We have investigated the microwave-detected photoconductivity responses from the amorphous In--Ga--Zn--O (a-IGZO) thin films. The time constant extracted by the slope of the slow part of the reflectivity signals are correlated with TFT performances. We have evaluated the influences of the sputtering conditions on the quality of a-IGZO thin film, as well as the influences of gate insulation films and annealing conditions, by comparing the TFT characteristics with the microwave photoconductivity decay ($mu$-PCD). It is concluded that the $mu$-PCD is a promising method for in-line process monitoring for the IGZO-TFTs fabrication.

In this paper, we present update rules for convolutive nonnegative matrix factorization (NMF) in which cost functions are based on the squared Euclidean distance, the Kullback-Leibler (KL) divergence and the Itakura-Saito (IS) divergence. We define an auxiliary function for each cost function and derive the update rule. We also apply this method to the single-channel signal separation in speech signals. Experimental results showed that the convergence of our KL divergence-based method was better than that in the conventional method, and our method achieved single-channel signal separation successfully.

NAND-based block devices such as memory cards and solid-state drives embed a flash translation layer (FTL) to emulate the standard block device interface and its features. The overall performance of these devices is determined mainly by the efficiency of the FTL scheme, so intensive research has been performed to improve the average performance of the FTL scheme. However, its worst-case performance has rarely been considered. The present study aims to improve the worst-case performance without affecting the average performance. The central concept is to distribute the garbage collection cost, which is the main source of performance fluctuations, over multiple requests. The proposed scheme comprises three modules: i) anticipated partial log block merging to distribute the garbage collection time; ii) reclaiming clean pages by moving valid pages to bound the worst-case garbage collection time, instead of performing repeated block merges; and iii) victim selection based on the valid page count in a victim log and the required clean page count to avoid subsequent garbage collections. A trace-driven simulation showed that the worst-case performance was improved up to 1,300% using the proposed garbage collection scheme. The average performance was also similar to that of the original scheme. This improvement was achieved without additional memory overheads.

We propose a method to extract scene situation by orientation sensors of multiple mobile phones' environment. By using orientations recorded with videos, we analyzed their view concentrations as a remarkable position of the scene for each frame of videos. In an experiment for a soccer scene, the extracted points can be related to a trajectory of a soccer ball.

In developing an automatic system of a single tooth length measurement on x-ray image, since a tooth shape is assumed to be straight and curve, an algorithm which can accurately deal with straight and curve is required. This paper proposes an automatic algorithm for measuring the length of single straight and curve teeth. In the algorithm consisting of control point determination, curve fitting, and length measurement, PCA is employed to find the first and second principle axes as vertical and horizontal ones of the tooth, and two terminal points of vertical axis and the junction of those axes are determined as three first-order control points. Signature is then used to find a peak representing tooth root apex as the forth control point. Bezier curve, Euclidean distance, and perspective transform are finally applied with determined four control points in curve fitting and tooth length measurement. In the experiment, comparing with the conventional PCA-based method, the average mean square error (MSE) of the line points plotted by the expert is reduced from 7.548 pixels to 4.714 pixels for tooth image type-I, whereas the average MSE value is reduced from 7.713 pixels and 7.877 pixels to 4.809 pixels and 5.253 pixels for left side and right side of tooth image type-H, respectively.

A method to synthesize facial caricatures with non-planar expression is proposed. Several methods have been already proposed to synthesize facial caricatures automatically, but they mainly synthesize plane facial caricatures which look somewhat monotonous. In order to generate expressive facial caricature, the image should be expressed in non-planar style, expressing the depth of the face by shading and highlighting. In this paper, a new method to express such non-planar effect in facial caricatures is proposed by blending the grayscale information of the real face image into the plane caricature. Some methods also have been proposed to generate non-planar facial caricature, but the proposed method can adjust the degree of non-planar expression by interactive evolutionary computing, so that the obtained expression is satisfied by the user based on his/her subjective criteria. Since the color of the face looks changed, when the grayscale information of the natural face image is mixed, the color information of the skin area are also set by interactive evolutionary computing. Experimental results show the high performance of the proposed method.

In this paper, we design an Unequal Error Protection (UEP) rateless code with special coding graph and apply it to propose a novel HTTP adaptive streaming based on UEP rateless code (HASUR). Our designed UEP rateless code provides high diversity on decoding probability and priority for data in different important level with overhead smaller than 0.27. By adopting this UEP rateless channel coding and scalable video source coding, our HASUR ensures symbols with basic quality to be decoded first to guarantee fluent playback experience. Besides, it also provides multiple layers to ensure the most suitable quality for fluctuant bandwidth and packet loss rate (PLR) without estimating them in advance. We evaluate our HASUR against the alternative solutions. Simulation results show that HASUR provides higher video quality and more adapts to bandwidth and PLR than other two commercial schemes under End-to-End transmission.

