A rat-race hybrid-ring which includes a coupled-line called microwave C-section is proposed for size reduction. The perfect input match, isolation, equal power split and certain phase differences between two output ports can be satisfied at center frequency as in a normal hybrid-ring. The size of the proposed circuit becomes smaller than that of a normal rat-race built up with a folded non-coupled 3/4-wavelength transmission line, although the frequency characteristics are slightly damaged by the electromagnetic coupling between two folded strips. Theoretical results based on the even and odd mode decomposition method are in good agreement with those of the experimental circuit fabricated at 1 GHz.

This paper describes a spatial and temporal multipath channel model which is useful in array antenna environments for mobile radio communications. From this model, a no distortion criterion, that is an extension of the Nyquist criterion, is derived for equalization in both spatial and temporal domains. An adaptive tapped-delay-line (TDL) array antenna is used as a tool for equalization in both spatial and temporal domains. Several criterion for such spatial and temporal equalization such as ZF (Zero Forcing) and MSE (Mean Square Error), are available to update the weights and tap coefficients. In this paper, we discuss the optimum weights based on the ZF criterion in both spatial and temporal domains. Since the ZF criterion satisfies the Nyquist criterion in case of noise free, this paper applies the ZF criterion for the spatial and temporal equalization as a simple case. The Z transform is applied to represent the spatial and temporal model of the multipath channel and to derive the optimal weights of the TDL array antenna. However, in some cases the optimal antenna weights cannot be decided uniquely. Therefore, the effect on the equalization errors due to a finite number of antenna elements and tap coefficients can be shown numerically by computer simulations.

This paper presents a simple and efficient method for estimation of parameters useful for textured image analysis. On the basia of a 2-D Wold-like decomposition of homogenenous random fields, the texture field can be decomposed into a sum of two mutually orthogonal components: a deterministic component and an indeterministic component. The spectral density function (SDF) of the former is a sum of 1-D or 2-D delta functions. The 2-D autocorrelation function (ACF) of the latter is fitted to the assumed anisotropic ACF that has an elliptical contour. The parameters representing the ellipse and those representing the delta functions can be used to detect rotation angles and scaling factors of test textures. Specially, rotation and scaling invariant parameters, which are applicable to the classification of rotated and scaled textured images, can be estimated by combining these parameters. That is, a test texture can be correctly classified even if it is rotated and scaled. Several computer experiments on natural textures show the effectiveness of this method.

This paper presents a general method for computing quantitative information about finite-state real-time systems. We have developed algorithms that compute exact bounds on the delay between two specified events and on the number of occurrences of an event in a given interval. This technique allows us to determine performance measures such as schedulability, response time, and system load. Our algorithms produce more detailed information than traditional methods. This information leads to a better understanding of system behavior, in addition to determining its correctness. The algorithms presented in this paper are efficiently implemented using binary decision diagrams and have been incorporated into the SMV symbolic model checker. Using this method, we have verified a model of an aircraft control system with 1015 states. The results obtained demonstrate that our method can be successfully applied in the verification of real-time system designs.

We discuss how to determine automatically the number of mixture components in continuous mixture density HMMs (CHMMs). A notable trend has been the use of CHMMs in recent years. One of the major problems with a CHMM is how to determine its structure, that is, how many mixture components and states it has and its optimal topology. The number of mixture components has been determined heuristically so far. To solve this problem, we first investigate the influence of the number of mixture components on model parameters and the output log likelihood value. As a result, in contrast to the mixture number uniformity" which is applied in conventional approaches to determine the number of mixture components, we propose the principle of distribution size uniformity". An algorithm is introduced for automatically determining the number of mixture components. The performance of this algorithm is shown through recognition experiments involving all Japanese phonemes. Two types of experiments are carried out. One assumes that the number of mixture components for each state is the same within a phonetic model but may vary between states belonging to different phonemes. The other assumes that each state has a variable number of mixture components. These two experiments give better results than the conventional method.

