The cooperative and competitive network suitable for circuit realization is presented, based on the network proposed by Amari and Arbib. To ensure WTA process, the output function of the original network is replaced with the piecewise linear function and supplying the inputs as pulse waveforms is obtained. In the SPICE simulations, it is confirmed that the network constructed by operational amplifiers attains WTA process, even if the scale of the network becomes large.

Algorithms are presented for the four elementary arithmetic operations, to perform reliable floating-point arithmetic operations. These arithmetic operations can be achieved by applying residue techniques to the weighted number systems and performed with no accuracy lost in the process of the computing. The arithmetic operations presented can be used as elementary tools (on many existing architectures) to ensure the reliability of numerical computations. Simulation results especially for the solutions of ill-conditioned problems are given with emphasis on the practical usability of the tools.

In this paper, we implemented practical resource adaptation mechanism for broadband application environment especially suitable for portable computers (note PCs) with limited power supply. Continuous development of portability enhancement and increasing computation with less power consumption for battery operating environment in note PC equips with intelligent resource controlling mechanism embedded inside the hardware. In such environment, where occasional environmental changes take in place rapidly, adaptive and collaborative controls of resources are required. Optimization of resource based on power supply management is dedicated to the operating environment. Bi-directional, user, application, operating system and device aware interface for resource configuration/management is extended to the current Unix operating system by implementing application programming interface of Advanced Configuration and Power Interface (ACPI). Traditional operating system conceals the active device probing and controlling method autonomously. Implementation of "State handler daemon" interface enables applications and application users to monitor and adapt the resources available during the operation. Thick collaboration between application and devices that are reserved in its limited environments economizes the consuming device utilization resulting: for example, life extension of battery life and effective network bandwidth adaptation. We focused on DVTS (Digital Video Transport System) as a typical broadband application. Evaluation shows 125 minutes of continuous battery operation with battery life extension compared to 70 minutes with traditional systems. Collaboration with network device management enables 100% packet transfer compared to 89% without any Resource adaptations.

Lossless video coding is required in the fields of archiving and editing digital cinema or digital broadcasting contents. This paper proposes multiresolution lossless video coding using a discrete wavelet transform and adaptive inter/intra-frame prediction in the wavelet domain. The multiresolution structure based on the wavelet transform facilitates interchange among several video source formats such as Super High Definition (SHD) images, HDTV, SDTV, and mobile applications. In order to increase the compression ratio, and to keep the computational cost low, the adaptive inter/intra-frame prediction is performed in the lowest wavelet transform domain. The adaptive inter/intra-frame prediction can adapt to changes in the local inter/intra-frame statistics. Experiments on digital cinema test sequences confirm effectiveness of the proposed algorithm.

The format conversion operations between a floating-point number and an integer number and a round operation are the important standard floating-point operations. In most cases, these operations are implemented by adding additional hardware to the floating-point adder. The SR (simultaneous rounding) method, one of the techniques used to improve the performance of the floating-point adder, can perform addition and rounding operations at the same stage and is an efficient method with respect to the silicon area and its performance. In this paper, a hardware model to execute CRops (conversion and rounding operations) for the SR floating-point adder is presented and CRops are analyzed on the proposed hardware model. Implementation details are also discussed. The proposed scheme can maintain the advantages of the SR method and can perform each CRop with three pipeline stages.

Hypercomplex coefficient digital filters provide several attractive advantages such as compact realization with reduced system order, inherent parallelism. However, they also possess a drawback in that a multiplier requires a large amount of computations. This paper proposes a computationally efficient implementation of digital filters whose coefficient is a type of hypercomplex number; a bicomplex number. By decomposing a bicomplex multiplier into two parallel complex multipliers, we show that hypercomplex digital filters can be implemented as two parallel complex digital filters. The proposed implementation offers more than a 60% reduction in the count of real multipliers.

This paper investigates multiple-valued code-division multiple access (MV-CDMA) techniques and circuits for intra/inter-chip communication to achieve efficient data transmission in VLSI systems. To address the problems caused by interconnection complexity, we transmit multiplexed signals inside LSI systems employing pseudo-random orthogonal m-sequences as information carriers. A new class of multiple-valued CDMA techniques for intra-chip communication is discussed to demonstrate the feasibility of eliminating co-channel interference caused by a propagation delay of signals, e.g., clock skew. This paper describes the circuit configuration and performance evaluation of MV-CDMA systems for intra-chip communication. We first explain the principle of MV-CDMA technique, and then propose a bidirectional current-mode CMOS technique to realize compact correlation circuits for CDMA. Finally, we show the Spice and MATLAB simulation results of MV-CDMA systems, which indicate the excellent capabilities of eliminating co-channel interference.

