A novel long-term sub-band entropy (LT-SubEntropy) measure, which uses improved long-term spectral analysis and sub-band entropy, is proposed for voice activity detection (VAD). Based on the measure, we can accurately exploit the inherent nature of the formant structure on speech spectrogram (the well-known as voiceprint). Results show that the proposed VAD is superior to existing standard VAD methods at low SNR levels, especially at variable-level noise.

We investigate the impact of traffic on the performance of large-scale NAT (LSN), since it has been attracting attention as a means of better utilizing the limited number of global IPv4 addresses. We focus on the number of active flows because they drive up the LSN memory requirements in two ways; more flows must be held in LSN memory, and more global IPv4 addresses must be prepared. Through traffic measurement data analysis, we found that more than 1% of hosts generated more than 100 TCP flows or 486 UDP flows at the same time, and on average, there were 1.43-3.99 active TCP flows per host, when the inactive timer used to clear the flow state from a flow table was set to 15 s. When the timer is changed from 15 s to 10 min, the number of active flows increases more than tenfold. We also investigate how to reduce the above impact on LSN in terms of saving memory space and accommodating more users for each global IPv4 address. We show that to save memory space, regulating network anomalies can reduce the number of active TCP flows on an LSN by a maximum of 48.3% and by 29.6% on average. We also discuss the applicability of a batch flow-arrival model for estimating the variation in the number of active flows, when taking into account that the variation is needed to prepare an appropriate memory space. One way to allow each global IPv4 address to accommodate more users is to better utilize destination IP address information when mapping a source IP address from a private address to a global IPv4 address. This can effectively reduce the required number of global IPv4 addresses by 85.9% for TCP traffic and 91.9% for UDP traffic on average.

Various kinds of structured ASICs have been proposed that can customize logic functions using a few photomasks, which decreases the initial cost, especially that of expensive photo-masks. In the past, we have developed a via programmable structured ASIC “VPEX2” (Via Programmable logic device using EXclusive-or array) that is capable of changing logics on 2 via (the 1st and 3rd via) layers. The logic element (LE) of VPEX2 is composed of EXOR gate and 2 NOT gates. However, “VPEX2” architecture has the two important penalty, the area penalty is 5-6 times that of the ASIC and wiring congestion by detouring wires to avoid I/O terminals. In this paper, we propose a new architecture “VPEX3” in order to achieve the practical structures. In VPEX3, we applied three techniques for decrease area penalty and higher wiring efficiency: (1) LE area is reduced approximately 60% by omitting 1 NOT gate on a LE and the gate width reduction, (2) the kinds of configurable logic function on a single LE is increased from 13 to 22 by introducing “flexible AOI gate technique” and (3) flexible I/O terminal by introducing 2nd via as a programmable layers. Furthermore, the delay model for via programmable wiring is necessary in order to evaluate via programmable wiring architecture compared to standard cell ASIC. We extracted wiring delay characteristics from the ring oscillator test circuit using both of normal wiring and via-programmable wiring. These three new architectures and via programmable wiring-delay-model revealed that an area-delay product of “VPEX3” is as small as twice that of ASIC. Chip-cost estimation among FPGA, “VPEX2”, “VPEX3” and ASIC revealed that the “VPEX3” is the most cost-effective architecture for Systems-on-chips (SoCs) whose production volume is from one thousand to several tens of thousands units.

This study compares the performances of waveband protection and wavelength path protection in survivable hierarchical optical path networks. Network costs and the number of switching operations necessary are evaluated for different ratios of protected demand. Numerical results demonstrate that waveband protection can drastically decrease the number of switching operations in the case of failure, while both waveband and wavelength path protection effectively reduce the network resources needed compared to single layer optical path networks.

3 dB bandwidth enhancement of single mode semiconductor lasers is confirmed numerically and experimentally when they are operated by intensity modulated signal light injection. 3 dB bandwidth is enlarged to 2.5 times of resonant frequency. The numerical analysis of rate equations predicts that the bandwidth enhancement is accomplished by the modal gain control of semiconductor lasers with injected intensity modulated signal light through non-linear gain coefficient term.

In this letter, we propose a dissimilarity metric (DM) to measure the deviation of a cognitive radio from the network in terms of local sensing reports. Utilizing the probability mass function of the DM, we present a dissimilarity-based attacker detection algorithm to distinguish Byzantine attackers from honest users. The proposed algorithm is able to identify the attackers without a priori information of the attacking styles and is robust against both independent and dependent attacks.

In this paper, an improved B-picture coding algorithm based on the symmetric bi-directional motion estimation (ME) is proposed. In addition to the block match error between blocks in the forward and backward reference frames, the proposed method exploits the previously-reconstructed template regions in the current and reference frames for bi-directional ME. The side match error between the predicted target block and its template is also employed in order to alleviate block discontinuities. To efficiently perform ME, an initial motion vector (MV) is adaptively derived by exploiting temporal correlations. Experimental results show that the number of generated bits is reduced by up to 9.31% when the proposed algorithm is employed as a new macroblock (MB) coding mode for the H.264/AVC standard.

