One of the important topics of watermarking technique is a robustness against geometrical transformations. In the previous schemes, a template matching is performed or an additional signal is embedded for the recovery of a synchronization loss. However, the former requires the original template, and the latter degrades the quality of image because both a watermark and a synchronization signal must be embedded. In the proposed scheme only a synchronization signal is embedded for the recovery of both a watermark and a synchronization loss. Then the embedded information depends on the distance between two embedded signal positions. The distance is not changed seriously by random geometrical transformations like StirMark attack unless the embedded signal is disturbed. Therefore, a watermark can be extracted correctly from such geometrically transformed image if the synchronization signal can be recovered.

The traditional way of approaching device-level placement problems for analog layout is to explore a huge search space of absolute placement representations, where cells are allowed to illegally overlap during their moves. This paper presents a novel exploration technique for analog placement, operating on a subset of tree representations of the layout, where the typical presence of an arbitrary number of symmetry groups of devices is directly taken into account during the search of the solution space. The efficiency of the novel approach is due to the use of red-black interval trees, data structures employed to support operations on dynamic sets of intervals.

In this letter, a simple peak-to-average power ratio (PAPR) reduction scheme by using a cyclic-shifted sequence mapping is addressed in OFDM-CDMA systems. The PAPR reduction approach is very simple because of no additional complexity and no side information. Also, this simple approach can be easily combined with a modified selective mapping (SLM) approach, which outperforms the original SLM approach at the expense of one additional side information, guaranteeing approximately same transmitter complexity.

In this letter, a concise formula for the SNR degradation of OFDM caused by carrier frequency offset is derived by approximations over a shadowed two-path channel, which explicitly shows the sensitivity of SNR degradation to various parameters including the frequency offset. It is shown that, for small frequency offset, the SNR degradation is proportional to the square of the frequency offset and the square of the number of subcarriers. It is also shown that, if Es/N0 is reasonably large, the SNR degradation becomes insensitive to Es/N0, which is contrary to the case of the AWGN channel.

Digital Subtraction Angiography (DSA) is a technique used for enhancement of small details in angiogram imaging systems. In this approach, X-ray images of a subject, after injection, are subtracted from a reference X-ray image, taken from the same subject before injection. Due to the exponential absorption property of X-rays, effects of small details at different depth appear differently on X-ray images. Consequently, image subtraction cannot be employed on the original images without any adjustment or modification. Proper modification, in this case, is to use some form of logarithmic operation on images before subtraction. In medical imaging systems, the system designer has a choice to implement this logarithmic operation in the analog domain, before digitization of the video signal, or in the digital domain after analog-to-digital conversion (ADC) of the original video signal. In this paper, the difference between these two approaches is studied and upper bounds for quantization error in both cases are calculated. Based on this study, the best approach for utilization of the logarithmic function is proposed. The overall effects of these two approaches on the inherent signal noise are also addressed.

Parameter-optimized cubic convolution is used to accurately analyze the pitch center, rate and extent of vibrato tones. We interpolate the time-tracing fundamental frequencies of vibrato tones using parametric cubic convolution, and analytically estimate the positions and values of the extrema, which are used to analyze the characteristics of the vibrato. The optimal values of α, the parameter of the interpolation kernel, are also shown as a function of the normalized vibrato rates.

A good watermark is known to be perceptually invisible, undetectable without key and robust to spatial/temporal data modification. In this paper, we utilize the characteristics of the human visual system (HVS) for watermarking. In HVS, the response of visual cortex decomposes the image spectra into perceptual channels that are octave bands in spatial frequency. Based on the octave-bands division, same numbers of bits of the watermark are inserted into each channel. Experimental results show that the proposed method based on HVS method gives strong robustness to the attacks compared with conventional DCT, wavelet and DFT watermarking methods.

The purpose of this paper is to propose a novel cluster map based blind RBF equalizer for received signal constellation (RSC) independent channel, which belongs to RSC based blind equalization approach. Without channel estimator, firstly, the desired numbers of unlabeled RBF centers are obtained by an unsupervised clustering algorithm. Then a cluster map generated from the known RBF equalizer structure is used to partition the unlabeled centers into appropriate subsets merely by several simple sorting operations, which corresponds to the weight initialization. Finally, the weight is adjusted iteratively by an unsupervised least mean square (LMS) algorithm. Since the process of the weight initialization using the underlying structure of RBF equalizer is very effective, the proposed blind RBF equalizer can achieve almost identical performance with the optimal RBF equalizer. The validity of the proposed equalizer is also demonstrated by computer simulations.

Recently routing protocols for QoS aware multicast are actively studied, but there are few studies focusing on the scalability of link state advertisement when the available bandwidth of a link is updated along with the QoS aware multicast tree construction. This paper proposes a new QoS aware multicast routing protocol that is scalable in terms of the link state advertisement exchange. Our protocol has the following features; (1) A multicast network is divided into domains, and the advertisement of information on links within a domain is limited within the domain. (2) Among the border multicast routers, only the link state information of inter-domain links is advertised. As a result, the number of link state advertisement messages will be drastically reduced. (3) When a multicast tree spreads over multiple domains, the tree construction needs to be performed without information on links in other domains, and it is possible that the construction may fail. In order to cope with this problem, the crank back mechanism of a tree construction is introduced. This paper describes the detailed procedures and the message formats of our protocol. It also describes the evaluation of the number of exchanged link state advertisement messages and shows that our protocol can reduce the number comparing with the conventional protocols.

