Ray tracing is an efficient method for analyzing transmission characteristic of indoor wireless systems. However for simulating the transmission characteristic, using a path profile obtained by ray tracing, calculation times become enormous and there is no good theoretical model which can link a path analysis result with digital transmission characteristics evaluation. To overcome such problems, in this paper, a simple calculation method on spatial distribution of error occurrence due to intersymbol interference (ISI) based on "the equivalent transmission-path (ETP) model" is proposed. The ETP model is a technique that can simply estimate statistics of errors due to ISI that arise in Rayleigh and Nakagami-Rice fading environments. If a simple calculation method proposed in this paper is used, calculation time of digital transmission characteristics evaluation become tremendously shorter and results of this method agree with those of exact simulations with sufficient accuracy.

An analytic approximation of the information reduction factor is presented in an efficient manner for the case of two-dimensional measurement vector and a four-sigma validation gate. This analytic approximation allows us to efficiently evaluate performance prediction for the probabilistic data association (PDA) filter using the hybrid conditional average (HYCA) algorithm.

Methods usually employed for carrying out division in logic are based on algebraic or Boolean techniques. Algebraic division is fast but results may be less than optimal. Boolean division will yield better results but generally it is much slower because a minimization step is required. In [4], Kim and Dietmeyer proposed a new type of division, called extended algebraic division, and described a heuristic algorithm for it. A feature is that, unlike Boolean division, it does not require a minimization step. The present paper is concerned with an efficient algorithm for exact extended algebraic division. The algorithm was developed within the SIS environment, a program for logic synthesis developed at U.C. Berkeley. Experiments on factoring PLA's demonstrate a significant improvement in quality with a reasonable increase in run time.

This paper proposes an Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing system with Grouping Adaptive Modulation method (GAM-OFDM). The salient feature of the proposed system is to enable the reduction of required transmission bits for adaptive modulation information (AMI) that is required in the demodulation process at the receiver. This paper also proposes an efficient AMI transmission method for the GAM-OFDM system to enable the efficient transmission of AMI bits by using only two preamble symbols, and the Multi-Carrier Spectrum Spreading (MC-SS) technique to achieve the excellent performance of AMI transmission even under severe multi-path fading environments. This paper presents the various computer simulation results to verify the performance of proposed GAM-OFDM system.

We propose a new multiple access communication system based on finite field wavelet spread signature (FFWSS). In addition to the function of frequency diversity and multiple access, which are typically provided by traditional spreading codes, the FFWSS spreads data symbols in time, resulting in robustness against frequency selective slow fading. Using the FFWSS to spread a data symbol so that it is overlapped with neighboring symbols, a FFWSS-CDMA system is developed. It is observed that the ratio of the maximum nontrivial value of periodic correlation function to the code length of FFWSS is the same as that of a Sidelnikov sequence. Using RAKE-based receivers, simulation results show that the proposed FFWSS-CDMA system yields lower bit error rate (BER) than conventional DS-CDMA and MT-CDMA systems in multipath fading channels.

Face recognition provides an important means for realizing a man-machine interface and security. This paper presents "Smartface," a PC-based face recognition system using a temporal image sequence. The face recognition engine of the system employs a robust facial parts detection method and a pattern recognition algorithm which is stable against variations of facial pose and expression. The functions of Smartface include (i) screensaver with face recognition, (ii) customization of PC environment, and (iii) real-time disguising, an entertainment application. The system is operable on a portable PC with a camera and is implemented only with software; no image processing hardware is required.

This paper presents a novel and practical face-assisted video coding scheme to enhance the visual quality of the face region in videophone applications. A low-complexity skin-color-based face detection and tracking scheme is proposed to locate the human face regions in realtime. After classifying the macroblocks (MBs) into the face and non-face regions, we present a dynamic distortion-weighting adjustment (DDWA) scheme to skip encoding the static non-face MBs, and the saved bits are used to compensate the face region by increasing the distortion weighting of the face MBs. The quality of the face regions will thus be largely enhanced. Moreover, the computation originally required for encoding the skipped MBs can also be saved. The experimental results show that the proposed method can significantly improve the PSNR and the subjective quality of face regions, while the degradation introduced on the non-face areas is relatively invisible to human perception. The proposed algorithm is fully compatible with the H. 263 standard, and the low complexity feature makes it well suited to be implemented for real-time applications.

