In this article, the empirical mode decomposition (EMD) is introduced to the problem of signal detection in underwater sound. EMD is a new method pioneered by Huang et al. for non-linear and non-stationary signal analysis. Based on the EMD, any input data can be decomposed into a small number of intrinsic mode functions (IMFs) which can serve as the basis of non-stationary data for they are complete, almost orthogonal, local and adaptive. Another useful tool for processing transient signals is discrete wavelet transform (DWT). In this paper, these IMFs are applied to determine when the particular signals appear. From the computer simulation, based on the receiver operating characteristics (ROC), a performance comparison shows that this proposed EMD-based detector is better than the DWT-based method.

A novel planar composite right/left handed (CRLH) transmission line (TL) with double-sided metal patterns, which is advantageous in high scalability and low-cost fabrication, is proposed. Fundamental characteristics of the unbalanced and balanced CRLH TLs are confirmed numerically and theoretically both by full-wave finite-element method (FEM) simulations and the equivalent circuit analysis in terms of dispersion characteristics and characteristic impedances for the periodic structure. It is also shown that the relations between the left-handed circuit parameters and the geometrical parameters of the unit cell are simple and intuitive, which is useful for designing the CRLH TL. Experiments on 10-cell unbalanced and balanced CRLH TLs are carried out and the left-handed and right-handed wave propagations are confirmed by scattering parameter and near field measurements.

A novel structure for a frequency-independent steerable composite right/left-handed (CRLH) leaky wave (LW) antenna in the millimeter-wave band is proposed. This has the advantages of wide beam scanning and low profile, and is a suitable structure for mass-production. The proposed antenna has features wherein a movable dielectric slab is placed above the CRLH LW antenna, and the radiation angle can be steered by changing the distance between the slab and the antenna using compact actuators. Moreover, slots are added to the antenna to control the aperture amplitude distribution of the array antenna in order to enhance aperture efficiency. A prototype CRLH LW antenna has been fabricated with these slots, and backward-to-forward beam scanning characteristics at 76 GHz have been demonstrated successfully by measurement. A wide scanning angle from 73 to 114 deg. has been achieved experimentally. The aperture efficiency is 25.3%.

We propose a wave analysis method for probe-fed Radial Line Planar Antennas (RLPAs) which yields an approximate solution for the aperture field distribution and scattering by loaded probes. Damping of electric power in the radial line due to radiation by antenna elements is included. The method can accommodate the effect of all conductors, including the terminating wall, by introducing the concept of equivalent posts. We have found good correspondence between the measured and calculated values of the aperture field distribution. The proposed method is effective for general geometries of probe-fed RLPAs.

This paper introduces a novel MIMO (Multiple Input Multiple Output) communication system having orthogonal dual polarization diversity branches. We have designed a dual polarized circular patch antenna which has two orthogonal polarization ports such as vertical polarization (V) and horizontal polarization (H) on its metal surface. This design makes it works as two independent antennas in multipath environments. By using two dual polarized antennas at both the transmitter and receiver, we designed a dual-polarization 44 MIMO experiment system. This system can be used to investigate the performance of various MIMO transmission methods as well as the performance of adaptive algorithms in indoor multipath environments. To investigate the performance of our experiment system, we carried out a number of MIMO transmission experiments such as space-time-coded transmission having two parallel streams and MIMO eigenmode transmission. We will show the results of those experiments and discuss the advantages of using polarization diversity in MIMO communication system for next generation broadband wireless communication.

A probability density distribution of the envelope of maximal-ratio combiner output in a very generally distributed fading channel is derived. The derived formula has a series expanded form consisting of positive terms of the well-known m-distribution and is practical for numerical calculation, approximation and analysis.

Based on the theory of block projection onto convex sets (BPOCS), a novel de-blocking algorithm is proposed. A new smoothness constraint set (SCS) is used to remove the unnecessary high frequencies. In addition, an adaptive quantization constraint set (AQCS) is employed to suppress error in the smoothing process. The proposed size and position of new SCS are different from traditional ones. Extensive experimental results are provided to demonstrate that the proposed method can achieve better image quality with fewer iterations.

This paper presents a view independent video-based face recognition method using posterior probability in Kernel Fisher Discriminant (KFD) space. In practical environment, the view of faces changes dynamically. Robustness to view changes is required for video-based face recognition in practical environment. Since the view changes induce large non-linear variation, kernel-based methods are appropriate. We use KFD analysis to cope with non-linear variation. To classify image sequence, the posterior probability in KFD space is used. KFD analysis assumes that the distribution of each class in high dimensional space is Gaussian. This makes the computation of posterior probability in KFD space easy. The combination of KFD space and posterior probability of image sequence is the main contribution of the proposed method. The performance is evaluated by using two face databases. Effectiveness of the proposed method is shown by the comparison with the other feature spaces and classification methods.

