In this paper, we present a discriminative word-character hybrid model for joint Chinese word segmentation and POS tagging. Our word-character hybrid model offers high performance since it can handle both known and unknown words. We describe our strategies that yield good balance for learning the characteristics of known and unknown words and propose an error-driven policy that delivers such balance by acquiring examples of unknown words from particular errors in a training corpus. We describe an efficient framework for training our model based on the Margin Infused Relaxed Algorithm (MIRA), evaluate our approach on the Penn Chinese Treebank, and show that it achieves superior performance compared to the state-of-the-art approaches reported in the literature.

A metallic waveguide that has an array of dielectric rods located at a distance from the side wall of approximately one quarter the waveguide width was previously proposed for single mode propagation over a wide frequency range. In this study, the S parameters of such a waveguide were measured for the TE10 mode.

We present an attractive approach for OFDM transmission using an adaptive pre-FFT equalizer, which can select ICI reduction mode according to channel condition, and a degenerated-inverse-matrix-based channel estimator (DIME), which uses a cyclic sinc-function matrix uniquely determined by transmitted subcarriers. In addition to simulation results, the proposed system with an adaptive pre-FFT equalizer and DIME has been laboratory tested by using a software defined radio (SDR)-based test bed. The simulation and experimental results demonstrated that the system at a rate of more than 100 Mbps can provide a bit error rate of less than 10-3 for a fast multi-path fading channel that has a moving velocity of more than 200 km/h with a delay spread of 1.9 µs (a maximum delay path of 7.3 µs) in the 5-GHz band.

This paper presents a new hierarchical mode segmentation of the observed driving behavioral data based on the multi-level abstraction of the underlying dynamics. By synthesizing the ideas of a feature vector definition revealing the dynamical characteristics and an unsupervised clustering technique, the hierarchical mode segmentation is achieved. The identified mode can be regarded as a kind of symbol in the abstract model of the behavior. Second, the grammatical inference technique is introduced to develop the context-dependent grammar of the behavior, i.e., the symbolic dynamics of the human behavior. In addition, the behavior prediction based on the obtained symbolic model is performed. The proposed framework enables us to make a bridge between the signal space and the symbolic space in the understanding of the human behavior.

This paper presents the field uniformity characteristics in a triangular prism reverberation chamber that can be substituted for an open area test site or an anechoic chamber to measure electromagnetic interference. To improve size problems of a stirrer that is an official unit to generate a uniform field in the reverberation chamber, we suggest a diffuser of Quadratic Residue Sequence method. To validate the substitution of a diffuser for a stirrer, a diffuser is designed for 1-3 GHz, and three types of equilateral triangular prism reverberation chambers are modeled. Afterwards, the field distributions in these three reverberation chambers are both simulated and tested. Using XFDTD 6.2 of finite difference time domain method, field deviations of each structure are simulated and compared to each other. An evaluation of field uniformity is done by cumulative probability distribution which is specified in the IEC 61000-4-21. The result shows that the field uniformity in the chamber is within 6 dB tolerance and also within 3 dB standard deviation, which means a diffuser can satisfy the requirement of international standards.

A replacement of an expensive MgO protective layer with relatively inexpensive Lanthanum Hexa Boride (LaB6) has already been proposed. Since LaB6 is not transparent, unlike MgO, the LaB6 panel employs a long sustain gap structure. Since the sustain gap is 2.6 times larger than the distance between sustain and address electrodes, different driving methods from those of the conventional PDPs have to be adopted. For the driving technique of the sustain period, an application of delayed auxiliary pulses on A electrode and the overlap sustain pulse drive are proposed. Luminance degradation with higher sustain frequency driving can be compensated by use of a 2step sustain pulse driving. Low reset luminance and low address voltage are achieved with a square-ramp technique for the reset period. TV operation is successfully realized on AC PDP which incorporated the LaB6 cathodes.

To explain the variation of the address discharge during an address period, the wall voltage variation during an address period was investigated as a function of the address-on-time by using the Vt closed curves. It was observed that the wall voltage between the scan and address electrodes was decreased with an increase in the address-on-time. It was also observed that the wall voltage variation during an address period strongly depended on the voltage difference between the scan and address electrodes. Based on this result, the modified driving waveform to raise the level of Vscanw, was proposed to minimize the voltage difference between the scan and address electrodes. However, the modified driving waveform resulted in the increase in the falling time of scan pulse. Finally, the overlapped double scan waveform was proposed to reduce a falling time of scan pulse under the raised voltage level of Vscanw, also.

