In this paper, we propose a novel Autonomous Decentralized Control (ADC) scheme for indirectly controlling a system performance variable of large-scale and wide-area networks. In a large-scale and wide-area network, since it is impractical for any one node to gather full information of the entire network, network control must be realized by inter-node collaboration using information local to each node. Several critical network problems (e.g., resource allocation) are often formulated by a system performance variable that is an amount to quantify system state. We solve such problems by designing an autonomous node action that indirectly controls, via the Markov Chain Monte Carlo method, the probability distribution of a system performance variable by using only local information. Analyses based on statistical mechanics confirm the effectiveness of the proposed node action. Moreover, the proposal is used to implement traffic-aware virtual machine placement control with load balancing in a data center network. Simulations confirm that it can control the system performance variable and is robust against system fluctuations. A comparison against a centralized control scheme verifies the superiority of the proposal.

An 8-Mbit 0.18-µm CMOS 1T1C ferroelectric RAM (FeRAM) in a planar ferroelectric technology was developed. Even though the cell area of 2.48 µm2 is almost equal to that of a 4-Mbit stacked-capacitor FeRAM (STACK FeRAM) 2.32 µm2[1], the chip size of the developed 8-Mbit FeRAM, including extra 2-Mbit parities for the error correction code (ECC), is just 52.37 mm2, which is about 30% smaller than twice of the 4-Mbit STACK FeRAM device, 37.68mm2×2[1]. This excellent characteristic can be attributed to the large cell matrix architectures of the sectional cyclic word line (WL) that was used to increase the column numbers, and to the 1T1C bit-line GND level sensing (BGS)[2][3] circuit design intended to sense bit lines (BL) that have bit cells 1K long and a large capacitance. An access time of 52 ns and a cycle time of 77 ns in RT at a VDD of 1.8 V were achieved.

Template tracking has been extensively studied in Computer Vision with a wide range of applications. A general framework is to construct a parametric model to predict movement and to track the target. The difference in intensity between the pixels belonging to the current region and the pixels of the selected target allows a straightforward prediction of the region position in the current image. Traditional methods track the object based on the assumption that the relationship between the intensity difference and the region position is linear or non-linear. They will result in bad tracking performance when just one model is adopted. This paper proposes a method, called as Mixture Hyperplanes Approximation, which is based on finite mixture of generalized linear regression models to perform robust tracking. Moreover, a fast learning strategy is discussed, which improves the robustness against noise. Experiments demonstrate the performance and stability of Mixture Hyperplanes Approximation.

Heterogeneous networks (HetNet) with different radio access technologies have been deployed to support a range of communication services. To manage these HetNets efficiently, some interworking solutions such as MIH (media independent handover), ANQP (access network query protocol) or ANDSF (access network discovery and selection function) have been studied. Recently, the millimeter-wave (mm-wave) based HetNet has been explored to provide multi-gigabits-per-second data rates over short distances in the 60GHz frequency band for 5G wireless networks. WiGig (Wireless Gigabit Alliance) is one of the available radio access technologies using mm-wave. However, the conventional interworking solutions are not sufficient for the implementation of LTE (Long Term Evolution)/WiGig HetNets. Since the coverage area of WiGig is very small due to the high propagation loss of the mm-wave band signal, it is difficult for UEs to perform cell discovery and handover if using conventional LTE/WLAN (wireless local area networks) interworking solutions, which cannot support specific techniques of WiGig well, such as beamforming and new media access methods. To solve these problems and find solutions for LTE/WiGig interworking, RAN (radio access network)-level tightly coupled interworking architecture will be a promising solution. As a RAN-level tightly coupled interworking solution, this paper proposes to design a LTE/WiGig protocol adaptor above the protocol stacks of WiGig to process and transfer control signaling and user data traffic. The proposed extended control plane can assist UEs to discover and access mm-wave BSs successfully and support LTE macro cells to jointly control the radio resources of both LTE and WiGig, so as to improve spectrum efficiency. The effectiveness of the proposal is evaluated. Simulation results show that LTE/WiGig HetNets with the proposed interworking solution can decrease inter-cell handover and improve user throughput significantly. Moreover, the downlink backhaul throughput and energy efficiency of mm-wave HetNets are evaluated and compared with that of 3.5GHz LTE HetNets. Results indicate that 60GHz mm-wave HetNets have better energy efficiency but with much heavier backhaul overhead.

