Many subjective assessment methods for video quality are provided by ITU-T and ITU-R recommendations, but the differences among these methods have not been sufficiently studied. We compare five subjective assessment methods using four quantitative performance indices for both HD and QVGA resolution video. We compare the Double-Stimulus Continuous Quality-Scale (DSCQS), Double-Stimulus Impairment Scale (DSIS), Absolute Category Rating method (ACR), and ACR with Hidden Reference (ACR-HR) as common subjective assessment methods for HD and QVGA resolution videos. Furthermore, we added ACR with an 11-grade scale (ACR11) for the HD test and Subjective Assessment of Multimedia Video Quality (SAMVIQ) for the QVGA test for quality scale variations. The performance indices are correlation coefficients, rank correlation coefficients, statistical reliability, and assessment time. For statistical reliability, we propose a performance index for comparing different quality scale tests. The results of the performance comparison showed that the correlation coefficients and rank correlation coefficients of the mean opinion scores between pairs of methods were high for both HD and QVGA tests. As for statistical reliability provided by the proposed index, DSIS of HD and ACR of QVGA outperformed the other methods. Moreover, ACR, ACR-HR, and ACR11 were the most efficient subjective quality assessment methods from the viewpoint of assessment time.

This paper deals with an integral equation method for analyzing the diffraction of a transverse magnetic (TM) plane wave by a perfectly conductive periodic surface. In the region below the periodic surface, the extinction theorem holds, and the total field vanishes if the field solution is determined exactly. For an approximate solution, the extinction theorem does not hold but an extinction error field appears. By use of an image Green's function, new formulae are given for the extinction error field and the mean square extinction error (MSEE), which may be useful as a validity criterion. Numerical examples are given to demonstrate that the formulae work practically even at a critical angle of incidence.

Multivariate Public Key Cryptosystems (MPKC) are candidates for post-quantum cryptography. Rainbow is a digital signature scheme in MPKC, whose signature generation and verification are relatively efficient. However, the security of MPKC depends on the difficulty in solving a system of multivariate polynomials, and the key length of MPKC becomes substantially large compared with that of RSA cryptosystems for the same level of security. The size of the secret and public keys in MPKC has been reduced in previous research. The NC-Rainbow is a signature scheme in MPKC, which was proposed in order to reduce the size of secret key of Rainbow. So far, several attacks against NC-Rainbow have been proposed. In this paper, we summarize attacks against NC-Rainbow, containing attacks against the original Rainbow, and analyze the total security of NC-Rainbow. Based on the cryptanalysis, we estimate the security parameter of NC-Rainbow at the several security level.

In this paper, we propose a time and memory efficient Ultra Wide Band Short Range Radar (UWB SRR) system for measuring relative target velocities of up to 150km/hr. First, for the proposed detector, we select the required design parameters for good performance. The parameters are the number of coherent integrations, non-coherent integrations, and FFT points. The conventional detector uses a Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) to extract the range and velocity of the target simultaneously. Therefore, it requires high computation effort, high FFT processing time, and a huge amount of memory. However, the proposed pulse radar detector first decides the target range and then computes the target velocity using FFT sequentially for the decided range index. According to our theoretical and simulation analyses, the FFT processing time and the memory requirement are reduced compared to those of the conventional method. Finally, we show that the detection performance of the proposed detector is superior to that of the conventional detector in a background of Additive White Gaussian Noise (AWGN).

In this paper, we propose a spectrally efficient frequency-domain channel estimation scheme suitable for training sequence inserted single-carrier (TS-SC) block transmission using frequency-domain equalization (FDE). The proposed scheme performs the channel estimation in two steps and allows the use of shorter TS (but, longer than the channel length) than the conventional channel estimation schemes. In the first step, the received TS having cyclic property is constructed for performing frequency-domain channel estimation and the improved channel estimate is obtained by using simple averaging of noisy channel estimates. In the second step, the maximum likelihood channel estimation is carried out iteratively by using both the TS and the estimated symbol sequence obtained in the first step. It is shown by computer simulation that the proposed 2-step frequency-domain iterative channel estimation scheme achieves a bit error rate (BER) performance close to perfect channel estimation even in a relatively fast fading environment.

