We propose a novel optical signal processing using an optically pumped vertical-cavity surface-emitting laser (VCSEL) with an external light input. The mode transition between a fundamental and a 1st-high-order transverse mode is induced by an external light injection. Since a single mode fiber (SMF) spatially selects a fundamental transverse mode as an output signal, we are able to realize a nonlinear transfer function, which will be useful in future photonic networks. The mode transition characteristic of a 1.55 µm optically pumped two-mode VCSEL has been simulated by using a two-mode rate equation, which includes the effects of spatial hole burning and spectral hole burning as gain saturation coefficients. We focus on the detuning effect in the injection locking. When the wavelength of an input light with a fundamental mode is slightly longer than that of a VCSEL operating in a 1st-high-order transverse mode, the transverse mode of the VCSEL is switched to a fundamental mode at a critical input power level. This gives us an ideal transfer function for 2R (reamplification and reshaping) regeneration. Also, the proposed scheme may enable polarization insensitive signal processing, which is a unique feature in surface emitting lasers.

Automata based image compression methods exploit similarities in the images to reduce the amount of memory to the essential. Our cellular automata methods are motivated due to the fact that they may be used to create images on liquid crystal displays when we add some computational functionality to the displays. For this purpose we consider image generation methods in cellular automata with some reasonable restrictions and get a representation where the color values of the images can be derived directly from the single cell states. We are interested in the capabilities of such devices and provide some benefits of this representation in image compression, even in higher dimensions.

This letter handles symbolic simulation for high-level hardware design descriptions including uninterpreted functions. Two new heuristics are introduced, which are named "symbolic function table" and "synchronization". In the experiment, the equivalence of a hardware/software codesign was checked up to a given finite number of cycles, which is composed of a behavioral design, that is, a small DSP program written in C, and its register-transfer-level implementation, a VLIW architecture with an assembly program. Our symbolic simulator succeeded in checking the equivalence of the two descriptions which were not tractable without the heuristics.

Image segmentation is an essential technique of image analysis. In spite of the issues in contour initialization and boundary concavities, active contour models (snakes) are popular and successful methods for segmentation. In this paper, we present a new active contour model, Gaussian Gradient Force snake (GGF snake), for segmentation of an endoscopic image. The GGF snake is less sensitive to contour initialization and it ensures a high accuracy, large capture range, and fast CPU time for computing an external force. It was observed that the GGF snake produced more reasonable results in various image types : simple synthetic images, commercial digital camera images, and endoscopic images, than previous snakes did.

Normally, flow field is described with governing equations, such as the Navier-Stokes equations. However, for complex flow including multiphase and reactive flow such as combustion, this approach may not be suitable. As an alternative approach, Lattice Gas Automata (LGA) has been used to simulate fluid with mesoscopic particles by assuming that space and time are discrete, and the physical quantities take only a finite set of values. In this study, the model for combustion simulation is proposed, with the reaction probability depending on the local temperature to simplify the chemical reaction. Here, counter-flow twin flames are simulated. In order to validate this approach, some results of non-reactive flow are presented, compared with those by solving Navier-Stokes equations.

The partially rotational scan (PRS) technique greatly reduces the amount of data needed for n-detection testing. It also enables at-speed testing using low-speed testers. We designed tester intellectual properties (tester IP) with PRS for Viper and COMET II processors. When PRS was applied to a Viper processor, we obtained test data that provided the same fault coverage as with a set of automatic test pattern generation (ATPG) test vectors, although the amount of test data was 16% that of the ATPG. When the PRS technique was applied to a COMET II processor with full-scan design, we obtained test data that provided the same fault coverage as with a set of ATPG test vectors, although the amount of test data was 10% that of the ATPG. We also estimated hardware overhead and test time.

This paper proposes a new supply current test method for detecting floating gate defects in CMOS ICs. In the method, unusual increase of the supply current caused by defects is promoted by superposing an AC component on the DC power supply. Feasibility of the test is examined by some experiments on four DUTs with an intentionally caused defect. The results showed that our method could detect clearly all the defects, one of which may be detected by neither any functional logic test nor any conventional supply current test.

The IP routing lookup problem is equivalent to finding the longest prefix of a packet's destination address in a routing table. It is a challenging problem to design a high performance IP routing lookup architecture, because of increasing traffic, higher link speed, frequent updates and increasing routing table size. At first, increasing traffic and higher link speed require that the IP routing can be executed at wire speed. Secondly, frequent routing table updates require that the insertion and deletion operations should be simple and low delay. At last, increasing routing table size hopes that less memory is used in order to reduce cost. Although many schemes to achieve fast lookup exist, less attention is paid on the latter two factors. This paper proposed a novel pipelined IP routing lookup architecture using selective binary search on hash table organized by prefix lengths. The evaluation results show that it can perform IP lookup operations at a maximum rate of one lookup per cycle. The hash operation ratio for one lookup can be reduced to about 1%, less than two hash operations are needed for one table update and only 512 kbytes SRAM is needed for a routing table with about 43000 prefixes. It proves to have higher performance than the existing schemes.

In this paper, a new class of bent functions is constructed by combining class M and class C bent functions. Using the construction method of the class D bent functions defined on the binary vector space, new p-ary generalized bent functions are also introduced for odd prime p.

