Scaling the supply voltage (Vdd) and threshold voltage (Vth) for minimizing the energy consumption of processors dynamically is highly desired for applications such as wireless sensor network and Internet of Things (IoT). In this paper, we refer to the pair of Vdd and Vth, which minimizes the energy consumption of the processor under a given operating condition, as a minimum energy point (MEP in short). Since the MEP is heavily dependent on an operating condition determined by a chip temperature, an activity factor, a process variation, and a performance required for the processor, it is not very easy to closely track the MEP at runtime. This paper proposes a simple but effective algorithm for dynamically tracking the MEP of a processor under a wide range of operating conditions. Gate-level simulation of a 32-bit RISC processor in a 65nm process demonstrates that the proposed algorithm tracks the MEP under a situation that operating condition widely vary.

An efficient reciprocity and passivity preserving balanced truncation for RLC networks is presented in this paper. Reciprocity and passivity are fundamental principles of linear passive networks. Hence, reduction with preservation of reciprocity and passivity is necessary to simulate behavior of the circuits including the RLC networks accurately and stably. Moreover, the proposed method is more efficient than the previous balanced truncation methods, because sparsity patterns of the coefficient matrices for the circuit equations of the RLC networks are fully available. In the illustrative examples, we will show that the proposed method is compatible with PRIMA, which is known as a general reduction method of RLC networks, in efficiency and used memory, and is more accurate at high frequencies than PRIMA.

The exchanged hypercube, denoted by EH(s,t), is a graph obtained by systematically removing edges from the corresponding hypercube, while preserving many of the hypercube's attractive properties. Moreover, ring-connected topology is one of the most promising topologies in Wavelength Division Multiplexing (WDM) optical networks. Let Rn denote a ring-connected topology. In this paper, we address the routing and wavelength assignment problem for implementing the EH(s,t) communication pattern on Rn, where n=s+t+1. We design an embedding scheme. Based on the embedding scheme, a near-optimal wavelength assignment algorithm using 2s+t-2+⌊2t/3⌋ wavelengths is proposed. We also show that the wavelength assignment algorithm uses no more than an additional 25 percent of (or ⌊2t-1/3⌋) wavelengths, compared to the optimal wavelength assignment algorithm.

In this paper, we propose a novel error recovery method for massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) signal detection, which improves an estimate of transmitted signals by taking advantage of the sparsity and the discreteness of the error signal. We firstly formulate the error recovery problem as the maximum a posteriori (MAP) estimation and then relax the MAP estimation into a convex optimization problem, which reconstructs a discrete-valued sparse vector from its linear measurements. By using the restricted isometry property (RIP), we also provide a theoretical upper bound of the size of the reconstruction error with the optimization problem. Simulation results show that the proposed error recovery method has better bit error rate (BER) performance than that of the conventional error recovery method.

This paper presents an extremely low-profile front-end configuration for a base station at quasi-millimeter wave band. It consists of integrated modules of patch antennas and substrate integrated waveguide filters using two printed circuit boards, and transmitter modules using compact GaAs pHEMT three-dimensional monolithic millimeter-wave integrated circuits. The transmitter modules are located around the integrated modules. This is because the proposed front-end configuration can attain extremely low profile, and band-pass filtering performance at quasi-millimeter wave band. As a demonstration of the proposed configuration, 26-GHz-band 4-by-4 elements front-end module is fabricated and tested. The fabricated module has the thickness of about 1 cm, while that offers the attenuation of more than 30 dB with 2 GHz offset from 26 GHz. The proposed configuration can provide base station that can be effective in offering sub-millimeter wave and millimeter-wave bands broadband services for 5G mobile communications systems.

This paper deals with a broadcast network with a server and many users. The server has files of content such as music and videos, and each user requests one of these files, where each file consists of some separated layers like a file encoded by a scalable video coding. On the other hand, each user has a local memory, and a part of information of the files is cached (i.e., stored) in these memories in advance of users' requests. By using the cached information as side information, the server encodes files based on users' requests. Then, it sends a codeword through an error-free shared link for which all users can receive a common codeword from the server without error. We assume that the server transmits some layers up to a certain level of requested files at each different transmission rate (i.e., the codeword length per file size) corresponding to each level. In this paper, we focus on the region of tuples of these rates such that layers up to any level of requested files are recovered at users with an arbitrarily small error probability. Then, we give inner and outer bounds on this region.

In this letter, three constructions of perfect Gaussian integer sequences are constructed based on cyclic difference sets. Sufficient conditions for constructing perfect Gaussian integer sequences are given. Compared with the constructions given by Chen et al. [12], the proposed constructions relax the restrictions on the parameters of the cyclic difference sets, and new perfect Gaussian integer sequences will be obtained.

