This paper describes a theoretical foundation of fuzzy morphological operations and architectural extension of the shared-weight neural network (SWNN). The network performs shift-invariant filtering using fuzzy-morphological operations for feature extraction. The nodes in the feature extraction stage employ the generalized-mean operator to implement fuzzy-morphological operations. The parameters of the SWNN, weights, morphological structuring element and fuzziness, are optimized by the error back-propagation (EBP) training method. The parameter values of the trained SWNN are then implanted into the extended SWNN (ESWNN) which is a simple convolution neural network. The ESWNN architecture dramatically reduces the amount of computation by avoiding segmentation process. The neural network is applied to automatic recognition of a vehicle in visible images. The network is tested with several sequences of images that include targets ranging from no occlusion to almost full occlusion. The results demonstrate an ability to detect occluded targets, while trained with non-occluded ones. In comparison, the proposed network was superior to the Minimum-Average Correlation filter systems and produced better results than the ordinary SWNN.

The chirp noise effect in a directly modulated semiconductor laser diode (LD) is experimentally studied. A previous theoretical study reported that, when an LD is directly modulated, turn-on jitter caused by spontaneous emission, combined with chromatic dispersion, becomes a source of noise in fiber transmission and restricts system performance. This paper points out that, on the contrary, imperfection in LD driving circuits causes chirp noise and limits transmission performance in actual systems. Experiments regarding dependence of chirp noise on LD modulation conditions are also presented, which show that a high relaxation oscillation frequency and a short turn-on delay time are preferable from the viewpoint of chirp noise.

Theoretical calculations of the pulsing operation and the intensity noise under the optical feedback are demonstrated for operation of the self-sustained pulsation lasers. Two alternative models for the optical feedback effect, namely the time delayed injection model and the external cavity model, are applied in a combined manner to analyze the phenomena. The calculation starts by supposing the geometrical structure of the laser and the material parameters, and are ended by evaluating the noise. Characteristics of the feedback induced noise for variations of the operating parameters, such as the injection current, the feedback distance and the feedback ratio, are examined. A comparison to experimental data is also given to ensure accuracy of the calculation.

A floorplan is a partition of a rectangle into subrectangles, each of which is associated with a module. Zero-wasted-area layouts are known to exist when the height and width of modules are constrained only by the area, and several methods have been proposed for deriving such layouts. However, because these methods are global and indirect, they are inherently slow. We propose a new algorithm which simulates the air-pressure mechanics. It begins with a layout, which is not necessarily feasible, and iterates the movement of one wall at a time to the force-balancing position. The key issue is that it is guaranteed that every movement makes a current layout approach a zero-wasted-area layout by the measure of energy which is defined here. Experimental results on the example in several literatures and artificially made complex examples showed very fast convergence. The algorithm is evolved to methods which move all the walls simultaneously, resulting in a further speed enhancement.

This paper describes the design and performance of a high-speed 6-bit ADC using SiGe HBT for measuring-instrument applications. We show that the Gummel-Poon model suffices for SiGe HBT modeling and then we describe that the folding/interpolation architecture as well as simple, differential circuit design are suitable for ADC design with SiGe HBT. Measured results show that the nonlinearity of the ADC is within 1/2 LSB, and the effective bits are 5. 2 bits at an input frequency of 100 MHz and 4. 2 bits at 200 MHz with 768 MS/s. We also describe some design issues for folding/interpolation ADC.

In the floorplan design problem, soft blocks can take various rectilinear shapes. The conventional floorplanning methods, however, restrict their shapes only to rectangle. As a result, waste area often remains in the layout. Some floorplanning methods have been developed to handle rectilinear hard blocks, however, no floorplanning methods have been developed to optimize rectilinear soft blocks. In this paper, we propose a floorplanning method which places rectilinear soft blocks. The advantages of the method are reducing both waste area and wire length. We present Separate-Rejoin method which efficiently forms rectilinear shapes for soft blocks. The result is obtained quickly because the method is based on the slicing structure in spite of handling rectilinear block. Thus, our method is suitable for practical use in terms of layout area, wire length and processing time. We applied our method to a benchmark example and an industrial data. For the benchmark example, our method reduces waste area by 25% and wire length by 13% in comparison with the conventional rectangular soft block approach.

Electroabsorption modulators are high speed devices that are rapidly being commercialised and finding applications in a number of areas, particularly in telecommunications. A CW laser diode modulated by an electroabsorption modulator constitutes an extremely stable, robust and simple source of high quality, high repetition rate ultrashort optical pulses. In this paper we describe the capabilities and limitations of such pulse sources, and present nonlinear pulse compression and manipulation techniques that allow one to overcome these limitations. We also present the design of a new class of comb-like dispersion-profiled fibre compressor. Such a compressor is easily fabricated from commercially available fibres and represents a simple yet powerful way of extending the range of pulse durations available. As the electroabsorption modulator is essentially a high speed switch it is also applicable to optical processing problems, and we report the application of such a device to demultiplexing.

