This paper describes a new method for estimating the direction of arrival (DOA) using a nonlinear microphone array system based on complementary beamforming. Complementary beamforming is based on two types of beamformers designed to obtain complementary directivity patterns with respect to each other. In this system, since the resultant directivity pattern is proportional to the product of these directivity patterns, the proposed method can be used to estimate DOAs of 2(K-1) sound sources with K-element microphone array. First, DOA-estimation experiments are performed using both computer simulation and actual devices in real acoustic environments. The results clarify that DOA estimation for two sound sources can be accomplished by the proposed method with two microphones. Also, by comparing the resolutions of DOA estimation by the proposed method and by the conventional minimum variance method, we can show that the performance of the proposed method is superior to that of the minimum variance method under all reverberant conditions.

A low sidelobe two-beam waveguide slot array is designed and measured. The antenna structure should be symmetrical for realizing two symmetrical beams which imposes restriction in slot design for the sidelobe and the gain. The slot coupling distribution is optimized numerically for side-lobe suppression under the condition of the structural symmetry. The first side-lobe level is minimized for the specific antenna efficiency in the continuous source model. This synthesis is reinforced by the full wave slot analysis using the method of moments. The design is confirmed by experiments using a one-dimensional array at 12 GHz and the good agreements between the predictions and the measurements are observed.

In order that speech recognition system may have a high recognition rate in a noisy environment, a wide-band sharp directional microphone system is required at the input for securing a high S/N ratio. The authors have already reported the realization of a wide-band uni-directional microphone system by three-microphone integration method. In this paper, we intend to describe the derivation of a sharp directivity function and the realization of its microphone system. First, setting the shape of the characteristic function to bring a sharp directional pattern and then expanding it into the Fourier series, we derive a new directivity function. Next, on the basis of this directivity function, we will present a sharp directional microphone system with only three non-directional microphones and the subsequent analog signal processing. And also, the directional pattern acquired by the proposed method and the effect of the dispersion in the sensitivity of the constituent microphones on the directivity are discussed in detail.

In this paper, important methods for cryptanalysis of the stream cipher based on a class of keystream generators are discussed. These methods employ an approach called the fast correlation attack. This cryptographic problem is treated by considering its equivalent channel coding approach, namely decoding of certain very low rate codes in presence of very high noise. A novel family of algorithms for the fast correlation attack is presented. The algorithms are based on the iterative decoding principle in conjunction with a novel method for constructing the parity-checks. A goal of this paper is to summarize reported results and to compare some of the recent ones. Accordingly, the family is compared with recently proposed improved fast correlation attacks based on iterative decoding methods. An analysis of the algorithms performances and complexities is presented. The corresponding trade-offs between performance, complexity and required inputs are pointed out.

This paper proposes a new adaptation-mode control (AMC) for a robust adaptive microphone array with an adaptive blocking matrix (RAMA-ABM). The proposed AMC is based on cross correlations of two microphone signals and uses a state machine for controlling the adaptation to avoid target-signal cancellation. Evaluation with sound data obtained in different acoustic environments demonstrates that the noise reduction by the proposed AMC is 3 dB better than that by the AMC based on the SNR estimate. Subjective listening tests show that the quality of the output signal by the proposed AMC is comparable to or even better than those by the conventional AMCs.

NOR self-decimated sequences are attractive for stream ciphers because they have a good statistical property and the hardware construction is very simple. This paper presents an analysis of NOR self-decimation system for any parameter. We first determine the period. Then we show the exact distribution of consecutive two bits and three bits, which are shown to be almost uniform distribution.

An algorithm for cryptanalysis of certain keystream generators is proposed. The developed algorithm has the following two advantages over other reported ones: it is more powerful, and it can be implemented by a high-speed software or a simple hardware suitable for high parallel architectures. The algorithm is based on error-correction of information bits only (of the corresponding binary block code) with a novel method for construction of the parity-checks, and the employed error-correction procedure is an APP based threshold decoding. Experimental and theoretical analyses of the algorithm performance are presented, and its complexity is evaluated. The proposed algorithm is compared with recently proposed improved fast correlation attacks based on convolutional codes and turbo decoding. The underlying principles, performance and complexity are compared, and the gain obtained with the novel approach is pointed out.

