When video data are transmitted via the network, the quality of video data must be carefully chosen to be best under the condition that the transmission is not influenced by other internet services. They often use the simulcast type, which uses independent streams that are stored and transmitted for the quality, considering implementation, when they select the video quality. On the other hand, we had already proposed the scalable structure, which consists of base and enhancement data, but when they require the high quality video, these data are combined using the transcoding methods. In this paper, we propose the video contents delivery methods with scalable transcoding, in which users can update the quality of video data even after the transmission by base data and differential data. In order to reduce the total time of not only users' access time, but also watching time, we compare simulcast method with proposed methods in the total content utilization time using a video contents access model, and evaluate required transcoding time to reduce the waiting time of users.

For a highly nonlinear circuit design such as an active frequency multiplier, performing an input impedance "match" is not a straightforward problem. In this work, an analysis of nonlinear input impedance matching in active microwave frequency multipliers is presented. By utilizing harmonic balance simulation of an idealized device model, fundamental aspects of performing an input "match" are explored for classical frequency doubler and frequency tripler configurations. The analysis is then repeated using a realistic device model, verifying the efficacy of using nonlinear input impedance matching to improve the output power and return loss characteristics of a multiplier.

Visibility culling techniques have been studied extensively in computer graphics for interactive walkthrough applications in recent years. In this paper, a visibility culling approach by exploiting hardware-accelerated occlusion query is proposed. Organizing the regular grid representation of input scene as an octree-like hierarchy, a 2-tier view frustum culling algorithm is to efficiently cull away nodes invisible from a given viewpoint. Employing the eye-siding number of nodes, we can quickly enumerate an occlusion front-to-back order and effectively maximize the number of parallelizable occlusion queries for nodes while traversing the hierarchy. As experimental results show, our approach improves the overall performance in the test walkthrough.

In this paper, two techniques are proposed for accelerating and stabilizing the Levenberg-Marquardt (LM) method where its conventional stabilizer matrix (identity matrix) is superseded by (1) a diagonal matrix whose elements are column norms of Jacobian matrix J, or (2) a non-diagonal square root matrix of J TJ. Geometrically, these techniques make constraint conditions of the LM method fitted better to relevant cost function than conventional one. Results of numerical simulations show that proposed techniques are effective when both column norm ratio of J and mutual interactions between arguments of the cost function are large. Especially, the technique (2) introduces a new LM method of damped Gauss-Newton (GN) type which satisfies both properties of global convergence and quadratic convergence by controlling Marquardt factor and can stabilize convergence numerically. Performance of the LMM techniques are compared also with a damped GN method with line search procedure.

A robust time and frequency synchronization scheme is proposed for the high rate OFDM-based wireless local area networks (WLANs). The IEEE 802.11a standardized preamble is efficiently utilized and makes the proposed scheme practical. Simulation results under different channel environments are presented to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed scheme.

In a multi-layered RF circuit, it is important to avoid unexpected coupling caused by a parallel plate mode excited between different ground layers. Ground via-holes that short-circuit different ground layers are used for suppressing this mode. Quantitative evaluation of relations between suppression effect and ground via-hole disposition is required for optimal design. In this paper, a simple design formula that describes the suppression ratio is derived by mode-matching technique. The results of comparison with an FEM simulation validate our proposed formula. It is shown that the technique is indispensable for designing optimal disposition of via-holes to minimize the area of the ground via-holes for desired performance.

New strip arrangements for high Q or high effective permittivity are proposed for artificial dielectric resonators in a waveguide. The quality factor and the effective permittivity are discussed by changing strip arrangement composing the artificial dielectric. Concentrating strips from both sides to the middle in the waveguide leads to increase of unloaded Q. The value becomes high to several thousands by decreasing dielectric loss of the material. Interdigital strip arrangement makes the effective permittivity very high. A resonator of the strip arrangement has effective permittivity over 800 and unloaded Q over 1000. Moreover the resonator exhibits a good spurious characteristic with no unnecessary resonant mode throughout several harmonics range.

The actual sound environment system exhibits various types of linear and non-linear characteristics, and it often contains an unknown structure. Furthermore, the observations in the sound environment are often in the level-quantized form. In this paper, a method for estimating the specific signal for stochastic systems with unknown structure and the quantized observation is proposed by introducing a system model of the conditional probability type. The effectiveness of the proposed theoretical method is confirmed by applying it to the actual problem of psychological evaluation for the sound environment.

