity to dynamic estimation modeling error, and less sensitivity to pointing error over the conventional adaptive H∞ algorithm. Simulations confirm that the proposed technique achieves similar array performance of the adaptive H∞-based algorithm [4].

This paper presents an adaptive transform coefficient scan method that effectively improves intra coding efficiency of H.264. Instead of applying one zig-zag scan to all transform blocks, the proposed method applies a field scan to a horizontally predicted block, a horizontal scan to a vertically predicted block, and a zig-zag scan to blocks predicted in other prediction modes. Experiments based on JM9.6 were performed using only intra coding. Results of the experiments show that the proposed method yields an average PSNR enhancement of 0.16 dB and a maximum PSNR enhancement of 0.31 dB over the current H.264 using zig-zag scan.

Orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) systems for mobile applications suffer from inter-carrier-interference (ICI) due to frequency offset and to time-variation of the channels and from high peak-to-average-power ratio (PAPR). In this paper, we revisit symmetric cancellation coding (SCC) proposed by Sathananthan et al. and compare the effectiveness of SCC with a fixed subtraction combining and the well-known polynomial cancellation coding (PCC) over Rayleigh fading channels with Doppler spread in terms of the signal-to-interference plus noise power ratio (SINR) and bit-error-rate (BER). We also compare SCC with subtraction combining and SCC of Sathananthan et al. with maximum ratio combining (MRC). Our results show that SCC-OFDM with subtraction combining gives higher SINR than PCC-OFDM over the flat Rayleigh fading channel and that this superiority is not maintained under multi-path induced frequency-selective fading unless diversity combining is used. A simulation result shows, however, that SCC-OFDM with subtraction combining may perform better than PCC-OFDM for a certain range of Doppler spread when differential modulation is employed. Finally, we also demonstrate that the SCC-OFDM signal has less PAPR compared to the normal OFDM and PCC-OFDM and hence may be more practical.

An experimental study concerning Ultra Wideband (UWB) Microwave Radar for breast cancer detection is described. A simple phantom, consisting of a cylindrical plastic container with a low dielectric constant material imitating fatty tissues and a high dielectric constant object emulating tumour, is scanned with a tapered slot antenna operating between 3.1 to 10.6 GHz. A successful detection of a target is accomplished by a visual inspection of a two-dimensional image of the scanned phantom

This paper describes a beam scanning antenna that consists of a movable dielectric plate loaded onto a microstrip comb-line antenna. This type of antenna uses a mechanical system and so offers a simple structure and low cost. The main beam direction of the proposed antenna is changed by moving the dielectric plate. The guide wavelength of the microstrip line was measured at the quasi-millimeter wave band (20 GHz) when moving the dielectric plate to investigate the possibility of beam scanning. The proposed antenna was fabricated to experimentally demonstrate its principle operation. A possible beam scanning angle of 20 degrees was confirmed.

High power dissipation can occur when the response to a test vector is captured by flip-flops in scan testing, resulting in excessive IR drop, which may cause significant capture-induced yield loss in the DSM era. This paper addresses this serious problem with a novel test generation method, featuring a unique algorithm that deterministically generates test cubes not only for fault detection but also for capture power reduction. Compared with previous methods that passively conduct X-filling for unspecified bits in test cubes generated only for fault detection, the new method achieves more capture power reduction with less test set inflation. Experimental results show its effectiveness.

This paper describes a novel discrimination method of pulmonary nodules based on statistical analysis of thoracic computed tomography (CT) scans. Our previous Computer-Aided Diagnosis (CAD) system can detect pulmonary nodules from CT scans, but, at the same time, yields many false positives. In order to reduce the false positives, the method proposed in the present paper uses a relationship between pulmonary nodules, false positives and image features in CT scans. The trend of variation of the relationships is acquired through statistical analysis of a set of CT scans prepared for training. In testing, by use of the trend, the method predicts the appearances of pulmonary nodules and false positives in a CT scan, and improves the accuracy of the previous CAD system by modifying the system's output based on the prediction. The method is applied to 218 actual thoracic CT scans with 386 actual pulmonary nodules. The receiver operating characteristic (ROC) analysis is used to evaluate the results. The area under the ROC curve (Az) is statistically significantly improved from 0.918 to 0.931.

This paper presents a novel stereophonic acoustic echo canceling scheme without preprocessing. To accurately estimate echo path keeping the high level of performance in echo erasing, this scheme uses two filters, of which one filter is utilized as a guideline which does not erases echo but helps updating of the other filter, which actually erases echo. In addition, we propose a new filter dividing technique to apply to the filter divide scheme, and utilize this as the guideline. Numerical examples demonstrate that the proposed scheme improves the convergence behavior compared to conventional methods both in system mismatch (i.e., normalized coefficients error) and Echo Return Loss Enhancement (ERLE).

This paper presents the implementation of a 31-tap FIR Hilbert transform digital filter chip used in the digital-IF receivers, to confirm the effectiveness of our new design method. Our design method that we previously reported is based on a computation sharing multiplier using a new horizontal and vertical common subexpression techniques. A 31-tap FIR Hilbert transform digital filter was implemented and fabricated in 0.35 µm CMOS standard cell library. The chip's core contains approximately 33k transistors and occupies 0.86 mm2. The chip also has an operating speed of 70 MHz over. The implementation results show that the proposed Hilbert transformer has a smallest cost factor and so that is a high performance filter.

The possibility of using three kinds of new type composite materials as material for high speed sliding contacts was investigated. The results of this investigation were compared with the results of the low speed tests that were reported earlier. As a result of the above, it was discovered that for high speed rotation in the range from 0.014 m/s to 2 m/s, the order of merit did not significantly change. Based on this, it was concluded that if solid lubricant is effectively supplied to the sliding surface, the influence by frictional heat generated by high speed is slight. Of the three kinds of composite material, it was clarified that composite material (CMML-1) had the lowest contact resistance and Composite Material (CMML-3) had the lowest maximum frictional coefficient of friction. 'CM' and 'ML' are initialisms for 'Composite Material' and 'Material of Lubrication' respectively. The number that is attached to the material name is a numeric value that was set by this laboratory.

In order to improve the antenna gain, a composite right/left-handed (CRLH) leaky-wave (LW) antenna composed of symmetrical unit cells with short stubs terminated by vertical vias is designed. The use of symmetrical unit cells suppresses the cross-polarization of radiation to less than 23 dB. By comparing the measured radiation characteristics to that of a conventional CRLH LW antenna without short stub in the X-band, it is shown that the presented CRLH LW antenna with 51 unit cells offers a narrower beam and the antenna gain improves 4.1, 2.2 and 3.1 dB in the backward, broadside and forward directions of radiation, respectively.