In this paper, we propose a self-nonself recognition algorithm based on positive and negative selection used in the developing process of T cells. The anomaly detection algorithm based on negative selection is a representative model among self-recognition method and it has been applied to computer immune systems in recent years. In biological immune systems, T cells are produced through both positive and negative selection. Positive selection is the process used to determine a MHC receptor that recognizes self-molecules. Negative selection is the process used to determine an antigen receptor that recognizes antigens, or nonself cells. In this paper, we propose a self-recognition algorithm based on the positive selection and also propose a fusion algorithm based on both positive and negative selection. To verify the effectiveness of the proposed system, we show simulation results for detecting some infected data obtained from cell changes and string changes in the self-file.

In this paper, a novel description method of the contour of a shape using extended fractal interpolation functions (EFIFs) is presented. Although the scope of application of traditional FIFs has been limited to cases in which a given signal is represented by a single-valued function, the EFIFs derived by the introduction of a new parameter can describe a multiple-valued signal such as the contour of a shape with a high level of accuracy. Furthermore, the proposed description method possesses the useful property that once a given contour has been modeled by the proposed description method, the shape can be easily expanded at an arbitrary expansion rate. Experimental results show the effectiveness and usefulness of the proposed description method for representing contours.

Recent new technologies of electro-mechanical conversion devices have been reviewed. Especially, the electrochemical properties of anisotropic actuators using polypyrrole have been reviewed in detailed and the realization of the bimorph (or bending beam) structure without artificial adhesive agent is introduced.

Two-dimensional (2D) patterns of a conducting polymer have been prepared electrochemically. The patterns depend on the conditions of electrochemical polymerization. Concerning the polymerization reaction and the growth process of conducting polymers, it is found that the growth rate and solution flow during the generation of the 2D pattern are important factors for controlling the 2D pattern. The linear pattern and the simple branching pattern were successfully fabricated by optimizing the deposition conditions. The successful fabrication of the branching pattern indicates the processability of linear conducting polymers for network formation.

AFM/STM observations were performed on sub nm thick C-Au-S film by co-operation process of plasma CVD and sputtering with using CH4, SF6 and Ar mixture gas and Au plate discharge electrode. From the refractive index values, the conductive granular molecules with a size of 0.4-0.6 nm were expected to exist in the film. For the film at thickness similar to the molecular size, Ra (arithmetic mean departures of roughness profile from the mean line) values were measured to be 0.712/6.10 nm by AFM/STM measurement, respectively. The one order large STM Ra value compared to the AFM Ra value suggests that the film contains conductive granular molecules.

Cuprous Oxide Cu2O films were deposited by reactive DC magnetron sputtering. The substrate temperature and oxygen partial pressure were found to be important parameters in controlling the film property. The single-phase Cu2O films were successfully obtained by carefully controlling the oxygen partial pressure with suppression of CuO formation. The (100)-oriented epitaxial Cu2O film was grown on the (102) surface of single-crystal Al2O3. The fundamental absorption edge of the Cu2O film was determined to be about 2 eV by photo-transmission measurement. The resistivity of the film was of the order of 105 Ωcm.

We investigated growth conditions of the ReO3 thin films, as a first step of establishment of artificial superconducting multi-layer with the infinite layer cuprate and ReO3. The layers of ReO3 were expected to work as a charge reservoir block. The films were deposited from a Re metal target by off-axis reactive sputtering. Conductive and preferentially (100) oriented ReO3 thin films were obtained by in-situ post-annealing. The lowest resistivity was 4.4 10-5 ohmcm at room temperature.

This letter introduces a novel multi-user detection method, successive interference cancellation based on the order of log-likelihood-ratio(LLR-SIC), for code division multiple access (CDMA) systems. Unlike the conventional successive interference cancellation (SIC) based on the order of correlation, LLR-SIC operates on the fact that the user with the largest absolute value of log-likelihood ratio (LLR) should be first detected and cancelled from received signal. Simulation results show that LLR-SIC significantly outperforms the conventional SIC and partial parallel interference cancellation (P-PIC) over Rayleigh fading channels, and that LLR-SIC performance is not sensitive to channel estimation error at medium Eb/N0.

This paper proposes a new decision feedback decoding scheme for Alamouti-based space-time block coding (STBC) transmission over time-selective fading channels. In wireless channels, time-selective fading effects arise mainly due to Doppler shift and carrier frequency offset. Modelling the time-selective fading channels as the first-order Gauss-Markov processes, we use recursive algorithms such as Kalman filtering, LMS and RLS algorithms for channel tracking. The proposed scheme consists of the symbol decoding stage and channel tracking algorithms. Computer simulations confirm that the proposed scheme shows the better performance and robustness to time-selectivity.

In this paper, using p-ary bent functions defined on vector space over the finite field Fpk, we generalized the construction method of the families of p-ary bent sequences with balanced and optimal correlation properties introduced by Kumar and Moreno for an odd prime p, called generalized p-ary bent sequences. It turns out that the family of balanced p-ary sequences with optimal correlation property introduced by Moriuchi and Imamura is a special case of the newly constructed generalized p-ary bent sequences.

Range resolution for radar is determined by bandwidth. One of the various super-resolution techniques for improving resolution is bandwidth extrapolation (BWE). In this technique, a linear prediction model is fitted to the data, and the model is used to extrapolate the bandwidth. In this paper, we extend BWE, and propose a new algorithm that we call polarimetric bandwidth extrapolation (PBWE) applicable to polarimetric radar data. We show through numerical simulations that utilization of fully polarimetric information allows PBWE to improve the resolution beyond the conventional BWE method. Some results of a physical simulation experiment using a W-band polarimetric FMCW radar and corner reflectors are shown to confirm the advantage of PBWE.