A low-noise CMOS amplifier operating at a low supply voltage is developed using the two noise reduction techniques of autozeroing and chopper stabilization. The proposed amplifier utilizes a feedback with virtual grounded input-switches and a multiple-output switched op-amp. The low-noise amplifier fabricated in a 0.18-µm CMOS technology achieved 50-nV/Hz input noise at 1-MHz chopping and 0.5-mW power consumption at 1-V supply voltage.

In region-of-interest (ROI) image coding based on wavelet transforms, the tap length of the wavelet filter as well as energy compaction characteristics affect the quality of the restored image. This paper presents a wavelet transform comprised of two wavelet filter sets with different tap lengths. The wavelet filter is switched to the shorter-length set to code a ROI of an image and to the longer-length one for the remaining region, the region of non-interest (RONI). ROI coding examples demonstrate that this switching wavelet transform provides better quality levels than fixed transforms under the same total bits; the quality of the recovered ROI is improved in the lossy coding of both regions while that of the full image is improved in the lossless coding of the ROI.

Transferring the image information in analog form between the focal plane array (FPA) and the external electronics causes the disturbance of the outside noise. On-chip analog-to-digital (A/D) converter into the readout integrated circuit (ROIC) can eliminate the possibilities of the cross-talk of noise. Also, the information can be transported more efficiently in power in the digital domain compared to the analog domain. In designing on-chip A/D converter for cooled type high density infrared detector array, the most stringent requirements are power dissipation, number of bits, die area and throughput. In this study, pipelined type A/D converter was adopted because it has high operation speed characteristics with medium power consumption. Capacitor averaging technique and digital error correction for high resolution was used to eliminate the error which is brought out from the device mismatch. The readout circuit was fabricated using 0.6 µm CMOS process for 128 128 mid-wavelength infrared (MWIR) HgCdTe detector array. Fabricated circuit used direct injection type for input stage, and then S/N ratio could be maximized with increasing the integration capacitor. The measured performance of the 14 b A/D converter exhibited 0.2 LSB differential non-linearity (DNL) and 4 LSB integral non-linearity (INL). A/D converter had a 1 MHz operation speed with 75 mW power dissipation at 5 V. It took the die area of 5.6 mm2. It showed the good performance that can apply for cooled type high density infrared detector array.

This paper describes a dynamic and adaptive scheme for three-dimensional mesh morphing. Using several control maps, the connectivity of intermediate meshes is dynamically changing and the mesh vertices are adaptively modified. The 2D control maps in parametric space that include curvature map, area deformation map and distance map, are used to schedule the inserting and deleting vertices in each frame. Then, the positions of vertices are adaptively moved to better positions using weighted centroidal voronoi diagram (WCVD) and a Delaunay triangulation is finally used to determine the connectivity of mesh. In contrast to most previous work, the intermediate mesh connectivity gradually changes and is much less complicated. We demonstrate several examples of aesthetically pleasing morphs created by the proposed method.

In this paper, Pre-Rake scheme for pulse based Ultra Wideband impulse radio (UWB-IR) communications system is proposed considering a standardized UWB channel model from IEEE 802.15 SG3a, which is based on an extensive set of short-range indoor channel measurements. Two kinds of pulse waveforms are taken in account here, namely, Gaussian mono-pulse and newly designed Prolate Spheroidal Wave Functions (PSWF) pulses corresponding to FCC Spectrum Mask. The Pre-Rake scheme is shown to contribute to the low-power, cost-efficient UWB system designing as well as Rake combining gain. Instead of building a Rake receiver at the receiving side (e.g. portable unit), the transmitter (e.g. access point) can pre-combine the UWB signal before transmission in the forward link by estimating the channel impulse response from the reverse link. While the Pre-Raked signal is convolved with the estimated channel impulse response, the function of Rake combination at the receiver is automatically performed. Meanwhile, in order to defeat inter-pulse-interferences (IPI) caused by severe multipath fading conditions, adaptive guard-time scheme for consecutive pulses is proposed as well. Monte-Carlo simulations are carried out to compare the Pre-Rake with Rake results and show that Pre-Rake scheme is as good as Rake combining for both types of pulse waveforms. Then the mobile or portable unit with a conventional receiver can still achieve the diversity gain of Rake combination. Moreover, the effects of placing guard-time between pulses are also verified.