The diffraction problem of a Gaussian beam by finite number of periodic slots in a parallel-plate waveguide filled with a homogeneous dielectric is considered. The integro-differential equation for the unknown equivalent surface magnetic current density over the slots is derived and solved by the method of moments (piecewise sinusoidal Galerkin method). From some theoretical results for the angular diffraction pattern, the present geometry is observed to simulate well the previous rectangular groove geometry from the viewpoint of scattering behaviour. In addition, two types (resonance and non-resonance types) of Bragg blazing phenomena are discussed. Simultaneous Bragg and off-Bragg blazing is also demonstrated.

This letter presents an adaptive beamforming algorithm for an MC-CDMA system with adaptive antenna array. The proposed adaptive beamforming algorithm for the MC-CDMA systems is derived by (1) calculating the error signals between the pilot symbols of desired user and the received pilot signals in the frequency-domain, (2) transforming the frequency-domain error signals into time-domain error signals, (3) updating the filter coefficients of the adaptive beamformer in the direction of minimizing the MSE. Convergence behavior and user-capacity improvement of the proposed approach are demonstrated through computer simulation by applying it to the MC-CDMA system in the presence of interferences from other users.

A new timing estimation algorithm for asynchronous DS/CDMA multiuser communication system is proposed in this paper. The algorithm is based on the Minimum Variance Distortionless Response (MVDR) beamforming technique that minimizes the beamformer's output power with the constraint that only the signal with exact timing is distortionlessly passed. Exploiting the characteristics that the MVDR beamformer's output power is severely degraded according to erroneous timing estimation, we develop an efficient algorithm to estimate each user's timing by scanning the beamformer's output power variation. Compared to the maximum a posteriori (MAP) or maximum likelihood (ML) based multiuser timing estimator, the complexity is extensively reduced by separating the multi-dimensional optimization problem into several one-dimensional optimization problems. Furthermore, the algorithm is computationally feasible than the subspace-based timing estimator since no eigendecomposition (EVD) is required. Moreover, the proposed algorithm is near-far resistant since the MVDR beamformer is inherently energy independent to the interferers.

Optical logic gates for OR, AND, NOT, and NOR operations in waveguides consisting of nonlinear material are numerically investigated by means of FD-BPM (Finite Difference Beam Propagation Method). The proposed devices are designed utilizing the self-routing characteristics of nonlinear X-crossing structures when they are operated with one input beam or two. The numerical simulations show that the proposed structures can favorably be applied to optical data processing and computing as fundamental logic gates.

As a preprocessor of the automatic speech recognizer in a noisy environment, a microphone array system has been investigated to reduce the environmental noise. In usual microphone array design, a plane wave is assumed for the sake of simplicity (far-field assumption). However, this far-field assumption does not always hold, resulting in distortion in the array output. In this report, the subspace method, which is one of the high resolution spectrum estimator, is applied to the near-field source localization problem. A high resolution method is necessary especially for the near-field source localization with a small-sized array. By combining the source localization technique with a spatial inverse filter, the signal coming from the multiple sources in the near-field range can be separated. The modified minimum variance beamformer is used to design the spatial inverse filter. As a result of the experiment in a real environment with two sound sources in the near-field range, 60-70% of word recognition rate was achieved.

Reducing moire is an important consideration in CRT design. This paper aims to investigate how the visibility of the inverse-phase raster moire, a typical pattern of the raster moire, is influenced by the distribution of the electron beam and the structure of shadow mask apertures. First, a simple model based on the luminance distribution on the CRT screen and characteristics of the human vision was used to calculate the perceived intensity of the inverse-phase raster moire. This calculation was made to examine the effect of model parameters. It showed that the inverse-phase raster moire consists of (1,1)-order moire components. It was also found that the perceived intensity increases with a decrease in electron beam diameter and with an increase in horizontal aperture pitch. In addition, a subjective evaluation test was conducted using an inverse-phase moire pattern reproduced by the image simulation. Test results agreed with the calculated results. Finally, it was revealed that when an electron beam shape having a Gauss distribution was used, most of the raster moire is the inverse-phase raster moire caused by the (1,1)-order component, while the (2,2)-order moire component was very low.

BaAl2S4:Eu thin-film EL device using a new blue emitting EL phosphor was prepared by the two targets pulse-electron-beam evaporation. The maximum luminance level was 65 cd/m2 under the 50 Hz pulse voltage. The EL spectrum had blue emission with a peak around 470 nm due to the transition for Eu2+ ion. The CIE color coordinates of BaAl2S4:Eu EL device were x = 0.12 and y = 0.10. The performance of blue-emitting BaAl2S4:Eu EL devices is shown to be sufficient for commercial color EL display in color purity and luminance level.

