We have designed a superconductor-semiconductor hybrid analog-to-digital (A/D) converter and experimentally evaluated its performance at sampling frequencies up to 18.6 GHz. The A/D converter consists of a superconductor front-end circuit and a semiconductor back-end circuit. The front-end circuit includes a sigma-delta modulator and an interface circuit, which is for transmitting data signal to the semiconductor back-end circuit. The semiconductor back-end circuit performs decimation filtering. The design of the modulator was modified to reduce effects of integrator leak and thermal noise on signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). Using the improved modulator design, we achieved a bit-accuracy close to the ideal value. The hybrid architecture enabled us to reduce the integration scale of the front-end circuit to fewer than 500 junctions. This simplicity makes feasible a circuit based on a high TC superconductor as well as on a low TC superconductor. The experimental results show that the hybrid A/D converter operated perfectly and that SNR was 84.8 dB (bit accuracy~13.8 bit) at a band width of 9.1 MHz. This converter has the highest performance of all sigma-delta A/D converters.

We describe the transmission characteristics of a wavelength independent wavelength division multiplexing passive optical network (WDM-PON) based on a wavelength channel data rewriter (WCDR). The WCDR is composed of a linear amplifier (LA) and a saturated semiconductor optical amplifier (SOA), and by using the WCDR in optical network units (ONUs), we can erase the downstream signal and modulate the same wavelength channel with the upstream signal. In this paper, we analyze the data rewriting characteristic, the frequency chirp characteristic and the bit error rate (BER) degradation occasioned by the use of saturated SOAs. Furthermore, we report high-speed transmission with power penalty of less than 1 dB at bit rates of 1.25 Gbit/s, 2.5 Gbit/s and 10 Gbit/s for downstream signals and 1.25 Gbit/s for upstream signals after transmission through 40 km of single-mode fiber.

A semi-coherent technique for low-complexity frequency offset estimation is presented. The proposed estimation is based on discrete-time Fourier transform (DTFT). Since residual frequency offset can be compensated by channel estimation, frequency offset can be estimated only coarsely. We take advantage of the relationship between frequency resolution and accumulation period in DTFT in deriving the coarse estimator. Based on that, a novel method to balance the coherent and the non-coherent accumulation for frequency offset estimation is proposed. The proposed algorithm has low latency and complexity so that it is particularly suitable for packet traffic. The semi-coherent structure of the proposed algorithm is also scalable so that it can be used for both bursty and continuous traffic.

Exploiting layer7 context is an effective approach to improving the accuracy of detecting malicious messages in network intrusion detection/prevention systems (NIDS/NIPSs). Layer7 context enables us to inspect message formats and the message exchanged order. Unfortunately, layer7-aware NIDS/NIPSs pose crucial implementation issues because they require full TCP and IP reassembly without losing 1) complete prevention, 2) performance, 3) application transparency, or 4) transport transparency. Complete prevention means that the NIDS/NIPS should prevent malicious messages from reaching target applications. Application transparency means not requiring any modifications to and/or reconfiguration of server and client applications. Transport transparency is not to disrupt the end-to-end semantics of TCP/IP. To the best of our knowledge, none of the existing approaches meet all of these requirements. We have developed an efficient mechanism for layer7-aware NIDS/NIPSs that does meet the above requirements. Our store-through does this by forwarding each out-of-order or IP-fragmented packet immediately after copying the packet even if it has not been checked yet by an NIDS/NIPS sensor. Although the forwarded packet might turn out to be a part of an attack message, the store-through mechanism can successfully defend against the attack by blocking one of the subsequent packets that contain another part of attack message. Testing of a prototype in Linux kernel 2.4.30 demonstrated that the overhead of our mechanism is negligible compared with that of a simple IP forwarder even with the presence of out-of-order and IP-fragmented packets. In addition, the experimental results suggest that the CPU and memory usage incurred by our store-through is not significant.

We demonstrate a novel display structure for color electronic paper for the first time. Fully transparent amorphous oxide TFT array is directly deposited onto color filter array and combined with E Ink Imaging Film. Taking advantage of the transparent property of the oxide TFT, the color filter and TFT array are positioned at the viewing side of the display. This novel "Front Drive" display structure facilitates the alignment of the color filter and TFT dramatically.