Hands-free communications between cellular phones must be robust enough to withstand echo-path variation, and highly nonlinear echoes must be suppressed at low cost, when acoustic echo cancellation or suppression is applied to them. This paper proposes a spectrum-selective nonlinear echo suppression (SS-ES) approach as a solution to these issues. SS-ES is characterized by the selection of either a spectrum of the residual signal from an adaptive filter or a spectrum of the sending input signal depending on the amount of linear echo cancellation in an adaptive filter. Compared to conventional methods, the objective evaluation results of the SS-ES approach show an improvement of approximately 0.8-2.2dB, 0.23-2.39dB, and 0.26-0.50 in average echo return loss enhancement (ERLE), average root-mean-square log-spectral distortion (RMS-LSD), and the perceptual evaluation of speech quality (PESQ) value, respectively, under echo-path variation and double-talk conditions.

High efficiency video coding (HEVC) is a video compression standard that outperforms the predecessor H.264/AVC by doubling the compression efficiency. To enhance the intra prediction accuracy, 35 intra prediction modes were used in the prediction units (PUs), with partition sizes ranging from 4 × 4 to 64 × 64 in HEVC. However, the manifold prediction modes dramatically increase the encoding complexity. This paper proposes a fast mode- and depth-decision algorithm based on edge detection and reconfiguration to alleviate the large computational complexity in intra prediction with trivial degradation in accuracy. For mode decision, we propose pixel gradient statistics (PGS) and mode refinement (MR). PGS uses pixel gradient information to assist in selecting the prediction mode after rough mode decision (RMD). MR uses the neighboring mode information to select the best PU mode (BPM). For depth decision, we propose a partition reconfiguration algorithm to replace the original partitioning order with a more reasonable structure, by using the smoothness of the coding unit as a criterion in deciding the prediction depth. Smoothness detection is based on the PGS result. Experiment results show that the proposed method saves about 41.50% of the original processing time with little degradation (BD bitrate increased by 0.66% and BDPSNR decreased by 0.060dB) in the coding gain.

Dysarthric speech results from damage to the central nervous system involving the articulator, which can mainly be characterized by poor articulation due to irregular sub-glottal pressure, loudness bursts, phoneme elongation, and unexpected pauses during utterances. Since dysarthric speakers have physical disabilities due to the impairment of their nervous system, they cannot easily control electronic devices. For this reason, automatic speech recognition (ASR) can be a convenient interface for dysarthric speakers to control electronic devices. However, the performance of dysarthric ASR severely degrades when there is background noise. Thus, in this paper, we propose a noise reduction method that improves the performance of dysarthric ASR. The proposed method selectively applies either a Wiener filtering algorithm or a Kalman filtering algorithm according to the result of voiced or unvoiced classification. Then, the performance of the proposed method is compared to a conventional Wiener filtering method in terms of ASR accuracy.

This paper presents a spatial division (SD) transmission method based on two-ray fading that dispenses with the high signal processing cost of multiple-input and multiple-output (MIMO) detection and antennas with narrow beamwidth. We show the optimum array geometries as functions of the transmission distance for providing a concrete array design method. Moreover, we clarify achievable channel capacity considering reflection coefficients that depend on the polarization, incident angle, and dielectric constant. When the ground surface is conductive, for two- and three-element arrays, channel capacity is doubled and tripled, respectively, over that of free space propagation. We also clarify the application limit of this method for a dielectric ground by analyzing the channel capacity's dependency on the dielectric constant. With this method, increased channel capacity by SD transmission can be obtained merely by placing antennas of wireless transceiver sets that have only SISO (single-input and single-output) capability in a two-ray propagation environment. By using formulations presented in this paper for the first time and adding discussions on the adoption of polarization multiplexing, we clarify antenna geometries of SD transmission systems using polarization multiplexing for up to six streams.

Joint signal detection and channel estimation based on the expectation-maximization (EM) algorithm has been investigated for multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) mobile communications over fast-fading channels. The previous work in [20] developed a channel estimation method suitable for the EM-based iterative receiver. However, it remained possible for unreliable received signals to be repetitively used during the iterative process. In order to improve the EM-based iterative receiver further, this paper proposes spatial removal from the perspective of a message-passing algorithm on factor graphs. The spatial removal performs the channel estimation of a targeted antenna by using detected signals that are obtained from the received signals of all antennas other than the targeted antenna. It can avoid the repetitive use of unreliable received signals for consecutive signal detection and channel estimation. Appropriate applications of the spatial removal are also discussed to exploit both the removal effect and the spatial diversity. Computer simulations under fast-fading conditions demonstrate that the appropriate applications of the spatial removal can improve the packet error rate (PER) of the EM-based receiver thanks to both the removal effect and the spatial diversity.

Reducing accident severity is an effective way to improve road safety. In the literature of accident severity analysis, two main disadvantages exist: most studies use classification accuracy to measure the quality of a classifier which is not appropriate in the condition of unbalanced dataset; the other is the results are not easy to be interpreted by users. Aiming at these drawbacks, a novel multi-objective particle swarm optimization (MOPSO) method is proposed to identify the contributing factors that impact accident severity. By employing Pareto dominance concept, a set of Pareto optimal rules can be obtained by MOPSO automatically, without any pre-defined threshold or variables. Then the rules are used to form a non-ordered classifier. A MOPSO is applied to discover a set of Pareto optimal rules. The accident data of Beijing between 2008 and 2010 are used to build the model. The proposed approach is compared with several rule learning algorithms. The results show the proposed approach can generate a set of accurate and comprehensible rules which can indicate the relationship between risk factors and accident severity.