Coexisting with many concurrent narrowband services, the performance of UWB systems will be affected considerably by them. Specifically, IEEE 802.11a systems which operate around 5 GHz and overlap the band of UWB signals will interfere with UWB systems significantly. In this paper, a novel narrow-band interferences (NBI) suppression technique based on singular value decomposition (SVD) algorithm for a direct sequence ultra-wideband (DS-UWB) communication system is presented. SVD is used to approximate the interferences which then are subtracted from the received signals. The proposed technique is simple and robust. Simulation results show that the proposed new technique is very effective.

This paper presents a robust object tracking method under pose variation and partial occlusion. In practical environment, the appearance of objects is changed dynamically by pose variation or partial occlusion. Therefore, the robustness to them is required for practical applications. However, it is difficult to be robust to various changes by only one tracking model. Therefore, slight robustness to variations and the easiness of model update are required. For this purpose, Kernel Principal Component Analysis (KPCA) of local parts is used. KPCA of local parts is proposed originally for the purpose of pose independent object recognition. Training of this method is performed by using local parts cropped from only one or two object images. This is good property for tracking because only one target image is given in practical applications. In addition, the model (subspace) of this method can be updated easily by solving a eigen value problem. Performance of the proposed method is evaluated by using the test face sequence captured under pose, partial occlusion, scaling and illumination variations. Effectiveness and robustness of the proposed method are demonstrated by the comparison with template matching based tracker. In addition, adaptive update rule using similarity with current subspace is also proposed. Effectiveness of adaptive update rule is shown by experiment.

Point pattern matching (PPM) arises in areas such as pattern recognition, digital video processing and computer vision. In this study, a novel Genetic Algorithm (GA) based method for matching affine-related point sets is described. Most common techniques for solving the PPM problem, consist in determining the correspondence between points localized spatially within two sets and then find the proper transformation parameters, using a set of equations. In this paper, we use this fact that the correspondence and transformation matrices are two unitary polar factors of Grammian matrices. We estimate one of these factors by the GA's population and then evaluate this estimation by computing an error function using another factor. This approach is an easily implemented one and because of using the GA in it, its computational complexity is lower than other known methods. Simulation results on synthetic and real point patterns with varying amount of noise, confirm that the algorithm is very effective.

The purpose of the study is to obtain the automatic and optimal matching between a motion-measurement device such as a data glove and an output device such as a dexterous robot hand, where there are many differences in the numbers of degree of freedom, sensor and actuator positions, and data format, by means of motion imitation by the humans. Through the algorithm proposed here, a system engineer or user need no labor of determining the values of gains and parameters to be used. In the system, a subject with data glove imitated the same motion with a dexterous robot hand which was moving according to a certain mathematical function. Autoregressive models were adapted to the matching, where each joint angle in the robot and data glove data of the human were used as object and explanatory variables respectively. The partial regression coefficients were estimated by means of singular value decomposition with a system-noise reduction algorithm utilizing statistical properties. The experimental results showed that the robot hand was controlled with high accuracy with small delay, suggesting that the method proposed in this study is proper and easy way and is adaptive to many other systems between a pair of motion-measurement device and output device.

The hand posture estimation system by searching a similar image from a vast database, such as our previous research, may cause the increase of processing time, and prevent realtime controlling of a robot. In this study, the authors proposed a new estimation method of human hand posture by rearranging a large-scale database with the Self-Organizing Map including self-reproduction and self-annihilation, which enables two-step searches of similar image with short period of processing time, within small errors, and without deviation of search time. The experimental results showed that our system exhibited good performance with high accuracy within processing time above 50 fps for each image input with a 2.8 GHz CPU PC.

The objective of this paper is to propose the Pulse Position Modulation (PPM) system which embeds the synchronizing signal in the information frame. In the proposed system, the frame for transmitting information is also the frame for acquiring frame timing. The data transmission rate of the proposed system is independent of the length of the synchronization signal because the proposed system does not require the synchronization frame. The data transmission rate and the synchronization performance for the proposed system are better than those of the conventional system.

