In this paper, we propose a projection based design of near perfect reconstruction QMF banks. An advantage of this method is that additional design specifications are easily implemented by defining new convex sets. To apply convex projection technique, the main difficulty is how to approximate the design specifications by some closed convex sets. In this paper, introducing a notion of Magnitude Product Space where a pair of magnitude responses of analysis filters is expressed as a point, we approximate design requirements of QMF banks by multiple closed convex sets in this space. The proposed method iteratively applies a convex projection technique, Hybrid Steepest Descent Method, to find a point corresponding to the optimal analysis filters at each stage, where the closed convex sets are dynamically improved. Design examples show that the proposed design method leads to significant improvement over conventional design methods.

Developments in new frequency bands for wireless communications make a broadband channel for new services possible. Great effort has been made researching and developing broadband wireless communication in the 60-GHz millimeter-wave band since the early 1990s. In this paper, we design an ATM (asynchronous transfer mode)-based indoor millimeter-wave wireless local area network (WLAN) that supports multimedia transmissions and focus on the wireless access topic for implementation of wireless ATM. We propose an integrated multimedia transmission protocol, based on the MAC (medium access control) protocol, called RS-ISMA (reservation-based slotted idle signal multiple access). It supports CBR (constant bit rate), VBR (variable bit rate), ABR (available bit rate) and UBR (unspecified bit rate) transmissions and provides QoS (quality of service)-dependent adaptive retransmissions. An RS-ISMA-based prototype full-duplex indoor high-speed WLAN in the 60-GHz band was developed.

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 presents a pseudo glottal excitation model for the type of linear prediction vocoders with speech being coded at 1.6 kbps. While unvoiced speech and silence intervals are processed with a stochastic codebook of 512 entries, a glottal codebook with 32 entries for voiced excitation is used to describe the glottal phase characteristics. Steps of formulating the pseudo glottal excitation for one pitch period consist of 1) applying a polynomial model to simulate the low-frequency constituent of the residual, 2) inserting a magnitude-adjustable pulse sequence to characterize the main excitation, and 3) introducing turbulent noise in series with the resulting excitation. Procedures are described for codebook construction in addition to analysis and synthesis of the pseudo glottal excitation. Results in a mean opinion score (MOS) test show that the quality produced by the proposed coder is almost as good as that by 4.8 kbps CELP coder for male utterances, but the quality for female utterances is yet somewhat inferior.

Simulation of multi-band quantum transport based on a non-equilibrium Green's functions is presented in resonant tunneling diodes (RTD's), where realistic band structures and space charge effect are taken into account. To include realistic band structure, we have used a multi-band (MB) tight binding method with an sp3s* hybridization. As a result, we have found that the multiband nature significantly changes the results of conventional RTD simulations specifically for the case with indirect-gap barriers.

The high accuracy which is necessary for modern process simulation often requires the use of Monte-Carlo ion implantation simulation methods with the disadvantage of very long simulation times especially for three-dimensional applications. In this work a new method for an accurate and CPU time efficient three-dimensional simulation of ion implantation is suggested. The approach is based on a combination of the algorithmic capabilities of a fast analytical and the Monte-Carlo simulation method.

We consider a wait-free linearizable implementation of shared objects on a distributed message-passing system. We assume that the system provides each process with a local clock that runs at the same speed as global time and that all message delays are in the range [d-u,d] where d and u (0< u d) are constants known to every process. We present four wait-free linearizable implementations of read/write registers on reliable and unreliable broadcast models. We also present two wait-free linearizable implementations of general objects on a reliable broadcast model. The efficiency of an implementation is measured by the worst-case response time for each operation of the implemented object. Response times of our wait-free implementations of read/write registers on a reliable broadcast model is better than a previously known implementation in which wait-freedom is not taken into account.

The use of intelligent agents is on the rise, fueled by the unprecedented growth in the Internet and web based applications. Consequently, agent-oriented software is becoming large and complex. To support a systematic development of such software, an agent-oriented software development methodology is necessary. This paper focuses on the modeling phase of agent-oriented software life cycle and, presents an approach for agent modeling consisting of Agent Elicitation, Intra, and Inter Agent modeling methods. Agent Elicitation deals with identifying and extracting agents from "classes" in the real world. Intra Agent Modeling involves expressing agent characteristics - Goal, Belief, Plan and Capability - whereas, Inter Agent modeling incorporates agent mobility and communication in a multi-agent system.