The main purpose of this paper is to propose overtime replacement policies for the system which has a finite life cycle. The newly proposed overtime technique, where the system is replaced preventively at the first completion of some working cycle over a planned time T, is employed into modelings to avoid operational interruptions for successive jobs. We consider two overtime replacement model with finite operating interval which S is given as (i) constant interval, and (ii) random interval. The expected replacement costs per unit of time are obtained and their optimal solutions are discussed analytically. Further, numerical examples are given when the failure time has a Weibull distribution and working cycles are exponentially distributed.

Code-based public-key encryption schemes (PKE) are the candidates for post-quantum cryptography, since they are believed to resist the attacks using quantum algorithms. The most famous such schemes are the McEliece encryption and the Niederreiter encryption. In this paper, we present the zero-knowledge (ZK) proof systems for proving statements about data encrypted using these schemes. Specifically, we present a proof of plaintext knowledge for both PKE's, and also a verifiable McEliece PKE. The main ingredients of our constructions are the ZK identification schemes by Stern from Crypto'93 and by Jain, Krenn, Pietrzak, and Tentes from Asiacrypt'12.

Local governments usually designed disaster response plan by themselves in order to overcome disasters. In previous research, we developed the effective analysis method for disaster response which is “BFD (Business Flow Diagram)”. In this research, in order to improve effect of BFD analysis, we designed and developed WBS Manager focusing on the process of WBS development which is a part of BFD analysis, because WBS development is fundamental process of BFD method. Especially we developed WBS Manager as web-based application, and implemented it to actual studies at local governments in planning their disaster response operations. In this paper, we introduced the overview of WBS Manager.

The present study proposes a method for estimation of subjective image quality, for combinations of display physical factors, based on the Mahalanobis-Taguchi system in the field of quality engineering. The proposed method estimates subjective image quality by the estimated equation based on the Mahalanobis-Taguchi System and subjective evaluation experiments using the method of successive categories for images of which parameters are combinations of gamma, maximum luminance and minimum luminance. The estimated image quality is in good agreement with the experimental subjective image quality.

This paper proposes an algorithm for exemplar-based image inpainting, which produces the same result as that of Criminisi's original scheme but at the cost of much smaller computation cost. The idea is to compute mean and standard deviation of every patch in the image, and use the values to decide whether to carry out pixel by pixel comparison or not when searching for the best matching patch. Due to the missing pixels in the target patch, the same pixels in the candidate patch should be omitted when computing the distance between patches. Thus, we first compute the range of mean and standard deviation of a candidate patch with missing pixels, using the average and standard deviation of the entire patch. Then we use the range to determine if the pixel comparison should be conducted. Measurements with well-known images in the inpainting literature show that the algorithm can save significant amount of computation cost, without risking degradation of image quality.

The emerging three-dimensional (3D) technology is considered as a promising solution for achieving better performance and easier heterogeneous integration. However, the thermal issue becomes exacerbated primarily due to larger power density and longer heat dissipation paths. The thermal issue would also be critical once FPGAs step into the 3D arena. In this article, we first construct a fine-grained thermal resistive model for 3D FPGAs. We show that merely reducing the total power consumption and/or minimizing the power density in vertical direction is not enough for a thermal-aware 3D FPGA backend (placement and routing) flow. Then, we propose our thermal-aware backend flow named TherWare considering location-based heat balance. In the placement stage, TherWare not only considers power distribution of logic tiles in both lateral and vertical directions but also minimizes the interconnect power. In the routing stage, TherWare concentrates on overall power minimization and evenness of power distribution at the same time. Experimental results show that TherWare can significantly reduce the maximum temperature, the maximum temperature gradient, and the temperature deviation only at the cost of a minor increase in delay and runtime as compared with present arts.