This paper summarizes our recent efforts in modelocking Ti:sapphire lasers with semiconductor saturable absorber mirrors (SESAMs). We present the shortest optical pulses ever generated directly from a laser. The modelocking build-up time (T BU) of 60 µs is, to our knowledge, the shortest reported for a passively modelocked KLM laser to date.

We study nonlinear pulse propagation in an optical transmission system with dispersion compensation. This is particularly important for designing an ultra-fast long-haul communication system in the next generation. There exists a quasi-stationary pulse solution in such a system whose width and chirp are rapidly oscillating with the period of dispersion compensation. This pulse also has several new features such as enhanced power when compared with the soliton case with a uniform dispersion and a deformation from the sech-shape of soliton. We use the averaging method, and the averaged equation to describe the core of the pulse solution is shown to be the nonlinear Schrodinger equation having a nontrapping quadratic potential. Because of this potential, a pulse propagating in such a system eventually decays into dispersive waves in a way similar to the tunneling effect. However in a practical situation, the tunneling effect is estimated to be small, and the decay may be neglected.

This paper presents a new scheme to estimate depth in a natural three-dimensional scene using a multi-viewpoint image set. In the conventional Multiple-Baseline Stereo (MBS) scheme for the image set, although errors of stereo matching are somewhat reduced by using multiple stereo pairs, the use of square blocks of fixed size sometimes causes false matching, especially, in that image area where occlusion occurs and that image area of small variance of brightness levels. In the proposed scheme, the reference image is segmented into regions which are capable of being arbitrarily shaped, and a depth value is estimated for each region. Also, by comparing the image generated by projection with the original image, depth values are newly estimated in a top-down manner. Then, the error of the previous depth value is detected, and it is corrected. The results of experiments show advantages of the proposed scheme over the MBS scheme.

In the literatures [5] and [10], a systematic discussion is presented with respect to the optimum interpolation of multi-dimensional signals. However, the measures of error in these literatures are defined only in each limited block separately. Further, in these literatures, most of the discussion is limited to theoretical treatment and, for example, realization of higher order linear phase FIR filter bank is not considered. In this paper, we will present the optimum interpolation functions minimizing various measures of approximation error simultaneously. Firstly, we outline necessary formulation for the time-limited interpolation functions ψm(t) (m=0,1,. . . ,M-1) realizing the optimum approximation in each limited block separately, where m are the index numbers for analysis filters. Secondly, under some assumptions, we will present analytic or piece-wise analytic interpolation functions φm(t) minimizing various measures of approximation error defined at discrete time samples n=0, 1, 2,. . . . In this discussion, φm(n) are equal to ψm(n) n=0, 1, 2,. . . . Since ψm(t) are time-limited, φm(n) vanish outside of finite set of n. Hence, in designing discrete filter bank, one can use FIR filters if one wants to realize discrete synthesis filters which impulse responses are φm(n). Finally, we will present one-dimensional linear phase M channel FIR filter bank with high attenuation characteristic in each stop band. In this design, we adopt the cosine-sine modulation initially, and then, use the iterative approximation based on the reciprocal property.

Since spontaneously spoken language expressions appear continuously, the transfer stage of a spoken language machine translation system have to work incrementally. In such the system, the high degree of incrementality is also strongly required rather than that of quality. This paper proposes an incremental machine translation system, which translates English spoken words into Japanese in accordance with the order of appearances of them. The system is composed of three modules: incremental parsing, transfer and generation, which work synchronously. The transfer module utilizes some features and phenomena characterizing Japanese spoken language: flexible wordorder, ellipses, repetitions and so forth. This in influenced by the observational facts that such characteristics frequently appear in Japanese uttered by English-Japanese interpreters. Their frequent utilization is the key to success of the exceedingly incremental translation between English and Japanese, which have different word-order. We have implemented a prototype system Sync/Trans, which parses English dialogues incrementally and generates Japanese immediately. To evaluate Sync/Trans we fave made an experiment with the conversations consisting of 27 dialogues and 218 sentences. 190 of the sentences are correct, providing a success rate of 87.2%. This result shows our incremental method to be a promising technique for spoken language translation with acceptable accuracy and high real-time nature.

Three-dimensional (3-D) instrumentation using an image sequence is a promising instrumentation method for intelligent systems in which accurate 3-D information is required. However, real-time instrumentation is difficult since much computation time and a large memory bandwidth are required. In this paper, a 3-D instrumentation VLSI processor with a concurrent memory-access scheme is proposed. To reduce the access time, frequently used data are stored in a cache register array and are concurrently transferred to processing elements using simple interconnections to the 8-nearest neighbor registers. Based on a row and column memory access pattern, we propose a diagonally interleaved frame memory by which pixel values of a row and column are stored across memory modules. Based on the concurrent memory-access scheme, a 40 GOPS vprocessor is designed and the delay time for the instrumentation is estimated to be 42 ms for a 256256 images.

The introduction of networks providing Internet-like services such as the Open Computer Network (OCN) by NTT and others like it will lead to higher level demands by users. For example, users will be asking for higher quality, greater functionality, and lower charges for high-speed, high-throughput data transfer. To respond effectively to the wishes of sophisticated and varied users, technological development must be pursued from the user's point of view. For this reason, research and development is being performed on middleware to open up network functions and make it possible for the user and network to cooperate with each other. This paper discusses the development of major technologies for achieving an enhanced internetworking that should become a catalyst for the future multimedia network, and presents a future vision for the network.

Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGA's) are important devices for rapid system prototyping. Roth-Karp decomposition is one of the most popular decomposition techniques for Look-Up Table (LUT) -based FPGA technology mapping. In this paper, we propose a novel algorithm based on Binary Decision Diagrams (BDD's) for selecting good lambda set variables in Roth-Karp decomposition to minimize the number of consumed configurable logic blocks (CLB's) in FPGA's. The experimental results on a set of benchmarks show that our algorithm can produce much better results than the similar works of the previous approaches.

Nonlinear phenomena in perpendicular magnetic recording employing a single-pole head and a double-layered medium were investigated. First, measurement of linear superposition in the time domain indicated than the amount of nonlinear transition shift (NLTS) was less than 10 nm. It was concluded that the nonlinearity was caused by transition shift, not by waveform distortion. By interpreting the results, we proved that the NLTS was strongly related with head field gradient and interference field from recorded magnetization. Dependence on head parameter was examined by experiments. Based on the results, a single-pole head with which transition shift can be reduced was proposed. Pseudo-random sequence analysis revealed that NLTS was several percent even at 318 kFRPI, or at a bit interval of 80 nm, which agreed with the result of measurement of linear superposition in the time domain analysis. Experiments showed that NLTS increases the shortest bit length, in contrast with the case of longitudinal recording.

We propose an instruction-based variable priority scheme (IBVPS) which achieves high sustained memory throughput on a TCMP type vector supercomputer. Generally, there are two approaches to arbitrating interprocessor memory access conflict: request level priority control and fixed priority control. Each approach, however, affects performance in its own way: In the case of request level priority control, mutual obstruction causes a performance degradation, and in the case of fixed priority control, memory bank monopoly causes a performance degradation. Mutual obstruction refers to the interference among access requests coming from different instructions; memory bank monopoly refers to the un-interrupted accessing of the same memory bank by a series of higher priority instructions. The strategy of the instruction-based variable priority scheme consists in: (a) generally changing the priority assignment of all load/store pipelines at the end of any instruction running in the system, and (b) changing the priority assignment of all load/store pipelines more than once in the middle of an access instruction with a stride greater than 1 or an indirect access instruction which may monopolize some memory banks for an extended period of time. This strategy reduces mutual obstruction because the priority assignment is reshuffled for the entire group of load/store pipelines at a time. it also reduces memory bank monopoly because the opportunity for memory access is made equal among different instructions by changing the priority assignment at the end of an instruction. Moreover, it prevents the memory bank monopoly by a memory access instruction with a stride greater than 1 or an indirect access instruction, by changing the priority assignment more frequently. Consequently, high sustained memory throughput is achieved on TCMP type vector supercomputers.

The pattern spectrum has been proposed to represent morphological size distribution of an image. However, the conventional pattern spectrum cannot extract approximate shape information from image objects spotted by noisy pixels since this is based only on opening. In this paper, a novel definition of the pattern spectrum, morphological multiresolution pattern spectrum (MPS), involving both opening and closing is proposed. MPS is capable of distinguishing details from approximate information of the image.

With the rapid increase in recording density in recent years, the development of media with high coercivity and low noise has become an important issue in perpendicular as well as longitudinal recording. Compared with the CoCr binary system, the CoCrTa system is more effective in increasing coercivity. The increase in coercivity is due to not Ta segregation but to enhanced Cr segregation at column boundaries caused by Ta addition. When a Ti underlayer with uniform thickness was used, there was no improvement in c-axis alignment of the magnetic layers in CoCrTa and CoCrPt films, although the lattice mismatch of Co ternary alloys with Ti was much reduced compared with that of the CoCr film with Ti. This indicates that there may be no direct heteroepitaxial relationship between Ti underlayer and CoCr alloys at the Ti-Co alloy interface. In the case of the CoCrPt film, perpendicular coercivity increased linearly as Pt content increased up to 10at%. When Pt content was about 13at%, the shape of the M-H loop showed characteristics of domain wall motion reversal, which indicated strong exchange coupling among columns. When Ta content was increased to 4at% in the CoCrPt film, perpendicular coercivity increased and the shape of the M-H loop suggested that the domain wall motion reversal behavior was much reduced. This is thought to be associated with Cr segregation at column boundaries by Ta addition.

Time decay of magnetic properties in perpendicular magnetic recording media was studied. It was suggested that magnetization in media with a low energy ratio, KV/kT, of 50 is thermally stable in the absence of a demagnetizing field while coercivity exhibits a large time dependence. Magnetization in perpendicular recording media exhibited an appreciable time decay even for films with a large energy ratio of 300. The decay is attributed to the small perpendicular squareness due to a large perpendicular demagnetizing field acting in the media. The recording density dependence of the time decay in the output was explained in terms of the change in the demagnetizing field with the density. It is concluded that the use of media with large squareness as well as large energy ratio effectively reduces time decay in the output.