In the PICASSO, a system for the facial caricature generation, as the basic mechanisms to extract the individuality features of faces and to deform the features have been already introduced, it is expected to realize an autonomous mechanism to evaluate facial caricatures. The evaluation should be based on the framework of human visual cognition. In the PICASSO, some visual illusions such as the Wundt-Fick illusion and the Ponzo illusion for example, are applied to evaluate the shapes of the facial parts such as eyebrows, nose, mouth and face contour, in the deformation process. In many cases, as well-deformed caricatures are evaluated to be successful, it is confirmed that the utilization of the visual illusion is effective to evaluate the results of caricatures. In this paper, some experimental results are presented together with the definition of the evaluation measures and the further subjects.

Practical linewidth measurement accuracy better than 0.02 µm 3 sigma that meets the production requirement for devices with sub-half micron features, was achieved in a field emission scanning electron-beam metrology system (Hitachi S-7000). In order to establish high accuracy linewidth measurement, it was found in the study that reduction of electron-beam diameter and precise control of operating conditions are significantly effective. For the purpose of reducing electron-beam diameter, a novel electron optical system was adopted to minimize the chromatic aberration which defines electron-beam profile. As a result the electron beam diameter was reduced from 20 nm to 16 nm. In order to reduce measurement uncertainties associated with actual operating conditions, a field emission electron gun geometry and an objective lens current monitor were investigated. Then the measurement uncertainties due to operating conditions was reduced from 0.016 µm to 0.004 µm.

In this paper, we propose an algorithm of O(|V|min{k,|V|,|A|}|A|) time complexity for finding all k-edge-connected components of a given digraph D=(V,A) and a positive integer k. When D is symmetric, incorporating a preprocessing reduces this time complexity to O(|A|+|V|2+|V|min{k,|V|}min{k|V|,|A|}), which is at most O(|A|+k2|V|2).

Correspondence based on regions rather than lines seems to be effective, as regions are usually fewer than other image features and provide global information such as size, color, adjacency, etc. In this paper, we present a region matching approach for solving the correspondence problem. Images are segmented into regions and are individually described by classification tables using region adjacencies. From the structural description of the two images, the region matching process based on color and structural similarity is carried out. First, a small number of significant regions are selected and matched by using color, and then they are used as handles for constraint propagation to match the remaining regions by using structures. Our technique was implemented by using an efficient selection and propagation algorithm and was tested with a variety of scenes.

Mathematical morphology clarified geometrical properties of shape analysis algorithms for binary pictures. Results of labelling, distance transform, and adjacent numbering are, however, coded pictures. For full descriptions of shape analysis algorithms in the framework of mathematical morphology, it is necessary to extend morphological operations to code-labelled pictorial data. Nevertheless, extensions of morphology to code-labelled pictures have never discussed though the theory of gray morphology is well studied by several authors. Hence, this paper proposes a theory of the coded morphology which is based on the binary scaling of labels of pixels. The method uses n-layered binary sub-pictures for the processing of a picture with 2n labels. By introducing morphological operations for the coded point sets, we express some coding functions in the manner of the mathematical morphology. We also derive multidimensional array registers and gates which store and process coded pictures and morphological operations to them by proposing basic gates which compute parallelly logical operations for elements of Boolean layered arrays. These gates and registers are suitable for the implementation of the shape analysis processors on the three-dimensional VLSI and ULSI.

This paper proposes an off-line text-independent writer identification method applicable to Japanese and Korean sentences. It is assumed that the writer of a writing in question exists in a certain group of people and that reference writings written by each person in the group can be used for identification. In the proposed method, relative frequencies of some model patterns are counted on the binary pattern of each writing and are used as the feature to measure the distance between two writings. Based on a modified Mahalanobis' distance for this feature, the person whose reference writing is nearest to the writing in question is judged as the writer. The effectiveness of the proposed method is examined through an experiment using Japanese and Korean writings. Error rates in the experiment were different depending on conditions such as volume of reference writings, dimension of adopted features, and number of people to be identified. In some cases, error rates as low as 0% were observed. Error rates tend to be lower in Korean writings probably because Hangul is composed of a smaller number of letters compared to Kanji and Hiragana in Japanese writing.