This paper proposes low-power voltage-mode/current-mode hybrid circuits to realize an arbitrary two-variable logic function and a full-adder function. The voltage and current mode can be selected for low-power operations at low and high frequency, respectively, according to speed requirement. An nMOS pass transistor network is shared to realize voltage switching and current steering for the voltage- and current-mode operations, respectively, which leads to high utilization of the hardware resources. As a result, when the operating frequency is more than 1.15,GHz, the current mode of the hybrid logic circuit is more power-efficient than the voltage mode. Otherwise, the voltage mode is more power-efficient. The power consumption of the hybrid two-variable logic circuit is lower than that of the conventional two-input look-up table (LUT) using CMOS transmission gates, when the operating frequency is more than 800,MHz. The delay and area of the hybrid two-variable logic circuit are increased by only 7% and 13%, respectively

Anomaly detection has several practical applications in different areas, including intrusion detection, image processing, and behavior analysis among others. Several approaches have been developed for this task such as detection by classification, nearest neighbor approach, and clustering. This paper proposes alternative clustering algorithms for the task of anomaly detection. By employing a weighted kernel extension of the least squares fitting of linear manifolds, we develop fuzzy clustering algorithms for kernel manifolds. Experimental results show that the proposed algorithms achieve promising performances compared to hard clustering techniques.

This paper proposes a noise reduction method for impact noise with damped oscillation caused by clinking a glass, hitting a bottle, and so on. The proposed method is based on the zero phase (ZP) signal defined as the IDFT of the spectral amplitude. When the target noise can be modeled as the sum of the impact part and the damped oscillation part, the proposed method can reduce them individually. First, the proposed method estimates the damped oscillation spectra and subtracts them from the observed spectra. Then, the impact part is reduced by replacing several samples of the ZP observed signal. Simulation results show that the proposed method improved 10dB of SNR of real impact noise.

This paper focuses on the S-parameter method that is a basic method for measuring the input impedance of balanced-fed antennas. The basic concept of the method is summarized using the two-port network, and it is shown that the method can be enhanced to the unbalanced antennas using a formulation based on incident and reflected waves. The compensation method that eliminates the influence of a measurement jig and the application of the S-parameter method for the measurement of a radiation pattern with reduced unbalanced currents are explained. Further, application of the method for measuring the reflection and coupling coefficients of multiple antennas is introduced. The measured results of the input impedance of a dipole antenna, radiation patterns of a helical antenna on a small housing, and S-parameters of multiple antennas on a small housing are examined, and the measured results obtained with the S-parameter method are verified.

Multi-user MIMO (MU-MIMO) improves the system channel capacity by employing the transmission between a base station and multiple user terminals (UTs). Block Diagonalization (BD) has been proposed in order to realize MU-MIMO broadcast transmission. The BD algorithm cancels inter-user interference by creating the weights so that the channel matrixes for the other users are set to be zero matrixes. However, when the number of transmit antennas is equals to the total number of received antennas, the transmission rate by the BD algorithm is decreased. This paper proposes a new antenna selection method at the UTs to reduce the number of nulls for the other users except an intended user by the BD algorithm. It is verified via bit error rate (BER) evaluation that the proposed method is effective compared to the conventional BD algorithm, especially, when the number of users is increased with a low bit rate. Moreover, this paper evaluates the transmission rate based on IEEE802.11ac standard when considering BD algorithm with ideal user scheduling. Although the number of equivalent receive antenna is only one by the proposed method when the number of antennas at the the UT is two, it is shown that the transmission rate by the proposed method is higher than that by the conventional BD algorithm when the SNR is low even in the condition on user scheduling.

The higher-order characteristic basis function method (HO-CBFM) is clearly formulated. HO-CBFM provides results accurately even if a block division is arbitrary. The HO-CBFM combined with a volume integral equation (VIE) is used in the analysis of various antennas in the vicinity of a dielectric object. The results of the numerical analysis show that the HO-CBFM can reduce the CPU time while still achieving the desired accuracy.

Much attention has recently been paid to direction of arrival (DOA) estimation using compressed sensing (CS) techniques, which are sparse signal reconstruction methods. In our previous study, we developed a method for estimating the DOAs of multi-band signals that uses CS processing and that is based on the assumption that incident signals have the same complex amplitudes in all the bands. That method has a higher probability of correct estimation than a single-band DOA estimation method using CS. In this paper, we propose novel DOA estimation methods for multi-band signals with frequency characteristics using the Khatri-Rao product. First, we formulate a method that can estimate DOAs of multi-band signals whose phases alone have frequency dependence. Second, we extend the scheme in such a way that we can estimate DOAs of multi-band signals whose amplitudes and phases both depend on frequency. Finally, we evaluate the performance of the proposed methods through computer simulations and reveal the improvement in estimation performance.