Radio resource is the bottleneck for current multimedia wireless networks. Intelligent traffic control strategies can be enforced to optimize resource allocation so as to enhance network performance. In this study, dynamic control scheme for non-real-time traffic and autonomic control schemes for multimedia traffic are proposed to guarantee the required quality of service (QoS) in the inference-dominated high-speed wireless environment. Both handoff priority and terminal mobility are also taken into consideration. The performance of the state-dependent multidimensional birth-death process is derived by the efficient matrix-analytic methods (MAMs). Compared with the previous results, this paper shows that the proposed control methods can be used for both real-time and non-real-time multimedia traffic in order to meet the required performance without degrading the quality of multimedia services. These results are also important for the design of evolving multimedia wireless systems as well as network optimization.

This paper presents a semi-automatic algorithm for video object segmentation. Our algorithm assumes the use of multiple key video frames in which a semantic object of interest is defined in advance with human assistance. For video frames between every two key frames, the specified video object is tracked and segmented automatically using Learning Vector Quantization (LVQ). Each pixel of a video frame is represented by a 5-dimensional feature vector integrating spatial and color information. We introduce a parameter K to adjust the balance of spatial and color information. Experimental results demonstrate that the algorithm can segment the video object consistently with less than 2% average error when the object is moving at a moderate speed.

This paper overviews a total solution for frequency-domain blind source separation (BSS) of convolutive mixtures of audio signals, especially speech. Frequency-domain BSS performs independent component analysis (ICA) in each frequency bin, and this is more efficient than time-domain BSS. We describe a sophisticated total solution for frequency-domain BSS, including permutation, scaling, circularity, and complex activation function solutions. Experimental results of 22, 33, 44, 68, and 22 (moving sources), (#sources#microphones) in a room are promising.

Radio packet schedulers are currently being implemented in cdma2000 1x and 1xEV. cdma2000 1x stems from TIA/EIA-95 that was optimised to support circuit-based voice communications and is now extended to support high speed data transmission up to 153.6 kbps. 1xEV is primarily for wireless Internet access and can support up to maximally 2.4 Mbps. Compared with other 3G mobile systems that focus on voice services and guaranteed quality of the services, 1xEV exploits the delay-tolerant transmission of the packet data services so as to achieve spectral efficiency and reduce the cost of providing such services. Supporting multimedia transfer including real-time as well as delay-tolerant data transmission, however, is a must in designing packet schedulers for future mobile systems. In this letter, we address design issues of a packet scheduler by comparing two existing different schedulers: WQDS (Weighted Queuing Rate Scheduler) for cdma2000 1x and PFRS (Proportional Fairness Rate Scheduler) for 1xEV. Comparisons are made on the structure of schedulers as well as by numerical evaluations of performance.

This paper presents an analysis of electrically large antennas using the adaptive integral method (AIM). The arbitrarily shaped perfectly conducting surfaces are modeled using triangular patches and the associated electric field integral equation (EFIE) is solved for computing the radiation patterns of these antennas. The method of moments (MoM) is used to discretize the integral equations and the resultant matrix system will be solved by an iterative solver. The AIM is employed in the iterative solver to speed up the matrix-vector multiplication and to reduce the memory requirement. As specific applications, radiation patterns of parabolic reflectors and X-band horns are computed using the proposed method.

A DC offset caused by self-mixing is a serious problem for direct-conversion receivers. Local oscillation (LO) leakage via quadrature demodulators (QDEMOD) must be suppressed in order to achieve a low DC offset. An LO buffer which drives QDEMOD mainly causes the LO leakage. We proposed an LO buffer which has a high-pass frequency response with small occupied area and low current consumption. A QDEMOD using the proposed LO buffer is fabricated using a SiGe BiCMOS process. Measured low LO leakage of -70 dBm is achieved, which is 10 dB lower than that of a QDEMOD with a conventional LO buffer. This measured result indicates that the proposed LO buffer is suitable for QDEMODs for direct-conversion receivers.

