A new bipolar scan waveform is proposed to increase the light emission duty factor by achieving the fast address in AC plasma display panel (AC-PDP). The new bipolar scan waveform consists of two-step scan pulse, which can separate the address discharge mode into two different discharge modes: a space charge generation mode and a wall charge accumulation mode. By adopting the new bipolar scan waveform, the light emission duty factor is increased considerably under the single scan ADS driving scheme due to the reduction of address time per single subfield.

This paper deals with a first evaluation of the efficiency and the robustness of the real-time "v-disparity" algorithm in stereovision for generic road obstacles detection towards various types of obstacles (vehicle, pedestrian, motorbike, cyclist, boxes) and under adverse conditions (day, night, rain, glowing effect, noise and false matches in the disparity map). The theoretical good properties of the "v-disparity" algorithm--accuracy, robustness, computational speed--are experimentally confirmed. The good results obtained allow us to use this stereo algorithm as the onboard perception process for Driving Safety Assistance: conductor warning and longitudinal control of a low speed automated vehicle (using a second order sliding mode control) in difficult and original situations, at frame rate using no special hardware. Results of experiments--Vehicle following at low speed, Stop'n'Go, Stop on Obstacle (pedestrian, fallen motorbike, load dropping obstacle)--are presented.

We analytically investigate combinatorial effects of timer control and backoff algorithms on performance of bulk data transfer over two-state Markovian packet error channels. Numerical results for throughput, energy efficiency, and the probabilities of packet loss and loss of bulk data indicate that linear backoff algorithms outperform binary exponential ones as a whole when they are employed at the logical link sublayer with timer control.

It is inevitable for driver assist and warning systems to consider the drivers' state of consciousness. Drowsiness is one of the important factors in estimating the drivers' state of consciousness. A Method to extract the driver's initial stage of drowsiness was developed by means of the eyelid's opening relevant to each various characteristic of objects with motion pictures processing in the actual driving environment. The result was that an increase of the long eyelid closure time was the key factor in estimating the initial stage of drivers' drowsiness while driving. And the state of drowsiness could be presumed by checking the frequencies of long eyelid closure time per unit period.

This paper describes a 51.2 GOPS video recognition processor that provides a cost effective device solution for vision-based intelligent cruise control (ICC) applications. By integrating 128 4-way VLIW (Very Low Instruction Word) processing elements and operating at 100 MHz, the processor achieves to provide a computation power enough for a weather robust lane mark and vehicle detection function written in a high level programming language, to run in video rate, while at the same time it satisfies power efficiency requirements of an in-vehicle LSI. Basing on four basic parallel methods and a software environment including an optimizing compiler of an extended C language and video-based GUI tools, efficient development of real-time video recognition applications that effectively utilize the 128 processing elements are facilitated. Benchmark results show that, this processor can provide a four times better performance compared with a 2.4 GHz general purpose micro-processor.

We propose using SQP (Sequential Quadratic Programming) to directly recover 3D quadratic surface parameters from multiple views. A surface equation is used as a constraint. In addition to the sum of squared reprojection errors defined in the traditional bundle adjustment, a Lagrangian term is added to force recovered points to satisfy the constraint. The minimization is realized by SQP. Our algorithm has three advantages. First, given corresponding features in multiple views, the SQP implementation can directly recover the quadratic surface parameters optimally instead of a collection of isolated 3D points coordinates. Second, the specified constraints are strictly satisfied and the camera parameters and 3D coordinates of points can be determined more accurately than that by unconstrained methods. Third, the recovered quadratic surface model can be represented by a much smaller number of parameters instead of point clouds and triangular patches. Experiments with both synthetic and real images show the power of this approach.

A new spectrum management architecture for a flexible software defined radio (SDR) is proposed. In this architecture, the SDR hardware and software are certified separately so as not to destroy the SDR flexibility, but to ensure that any combinations of hardware and software are compliant to the radio regulations even at the system (vertical) handover, global (horizontal) handover, and upgrade (forward) or downgrade (backward) handover. This architecture is based on automatic calibration & certification unit (ACU), built-in GPS receiver, and radio security module (RSM). The ACU is a hardware embedded RF manager that dynamically controls the output power spectrum to be compliant to the local radio regulation parameters. This local radio regulation parameters are securely downloaded to the hardware as an electronic label of the SDR software and stored in the RSM which is a security manager of the hardware. The GPS position check is used, especially during roaming, to keep the compliancy of the terminal to each local radio regulations managed by the geographical region. The principle parties involved in this architecture are telecommunication certification body (TCB), SDR hardware maker (HW maker), SDR software maker (SW maker), and SDR user. The roles and relationships of these four parties in the proposed architecture are clarified in this paper.