This paper presents the detailed investigations on a simple multi-band method that allows inverted-F antennas (IFAs) to achieve good impedance matching in many different frequency bands. The impressive simplicity of the method arises from its sharing of a shorting strip among multiple branch elements to simultaneously generate independent resonant modes at arbitrary frequencies. Our simulation and measurement results clarify that, by adjusting the number of branch elements and their lengths, it is very easy to control both the total number of resonant modes and the position of each resonant frequency with impedance matching improved concurrently by adjusting properly the distance ds between the feeding and shorting points. The effectiveness of the multi-band method is verified in antenna miniaturization designs, not only in the case of handset antenna, but also in the design upon an infinite ground plane. Antenna performance and operation principles of proposed multi-band models in each case are analyzed and discussed in detail.

In deep-submicron era, interconnection delays are not negligible even in high-level synthesis and regular-distributed-register architectures (RDR architectures) have been proposed to cope with this problem. In this paper, we propose a high-level synthesis algorithm using operation chainings which reduces the overall latency targeting RDR architectures. Our algorithm consists of three steps: The first step enumerates candidate operations for chaining. The second step introduces maximal chaining distance (MCD), which gives the maximal allowable inter-island distance on RDR architecture between chaining candidate operations. The last step performs list-scheduling and binding simultaneously based on the results of the two preceding steps. Our algorithm enumerates feasible chaining candidates and selects the best ones for RDR architecture. Experimental results show that our proposed algorithm reduces the latency by up to 40.0% compared to the original approach, and by up to 25.0% compared to a conventional approach. Our algorithm also reduces the number of registers and the number of multiplexers compared to the conventional approaches in some cases.

Recently, high-level synthesis (HLS) techniques for FPGA designs are required in various applications such as computerized stock tradings and reconfigurable network processings. In HLS for FPGA designs, we need to consider module floorplan and reduce multiplexer's cost concurrently. In this paper, we propose a floorplan-driven HLS algorithm for multiplexer reduction targeting FPGA designs. By utilizing distributed-register architectures called HDR, we can easily consider module floorplan in HLS. In order to reduce multiplexer's cost, we propose two novel binding methods called datapath-oriented scheduling/FU binding and datapath-oriented register binding. Experimental results demonstrate that our algorithm can realize FPGA designs which reduce the number of slices by up to 47% and latency by up to 22% compared with conventional approaches while the number of required control steps is almost the same.

This invited paper aims to present an overview of our recent research and development (R&D) of advanced microwave planar filters, in particular with miniaturization and/or electronically tunable/ reconfigurable functionalities, which are in demand for future communication/radar systems as well as emerging wireless applications.

A power allocation to active and reactive power in stochastic resonance is discussed for energy harvesting from noise. It is confirmed that active power can be increased at stochastic resonance, in the same way of the relationship between energy and phase at an appropriate setting in resonance.

Recently a compact code of mosaic floorplans with ƒ inner face was proposed by He. The length of the code is 3ƒ-3 bits and asymptotically optimal. In this paper, we propose a new code of mosaic floorplans with ƒ inner faces including k boundary faces. The length of our code is at most $3f - rac{k}{2} - 1$ bits. Hence our code is shorter than or equal to the code by He, except for few small floorplans with k=ƒ≤3. Coding and decoding can be done in O(ƒ) time.

For k ≥ 3, a convex geometric graph is called k-locally outerplanar if no path of length k intersects itself. In [D. Boutin, Convex Geometric Graphs with No Short Self-intersecting Path, Congressus Numerantium 160 (2003) 205-214], Boutin stated the results of the degeneracy for 3-locally outerplanar graphs. Later, in [D. Boutin, Structure and Properties of Locally Outerplanar Graphs, Journal of Combinatorial Mathematics and Combinatorial Computing 60 (2007) 169-180], a structural property on k-locally outerplanar graphs was proposed. These results are based on the existence of “minimal corner pairs”. In this paper, we show that a “minimal corner pair” may not exist and give a counterexample to disprove the structural property. Furthermore, we generalize the result on the degeneracy with respect to k-locally outerplanar graphs.

