This letter presents a novel approach for traffic light detection in a video frame captured by an in-vehicle camera. The algorithm consists of rotated principal component analysis (RPCA), modified amplitude thresholding with respect to the histograms of the PC planes and final filtering with a neural network. The proposed algorithm achieves an average detection rate of 96% and is very robust to variations in the image quality.

In this letter, we propose a cache organization that substantially reduces the memory bandwidth of motion compensation (MC) in the H.264/AVC decoders. To reduce duplicated memory accesses to P and B pictures, we employ a four-way set-associative cache in which its index bits are composed of horizontal and vertical address bits of the frame buffer and each line stores an 8 2 pixel data in the reference frames. Moreover, we alleviate the data fragmentation problem by selecting its line size that equals the minimum access size of the DDR SDRAM. The bandwidth of the optimized cache averaged over five QCIF IBBP image sequences requires only 129% of the essential bandwidth of an H.264/AVC MC.

It has been known that testing of reversible circuits is relatively easier than conventional irreversible circuits in the sense that few test vectors are needed to cover all stuck-at faults. This paper shows, however, that it is NP-hard to generate a minimum complete test set for stuck-at faults on the wires of a reversible circuit using a polynomial time reduction from 3SAT to the problem. We also show non-trivial lower bounds for the size of a minimum complete test set.

This paper presents a unified test compression technique for scan stimulus and unknown masking data with seamless integration of test generation, test compression and all unknown response masking for high quality manufacturing test cost reduction. Unlike prior test compression methods, the proposed approach considers the unknown responses during test pattern generation procedure, and then selectively encodes the less specified bits (either 1s or 0s) in each scan slice for compression while at the same time masks the unknown responses before sending them to the response compactor. The proposed test scheme could dramatically reduce test data volume as well as the number of required test channels by using only c tester channels to drive N internal scan chains, where c = 「 log 2N 」 + 2. In addition, because all the unknown responses could be exactly masked before entering into the response compactor, test loss due to unknown responses would be eliminated. Experimental results on both benchmark circuits and larger designs indicated the effectiveness of the proposed technique.

In this paper, we propose an extension to GridFTP that optimizes its performance by dynamically adjusting the number of parallel TCP connections. GridFTP has been used as a data transfer protocol to effectively transfer a large volume of data in Grid computing. GridFTP supports a feature called parallel data transfer that improves throughput by establishing multiple TCP connections in parallel. However, for achieving high GridFTP throughput, the number of TCP connections should be optimized based on the network status. In this paper, we propose an automatic parallelism tuning mechanism called GridFTP-APT (GridFTP with Automatic Parallelism Tuning) that adjusts the number of parallel TCP connections according to information available to the Grid middleware. Through simulations, we demonstrate that GridFTP-APT significantly improves the performance of GridFTP in various network environments.

We describe an evaluation system consisting of an evaluation and interpretation model to totally assess and interpret an end-user's computing capability. It includes four evaluation factors and eighteen items, the complex indicators, an evaluation process, and method. We verified the model construct was verified by factor analysis and reliability analysis through a pilot test. We confirmed the application of the developed system by applying the model to evaluating end-users in a computing business environment and presenting the results. This system contributes to developing a practical system for evaluating an end-user's computing capability and hence for improving computing capability of end-users.

This paper presents a new methodology, Beacognition, for real-time discovery of the associations between a signal space and arbitrarily defined regions, termed as Semantically Meaningful Areas (SMAs), in the corresponding physical space. It lets the end users develop semantically meaningful location systems using standard 802.11 network beacons as they roam through their environment. The key idea is to discover the unique associations using a beacon popularity model. The popularity measurements are then used to localize the mobile devices. The beacon popularity is computed using an election' algorithm and a new recognition model is presented to perform the localization task. We have implemented such a location system in a five story campus building. The comparative results show significant improvement in localization by achieving on average 83% SMA and 88% Floor recognition rate in less than one minute per SMA training time.

