In time-varying fading environments, the performance of multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems applying an eigenbeam-space division multiplexing (E-SDM) technique may be degraded due to a channel change during the time interval between the transmit weight matrix determination and the actual data transmission. To compensate for the channel change, we have proposed some channel prediction methods. Simulation results based on computer-generated channel data showed that better performance can be obtained when using the prediction methods in Rayleigh fading environments assuming the Jakes model with rich scatterers. However, actual MIMO systems may be used in line-of-sight (LOS) environments, and even in a non-LOS case, scatterers may not be uniformly distributed around a receiver and/or a transmitter. In addition, mutual coupling between antennas at both the transmitter and the receiver cannot be ignored as it affects the system performance in actual implementation. We conducted MIMO channel measurement campaigns at a 5.2 GHz frequency band to evaluate the channel prediction techniques. In this paper, we present the experiment and simulation results using the measured channel data. The results show that robust bit-error rate performance is obtained when using the channel prediction methods and that the methods can be used in both Rayleigh and Rician fading environments, and do not need to know the maximum Doppler frequency.

This paper describes a novel high-Q active inductor circuit configuration composed of an operational transconductance amplifier (OTA) and an input RC network. Due to the phase rotation made by the input RC network, the active inductor circuit provides high-Q inductive impedance at higher frequencies. According to circuit simulation with design-kit of a 90-GHz-fT SiGe HBT technology, an inductance of more than 0.53 nH and Q of more than 80 can be obtained at quasi-millimeter-wave frequency, 24 GHz. The Q value is tunable by controlling the transconductance of the OTA. These features are also ensured by means of measurements of fabricated active inductor circuit. Since the active inductor circuit needs small chip area, which is 25% of a conventional passive inductor, the proposed active inductor contributes to implement a cost-effective high-Q notch filter for frequencies up to quasi-millimeter-wave frequencies.

This paper illustrates a feasible health informatics domain knowledge management process which helps gather useful technology information and reduce many knowledge misunderstandings among engineers who have participated in the IBM mainframe rightsizing project at National Taiwan University (NTU) Hospital. We design an asynchronously sharing mechanism to facilitate the knowledge transfer and our health informatics domain knowledge management process can be used to publish and retrieve documents dynamically. It effectively creates an acceptable discussion environment and even lessens the traditional meeting burden among development engineers. An overall description on the current software development status is presented. Then, the knowledge management implementation of health information systems is proposed.

In this paper, we show that motion sharpening phenomenon can be explained as a form of visual masking for a special case where a video sequence is composed of alternate frames with different level of sharpness. A frame of higher sharpness behaves to mask the ambiguity of a subsequent frame of lower sharpness and hence preserves the perceptive quality of the whole sequence. Borrowing the mechanism for visual masking, we formulated a quantitative model for deriving the minimum spatial frequency conditions which preserves the subjective quality of the frames being masked. The quantitative model takes into account three fundamental properties of the video signals, namely the size of motion, average luminance and the power of each frequency components. The psychophysical responses towards the changes of these properties are obtained through subjective assessment tests using video sequences of simple geometrical patterns. Subjective experiments on natural video sequences show that more than 75% of viewers could make no distinction between the original sequence and the one processed using the quantitative model.

In the design of Space Time Block Coding (STBC), for an arbitrary complex signal constellation with a size above 2 as well as a real signal matrix with a size above 8, it is difficult to acquire full code rate and full transmit diversity simultaneously. In this letter, an efficient selective receiver switching scheme is proposed for STBC with the full code rate and non-orthogonal design with the example of a 4-by-4 matrix. In the proposed scheme with the aid of beamforming, we divide the received signals into two groups according to the encoded matrix. By this way, we can eliminate the interference from the neighboring signals by more than half.

As THz wave has the advantages of enough resolution and penetration to materials, it has been examined to be used for the imaging system. The propagation distance of THz wave is limited to be short. That is also the advantage for application to the indoor wireless communication etc. For the achievement of the ultra-high frequency oscillator (and concurrently transmitter) device, the properties of small, electronic excitation, the antenna constructed and being on the wafer are important. For the purpose, the Negative differential resistance Dual channel transistor (NDR-DCT) proposed by AIST is utilized. In this paper, as an initial theoretical analysis, we simulated the oscillation frequency of this device at about 100 GHz-1THz within the Terahertz band on which the above applications was expected. The equivalent circuit model of NDR-DCT was shown based on the analogy with the resonant tunnelling diode (RTDs), and the antenna as the resonance circuit part was designed by the numerical analysis. The possibility of the THz oscillation of this device was confirmed. The slit reflector that we proposed can realize the slot antenna on the device effectively and is suitable for three terminal structure semiconductor. its manufacturing is relatively easy.