An LCD Driver IC includes more than 300 buffer amplifiers on a single chip. The phase compensation capacitors (on-chip Miller capacitors) for the amplifiers are more than 1000 pF and occupy a large chip area. This paper describes a two-gain-stage amplifier in which an on-chip Miller capacitor is not used for phase compensation in an LCD Driver IC. In the proposed amplifier, phase compensation is achieved only by a newly introduced zero, which is formed by the load capacitance and a phase compensation resistor connected between the output of the amplifier and the capacitive load. Designs of the phase compensation resistor and the amplifier before compensation are discussed, considering a typical load capacitance range. The test chip was fabricated. The newly introduced zero successfully stabilized the amplifier. The chip area for the amplifier was reduced by 30-40%, compared with our previously reported one. The current consumption of the amplifier was only 5 µA. The experimental results of the fabricated test chip support that the proposed amplifier is suitable to an LCD driver IC with a smaller chip area.

MOSFETs can be used as capacitors, but its capacitance can vary by 5 to 7 times as its terminal voltage varies. To reduce the voltage dependence of the capacitance, this paper proposed two types of devices: one is called accumulation MOSFET (AMOS) and the other is formed by two conventional PMOS connected in anti-parallel. These two devices are readily available in the standard digital CMOS processes. The proposed capacitors were implemented in three different CMOS processes. The measured results show that the capacitances of both devices have less voltage dependence than a single PMOS. The voltage dependence of the AMOS capacitance can be as small as 17%. The minimum capacitance per unit area of the AMOS is 1.8 times that of the double-poly capacitor in an analog/mixed-mode CMOS process. To verify the usefulness of these two types of capacitors, they are used as compensation capacitors in a conventional two-stage amplifier. The measured results show that the amplifier compensated by the AMOS capacitor has little variation (6%) of the unity-gain frequency over the input common-mode range. Due to its smaller die area and cheaper digital process, AMOS can be used as compensation capacitor without resorting to more expensive analog process.

We show a method to determine a Steiner Minimum Tree (SMT) and a necessary and sufficient condition that an SMT is a full Steiner tree for three given points in -geometry ( = 3m, m is a positive integer). The -geometry allows only orientations with angles i/ (i and ( 2) are integers), and fill up the gap between the rectilinear geometry ( = 2) and the Euclidean geometry ( = ). An SMT in -geometry ( = 3m) has a similar property to that in the Euclidean geometry. The method to determine an SMT in -geometry is an extension of the well-known method in the Euclidean geometry. The Steiner point in -geometry is any point in the intersection area with a parallelogram and a Steiner locus. Then there are infinite candidate locations of the Steiner point. The Steiner point in the Euclidean geometry is that in -geometry ( = 3m).

Caching of frequently accessed data has been shown to be a useful technique for reducing congestion on the narrow bandwidth of wireless channels. However, traditional client/server strategies for supporting transactional cache consistency, which require extensive communications between a client and a server, are not appropriate in a wireless mobile database. This paper proposes two, simple but effective, transactional cache consistency protocols for mobile read-only transactions by utilizing the broadcast-based solutions for the problem of invalidating caches. The novelty of our approach is that the consistency check on accessed data and the commitment protocol are implemented in a truly distributed fashion as an integral part of cache invalidation process. The applicability of proposed techniques is also examined by an analytical study.

The Fat-Btree which is a new parallel B-tree structure has been proposed to improve the access performance of shared-nothing parallel database systems. Since the Fat-Btree has only a part of index nodes on each processing element, it can reduce the synchronization cost in update operations. For these reasons, both retrieval and update operations can be processed at high throughput compared to previously proposed parallel B-tree structures for shared-nothing computers. Though we tried to apply some conventional concurrency control methods to the Fat-Btree, e.g., B-OPT and ARIES/IM, which were designed for shared-everything machines, we found that these methods are not always appropriate for the Fat-Btree. In this paper, it is shown that the conventional methods are not suitable for the Fat-Btree and other parallel B-trees. We propose a new deadlock free concurrency control protocol, named INC-OPT, to improve the performance of the Fat-Btree more effectively than the B-OPT and ARIES/IM. Furthermore, in order to prove that the Fat-Btree provides the impact on the performance of shared-nothing parallel databases, we compare the real performance of three types of parallel B-tree structures, Fat-Btree, Copy-Whole-Btree, and Single-Index-Btree, on an nCUBE3 machine where the INC-OPT is applied.

We describe a method of compensating temperature fluctuation by a linear-time-warping processing in a sound reproduction system. This technique is applied to impulse responses of room transfer functions, to achieve a high-quality sound reproduction system, particularly one that treats high-frequency components. First, the impulse responses are measured before and after temperature fluctuation, and the former are converted to the latter by the proposed process. Next, we design inverse filters for the system, and evaluate the improvement of the reproduction accuracy and spectrum distortion. By the compensation method, we can improve the reproduction accuracy at any frequency. Moreover, we propose an adaptive algorithm for the estimation of a suitable warping ratio, using the observed signal of reproduced sound obtained at only one control point. Using the proposed algorithm, we can improve the reproduction accuracy at each control point by about 14 dB, in which a difference in temperature is 1.4.

