Reduction of the intensity noise in semiconductor lasers is an important subject for the higher performance of an application. Simultaneous usage of the superposition of high frequency current and the electric negative feedback loop was proposed to suppress the noise for the higher power operation of semiconductor lasers. Effective noise reduction of more than 25 dB with 80 mW operation was experimentally demonstrated.

Digital still cameras emerged following the introduction of the Sony Mavica analog prototype camera in 1981. These early cameras produced poor image quality and did not challenge film cameras for overall quality. By 1995 digital still cameras in expensive SLR formats had 6 mega-pixels and produced high quality images (with significant image processing). In 2005 significant improvement in image quality was apparent and lower prices for digital still cameras (DSCs) started a rapid decline in film usage and film camera sells. By 2010 film usage was mostly limited to professionals and the motion picture industry. The rise of DSCs was marked by a “pixel war” where the driving feature of the cameras was the pixel count where even moderate cost, ∼ $120, DSCs would have 14 mega-pixels. The improvement of CMOS technology pushed this trend of lower prices and higher pixel counts. Only the single lens reflex cameras had large sensors and large pixels. The drive for smaller pixels hurt the quality aspects of the final image (sharpness, noise, speed, and exposure latitude). Only today are camera manufactures starting to reverse their course and producing DSCs with larger sensors and pixels. This paper will explore why larger pixels and sensors are key to the future of DSCs.

Ultra-wide band (UWB) pulse radar with high range resolution and dielectric permeability is promising as an internal imaging technique for non-destructive testing or breast cancer detection. Various imaging algorithms for buried objects within a dielectric medium have been proposed, such as aperture synthesis, the time reversal approach and the space-time beamforming algorithm. However, these algorithms mostly require a priori knowledge of the dielectric medium boundary in image focusing, and often suffer from inadequate accuracy to identify the detailed structure of buried targets, such as an edge or specular surface owing to employing the waveform focusing scheme. To overcome these difficulties, this paper proposes an accurate and non-parametric (i.e. using an arbitrary shape without target modeling) imaging algorithm for targets buried in a homogeneous dielectric medium by advancing the RPM (Range Points Migration) algorithm to internal imaging issues, which has been demonstrated to provide an accurate image even for complex-shaped objects in free-space measurement. Numerical simulations, including those for two-dimensional (2-D) and three-dimensional (3-D) cases, verify that the proposed algorithm enhances the imaging accuracy by less than 1/10 of the wavelength and significantly reduces the computational cost by specifying boundary extraction compared with the conventional SAR-based algorithm.

In this paper, we propose a switchable linear prediction (LP)/warped linear prediction (WLP) hybrid scheme for the transform coded excitation (TCX) coder, which is adopted as a core codec in AMR-WB+ and USAC. The proposed algorithm selects either an LP or WLP filter on a per-frame basis. To provide a smooth transitions between LP and WLP frames, a window switching scheme is developed using sine and rectangular windows. In addition, a Gaussian Mixture Model (GMM)-based classification module is used to determine the prediction mode. Through a subjective listening test it was confirmed that the proposed LP/WLP switching scheme offers improved sound quality.

This paper presents a novel algorithm to generate homogeneous superpixels from Markov random walks. We exploit Markov clustering (MCL) as the methodology, a generic graph clustering method based on stochastic flow circulation. In particular, we introduce a graph pruning strategy called compact pruning in order to capture intrinsic local image structure. The resulting superpixels are homogeneous, i.e. uniform in size and compact in shape. The original MCL algorithm does not scale well to a graph of an image due to the square computation of the Markov matrix which is necessary for circulating the flow. The proposed pruning scheme has the advantages of faster computation, smaller memory footprint, and straightforward parallel implementation. Through comparisons with other recent techniques, we show that the proposed algorithm achieves state-of-the-art performance.

The existing routing protocols for the interplanetary backbone network did not consider future link connection and link congestion. A novel routing protocol named CAMARP for the interplanetary backbone network is proposed in this letter. We use wait delay to consider future link connection and make the best next hop selection. A load balancing mechanism is used to avoid congestion. The proposed method leads to a better and more efficient distribution of traffic, and also leads to lower packet drop rates and higher throughput. CAMARP demonstrates good performance in the experiment.