This paper presents a new statistical model-based voice activity detection (VAD) algorithm in the wavelet domain to improve the performance in non-stationary environments. Due to the efficient time-frequency localization and the multi-resolution characteristics of the wavelet representations, the wavelet transforms are quite suitable for processing non-stationary signals such as speech. To utilize the fact that the wavelet packet is very efficient approximation of discrete Fourier transform and has built-in de-noising capability, we first apply wavelet packet decomposition to effectively localize the energy in frequency space, use spectral subtraction, and employ matched filtering to enhance the SNR. Since the conventional wavelet-based spectral subtraction eliminates the low-power speech signal in onset and offset regions and generates musical noise, we derive an improved multi-band spectral subtraction. On the other hand, noticing that fixed threshold cannot follow fluctuations of time varying noise power and the inability to adapt to a time-varying environment severely limits the VAD performance, we propose a statistical model-based VAD algorithm in wavelet domain with an adaptive threshold. We perform extensive computer simulations and compare with the conventional algorithms to demonstrate performance improvement of the proposed algorithm under various noise environments.

This paper describes an efficient PCRD (Post-Compression Rate-Distortion) scheme for rate control of JPEG2000. The proposed method determines the rate constant in consideration of the decreasing characteristic of RD-slopes and conducts rate allocation about only coding passes excluded from the previous rate allocation. As a result, it can considerably reduce the number of operations and encoding time with nearly the same PSNR performance as the conventional rate control scheme of JPEG2000.

This paper proposes a low complexity composite CDMA system based on MIMO (Multiple-Input-Multiple-Output) processing and LDPC (low-density parity-check) codec based a CDMA system, which works well even if the complicated case of multipath, multiusers and short length LDPC codes. To explore the practical application, the mobile user in the composite CDMA systems is with only two antennas and adopts short length irregular LDPC codec, each user's data has been divided two LDPC encoded substreams being sent to two transmitter antennas at base station. Since the LDPC encoded substreams of reaching the mobile user are orthogonal to each other in space and time, the CDMA system performances (BER and SINR) can be improved much, but the multipath may ruin the orthogonalilty. To solve the problems, the paper provides the algorithms of main function modules of transmitter and receivers, gives a simple method to test the girth of LDPC codes, and analyzes the performance of MIMO-LDPC CDMA systems theoretically and experimentally. The simulation results show that the hybrid CDMA systems can have better performance than the conventional CDMA systems based on single transmitted antenna at a base station.

HfOxNy thin films formed by the electron cyclotron resonance (ECR) Ar/N2 plasma nitridation of HfO2 films were investigated for high-k gate insulator applications. HfOxNy thin films formed by the ECR Ar/N2 plasma nitridation (60 s) of 1.5-nm-thick HfO2 films, which were deposited on chemically oxidized Si(100) substrates, were found to be effective for suppressing interfacial layer growth or crystallization during postdeposition annealing (PDA) in N2 ambient. After 900 PDA of for 5 min in N2 ambient, it was found that HfSiON film with a relatively high dielectric constant was formed on the HfOxNy/Si interface by Si diffusion. An equivalent oxide thickness (EOT) of 2.0 nm and a leakage current density of 1.010-3 A/cm2 (at VFB-1 V) were obtained. The effective mobility of the fabricated p-channel metal-insulator-semiconductor field-effect transistor (MISFET) with the HfOxNy gate insulator was 50 cm2/Vs, and the gate leakage current of the MISFET with the HfOxNy gate insulator was found to be well suppressed compared with the MISFET with the HfO2 gate insulator after 900 PDA because of the nitridation of HfO2.

To perform a comparative study, we experimented on two differential epitaxial structures, the conventional metamorphic high-electron-mobility-transistor (MHEMT) using the InAlAs/InGaAs/InAlAs structure and the InP-composite-channel MHEMT adopting the InAlAs/InGaAs/InP structure. Compared with the conventional MHEMT, the InP-composite-channel MHEMT shows improved breakdown performance; more than approximately 3.8 V. This increased breakdown voltage can be explained by the lower impact ionization coefficient of the InP-composite-channel MHEMT than that of the conventional MHEMT. The InP-composite-channel MHEMT also shows improved Radio Frequency characteristics of S21 gain of approximately 4.35 dB at 50 GHz, and a cutoff frequency (fT) and a maximum frequency of oscillation (fmax) of approximately 124 GHz and 240 GHz, respectively, were obtained. These are due to decreases in go and gm.

Interfaces between a coaxial structure and a post-wall waveguide are proposed as the essential components for cost-effective millimeter-wave modules. PTFE substrate is selected in terms of loss and manufacturability. The reflection and the transmission characteristics are investigated. The short-stepped and the short-taper-stepped feeding structures provide 14.7% and 13.2% bandwidths for the reflection smaller than -15 dB, respectively. The 4640 mm2 size antenna fed by the short-stepped structure in PTFE substrate gives 27.3 dBi with 58.2% efficiency at 60.0 GHz. Feeding structures in PTFE substrate fulfill electrical and manufacturing demands in millimeter-wave bands.