The increasing demand of low power Direct Digital Frequency Synthesizer (DDFS) leads to the requirement of efficient compression methods to reduce ROM size for storing sine function values. This paper presents a technique to achieve very high compression ratio by using the optimized four-segment linear difference method. The proposed technique results in the ROM compression ratio of about 117.3:1 and the word size reduction of 6 bits for the design of a DDFS with 11-bit sine amplitude output. This high compression ratio result is very promising to meet the requirement of low power consumption and low hardware complexity in digital VLSI technology.

In this paper, we study opacity-enforcing supervisory control of discrete event systems. We consider the case that the secrete behavior of the system is specified by multiple secret languages, and synthesize a maximally permissive supervisor that enforces opacity for all secret languages. We prove that, under a certain assumption on observable and uncontrollable events, a maximally permissive opacity-enforcing supervisor can be synthesized in a modular fashion.

This paper presents a syntax-based framework for gap resolution in analytic languages. CCG, reputable for dealing with deletion under coordination, is extended with a memory mechanism similar to the slot-and-filler mechanism, resulting in a wider coverage of syntactic gaps patterns. Though our grammar formalism is more expressive than the canonical CCG, its generative power is bounded by Partially Linear Indexed Grammar. Despite the spurious ambiguity originated from the memory mechanism, we also show that its probabilistic parsing is feasible by using the dual decomposition algorithm.

The letter deals with direction-of-arrival (DOA) estimation under nonuniform white noise and moderately small signal-to-noise ratios. The proposed approach first uses signal subspace projection for received data vectors, which form an efficient iterative quadratic maximum-likelihood (IQML) approach to achieve fast convergence and high resolution capabilities. In conjunction with a signal subspace selection technique, a more exact signal subspace can be obtained for reducing the nonuniform noise effect. The performance improvement achieved by applying the proposal to the classic IQML method is confirmed by computer simulations.

The objective of wireless location is to determine the mobile station (MS) location in a wireless cellular communications system. When signals are propagated through non-line-of-sight (NLOS) paths, the measurements at the base stations (BSs) contain large errors which result in poor detectability of an MS by the surrounding BSs. In those situations, it is necessary to integrate all available heterogeneous measurements to improve location accuracy. This paper presents hybrid methods that combine time of arrival (TOA) at three BSs and angle of arrival (AOA) information at the serving BS to obtain a location estimate for the MS. The proposed methods mitigate the NLOS effect by using the weighted sum of the intersections between three TOA circles and the AOA line without requiring the a priori knowledge of NLOS error statistics. Numerical results show that all positioning methods offer improved estimation accuracy over those which rely on the two circles and two lines. The proposed methods always achieve better location accuracy than the Taylor series algorithm (TSA) and the hybrid lines of position algorithm (HLOP) do, regardless of the NLOS error statistics.

Flash SSDs are being incorporated in many enterprise storage platforms recently and expected to play a notable role for IO-intensive applications. However, the IO characteristics of flash SSDs are very different from those of hard disks. Since existent storage subsystems are designed on the basis of characteristics of hard disks, the IO performance of flash SSDs may not be obtained as expected. This paper provides an evaluation of flash SSDs in transaction processing systems with TPC-C benchmark. We present performance results with various configurations and describe our observations of the IO behaviors at different levels along the IO path, which helps to understand the performance of flash-based transaction processing systems and provides certain references to build flash-based systems for IO-intensive applications.

The characteristics of hole-assisted fiber (HAF) are investigated both numerically and experimentally in terms of its applicability as a bending-loss insensitive fiber (BIF). We show that HAF with the desired mode-field diameter (MFD), bending-loss and cutoff wavelength characteristics can be roughly designed by taking a few specific structural parameters into consideration. We also show that an optical cord composed of adequately designed HAF realizes satisfactory transmission performance with respect to its multi-path interference (MPI) characteristics. These results reveal that a hole-assisted type BIF will be beneficial for realizing easy and economical installation and maintenance in future access networks.

