Slant correction is a preprocessing technique to improve segmentation and recognition accuracy for handwritten word recognition. All conventional slant correction techniques were performed by the estimation of the average slant angle and the shear transformation. In this paper, a nonuniform slant correction technique for handwritten word recognition is proposed where the slant correction problem is formulated as a global optimal estimation problem of the sequence of local slant angles. The optimal estimation is performed by a dynamic programming based algorithm. From experimental results it was shown that the present technique outperforms conventional uniform slant correction techniques.

We propose a method for reducing the size of a share in visual secret sharing schemes. The proposed method does not cause the leakage and the loss of the original image. The quality of the recovered image is almost same as that of previous schemes.

Service differentiation has been a subject of research for the past few years in the IETF; and in the current Internet, IP flows are mostly treated in a best-effort approach. However, for next generation networks it is expected that users would like to obtain service differentiation based on their preferences or profiles as well as the different types of multimedia they opt to receive or send. In addition, current Quality of Service (QoS) provisioning architectures have been designed mostly for the fixed networks without taking into consideration the wireless or radio links special requirements, such as low bandwidth availability, error prone communications, etc. In this paper we propose a QoS provisioning architecture for next generation networks that uses a hybrid approach to deal with both the wireless and wired (fixed) part of the network. For administering the scarce resource of the radio environment, we have developed a resource allocation algorithm based on micro-economic principles that uses associated piecewise linear utility functions which describe the benefit a user receives from the allocation of various amounts of resource. For the wired part of the network we have also developed a Core-Stateless Utility based Rate allocation Framework (SURF) for performing traffic policing where the flow's requirements are expressed using utility functions. The core routers maintain no per-flow state and implement a simple packet level admission control algorithm that is based on a threshold utility value that is computed dynamically. To tie in these two mechanisms, we developed a signaling mechanism that collect network statistics when a user starts a call and a QoS administrator entity (or Broker) perform the computations for allocating resources based on the information of available resources in the fixed and the wireless sections of the network. A comparison between the hybrid approach and the SURF approach to show the performance of the proposed architecture is presented later in the paper.

This paper proposes two alternative approaches that do not make use of a dictionary but instead utilizes different types of learned features to segment words in a language that has no explicit word boundary. Both methods utilize decision trees as knowledge representation acquired from a training corpus in the segmentation process. The first method, a language-dependent technique, applies a set of constructed features patterns based on character types to generate a set of heuristic segmentation rules. It separates a running text into a sequence of small chunks based on the given patterns, and constructs a decision tree for word segmentation. The second method extracts statistics of character sequences from a training corpus and uses them as features for the process of constructing a set of rules by decision tree induction. The latter needs no linguistic knowledge. By experiments on Thai language, both methods achieve relatively high accuracy but the latter performs much better.

A novel thresholding algorithm for change detection in video sequences is proposed. The method is based on image differencing and the intensity distribution of a difference image. With a difference image between two consecutive images, we prepare a new image model for the distribution of stationary pixels. The distribution of moving pixels is then separated by extracting the distribution of stationary pixels from the overall distribution of the difference image. Pixels that exhibit a significant change in intensity are classified using a likelihood criterion. The proposed algorithm is tested on the standard MPEG sequences and verified to have reliable performance.

The rapid spread of cellular phones in recent years has facilitated not only voice communication but also Internet access via the cellular phone system, and in addition, subscriber demand has led to a diversification in the services provided. One service in high demand is the seamless use of cellular phones in both public and private wireless network areas. In the data world, there is already such an application in the form of public and private use of wireless LAN. However, an increase in the number of users would require the realization of low-cost, easy-to-install very small base stations (VSBS) that use the frequency band efficiently in order to allow private use of ordinary cellular phones. To bring such VSBS into effect, a technology that autonomously selects frequencies which do not interfere with the public communication system from out of the publicly used frequency band is essential for turning such VSBS into reality. This paper proposes a frequency selection algorithm that actively uses cellular phone features such as frequency selection and received signal level measurement, and discusses the results of verification experiments.

In this letter, we show that a key agreement and password authentication protocol proposed by Kwon and Song is potentially vulnerable to a reflection attack, and then suggest simple improvements.