A new clustering method was proposed to increase the effect of duration modeling on the HMM-based phoneme recognition. A precise observation on the temporal correspondences between a phoneme HMM with output probabilities by single Gaussian modeling and its training data indicated that there were two extreme cases, one with several types of correspondences in a phoneme class completely different from each other, and the other with only one type of correspondence. Although duration modeling was commonly used to incorporate the temporal information in the HMMs, a good modeling could not be obtained for the former case. Further observation for phoneme HMMs with output probabilities by Gaussian mixture modeling also showed that some HMMs still had multiple temporal correspondences, though the number of such phonemes was reduced as compared to the case of single Gaussian modeling. An appropriate duration modeling cannot be obtained for these phoneme HMMs by the conventional methods, where the duration distribution for each HMM state is represented by a distribution function. In order to cope with the problem, a new method was proposed which was based on the clustering of phoneme classes with plural types of temporal correspondences into sub-classes. The clustering was conducted so as to reduce the variations of the temporal correspondences in sub-classes. After the clustering, an HMM was constructed for each sub-class. Using the proposed method, speaker dependent recognition experiments were performed for phonemes segmented from isolated words. A few-percent increase was realized in the recognition rate, which was not obtained by another method based on the duration modeling with a Gaussian mixture.

This is an attempt to examine the contact resistance of a composite material which is used for sliding contacts. The composite material used here is sintered by dispersing the solid lubricant WS2 into the metallic base alloy Cu-Sn. A method based on Greenwood's formula is applied to determine how the calculated values are related to the contact resistance values obtained in our experiments. As a result, the composite material mated with the carbon specimen is found nearly to corresponds to the values of those calculated by the extended Greenwood's formula, whereas its value mated with the tungsten specimen does not. In short, it is concluded that the composite material mated with the carbon specimen consists of multispots.

We model a road network as a directed graph G(V,E) with a source s and a sink t, where each edge e has a positive length l(e) and each vertex v has a distribution function αv with respect to the traffic entering and leaving v. This paper proposes a polynomial time algorithm for evaluating the importance of each edge e E whicn is defined to be the traffic f(e) passing through e in order to assign the required traffic Fst(0) from s to t along only shortest s-t paths in accordance with the distribution function αv at each vertex v.

There are various difficulties in processing spoken dialogs because of acoustic, phonetic, and grammatical ill-formedness, and because of interactions among participants. This paper describes temporal characteristics of utterances in human-human task-oriented dialogs and interactions between the participants, analyzed in relation to the topic structure of the dialog. We analyzed 12 task-oriented simulated dialogs of ASJ continuous speech corpus conducted by 13 different participants whose total length being 66 minutes. Speech data was segmented into utterance units each of which is a speech interval segmented by pauses. There were 3876 utterance units, and 38.9% of them were interjections, fillers, false starts and chiming utterances. Each dialog consisted of 6 to 15 topic segments in each of which participants exchange specific information of the task. Eighty-six out of 119 new topic segments started with interjectory utterances and filled pauses. It was found that the durations of turn-taking interjections and fillers including the preceding silent pause were significantly longer in topic boundaries than the other positions. The results indicate that the duration of interjection words and filled pauses is a sign of a topic shift in spoken dialogs. In natural conversations, participants' speaking modes change dynamically as the conversation develops. Response time of both client and agent role speakers became shorter as the dialog proceeded. This indicates that interactions between the participants become active as the dialog proceeds. Speech rate was also affected by the dialog structure. It was generally fast in the initiating and terminating parts where most utterances are of fixed expressions, and slow in topic segments of the body part of the dialog where both client and agent participants stalled to speak in order to retrieve task knowledge. The results can be utilized in man-machine dialog systems, e.g., in order to detect topic shifts of a dialog, and to make the speech interface of dialog systems more natural to a human participant.