We theoretically study the performance of multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) free-space optical (FSO) systems using subcarrier quadrature modulation (SC-QAM) signaling. The system average symbol-error rate (ASER) is derived taking into account the atmospheric turbulence effects on the MIMO/FSO channel, which is modeled by log-normal and the gamma-gamma distributions for weak and moderate-to-strong turbulence conditions. We quantitatively discuss the influence of index of refraction structure parameter, link distance, and different MIMO configurations on the system ASER. We also analytically derive and discuss the MIMO/FSO average (ergodic) channel capacity (ACC), which is expressed in terms of average spectral efficiency (ASE), under the impact of various channel conditions. Monte Carlo simulations are also performed to validate the mathematical analysis, and a good agreement between numerical and simulation results is confirmed.

In this letter, constructions of sequences with perfect odd autocorrelation and sequence sets with zero odd correlation zone (ZOCZ) over the 8-QAM+ constellation are presented. Based on odd perfect ternary sequences, odd perfect sequences and ZOCZ sequence sets over the 8-QAM+ constellation are constructed by using shift vectors and mappings. These odd perfect sequences and ZOCZ sequence sets over 8-QAM+ constellation can be used in communication systems to achieve high transmission data rate (TDR) and low interference.

A macroscopic structure was analyzed for a system comprising multiple elements in which the dynamics is affected by their distribution. First, a nonlinear Boltzmann equation, which has an integration term with respect to the distribution of the elements, was derived. Next, the moment vector equation (MVE) for the Boltzmann equation was derived. The average probability density function (pdf) in a steady state was derived using eigen analysis of the coefficient matrix of the MVE. The macroscopic structure of the system and the mechanism that provides the average pdf and the transient response were then analyzed using eigen analysis. Evaluation of the average pdf and transient response showed that using eigen analysis is effective for analyzing not only the transient and stationary properties of the system but also the macroscopic structure and the mechanism providing the properties.

We introduce a new nonlinear control method to globally asymptotically stabilize a class of uncertain nonlinear systems. First, we provide a system reconfiguration method which reconfigures the nonlinear systems with smooth positive functions. Then, we provide a nonlinear controller design method to globally asymptotically stabilize the reconfigured systems by utilizing Lyapunov equations. As a result, a class of uncertain nonlinear systems which have not been treated in the existing results can be globally asymptotically stabilized by our control method. Examples are given for easy following and illustration.

This paper investigates the average block error rate (BLER) performance of star 16QAM schemes considering the effective peak-to-average power ratio (PAPR) criterion called a cubic metric (CM) for uplink discrete Fourier transform (DFT)-precoded orthogonal frequency division multiple access (OFDMA). We clarify the best ring amplitude ratio for the (4, 12) and (8, 8) star 16QAM schemes from the viewpoint of the required average signal-to-noise power ratio (SNR) that satisfy the target average BLER based on link-level simulations. We also validate the agreement of the best ring amplitude ratios with those maximizing the mutual information based throughput. Then, employing the best ring amplitude ratios for the respective coding rates of the turbo code, we show that (8, 8) star 16QAM achieves better average BLER performance compared to that for (4, 12) star 16QAM. Moreover, we show the effectiveness of the (8, 8) star 16QAM scheme compared to square 16QAM in terms of the required average received SNR considering the CM when the coding rate is low such as 1/3 for uplink DFT-precoded OFDMA.

In this paper, we propose a rectangular weighting function that can be used in the method of iteratively reweighted least squares (IRWLS) for designing equiripple all-pass IIR filters. The purpose of introducing this weighting function is to improve the convergence performance in the solution of the IRWLS. The height of each rectangle is designed to be equal to the local maximum of each ripple, and the width of each rectangle is designed so that the area of each rectangle becomes equal to the area of each ripple. Here, the ripple is the absolute value of the phase error. We show experimentally that the convergence performance in the solution of the IRWLS can be improved by using the proposed weighting function.