We study the user reneging behavior in a hybrid Multimedia-on-Demand (MoD) system, which provides both interactive and batch services. Reneging happens when users become reluctant to wait for a batch service and quit the service. They will either join the interactive service or quit the system. In this letter, the analytical model for the MoD system with user reneging behavior is provided. Numerical results show that the reneging behavior has a significant impact on system performance. Therefore, careful consideration on reneging behavior should be made for designing a MoD system.

The complex dielectric image Green's function for metal-insulator-semiconductor (MIS) technology is proposed in this paper through dielectric image method. Then the Epsilon algorithm for Pade approximation is used to accelerate the convergence of the infinite series summation resulted from the complex dielectric image Green's function. Because of the complex dielectric permittivity of semiconducting substrate, the real and imaginary part of the resulted Green's function is accelerated by Epsilon algorithm, respectively. Combined with the complex dielectric image Green's function, the frequency-dependent capacitance and conductance of the transmission lines and interconnects based on MIS technology are investigated through the method of moments (MoM). The computational results of our method for 2-D and 3-D extraction examples are well agreement with experimental data gained from chip measurement and other methods such as full-wave analysis and FastCap.

The model for the process of F0 contour generation, first proposed by Fujisaki and his coworkers, has been successfully applied to Standard Chinese, which is a typical tone language with a distinct feature that both positive and negative tone commands are required. However, the inverse problem, viz., automatic derivation of the model parameters from an observed F0 contour of speech, cannot be solved analytically. Moreover, the extraction of model parameters for Standard Chinese is more difficult than for Japanese and English, because the polarity of tone commands cannot be inferred directly from the F0 contour itself. In this paper, an efficient method is proposed to solve the problem by using information on syllable timing and tone labels. With the same framework as for the successive approximation method proposed for Japanese and English, the method presented here for Standard Chinese is focused on the first-order estimation of tone command parameters. A set of intra-syllable and inter-syllable rules are constructed to recognize the tone command patterns within each syllable. The experiment shows that the method works effectively and gives results comparable to those obtained by manual analysis.

We present a new space-time successive interference cancellation (ST-SIC) scheme with multiple transceiver antennas for direct-sequence code division multiple access (DS-CDMA) systems. The proposed scheme is computationally very efficient, while maintains the performance close to the previous space-time multiuser detection (ST-MUD) scheme. The bit error rate (BER) performance of the ST-SIC scheme for coherent phase shift keying (PSK) modulation is analytically examined in Rayleigh fading channels, and its validity and usefulness are demonstrated by computer simulations.

Recent investigations using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) of human speech organs have opened up new avenues of research. Visualization of the speech production system provides abundant information on the physiological and acoustic realization of human speech. This article summarizes the current status of MRI applications with respect to speech research as well as our own experience of discovery and re-evaluation of acoustic events emanating from the vocal tract and physiological mechanisms.

A novel method for measuring microwave reflection coefficients without the open and load standards is proposed. In this method, a single probe is inserted into an air line and the output wave is detected by a vector detector. Offset shorts are used for the calibration. The measurement system is constructed using 7 mm coaxial line and APC7 connectors. The result of the measurement in the frequency range 1-9 GHz shows the possibility of the proposed method. All the major systematic errors can be estimated from the data that is easily obtainable.

High-frequency characteristics of SiGe heterojunction bipolar transistors with different emitter sizes are studied based on pulsed measurements. Because the self-heating effect in transistors will enhance the Kirk effect, as the devices operate in high current region, the measured cutoff frequency and maximum oscillation frequency decrease with measurement time in the pulsed duration. By analyzing the equivalent small-signal device parameters, we know the reduction of cutoff frequency and maximum oscillation frequency is attributed to the reduction of transconductance and the increase of junction capacitances for fixed base-emitter voltage, while it is only attributed to the degradation of transconductance for fixed collector current. Besides, the degradation of high-frequency performance due to self-heating effect would be improved with the layout design combining narrow emitter finger and parallel-interconnected subcells structure.