A generalized algorithm for designing an optimum VQ source codec in systems with channel coding is presented. Based on an AWGN channel model, the algorithm derives the distribution of the channel decoder soft-output and substitutes it in the expression for the system end-to-end distortion. The VQ encoder/decoder pair is then optimized by minimizing this end-to-end distortion. For a Gauss-Markov source, the proposed algorithm outperforms the conventional SOVQ source coding scheme by 5.0 dB in the decoded source SNR. Application of this algorithm for designing optimum low-bit-rate speech codec is given. A 4.0 kbps VQ based CELP codec is designed for performance evaluations, where all the CELP parameter encoder/decoder pairs are optimized by minimizing their end-to-end distortions, respectively. As a result, the speech distortion over the noisy channel is minimized. Subjective tests show that the proposed algorithm improves the decoded speech quality by 2.5 MOS relative to a regular SOVQ CELP speech coding system. The performances of the algorithm under channel mismatch conditions are also shown and discussed.

This paper reports the implementation in three dimensions (3D) of diffusion models for low dose implanted dopants in silicon and the various numerical issues associated with it. In order to allow the end-users to choose between high accuracy or small calculation time, a conventional and 5-species diffusion models have been implemented in the 3D module DIFOX-3D belonging to the PROMPT plateform. By comparison with one and two-dimensional (1D and 2D) simulations performed with IMPACT-4, where calibrated models exist, the validity of this 3D models have been checked. Finally, the results obtained for a 3-dimensional simulation of a rapid thermal annealing step involved in the manufacturing of a MOS transistor are presented what show the capability of this module to handle the optimization of real devices.

To evaluate or compare the convergence speed of adaptive digital filters (ADF) with least mean squared (LMS) algorithm, the condition numbers of correlation matrices of tap-input vectors are often used. In this paper, however, the comparison of the conventional fullband ADF and the subband ADF based on their condition numbers is shown to be invalid. In some cases, the over-sampled subband ADF converges faster than the fullband ADF, although the former has larger condition numbers. To explain the above phenomenon, an expression for the convergence behavior of the subband ADF and simulation results are provided.

This paper presents a new method for statistical modelling of prosody control in speech synthesis. The proposed method, which is referred to as Constrained Tree Regression (CTR), can make suitable representation of complex effects of control factors for prosody with a moderate amount of learning data. It is based on recursive splits of predictor variable spaces and partial imposition of constraints of linear independence among predictor variables. It incorporates both linear and tree regressions with categorical predictor variables, which have been conventionally used for prosody control, and extends them to more general models. In addition, a hierarchical error function is presented to consider hierarchical structure in prosody control. This new method is applied to modelling of speech segmental duration. Experimental results show that better duration models are obtained by using the proposed regression method compared with linear and tree regressions using the same number of free parameters. It is also shown that the hierarchical structure of phoneme and syllable durations can be represented efficiently using the hierarchical error function.

Scheduling directed a-cyclic task graphs (DAGs) onto multiprocessors is known to be an intractable problem. Although there have been several heuristic algorithms for scheduling DAGs onto multiprocessors, few address the mapping onto a given number of completely connected processors with an objective of minimizing the finish time. We present an efficient algorithm called ClusterMerge to statically schedule directed a-cyclic task graphs onto a homogeneous completely connected MIMD system with a given number of processors. The algorithm clusters tasks in a DAG using a longest path heuristic and then iteratively merges these clusters to give a number of clusters identical to the number of available processors. Each of these clusters is then scheduled on a separate processor. Using simulations, we demonstrate that ClusterMerge schedules task graphs yielding the same or lower execution times than those of other researchers, but using fewer processors. We also discuss pitfalls in the various approaches to defining the longest path in a directed a-cyclic task graph.

