This paper proposes a new method for automatic improvement in image quality through adjusting the image sharpness. This method does not need prior knowledge about image blur. To improve image quality, the sharpness must be adjusted to an optimal value. This paper shows a new method to evaluate sharpness without MTF. It is considered that the human visual system judges image sharpness mainly based upon edge area features. Therefore, attention is paid to the high spatial frequency components in the edge area. The value is defined by the average intensity of the high spatial fequency components in the edge area. This is called the image edge sharpness" value. Using several images, edge sharpness values are compared with experimental results for subjective sharpness. According to the experiments, the calculated edge sharpness values show a good linear relation with subjective sharpness. Subjective image sharpness does not have a monotonic relation with subjective image quality. If the edge sharpness value is in a particular range, the image quality is judged to be good. According to the subjective experiments, an optimal edge sharpness value for image quality was obtained. This paper also shows an algorithm to alter an image into one which has another edge sharpness value. By altering the image, which achieves optimal edge sharpness using this algorithm, image sharpness can be optimally adjusted automatically. This new image improving method was applied to several images obtained by scanning photographs. The experimental results were quite good.

This paper first proposes a fast fingerprint identification method based on a weighted-mean of binary image, and further investigates optimization of the weights. The proposed method uses less computer memory than the conventional pattern matching method, and takes less computation time than both the feature extraction method and the pattern matching method. It is particularly effective on the fingerprints with a small angle of inclination. In order to improve the identification precision of the proposed basic method, three schemes of modifying the proposed basic method are also proposed. The performance of the proposed basic method and its modified schemes is evaluated by theoretical analysis and computer experiment using the fingerprint images recorded from a fingerprint read-in device. The numerical results showed that the proposed method using the modified schemes can improve both the true acceptance rate and the false rejection rate with less memory and complexity in comparison with the conventional pattern matching method and the feature extraction method.

This paper considers the problem of finding a largest common subgraph of graphs, which is an important problem in chemical synthesis. It is known that the problem is NP-hard even if graphs are restricted to planar graphs of vertex degree at most three. By the way, a graph is called an almost tree if E(B)V(B)+ K holds for every block B where K is a constant. In this paper, a polynomial time algorithm for finding a largest common subgraph of two graphs which are connected, almost trees and of bounded vertex degree. The algorithm is an extension of a subtree isomorphism algorithm which is based on dynamic programming. Moreover, it is shown that the degree bound is essential. That is, the problem of finding a largest common subgraph of two connected almost trees is proved to be NP-hard for any K0 if degree is not bounded. The three dimensional matching problem, a well known NP-complete problem, is reduced to the problem.

A YBCO/CeO2/Au MIS structure (YBCO:YBa2Cu3O7y) is fabricated on a MgO(100) substrate with the help of the all-in-situ electron-beam and heater coevaperation system. The current-voltage (I-V) characteristics of the deposited YBCO film under various gate voltages are examined. Small modulation of the I-V characteristics by gate voltages can be observed. Meanwhile, the surface morphology is also studied by means of an atomic force microscope (AFM). The relation between the field effect and the surface morphology of a thin YBCO film is discussed.

This system called COKIS automatically extracts knowledge about C functions from the UNIX on-line manual by using its description paragraph and the user can interactively inquire to the system in order to know about UNIX C functions. The idea is motivated on the one side to free users from being involved in an exhaustive knowledge acquisition in the past, and to examine problems in understanding knowledge itself on the other. We propose Memory Processor which is implemented to realize extracting knowledges from corpus and processing dialogues in the inquiry system at the same modules.

To improve measurement accuracy and speed, a switched-capacitor capacitance measurement circuit with the vernier scale is developed. Its process consists of a coarse measurement by charge-balancing A-D conversion and a fine measurement by single-slope A-D conversion. a prototype using discrete components confirms the principles of operation.

The performance of processing elements can be improved by the progress of VLSI circuit technology, while the communication overhead can not be negligible in parallel processing system. This paper presents a unified scheduling that allocates tasks having different task processing times in multiple processing elements. The objective function is formulated to measure communication time between processing elements. By employing constraint conditions, the scheduling efficiently generates an optimal solution using an integer programming so that minimum communication time can be achieved. We also propose a VLSI processor for robotics whose latency is very small. In the VLSI processor, the data transfer between two processing elements can be done very quickly, so that the communication cycle time is greatly reduced.