We report a directly deposited dielectric multilayer onto an end face of a fluorinated polyimide optical waveguide by ion beam sputtering process. This dielectric multilayer (Ta2O5/SiO2) acts on a wavelength separation filter which passes 1310 nm wavelength signal and reflects 1550 nm wavelength signal.

This paper proposes a new digital beamforming adaptive array antenna (DBFAAA) that is effective in severe multipath environments in which timing and carrier synchronization circuits cannot function ideally resulting in the DBFAAA losing control. The proposed DBFAAA has two stages. In the first, the DBFAAA captures the desired signal and establishes synchronization. In the second, the DBFAAA optimizes the beam pattern of the signal. The proposed configuration employs an eigenvector beam of the maximum eigenvalue in the first stage beam-forming. In addition, a fractionally-spaced-tapped-delay-line (FS-TDL) with real tap weights, which is placed after the beam-former, is applied to achieve timing synchronization. The behavior of the proposed DBFAAA for asynchronous sampling data is investigated and the results indicate that the proposed configuration enables asynchronous sampling at the A/D converter. A prototype of the proposed DBFAAA achieving 38-Mbps real-time data communication is introduced and the transmission performance is shown.

This paper analyses the performance of a joint receiving structure for DS-CDMA communications systems. To reduce undesirable performance degradation due to the multiple access interferences and the near-far problem in multipath fading channel environment, this paper exploits the receiving structure for the multiuser communication composed of a beamformer-RAKE receiver and a decorrelating multiuser detector. The proposed DS-CDMA receiving structure mitigates the performance impairment invoked from the noise enhancement and reveals less computational complexity by utilizing the multipath temporal combiner prior to accessing the decorrelating detection. Also an efficient block Toeplitz inversion technique using the matrix Levinson polynomials is introduced to further diminish the computational burden encountered from applying the decorrelating multiuser detection process as in usual. Simulation results are conducted to demonstrate the superior performance of the proposed multiuser detection structure in multipath fading CDMA channel.

In industrial assembly lines, seam sealing is a painting process used for making watertight seals or for preventing rusting. In the process, sealant is painted on seams located at the joints of pressed metal parts. We developed a sealing robot system that adjusts the sealing gun motion adaptively to the seam position sensed by a range sensor (a scanning laser rangefinder which senses profile range data). In this paper, we propose a high-speed and highly reliable algorithm for seam position computation from the sensed profile range data around the seam. It is proved experimentally that the sealing robot system used with the developed algorithm is very effective, especially for reducing wasted sealant.

This paper deals with the fundamental problem of automatic assessment of appearance of seam puckers on suits, and suggests possibilities for practical usage. Presently, evaluations are done by inspectors who compare standard photographs of suits to test samples. In order to avoid human errors, however, a method of automatic evaluation is desired. We process the problem as pattern recognition. As a feature we use fractal dimensions. The fractal dimensions obtained from standard photographs are used as template patterns. To make it easier to calculate fractal dimensions, we plot a curve representing the appearance of seam puckers, from which fractal dimensions of the curve can be calculated. The seam puckers in gray-scale images are confused with the material's texture, so the seam puckers must be enhanced for a precise evaluation. By using the concept of variance, we select images with seam puckers and enhance only the images with seam puckers. This is the novel aspect of this work. Twenty suits are used for the evaluation experiment and we obtain a result almost the same to the evaluation gained by inspection. That is, the evaluation of 11 samples is the same as that gained by inspection, the results of 8 samples differ by 1 grade, and the evaluation of 1 sample has a 2-grade difference. The results are also compared to the evaluation of the system using the Daubechies wavelet feature. The result of comparison shows that the present method gives a better evaluation than the system using the Daubechies wavelet.

We studied theoretically and experimentally an InGaAs/InAlAs/InP polarization-insensitive multiple quantum well (MQW) electroabsorption (EA) modulator operating over a very wide wavelength range in 1.55 µm wavelength region. One of the simplest possible potential-tailored quantum well, "pre-biased" quantum well (PBQW) is used to achieve wide-wavelength polarization insensitivity. PBQW is basically a rectangular quantum well with a thin barrier inserted near one edge of well. This thin barrier effectively introduces "pre-bias" to a rectangular quantum well and the same amount of Stark shift is achieved for electron-heavy hole and electron-light hole transition energies. By incorporating tensile strain into PBQW, polarization-insensitive modulation is achieved over 60 nm wavelength range, from 1510 nm to 1570 nm. This MQW-EA modulator plays an important role in wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) transmission and switching systems.