This paper describes a design of energy-efficient Standard Cell Memory (SCM) using Silicon-on-Thin-BOX (SOTB). We present automatic place and routing (P&R) methodology for optimal body-bias separation (BBS) for SCM, which enables to apply different body bias voltages to latches and to other peripheral circuits within SCM. Capability of SOTB to effectively reduce leakage by body biasing is fully exploited in BBS. Simulation results demonstrated that our approach allows us to design SCM with 40% smaller energy dissipation at the energy minimum voltage as compared to the conventional design flow. For the process and temperature variations, Adaptive Body Bias (ABB) for SCM with our BBS provided 70% smaller leakage energy than ABB for the conventional SCM, while achieving the same clock frequency.

In this work, two new proposed NMF models are developed for facial expression recognition. They are called maximum volume constrained nonnegative matrix factorization (MV_NMF) and maximum volume constrained graph nonnegative matrix factorization (MV_GNMF). They achieve sparseness from a larger simplicial cone constraint and the extracted features preserve the topological structure of the original images.

Multivariate Public Key Cryptography (MPKC) is one of the main candidates for secure communication in a post-quantum era. Recently, Yasuda and Sakurai proposed at ICICS 2015 a new multivariate encryption scheme called SRP, which offers efficient decryption, a small blow up factor between plaintext and ciphertext and resists all known attacks against multivariate schemes. However, similar to other MPKC schemes, the key sizes of SRP are quite large. In this paper we propose a technique to reduce the key size of the SRP scheme, which enables us to reduce the size of the public key by up to 54%. Furthermore, we can use the additional structure in the public key polynomials to speed up the encryption process of the scheme by up to 50%. We show by experiments that our modifications do not weaken the security of the scheme.

In this paper, we propose a new spatial modulation (SM) scheme based on quaternary quasi-orthogonal sequences (Q-QOSs), referred to as Q-QOS-SM. First, the conventional SM and generalized-SM (GSM) schemes are reinterpreted as a new transmission scheme based on a spatial modulation matrix (SMM), whose column indices are used for the mapping of spatial-information bits unlike the conventional ones. Next, by adopting the SMM comprising the Q-QOSs, the proposed Q-QOS-SM that guarantees twice the number of spatial bits at a transmitter compared with the SM with a constraint of transmit antennas, is designed. From the computer-simulation results, the Q-QOS-SM is shown to achieve a greatly improved throughput compared with the conventional SM and GSM schemes, especially, for a large number of the receive antennas. This finding is mainly because the new scheme offers a much higher minimum Euclidean distance than the other schemes.

Secret sharing is a method to protect information for security. The information is divided into n shares, and the information is reconstructed from any k shares but no knowledge of it is revealed from k-1 shares. Physical layer security is a method to yield a favorable receive condition to an authorized destination terminal in wireless communications based on multi-antenna transmission. In this study, we propose wireless packet communications protected by the secret sharing based on Reed Solomon coding and the physical layer security based on vector coding, which implements a single-antenna system and a multi-antenna system. Evaluation results show the validity of the proposed scheme.

Radio signals show characteristics of minute differences, which result from various idiosyncratic hardware properties between different radio emitters. A robust detector based on exponentially weighted distances is proposed to detect the exact reference instants of the burst communication signals. Based on the exact detection of the reference instant, in which the radio emitter finishes the power-up ramp and enters the first symbol of its preamble, the features of the radio fingerprint can be extracted from the transient signal section and the steady-state signal section for radiometric identification. Experiments on real data sets demonstrate that the proposed method not only has a higher accuracy that outperforms correlation-based detection, but also a better robustness against noise. The comparison results of different detectors for radiometric identification indicate that the proposed detector can improve the classification accuracy of radiometric identification.

High power dissipation can occur by high launch-induced switching activity when the response to a test pattern is captured by flip-flops (FFs) in at-speed scan testing, resulting in excessive IR drop. IR drop may cause significant capture-induced yield loss in the deep submicron era. It is known that test modification methods using X-identification and X-filling are effective to reduce power dissipation in the capture cycle. Conventional low power dissipation oriented X-filling methods consecutively select FFs and assign values to decrease the number of transitions on the FFs. In this paper, we propose a novel low power dissipation oriented X-filling method using SAT Solvers that conducts simultaneous X-filling for some FFs. We also proposed a selection order of FFs based on a correlation coefficient between transitions of FFs and power dissipation. Experimental results show that the proposed method was effective for ISCAS'89 and ITC'99 benchmark circuits compared with justification-probability-based fill.

We consider the intrinsic randomness problem for correlated sources. Specifically, there are three correlated sources, and we want to extract two mutually independent random numbers by using two separate mappings, where each mapping converts one of the output sequences from two correlated sources into a random number. In addition, we assume that the obtained pair of random numbers is also independent of the output sequence from the third source. We first show the δ-achievable rate region where a rate pair of two mappings must satisfy in order to obtain the approximation error within δ ∈ [0,1), and the second-order achievable rate region for correlated general sources. Then, we apply our results to non-mixed and mixed independently and identically distributed (i.i.d.) correlated sources, and reveal that the second-order achievable rate region for these sources can be represented in terms of the sum of normal distributions.

