This paper presents a semi-automatic algorithm for video object segmentation. Our algorithm assumes the use of multiple key video frames in which a semantic object of interest is defined in advance with human assistance. For video frames between every two key frames, the specified video object is tracked and segmented automatically using Learning Vector Quantization (LVQ). Each pixel of a video frame is represented by a 5-dimensional feature vector integrating spatial and color information. We introduce a parameter K to adjust the balance of spatial and color information. Experimental results demonstrate that the algorithm can segment the video object consistently with less than 2% average error when the object is moving at a moderate speed.

In this letter, using techniques from linear algebra and coding theory, we characterize the quadratic Boolean functions represented by trace. We show that a linear combination of trace-terms over finite field can be determined to be bent by a polynomial GCD computation. Then we derive some new families of bent functions.

Multicode code-division multiple access (MC-CDMA) and variable processing gain CDMA (VPG-CDMA) are very appealing techniques for achieving high bit-rate data transmission and providing significant capacity gain in wireless channels. This letter provides the peak-to-average power ratio (PAPR) reduction scheme by using a code selective allocation (CSA) in a MC VPG-CDMA system. From simulation results, the MC VPG-CDMA system experiences a reduced PAPR thanks to the CSA algorithm and maintains an acceptable performance degradation even if encountered with nonlinear distortions introduced by a level clipper.

The three beam-switched top-loaded antenna is suited to be applied to a wireless local area network to switch the radiation pattern by arranging several unidirectional antennas. In this paper, a three beam switched top loaded monopole antenna is proposed to realize its small size and planar structure. Three top loaded monopole antennas are arranged around a parasitic hexagonal patch at intervals of 120 degrees. The feed element is selected by the switching device to switch the radiation pattern. This antenna allows for reduction in the number of elements as well as downsizing. The front to back ratio (F/B) becomes 23 dB by selecting suitable parameters.

The recognition limit of luminance difference in the human visual system (HVS) has not been studied systematically. In this paper, surround adapted Weber-Fechner fraction is calculated based on the crispening effect. It is found that surround adapted fractions have reduced to 1/3 of the traditional Weber-Fechner fractions. As compared with Breitmeyer's experiments, the presented result is a reasonable one. It can be used as some guide to design the digital display system when a designer needs to decide bit count of digital signal in considering of the limit of brightness level, and as the inspection tool of display manufacturing of brightness smear, defect, and so on.

This paper attempts to use the polarimetric correlation coefficient for extraction of the polarimetric features of the urban areas and the natural distributed areas from Polarimetric Synthetic Aperture Radar (POLSAR) data. There is a possibility that the polarimetric correlation coefficient can reveal various scattering mechanisms of terrains based on the reflection symmetry property. In order to verify the capability of polarimetric correlation coefficient, we examined the behavior of this coefficient of the urban areas and the natural distributed areas with respect to the several polarimetric scattering models in the linear and circular polarization bases, and the difference of the polarimetric scattering characteristics between these two areas was derived. It was confirmed that the polarimetric correlation coefficient is useful to extract the polarimetric features from the actual L-band and X-band POLSAR data.

This paper presents new encoding methods for the binary genetic algorithm (BGA) and new converting methods for the real-coded genetic algorithm (RCGA). These methods are developed for the specific case in which some parameters have to be searched in wide ranges since their actual values are not known. The oversampling effect which occurs at large values in the wide range search are reduced by adjustment of resolutions in mantissa and exponent of real numbers mapped by BGA. Owing to an intrinsic similarity in chromosomal operations, the proposed encoding methods are also applied to RCGA with remapping (converting as named above) from real numbers generated in RCGA. A simple probabilistic analysis and benchmark with two ill-scaled test functions are carried out. System identification of a simple electrical circuit is also undertaken to testify effectiveness of the proposed methods to real world problems. All the optimization results show that the proposed encoding/converting methods are more suitable for problems with ill-scaled parameters or wide parameter ranges for searching.

The reflection characteristics of large alternating-phase fed single-layer waveguide arrays with center-feeds are investigated to identify the mechanism for bandwidth narrowing effects. Firstly, the overall reflection for the whole array is analyzed by FEM and fine agreement with measurements is demonstrated. It is deviating from the conventional prediction based upon a simple sum of reflections from components in the array, such as the multiple-way power divider, the slot waveguides and the aperture at the antenna input. Careful diagnosis reveals that the mutual coupling between the alternating phase waveguides via external half-space is the key factor in reflection accumulation. Amongst all, the slot with strong excitation whose position depends upon the aperture illumination design produces the dominant contribution in the mutual coupling.

A method for detecting shallowly buried landmines using sequential ground penetrating radar (GPR) data is presented. After removing a dominant coherent component arising from the ground surface reflection from the GPR data, three kinds of target features related to wave correlation, energy ratio, and signal arrival time are extracted. Since the detection problem treated here is reduced to a binary hypothesis test, an approach based on a likelihood ratio test is employed as a detection algorithm. In order to check the detection performance, a Monte Carlo simulation is carried out for data generated by a two-dimensional finite-difference time domain (FDTD) method. Results given in the form of receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves show that good detection performance is obtained even for landmines buried at shallow depths under rough ground surfaces, where the responses from the landmines and that from the ground surface overlap in time.

A RF front-end chip for a dual-band Global Positioning System (GPS) receiver for L1 and L2 bands is designed using 0.25 µm CMOS technology. All function blocks of the GPS front-end are integrated onto one chip. The low noise amplifier has input matching over a wide frequency range to handle the L1 and L2 bands. This receiver uses a dual-band image-reject mixer with the quadrature mixer sharing a transconductor stage. This configuration enables the RF blocks to be shared with the L1 and L2 bands. The receiver has a chip area of 3.16 mm3.16 mm, and consumes 35 mA at 2.5 V.