In this paper, the closed-form expressions of signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio (SINR) and the outage probability are derived for a maximal ratio combining (MRC) two-dimensional (2-D)-RAKE receiver with imperfect power control in a frequency-selective Nakagami fading channel. The impact of power control error (PCE) on the performance of the receiver is analyzed for all kinds of fading environments. The results of numerical derivation and simulation indicate that the performance of 2-D-RAKE receivers degrades due to imperfect power control. But when PCE is not serious, increasing the number of antennae and temporal diversity order can compensate for the performance loss. The exact performance improvement due to space-time processing varies with the PCE and the fading environment.

In this paper, the separate coding scheme is applied to space-time turbo-coded modulations (ST-TuCM). The separate coding for ST-TuCM uses the plural number of component encoders, each of which is a binary turbo encoder in the transmitter. The receiver has component decoders corresponding to the component encoders. The likelihood values derived by the component decoders are employed as a-priori information of transmitted signal from other transmit antennas in iterative demodulation-decoding. Simulation results under the fast Rayleigh fading channel show that separate coding and iterative demodulation-decoding improve the bit error rate performance.

This paper proposes Variable Spreading Factor-Orthogonal Frequency and Code Division Multiplexing (VSF-OFCDM) as the most promising forward link wireless access method in broadband packet wireless transmission using an approximate 50 to 100 MHz bandwidth. The proposed OFCDM employing VSF can flexibly realize near optimum wireless access satisfying higher radio link capacity both in isolated cell environments such as hot-spot areas and indoor offices and in multi-cell environments such as cellular systems by adaptively changing the appropriate spreading factor, SF, in the frequency domain based on the cell structure, radio link conditions such as the delay spread, and major radio link parameters such as the data modulation scheme and channel coding rate. Furthermore, by establishing SF=1, i.e., no spreading mode, VSF-OFCDM can be used as orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM). Computer simulation results demonstrate that, while SF=1 (OFDM) achieves higher link capacity than SF>1 in an isolated-cell environment, OFCDM with the optimized SF value over 1 achieves approximately 1.4 times higher capacity compared with OFDM in a multi-cell environment associated with the advantageous one-cell frequency reuse. Consequently, VSF-OFCDM can provide seamless deployment of broadband packet wireless access with higher radio link capacity, that is, OFDM in an isolated-cell environment, and OFCDM with the adaptively optimized SF value over 1 in a multi-cell environment according to the major radio link conditions and radio link parameters, by only changing the spreading factor.

A new measurement method using two resonance modes, the TE021 and TE012 modes, in an image-type dielectric resonator is proposed to measure the surface resistance Rs of only one high-Tc superconductor (HTS) film and the loss tangent tan δ of a sapphire rod separately, precisely and nondestructively. The image-type resonator is constructed by placing a sapphire rod in a bottom of a conductor cavity made of two HTS films and a copper ring. This resonator is designed from the mode charts calculated on the basis of the rigorous analysis by the mode matching method, taking account of an uniaxial-anisotropic characteristic of sapphire. It is verified that the mode charts are also effective to identify many resonance modes observed in measurement. The temperature dependence of Rs of one YBCO film was measured at 19.3 GHz by this method. The measured result agreed very well with one measured by the conventional two-dielectric resonator method. As a result, it was verified that this method is useful to evaluate Rs value of one HTS film with no damage.

The capability of a high-temperature superconducting sigma-delta modulator was studied by means of circuit simulation and FFT analysis. Parameters for the circuit simulation were extracted from experimental measurements. The present circuit simulation includes thermal-noise effect. Successive FFT analyses were made to evaluate the dynamic range of the sigma-delta modulator. As a result, the dynamic range was evaluated as 60.1 dB at temperature of 20 K and 56.9 dB at temperature of 77 K.

We developed a conversation system which can participate in a group conversation. Group conversation is a form of conversation in which three or more participants talk to each other about a topic on an equal footing. Conventional conversation systems have been designed under the assumption that each system merely talked with only one person. Group conversation is different from these conventional systems in the following points. It is necessary for the system to understand the conversational situation such as who is speaking, to whom he is speaking, and also to whom the other participants pay attention. It is also necessary for the system itself to try to affect the situation appropriately. In this study, we realized the function of recognizing the conversational situation, by combining image processing and acoustic processing, and the function of working on the conversational situation utilizing facial and body actions of the robot. Thus, a robot that can join in the group conversation was realized.

This letter presents parallel algorithms for matrix multiplication and the fast Fourier transform (FFT) that are significant problems arising in engineering and scientific applications. The proposed algorithms are designed on a 3-dimensional processor array with separable buses (PASb). We show that a PASb consisting of N N h processors can compute matrix multiplication of size N N and the FFT of size N in O(N/h+log N) time, respectively. In order to examine ease of hardware implementation, we also evaluate the VLSI complexity of the algorithms. A result obtained achieves an optimal bound on area-time complexity when h=O(N/log N).

