This paper presents techniques used in combinational test generation for multiple stuck-at faults using the parallel vector pair analysis. The techniques accelerate a test generation procedure previously proposed and reduce the number of test vectors generated, while higher fault coverage is derived. The first technique proposed in this paper, which is applied at the first phase of test generation, is rules of ordering vector pairs to be analyzed, to derive high fault coverage without repeating the analysis for the same vector pairs. The second one is to generate new vector pairs for undetected faults, instead of random vector pairs. Both techniques are based on the idea that faults close to primary inputs should be detected earlier than close to primary outputs. The third technique proposed here is how to construct vector pairs from one input vector in order to accelerate test generation especially for circuits with many primary inputs and scan flip-flops. Experimental results for bench-mark circuits show the effectiveness of the techniques.

Although Hidden Markov Modeling (HMM) is widely and successfully used in many speech recognition applications, duration control for HMMs is still an important issue in improving recognition accuracy since a HMM places no constraints on duration. For compensating this defect, some duration control algorithms that employ precise duration models have been proposed. However, they suffer from greatly increased computational complexity. This paper proposes a new state duration control algorithm for limiting both the maximum and the minimum state durations. The algorithm is for the HMM trellis likelihood calculation, not for the Viterbi calculation. The amount of computation required by this algorithm is only order one (O(1)) for the maximum state duration n; that is, the computation amount is independent of the maximum state duration while many conventional duration control algorithm require computation in the amount of order n or order n2. Thus, the algorithm can drastically reduce the computation needed for duration control. The algorithm uses the property that the trellis likelihood calculation is a summation of many path likelihoods. At each frame, the path likelihood that exceeds the maximum likelihood is subtracted, and the path likelihood that satisfies the minimum likelihood is added to the forward probability. By iterating this procedure, the algorithm calculates the trellis likelihood efficiently. The algorithm was evaluated using a large-vocabulary speaker-independent spontaneous speech recognition system for telephone directory assistance. The average reduction in error rate for sentence understanding was about 7% when using context-independent HMMs, and 3% when using context-dependent HMMs. We could confirm the improvement by using the proposed state duration control algorithm even though the maximum and the minimum state durations were not optimized for the task (speaker-independent duration settings obtained from a different task were used).

This paper describes that the dielectric characteristics of a catheter around the interstitial antenna have an effect on the wavelength for current, and this effect results in the variation of the SAR (Specific Absorption Rate) distribution around the antenna. A theoretical study of SAR distribution ground a coaxial-slot antenna is performed. Analytical technique used is the moment method. Result and discussion on the effect of material and thickness of the catheter are presented. The wavelength for the current shortens with increasing dielectric constant or decreasing thickness of the catheter. Due to this variation of the wavelength for current, the SAR distributions take various shapes.

We frequently need to calculate the Neumann function Nν(x) of complex order ν numerically in order to solve boundary problems on electromagnetic fields. This paper presents a new method for the numerical calculation of Nν(x) of complex order ν. This method can calculate Nν(x) precisely even when the order ν is close to an integer n, and the algorithm by the method is very simple.

The previous literature on consecutive k-out-of-r-from-n: F systems give recursive equations for the system reliability only for the special case when all component probabilities are equal. This paper deals with the problem of calculating the reliability for a (linear or circular) consecutive 2-out-of-r-from-n: F system with unequal component probabilities. We provide two new algorithms for the linear and circular systems which have time complexity of O(n) and O(nr), respectively. The results of some computational experiments are also described.

A new clustering method was proposed to increase the effect of duration modeling on the HMM-based phoneme recognition. A precise observation on the temporal correspondences between a phoneme HMM with output probabilities by single Gaussian modeling and its training data indicated that there were two extreme cases, one with several types of correspondences in a phoneme class completely different from each other, and the other with only one type of correspondence. Although duration modeling was commonly used to incorporate the temporal information in the HMMs, a good modeling could not be obtained for the former case. Further observation for phoneme HMMs with output probabilities by Gaussian mixture modeling also showed that some HMMs still had multiple temporal correspondences, though the number of such phonemes was reduced as compared to the case of single Gaussian modeling. An appropriate duration modeling cannot be obtained for these phoneme HMMs by the conventional methods, where the duration distribution for each HMM state is represented by a distribution function. In order to cope with the problem, a new method was proposed which was based on the clustering of phoneme classes with plural types of temporal correspondences into sub-classes. The clustering was conducted so as to reduce the variations of the temporal correspondences in sub-classes. After the clustering, an HMM was constructed for each sub-class. Using the proposed method, speaker dependent recognition experiments were performed for phonemes segmented from isolated words. A few-percent increase was realized in the recognition rate, which was not obtained by another method based on the duration modeling with a Gaussian mixture.