In this paper, we investigate the proportional fair scheduling (PFS) problem for multiuser OFDM systems, considering the impact of packet length. Packet length influences scheduling schemes in a way that each scheduled packet should be ensured to be completely transmitted within the scheduled frames. We formulate the PFS problem as an optimization problem. Based on the observations on the structure of optimal solutions, we propose a heuristic scheduling algorithm that consists of two stages. First, subcarriers are allocated among users without considering the packet length constraint. Then on the second stage, subcarrier readjustment is done in a way that surplus subcarriers from length-satisfied users are released and allocated among length-unsatisfied users. The objective is to provide proportional fairness among users while guaranteeing complete transmission of each scheduled packet. Simulation results show that the proposed scheme has quite close performance to the optimal scheme in terms of Multi-carrier Proportional Fairness Measure (MCPFM), throughput and average packet delay.

This paper presents a triple-band WCDMA direct conversion receiver (DCR) IC that needs a small number of off-chip components and control signals from digital baseband (DBB) IC. The DCR IC consists of 3 quadrature demodulators (QDEMs) with on-chip impedance matching circuit and an analog baseband block (ABB) that contains a low-pass filter (LPF) with fc automatic tuning circuit using no off-chip components and a linear-in-dB variable-gain amplifier (VGA) with on-chip analog high-pass filter (HPF). In order to make use of DBB control-free DC offset canceler, the DCR is designed to avoid large gain change under large interference that causes long transient response. In order to realize that characteristic without increasing quiescent current, the QDEM is used that employs class AB input stage and low-noise common mode feedback (CMFB) output stage. The DCR IC was fabricated in a SiGe BiCMOS process and occupies about 2.9 mm3.0 mm. The DCR needs SAW filters only for off-chip components and a gain control signal from DBB IC for AGC loop. The IIP3 of over -4.4 dBm for small signal input level and that of over +1.9 dBm for large signal input level are achieved. The gain compression of the desired signal is less than 0.3 dB for ACS Case-II condition.

A distributed algorithm that uses the MVDR (minimum variance distortionless response) combiner and the local information to adjust the power and weight (combining weight) is proposed for joint diversity and power control in wireless networks. The proposed algorithm limits the power according to a constraint and has the property that if the SINR (signal to interference and noise ratio) requirement is achieved, then the condition of this achievement will hold after every discrete time. We prove that the power and weight of the proposed algorithm converge to the optimal feasible power and weight that minimize the total power consumption. Simulation results also show that the MVDR combiner gets lower average power level per user and higher probability of success in meeting the SINR requirement than other combiners.

Digital video encapsulates the time series of a frame (still) images, where overall video quality can be obtained by using the quality of each frame image and the temporal information between the frame image. Coding of video produces degradation of these two types of information. These degradations can be classified as spatial degradation (static degradation) of a frame images and temporal degradation between frame image (dynamic degradation). In the framework of video quality evaluation it is necessary to consider those degradations, because their contents are strongly interdependable and quantification is problematic for these degradations. Therefore, the development of an objective video quality assessment method for single video quality requires to investigate how much static degradation and dynamic degradation affect single video quality. In this research, single video quality was predicted highly accuratly by using frame quality as static degradation and frame rate information as dynamic degradation.

The TFT-LCD image has non-uniform brightness that is the major difficulty of finding the visible defect called Mura in the field. To facilitate Mura detection, background signal shading should level off and Mura signal must be amplified. In this paper, Mura signal amplification and background signal flattening method is proposed based on human visual system (HVS). The proposed DC normalized contrast sensitivity function (CSF) is used for the Mura signal amplification and polynomial regression (PR) is used to level off the background signal. In the enhanced image, tri-modal thresholding segmentation technique is used for finding Dark and White Mura at the same time. To select reliable defect, falsely detected invisible region is eliminated based on Weber's Law. By the experimental results of artificially generated 1-d signal and TFT-LCD image, proposed algorithm has novel enhancement results and can be applied to real automated inspection system.