Self-aligned aluminum-gate MOSFET's have been successfully fabricated by employing ultraclean ion implantation technology. The use of ultra high vacuum ion implanter and the suppression of high-energy ion-beam-induced metal sputter contamination have enabled us to form ultra-shallow low-leakage pn junctions by furnace annealing at a temperature as low as 450. The fabricated aluminum-gate MOSFET's have exhibited good electrical characteristics, thus demonstrating a large potential for application to realizing ultra-high-speed integrated circuits.

This paper proposes a surveillance system concept, which includes the analysis of fiber fault factors and monitored items, the architecture for diagnosing fiber degradation and the system configuration. Fiber faults are classified into two types. One is fiber failure caused by fiber axial tensile strain and the other is fiber loss increase caused by fiber bending and the absorption of hydrogen molecules. It was found that there is an urgent need for fiber axial strain monitoring, sensitive loss monitoring operating at longer wavelengths and water sensing, in order to detect the origin and early indications of these faults before the service is affected. Moreover, an algorithm for predicting and diagnosing fiber faults based on the detected results was investigated and systematized.

The subject of the paper is to propose an O(|V|+|E|) algorithm for the 3-edge-connectivity augmentation problem (UW-3-ECA) defined by "Given an undirected graph G0=(V,E), find an edge set E of minimum cardinality such that the graph (V,EE ) (denoted as G0+E ) is 3-edge-connected, where each edge of E connects distinct vertices of V." Such a set E is called a solution to the problem. Let UW-3-ECA(S) (UW-3-ECA(M), respectively) denote UW-3-ECA in which G0+E is required to be simple (G0+E may have multiple edges). Note that we can assume that G0 is simple in UW-3-ECA(S). UW-3-ECA(M) is divided into two subproblems (1) and (2) as follows: (1) finding all k-edge-connected components of a given graph for every k3, and (2) determining a minimum set of edges whose addition to G0 result in a 3-edge-connected graph. Concerning the subproblem (1), we use an O(|V|+|E|) algorithm that has already been existing. The paper proposes an O(|V|+|E|) algorithm for the subproblem (2). Combining these algorithms makes an O(|V|+|E|) algorithm for finding a solution to UW-3-ECA(M). Furthermore, it is shown that a solution E to UW-3-ECA(M) is also a solution to UW-3-ECA(S) if |V|4, partly solving an open problem UW-k-ECA(S) that is a generalization of UW-3-ECA(S).

We designed and fabricated a prototype 0.4-µm-gate CMOS/SIMOX PLL LSI in order to verify the potential usefulness of ultrathin-film SIMOX technology for creating an extremely low-power LSI containing high-speed circuits operating at frequencies of at least 1 GHz and at low supply voltages. This PLL LSI contains both high-frequency components such a prescaler and low-frequency components such as a shift register, phase frequency comparator, and fixed divider. One application of the LSI could be for synthesizing communication band frequencies in the front-end of a battery-operated wireless handy terminal for personal communications. At a supply voltage of 2 V, this LSI operates at up to 2 GHz while dissipating only 8.4 mW. Even at only 1.2 V, 1 GHz-operation can be obtained with a power consumption of merely 1.4 mW. To explain this low-power feature, we extensively measured the electrical characteristics of individual CMOS/SIMOX basic circuits as well as transistors. Test results showed that the high performance of the LSI is mainly due to the advanced nature of the CMOS/SIMOX devices with low parasitic capacitances around source/drain regions and to the new circuit design techniques used in the dual-modulus prescalar.

We report on Brillouin optical-fiber time domain reflectometry (BOTDR) for distributed temperature or strain measurement along a single-mode optical fiber. BOTDR uses Brillouin scattering in optical fibers, whose Brillouin frequency shift increases in proportion to temperature or strain induced in the fiber. This method requires access to only one end of a fiber, as with conventional optical time domain reflectometry (OTDR) which uses Rayleigh scattering in optical fibers. In BOTDR, a coherent optical detection method is used as a backscattered light detection technique. This technique can achieve both high sensitivity and high frequency resolution and easily separate a weak Brillouin line from a strong Rayleigh scattering peak and Fresnel reflected light. Experimental results show the potential for measuring temperature and strain distribution with respective accuracies of 3 or 0.006%, and a spatial resolution of 100m in an 11.57km long fiber.

