In this letter, we propose a method for obtaining a clear and natural output image by tuning the illumination component in an input image. The proposed method is based on the retinex process and it is suitable for the image quality improvement of images of which illumination is insufficient.

How to manage the video streaming in future networks is becoming a more and more challenging issue. Recent studies on vehicular networks depict a new picture of the next generation Intelligent Transport System (ITS), with high level road safety and more comfortable driving experience. To cope with the heterogeneous network development for the next generation cellular network, centralized medium control is promising to be employed upon Road Side Unit (RSU). To accommodate the QoS constraints posed by video services in vehicular networks, the scalable video coding (SVC) scheme in H.264/AVC standard family offers spatial and temporal scalabilities in the video dissemination. In this paper, we target the resource allocation and layer selection problem for the multi-user video streaming over highway scenario, by employing SVC coding scheme for the video contents. We propose a Resource Allocation and Layer Selection (RALS) algorithm, which explicitly takes account of the utility value of each Group Of Picture (GOP) among all the vehicular users. Simulation results show that our proposed RALS algorithm outperforms the comparison schemes in typical scenarios.

A secure identification scheme for JPEG images is proposed in this paper. The aim is to robustly identify JPEG images which are generated from the same original image under various compression levels in security. A property of the positive and negative signs of DCT coefficients is employed to achieve a robust scheme. The proposed scheme is robust against a difference in compression levels, and does not produce false negative matches in any compression level. Conventional schemes that have this property are not secure. To construct a secure identification system, we combine a new error correction technique with 1-bit parity with a fuzzy commitment scheme, which is a well-known biometric cryptosystem. In addition, a way for speeding up the identification is also proposed. The experimental results show the proposed scheme is effective for not only still images, but also video sequences in terms of the querying such as false positive, false negative and true positive matches, while keeping a high level of the security.

Microwave heating is expected to increase the yield of product, to decrease the reaction time, and to discover the new reaction system. The Rolling Circle Amplification (RCA) is an enzymatic synthesis method of deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) strands with repeated sequence of a circulate template-DNA. In previous study, controlled microwave heating accelerated the maximum 4-fold compared with the conventional condition. Further, we indicated that the selectively heat of some buffer components by microwave irradiation induced the acceleration of RCA. The purpose of this research is to clarify the relationship between the microwave heating and buffer components. The understanding of role of ion-containing buffer components under microwave will be able to control the microwave-assisted enzymatic reaction. We studied the relation between the microwave power loss and RCA components via dielectric measurements, cavity resonator feature measurement, and electromagnetic simulation. Electromagnetic simulation of the TM010 cavity showed that the sample tube was heated only by an electric field. The buffer containing ions of the RCA components was selectively heated via microwave irradiation in the TM010 cavity resonator.

In satellite/terrestrial integrated mobile communication systems (STICSs), a user terminal directly connects both terrestrial and satellite base stations. STICS enables expansion of service areas and provides a robust communication service for large disasters. However, the cell radius of the satellite system is large (approximately 100km), and thus a capacity enhancement of the satellite subsystem for accommodating many users is needed. Therefore, in this paper, we propose an application of two methods — multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) transmission using multi-satellites and non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) for STICS — to realize the performance improvement in terms of system capacity and user fairness. Through numerical simulations, we show that system capacity and user fairness are increased by the proposed scheme that applies the two methods.

In a previous work [1], Wang et al. proposed a privacy-preserving outsourcing scheme for biometric identification in cloud computing, namely CloudBI. The author claimed that it can resist against various known attacks. However, there exist serious security flaws in their scheme, and it can be completely broken through a small number of constructed identification requests. In this letter, we modify the encryption scheme and propose an improved version of the privacy-preserving biometric identification design which can resist such attack and can provide a much higher level of security.

As an important extension of high-efficiency video coding (HEVC), screen content coding (SCC) includes various new coding modes, such as Intra Block Copy (IBC), Palette-based coding (Palette), and Adaptive Color Transform (ACT). These new tools have improved screen content encoding performance. This paper proposed a novel and fast algorithm by classifying Code Units (CUs) as text CUs or non-text CUs. For text CUs, the Intra mode was skipped in the compression process, whereas for non-text CUs, the IBC mode was skipped. The current CU depth range was then predicted according to its adjacent left CU depth level. Compared with the reference software HM16.7+SCM5.4, the proposed algorithm reduced encoding time by 23% on average and achieved an approximate 0.44% increase in Bjøntegaard delta bit rate and a negligible peak signal-to-noise ratio loss.

We propose a novel method for estimating acoustic scenes such as user activities, e.g., “cooking,” “vacuuming,” “watching TV,” or situations, e.g., “being on the bus,” “being in a park,” “meeting,” utilizing the information of acoustic events. There are some methods for estimating acoustic scenes that associate a combination of acoustic events with an acoustic scene. However, the existing methods cannot adequately express acoustic scenes, e.g., “cooking,” that have more than one subordinate category, e.g., “frying ingredients” or “plating food,” because they directly associate acoustic events with acoustic scenes. In this paper, we propose an acoustic scene estimation method based on a hierarchical probabilistic generative model of an acoustic event sequence taking into account the relation among acoustic scenes, their subordinate categories, and acoustic event sequences. In the proposed model, each acoustic scene is represented as a probability distribution over their unsupervised subordinate categories, called “acoustic sub-topics,” and each acoustic sub-topic is represented as a probability distribution over acoustic events. Acoustic scene estimation experiments with real-life sounds showed that the proposed method could correctly extract subordinate categories of acoustic scenes.