Content sharing mechanisms in current DRM systems are based on a domain where multiple devices have the same domain key. This can lead to a security weakness as failure of one device means revocation of a domain itself. Furthermore, if a device leaves the domain, all the other devices should update their domain key. This also leads to efficiency problem. This paper proposes the new content sharing scheme based on the user binding DRM without the use of domain key. The proposed scheme improves the previous domain technology in terms of security and efficiency as it removes the use of domain key and only allows content sharing for multiple devices owned by the same user.

Model-Driven Engineering and Domain-Specific Modeling Languages are encouraging an increased used of metamodels for the definition of languages and tools. Although the Meta Object Facility language is the standard for metamodeling, there are alternative metamodeling languages that are aimed at satisfying specific requirements. In this context, sharing information throughout different domains and tools requires not only being able to translate models between modeling languages defined with the same metamodeling language, but also between different metamodeling languages. This paper addresses this latter need describing a general technique to define transformations that perform this translation. In this work, two case studies illustrate the application of this process.

This paper presents a gate-block selection algorithm, which can synthesize a proper parameter extractor of the pre-computation-based content-addressable memory (PB-CAM) to enhance power efficiency for specific applications such as embedded systems, microprocessor and SOC, etc. Furthermore, a novel CAM cell design with single bit-line is proposed. The proposed CAM cell design requires only one heavy loading bit-line and merely is constructed with eight transistors. The whole PB-CAM design was described in Spice with TSMC 0.35 µm double-poly quadruple-metal CMOS process. We used Synopsys Nanosim to estimate power consumption. With a 128 words by 32 bits CAM size, the experimental results showed that our proposed PB-CAM effectively reduces 18.21% of comparison operations in the CAM and saves 16.75% in power reduction by synthesizing a proper parameter extractor of the PB-CAM compared with the 1's count PB-CAM. This implies that our proposed PB-CAM is more flexible and adaptive for specific applications.

This paper proposes an enhanced method for estimating the a priori Signal-to-Disturbance Ratio (SDR) to be employed in the Acoustic Echo and Noise Suppression (AENS) system for full-duplex hands-free communications. The proposed a priori SDR estimation technique is modified based upon the Two-Step Noise Reduction (TSNR) algorithm to suppress the background noise while preserving speech spectral components. In addition, a practical approach to determine accurately the Echo Spectrum Variance (ESV) is presented based upon the linear relationship assumption between the power spectrum of far-end speech and acoustic echo signals. The ESV estimation technique is then employed to alleviate the acoustic echo problem. The performance of the AENS system that employs these two proposed estimation techniques is evaluated through the Echo Attenuation (EA), Noise Attenuation (NA), and two speech distortion measures. Simulation results based upon real speech signals guarantee that our improved AENS system is able to mitigate efficiently the problem of acoustic echo and background noise, while preserving the speech quality and speech intelligibility.

A method was developed for deriving the control input for a multi-dimensional discrete-time nonlinear system so that a performance index is approximately minimized. First, a moment vector equation (MVE) is derived; it is a multi-dimensional linear equation that approximates a nonlinear system in the whole domain of the system state and control input. Next, the performance index is approximated by using a quadratic form with respect to the moment vector. On the basis of the MVE and the quadratic form, an approximate optimal controller is derived by solving the linear quadratic optimal control problem. A bilinear optimal control problem and a mountain-car problem were solved using this method, and the solutions were nearly optimal.

Recently, Kempf and Koodli have proposed a security protocol for Fast Mobile IPv6 (FMIPv6). Through the SEcure Neighbor Discovery (SEND) protocol, it achieves secure distribution of a handover key, and consequently becomes a security standard for FMIPv6. However, it is still vulnerable to redirection attacks. In addition, due to the SEND protocol, it suffers from denial of service attacks and expensive computational cost. In this paper, we present a security protocol, which enhances Kempf-Koodli's one with the help of the AAA infrastructure.

This letter presents a new quadrature voltage-controlled oscillator (QVCO) consisting of two n-core Colpitts voltage-controlled oscillators (VCOs) with a tail inductor. The VCOs are used as a single-ended injected injection-locked frequency divider (ILFD). The output of the tail inductor in one ILFD is injected into the injection node in the other ILFD and vice versa. The proposed QVCO has been implemented in the 0.18 µm CMOS technology. At the supply voltage of 1.0 V, the power consumption is 1.8 mW. The free-running frequency is tunable from 4.68 GHz to 5.03 GHz as the tuning voltage is varied from 0.0 V to 1.8 V. The measured phase noise is -113.58 dBc/Hz at the 1 MHz frequency offset from the oscillation frequency of 5.03 GHz and the figure of merit (FOM) of the QVCO is -185.06 dBc/Hz.