A new capacitor over bit-line (COB) stacked capacitor memory cell was developed using a local interconnect poly-silicon layer to arrange a capacitor contact between bit-lines. This memory cell enables usable capacitor area to increase and capacitor contact hole depth to decrease. The hemispherical grain (HSG) silicon, whose effective surface area is twice that of ordinary poly-silicon, was utilized for the storage node to increase the storage capacitance without increasing the storage node height. The feasibility of achieving a 1.8 µm2 memory cell with 30 fF storage capacitance using a 7 nm-SiO2-equivalent dielectric film and a 0.5 µm-high HSG storage node has been verified for 64 MbDRAMs by a test memory device using a 0.4 µm CMOS process.

Subjective quality tests have proven that embedded adaptive differential PCM (ADPCM), known to tolerate information loss through bit dropping, does not maintain sufficient speech quality when directly applied to asynchronous transfer mode (ATM) due to the fixed-length cell transmission scheme unique to ATM. We propose a coding and transmission scheme which enhances the performance by adjusting the embedded ADPCM coding rate according to input speech characteristics, thereby taking advantage of the ATM environment, where the transmission of variable rate sources is feasible. By varying the number of code bits of an embedded ADPCM coder from 6bits per sample, or 48kbps, for blocks of speech with a high prediction gain, to 2bits, or 16kbps, for silent blocks, a good compromise between coding bit rate and speech quality with gradual degradation due to information loss is achieved. The results of subjective evaluation tests showed the speech quality of the proposed scheme to be over 3.5 mean opinion score (MOS) on a scale of 1 to 5 at a cell loss rate of 10%. A prototype of the codec and the ATM cell assembly/disassembly functions were also fabricated using 3 conventional digital signal processors (DSPs) for real-time conversation tests.

The performance of copper interconnects formed by the low-kinetic-energy ion bombardment process has been investigated. The copper films formed on SiO2 by this technology under a sufficient amount of ion energy deposition exhibit perfect orientation conversion from Cu (111) to Cu (100) upon post-metallization thermal annealing. We have discovered such crystal orientation conversion is always accompanied by a giant-grain growth as large as 100 µm. The copper film resistivity decreases due to the decrease in the grain boundary scattering, when the giant-grain growth occurs in the film. The resistivity of giant-grain copper film at a room temperature is 1.76 µΩcm which is almost equal to the bulk resistivity of copper. Furthermore, a new-accelerated electromigration life-test method has been developed to evaluate copper interconnects having large electromigration resistance within a very short period of test time. The essence of the new method is the acceleration by a large-current-stress of more than 107 A/cm2 and to utilize the self heating of test interconnect for giving temperature stress. In order to avoid uncontrollable thermal runaway and resultant interconnect melting, we adopted a very efficient cooling system that immediately removes Joule heat and keeps the interconnect temperature constant. As a result, copper interconnects formed by the low-kinetic-energy ion bombardment process exhibit three orders of magnitude longer lifetime at 300 K than Al alloy interconnects.

Two kinds of nitrided ultrathin (510 nm) SiO2 films were formed on the silicon (100) face using rapid thermal NH3-nitridation (RTN) and rapid thermal N2O-oxynitridation (RTON) technologies. The MOS capacitors with RTN SiO2 film showed that by Fowler-Nordheim (F-N) electron injection, both electron trap density and low-field leakage increase by the NH3-nitridation. In addition, the charge-to-breakdown (QBD) value decreases owing to NH3-nitridation. By contrast, RTON SiO2 films exhibited extremely low electron trap density, almost no increase of the leakage current, and large QBD value above 200C/cm2. The oxide film composition was evaluated by secondary ion mass spectroscopy (SIMS). The chemical bonding states were also examined by Fourier transform-infrared reflection attenuated total reflectance (FT-IR ATR) and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) measurements. These results indicate that although a large number of nitrogen (N) atoms are incorporated by the RTN and RTON, only the RTN process generates the hydrogen-related species such as NH and SiH bounds in the film, whereas the RTON film indicates only SiN bonds in bulk SiO2. From the dielectric and physical properties of the oxide films, it is considered that the oxide wearout by high-field stress is the result of the electron trapping process, in which anomalous leakage due to trap-assisted tunneling near the injected interface rapidly increases, leading to irreversible oxide failure.

