This paper reviews long optical reach and large capacity transmission which has become possible because of the application of wide-band and low-noise optical fiber amplifiers and digital coherent signal processing. The device structure and mechanism together with their significance are discussed.

Systematic research on electromagnetic compatibility (EMC) in Japan started in 1977 by the establishment of a technical committee on “environmental electromagnetic engineering” named EMCJ, which was founded both in the Institute of Electronics and Communication Engineers or the present IEICE (Institute of Electronics, Information and Communication Engineers) and in the Institute of Electrical Engineers of Japan or the IEEJ. The research activities have been continued as the basic field of interdisciplinary study to harmonize even in the electromagnetic (EM) environment where radio waves provide intolerable EM disturbances to electronic equipment and to that environment itself. The subjects and their outcomes which the EMCJ has dealt with during about 40 years from the EMCJ establishment include the evaluation of EM environment, EMC of electric and electronic equipment, and EMC of biological effects involving bioelectromagnetics and so on. In this paper, the establishment history and structure of the EMCJ are reviewed along with the change in activities, and topics of the technical reports presented at EMCJ meetings from 2006 to 2016 are surveyed. In addition, internationalization and its related campaign are presented in conjunction with the EMCJ research activities, and the status quo of the EMCJ under the IEICE is also discussed along with the prospects.

In our previous work, we introduced new concepts of secure scan design; shift register equivalent circuits (SR-equivalents, for short) and strongly secure circuits, and also introduced generalized shift registers (GSRs, for short) to apply them to secure scan design. In this paper, we combine both concepts of SR-equivalents and strongly secure circuits and apply them to GSRs, and consider the synthesis problem of strongly secure SR-equivalents using GSRs. We also consider the enumeration problem of GSRs that are strongly secure and SR-equivalent, i.e., the cardinality of the class of strongly secure SR-equivalent GSRs to clarify the security level of the secure scan architecture.

This paper presents a novel speaking aid system to help laryngectomees produce more naturally sounding electrolaryngeal (EL) speech. An electrolarynx is an external device to generate excitation signals, instead of vibration of the vocal folds. Although the conventional EL speech is quite intelligible, its naturalness suffers from the unnatural fundamental frequency (F0) patterns of the mechanically generated excitation signals. To improve the naturalness of EL speech, we have proposed EL speech enhancement methods using statistical F0 pattern prediction. In these methods, the original EL speech recorded by a microphone is presented from a loudspeaker after performing the speech enhancement. These methods are effective for some situation, such as telecommunication, but it is not suitable for face-to-face conversation because not only the enhanced EL speech but also the original EL speech is presented to listeners. In this paper, to develop an EL speech enhancement also effective for face-to-face conversation, we propose a method for directly controlling F0 patterns of the excitation signals to be generated from the electrolarynx using the statistical F0 prediction. To get an "actual feel” of the proposed system, we also implement a prototype system. By using the prototype system, we find latency issues caused by a real-time processing. To address these latency issues, we furthermore propose segmental continuous F0 pattern modeling and forthcoming F0 pattern modeling. With evaluations through simulation, we demonstrate that our proposed system is capable of effectively addressing the issues of latency and those of electrolarynx in term of the naturalness.

Telecommunication networks have evolved from telephony networks to the Internet, and they sustainably support the development of a secured, safe, and comfortable society. The so-called “switching technology” including the evolved “network system technology” is one of the main infrastructure technologies used for realizing information communication services. On the occasion of completion of 100 years since the establishment of the IEICE, we summarize the history of network system technologies and present their future direction for the next generation. We mainly focus on a series of technologies that evolved through the discussions of the IEICE technical committees on switching engineering, launched 50 years ago, switching systems engineering, and network systems in action.

Recent acoustic event classification research has focused on training suitable filters to represent acoustic events. However, due to limited availability of target event databases and linearity of conventional filters, there is still room for improving performance. By exploiting the non-linear modeling of deep neural networks (DNNs) and their ability to learn beyond pre-trained environments, this letter proposes a DNN-based feature extraction scheme for the classification of acoustic events. The effectiveness and robustness to noise of the proposed method are demonstrated using a database of indoor surveillance environments.

The IEEE 802.11 wireless local area network (WLAN) is the most widely deployed communication standard in the world. Currently, the IEEE 802.11ax draft standard is one of the most advanced and promising among future wireless network standards. However, the suggested uplink-OFDMA (UL-OFDMA) random access method, based on trigger frame-random access (TF-R) from task group ax (TGax), does not yet show satisfying system performance. To enhance the UL-OFDMA capability of the IEEE 802.11ax draft standard, we propose a centralized contention-based MAC (CC-MAC) and describe its detailed operation. In this paper, we analyze the performance of CC-MAC by solving the Markov chain model and evaluating BSS throughput compared to other methods, such as DCF and TF-R, by computer simulation. Our results show that CC-MAC is a scalable and efficient scheme for improving the system performance in a UL-OFDMA random access situation in IEEE 802.11ax.