We propose a novel 50 Mb/s optical transmitter fabricated in a 0.6 µm BiCMOS technology for automotive applications. The proposed VCSEL driver chip was designed to operate with a single supply voltage ranging from 3.0 V to 5.25 V. A fully integrated feedforward current control circuit is presented to stabilize the optical output power without any external components. The experimental results show that the optical output power can be stable within a 1.1 dB range and the extinction ratio greater than 14 dB over the automotive environmental temperature range of -40 to 105.

In this paper, a low power current protection circuit implemented in a low dropout regulator (LDO) is presented. The proposed circuit, designed in a 0.35 µm CMOS process, provides a precise limiting current as well as holding current with low dependency on both supply voltage and regulator output voltage. The experimental results showed that the proposed circuit is operable in the regulator output voltage range from VOUT=1.2 V to VOUT=3.6 V and supply voltage range from VDD=VOUT+0.5 V to VDD=5.6 V. Since the proposed circuit is composed of few simple basic circuits such as a comparator and a Schmitt Trigger, it has a low current consumption of less than ISS=0.82 µA at a load current of ILOAD=200 mA. This makes the circuit suitable for low power and low voltage LDO design.

This paper presents new approaches for the estimation of range between the preceding vehicle and the experimental vehicle, estimation of vehicle size and its projective size, and dynamic camera calibration. First, our proposed approaches adopt a camera model to transform coordinates from the ground plane onto the image plane to estimate the relative position between the detected vehicle and the camera. Then, to estimate the actual and projective size of the preceding vehicle, we propose a new estimation method. This method can estimate the range from a preceding vehicle to the camera based on contact points between its tires and the ground and then estimate the actual size of the vehicle according to the positions of its vertexes in the image. Because the projective size of a vehicle varies with respect to its distance to the camera, we also present a simple and rapid method of estimating a vehicle's projective height, which allows a reduction in computational time for size estimation in real-time systems. Errors caused by the application of different camera parameters are also estimated and analyzed in this study. The estimation results are used to determine suitable parameters during camera installation to suppress estimation errors. Finally, to guarantee robustness of the detection system, a new efficient approach to dynamic calibration is presented to obtain accurate camera parameters, even when they are changed by camera vibration owing to on-road driving. Experimental results demonstrate that our approaches can provide accurate and robust estimation results of range and size of target vehicles.

In this paper, an ER (Error-Reduction) algorithm-based method for removal of adherent water drops from images obtained by a rear view camera mounted on a vehicle in rainy conditions is proposed. Since Fourier-domain and object-domain constraints are needed for any ER algorithm-based method, the proposed method introduces the following two novel constraints for the removal of adherent water drops. The first one is the Fourier-domain constraint that utilizes the Fourier transform magnitude of the previous frame in the obtained images as that of the target frame. Noting that images obtained by the rear view camera have the unique characteristics of objects moving like ripples because the rear view camera is generally composed of a fish-eye lens for a wide view angle, the proposed method assumes that the Fourier transform magnitudes of the target frame and the previous frame are the same in the polar coordinate system. The second constraint is the object-domain constraint that utilizes intensities in an area of the target frame to which water drops have adhered. Specifically, the proposed method models a deterioration process of intensities that are corrupted by the water drop adhering to the rear view camera lens. By utilizing these novel constraints, the proposed ER algorithm can remove adherent water drops from images obtained by the rear view camera. Experimental results that verify the performance of the proposed method are represented.

This paper proposes the design of a driver to deal with a thin-disc central supporting structure ultrasonic actuator based on the vibration modes and the equivalent circuit. In order to gain the electromechanical match at resonant frequency, a spectrum analyzer should measure admittance for driving piezoelectric ceramics. The virtual analyzer also investigated the characteristics of a MODEL-E equivalent circuit based upon the admittance-frequency response. The inherent capacitance from an ultrasonic actuator became the partial component in the design of a resonant circuit. IsSpice software is introduced to simulate as well as the experimental results has demonstrated a high agreement related to the conceptual design and practical implementation for the driving circuit.

Break arcs are generated between silver electrical contacts in a DC 42 V-10 A resistive circuit. Break arcs are driven by the radial magnetic field. The magnetic field is formed between the electrical contacts with a permanent magnet embedded in the cathode. The arc motion is taken with a high-speed camera and contact surfaces are observed after break operations. Experimental results with the magnet are compared with those without the magnet to confirm the effect of the embedded magnet. For break operations with the magnet following results are shown. Break arcs are rotationally driven by the radial magnetic field in the direction according to Lorentz force. The shortening effect of the arc duration is confirmed. The traces of the arc spots on the contact surfaces are ring-shaped, wide and uniform. This result shows the prevention effect of local erosion of electrical contacts. The rotational frequency of the break arc depends on the Lorentz force with the radial magnetic field.