This paper presents a performance analysis of the standard non-coherent delay-locked loop in asynchronous direct-sequence code division multiple access (DS-CDMA) environments. In particular, the effects of multiple access interference on the loop performance are addressed. We work out an expression for the steady-state tracking-error variance and provide performance curves in terms of mean time to lose lock as a function of the number of interfering users and Eb/No.

Password checking schemes are human identification methods commonly adopted in many information systems. One of their disadvantages is that an attacker who correctly observed an input password can impersonate the corresponding user freely. To overcome it there have been proposed interactive human identification schemes. Namely, a human prover who has a secret key is asked a question by a machine verifier, who then checks if an answer from the prover matches the question with respect to the key. This letter examines such a scheme that requires relatively less efforts to human provers. By computer experiments this letter evaluates its resistance against a type of attack; after observing several pairs of questions and correct answers how successfully can an attacker answer the next question?

Program transformation is a kind of optimization techniques for logic programs, which aims at transforming equally a program into an other form by exploiting some properties or information of the program, so as to make the program cheaper to evaluate. In this paper, a new kind of property of logic programs, called reducibility, is exploited in program transformation. A recursive predicate is reducible if the values of some variables in the recursive predicate are independent to the remainder part and can be detached from the predicate after finite times of expansions. After being proved that the semantic notion of reducibility can be replaced by the syntactic notion of disconnectivity of a R-graph, which is a kind of graph model to represent the behavior of formula expansions, an efficient testing and factoring algorithm is proposed. The paper also extends some existed results on compiled formulas of linear sirups, and compares with some related work.

High-Tc superconducting flux flow transistors were fabricated with co-evaporated thin films of YBaCuO. The vortex flow channels (2 µm in width) and the device patterns were formed by Ar ion milling. The three-terminal characteristics, vortex flow characteristics, transresistance, and current gain of the device were measured. The AC input-output characteristics of the device with an Au load resistor were also measured. The measured flow voltage, transresistance and current gain are discussed in relation to these AC input-output measurements.

A Monte Carlo method for the passage of electrons based on a single scattering model is developed. A code based on this method is operable on personal computers, and has been applied to analyze electron behavior in a layered system consisting of Ti (an accelerator window), air, cellulose triacetate (CTA) and backing material irradiated by 300 keV electrons. The energy spectra and the angular distributions of electrons on the CTA surface as well as depth distributions of energy deposition in the CTA for various backing materials have been obtained. Some of these results are compared with experiments, and show fairly good agreement.

A new approximation calculation method, named the Recursive Matrix-calculation (RM) method, is proposed. It uses matrix calculation to determine the number of link disjoint paths under a hop link number constraint, i.e. hop limit. The RM method does not overestimate the number of link disjoint paths. When networks are designed by this method, network reliability is perfectly guaranteed. Moreover, the RM method is based on matrix calculation, so CPU time can be reduced by using super-computers equipped with vector processors. Simulation results confirm that the RM method yields rapid approximations that are conservative. Thus the proposed method is very useful for designing reliable multimedia networks.

A noise cancelling sonar-ranging system based on the adaptive filtering technique, which can automatically adapt itself to the changes in environmental noise-field and improve the passive sonar-ranging/goniometric precision, was introduced by this paper. In the meantime, the software and hardware design principle of the system using high speed VLSI (Very Large Scale Integrated) DSP (Digital Signal Processing) chips, and the practical test results were also presented. In comparison with the traditional ranging system, the system not only enhanced obviously the ranging precision but also possessed some more characteristics such as simple structure, rapid operation, large data-storage volume, easy programming, high reliability and so on.

In this study, a ring of simple chaotic circuits coupled by inductors is investigated. An extremely simple three-dimensional autonomous circuit is considered as a chaotic subcircuit. By carrying out circuit experiments and computer calculations for two, three or four subcircuits case, various synchronization phenomena of chaos are confirmed to be stably generated. For the three subcircuits case, two different synchronization modes coexist, namely in-phase synchronization mode and three-phase synchronization mode. By investigating Poincar map, we can see that two types of synchronizations bifurcate to quasi-synchronized chaos via different bifurcation route, namely in-phase synchronization undergoes period-doubling route while three-phase synchronization undergoes torus breakdown. Further, we investigate the effect of the values of coupling inductors to bifurcation phenomena of two types of synchronizations.