Multiple access interferecnce (MAI) is a major factor limiting the performance of direct-sequence code-division multiple access (DS-CDMA) systems. Since the amount of MAI is dependent on the correlation among user signals, one way to reduce it is to reduce such correlation. In mobile multiuser communication, each user experiences a different time-varying channel response. This user-dependent characteristic in channel variation can be exploited to assist the separation of different user signals, in addition to the capability provided by the spreading codes. As the correlation among different user channels are expected to decrease with increase in time span, enhanced decorrelation among different users' signals can be effected by spacing out the chips of one modulated symbol in time. Thus we consider chip-interleaving DS-CDMA (CI-DS-CDMA) in this study. We investigate its performance through theoretical analysis and computer simulation. Employing only a slightly modified rake receiver structure, CI-DS-CDMA is shown to attain significant performance gain over conventional DS-CDMA, in multiple access communication over single- and multi-path fading channels, without complicated multiuser detection. CI-DS-CDMA also has a lower demand for short-term power control than conventional DS-CDMA, especially in one-path Rayleigh fading. Results of the theoretical analysis and the computer simulation agree well with each other.

We introduce efficient algorithms for the τ-adic sliding window method, which is a scalar multiplication algorithm on Koblitz curves over F2m. The τ-adic sliding window method is divided into two parts: the precomputation part and the main computation part. Until now, there has been no efficient way to deal with the precomputation part; the required points of the elliptic curves were calculated one by one. We propose two fast algorithms for the precomputation part. One of the proposed methods decreases the cost of the precomputation part by approximately 30%. Since more points are calculated, the total cost of scalar multiplication is decreased by approximately 7.5%.

In this paper, we propose and describe a new synchronizer for the FFT timing applicable to multi-carrier spread-spectrum (MC-SS) communication systems. The performance of the synchronizer is evaluated in terms of false- and miss-detection probabilities in the presence of additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN) and Rayleigh fading.

In an orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) system, the bit error performance is degraded in the presence of multiple propagation paths whose excess delays are longer than the Guard Interval (GI), because the orthogonality between subcarriers cannot be maintained. In this paper, we propose a new OFDM demodulation method with a variable-length effective symbol and a multi-stage inter-carrier interference (ICI) canceller, in order to improve the bit error performance in the presence of multipaths whose excess delays are longer than the GI. The influence of the inter-symbol interference (ISI) is eliminated by the variable-length effective symbol, and then the ICI component is reduced by the multi-stage ICI canceller. The principle of the proposed method is explained, and the performance of the proposed method is then evaluated by computer simulation. The results show that the proposed method improves the system availability under more various multipath fading environments without changing the system parameters.

This paper considers a reconfiguration problem on a processor array model based on single-and-half-track switches, which is proposed for a fault tolerance technique at the fabrication time. The focus of this paper is to achieve the optimal reconfigurability, which means that whenever there exists a solution for successful reconfiguration, the designed method can find the solution. The paper consists of two parts. In the first part, we show two essential constraints that have been assumed in most of the previous studies, and make four reconfiguration classes that differ in the assumed essential constraints. Then, we present some inclusion relations among the four reconfiguration classes. As a result, it becomes clear that the most restrictive class including most of the previous methods never achieves the truly optimal reconfigurability. In the second part, we present a reconfiguration method based on sequential routing (RMSR). Although the worst-case time complexity of the RMSR is exponential in the number of processing elements, the reconfigurability of the RMSR is optimal within the most restrictive reconfiguration class. The effectiveness of the RMSR is shown by a computer simulation.

In this paper, a new approach is proposed to improve the channel estimation accuracy with channel tracking capability for adaptive multicarrier equalization systems under time-variant multipath fading channel. The improvement is carried out based on the assumption that the channel is static over a transmitted block period, and slowly linearly changing over several block periods. By applying IFFT to the concatenated channel transfer function derived from different blocks, the noise-averaging improvement is achieved, and a better estimation of the channel coefficients with some delay can be obtained. A multi-step channel predictor and a smoothing filter is utilized to compensate for the delay and make the system more robust in terms of channel tracking performance. Adaptive time domain equalization is jointly performed with this approach to avoid the channel invertibility problem found in the frequency domain approach. A short period of training sequences is utilized resulting in more efficient use of available communication capacity. The effectiveness of the proposed approach is evaluated through simulation for multicarrier systems in time-variant multipath fading channels. Results show improvement over previous channel estimation schemes.