The software-defined radio technique translates the traditional hardware radio platform to a flexible software radio platform that can support multiple air interface standards. This work proposes an efficient IF processing architecture based on software-defined radio for 2G GSM/IS-95 and 3G W-CDMA systems. Hardware complexity is estimated by fixed-point simulation. IF processing architecture should be highly flexible and minimally complex. Firstly, a carrier channel is selected from a wide frequency band using a high-resolution numerically controlled oscillator (NCO). Wide-range interpolation/decimation is performed by the cascaded integrator comb (CIC) filter that involves no multiplier nor stores filter coefficients. Both the desired narrowband and the desired wideband signals can be extracted. The look-up table (LUT), based on the distributed arithmetic (DA) algorithm is used to implement the finite impulse response (FIR) filter. Therefore, a small area and high speed can be achieved. The errors caused by truncation, quantization, rounding-off and overflow are predicted using a fixed-point simulation. These predictions will help to evaluate the word-length for VLSI implementation. Finally, ALTERA APEX20KE is used as a target device. One hundred thousand gates are used for the implementation. Thus, the proposed architecture has high processing flexibility and small area.

The power dissipation at the off-chip bus has become a significant part of the overall power dissipation in micro-processor based digital systems. This paper presents irredundant address bus encoding methods which reduce signal transitions on the instruction address buses by using adaptive codebook methods. These methods are based on the temporal locality and spatial locality of instruction address. Since applications tend to JUMP/BRANCH to limited sets of addresses, proposed encoding methods assign the least signal transition codes to the addresses of JUMP/BRANCH operations in the past. In addition, our methods can be easily applicable for conventional digital systems since they are irredundant encoding methods. Our encoding methods reduce the signal transitions on the instruction address buses, which results in the reduction of total power dissipation of digital systems. Experimental results show that our methods can reduce the signal transition by an average of 88%.

In relation to the Software Defined Radio (SDR) concept, an experimental simulation system was developed. Likewise, verification tests were performed in order to validate the envisaged SDR certification processes including its development, certification, distribution, and software installation assuming the future possibility of exchanging the software in the field.

The Communications Research Laboratory (CRL) started a new project named the New Generation Mobile Network Project in April 2002. The target of this project is the development of new technologies to enable seamless and secure integration of various wireless access networks such as 3rd and 4th generation cellular, wireless LAN, high-speed mobile wireless, wired communications, and broadcasting networks. This paper presents an overview of CRL's new generation mobile communication system that is called The Multimedia Integrated Network by Radio Access Innovation Plus (MIRAI+), as well as details the role of Software Radio Technology (SDR) in MIRAI+.

As the CMOS technology enters the very deep submicron era, inter-wire coupling capacitance becomes the dominant part of load capacitance. The coupling effects have brought new challenges to routing algorithms on both delay estimation and optimization. In this paper, we propose a timing-driven global routing algorithm with consideration of coupling effects. Our two-phase algorithm based on timing-relax method includes a heuristic Steiner tree algorithm to guarantee the timing performance of the initial solution and an optimization algorithm based on coupling-effect-transference. Experimental results are given to demonstrate the efficiency and accuracy of the algorithm.

In this paper, as an important technology for the software-defined radio, a novel scheme of adaptive array antenna utilizing bandpass sampling technique is proposed. For adaptive signal processing, it is necessary to convert the radio frequency signal received by the antenna that is given by real number into baseband region, i.e., complex number region. Then, the method for dividing the bandpass sampled signal to in-phase and quadrature components is analyzed. The sampling scheme is called the IQ-division bandpass sampling. An adaptive array antenna based on the IQ-division bandpass sampling is characterized by the signal processing at the bandpass sampled signal stage, namely, intermediate frequency stage, not baseband. Finally, we will confirm the validity of the proposed scheme through an experiment in a radio anechoic chamber.

This paper presents the summarized achievements of "Study Group on Software Technology for Radio Equipment" held at TELEC from April 2000 to March 2003. The Study Group specified the essential issues on Software Defined Radio (SDR), and discussed desirable methods to evaluate conformity to technical regulations in radios that can change RF characteristics only by changing software. The biggest objective in SDR is to build the architecture to allow users to install software exclusively in the combination of hardware and software that have passed the certification test. The Study Group has reached a solution by introducing the idea of "tally." This paper explains the concept of tally, and proposes two types of systems to use tallies in checking adaptability in combinations of hardware and software.