In this paper, we propose a synthesizable LDPC decoder IP core for the WiMAX system with high parallelism and enhanced error-correcting performance. By taking the advantages of both layered scheduling and fully-parallel architecture, the decoder can fully support multi-mode decoding specified in WiMAX with the parallelism much higher than commonly used partial-parallel layered LDPC decoder architecture. 6-bit quantized messages are split into bit-serial style and 2bit-width serial processing lines work concurrently so that only 3 cycles are required to decode one layer. As a result, 12∼24 cycles are enough to process one iteration for all the code-rates specified in WiMAX. Compared to our previous bit-serial decoder, it doubles the parallelism and solves the message saturation problem of the bit-serial arithmetic, with minor gate count increase. Power synthesis result shows that the proposed decoder achieves 5.83pJ/bit/iteration energy efficiency which is 46.8% improvement compared to state-of-the-art work. Furthermore, an advanced dynamic quantization (ADQ) technique is proposed to enhance the error-correcting performance in layered decoder architecture. With about 2% area overhead, 6-bit ADQ can achieve the error-correcting performance close to 7-bit fixed quantization with improved error floor performance.

Microfluidic biochips, also referred to “lab-on-a-chip,” have been recently proposed to integrate all the necessary functions for biochemical analyses. This technology starts a new era of biology science, where a combination of electronic and biology is first introduced. There are several types of microfluidic biochips; among them there has been a great interest in flow-based microfluidic biochips, in which the flows of liquid is manipulated using integrated microvalves. By combining several microvalves, more complex resource units such as micropumps, switches and mixers can be built. For efficient execution, the flows of liquid routes in microfluidic biochips need to be scheduled under some resource constraints and routing constraints. The execution time of a biochemical application depends strongly on the binding and scheduling result. The most previously developed binding and scheduling algorithm is based on heuristics, and there has been no method to obtain optimal results. Considering the above, we propose an optimal method by casting the problem to a clique problem. Moreover, this paper also presents some heuristic techniques for computational time reduction. Experiments demonstrate that the proposed method is able to reduce the execution time of biochemical applications by more than 15% compared with the previous approach. Moreover, the proposed heuristic method is able to produce the results at no or little cost of optimality, in significantly shorter time than the optimal method.

Most of scientists except computer scientists do not want to make efforts for performance tuning with rewriting their MPI applications. In addition, the number of processing elements which can be used by them is increasing year by year. On large-scale parallel systems, the number of accumulated messages on a message buffer tends to increase in some of their applications. Since searching message queue in MPI is time-consuming, system side scalable acceleration is needed for those systems. In this paper, a support function named LHS (Limited-length Head Separation) is proposed. Its performance in searching message buffer and hardware cost are evaluated. LHS accelerates searching message buffer by means of switching location to store limited-length heads of messages. It uses the effects such as increasing hit rate of cache on host with partial off-loading to hardware. Searching speed of message buffer when the order of message reception is different from the receiver's expectation is accelerated 14.3 times with LHS on FPGA-based network interface card (NIC) named DIMMnet-2. This absolute performance is 38.5 times higher than that of IBM BlueGene/P although the frequency is 8.5times slower than BlueGene/P. LHS has higher scalability than ALPU in the performance per frequency. Since these results are obtained with partially on loaded linear searching on old Pentium®4, performance gap will increase using state of art CPU. Therefore, LHS is more suitable for larger parallel systems. The discussions for adopting proposed method to state of art processors and systems are also presented.

We show teachability of a subclass of simple deterministic languages. The subclass we define is called stack uniform simple deterministic languages. Teachability is derived by showing the query learning algorithm for this language class. Our learning algorithm uses membership, equivalence and superset queries. Then, it terminates in polynomial time. It is already known that simple deterministic languages are polynomial time query learnable by context-free grammars. In contrast, our algorithm guesses a hypothesis by a stack uniform simple deterministic grammar, thus our result is strict teachability of the subclass of simple deterministic languages. In addition, we discuss parameters of the polynomial for teachability. The “thickness” is an important parameter for parsing and it should be one of parameters to evaluate the time complexity.