Automated biometrics identification using finger vein images has increasingly generated interest among researchers with emerging applications in human biometrics. The traditional feature-level fusion strategy is limited and expensive. To solve the problem, this paper investigates the possible use of infrared hybrid finger patterns on the back side of a finger, which includes both the information of finger vein and finger dorsal textures in original image, and a database using the proposed hybrid pattern is established. Accordingly, an Intersection enhanced Gabor based Direction Coding (IGDC) method is proposed. The Experiment achieves a recognition ratio of 98.4127% and an equal error rate of 0.00819 on our newly established database, which is fairly competitive.

This paper aims to investigate the performance improvements made possible by combining various major language model (LM) technologies together and to reveal the interactions between LM technologies in spontaneous automatic speech recognition tasks. While it is clear that recent practical LMs have several problems, isolated use of major LM technologies does not appear to offer sufficient performance. In consideration of this fact, combining various LM technologies has been also examined. However, previous works only focused on modeling technologies with limited text resources, and did not consider other important technologies in practical language modeling, i.e., use of external text resources and unsupervised adaptation. This paper, therefore, employs not only manual transcriptions of target speech recognition tasks but also external text resources. In addition, unsupervised LM adaptation based on multi-pass decoding is also added to the combination. We divide LM technologies into three categories and employ key ones including recurrent neural network LMs or discriminative LMs. Our experiments show the effectiveness of combining various LM technologies in not only in-domain tasks, the subject of our previous work, but also out-of-domain tasks. Furthermore, we also reveal the relationships between the technologies in both tasks.

This paper presents a non-crossover and multi-mutation based genetic algorithm (NMGA) for the Flexible Job-shop Scheduling problem (FJSP) with the criterion to minimize the maximum completion time (makespan). Aiming at the characteristics of FJSP, three mutation operators based on operation sequence coding and machine assignment coding are proposed: flip, slide, and swap. Meanwhile, the NMGA framework, coding scheme, as well as the decoding algorithm are also specially designed for the FJSP. In the framework, recombination operator crossover is not included and a special selection strategy is employed. Computational results based on a set of representative benchmark problems were provided. The evidence indicates that the proposed algorithm is superior to several recently published genetic algorithms in terms of solution quality and convergence ability.

This paper presents an innovative fabrication process for a planar circuits at millimeter-wave frequency. Screen printing technology provides low cost and high performance coplanar waveguides (CPW) lines in planar devices operated at millimeter-wave frequency up to 110GHz. Printed transmission lines provide low insertion losses of 0.30dB/mm at 110GHz and small return loss like as impedance standard lines. In the paper, Multiline Thru-Reflect-Line (TRL) calibration was also demonstrated by using the impedance standard substrates (ISS) fabricated by screen printing. Regarding calibration capability validation, verification devices were measured and compare the results to the result obtained by the TRL calibration using commercial ISS. The comparison results obtained by calibration of screen printing ISS are almost the same as results measured based on conventional ISS technology.

We propose an edge-preserving multiscale image decomposition method using filters for non-equispaced signals. It is inspired by the domain transform, which is a high-speed edge-preserving smoothing method, and it can be used in many image processing applications. One of the disadvantages of the domain transform is sensitivity to noise. Even though the proposed method is based on non-equispaced filters similar to the domain transform, it is robust to noise since it employs a multiscale decomposition. It uses the Laplacian pyramid scheme to decompose an input signal into the piecewise-smooth components and detail components. We design the filters by using an optimization based on edge-preserving smoothing with a conversion of signal distances and filters taking into account the distances between signal intervals. In addition, we also propose construction methods of filters for non-equispaced signals by using arbitrary continuous filters or graph spectral filters in order that various filters can be accommodated by the proposed method. As expected, we find that, similar to state-of-the-art edge-preserving smoothing techniques, including the domain transform, our approach can be used in many applications. We evaluated its effectiveness in edge-preserving smoothing of noise-free and noisy images, detail enhancement, pencil drawing, and stylization.

The copy-move or region duplication forgery technique is a very common type of image manipulation, where a region of the image is copied and then pasted in the same image in order to hide some details. In this paper, a keypoint-based method for copy-move forgery detection is proposed. Firstly, the feature points are detected from the image by using the Förstner Operator. Secondly, the algorithm extracts the features by using MROGH feature descriptor, and then matching the features. Finally, the affine transformation parameters can be estimated using the RANSAC algorithm. Experimental results are presented to confirm that the proposed method is effective to locate the altered region with geometric transformation (rotation and scaling).