The complexity of Finite Impulse Response (FIR) filters is mainly dominated by the number of adders (subtractors) used to implement the coefficient multipliers. It is well known that Common Subexpression Elimination (CSE) method based on Canonic Signed Digit (CSD) representation considerably reduces the number of adders in coefficient multipliers. Recently, a binary-based CSE (BSE) technique was proposed, which produced better reduction of adders compared to the CSD-based CSE. In this paper, we propose a new 4-bit binary representation-based CSE (BCSE-4) method which employs 4-bit Common Subexpressions (CSs) for implementing higher order low-power FIR filters. The proposed BCSE-4 offers better reduction of adders by eliminating the redundant 4-bit CSs that exist in the binary representation of filter coefficients. The reduction of adders is achieved with a small increase in critical path length of filter coefficient multipliers. Design examples show that our BCSE-4 gives an average power consumption reduction of 5.2% and 6.1% over the best known CSE method (BSE, NR-SCSE) respectively, when synthesized with TSMC-0.18 µm technology. We show that our BCSE-4 offers an overall adder reduction of 6.5% compared to BSE without any increase in critical path length of filter coefficient multipliers.

Multi-Car Elevator (MCE) systems, which consist of several independent cars built in the same shaft, are being considered as the elevators of the next generation. In this paper, we present MceSim, a simulator of MCE systems. MceSim is an open source software available to the public, and it can be used as a common testbed to evaluate different control methods related to MCE systems. MceSim was used in the group controller performance competition: CST Solution Competition 2007. This experience has proven MceSim to be a fully functional testbed for MCE systems.

This paper proposes a MAC protocol for presence information discovery in ubiquitous networks. The proposed protocol is designed for proactive discovery in which wireless devices periodically broadcast packets containing presence information. The protocol is based on Framed Aloha. The objective of the protocol is to assure the discovery time of single-hop neighbors considering wireless collisions and also power consumption. In this paper, we show that the proposed protocol is able to assure specified discovery time in distributed networks with random topology.

A system which employs a stylus as an input device is suitable for creative activities like writing and painting. However, such a system does not always provide the user with a GUI that is easy to operate using the stylus. In addition, system usability is diminished because the stylus is not always integrated into the system in a way that takes into consideration the features of a pen. The purpose of our research is to improve the usability of a system which uses a stylus as an input device. We propose shortcut actions, which are interaction techniques for operation with a stylus that are controlled through a user's hand motions made in the air. We developed the Context Sensitive Stylus as a device to implement the shortcut actions. The Context Sensitive Stylus consists of an accelerometer and a conventional stylus. We also developed application programs to which we applied the shortcut actions; e.g., a drawing tool, a scroll supporting tool, and so on. Results from our evaluation of the shortcut actions indicate that users can concentrate better on their work when using the shortcut actions than when using conventional menu operations.

To understand the structural and functional properties of large-scale complex networks, it is crucial to efficiently extract a set of cohesive subnetworks as communities. There have been proposed several such community extraction methods in the literature, including the classical k-core decomposition method and, more recently, the k-clique based community extraction method. The k-core method, although computationally efficient, is often not powerful enough for uncovering a detailed community structure and it produces only coarse-grained and loosely connected communities. The k-clique method, on the other hand, can extract fine-grained and tightly connected communities but requires a substantial amount of computational load for large-scale complex networks. In this paper, we present a new notion of a subnetwork called k-dense, and propose an efficient algorithm for extracting k-dense communities. We applied our method to the three different types of networks assembled from real data, namely, from blog trackbacks, word associations and Wikipedia references, and demonstrated that the k-dense method could extract communities almost as efficiently as the k-core method, while the qualities of the extracted communities are comparable to those obtained by the k-clique method.

A novel CMOS LC quadrature oscillator (QO) which adopts complementary-coupling circuitry has been proposed. The performance improvement in I/Q phase error and phase noise of the proposed QO, is explained in comparison with conventional QOs. The proposed QO is implemented in 0.18 µm CMOS technology along with conventional QOs. The measurement result of the proposed QO shows -133.5 dBc/Hz of phase noise at 1 MHz offset and 0.6 I/Q phase difference, while oscillating at 1.77 GHz. The proposed QO shows more than 6.5 dB phase noise improvement compared to that of the conventional QOs over the offset frequency range of 10 K-1 MHz, while dissipating 4 mA from 1.4 V supply.