Quality of Service (QoS) provisioning is a new but challenging research area in the field of Mobile Ad hoc Network (MANET) to support multimedia data communication. However, the existing QoS routing protocols in ad hoc network did not consider a major aspect of wireless environment, i.e., mutual interference. Interference between nodes belonging to two or more routes within the proximity of one another causes Route Coupling. This can be avoided by using zone-disjoint routes. Two routes are said to be zone disjoint if data communication over one path does not interfere with the data communication along the other path. In this paper, we have proposed a scheme for supporting priority-based QoS in MANET by classifying the traffic flows in the network into different priority classes and giving different treatment to the flows belonging to different classes during routing so that the high priority flows will achieve best possible throughput. Our objective is to reduce the effect of coupling between routes used by high and low priority traffic by reserving zone of communication. The part of the network, used for high priority data communication, i.e, high priority zone, will be avoided by low priority data through the selection of a different route that is maximally zone-disjoint with respect to high priority zones and which consequently allows contention-free transmission of high priority traffic. The suggested protocol in our paper selects shortest path for high priority traffic and diverse routes for low priority traffic that will minimally interfere with high priority flows, thus reducing the effect of coupling between high and low priority routes. This adaptive, priority-based routing protocol is implemented on Qualnet Simulator using directional antenna to prove the effectiveness of our proposal. The use of directional antenna in our protocol largely reduces the probability of radio interference between communicating hosts compared to omni-directional antenna and improves the overall utilization of the wireless medium in the context of ad hoc wireless network through Space Division Multiple Access (SDMA).

Recent advances in measurement techniques for microwave active devices and circuits are reviewed in this paper. The R&D activities have been devoted aggressively how to characterize nonlinear performance of high power devices and circuits. They are pulsed I-V, a variety of load-pull measurements, probing, sampling, and sensing techniques, supported by the recent significant advances in DSP (Digital Signal Processing), RF components, semiconductor devices, etc. The recent advances in vector network analyzers are of our great interest. They are (a) multi-port vector network analyzers for characterizing mixers, differential devices, packaged components, electronic package characterization, and multi-layer transmission lines, and (b) EO (Electro-Optic) modulated vector network analyzers for characterizing electronic performance of EO devices with the aid of EO modulators and photonic probes. In addition, probing, sampling, and sensing techniques have made great progress to directly measure electromagnetic field, time-domain voltage waveform, and temperature in small spot areas. In this paper, some topics related to these measurement techniques are briefly reviewed. Then the existing and future issues for characterization and measurement techniques of microwave active devices and circuits are discussed.

Orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) is a possible candidate for the modulation used in mobile multimedia communications because of its robustness to fading and flexibility of transmission rate. Partial transmit sequence (PTS) is an effective technique for reducing the peak power of OFDM signals by means of phase rotation. In PTS, side information (SI) is transmitted to correct the effects of the phase rotation. We propose a new method based on rotationally invariant trellis coded modulation for coded OFDM with PTS. In this method, no SI is required and the few information bits affected by the phase rotation are not used as data. (They are regarded as dummy bits). It is shown that the proposed method yields better bit error rate (BER) performance than other methods using side information under the condition of almost the same transmission rate.

In this paper, we present a predictive control method, based on Fuzzy Neural Network (FNN), for the control of chaotic systems without precise mathematical models. In our design method, the parameters of both predictor and controller are tuned by a simple gradient descent scheme, and the weight parameters of the FNN are determined adaptively throughout system operations. In order to design the predictive controller effectively, we describe the computing procedure for each of the two important parameters. In addition, we introduce a projection matrix for determining the control input, which decreases the control performance function very rapidly. Finally, we depict various computer simulations on two representative chaotic systems (the Duffing and Hénon systems) so as to demonstrate the effectiveness of the new chaos control method.

Cryptography and Coding Theory are closely related in many respects. Recently, the problem of "decoding Reed Solomon codes" (also known as "polynomial reconstruction") was suggested as an intractability assumption to base the security of protocols on. This has initiated a line of cryptographic research exploiting the rich algebraic structure of the problem and its variants. In this paper we give a short overview of the recent works in this area as well as list directions and open problems in Polynomial Reconstruction Based Cryptography.

NMAC is a function for message authentication based on cryptographic hash functions such as SHA. It is shown to be a secure message authentication code if its compression function with fixed input length is a secure message authentication code and its iterated hash function with variable input length constructed with the compression function is weakly collision resistant. In this article, two results are shown on the strength of the weak collision resistance of the iterated hash function in NMAC. First, it is shown that the weak collision resistance of the iterated hash function in NMAC is not implied by the pseudorandomness of its compression function even if the MD-strengthening is assumed. Second, the weak collision resistance of the iterated hash function in NMAC implies the collision resistance of its compression function if the compression function is pseudorandom.