Various DC power supply systems such as photovoltaic power generation, fuel cell and others have been gradually spreading, so that DC power distribution systems are expected as one of energy-saving technologies at houses and business-related buildings as well as data centers and factories. Under such circumstances switches for electric appliances are requested to interrupt DC current safely in DC power systems (DC 300-400V). It is well-known that DC current is much more difficult to be interrupted than AC current with current-zero. In this paper a model switch is developed and fundamental characteristics of DC current interruption in a resistive circuit is experimentally and theoretically examined. Consequently arc duration is found to be approximately a function of interrupted power rather than source voltage and circuit current. In addition arc length at its extinction is obtained by the observation of a high-speed camera. Then the arc length is found to be decided only by interrupted power like the gap length, independent of separation velocity. From these results it can be made clear that the arc form becomes arc-shaped at its extinction when the interrupted power is larger than about 500W. In addition the effect of magnetic blow-out on arc extinction is examined.

We investigate a phased array-fed dual reflector antenna applying one-dimensional beam-scanning of the center-fed type, using an elliptical aperture to provide wide area observation. The distinguishing feature of this antenna is its elliptical aperture shape, in which the aperture diameter differs between the forward satellite direction and the cross-section orthogonal to it. The shape in the plane of the forward satellite direction, which does not have a beam-scanning function, is a ring-focus Cassegrain antenna, and the shape in the plane orthogonal to that, which does have a beam-scanning function, is an imaging reflector antenna. This paper describes issues which arose during design of the elliptical aperture shape and how they were solved, and presents design results using elliptical aperture dimensions of 1600 mm × 600 mm, in which the beam width differs by more than two times in the orthogonal cross-section. The effectiveness of the antenna was verified by fabricating a prototype antenna based on the design results. Measurement results confirmed that an aperture efficiency of 50% or more could be achieved, and that a different beam width was obtained in the orthogonal plane in accordance with design values.

This paper considers a massive multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO) relaying system with multi-pair single-antenna users. The relay node adopts maximum-ratio combining/maximum-ratio transmission (MRC/MRT) stratagem for reception/transmission. We analyze the spectral efficiency (SE) and power scaling laws with respect to the number of relay antennas and other system parameters. First, by using the law of large numbers, we derive the closed-form expression of the SE, based on which, it is shown that the SE per user increases with the number of relay antennas but decreases with the number of user pairs, both logarithmically. It is further discovered that the transmit power at the source users and the relay can be continuously reduced as the number of relay antennas becomes large while the SE can maintains a constant value, which also means that the energy efficiency gain can be obtained simultaneously. Moreover, it is proved that the number of served user pairs can grow proportionally over the number of relay antennas with arbitrary SE requirement and no extra power cost. All the analytical results are verified through the numerical simulations.

Silver contacts are separated at constant speed and break arcs are generated in a 300V-450V DC and 10A resistive circuit. The transverse magnetic field of a permanent magnet is applied to the break arcs. Motion of the break arcs, arc duration and the number of reignitions are investigated when side surfaces of the contacts are covered with insulator pipes. Following results are shown. The motion of the break arcs and the arc duration when the anode is covered with the pipe are the same as those without pipes. When the cathode is covered with the pipe, the motion of break arcs change from that without the pipes and reignitions occur more frequently. The arc duration becomes longer than that without the pipes because of the occurrence of reignitions. The number of reignition increases with increasing the supply voltage in 300V-400V. The period of occurrence of the reignition with pipes is shorter than that when the cathode is covered with the pipe.

Break arcs are rotated with the radial magnetic field formed by a magnet embedded in a fixed cathode contact. The break arcs are generated in a 48VDC resistive circuit. The circuit current when the contacts are closed is 10A. The depth of the magnet varies from 1mm to 4mm to change the strength of the radial magnetic field for rotating break arcs. Images of break arcs are taken by two high-speed cameras from two directions and the rotational motion of the break arcs is observed. The rotational period of rotational motion of the break arcs is investigated. The following results are obtained. The break arcs rotate clockwise on the cathode surface seen from anode side. This rotation direction conforms to the direction of the Lorentz force that affects to the break arcs with the radial magnetic field. The rotational period gradually decreases during break operation. When the depth of magnet is larger, the rotational period becomes longer.

The scan segmentation method is an efficient solution to deal with the test power problem; However, the use of multiple capture cycles may cause capture violations, thereby leading to fault coverage loss. This issue is much more severe in at-speed testing. In this paper, two scan partition schemes based on complex networks clustering ara proposed to minimize the capture violations without increasing test-data volume and extra area overhead. In the partition process, we use a more accurate notion, spoiled nodes, instead of violation edges to analyse the dependency of flip-flops (ffs), and we use the shortest-path betweenness (SPB) method and the Laplacian-based graph partition method to find the best combination of these flip-flops. Beyond that, the proposed methods can use any given power-unaware set of patterns to test circuits, reducing both shift and capture power in at-speed testing. Extensive experiments have been performed on reference circuit ISCAS89 and IWLS2005 to verify the effectiveness of the proposed methods.