A novel design technique for two-dimensional (2-D) waveguide slot arrays is proposed in this paper that combines a full-wave method of moments (MoM) analysis and an equivalent circuit with the explicit restraint of input matching. The admittance and slot spacing are determined first in an equivalent circuit to realize the desired distribution of power dissipation and phase, with the explicit restraint of input matching. Secondly by applying a full-wave MoM analysis to the finite 2-D array, slot parameters are iteratively determined to realize the active admittance designed above where slot mutual coupling and wall thickness are fully taken into account. The admittance, treated as the key parameter in the equivalent circuit corresponds to the power dissipation of the slots but not to the slot voltage, which is directly synthesized from the radiation pattern. The initial value of the power dissipation is assumed to be proportional to the square of the amplitude of the desired slot voltage. This assumption leads to a feedback procedure, because the resultant slot voltage distribution generally differs from the desired ones due to the effect of non-uniformity in the characteristic impedance on slot apertures. This slot voltage error is used to renew the initial distribution of power dissipation in the equivalent circuit. Generally, only one feedback cycle is needed. Two 2427-element arrays with uniform and Taylor distributions were designed and fabricated at 25.3 GHz. The measured overall reflections for both antennas were suppressed below -18 dB over the 24.3-26.3 GHz frequency range. High aperture efficiencies of 86.8% and 55.1% were realized for the antennas with uniform and Taylor distributions, the latter of which has very low sidelobes below -33 dB in both the E- and H-planes.

A new kind of 3D power divider based on a half-mode substrate integrated circular cavity (HSICC) is proposed. This novel power divider can reduce the size of a power divider based on normal substrate integrated circular cavity (SICC) by nearly a half. To verify the validity of the design method, a two-way X-band HSICC power divider using low temperature co-fired ceramic (LTCC) technology is designed, fabricated and measured.

This paper proposes Bayesian context clustering using cross validation for hidden Markov model (HMM) based speech recognition. The Bayesian approach is a statistical technique for estimating reliable predictive distributions by treating model parameters as random variables. The variational Bayesian method, which is widely used as an efficient approximation of the Bayesian approach, has been applied to HMM-based speech recognition, and it shows good performance. Moreover, the Bayesian approach can select an appropriate model structure while taking account of the amount of training data. Since prior distributions which represent prior information about model parameters affect estimation of the posterior distributions and selection of model structure (e.g., decision tree based context clustering), the determination of prior distributions is an important problem. However, it has not been thoroughly investigated in speech recognition, and the determination technique of prior distributions has not performed well. The proposed method can determine reliable prior distributions without any tuning parameters and select an appropriate model structure while taking account of the amount of training data. Continuous phoneme recognition experiments show that the proposed method achieved a higher performance than the conventional methods.

This paper introduces a future and past search engine, ChronoSeeker, which can help users to develop long-term strategies for their organizations. To provide on-demand searches, we tackled two technical issues: (1) organizing efficient event searches and (2) filtering out noises from search results. Our system employed query expansion with typical expressions related to event information such as year expressions, temporal modifiers, and context terms for efficient event searches. We utilized a machine-learning technique of filtering noise to classify candidates into information or non-event information, using heuristic features and lexical patterns derived from a text-mining approach. Our experiment revealed that filtering achieved an 85% F-measure, and that query expansion could collect dozens more events than those without expansion.

AC-waveform synthesis with quantum-mechanical accuracy has been attracting many researchers, especially metrologists in national metrology institutes, not only for its scientific interest but its potential benefit to industries. We describe the current status at National Metrology Institute of Japan of development of a Josephson arbitrary waveform synthesizer based on programmable and pulse-driven Josephson junction arrays.

Joint source-channel coding (JSCC) is a method to jointly allocate the given total transmission bitrate to the source coding and channel coding to maximize the video quality at the receiving end. In this paper, we propose a practical model for efficiently determining a near-optimal code rate for JSCC in real-time video communications. The conventional code rate decision schemes using analytical source coding distortion model and channel-induced distortion model are usually complex, and typically employ the process of model parameter training which involves potentially high computational complexity and implementation cost. To avoid the complex modeling procedure, we introduce a very simple video quality model based on the playable bitrate which is defined as the total bit amount per unit time that is not affected by the channel loss during transmission including correctly recovered bits by the channel decoder. Because the video quality at the receiving end is clearly commensurate with the playable bitrate, we can easily determine the quality-oriented near-optimal code rate by finding the code rate that maximizes the playable bitrate at the sender side. The proposed playable bitrate model is very simple because it does not require the complex training procedure for obtaining model parameters, which is usually required in the conventional code rate decision method. It is shown by simulations that the proposed code rate decision scheme based on the playable bitrate model can efficiently determine the near-optimal code rate for JSCC in terms of high accuracy on the optimal code rate.

