Simple disjunctive decomposition is a special case of logic function decompositions, where variables are divided into two disjoint sets and there is only one newly introduced variable. It offers an optimal structure for a single-output function. This paper presents two techniques that enable us to apply simple disjunctive decompositions with little overhead. Firstly, we propose a method to find symple disjunctive decomposition forms efficiently by limiting decomposition types to be found to two: a decomposition where the bound set is a set of symmetric variables and a decomposition where the output function is a 2-input function. Secondly, we propose an algorithm that constructs a new logic representation for a simple disjunctive decomposition just by assigning constant values to variables in the original representation. The algorithm enables us to apply the decomposition with keeping good structures of the original representation. We performed experiments for decomposing functions and confirmed the efficiency of our method. We also performed experiments for restructuring fanout free cones of multi-level logic circuits, and obtained better results than when not restructuring them.

In this paper, we analyze the inverse scattering problem by a new deterministic method called "Source and Radiation Field Solution," which has the merit that both the source and the radiation field can be treated at the same time, the effect of which has already shown in ordinary scattering problems.

In the task of forming high-level object-centered models from low-level image-based features, parts serve as an intermediate representation. A representation of parts for object recognition should be rich, stable, and invariant to changes in the viewing conditions. In addition, it should be capable of describing partially occluded shapes. This paper describes a method for decomposing shapes into parts. The method is based on pairs of negative curvature minima which have a good continuation at their boundary tangents. A measure of good continuation is proposed by using the coefficients of cocircularity, smoothness, and proximity. This method could recover parts in a direct computation, therefore efficient in calculation than the former. Currently, we assume that the shape is a closed planar curve.

This paper addresses the important issue of estimating realistic grasping postures, and presents a methodology and algorithm to automate the generation of hand and body postures during the grasp of arbitrary shaped objects. Predefined body postures stored in a database are generalized to adapt to a specific grasp using inverse kinematics. The reachable space is represented discretely dividing into small subvolumes, which enables to construct the database. The paper also addresses some common problems of articulated figure animation. A new approach for body positioning with kinematic constraints on both hands is described. An efficient and accurate manipulation of joint constraints is presented. Obtained results are quite satisfactory, and some of them are shown in the paper. The proposed algorithms can find application in the motion of virtual actors, all kinds of animation systems including human motion, robotics and some other fields such as medicine, for instance, to move the artificial limbs of handicapped people in a natural way.

This paper describes a new Artificial Neural Network (ANN), UNItary Decomposition ANN (UNIDANN), which can perform the unitary eigendecomposition of the synaptic weight matrix. It is shown both analytically and quantitatively that if the synaptic weight matrix is Hermitian positive definite, the neural output, based on the proposed dynamic equation, will converge to the principal eigenvectors of the synaptic weight matrix. Compared with previous works, the UNIDANN possesses several advantageous features such as low computation time and no synchronization problem due to the underlying analog circuit structure, faster convergence speed, accurate final results, and numerical stability. Some simulations with a particular emphasis on the applications to high resolution bearing estimation problems are also furnished to justify the proposed ANN.

This paper addresses the problem of determining the 3-D pose of a curved rigid object from a single 2-D image. The surface of the object are assumed to be modeled with several patches, each of which be expressed by an implicit polynomial. Moreover, the sensed data are assumed to be the coordinates of those points that are on the image contours. Based on the idea of contour matching, the algorithm proposed computes the parameters defining the pose of the object, and achieves the segmentation of the sensed data and the recognition of the object.

This paper proposes a new method for dynamically controlling the clock speed of a processor in order to reduce power consumption without decreasing system performance. It automatically tunes the processor's speed by monitoring its activities and avoiding useless work so as not to exhaust the battery energy. Experiments with performance bottlenecks caused by disk activities show that the proposed method is very effective in comparison with the traditional one, in which the processor's speed is fixed.