In this letter, the problem of attaining frequency synchronization for high rate WPANs is considered. An estimation of the frequency offset is essential step at the receiver because the frequency offset means that the phase of transmitted signal is corrupted. The proposed algorithm utilizes the difference in phase between received preamble and estimated preamble. It turns out that the proposed algorithm has low complexity and good performance. To enhance the capability, we use peak phase detector. The performance of the proposed algorithm is assessed by computer simulation, and the frequency offset variance is compared to Cramer Rao Bound.

For three-step cell search in WCDMA, a stepwise serial scheme is conventionally employed, where each step of cell search operates in serial. In order to reduce the cell search time, a stepwise parallel scheme can be considered as a candidate for cell search, where each step operates in pipelined fashion. However, in the parallel scheme where the processing time in every step is equal, excessive accumulations are caused in step (1) and step (3) because the period of a code used for step (2) is much longer than that for the other steps. And it does not provide any gain because the effect becomes easily saturated with the number of accumulations. In this paper, the performance of parallel cell search is analyzed, and compared with that of serial cell search. Finally, it is shown that the performance of parallel cell search can be improved by adjusting the processing time in each step, based on the analytic results.

Recently, software development projects have been required to produce highly reliable systems within a short period and with low cost. In such situation, software quality prediction helps to confirm that the software product satisfies required quality expectations. In this paper, by using a Bayesian Belief Network (BBN), we try to construct a prediction model based on relationships elicited from the embedded software development process. On the one hand, according to a characteristic of embedded software development, we especially propose to classify test and debug activities into two distinct activities on software and hardware. Then we call the proposed model "the BBN for an embedded software development process". On the other hand, we define "the BBN for a general software development process" to be a model which does not consider this classification of activity, but rather, merges them into a single activity. Finally, we conducted experimental evaluations by applying these two BBNs to actual project data. As the results of our experiments show, the BBN for the embedded software development process is superior to the BBN for the general development process and is applicable effectively for effective practical use.

To overcome the mobility impact on RSVP, many schemes have been proposed based on Mobile IP regional registration and passive reservation in advance. Although the regional registration and in advance reservation reduce the QoS interruption time, the latter may demand intolerable bandwidth. This letter introduces a novel approach to reduce the QoS interruption time by maximizing the localization of QoS re-establishment in the regional registration environment. The proposed scheme identifies the exact path segment affected by mobility. The QoS interruption time of the proposed scheme is comparable to its low bound without in advance reservation.

A fully integrated broadband distributed frequency tripler, periodically loaded with HBV devices, has been designed and fabricated and has demonstrated the generation of a broad range of output frequencies of up to 570 GHz. Key to the design is the principle that the entire frequency tripler circuit is produced monolithically and incorporates novel HBV devices electrically and mechanically interconnected by a thin low-loss SU-8 membrane. With the device fabrication approach used, the novel HBV devices are able to produce a higher capacitance-voltage swing ratio whilst simultaneously minimizing the device series and contact resistances to achieve the optimum conversion efficiency. The entire concept of this work was to design a cost effective fully integrated waveguide package, with the frequency tripler circuit mounted at the E-plane of a micromachined waveguide which was constructed with stepped height and width to prevent the propagation of higher order modes inside the waveguide sections. The micromachined waveguide sections exhibit high dimensional accuracy and a good surface finish which is necessary for the efficient propagation of high frequency signals. The frequency tripler circuit and the accompanying micromachined waveguide sections are mounted in a specifically designed metal test fixture to form a compact and cost-effective subcomponent with great commercial potential for broadband harmonic generation of up to terahertz frequencies. This paper presents the design methodology and techniques used to produce the frequency tripler package, together with some initial measurement results.

This paper presents an analysis of the Slotted DS-CDMA system with modified node components in order to construct a load control structure in which the service rates of each node can be dynamically adapted without using feedback information. In contrast to the traditional Slotted DS-CDMA which is widely represented with single queue, prior emphasis of the approach is laid on the usage of an additional queue which is applied to manage the collided packet traffic while its queue size is also used as a load control parameter. Semi-Markov process is applied to describe the statistic behavior of the system in steady state. Trade-offs between two major performance parameters, i.e., delay and throughput, are presented and compared with those of the traditional system. Results obtained from the simulation and numerical analysis using queuing concept are compared. With these results, an advantage performance for group packets is shown, and we finally extend the concept based on the obtained results to describe a simple algorithm using one way control message as the tool to alleviate the stability problem.