In this paper, we propose a method for selecting n-mode singular vectors in higher-order singular value decomposition. We select the minimum number of n-mode singular vectors, when the upper bound of a least-squares cost function is thresholded. The reduced n-ranks of all modes of a given tensor are determined automatically and the tensor is represented with the minimum number of dimensions. We apply the selection method to simultaneous low rank approximation of matrices. Experimental results show the effectiveness of the n-mode singular vector selection method.

In high-precision positioning systems, the limit cycles induced by friction effects result in a significant reduction in the positioning performance; particularly when the servo system utilizes a high gain controller. Accordingly, the current study presents a compensation scheme consisting of a dead-zone function and an integral term to limit the equivalent gain of unspecified controllers to the stable range. The proposed compensation scheme not only ensures that the feedback loop system remains stable, but also provides a simple and effective mechanism for preventing the users from inadvertently setting control gains which degrade the positioning performance of the system. The simulation results confirm the ability of the gain limit compensation scheme to suppress the effects of limit cycles and therefore demonstrate its feasibility for practical applications.

This paper presents a method of scalable lossless image compression by means of lossy coding. A progressive decoding capability and a full decoding for the lossless rendition are equipped with the losslessly encoded bit stream. Embedded coding is applied to large-amplitude coefficients in a wavelet transform domain. The other wavelet coefficients are encoded by a context-based entropy coding. The proposed method slightly outperforms JPEG-LS in lossless compression. Its rate-distortion performance with respect to progressive decoding is close to that of JPEG2000. The spatial scalability with respect to resolution is also available.

This paper describes a novel Wilkinson power divider operating at two arbitrary different frequencies. The proposed divider consists of two-section transmission lines and a series RLC circuit connected between two output ports. The circuit parameters for a dual-band operation are derived by the even/odd mode analysis. Equal power split, complete matching, and good isolation between two output ports are numerically demonstrated. Dual-band and broadband Wilkinson power dividers can be successfully designed. Finally, verification of this design method is also shown by electromagnetic simulations and experiments.

For developing design environment of various Dynamically Reconfigurable Processor Arrays (DRPAs), the Graph with Configuration Information (GCI) is proposed to represent configurable resource in the target dynamically reconfigurable architecture. The functional unit, constant unit, register, and routing resource can be represented in the graph as well as the configuration information. The restriction in the hardware is also added in the graph by limiting the possible configuration at a node controlled by the other node. A prototype compiler called Black-Diamond with GCI is now available for three different DRPAs. It translates data-flow graph from C-like front-end description, applies placement and routing by using the GCI, and generates configuration data for each element of the DRPA. Evaluation results of simple applications show that Black-Diamond can generate reasonable designs for all three different architectures. Other target architectures can be easily treated by representing many aspects of architectural property into a GCI.

With the nano-scale technology, an system-on-chip (SOC) design may consist of many reusable cores from multiple sources. This causes that the complexity of SOC testing is much higher than that of conventional VLSI chip testing. One of the SOC test challenges is the test data reduction. This paper presents a multi-code compression (MCC) technique to reduce the volume of test data and the test application time. A multi-code decompressor for recovering the compressed test data is also proposed. Experimental results show that the MCC scheme can achieve higher compression ratio than single-code compression schemes. The area cost of the proposed multi-code decompressor is small--only about 3498 µm2 based on TSMC 0.18 µm standard cell technology.

The C-oscillation due to Martin-Löf shows that {α| ∀ n [C(α n)≥ n-O(1)]=, which also follows {α| ∀ n [K(α n)≥ n+K(n)-O(1)]=. By generalizing them, we show that there does not exist a real α such that ∀ n (K(α n)≥ n+λ K(n)-O(1)) for any λ>0.