Recessed-gate DMTs (doped-channel hetero-MISFETs) with i-AlGaAs/n-GaAs structure and pseudomorphic i-AlGaAs/n-InGaAs/i-GaAs structure have been developed. Broad plateaus in gm and fT provide evidence that the DMTs make the devices suitable for high-speed large-signal operation. GaAs DMTs with 0.35 µm-length have gate turn on voltage of 0.7 V, maximum transconductance of 320 mS/mm and fT of 41 GHz. Pseudomorphic DMTs have gate turn on voltage of 0.9 V, maximum transconductance of 320 mS/mm, fT of 42 GHz and have the enhanced advantages of high current drivability and large gate swing. Further more, with the use of the recessed-gate DMTs, a high-speed laser driver IC for multi-Gb/s optical communication systems are demonstrated. This laser driver IC operates at 10 Gb/s with rise and fall times as fast as 40 psec, and it can drive up to 60 mA into a 25 Ω load.

This paper describes a monolithic 10-b A/D converter that realized a maximum conversion frequency of 300 MHz. Through the development of the interpolated-parallel scheme, the severe requirement for the transistor Vbe matching can be alleviated drastically, which improves differential nonlinearity (DNL) significantly to within 0.4 LSB. Furthermore, an extremely small input capacitance of 8 pF can be attained, which translates into better dynamic performance such as SNR of 56 dB and THD of 59 dB for an input frequency of 10 MHz. Additionally, the folded differential logic circuit has been developed to reduce the number of elements, power dissipation, and die area drastically. Consequently, the A/D converter has been implemented as a 9.0 4.2-mm2 chip integrating 36K elements, which consumes 4.0 W using a 1.0-µm-rule, 25-GHz ft, double-polysilicon self-aligned bipolar technology.

This paper proposes a superposed SSMA (Spread Spectrum Multiple Access)-QPSK (Quadrature Phase Shift Keying) signal transmission scheme over high speed QPSK signals to achieve higher frequency utilization efficiency and to facilitate lower power transmitters for SSMA-QPSK signal transmission. Experimental results show that the proposed scheme which employs the coding-rate of one-half FEC (Forward Error Correction) and a newly proposed co-channel interference cancellation scheme for SSMA-QPSK signals can transmit twenty SSMA-QPSK channels simultaneously over a nonlinearly amplified high speed QPSK signal transmission channel and achieve as ten times SSMA channels transmission as that without co-channel interference cancellation when the SSMA-QPSK signal power to the high speed QPSK signal power ratio equals -30dB. Moreover, cancellation feasibility generation of the interference signals replica through practical hardware implementation is clarified.

The authors recently proposed a design method of stable IIR digital filters based on the interpolation by rational characteristic functions of filters, for a set of values of these characteristic function and, in addition, their higher derivatives prescribed at a number of frequency. This method can be further extended so that, despite usage of a less number of interpolation points, almost the same filter characteristics as one obtained by the former method can be realized. This paper presents an improved design method for making the transfer function meet strict magnitude specifications. The method proposed in this paper is especially efficient for designing a filter whose characteristics is specified not only in the passband but also in the transition band with relatively narrow bandwidth.

Copper contamination behavior is studied, depending on the pH level, conductivity type P or N of a silicon substrate, and contamination method of copper. If the pH level of a copper containing solution is adjusted by using ammonia, copper atoms and ammonia molecules produce copper ion complexes. Accordingly, the amount of copper adsorption on the substrate surface is decreased. When N-type silicon substrates are contaminated by means of copper containing solutions, copper atoms on the surfaces diffuse into bulk crystal even at room temperature. But for P-type silicon substrates, copper atoms are transferred into bulk crystal only after high temperature annealing. In the case of silicon substrates contaminated by contact with metallic copper, no copper atom diffusion into bulk crystal was observed. The above mentioned copper contamination behavior can be explained by the charge transfer interaction of copper atoms with silicon substrates.

Mathematical morphology clarified geometrical properties of shape analysis algorithms for binary pictures. Results of labelling, distance transform, and adjacent numbering are, however, coded pictures. For full descriptions of shape analysis algorithms in the framework of mathematical morphology, it is necessary to extend morphological operations to code-labelled pictorial data. Nevertheless, extensions of morphology to code-labelled pictures have never discussed though the theory of gray morphology is well studied by several authors. Hence, this paper proposes a theory of the coded morphology which is based on the binary scaling of labels of pixels. The method uses n-layered binary sub-pictures for the processing of a picture with 2n labels. By introducing morphological operations for the coded point sets, we express some coding functions in the manner of the mathematical morphology. We also derive multidimensional array registers and gates which store and process coded pictures and morphological operations to them by proposing basic gates which compute parallelly logical operations for elements of Boolean layered arrays. These gates and registers are suitable for the implementation of the shape analysis processors on the three-dimensional VLSI and ULSI.