The concepts of M-convexity and L-convexity, introduced by Murota (1996, 1998) for functions on the integer lattice, extract combinatorial structures in well-solved nonlinear combinatorial optimization problems. These concepts are extended to polyhedral convex functions and quadratic functions on the real space by Murota-Shioura (2000, 2001). In this paper, we consider a further extension to general convex functions. The main aim of this paper is to provide rigorous proofs for fundamental properties of general M-convex and L-convex functions.

In this paper, we propose a function that provides scalability of image quality on the basis of regions of interest for JPEG2000 coding. Functions of this type are useful in the progressive transmission of images, where the aim is to more quickly decode regions of interest than backgrounds. The conventional methods of progressive transmission have mainly been based on SNR scalability or on resolution scalability. With these conventional functions, it is impossible to achieve region-based scalability in the progressive transmission of images. The proposed methods use the ROI and SNR layer structures of JPEG2000, so the methods are suitable for the region-progressive transmission of JPEG2000 images.

In this paper, a novel method of clock feedthrough reduction in CMOS autozeroed operational amplifiers with three-phase clock operation is presented. The operational amplifiers in the method are configured by two autozeroed-gain stages. The differential input stage and the second output gain stage are autozeroed individually by a three-phase clock for autozeroing. The three-phase clock is provided so as to finish the compensation period of the input stage earlier than the end of the second stage compensation period. This operation makes it possible to absorb affection of clock feedthrough in the input stage with the second stage. As a result, residual error of offset compensation is much reduced by the voltage gain of the first stage. The effect of the two-stage autozeroing has been confirmed with SPICE simulation and fabricated CMOS circuit. The results of SPICE simulation showed that the two-stage autozeroed operational amplifier has significant advantage as compared to conventional configuration. Affection of clock feedthrough is reduced to about 1/50 in the two-stage configuration. Fabricated CMOS circuit also showed high potential of the two-stage autozeroed operational amplifier for feedthrough reduction. It has been proven experimentally that the two-stage autozeroing is an effective design approach to reduce clock feedthrough error in CMOS autozeroed operational amplifiers.

A new rewritable medium utilizing a guest-host (G-H) polymer-dispersed liquid-crystal (PDLC) film has been developed in our laboratory. The medium is thermally written and electrically erased. It is portable, like paper, and can store recorded data because of the memory effect of smectic-A liquid crystal (SmA LC), which exhibits bistable states of homeotropic and focal conic alignment. Dichroic dye is added to the SmA LC to form the G-H type. An evaluation of the characteristics revealed that this medium exhibits both high contrast and good reliability.

A novel power spectral density accumulation (PSDA) method for estimating the bandwidth of the clutter spectra is proposed, based on a priori knowledge of the shape of the clutter spectra. The comparison of the complexity and the performance between the PSDA method and the general ones is presented. It is shown that the PSDA method is effective for the short-time clutter data in the practical application.

M-convex functions have various desirable properties as convexity in discrete optimization. We can find a global minimum of an M-convex function by a greedy algorithm, i.e., so-called descent algorithms work for the minimization. In this paper, we apply a scaling technique to a greedy algorithm and propose an efficient algorithm for the minimization of an M-convex function. Computational results are also reported.

Locating corner points from an edge detected image is very important in view of simplifying the post processing part of a system that utilizes a corner information. In this paper, we propose a robust geometrical approach for corner detection. Unlike classical corner detection methods, which idealize corners as junction points of two line segments, our approach considers the possibility of multiple line segments intersecting at a point. Moreover, junctions caused by two or more curved segments of different curvature are thought of as a corner point. The algorithm has been tested and proved competence with different types of images demonstrating its ability to detect and localize the corners in the image, though we found it to be best suited for images with relatively few curved segments. With the help of non-maximum response suppression technique our approach yields comparatively better result than any other method.