This paper presents an ADPLL using a hierarchical TDC composed of a 4fLO DCO followed by a divide-by-4 circuit and three stages of known phase interpolators. We derived simple design requirements for ensuring precision of the phase interpolator. The proposed architecture provides immunity to PVT and local variations, which allows calibration-free operation, as well as sub-inverter delay resolution contributing to good in-band phase noise performance. Also the hierarchical TDC makes it possible to employ a selective activation scheme for power saving. Measured performances demonstrate the above advantages and the in-band phase noise reaches -104 dBc/Hz. It is fabricated in a 65 nm CMOS process and the active area is 0.18 mm2.

Mirrored serpentine microstrip lines are proposed for a parallel high speed digital signaling to reduce the peak far-end crosstalk (FEXT) voltage. Mirrored serpentine microstrip lines consist of two serpentine microstrip lines, each one equal to a conventional normal serpentine microstrip line. However, one serpentine microstrip line of the mirrored serpentine microstrip lines is flipped in the length direction, and thus, two serpentine microstrip lines face each other. Time domain reflectometry measurements show that the peak FEXT voltage of the mirrored serpentine microstrip lines is reduced by 56.4% of that of conventional microstrip lines and 30.0% of that of conventional normal serpentine microstrip lines.

We propose a novel method for measuring the matched total radiated power (TRP) and matched total radiated sensitivity (TRS) of small radio terminals, called over-the-air (OTA) measurement, using a spheroidal coupler (SC). To measure these parameters accurately in a multiple-reflection environment, such as in an SC, we developed two key techniques, i.e. displacement method and reflection compensation method, and verified their effectiveness by several simulations and fundamental experiments on a test transmitter. We also describe an absolute method for measuring antenna radiation efficiency using the displacement method. Furthermore, we describe TRP and TRS measurements for actual UMTS (Universal Mobile Telecommunications System) terminals, and verify that the proposed method achieves quick measurements with good accuracy. The SC provides a compact, low-cost OTA measurement system with high sensitivity and high speed.

Cooperative relaying, while effective in mitigating fading effects, might reduce the overall network throughput since its overhead such as additional time slot and frequency band can be significant. In order to overcome this problem, this paper proposes a superposition coding based cooperative relay scheme to provide reliable transmission with little or no overhead. This scheme exploits the superimposed messages for users in the network to achieve the simultaneous transmission of two or more independent data streams. This scheme reduces the number of transmission phases to the same as that of conventional cooperative relay schemes. The symbol error performance of the proposed scheme is analyzed and simulated.

In this paper, we derive a simple formula to generate a wide-sense systematic generator matrix(we call it quasi-systematic) B for a Reed-Solomon code. This formula can be utilized to construct an efficient interpolation based erasure-only decoder with time complexity O(n2) and space complexity O(n). Specifically, the decoding algorithm requires 3kr + r2 - 2r field additions, kr + r2 + r field negations, 2kr + r2 - r + k field multiplications and kr + r field inversions. Compared to another interpolation based erasure-only decoding algorithm derived by D.J.J. Versfeld et al., our algorithm is much more efficient for high-rate Reed-Solomon codes.

We describe a multi-step approach for automatic segmentation of the femoral head and the acetabulum in the hip joint from three dimensional (3D) CT images. Our segmentation method consists of the following steps: 1) construction of the valley-emphasized image by subtracting valleys from the original images; 2) initial segmentation of the bone regions by using conventional techniques including the initial threshold and binary morphological operations from the valley-emphasized image; 3) further segmentation of the bone regions by using the iterative adaptive classification with the initial segmentation result; 4) detection of the rough bone boundaries based on the segmented bone regions; 5) 3D reconstruction of the bone surface using the rough bone boundaries obtained in step 4) by a network of triangles; 6) correction of all vertices of the 3D bone surface based on the normal direction of vertices; 7) adjustment of the bone surface based on the corrected vertices. We evaluated our approach on 35 CT patient data sets. Our experimental results show that our segmentation algorithm is more accurate and robust against noise than other conventional approaches for automatic segmentation of the femoral head and the acetabulum. Average root-mean-square (RMS) distance from manual reference segmentations created by experienced users was approximately 0.68 mm (in-plane resolution of the CT data).