The present paper describes a quality enhancement of band-limited speech signals. In regular telephone communication, the quality of the received speech signal is degraded by band limitation. We propose an effective but simple scheme for obtaining narrowband speech signals in which the frequency components are estimated from band limited signals. The proposed method utilizes aliasing components generated by wavelet reconstruction filters in the inverse discrete wavelet transform. The results of enhancement have been verified by applying this method to speech samples via telephone lines to obtain a noticeable improvement in speech quality.

Larger object classes often become more costly classes in the maintenance phase of object-oriented software. Consequently class would have to be constructed in a medium or small size. In order to discuss such desirable size, this paper proposes a simple method for predictively discriminating costly classes in version-upgrades, using a class size metric, Stmts. Concretely, a threshold value of class size (in Stmts) is provided through empirical studies using many Java classes. The threshold value succeeded as a predictive discriminator for about 73% of the sample Java classes.

In this paper, an algorithm for anchor frame detection in news video is proposed, which consists of four steps. First, the cumulative histogram method is used to detect shot boundaries in order to segment a news video into video shots. Second, skin color information is used to detect face regions in each video shot. Third, color information of upper body regions is used to extract anchor object. Then, a graph-theoretic cluster analysis algorithm is utilized to classify the news video into anchor-person shots and non-anchor shots. Experimental results have shown the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm.

A novel image enhancement algorithm that can efficiently detect a small target of panoramic infrared (IR) imagery is proposed. Image enhancement is the first step for detecting and recognizing a small target in the IR imagery. The essence of the proposed algorithm is to utilize the independent histogram equalization (HE) separately over two sub-images obtained by decomposing the given image through the statistical hypothesis testing (SHT). Experimental results show that the proposed algorithm has better discrimination and lower false alarm rate than the conventional algorithms.

The goal of gaze detection is to locate the position (on a monitor) where a user is looking. Previous researches use one wide view camera, which can capture the user's entire face. However, the image resolution is too low with such a camera and the fine movements of user's eye cannot be exactly detected. So, we propose the new gaze detection system with dual cameras (a wide and a narrow view camera). In order to locate the user's eye position accurately, the narrow-view camera has the functionalities of auto focusing/panning/tilting based on the detected 3D eye positions from the wide view camera. In addition, we use the IR-LED illuminators for wide and narrow view camera, which can ease the detecting of facial features, pupil and iris position. To overcome the problem of specular reflection on glasses by illuminator, we use dual IR-LED illuminators for wide and narrow view camera and detect the accurate eye position, which is not hidden by the specular reflection. Experimental results show that the gaze detection error between the computed positions and the real ones is about 2.89 cm of RMS error.

A wide-range multiphase delay-locked loop (DLL) using mixed-mode voltage-controlled delay lines (VCDLs) is presented. An edge-triggered duty cycle corrector is introduced to generate output clocks with 50% duty cycle. This DLL using an analog 3-states phase-frequency detector (PFD) and the proposed digital PFD can achieve low jitter operation over a wide frequency range without harmonic locking problems. It has been fabricated in a standard 0.25-µm CMOS technology and occupies a core area of 1 mm2 including the on-chip regulator and loop filter. For reference clocks from 20 MHz to 550 MHz, all the measured rms and peak-to-peak jitters are below 10 ps and 78 ps, respectively.

A sub-grid finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) method was applied to analyze electromagnetic (EM) interaction between a 5 GH band antenna mounted laptop personal computer (PC) and a human body model in realistic use situations. The investigated situations were a typing and a non-typing PC users, who were simulated with a realistic whole body or half body model. It was found that the body proximity effect was mainly blocking the radiation up to 20 dB towards the body side, and the hands on the keyboard were mainly blocking the radiation up to 10 dB towards the direction at an angle to the head. It was also found that the highest EM absorption in the typing and non-typing situations occurred in the hand and in the chest, respectively, and the hands on the keyboard had a significantly blocking effect for the SAR spread to the head region. The peak SAR levels were low enough compared to the safety guidelines.

A feedforward-based active shielding technique for digital noise suppression is more preferred for its capability of reducing the noise on the entire area inside the guard ring. In order to compensate for the variation of substrate parameters, an automatic control scheme to tune the gain of the active shield circuit is proposed. Simulation results show the effectiveness of the proposed system in reducing the digital noise regardless of circuit layout. Simulation results also show that noise suppression improvement from passive guard ring to active shield with tuning is 20 dB or one tenth while that from active shield without tuning to active shield with tuning is 12 dB.

A method is proposed to compute moments of distributed coupled RLC interconnects. Both uniform line models and non-uniform line models will be developed. Considering both self inductances and mutual inductances in multi-conductors, recursive moment computations formulae of lumped coupled RLC interconnects are extended to those of distributed coupled RLC interconnects. By using the moment computation technique in conjunction with the projection-based order reduction method, the inductive crosstalk noise waveform can be accurately and efficiently estimated. Fundamental developments of the proposed approach will be described. Simulation results demonstrate the improved accuracy of the proposed method over the traditional lumped methods.

A tunneling magnetoresistive(TMR)-based logic-in- memory circuit, where storage functions are distributed over a logic-circuit plane, is proposed for a low-power VLSI system. Since the TMR device is regarded as a variable resistor with a non-volatile storage capability, any logic functions with external inputs and stored inputs can be performed by using the TMR-based resistor/transistor network. The combination of dynamic current-mode circuitry and a TMR-based logic network makes it possible to perform any switching operations without steady current, which results in power saving. A design example of an SAD unit for MPEG encoding is discussed, and its advantages are demonstrated.