A low power 16 Mb embedded DRAM (eDRAM) macro is fabricated using 0.15 µm logic -based embedded DRAM process technology. A 0.5 µm2 CUB (apacitor nder it-line) DRAM cell is newly developed for this process. Novel start-up and dynamic fuse-data loading circuit are developed to realize easy customization of memory capacities with minimum area penalty. A new write-mask control circuit using write-gate sense-amplifier is adopted in order to apply column shift-redundancy circuit. Various low power technologies including unique "non-precharge read-data bus" method are applied. In the test-chip adopting new process-technology and three original circuit-design techniques, random column operation of 166 MHz and data retention power of 123 µW are demonstrated at 1.5 V power supply.

This paper proposes a retargetable framework for rapid evaluation of processor architecture, which represents abstraction levels of architecture in a hierarchical manner. The basis for such framework is a hierarchical architecture description language, called XR2, which describes architecture at three abstraction levels: instruction set architecture, pipeline architecture and micro-architecture. In addition, a token-level computational model for fast pipeline simulation is proposed, which considers the minimal information required for the given performance measurement of the pipeline. Experimental result shows that token-level simulation is faster than the traditional cycle-accurate one by 50% to 80% in pipeline architecture evaluation.

Interest in the regulatory issues for Software Defined Radio (SDR) is spreading worldwide since the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) recently recognized SDR and created a new category for SDR authorization. SDR technology will bring enormous benefits to the field of wireless services. However, in order to ensure such benefits, revisions of the radio law and/or related ordinances are required regardless of standardization of the software downloading and other implementation details. In order to define the issues peculiar to SDR and to investigate how conformity evaluation should be conducted for radio equipments whose RF characteristics can be altered by software changes in the field, "Study Group on Software Technology for Radio Equipment" was organized by the Telecom Engineering Center (TELEC) in 2000. This paper summarizes a report of the Study Group that was published in March 2003 including the proposal for "Technical regulation conformity evaluation system," the principal output of the study, which proposes how to prevent unauthorized changes to radio equipment in the field.

Many carriers are introducing multi-media services to satisfy customer demands for these services. In order to provide such services, carrier must increase their system capacity. It is well known that space division multiple access (SDMA) improves system capacity and is compatible with existing access systems. In order to evaluate the performance of SDMA, we developed an SDMA test bed. The test bed maintains the personal handy phone systems (PHS). The PHS adopts time division multiple access (TDMA). Aiming to compare the performance of SDMA and TDMA using the same analog hardware, the SDMA test bed employs a software-defined radio (SDR) technique. This paper shows the outline and performance of the test bed. The results of laboratory tests indicate that the bit error rate (BER) of the test bed operated in the SDMA mode at under 10-3 when the carrier-tointerference ratio (CIR) was larger than approximately -22 dB. Antenna patterns measured in an anechoic chamber show that the SDMA test bed produces correct antenna patterns when there are three desired signals and one interference signal. The results of the four field tests confirm that the test bed operated while two-multiplex SDMA mode doubled of the traffic and decreased the interference level as compared with the TDMA mode. Furthermore, the test bed operated while threemultiplex SDMA mode improves the traffic about 2.4 to 2.7 times. The SDMA test bed decreased the impact of the adjusted TDMA base station (BS). Therefore, we confirmed that the SDMA improves system capacity without any degradation.

This paper outlines the perspectives on Software Defined Radio (SDR) technology in viewpoint of the standardization of the future mobile communication systems. The activities of ITU-R SG8 Working Party 8F (WP8F) and mITF (mobile IT Forum) of Japan for systems beyond IMT-2000 (B3G) or 4-th generation mobile systems are firstly summarized. The latest discussions relating to SDR technology in the both parties are reported. It is followed by consideration on both expectations and technical issues on SDR in order to realize the technology in the future mobile communication systems. They are clarified in the viewpoint of standardization activity on B3G. Also some regulation issues are lastly summarized.

We've been developing new electron guns for a high brightness CRT. The electron guns were modified to increase the emission current without the increase of the driving voltage. We achieved the high brightness CRT with "low cut-off electron gun" and the gun was successfully introduced into our multimedia CRT. Now we are developing next generation gun or "double drive electron gun" for larger screen CRT. The gun can emit about double current in comparison with the "low cut-off electron gun."