In the design of nonlinear reliable controllers, one major issue is to solve for the solutions of the Hamilton-Jacobi inequality. In general, it is hard to obtain a closed form solutions due to the nonlinear nature of the inequality. In this paper, we seek for the existence conditions of quadratic type positive semidefinite solutions of Hamilton-Jacobi inequality. This is achieved by taking Taylor's series expansion of system dynamics and investigating the negative definiteness of the associated Hamilton up to fourth order. An algorithm is proposed to seek for possible solutions. The candidate of solution is firstly determined from the associated algebraic Riccati inequality. The solution is then obtained from the candidate which makes the truncated fourth order polynomial of the inequality to be locally negative definite. Existence conditions of the solution are explicitly attained for the cases of which system linearization possesses one uncontrollable zero eigenvalue and a pair of pure imaginary uncontrollable eigenvalues. An example is given to demonstrate the application to reliable control design problem.

Simplification orderings, like the recursive path ordering and the improved recursive decomposition ordering, are widely used for proving the termination property of term rewriting systems. The improved recursive decomposition ordering is known as the most powerful simplification ordering. Recently Jouannaud and Rubio extended the recursive path ordering to higher-order rewrite systems by introducing an ordering on type structure. In this paper we extend the improved recursive decomposition ordering for proving termination of higher-order rewrite systems. The key idea of our ordering is a new concept of pseudo-terminal occurrences.

In this paper, the performances of texture classification based on pyramidal and uniform decomposition are comparatively studied with and without feature selection. This comparison using the subband variance as feature explores the dependence among features. It is shown that the main problem when employing 2-D non-separable wavelet transforms for texture classification is the determination of the suitable features that yields the best classification results. A Max-Max algorithm which is a novel evaluation function based on genetic algorithms is presented to evaluate the classification performance of each subset of selected features. It is shown that the performance with feature selection in which only about half of features are selected is comparable to that without feature selection. Moreover, the discriminatory characteristics of texture spread more in low-pass bands and the features extracted from the pyramidal decomposition are more representative than those from the uniform decomposition. Experimental results have verified the selectivity of the proposed approach and its texture capturing characteristics.

In a variety of communication systems, the multipath propagation due to various reflections is often encountered. In this paper, the directions-of-arrival (DOA) estimation of the cyclostationary coherent signals is investigated. A new approach is proposed for estimating the DOA of the coherent signals impinging on a uniform linear array (ULA) by utilizing the spatial smoothing (SS) technique. In order to improve the robustness of the DOA estimation by exploiting the cyclic statistical information sufficiently and handling the coherence effectively, we give a cyclic algorithm with multiple lag parameters and the optimal subarray size. The performance of the presented method is verified and compared with the conventional methods through numerical examples.

Thin films of PTFE (mean molecular weight of source material 8500) were deposited by ionization-assisted deposition (IAD) method at different ion acceleration voltages Va on substrates kept at room temperature. The molecular chains in the film were found to be oriented in parallel with the substrate, and the film has preferential crystal orientation to (100) plane. Although the ion acceleration did not give significant influence on the film orientation and chemical structure, IAD was effective to improve the surface smoothness. The Cu decoration test revealed that the pinhole density in the film is reduced and the insulating capability is improved by depositing the film at Va = 500 V. The result of dielectric loss measurement for Al/PTFE/Al capacitors was in consistency. However, excessive ion acceleration deteriorated the insulating property, probably due to the dielectric breakdown that occurred in the course of deposition.

A new radar system is presented, which consists of one main radar and cooperative plural transponders. The transponders are integrated in the respective retrodirective antennas which are arranged beyond the horizon in such a manner as they surround the main radar. An algorithm for determining the three-dimensional target position is given. Computer simulations have been made for different target positions by assuming measurement errors. A target whose monostatic radar cross section is small or has been specially reduced by absorbing materials could be detected by this system if it is properly constructed.