In many fields such as city administration and facilities management, there are an increasing number of requests for a Geographic Information System (GIS) that provides users with automated mapping functions. A mechanism which displays 3D views of an urban scene is particularly required because it would allow the construction of an intuitive and understandable environment for managing objects in the scene. In this paper, we present a new urban modeling system utilizing both image-based and geometry-based approaches. Our method is based on a new concept in which a wide urban area can be displayed with natural photo-realistic images, and each object drawn in the view can be identified by pointing to it. First, to generate natural urban views from any viewpoint, we employ an image-based rendering method, Image Walkthrough, and modify it to handle aerial images. This method can interpolate and generate natural views by assembling several source photographs. Next, to identify each object in the scene, we recover its shape using computer vision techniques (a geometry-based approach). The rough shape of each building is reconstructed from various aerial images, and then its drawn position on the generated view is also determined. This means that it becomes possible to identify each building from an urban view. We have combined both of these approaches yielding a new style of urban information management. The users of the system can enjoy an intuitive understanding of the area and easily identify their target, by generating natural views from any viewpoint and suitably reconstructing the shapes of objects. We have made a prototype system of this new concept of GIS, which have shown the validity of our method.

The propagation characteristic of 670 nm laser light on the array of 10 µm diameter polystyrene micro-sphere was studied. For the linearly arranged array of micro-spheres from one to 12, the propagated light intensity was decreased from 700 mV to 45 mV. However, the propagated light intensity in the air was significantly decreased and it became 2 mV at 60 µm from the optical fiber light source. For the micro-sphere array on the curvilinear line, the light intensity at 12th micro-sphere became 35 mV. This fact means the light was propagated almost same as that on the linear line. Whereas it is expected that three dimensionally crossing optical wave-guide is possible to be fabricated by arranging the micro-spheres.

In this paper, we propose a peak-weighted cepstral lifter (PWL) for enhancing the spectral peaks of an all-pole model spectrum in the cepstral domain. The design parameter of the PWL is the degree of pole enhancement or pole shifting toward the unit circle. The optimal pole shifting factor is chosen by considering the sensitivity to spectral resonance peaks, the variability of cepstral variances, and the recognition accuracy. Next, we generalize the PWL so that the optimal shifting factor is adaptively determined in frame-by-frame basis. Compared with other cepstral lifters, a speech recognizer employing the frame-adaptive PWL provides better recognition performance.

In recent years, the concept of the software radio has been put forward by the international communication society. It is well known that software radio will play an important role in third generation wireless communication systems. But until now there is not an acceptable concept of software radio. How to make software radio be applicable authentically, and how to develop its ascendancy? This paper introduces some new ideas about the key issues of software radio, including software radio architecture and its hardware platform, and it focuses on the design considerations of the hardware platform. Conventional software radio systems use pipeline architecture, which is not scalable and cannot fulfill the inherent requirements of software radios. In this paper a new layer structure of the hardware platform is proposed. It is an open architecture with flexibility and scalability. Then three schemes for hardware platform realization are introduced: bus architecture, switched network architecture, and fat tree architecture. An extensive analysis on advantages and disadvantages of each architecture is given. Then an application example is proposed. The switched network architecture is applied in the cellular wireless communication systems. The basestation is divided into four components according to their functions: antenna, IF, baseband, and control, which are connected by the ATM network. We call this virtualization of wireless communication systems. This will bring great benefits such as fast handoff, easily realization of different macrodiversity algorithm.

We present three-wave mixing devices useful for signal processing functions in WDM and TDM systems, including wavelength conversion, spectral inversion, and gated mixing. These mixers exhibit extremely wide bandwidth, low noise, high efficiency, and format transparency.

PARAdeg has been defined to try to measure parallelism inherent in a program net. Studies on computation of PARAdeg have been done, but the quantitative evaluation, on how much PARAdeg fits parallelism of program nets, has not been studied. In this paper, we do the evaluation by applying genetic algorithm to measure firing completion times when PARAdeg processors, and less and more processors are provided for 400 program nets. Our experimental results show that the firing completion times decrease rapidly with increase of processors till PARAdeg and slowly when processors are increased to more than PARAdeg, which implies PARAdeg is a reasonable standard to measure parallelism of program nets.

In this letter we propose a new mode for block ciphers which uses an unknown random block as feedback. We show that the successful differential/linear cryptanalyses of DES under the mode require at least the complexity of the exhaustive key search. We also present the processing overhead of our scheme compared to that of ECB mode.