This report will present an expression for the mechanical behavior of a drum-wound dual coated fiber and an analytical expression for the microbending loss in single mode dual coated fibers. These analytical expressions are then compared with experimental drumwinding microbending loss results to determine their validity.

Selective epitaxial growth technology has been extended to the base formation of a transistor on the basis of the SATURN (Self-Alignment Technology Utilizing Reserved Nitride) process, a high-speed bipolar LSI processing technology. The formation of a self-aligned base contact, coupled with SIC (Selective Ion-implanted Collector) fabricated by lowenergy ion implantation, has not only narrowed the transistor active regions but has drastically reduced the base width. A final base width of 800 and a maximum cut-off frequency of 31 GHz were achieved.

The authors recently proposed a design method of stable IIR digital filters based on the interpolation by rational characteristic functions of filters, for a set of values of these characteristic function and, in addition, their higher derivatives prescribed at a number of frequency. This method can be further extended so that, despite usage of a less number of interpolation points, almost the same filter characteristics as one obtained by the former method can be realized. This paper presents an improved design method for making the transfer function meet strict magnitude specifications. The method proposed in this paper is especially efficient for designing a filter whose characteristics is specified not only in the passband but also in the transition band with relatively narrow bandwidth.

In this paper we propose a new application of Wu's mechanical theorem proving method to reconstruct polyhedra in 3-D space from their projection image. First we set up three groups of equations. The first group is of the geometric relations expressing that vertices are on a plane segment, on a line segment, and forming angle in 3-D space. The second is of those relations on image plane. And the rest is of the relations between the vertices in 3-D space and their correspondence on image plane. Next, we classify all the groups of equations into two sets, a set of hypotheses and a conjecture. We apply this method to seven cases of models. Then, we apply Wu's method to prove that the hypotheses follow the conjecture and obtain pseudodivided remainders of the conjectures, which represent relations of angles or lengths between 3-D space and their projected image. By this method we obtained new geometrical relations for seven cases of models. We also show that, in the region in image plane where corresponding spatial measures cannot reconstructed, leading coefficients of hypotheses polynomials approach to zero. If the vertex of an image angle is in such regions, we cannot calculate its spatial angle by direct manipulation of the hypothesis polynomials and the conjecture polynomial. But we show that by stability analysis of the pseudodivided remainder the spatial angles can be calculated even in those regions.

The Hilbert curve is one of the simplest curves which pass through all points in a space. Many researchers have worked on this curve from the engineering point of view, such as for an expression of two-dimensional patterns, for data compression in an image or in color space, for pseudo color image displays, etc. A computation algorithm of this curve is usually based on a look-up table instead of a recursive algorithm. In such algorithm, a large memory is required for the path look-up table, and the memory size becomes proportional to the image size. In this paper, we present an implementation of a fast sequential algorithm that requires little memory for two and three dimensional Hilbert curves. Our method is based on some rules of quad-tree traversal in two dimensional space, and octtree traversal in three dimensional space. The two dimensional Hilbert curve is similar to the scanning of a DF (Depth First) expression, which is a quad-tree expression of an image. The important feature is that it scans continuously from one quadrant, which is obtained by quad tree splitting, to the next adjacent one in two dimensional space. From this point, if we consider run-lengths of black and white pixels during the scan, the run-lengths of the Hilbert scan tend to be longer than those of the raster scan and the DF expression scanning. We discuss the application to data compression using binary images and three dimensional data.