This paper presents a method for spatial and temporal segmentation of long image sequences which include multiple independently moving objects, based on the Minimum Description Length (MDL) principle. By obtaining an optimal motion description, we extract spatiotemporal (ST) segments in the image sequence, each of which consists of edge segments with similar motions. First, we construct a family of 2D motion models, each of which is completely determined by its specified set of equations. Then, based on these sets of equations we formulate the motion description length in a long sequence. The motion state of one object at one moment is determined by finding the model with shortest description length. Temporal segmentation is carried out when the motion state is found to have changed. At the same time, the spatial segmentation is globally optimized in such a way that the motion description of the entire scene reaches a minimum.

The optical characteristics of the fiber loop polarizer are investigated considering the birefringence in the fiber loop. The experimental and the theoretical spectrum transmissions agree well with each other. The extinction ratio and the insertion loss of the fiber polarizers have been improved for practical use.

In this paper, a new off-line handwritten word recognition method based on the explicit modeling of character junctures is presented. A handwritten word is regarded as a sequence of characters and junctures of four types. Hence both characters and junctures are explicitly modeled. A handwriting system employing hidden Markov models as the main statistical framework has been developed based on this scheme. An interconnection network of character and ligature models is constructed to model words of indefinite length. This model can ideally describe any form of hamdwritten words including discretely spaced words, pure cursive words, and unconstrained words of mixed styles. Also presented are efficient encoding and decoding schemes suitable for this model. The system has shown encouraging performance with a standard USPS database.

A composite noise generator (CNG) is proposed for simulating the actual non-Gaussian noise and its applications are mentioned. Basing upon the actual measured result (APD) of induced noise from electric contact discharge arc, the APD is approximated by partial linearlization and shown that it can be simulated by a combination of plural Gaussian noise sources. Applying the CNG, quasi-peak (Q-P) detector is investigated and shown that the Q-P detector response is different for non-Gaussian noise when its time domain parameter is different even if its original APD is the same. For digital transmission error due to non-Gaussian noise, and for TV picture stained by the non-Gaussian noise, the CNG is applied to evaluate their performances and quality. The results obtained show that the CNG can be used as a standard non-Gaussian generator for several immunity tests for information equipments.

We introduce the interval set of a graph G which is a representation of the proper-path-decomposition of G, and show a linear time algorithm to construct an optimal interval set for any tree T. It is shown that a proper-path-decomposition of T with optimal width can be obtained from an optimal interval set of T in O(n log n) time.

In formal specification languages for parallel processes, such as CSP and LOTOS, algebraic laws for basic operators are provided that can be used to transform process expressions, and in particular, composition of processes can be calculated using these laws. Process composition can be used to simplify and improve the specification, and also to prove properties of the specification such as deadlock absence. We here test the practicality of process composition using CSP and suggest useful techniques, working in an example with nontrivial size and complexity. We emphasize that the size explosion of composed processes, caused by interleaving of the events of component processes, is a serious problem. Then we propose a technique, which we name two-way pipe, that can be used to reduce the size of the composed process, regarded as a program optimization at specification level.

We developed a parallel bordered-block-diagonal (BBD) matrix solution for parallel circuit simulation. In parallel circuit sumulation on a MIMD parallel computer, a circuit is partitioned into as many subcircuits as the processors of a parallel computer. Circuit partition produce a BBD matrix. In parallel BBD matrix solution, diagonal blocks are easily solved separately in each processor. It is difficult, however, to solve the interconnection (IC) submatrix of a BBD matrix effectively in parallel. To make matters worse, the more a circuit is partitioned into subcircuits for highly parallel circuit simulation, the larger the size of an IC submatrix becomes. From an examination, we found that an IC submatrix is more dense (about 30% of all entries are non-zeros) than a normal circuit matrix, and the non-zeros per row in an IC submatrix are almost constant with the number of subcircuits. To attain high-speed circuit simulation, we devised a data structure for BBD matrix processing and an approach to parallel BBD matrix solution. Our approach solves the IC submatrix in a BBD matrix as well as the diagonal blocks in parallel using all processors. In this approach, we allocate an IC submatrix in block-wise order rather than in dot-wise order onto all processors. Thus, we balance the processor perfomance with the communication capacity of a parallel computer system. When we changed the block size of IC submatrix allocation from dot-wise order to 88 block-wise order, the 88 block-wise order allocation almost halved the matrix solution time. The parallel simulation of a sample circuit with 3277 transistors was 16.6 times faster than a single processor when we used 49 processors.