As financial products have grown in complexity and level of risk compounding in recent years, investors have come to find it difficult to assess investment risk. Furthermore, companies managing mutual funds are increasingly expected to perform risk control and thus prevent assumption of unforeseen risk by investors. A related revision to the investment fund legal system in Japan led to establishing what is known as “the rule for investment diversification” in December 2014, without a clear discussion of its expected effects on market price formation having taken place. In this paper, we therefore used an artificial market to investigate its effects on price formation in financial markets where investors follow the rule at the time of a market crash that is caused by the collapse of an asset fundamental price. As results, we found the possibility that when the fundamental price of one asset collapses and its market price also collapses, some asset market prices also fall, whereas other asset market prices rise for a market in which investors follow the rule for investment diversification.

In recommending to another individual an item that one loves, accuracy is important, however in most cases, focusing only on accuracy generates less satisfactory recommendations. Studies have repeatedly pointed out that aspects that go beyond accuracy — such as the diversity and novelty of the recommended items — are as important as accuracy in making a satisfactory recommendation. Despite their importance, there is no global consensus about definitions and evaluations regarding beyond-accuracy aspects, as such aspects closely relate to the subjective sensibility of user satisfaction. In addition, devising algorithms for this purpose is difficult, because algorithms concurrently pursue the aspects in trade-off relation (i.e., accuracy vs. novelty). In the aforementioned situation, for researchers initiating a study in this domain, it is important to obtain a systematically integrated view of the domain. This paper reports the results of a survey of about 70 studies published over the last 15 years, each of which addresses recommendations that consider beyond-accuracy aspects. From this survey, we identify diversity, novelty, and coverage as important aspects in achieving serendipity and popularity unbiasedness — factors that are important to user satisfaction and business profits, respectively. The five major groups of algorithms that tackle the beyond-accuracy aspects are multi-objective, modified collaborative filtering (CF), clustering, graph, and hybrid; we then classify and describe algorithms as per this typology. The off-line evaluation metrics and user studies carried out by the studies are also described. Based on the survey results, we assert that there is a lot of room for research in the domain. Especially, personalization and generalization are considered important issues that should be addressed in future research (e.g., automatic per-user-trade-off among the aspects, and properly establishing beyond-accuracy aspects for various types of applications or algorithms).

Malaysia is one of the countries with the highest car crash fatality rates in Asia. The high implementation cost of in-vehicle driver behavior warning system and autonomous driving remains a significant challenge. Motivated by the large number of simple yet effective inventions that benefitted many developing countries, this study presents the findings of emotion recognition based on skin conductance response using a low-cost wearable sensor. Emotions were evoked by presenting the proposed display stimulus and driving stimulator. Meaningful power spectral density was extracted from the filtered signal. Experimental protocols and frameworks were established to reduce the complexity of the emotion elicitation process. The proof of concept in this work demonstrated the high accuracy of two-class and multiclass emotion classification results. Significant differences of features were identified using statistical analysis. This work is one of the most easy-to-use protocols and frameworks, but has high potential to be used as biomarker in intelligent automobile, which helps prevent accidents and saves lives through its simplicity.

Multi-hypothesis prediction technique, which exploits inter-frame correlation efficiently, is widely used in block-based distributed compressive video sensing. To solve the problem of inaccurate prediction in multi-hypothesis prediction technique at a low sampling rate and enhance the reconstruction quality of non-key frames, we present a resample-based hybrid multi-hypothesis scheme for block-based distributed compressive video sensing. The innovations in this paper include: (1) multi-hypothesis reconstruction based on measurements reorganization (MR-MH) which integrates side information into the original measurements; (2) hybrid multi-hypothesis (H-MH) reconstruction which mixes multiple multi-hypothesis reconstructions adaptively by resampling each reconstruction. Experimental results show that the proposed scheme outperforms the state-of-the-art technique at the same low sampling rate.

In this paper, a multichannel speech enhancement system which adopts a denoising auto-encoder as part of the beamformer is proposed. The proposed structure of the generalized sidelobe canceller generates enhanced multi-channel signals, instead of merely one channel, to which the following denoising auto-encoder can be applied. Because the beamformer exploits spatial information and compensates for differences in the transfer functions of each channel, the proposed system is expected to resolve the difficulty of modelling relative transfer functions consisting of complex numbers which are hard to model with a denoising auto-encoder. As a result, the modelling capability of the denoising auto-encoder can concentrate on removing the artefacts caused by the beamformer. Unlike conventional beamformers, which combine these artefacts into one channel, they remain separated for each channel in the proposed method. As a result, the denoising auto-encoder can remove the artefacts by referring to other channels. Experimental results prove that the proposed structure is effective for the six-channel data in CHiME, as indicated by improvements in terms of speech enhancement and word error rate in automatic speech recognition.