In multilevel block modulation codes for QPSK and 8-PSK modulation, a construction of binary component codes is given. These codes have a good minimum Euclidean distance by using different forms of the dependency properties of the binary component codes. Interdependency among component codes is formed by using the binary component subcodes which are derived by the coset decomposition of the binary component codes. The algebraic structures of the codes are investigated to find out how interdependency among component codes gives a good minimum Euclidean distance. First, it is shown that cyclic codes over ZM for M-PSK (M=4,8), where the coding scheme is given by Piret, can be constructed by forming specific interdependency among binary component codes for proposed multilevel coding method. Furthermore, it is shown that better minimum Euclidean distance than above can be obtained by modifying the composition of interdependency among binary component codes. These proposed multilevel codes have algebraic structure of additive group and cyclic property over GF(M). Finally, error performances are compared with those of some code's reference modulation scheme for transmitting the same number of information bits.

The following, which is related to the design of the microwave filters, is mainly presented: (1) certain useful approximation which can be obtained by double-resistive- terminated 2-ports consisting of a cascade of two 1-variable 2-ports in different variables, and (2) an approach for filter design from 2-variable viewpoint. Approximations presented provide useful magnitude responses in 2-D domain. Hence it is discussed that how the provided 2-D responses can be used for the design of the microwave filters. Furthermore, properties of the 2-variable transfer functions resulting in such circuits are given.

The TMN that appears to operate the various communication networks generally and efficiently is developed under the different platform environment such as the different hardware and the different operating system. One of the main problems is that all the agents of the TMN system must be duplicated and maintain the software and the data blocks that perform the identical function. Therefore, the standard of the Q3 interface development cannot be defined and the multi-platform cannot be supported in the development of the TMN agent. In order to overcome these problems, the Farming methodology that is based on the Farmer model has been suggested. The main concept of the Farming methodology is that the software and the data components that are duplicated and stored in each distributed object are saved in the Platform Independent Class Repository (PICR) by converting into the format of the independent componentware in the platform, so that the componentwares that are essential for the execution can be loaded and used statically or dynamically from PICR as described in the framework of each distributed object. The distributed TMN agent of the personal communication network is designed and developed by using the Farmer model.

We introduce a strongly infix code. A code X is a strongly infix code if X is an infix code and any catenation of two words in X has no proper factor in X, which is neither a left factor nor a right factor. We show that the class of strongly infix codes is closed under composition, and, as the dual result, that the property to be strongly infix is inherited by a component of a decomposition.

Huynen has already provided a method to decompose a Mueller matrix in order to retrieve detailed target information in a polarimetric radar system. However, this decomposition sometimes fails in the presence of small error or noise in the elements of a Mueller matrix. This paper attempts to improve Huynen's decomposition method. First, we give the definition of stable decomposition and present an example, showing a problem of Huynen's approach. Then two methods are proposed to carry out stable decompositions, based on the nonlinear least square method and the Newton's method. Stability means the decomposition is not sensitive to noise. The proposed methods overcomes the problems on the unstable decomposition of Mueller matrix, and provides correct information of a target.

The problem of constructing the proper-path-decomposition of width at most 2 has an application to the efficient graph layout into ladders. In this paper, we give a linear time algorithm which, for a given graph with maximum vertex degree at most 3, determines whether the proper-pathwidth of the graph is at most 2, and if so, constructs a proper-path-decomposition of width at most 2.

A multimedia coding standard, MPEG4 has frozen its Committee Draft (CD) as the MPEG4 version 1 CD, last October. It defines Audio-Visual (AV) coding Algorithms and their System Multiplex/Composition formats. Founding on Object-base concept, Video part adopts Shape Coding technology in addition to conventional Texture Coding skills. Audio part consists of voice coding tools (HVXC and CELP core) and audio coding tools (HILN and MPEG2 AAC or Twin VQ). Error resilience technologies and Synthetic and Natural Hybrid Coding (SNHC) technologies are the MPEG4 specific features. System part defines flexible Multiplexing of audio-visual bitstreams and Scene Composition for user-interactive re-construction of the scenes at decoder side. The version 1 standardization will be finalized in 1998, with some possible minute changes. The expected application areas are real-time communication, mobile multimedia, internet/intranet accessing, broadcasting, storage media, surveillance, and so on.