This paper presents measurement and analysis of various networks and applications using a high-speed IP meter. The authors have developed a high-speed IP meter with a GPS timestamp component, which enables precise measurement of packet delay and jitter in various networks. Measurement of the following networks was performed, 1) Measurement of traffic in a commercial IPv6 access service on ADSL, as a typical broadband access service network. 2) Measurement of traffic in the 54th IETF meeting in Yokohama, as a typical high-speed Internet backbone network. This paper reports the characteristics identified in these networks, e.g. asymmetricities of one-way packet delay over an ADSL access network and the difference in TCP/UDP packet delay over a high-speed backbone network. It also presents the analysis results of some multimedia applications in the Internet, and discusses the quality of service on Internet access service networks.

A mathematical expression for the received signal power in a severe frequency-selective fading channel is derived. Using the derived expression, the signal power distributions are obtained by Monte-Carlo simulation and compared with the Nakagami m-power distribution. It is found that the power distribution matches well with the Nakagami m-power distribution when the multipath channel has a uniform power delay profile.

For the reception of MC-CDMA signals in a frequency-selective fading channel, frequency-domain equalization is necessary before despreading. In this paper, joint antenna diversity combining and one-tap frequency-domain equalization is considered (simply referred to as the joint antenna diversity & equalization, in this paper). A receiver structure for joint antenna diversity & equalization is presented and the unified weights based on minimum mean square error (MMSE) criterion are found in the presence of multi-users with different spreading factors and transmit powers. For comparison, antenna diversity combining after despreading using MMSE combining (MMSEC) is also considered. The achievable bit error rate (BER) performances with joint antenna diversity & equalization and with antenna diversity after MMSEC despreading in a frequency-selective Rayleigh fading channel are evaluated by computer simulations and compared.

A fast winner search method based on separating all codewords in the original codebook completely into a promising group and an impossible group is proposed. Group separation is realized by using sorted both L1 and L2 norms independently. As a result, the necessary search scope that guarantees full search equivalent PSNR can be limited to the common part of the 2 individual promising groups. The high search efficiency is confirmed by experimental results.

This paper presents a distinct approach to the robustness stability analysis and design of linear uncertain systems. Based on the extension version of the projection method, the specific stability issue, which ensures the poles within a specific region, can be efficiently analyzed. Furthermore, we derive a simple design scheme for a class of uncertain systems. By the proposed numerical algorithm, some examples are given to demonstrate the validity and effectiveness.

The knowledge of a good enclosure of the range of a function over small interval regions allows us to avoid convergence of optimization algorithms to a non-global point(s). We used interval slopes f[X,x] to check for monotonicity and integrated their derivative forms g[X,x], x X by quadratic and Newton methods to obtain narrow enclosures. In order to include boundary points in the search for the optimum point(s), we expanded the initial box by a small width on each dimension. These procedures resulted in an improvement in the algorithm proposed by Hansen.

We show examples of accurate computer-aided design of power coupling between two dielectric slab waveguides of finite length by using the boundary-element method (BEM) based on guided-mode extracted integral equations (GMEIE's). The integral equations derived in this paper can be solved by the conventional BEM. Various properties in numerical calculations of GMEIE's are examined. The reflection and coupling coefficients of the guided wave as well as the scattering power are calculated numerically for the case of incidence TM guided-mode. The presented results are checked by the energy conservation law and reciprocity theorem. The results show that it is possible to design an optimum coupling between two dielectric slab waveguides by using the BEM based on GMEIE's.

Genetic algorithm (GA) is a widely used numerical technique to simplify some analytical solutions in electromagnetic theory. Genetic algorithms can be combined with the geometric optics method to tackle electromagnetic scattering problems. This paper presents an extrapolation procedure, which derived, as a first step, a functional representation of the radar cross section (RCS) of three different dielectric objects that was computed via the Mie solution or the method of moments (MOM). An algorithm was employed to fit the scattering characteristics of dielectric objects at high frequencies.

Field-theoretical equivalent circuit models of a variety of coplanar waveguide (CPW) lumped-element discontinuities for two dominant modes are characterized by executing the short-open calibration (SOC) procedure in the fullwave method of moments (MoM). In our developed MoM platform, the impressed current sources with even or odd symmetry are introduced at the selected ports in order to separately excite the even and odd dominant modes, i.e., CPW- and CSL-mode. After the port network parameters are numerically derived using the Galerkin's technique, the two SOC standards are defined and evaluated in the self-consistent MoM to effectively de-embed and extract the core model parameters of a CPW circuit or discontinuity. After the validation is confirmed via comparison with the published data, extensive investigation is carried out to for the first time demonstrate the distinctive model properties of one-port CPW short- and open-end elements as well as two-port inductive and capacitive coupling elements with resorting to its two different dominant modes.

In this paper a second order Volterra series model of an operational amplifier (opamp) circuit is presented. Such a model is suitable to the investigation of the rectification and demodulation effects of radio frequency (RF) interference superimposed on the nominal input signals and on the power supply voltage of an opamp. On the basis of the new model, some design criteria to improve the immunity of opamps to RF interference are proposed. Model predictions are verified by comparison with experimental test results.

A two stage non-scan design for testability method is proposed. The first stage selects test points based on an earlier testability measure conflict. A new design for testability algorithm is proposed to select test points by a fault-oriented testability measure conflict+ in the second stage. Test points are selected in the second stage based on the hard faults after the initial ATPG run of the design for testability circuit in the preliminary stage. The new testability measure conflict+ based on conflict analysis of hard-faults in the process of test generation is introduced, which emulates most general features of sequential ATPG. The new testability measure reduces testability of a fault to the minimum D or controllability of the primary outputs, and therefore, does not need observability measure any more. Effective approximate schemes are adopted to get reasonable estimation of the testability measure. A couple of effective techniques are also adopted to accelerate the process of the proposed design for testability algorithm. Experimental results show that the proposed method gets even better results than two of the recent non-scan design for testability methods nscan and lcdft.