This paper deals with a problem to decide whether a given graph structure appears as a pattern in the structure of a given graph. A graph pattern is a triple p=(V,E,H), where (V,E) is a graph and H is a set of variables, which are ordered lists of vertices in V. A variable can be replaced with an arbitrary connected graph by a kind of hyperedge replacements. A substitution is a collection of such replacements. The graph pattern matching problem (GPMP) is the computational problem to decide whether or not a given graph G is obtained from a given graph pattern p by a substitution. In this paper, we show that GPMP for a graph pattern p and a graph G is solvable in polynomial time if the length of every variable in p is 2, p is of bounded treewidth, and G is connected.

We present a new data structure called the packed compact trie (packed c-trie) which stores a set S of k strings of total length n in nlog σ+O(klog n) bits of space and supports fast pattern matching queries and updates, where σ is the alphabet size. Assume that α=logσn letters are packed in a single machine word on the standard word RAM model, and let f(k,n) denote the query and update times of the dynamic predecessor/successor data structure of our choice which stores k integers from universe [1,n] in O(klog n) bits of space. Then, given a string of length m, our packed c-tries support pattern matching queries and insert/delete operations in $O(rac{m}{alpha} f(k,n))$ worst-case time and in $O(rac{m}{alpha} + f(k,n))$ expected time. Our experiments show that our packed c-tries are faster than the standard compact tries (a.k.a. Patricia trees) on real data sets. We also discuss applications of our packed c-tries.

In a speech enhancement system for impact noise, it is important for any impact noise activity to be detected. However, because impact noise occurs suddenly, it is not always easy to detect. We propose a method for impact noise activity detection based on the kurtosis of an instantaneous power spectrum. The continuous duration of a generalized impact noise is shorter than that of speech, and the power of such impact noise varies dramatically. Consequently, the distribution of the instantaneous power spectrum of impact noise is different from that of speech. The proposed detection takes advantage of kurtosis, which depends on the sharpness and skirt of the distribution. Simulation results show that the proposed noise activity detection improves the performance of the speech enhancement system.

In both theoretical analysis and practical use for an antidictionary coding algorithm, an important problem is how to encode an antidictionary of an input source. This paper presents a proposal for a compact tree representation of an antidictionary built from a circular string for an input source. We use a technique for encoding a tree in the compression via substring enumeration to encode a tree representation of the antidictionary. Moreover, we propose a new two-pass universal antidictionary coding algorithm by means of the proposal tree representation. We prove that the proposed algorithm is asymptotic optimal for a stationary ergodic source.

In this letter, we integrate domain information into the original artificial bee colony algorithm to create a novel, neighbor-interactive bee colony algorithm. We use the Hamming distance measure to compute variable dependency between two binary variables and employ the Gini correlation coefficient to compute variable relation between integer variables. The proposed optimization method was evaluated by minimizing binary Ising models, integer Potts models, and trapped functions. Experimental results show that the proposed method outperformed the traditional artificial bee colony and other meta-heuristics in all the testing cases.

Fuzzy controller can be useful to realize a practical closed-loop FES controller, because it is possible to make it easy to design FES controller and to determine its parameter values, especially for controlling multi-joint movements by stimulating many muscles including antagonistic muscle pairs. This study focused on using fuzzy controller for the closed-loop control of cycling speed during FES cycling with pedaling wheelchair. However, a designed fuzzy controller has to be tested experimentally in control performance. In this paper, a closed-loop fuzzy FES controller was designed and tested in knee extension movements comparing to a PID controller with healthy subjects before applying to FES cycling. The developed fuzzy controller showed good control performance as a whole in comparing to PID controller and its parameter values were determined through simple control tests of the target movement.

A bi-dimensional empirical mode decomposition (BEMD) is one of the powerful methods for decomposing non-linear and non-stationary signals without a prior function. It can be applied in many applications such as feature extraction, image compression, and image filtering. Although modified BEMDs are proposed in several approaches, computational cost and quality of their bi-dimensional intrinsic mode function (BIMF) still require an improvement. In this paper, an iteration-free computation method for bi-dimensional empirical mode decomposition, called iBEMD, is proposed. The locally partial correlation for principal component analysis (LPC-PCA) is a novel technique to extract BIMFs from an original signal without using extrema detection. This dramatically reduces the computation time. The LPC-PCA technique also enhances the quality of BIMFs by reducing artifacts. The experimental results, when compared with state-of-the-art methods, show that the proposed iBEMD method can achieve the faster computation of BIMF extraction and the higher quality of BIMF image. Furthermore, the iBEMD method can clearly remove an illumination component of nature scene images under illumination change, thereby improving the performance of text localization and recognition.

In this paper, we propose a novel gate delay time mismatch tolerant time-mode signal accumulator whose input and output are represented by a time difference of two digital signal transitions. Within the proposed accumulator, the accumulated value is stored as the time difference between the two pulses running around the same ring of a delay line, so that there is no mismatch between the periods of the two pulses, thus the output drift of the accumulator is suppressed in principle without calibrating mismatch of two rings, which is used to store the accumulated value in the conventional one. A prototype of the proposed accumulator was fabricated in 180nm CMOS. The accumulating operation is confirmed by both time and frequency domain experiments. The standard deviation of the error of the accumulating operation is 9.8ps, and compared with the previous work, the peak error over full-scale is reduced by 46% without calibrating the output drift.