The capacitance and the resistance of the Au/PrBa2Cu3Oy (PBCO)/YBa2Cu3Ox (YBCO) structure were measured at liquid helium temperature. A film of YBCO was deposited by rf magnetron sputtering at 700, and its thickness was 250 nm. A film of PBCO was deposited by rf magnetron sputtering at 690, and its thickness was less than 375 nm. The inverse capacitance and the resistance of the structure increased with PBCO thickness when PBCO thickness was more than 70 nm. However, the inverse capacitance was near zero, and the resistance was much less than that of PBCO itself when PBCO thickness was less than 70 nm. These results show the possibility that the electric property of PBCO within 70 nm from the PBCO/YBCO interface is different from that of PBCO itself, that is, there is a low-resistance region in PBCO near the YBCO/PBCO interface.

Cryocooler cooled superconducting magnets using Bismuth based high-Tc current leads have been successfully demonstrated. The magnets mainly consisted of a superconducting coil, current leads and a radiation shield which are cooled by a two stage Gifford-McMahon cryocooler without using liquid helium. Our first liquid helium-free 4.6 T (Nb, Ti)3Sn superconducting magnet with a room temperature bore of 38 mm operated at 11 K has recorded a continuous operation at 3.7 T for 1,200 hours and total cooling time over 10,000 hours without trouble. As a next step, we constructed a (Nb, Ti)3Sn liquid helium-free superconducting magnet with a wider room temperature bore of 60 mm. The coil temperature reached 8.3 K in 37 hours after starting the cryocooler. The magnet generated 5.0 T at the center of the 60 mm room temperature bore at an operating current of 140 A. An operation at a field of 5 T was confirmed to be stable even if the cryocooler has been stopped for 4 minutes. These results show that the liquid helium-free superconducting magnets can provide an excellent performance for a new application of the superconducting magnet.

A YBaCuO-Nonsuperconductive YBaCuO-YBaCuO coplanar Josephson junction has been fabricated, using Nonsuperconductive YBaCuO thin film deposited on an MgO(100) substrate with intentional and very local damage which was created by Focused Ion Beam. The YBaCuO grown on the damaged section of the substrate turned out to be non-superconductor, due to implanted Ga ions and the change in the crystal quality, facilitating formation of an S-N-S junction. We found the important fact that the critical current density decreased exponentially with inverse of the junction length which was changed from 0.2 to 1 µm, and that Ga ion was detected in the thin films of the junctions, and that the thin films of the junctions were formed by a mixture of an amorphous, a polycrystal and a crystal, which is confirmed by Transmission Electron Diffraction. And the damaged substrate gave rise to Ga segregation and the mixed crystal, which played an very important role to form the normal metallic YBCO thin film of the Josephson junction. All these facts are related with the S-N-S junctions.

As a first step to develop a system to analyze or recognize patterns contained in mages, it is important to provide a good base representation that can facilitate efficiently the interpretation of such patterns. Since structural features of basic patterns in document images such as characters or tables are horizontal and vertical stroke components, we propose a new expression of document image based on the MCR expression that can express well such features of text and tabular components of an image.

The state of the art of low-voltage (LV) analog circuit design techniques is reviewed, and fundamental design techniques are identified and classified as follows: 1) current-mode, 2) series-to-parallel, 3) signal range sharing, 4) dynamic bias, 5) linear bias, and 6) LV regulator. A relatively wide variety of low frequency application circuits have been developed, but future development is expected for wide-bandwidth application circuits such as a voltage-controlled-oscillator (VCO), a balanced multiplier, etc. The circuit techniques such as current-mode, signal range sharing, and dynamic bias will probably be most important for advanced future circuit designs.

A multiple instruction stream-multiple data stream (MIMD) computer is a parallel computer consisting of a large number of identical processing elements. The essential feature that distinguishes one MIMD computer family from another is the interconnection network. In this paper, we are concerned with a representative type of interconnection networks: the hypercube connected network. A family of regular graphs is presented as a possible candidate for the implementation of a distributed system and for fault-tolerant architectures. The symmetry of graphs makes it possible to determine message routing by using a simple distributed algorithm. A candidate having the same property is the hypercube connected network. Arbitrary data permutations are generally accomplished by sorting. For certain classes of permutations, however, this is, for many frequently used permutations in parallel processing such as bit reversal, bit shuffle, bit complement, matrix transpose, butterfly permutations used in FFT algorithms, and segment shuffles, there exist algorithms that are more efficient than the best sorting algorithm. One such class is the bit permute complement (BPC) class of permutations. In this paper, we, first, develop an algorithm to realize an arbitrary BPC permutation in hypercube connected networks. The developed algorithm in hypercube connected networks requires only 1 token memory register in each node. We next evaluate the ability to realize BPC permutations in these networks of an arbitrary size by estimating the number of required routing steps.