This paper shows the effectiveness of a cinematographic camera for controlling 3D video by measuring its effects on viewers with several typical camera works. 3D free-viewpoint video allows us to set its virtual camera on arbitrary positions and postures in 3D space. However, there have been neither investigations on adaptability nor on dependencies between the camera parameters of the virtual camera (i.e., positions, postures, and transitions) nor the impressions of viewers. Although camera works on 3D video based on expertise seems important for making intuitively understandable video, it has not yet been considered. When applying camera works to 3D video using the planning techniques proposed in previous research, generating ideal output video is difficult because it may include defects due to image resolution limitation, calculation errors, or occlusions as well as others caused by positioning errors of the virtual camera in the planning process. Therefore, we conducted an experiment with 29 subjects with camera-worked 3D videos created using simple annotation and planning techniques to determine the virtual camera parameters. The first point of the experiment examines the effects of defects on viewer impressions. To measure such impressions, we conducted a semantic differential (SD) test. Comparisons between ground truth and 3D videos with planned camera works show that the present defects of camera work do not significantly affect viewers. The experiment's second point examines whether the cameras controlled by planning and annotations affected the subjects with intentional direction. For this purpose, we conducted a factor analysis for the SD test answers whose results indicate that the proposed virtual camera control, which exploits annotation and planning techniques, allows us to realize camera working direction on 3D video.

This paper describes a technique for controlling the degree of expressivity of a desired emotional expression and/or speaking style of synthesized speech in an HMM-based speech synthesis framework. With this technique, multiple emotional expressions and speaking styles of speech are modeled in a single model by using a multiple-regression hidden semi-Markov model (MRHSMM). A set of control parameters, called the style vector, is defined, and each speech synthesis unit is modeled by using the MRHSMM, in which mean parameters of the state output and duration distributions are expressed by multiple-regression of the style vector. In the synthesis stage, the mean parameters of the synthesis units are modified by transforming an arbitrarily given style vector that corresponds to a point in a low-dimensional space, called style space, each of whose coordinates represents a certain specific speaking style or emotion of speech. The results of subjective evaluation tests show that style and its intensity can be controlled by changing the style vector.

A simple and efficient semi-supervised classification method is presented. An unsupervised spectral mapping method is extended to a semi-supervised situation with multiplicative modulation of similarities between data. Our proposed algorithm is derived by linearization of this nonlinear semi-supervised mapping method. Experiments using the proposed method for some public benchmark data and color image data reveal that our method outperforms a supervised algorithm using the linear discriminant analysis and a previous semi-supervised classification method.

The average bit erasure probability of a binary linear code ensemble under maximum a-posteriori probability (MAP) decoding over binary erasure channel (BEC) can be calculated with the average support weight distribution of the ensemble via the EXIT function and the shortened information function. In this paper, we formulate the relationship between the average bit erasure probability under MAP decoding over BEC and the average support weight distribution for a binary linear code ensemble. Then, we formulate the average support weight distribution and the average bit erasure probability under MAP decoding over BEC for regular LDPC code ensembles.

We propose a new label recognition system for photonic label switching using self-routing of labels. Binary-coded labels in on-off keying format are considered. The system consists of an all-optical demultiplexer (DeMUX) and an address recognition unit (ARU) consisting of tree-structured switches. The system uses self-routing propagation of an indication bit controlled with address bits. The indication bit is placed in advance of the address bits in the label. In DeMUX, all-optical switches in a configuration of Mach-Zehnder interferometer with semiconductor optical amplifiers (SOA-MZI) are controlled by the indication bit pulse to separate each of the label bits. The indication bit pulse is routed to the destination output port corresponding to the code of the address in ARU. It is shown that all the binary number codes can be recognized with this system. The operation principle is verified by numerical simulation using coupled-mode theory and a rate equation. Moreover, the switching crosstalk is also evaluated.

In this paper, we derive an upper bound for the average block error probability of a standard irregular low-density parity-check (LDPC) code ensemble under the maximum-likelihood (ML) decoding. Moreover, we show that the upper bound asymptotically decreases polynomially with the code length. Furthermore, when we consider several regular LDPC code ensembles as special cases of standard irregular ones over an additive white Gaussian noise channel, we numerically show that the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) thresholds at which the proposed bound converges to zero as the code length tends to infinity are smaller than those for a bound provided by Miller et al.. We also give an example of a standard irregular LDPC code ensemble which has a lower SNR threshold than a given regular LDPC code ensemble.

Burst assembly at edge nodes is an important issue for the Optical Burst Switching (OBS) networks because it has a great impact on the traffic characteristics. We analyze the assembled traffic of the Science Information Network (SINET) by using the Fractional Brownian Motion (FBM) model. The analytical and simulation results show that existing assembly schemes cannot avoid increasing the burstiness, which will deteriorate the network performance. Here, burstiness is defined as the variance of the bitrate in small timescales. Therefore, we address the issue of how to reduce the burstiness of the assembled network traffic. Firstly, a sliding window-based assembly algorithm is introduced to reduce the burstiness of assembled traffic by transmitting bursts at an average rate in a small timescale. Next, an advanced timer-based assembly algorithm is introduced, by which the traffic rate is smoothed out by restricting the burst length to a threshold. The simulation results show that both the sliding window-based and advanced timer-based assembly algorithms perform better than existing assembly algorithms do in terms of the burst loss ratio. The simulation also indicates that the advanced timer-based assembly algorithm performs better in terms of the edge buffering delay than the sliding window-based assembly algorithm does.