This paper presents beamforming and beam tracking techniques and downlink performance results from field experiments using a Proof-of-Concept (PoC) system. The PoC implements a 5G mobile radio access system in the millimeter wave band and utilizes beamforming and beam tracking techniques. These techniques are realized with a dielectric lens antenna fed by a switched antenna feeder array. The half-power beamwidth of the antenna is 3° corresponding to massive MIMO using approximately 1000 antenna elements. The system bandwidth is 1GHz and the center frequency is 73.5GHz. Adaptive modulation and coding using four modulation and coding schemes is implemented. The field experiment is conducted in the following small cell environments: a courtyard, a shopping mall and a street canyon. The majority of the test area is Line-Of-Sight (LOS) however the shopping mall course contains 69% Non-LOS (NLOS) conditions. The results show that the maximum throughput of over 2Gbps using rate 7/8 coded 16QAM modulation is achieved in 87%, 34% and 28% of each of the respective environments. The beam tracking achieves high availability of coverage and seamless mobility not only in LOS environments but also under NLOS conditions through the reflected paths.

In recent years, deep learning has been widely applied in relation extraction task. The method uses only word embeddings as network input, and can model relations between target named entity pairs. It equally deals with each relation mention, so it cannot effectively extract relations from the corpus with an enormous number of non-relations, which is the main reason why the performance of relation extraction is significantly lower than that of relation classification. This paper designs a deep reinforcement learning framework for relation extraction, which considers relation extraction task as a two-step decision-making game. The method models relation mentions with CNN and Tree-LSTM, which can calculate initial state and transition state for the game respectively. In addition, we can tackle the problem of unbalanced corpus by designing penalty function which can increase the penalties for first-step decision-making errors. Finally, we use Q-Learning algorithm with value function approximation to learn control policy π for the game. This paper sets up a series of experiments in ACE2005 corpus, which show that the deep reinforcement learning framework can achieve state-of-the-art performance in relation extraction task.

The Internet of Things (IoT) is defined as a global infrastructure for the Information Society, enabling advanced services by interconnecting (physical and virtual) things based on, existing and evolving, interoperable information and communication technologies by ITU-T. Data may be communicated in low-power and lossy environments, which causes complicated security issues. Furthermore, concerns are raised over access of personally identifiable information pertaining to IoT devices, network and platforms. Security and privacy concerns have been main barriers to implement IoT, which needs to be resolved appropriate security and privacy measures. This paper describes security threats and privacy concerns of IoT, surveys current studies related to IoT and identifies the various requirements and solutions to address these security threats and privacy concerns. In addition, this paper also focuses on major global standardization activities for security and privacy of Internet of Things. Furthermore, future directions and strategies of international standardization for theInternet of Thing's security and privacy issues will be given. This paper provides guidelines to assist in suggesting the development and standardization strategies forward to allow a massive deployment of IoT systems in real world.

IEEE 802.11ah is an emerging wireless LAN standard in the sub-1-GHz license-exempt bands for cost-effective and range-extended communication. One of the most challenging issues that need to be overcome in relation to IEEE 802.11ah is to ensure that thousands of stations are able to associate efficiently with a single access point. During network initialization, several thousand stations try to associate with the access point, leading to heavy channel contention and long association delay. Therefore, IEEE 802.11ah has introduced an authentication control mechanism that classifies stations into groups and only a small number of stations in a group are allowed to access the medium in a beacon interval. This grouping strategy provides fair channel access to a large number of stations. However, the approach to grouping the stations and determining the best group size is undefined in the draft of IEEE 802.11ah. In this paper, we first model the authentication/association in IEEE 802.11ah. Our analysis shows that there exists the best group size that results in minimal association delay. Consequently, the analytical model is extended to determine the best group size. Finally, an enhanced authentication control algorithm, which utilizes the best group size to provide the minimum association delay, is proposed. The numerical and the simulation results we obtained with the proposed method demonstrate that our method succeeds in minimizing the association delay.

This paper presents a capacitor-loaded 4x4 planar loop array for three-dimensional near-field beamforming of magnetic resonance wireless power transfer (WPT). This planar loop array provides three important functions: beamforming, selective power transfer, and the ability to work alignment free with the receiver. These functions are realized by adjusting the capacitance of each loop. The optimal capacitance of each loop that corresponds to the three functions can be found using a genetic algorithm (GA); the three functions were verified by comparing simulations and measurements at a frequency of 6.78MHz. Finally, the beamforming mechanism of a near-field loop array was investigated using the relationship between the current magnitude and the resonance frequency of each loop, resulting in the findings that the magnitude and the resonance frequency are correlated. This focused current of the specified loop creates a strong magnetic field in front of that loop, resulting in near-field beamforming.