Reduction of the intensity noise in semiconductor lasers is an important subject for the higher performance of an application. Simultaneous usage of the superposition of high frequency current and the electric negative feedback loop was proposed to suppress the noise for the higher power operation of semiconductor lasers. Effective noise reduction of more than 25 dB with 80 mW operation was experimentally demonstrated.

Clock gating is supported by commercial tools as a power optimization feature based on the guard signal described in HDL (structural method). However, the identification of control signals for gated registers is hard and designer-intensive work. Besides, since the clock gating cells also consume power, it is imperative to minimize the number of inserted clock gating cells and their switching activities for power optimization. In this paper, we propose an automatic multi-stage clock gating algorithm with ILP (Integer Linear Programming) formulation, including clock gating control candidate extraction, constraints construction and optimum control signal selection. By multi-stage clock gating, unnecessary clock pulses to clock gating cells can be avoided by other clock gating cells, so that the switching activity of clock gating cells can be reduced. We find that any multi-stage control signals are also single-stage control signals, and any combination of signals can be selected from single-stage candidates. The proposed method can be applied to 3 or more cascaded stages. The multi-stage clock gating optimization problem is formulated as constraints in LP format for the selection of cascaded clock-gating order of multi-stage candidate combinations, and a commercial ILP solver (IBM CPLEX) is applied to obtain the control signals for each register with minimum switching activity. Those signals are used to generate a gate level description with guarded registers from original design, and a commercial synthesis and layout tools are applied to obtain the circuit with multi-stage clock gating. For a set of benchmark circuits and a Low Density Parity Check (LDPC) Decoder (6.6k gates, 212 F.F.s), the proposed method is applied and actual power consumption is estimated using Synopsys NanoSim after layout. On average, 31% actual power reduction has been obtained compared with original designs with structural clock gating, and more than 10% improvement has been achieved for some circuits compared with single-stage optimization method. CPU time for optimum multi-stage control selection is several seconds for up to 25k variables in LP format. By applying the proposed clock gating, area can also be reduced since the multiplexors controlling register inputs are eliminated.

Our research is focused on examining the video quality assessment model based on the MPEG-7 descriptor. Video quality is estimated by using several features based on the predicted frame quality such as average value, worst value, best value, standard deviation, and the predicted frame rate obtained from descriptor information. As a result, assessment of video quality can be conducted with a high prediction accuracy with correlation coefficient=0.94, standard deviation of error=0.24, maximum error=0.68 and outlier ratio=0.23.

In the literature, two connectivity-based distributed clustering schemes exist: CDC (Connectivity-based Distributed node Clustering scheme) and SDC (SCM-based Distributed Clustering). While CDC and SDC have mechanisms for maintaining clusters against nodes joining and leaving, neither method assumes that frequent changes occur in the network topology. In this paper, we propose a lightweight distributed clustering method that we term SBDC (Schelling-Based Distributed Clustering) since this scheme is derived from Schelling's model – a popular segregation model in sociology. We evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed SBDC in an environment where frequent changes arise in the network topology. Our simulation results show that SBDC outperforms CDC and SDC under frequent changes in network topology caused by high node mobility.

This paper presents a no-reference (NR) based video-quality estimation method for compressed videos which apply inter-frame prediction. The proposed method does not need bitstream information. Only pixel information of decoded videos is used for the video-quality estimation. An activity value which indicates a variance of luminance values is calculated for every given-size pixel block. The activity difference between an intra-coded frame and its adjacent frame is calculated and is employed for the video-quality estimation. In addition, a blockiness level and a blur level are also estimated at every frame by analyzing pixel information only. The estimated blockiness level and blur level are also taken into account to improve quality-estimation accuracy in the proposed method. Experimental results show that the proposed method achieves accurate video-quality estimation without the original video which does not include any artifacts by the video compression. The correlation coefficient between subjective video quality and estimated quality is 0.925. The proposed method is suitable for automatic video-quality checks when service providers cannot access the original videos.

In this letter, a post-detection signal to noise ratio (SNR) is considered for transmit antenna selection, when a sorted QR decomposition (SQRD) algorithm is used for signal detection in spatial multiplexing (SM) ultra-wideband (UWB) multiple input multiple output systems. The post-detection SNR expression is obtained using a QR factorization algorithm based on a sorted Gram-Schmidt process. The employed antenna selection criterion is to utilize the largest minimum post-detection SNR value. It is shown via simulations that the antenna selection significantly enhances the BER performance of the SQRD-based SM UWB systems on a log-normal multipath fading channel.