Power-aware distributed file systems for efficient Big Data processing are increasingly moving towards power-proportional designs. However, current data placement methods for such systems have not given careful consideration to the effect of gear-shifting during operations. If the system wants to shift to a higher gear, it must reallocate the updated datasets that were modified in a lower gear when a subset of the nodes was inactive, but without disrupting the servicing of requests from clients. Inefficient gear-shifting that requires a large amount of data reallocation greatly degrades the system performance. To address this challenge, this paper proposes a data placement method known as Accordion, which uses data replication to arrange the data layout comprehensively and provide efficient gear-shifting. Compared with current methods, Accordion reduces the amount of data transferred, which significantly shortens the period required to reallocate the updated data during gear-shifting then able to improve the performance of the systems. The effect of this reduction is larger with higher gears, so Accordion is suitable for smooth gear-shifting in multigear systems. Moreover, the times when the active nodes serve the requests are well distributed, so Accordion is capable of higher scalability than existing methods based on the I/O throughput performance. Accordion does not require any strict constraint on the number of nodes in the system therefore our proposed method is expected to work well in practical environments. Extensive empirical experiments using actual machines with an Accordion prototype based on the Hadoop Distributed File System demonstrated that our proposed method significantly reduced the period required to transfer updated data, i.e., by 66% compared with an existing method.

Gallium oxide is expected as a channel material for thin film transistors. In the conventional technologies, gallium oxide has been tried to be fabricated by atomic layer deposition (ALD) at high temperatures from 100--450$^{circ}$C, although the room-temperature (RT) growth has not been developed. In this work, we developed the RT ALD of gallium oxide by using a remote plasma technique. We studied trimethylgallium (TMG) adsorption and its oxidization on gallium oxide surfaces at RT by infrared absorption spectroscopy (IRAS). Based on the adsorption and oxidization characteristics, we designed the room temperature ALD of Ga$_{2}$O$_{3}$. The IRAS indicated that TMG adsorbs on the gallium oxide surface by consuming the adsorption sites of surface hydroxyl groups even at RT and the remote plasma-excited water and oxygen vapor is effective in oxidizing the TMG adsorbed surface and regeneration of the adsorption sites for TMG. We successfully prepared Ga$_{2}$O$_{3}$ films on Si substrates at RT with a growth per cycle of 0.055,nm/cycle.

Nitrogen adsorption on thermally cleaned Si(100) surfaces by pure and plasma excited NH$_{3}$ is investigated by extit{in situ} IR absorption spectroscopy and ex-situ X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy with various temperatures from RT (25$^{circ}$C) to 800$^{circ}$C and with a treatment time of 5,min. The nitrogen coverage after the treatment varies according to the treatment temperature for both pure and plasma excited NH$_{3}$. In case of the pure NH$_{3}$, the nitrogen coverage is saturated as low as 0.13--0.25 mono layer (ML) while the growth of the nitride film commenced at 550$^{circ}$C. For the plasma excited NH$_{3}$, the saturation coverage was measured at 0.54,ML at RT and it remained unincreased from RT to 550$^{circ}$C. This indicates that the plasma excited NH$_{3}$ enhances the nitrogen adsorption near at RT. It is found that main species of N is Si$_{2}=$ NH in case of the plasma excited NH$_{3}$ at RT while the pure NH$_{3}$ treatment gives rise to the Si--NH$_{2}$ passivation with Si--H at RT. We discuss the mechanism of the nitrogen adsorption on Si(100) surfaces with the plasma excited NH$_{3}$ in comparison with the study on the pure NH$_{3}$ treatment.