In this paper, we propose a novel stakeholder mining mechanism for analyzing bias in news articles by comparing descriptions of stakeholders. Our mechanism is based on the presumption that interests often induce bias of news agencies. As we use the term, a "stakeholder" is a participant in an event described in a news article who should have some relationships with other participants in the article. Our approach attempts to elucidate bias of articles from three aspects: stakeholders, interests of stakeholders, and the descriptive polarity of each stakeholder. Mining of stakeholders and their interests is achieved by analysis of sentence structure and the use of RelationshipWordNet, a lexical resource that we developed. For analyzing polarities of stakeholder descriptions, we propose an opinion mining method based on the lexical resource SentiWordNet. As a result of analysis, we construct a relations graph of stakeholders to group stakeholders sharing mutual interests and to represent the interests of stakeholders. We also describe an application system we developed for news comparison based on the mining mechanism. This paper presents some experimental results to validate the proposed methods.

A new type of modulation called continuous-phase parallel-combinatory high-compaction multicarrier modulation (CPPC/HC-MCM) is proposed. CPPC/HC-MCM employs the technique of continuous-phase modulation (CPM) and avoids the formation of amplitude gaps between two successive signals to enhance the spectral efficiency of conventional PC/HC-MCM. Results of simulations show that CPPC/HC-MCM is spectrally efficient and achieves a smaller bit error rate than conventional (unmodulated) PC/HC-MCM at a common spectral efficiency even if the peak-to-average power ratio is considered.

This survey summarizes the state-of-the-art research on network coding, mainly focusing on its applications to computer networking. Network coding generalizes traditional store-and-forward routing techniques by allowing intermediate nodes in networks to encode several received packets into a single coded packet before forwarding. Network coding was proposed in 2000, and since then, it has been studied extensively in the field of computer networking. In this survey, we first summarize linear network coding and provide a taxonomy of network coding research, i.e., the network coding design problem and network coding applications. Moreover, the latter is subdivided into throughput/capacity enhancement, robustness enhancement, network tomography, and security. We then discuss the fundamental characteristics of network coding and diverse applications of network coding in details, following the above taxonomy.

This letter addresses linear processing issues for the downlink of closed-loop multi-user non-regenerative MIMO-relay systems with arbitrary number of antennas at each node. First three precoding design schemes at BS are presented. Then given the fixed BS linear processing matrix, we propose a joint iterative linear processing scheme for the relay station and mobile stations, aiming to minimize the total mean squared error (MSE). Finally Simulation results are provided to show the performance gain of joint linear processing at the multi-antenna nodes.

In this work, an ultra-wideband impulse radio (UWB-IR) transceiver with accurate time-of-arrival (TOA) estimation for a ranging/positioning system was developed for wireless sensor network applications. The system uses an impulse radio characterized by a low duty cycle and direct-sequence spreading, which enable very precise ranging and good receiver sensitivity. An algorithm enabling the TOA of the first-path signal to be measured accurately in a multi-path environment with simple, low-power and low cost implementations was proposed. UWB chips with CMOS 0.18-µm technology and UWB transceiver modules performed that the accuracy of the proposed ranging system is 18.5 cm in a closed space.

In this letter, we give a generalized construction for sets of frequency-hopping sequences (FHSs) based on power-residue sequences. Our construction encompasses a known optimal construction and can generate new optimal sets of FHSs which simultaneously achieve the Peng-Fan bound and the Lempel-Greenberger bound.

Ultra-Wideband is an attractive technology for short range positioning, especially indoors. However, for normal 3D Time Difference of Arrival (TDOA) positioning, at least four receivers with an unblocked direct path to the transmitter are required. A requirement that is not always met. In this work, a novel method for TDOA positioning using only three receivers is presented. TDOA positioning with three receivers is possible by exploiting the knowledge of some of the indoor features, namely positions of big flat reflective surfaces, for example ceiling and walls. The proposed method was verified using data from a measurement campaign.