A quasi-periodic signal is a periodic signal with period and amplitude variations. Several physiological signals, including the electrocardiogram (ECG), can be treated as quasi-periodic. Vector quantization (VQ) is a valuable and universal tool for signal compression. However, compressing quasi-periodic signals using VQ presents several problems. First, a pre-trained codebook has little adaptation to signal variations, resulting in no quality control of reconstructed signals. Secondly, the periodicity of the signal causes data redundancy in the codebook, where many codevectors are highly correlated. These two problems are solved by the proposed codebook replenishment VQ (CRVQ) scheme based on a bar-shaped (BS) codebook structure. In the CRVQ, codevectors can be updated online according to signal variations, and the quality of reconstructed signals can be specified. With the BS codebook structure, the codebook redundancy is reduced significantly and great codebook storage space is saved; moreover variable-dimension (VD) codevectors can be used to minimize the coding bit rate subject to a distortion constraint. The theoretic rationale and implementation scheme of the VD-CRVQ is given. The ECG data from the MIT/BIH arrhythmic database are tested, and the result is substantially better than that of using other VQ compression methods.

In this paper, a novel continuous complementary sliding control was proposed to improve the tracking performance given the available control bandwidth and the extend of parameter uncertainty. With this control law, the ultimate bound of tracking error was shown to be reduced at least by half, as compared with the conventional continuous sliding control. More strikingly, the proposed control can effectively improve the error transient response during the reaching phase. We presented a composite complementary sliding control scheme for a class of uncertain nonlinear systems including the nonlinear electrohydraulic position servo control system, which will be used as an illustrated example. Simulation results indicated exceptional good tracking performance to step and sine wave reference inputs can be obtained. In addition, the disturbance rejection property of the controller to single-frequency sinusoidal disturbances is also outstanding.

In this paper, we propose an RTP/UDP/IP header compression method, Multiple-Reference Compression (MRC), which is designed for mobile multimedia communications. MRC is a compression method that calculates differences from the multiple reference headers that have already been sent and inserts them into a compressed header. The receiver can decompress the compressed header as long as at least one of the reference headers is correctly received and decompressed. MRC improves robustness against packet losses compared with CRTP defined in IETF RFC2508, and imposes less overheads and computational burden than robust header compression (ROHC) defined in RFC3095. We also implemented MRC and other header compression algorithms into our mobile testbed, and conducted multimedia streaming experiments over the testbed. The results of the experiments show that MRC offers the same level of packet loss rate as Legacy RTP for both audio and video streams, and provides better media quality than Legacy RTP and CRTP on error-prone radio links. Header compression robust against packet losses is expected as a key technology for VoIP and multimedia streaming services over 3G and future mobile networks.

In this paper a low-complexity and high-resolution algorithm to estimate the magnitude of complex numbers is presented. Starting from a review of previous art, the new algorithm has been derived to improve precision performance without any penalty in hardware complexity. As a case example, a semi-custom VLSI implementation for 10 bit 2's complement input data has been performed. A mean square error and mean error performance improvement of nearly one order of magnitude has been demonstrated for an hardware complexity increase of roughly 34% with respect to previously presented solutions.

Methods that precisely compensate for propagation distortion using pilot symbols are widely used in mobile communications. We describe such a pilot-symbol-assisted technique for precise compensation of flat fading and frequency offset. This technique provides a wide range of offset compensation. Conventional methods using fast Fourier transform (FFT) compensate for both slow and fast fading, but their tolerable range of frequency offset is very limited. By composing a system with an approximate frequency estimator, we can estimate and compensate for fading and a large frequency offset at the same time. The estimation and compensation are carried out by periodic pilot symbols and no other index sequences are needed. This method enables high-data-rate transmission. We describe the method and provide a theoretical analysis for the compensable range of fading and frequency offset for a transmission frame structure with pilot symbols. Then, we evaluate the method by computer simulation.

We have recently developed a programmable composite noise generator (P-CNG) which can easily control noise parameters such as average power, time-based amplitude probability distribution (APD), crossing rate distribution, occurrence frequency distribution and burst duration. Two applications of the P-CNG are demonstrated to show its usefulness. For the first application, Middleton's Class A noise is simulated. A method of setting parameters for Class A noise is demonstrated. The APD of P-CNG output is in good agreement with that of true Class A noise. In the second application, the P-CNG is used for subjective evaluation test (opinion test) of TV picture degradation. Five simple composite noise models with two kinds of APD are used. Other parameters such as average power are kept constant. Experimental results show that the envelope and APD of composite noises do not greatly influence the subjective evaluation. Finally the capabilities of the P-CNG are shown.

A study of apple flavor, banana flavor, and their chemical components was performed using an array of quartz crystal microbalance (QCM) gas sensors coated with sensing films such as lipids or stationary phase materials for gas chromatography (GC). The steady state sensor responses measured by a static measurement system were used to evaluate the characteristics of the different samples by principal component analysis (PCA) method. Since the array has shown good discrimination properties for fruit flavor components providing useful information, it was used to investigate the components that primarily contribute to the odor of the flavors. The results obtained from principal components analysis aided by sensory test were also used for an attempt to synthesize apple and banana flavors using only three of its odor components.