In this paper, the influences of the cross-sectional deformation on the coplanar waveguide (CPW) characteristics for the use of Ti: LiNbO3optical modulator are presented based on quasi-static analysis. In particular, the influences of the changes in the thickness of Ti: LiNbO3 substrate and the cross-sectional shape of electrodes are studied in detail by using the finite element method proposed previously. As a result, it is found that the propagation characteristics of the dominant mode change significantly with the thickness of LiNbO3 substrate when it is less than 100 µm. It is also shown that an inverted trapezoidal deformation of the electrode cross section is promising because a wider electrode gap and thinner electrodes are available in the design of optical modulators.

This paper presents a cost-effective network for very large ATM cross-connects. In order to develop it, we propose the delta network with expanded middle stages. This proposed network is the intermediate network between a nonblocking network and the delta network with respect to the cost of hardware and internal blocking probability. Using this network, we explore the tradeoff between the cost and internal blocking probability, and derive the optimum configuration under temporarily deviating traffic. Internal blocking occurs when input traffic temporarily deviates from its average value. However, we cannot evaluate the internal blocking probability by using conventional traffic models. In this paper, we adopt temporarily deviating traffic such that all traffic is described as the superposition of the paths which are defined by traffic parameters. As can easily be seen, the path corresponds to virtual path (VP) or virtual channel (VC). Therefore, we believe that our model describes actual traffic more exactly than conventional models do. We show that the optimum configuration is the proposed network whose expansion ratio γ=3 when the maximum number of paths that can be accommodated in one link is greater than 22. This network achieves the internal blocking probability of 10-10. As an example of this network, we show that the proposed network of size 7272 is constructed with only 40% of the hardware required by the nonblocking network.

A W-graph is a partially known graph which contains wild-components. A wild-component is an incompletely defined connected subgraph having p vertices and p-1 unspecified edges. The informations we know on a wild-component are which has a vertex set and between any two vertices there is one and only one path. In this paper, we discuss the properties of circuits in a W-graph (called W-circuits). Although a W-graph has unspecified edges, we can obtain some important properties of W-circuits. We show that the W-ring sum of W-circuits is also a W-circuit in the same W-graph. The following (1) and (2) are proved: (1) A W-circuit Ci of a W-graph can be transformed into either a circuit or an edge disjoint union of circuits, denoted by Ci*, of a graph derived from the W-graph, (2) if W-circuits C1, C2, , Cn are linearly independent, then C1*, C2*, , Cn* obtained in (1) are also linearly independent.

This paper describes a preconstrained compaction method and its application to the direct design-rule conversion of CMOS layouts. This approach can convert already designed physical patterns into compacted layouts that satisfy user-specified design rules. Furthermore, preconstrained compaction can eliminate unnecessarily extended diffusion areas and polysilicon wires which tend to be created with conventional longest path based compactions. Preconstrained compaction can be constructed by combining a longest path algorithm with forward and backward slack processes and a preconstraint generation process. This contrasts with previously proposed approaches based on longest path algorithms followed by iterative improvement processes, which include applications of linear programming. The layout styles in those approaches are usually limited to a model where fixed-shaped rectilinear blocks are moved so as to minimize the total length of rectilinear interconnections among the blocks. However, preconstrained compaction can be applied to reshaping polygonal patterns such as diffusion and channel areas. Thus, this compaction method makes it possible to reuse CMOS leaf and macro cell layouts even if design rules change. The proposed preconstrained compaction approach has been applied to direct design-rule conversion from 0.8-µm to 0.5-µm rules of CMOS layouts containing from several to 10,195 transistors. Experimental results demonstrate that a 10.6% reduction in diffusion areas can be achieved without unnecessary extensions of polysilicon wires with a 39% increase in processing times compared with conventional approaches.