Lattice-reduction (LR) technique has been adopted to improve the performance and reduce the complexity in MIMO data detection. This paper presents an improved quantization scheme for LR aided MIMO detection based on Gram-Schmidt orthogonalization. For the LR aided detection, the quantization step applies the simple rounding operation, which often leads to the quantization errors. Meanwhile, these errors may result in the detection errors. Hence the purpose of the proposed detection is to further solve the problem of degrading the performance due to the quantization errors in the signal estimation. In this paper, the proposed quantization scheme decreases the quantization errors using a simple tree search with a threshold function. Through the analysis and the simulation results, we observe that the proposed detection can achieve the nearly optimal performance with very low complexity, and require a little additional complexity compared to the conventional LR-MMSE detection in the high Eb/N0 region. Furthermore, this quantization error reduction scheme is also efficient even for the high modulation order.

Route discovery process is a major mechanism in the most routing protocols in Mobile Ad Hoc Network (MANET). Routing overhead is one of the problems caused by broadcasting the route discovery packet. To reduce the routing overhead, the location-based routing schemes have been proposed. In this paper, we propose our scheme called Location-based Routing scheme with Adaptive Request Zone (LoRAReZ). In LoRAReZ scheme, the size of expected zone is set adaptively depending on the distance between source and destination nodes. Computer simulation has been conducted to show the effectiveness of our propose scheme. We evaluate the performances of LoRAReZ scheme in the terms of packet delivery fraction (PDF), routing overhead, average end-to-end delay, throughput, packet collision, average hop count, average route setup time, and power consumption. We compare those performance metrics with those of Location Aided Routing (LAR) and Location Aware Routing Protocol with Dynamic Adaptation of Request Zone (LARDAR) protocols. The simulation results show that LoRAReZ can provide all the better performances among those of LAR and LARDAR schemes.

Deposition of inclined anisotropy film for bit-patterned media was studied using an oblique incidence collimated sputtering. Pt underlayer increased the inclination angle of magnetic layer more than 5° on a Ta seed layer. Further increase of the angle was obtained by annealing Pt/Ru underlayer resulting an inclination angle of 9.4° for a Co-Cr15.5 film on the underlayer. The magnetic properties of the Co-Cr15.5 film with an inclined orientation was estimated comparing measured hysteresis loops with simulated ones, which indicated to have inclined magnetic anisotropy with an anisotropy field of about 4.5kOe and a deflection angle of the anisotropy about the same as that of the crystalline orientation.

To achieve high recording density in a bit-patterned media recording system, the spacing between data bit islands in both the along-track and the across-track directions must be decreased, thus leading to the increase of two-dimensional (2D) interference. One way to reduce the 2D interference is to apply a 2D coding scheme on a data sequence before recording; however, this method usually requires many redundant bits, thus lowering a code rate. Therefore, we propose a novel 2D coding scheme referred to as a recorded-bit patterning (RBP) scheme to mitigate the 2D interference, which requires no redundant bits at the expense of using more buffer memory. Specifically, an input data sequence is first split into three tracks in which will then be rotated to find the best 3-track data pattern based on a look-up table before recording, such that the shifted data tracks yield the least effect of 2D interference in the readback signal. Numerical results indicate that the proposed RBP scheme provides a significant performance improvement if compared to a conventional system (without 2D coding), especially when the recording density is high and/or the position jitter noise is large.

The equivalent circuit of aperture-coupled cavities filled with a lossy dielectric is considered by means of an eigenmode expansion technique founded on the segmentation concept. It is different from a series LCR resonant circuit, and the resistor which symbolizes the dielectric loss is connected to the capacitor in parallel. If the cavities are formed by a short-circuited oversize waveguide, then the input admittance can be represented by the product of a coupling factor to the connected waveguide port and the equivalent admittance of the short-circuited waveguide. The transmission line model is effective even if lossy wall effect and dielectric partially-loading effect are considered. As a result, three-dimensional eigenmode parameters, such as the resonant frequency and the Q-factor, become dispensable and the computational complexity for the cavity simulation in the field of microwave heating is dramatically reduced.