In this paper, we propose an efficient resource discovery scheme for large-scale ubiquitous computing environments, which supports scalable semantic searches and load balancing among resource discovery resolvers. Here, the resources are described based on the concepts defined in the ontological hierarchy. To semantically search the resources in a scalable manner, we propose a semantic vector space and semantic resource discovery network in which the resources are organized based on their respective semantic distances. Most importantly, landmarks are introduced for the first time to reduce the dimensionality of the vector space. Computer simulation with CAN verifies the effectiveness of the proposed scheme.

This paper describes a semi-fragile watermarking scheme for image authentication and tamper-proofing. Each watermark bit is duplicated and randomly embedded in the original image in the discrete wavelet domain by modifying the corresponding image coefficients through quantization. The modifications are made so that they have little effect on the image and that the watermarking is robust against tampering. The watermark image for authentication is reconstructed by taking a weighted vote on the extracted bits. The bits that lose the vote are treated as having been tampered with, and the locations of the lost bits as indicating tampered positions. Thus, authentication and tamper-proofing can be done by observing the images of watermarks that win and lose votes. Sieving, emphasis, and weighted vote were found to be effectively make the authentication and tamper detection more accurate. The proposed scheme is robust against JPEG compression or acceptable modifications, but sensitive to malicious attacks such as cutting and pasting.

The design aspects of the bulk InGaAsP semiconductor optical amplifier integrated Mach-Zehnder interferometer (SOA-MZI) optimized for 40 Gbps-NRZ all optical wavelength conversion are described. The dimensions of the SOA active waveguide have been optimized for fast gain recovery by maximizing the gain and adjusting the wavelength-converted NRZ waveforms. Submicron-width buried heterostructure (BH) SOA waveguides were fabricated successfully and showed little leakage current. The experimental wavelength-converted optical waveform agreed well to the numerical simulations, and mask-compliant 40 G-NRZ wavelength-converted waveform was obtained by the optimized SOA-MZI. 40 G-NRZ full C-band operation and polarization-insensitive operation of SOA-MZI were also achieved.

An 8ch, 400 GHz monolithically integrated WDM channel selector featuring an array of quantum well semiconductor optical amplifiers (SOA) and arrayed waveguidegrating demultiplexer is presented. Reduction of fabrication complexity was achieved by using a single step selective area MOVPE to realize the different bandgap profiles for the SOA array and passive region. The selective growth mask dimensions were optimized by simulation. Dry-etching with short bending radii of 200 µm resulted in compact device size of 7 mm2.5 mm. Static channel selection with high ON-OFF ratio of >40 dB was achieved.

In this paper we modeled and analyzed the ridge type InGaAlAs/InP semiconductor laser with lateral current confinement structure, and optimized the design for the ridge wave guide with the current confinement. We proposed and fabricated the ridge type InGaAlAs/InP laser with a cost effective selective undercut etching method and demonstrated the improvement of the ridge laser performance. This paper provides a solution to solve the cost/yield issue for conventional BH (buried hetero-structure) type laser and performance issue for conventional ridge type laser.

A statistical speech synthesis system based on the hidden Markov model (HMM) was recently proposed. In this system, spectrum, excitation, and duration of speech are modeled simultaneously by context-dependent HMMs, and speech parameter vector sequences are generated from the HMMs themselves. This system defines a speech synthesis problem in a generative model framework and solves it based on the maximum likelihood (ML) criterion. However, there is an inconsistency: although state duration probability density functions (PDFs) are explicitly used in the synthesis part of the system, they have not been incorporated into its training part. This inconsistency can make the synthesized speech sound less natural. In this paper, we propose a statistical speech synthesis system based on a hidden semi-Markov model (HSMM), which can be viewed as an HMM with explicit state duration PDFs. The use of HSMMs can solve the above inconsistency because we can incorporate the state duration PDFs explicitly into both the synthesis and the training parts of the system. Subjective listening test results show that use of HSMMs improves the reported naturalness of synthesized speech.

Based on the channel properties of of the meteor burst communication, a kind of semi-irregular LDPC codes suitable for MBC is presented. Simulation results show that the application of this kind of semi-irregular LDPC codes in MBC yields better performance than the regular ones. Some theoretical analyses are given.

We report the generation of time- and wavelength-interleaved optical pulses using the principle of sub-harmonic pulse gating in a dispersion-managed fiber cavity. The pulsed source has been applied to the processing of electrical and optical signals including analog-to-digital conversion, wavelength multicast, and serial-to-parallel optical data conversion.