Ultra-wide band (UWB) pulse radar with high range resolution and dielectric permeability is promising as an internal imaging technique for non-destructive testing or breast cancer detection. Various imaging algorithms for buried objects within a dielectric medium have been proposed, such as aperture synthesis, the time reversal approach and the space-time beamforming algorithm. However, these algorithms mostly require a priori knowledge of the dielectric medium boundary in image focusing, and often suffer from inadequate accuracy to identify the detailed structure of buried targets, such as an edge or specular surface owing to employing the waveform focusing scheme. To overcome these difficulties, this paper proposes an accurate and non-parametric (i.e. using an arbitrary shape without target modeling) imaging algorithm for targets buried in a homogeneous dielectric medium by advancing the RPM (Range Points Migration) algorithm to internal imaging issues, which has been demonstrated to provide an accurate image even for complex-shaped objects in free-space measurement. Numerical simulations, including those for two-dimensional (2-D) and three-dimensional (3-D) cases, verify that the proposed algorithm enhances the imaging accuracy by less than 1/10 of the wavelength and significantly reduces the computational cost by specifying boundary extraction compared with the conventional SAR-based algorithm.

This letter presents an efficient method for the maritime Loran-C additional secondary factor (ASF) correction based on equivalent ground conductivity inversion. Using the proposed method, the accuracy of Loran-C system on maritime positioning, navigation, and timing (PNT) can be improved significantly with a limited number of surveys. Comparison with measured ASF results shows a root-mean-square error (RMSE) of less than 100 ns in most areas.

With the aim of achieving heterogeneous integration of compound semiconductors with silicon technology, the fabrication of an InP/InGaAs transferred-substrate HBT (TS-HBT) on a Si substrate is reported. A current gain of 70 and a maximum current density of 12.3 mA/µm2 were confirmed in a TS-HBT with a 340-nm-wide emitter. From microwave characteristics of the TS-HBT obtained after de-embedding, a cutoff frequency (fT) of 510 GHz and a 26% reduction of the base-collector capacitance were estimated. However, the observed fT was too high for an HBT with a 150-nm-thick collector. This discrepancy can be explained by the error in de-embedding, because an open pad is observed to have large capacitance and strong frequency dependence due to the conductivity of the Si substrate.

Secure computation of the set intersection functionality allows n parties to find the intersection between their datasets without revealing anything else about them. An efficient protocol for such a task could have multiple potential applications in commerce, health care, and security. However, all currently known secure set intersection protocols for n > 2 parties have computational costs that are quadratic in the (maximum) number of entries in the dataset contributed by each party, making secure computation of the set intersection only practical for small datasets. In this paper, we describe the first multi-party protocol for securely computing the set intersection functionality with both the communication and the computation costs that are quasi-linear in the size of the datasets. For a fixed security parameter, our protocols require O(n2k) bits of communication and Õ(n2k) group multiplications per player in the malicious adversary setting, where k is the size of each dataset. Our protocol follows the basic idea of the protocol proposed by Kissner and Song, but we gain efficiency by using different representations of the polynomials associated with users' datasets and careful employment of algorithms that interpolate or evaluate polynomials on multiple points more efficiently. Moreover, the proposed protocol is robust. This means that the protocol outputs the desired result even if some corrupted players leave during the execution of the protocol.

Cooperative relay selection, in which one of multiple relays is selected to retransmit the source signal to the destination, has received considerable attention in recent years, because it is a simple way to obtain cooperative diversity in wireless networks. The exact expression of outage probability for a decode-and-forward cooperative relay selection with multiple source and destination antennas over Rayleigh fading channels was recently derived in [9]. In this letter, we derive the exact expressions of outage probability and diversity-multiplexing tradeoff over independent and non-identically distributed Nakagami-m fading channels as an extension of [9]. We then analyze the effects of various parameters such as fading conditions, number of relays, and number of source and destination antennas on the outage probability.

Electromagnetic scattering at high-frequencies is computationally heavy. Radar cross section (RCS) of electrically large concave and convex objects are solved by using the hybrid method. For convex and concave surfaces, Modified-Vector Physical Optics (MPO) with enhanced accuracy and Iterative Physical Optics (IPO) taking multiple-reflections into account, are selectively and independently applied for convex and concave parts of the scatterer. The accuracy of RCS by this hybrid method is tested with the MoM based simulator Wipl-D as the reference. The RCS from relatively small scatterers with the dimension of the order of a few wavelengths can be successfully predicted.

In recent years, local pattern based features have attracted increasing interest in object detection and recognition systems. Local Binary Pattern (LBP) feature is widely used in texture classification and face detection. But the original definition of LBP is not suitable for human detection. In this paper, we propose a novel feature named gradient local binary patterns (GLBP) for human detection. In this feature, original 256 local binary patterns are reduced to 56 patterns. These 56 patterns named uniform patterns are used for generating a 56-bin histogram. And gradient value of each pixel is set as the weight which is always same in LBP based features in histogram calculation to computing the values in 56 bins for histogram. Experiments are performed on INRIA dataset, which shows the proposal GLBP feature is discriminative than histogram of orientated gradient (HOG), Semantic Local Binary Patterns (S-LBP) and histogram of template (HOT). In our experiments, the window size is fixed. That means the performance can be improved by boosting methods. And the computation of GLBP feature is parallel, which make it easy for hardware acceleration. These factors make GLBP feature possible for real-time pedestrian detection.