An efficient technique for expressing document image is required as part of a unified approach to document image processing. This paper presents a new method, Minimum Covering Run (MCR), for expressing binary images. The name being adapted from horizontal or vertical run representation. The proposed technique uses some horizontal and vertical runs together to represent binary images in which the total number of representative runs is minimized. Considering the characteristic of above run types precisely, it is shown that horizontal and vertical runs of any binary image could be thought of as partite sets of a bipartite graph. Consequently, the MCR expression that corresponds to the construction of one of the most interesting problems in graphs; i.e., maximum matching, is analogously found by using an algorithm which solves this problem in a corresponding graph. The most efficient algorithm takes at most O(n5/2) computations for solving the problem where n is the sum of cardinalities of both partite sets. However, some patterns in images like tables or line drowings, generally, have a large number of runs representing them which results in a long processing time. Therefore, we provide the Rectangular Segment Analysis (RSA) as a pre-processing to define runs representing such patterns beforehand. We also show that horizontal and vertical covering parts of the proposed expression are able to represent stroke components of characters in document images. As an implementation, an efficient algorithm including arrangement for run data structure of the MCR expression is presented. The experimental results show the possibility of stroke extraction of characters in document images. As an application, some patterns such as tables can be extracted from document images.

A new method for interpolating boundary function values and first derivatives of a triangle is presented. This method has a relatively simple construction and involves no compatibility constraints. The polynomial precision set of the interpolation function constructed includes all the cubic polynomial and less. The testing results show that the surface produced by the proposed method is better than the ones by weighted combination schemes in both of the fairness and preciseness.

In order to evaluate multipath signal strengths reflected by mountain, a fundamental equation is derived for both cases where antenna beams are larger and smaller than a reflecting plane, assuming that reflection consists of absoption and scattering at the mountain surface. Absorption loss at a mountain surface was measured on a model propagation path by using sharp beam antennas to separately pick up the mountain-reflected signal.

This paper describes issues on dialogue corpora for speech and natural language research. Speech and text corpora of dialogue have recently become more important for the development and the evaluation of speech and text-based dialogue systems. However, the design and the construction of dialogue corpora themselves still remain research issues and many problems have not yet been clarified. Many kinds of corpus are necessary to study various aspects of dialogues. On the other hand, each corpus should contain a certain quantity for each purpose in order to make it statistically meaningful. This paper presents the issues related with design and creation of dialogue corpora; the selection of a task domain, transcription conventions, situations for the collection, syntactic and semantic ill-formedness, and politeness. Future directions for dialogue corpora creation are also discussed.

Modeling and performance analysis have played an important role in the economical design and efficient operation of switching systems, and is currently becoming more important because the switching systems should handle a wide range of traffic characteristics, meeting the grade of service requirements of each traffic type. Without these techniques we could no longer achieve economy and efficiency of the switching systems in complex traffic characteristic environments. From the beginning of research on electronic switching systems offering circuit-switched applications, Stored Program Control (SPC) technology has posed challenges in the area of modeling and performance analysis as well as queueing structure, efficient scheduling, and overload control strategy design. Not only teletraffic engineers and performance analysts, but also queueing theorists have been attracted to this new field, and intensive research activities, both in theory and in practice, have continued over the past two decades, now evolving to even a broader technical field including traditional performance analysis. This article reviews a number of important issues that have been raised and solved, and whose solutions have been reflected in the design of SPC switching systems. It first discusses traffic problems for centralized control systems. It next discusses traffic problems inherent in distributed switching systems.

Extended interpolatory approximations are discussed for some classes of n-dimensional stochastic signals expressed as the orthogonal expansions with respect to a given set of orthonormal functions. We assume that the norm of the weighted mutual correlation function of the signal is smaller than a given positive number. The presented approximation has the minimum measure of approximation error among all the linear and nonlinear statistical approximations using the similar measure of error and the same generalized moments of these signals.

An algorithm is presented for selecting the k-th smallest element of a totally ordered (but not sorted) set of n elements, 1kn, in the case that a special-purpose sorter is used as a coprocessor. When the pipeline merge sorter is used as the special-purpose sorter, we analyze the comparison complexity of the algorithm for the given capacity of the sorter. The comparison complexity of the algorithm is 1.4167no(n), provided that the capacity of the sorter is 256 elements. The comparison complexity of the algorithm decreases as the capacity of the sorter increases.