This paper describes a method for estimating Direction Of Arrival (DOA) of multiple sound sources in full azimuth with three microphones. Estimating DOA with paired microphone arrays creates imaginary sound sources because of time delay of arrival (TDOA) being identical between real and imaginary sources. Imaginary sound sources can create chronic problems in multiple Sound Source Localization (SSL), because they can be localized as real sound sources. Our proposed approach is based on the observation that each microphone array creates imaginary sound sources, but the DOA of imaginary sources may be different depending on the orientation of the paired microphone array. With the fact that a real source would always be localized in the same direction regardless of the array orientation, we can suppress the imaginary sound sources by minimum filtering based on Steered Response Power – Phase Transform (SRP-PHAT) method. A set of experiments conducted in a real noisy environment showed that the proposed method was accurate in localizing multiple sound sources.

In this paper, we propose a synthesis method for asynchronous circuits with bundled-data implementation. The proposed method iteratively applies behavioral synthesis and floorplanning to obtain a near optimum circuit in the term of latency under given design constraints. To improve latency, behavioral synthesis and floorplanning are carried out so that the delay of the control circuit is minimized and the addition of delay elements to satisfy timing constraints is minimized. We evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed method in terms of latency, area, and the number of timing violations while synthesizing several benchmarks. Experimental results show that the proposed method synthesizes faster circuits compared to the circuit synthesized without the proposed method. Also, the proposed method is effective to reduce the number of timing violations.

The cause-and-effect relation between plasmon-resonance absorption and surface wave in a sinusoidal metal grating is investigated. By introducing an equivalent impedance model, similar to an equivalent circuit on an electric circuit, which is an impedance boundary value problem on the fictitious surface over the grating, we estimate the surface wave from the eigen field of the model by using the resonance property of the scattered field. Through numerical examples, we illustrate that the absorption in the grating occurs in the condition of exciting the surface wave along the model, and the real part of the surface impedance is negative on about half part of the fictitious surface in the condition.

In this letter, we propose and analyze a cooperative transmission scheme (CTS) that uses transmission timing control for LTE enterprise femtocells. In our scheme, the user equipment (UE) can receive the desired signal from an adjacent fBS as well as its serving femtocell BS (fBS). Thus, UE achieves an improved signal to interference ratio (SIR) due to the synchronization of the two signals. Analysis and simulation results show that the proposed scheme can reduce the outage probability for enterprise femtocells compared to the conventional system. In particular, a significant performance improvement can be achieved for UEs located at cell edges.

Let G be a connected graph in which we designate a vertex or a block (a biconnected component) as the center of G. For each cut-vertex v, let Gv be the connected subgraph induced from G by v and the vertices that will be separated from the center by removal of v, where v is designated as the root of Gv. We consider the set R of all such rooted subgraphs in G, and assign an integer, called an index, to each of the subgraphs so that two rooted subgraphs in R receive the same indices if and only if they are isomorphic under the constraint that their roots correspond each other. In this paper, assuming a procedure for computing a signature of each graph in a class of biconnected graphs, we present a framework for computing indices to all rooted subgraphs of a graph G with a center which is composed of biconnected components from . With this framework, we can find indices to all rooted subgraphs of a outerplanar graph with a center in linear time and space.

A Mur type analytical absorbing boundary condition (A-ABC), which is based on the one-dimensional one-way wave equation, is proposed for multidimensional wave analysis by introducing the directional splitting technique. This new absorbing boundary condition is expansion of the first-order Mur. The absorbing ability, required memory, and calculation speed of the Mur type A-ABC are evaluated by comparison with those of conventional ABCs. The result indicated that absorbing ability of the proposed ABC is higher than the first-order Mur and lower than the second-order Mur at large incident angle. While, our proposed ABC has advantage in both required memory and calculation speed by comparison with the second-order Mur. Thus, effectivity of the proposed Mur type A-ABC is shown.

A compact and wide stopband low-pass filter (LPF) which consists of a hairpin structural resonator, a chip-capacitor, and inductor lines is proposed in this paper. With the capacitor loaded, the hairpin structure realized three transmission zeros in the stopband. The LPF with one hairpin unit was designed using the conventional prototype design procedure in the passband. To further improve the stopband characteristics, the LPF with three hairpin units was studied and designed with the same manner as in a one unit LPF. The finally designed three-hairpin LPF showed mostly 60 dB rejection characteristics in the conjunction with defected ground condition for avoiding the spurious response at the stopband. The measurement results agreed well with simulated ones.

In this paper, we propose a duplicate document detection model recognizing both partial duplicates and near duplicates. The proposed model can detect partial duplicates as well as exact duplicates by splitting a large document into many small sentence fingerprints. Furthermore, the proposed model can detect even near duplicates, the result of trivial revisions, by filtering the common words and reordering the word sequence.