A real-time adaptive segmentation method based on new distance features is proposed for the binary centroid tracker. These novel features are distances between the predicted center pixel of a target object by a tracking filter and each pixel in extraction of a moving target. The proposed method restricts clutters with target-like intensity from entering a tracking window and has low computational complexity for real-time applications compared with other complex feature-based methods. Comparative experiments show that the proposed method is superior to other segmentation methods based on the intensity feature only in target detection and tracking.

The problem of finding the location of the center and the problem of finding the median in a graph are important and basic among many network location problems. In connection with these two problems, the following two theorems are well-known. One is proved by Jordan and Sylvester, and it shows that the center of every tree consists of either one vertex or two adjacent vertices. The other is proved by Jordan and it shows that the centroid (median) of every tree consists of either one vertex or two adjacent vertices. These theorems have been generalized by many researchers so far. Harary and Norman proved that the center of every connected graph G lies in a single block of G. Truszczynski proved that the median of every connected graph G lies in a single block of G. Slater defined k-centrum, which can express both center and median, and proved that the k-centrum of every tree consists of either one vertex or two adjacent vertices. This paper discusses generalization of these theorems. We define the -blocks of a graph G as a generalization of the blocks of G, where is a subset of the vertex set of G; and define the -centroid of G as a generalization of the centroid of G. First, we prove that the -centroid of G is included in an -block of G. This is a generalization of the above theorems concerning centroid, by Jordan and Truszczynski. Secondly, we define the -centrum of G as a generalization of the k-centrum of G and prove some theorems concerning the location of -centrum. Using one of theorems proved here, we can easily obtain the theorem showing that the k-centrum of every connected graph G lies in a single block of G. This theorem is a generalization of the above theorem by Slater.

This note investigates the characterizing properties of the level sets of an M-convex function introduced by Murota.

The linear complementarity problem (LCP) is one of the most widely studied mathematical programming problems. The theory of LCP can be extended to oriented matroids which are combinatorial abstractions of linear subspaces of Euclidean spaces. This paper briefly surveys the LCP, oriented matroids and algorithms for the LCP on oriented matroids.

Given a combinatorial problem on a set of weighted elements, if we change the weight using a parameter, we obtain a parametric version of the problem, which is often used as a tool for solving mathematical programming problems. One interesting question is how to describe and analyze the trajectory of the solution. If we consider the trajectory of each weight function as a curve in a plane, we have a set of curves from the problem instance. The curves induces a cell complex called an arrangement, which is a popular research target in computational geometry. Especially, for the parametric version of the problem of computing the minimum weight base of a matroid or polymatroid, the trajectory of the solution becomes a subcomplex in an arrangement. We introduce the interaction between the two research areas, combinatorial optimization and computational geometry, through this bridge.

The invariant polynomials of discrete systems such as graphs, matroids, hyperplane arrangements, and simplicial complexes, have been theoretically investigated actively in recent years. These invariants include the Tutte polynomial of a graph and a matroid, the chromatic polynomial of a graph, the network reliability of a network, the Jones polynomial of a link, the percolation function of a grid, etc. The computational complexity issues of computing these invariants have been studied and most of them are shown to be #P-complete. But, these complexity results do not imply that we cannot compute the invariants of a given instance of moderate size in practice. To meet large demand of computing these invariants in practice, there have been proposed a framework of computing the invariants by using the binary decision diagrams (BDD for short). This provides mildly exponential algorithms which are useful to solve moderate-size practical problems. This paper surveys the BDD-based approach to computing the invariants, together with some computational results showing the usefulness of the framework.

This is a survey of algorithmic results in the theory of "discrete convex analysis" for integer-valued functions defined on integer lattice points. The theory parallels the ordinary convex analysis, covering discrete analogues of the fundamental concepts such as conjugacy, the Fenchel min-max duality, and separation theorems. The technical development is based on matroid-theoretic concepts, in particular, submodular functions and exchange axioms.

A quantitative study is made on performance of neutron penumbral imaging with a toroidal-segment aperture, and it focused on isoplanaticity of aperture point spread function and effect of the non-isoplanaticity on the reconstructed images. The results show that the aperture point spread function is satisfactorily isoplanatic for a small field of view, while for a large field of view the point spread function is not satisfactorily isoplanatic resulting in some distortion in the reconstructed image and reduction of resolution.