This letter describes a new QR-decomposition maximum likelihood detector that is combined with frequency-domain equalization for single-carrier transmission based multiple-input multiple-output systems. By utilizing the equalized substreams to adjust the frequency selectivity in corresponding substreams in subsequent stages, the packet error rate performances of the proposed detector is superior to that of the minimum mean squared error receiver by a factor of the receive antenna diversity gain.

This paper investigates suitable indexing techniques to enable efficient content-based audio retrieval in large acoustic databases. To make an index-based retrieval mechanism applicable to audio content, we investigate the design of Locality Sensitive Hashing (LSH) and the partial sequence comparison. We propose a fast and efficient audio retrieval framework of query-by-content and develop an audio retrieval system. Based on this framework, four different audio retrieval schemes, LSH-Dynamic Programming (DP), LSH-Sparse DP (SDP), Exact Euclidian LSH (E2LSH)-DP, E2LSH-SDP, are introduced and evaluated in order to better understand the performance of audio retrieval algorithms. The experimental results indicate that compared with the traditional DP and the other three compititive schemes, E2LSH-SDP exhibits the best tradeoff in terms of the response time, retrieval accuracy and computation cost.

Analysis of resonance frequency in shorted transmission lines with inserted capacitor has been made. The analysis shows a resonance frequency dependence on capacitance position on a shorted transmission line. Two analysis methods are presented to predict the resonance frequency and understand how the inserted capacitor affects the resonance frequency of the shorted transmission line. Using this knowledge we propose a new structure for digital controlled oscillators utilizing the capacitance's sensitivity dependence on position of the shorted transmission line to increase the frequency resolution. A 9 GHz transmission line based digital controlled oscillator was designed and fabricated as a proof of concept. Measured results show that more than 100 times frequency step resolution increase is possible utilizing the same tuning capacitor size located at different points on the transmission line.

Although it is very important to conduct listening tests when constructing a practical sound field reproduction system based on wave field synthesis, listening tests are very expensive. A localization model of synthesized sound images that predicts the results of listening tests is proposed. This model reduces the costs of constructing a reproduction system because it makes it possible to omit the listening tests. The proposed model uses the precedence effect and predicts the direction of synthesized sound images based on the inter-aural time difference. A comparison of the results predicted by the proposed model and the localized results of listening tests shows that the model accurately predicts the localized results.

We describe a statistical parametric speech synthesis system developed by a joint group from the Nagoya Institute of Technology (Nitech) and the Nara Institute of Science and Technology (NAIST) for the annual open evaluation of text-to-speech synthesis systems named Blizzard Challenge 2006. To improve our 2005 system (Nitech-HTS 2005), we investigated new features such as mel-generalized cepstrum-based line spectral pairs (MGC-LSPs), maximum likelihood linear transform (MLLT), and a full covariance global variance (GV) probability density function (pdf). A combination of mel-cepstral coefficients, MLLT, and full covariance GV pdf scored highest in subjective listening tests, and the 2006 system performed significantly better than the 2005 system. The Blizzard Challenge 2006 evaluations show that Nitech-NAIST-HTS 2006 is competitive even when working with relatively large speech databases.

Two dual-band bandpass filters (BPFs) based on the doubly parallel-coupled stepped impedance resonators (SIRs) structures have been proposed in this paper. The coupled-SIRs with/without open-stub-loads are introduced in the filter design. The dual-band filters exhibiting multiple zeros design operate at 2.45/5.2-GHz for the WLAN applications. Two three-staged filters composed of four SIRs have been proposed with the tapped-line adapted in the I/O sections. A five-staged filter is constructed based on the same design principle to achieve a better band-rejection. The proposed filters have the advantages of a much wider bandwidth in both the passbands without sacrificing the passband's insertion loss and passband flatness. The design procedure for a conventional parallel-coupled microstrip lines model is still suitable to design the proposed filters. The proposed filters have achieved almost twice the bandwidth of a conventional parallel-coupled lines configuration under the same design parameters. The experiments have been conducted to verify filter performance. Measured results are in good agreement with the full-wave simulation results.

In a centralized localization scenario, the limited throughput of the central node constrains the possible number of target node locations that can be estimated simultaneously. To overcome this limitation, we propose a method which effectively decreases the traffic load associated with target node localization, and therefore increases the possible number of target node locations that can estimated simultaneously in a localization system based on received signal strength indicator (RSSI) and maximum likelihood estimation. Our proposed method utilizes a threshold which limits the amount of forwarded RSSI data to the central node. As the threshold is crucial to the method, we further propose a method to theoretically determine its value. We experimentally verified the proposed method in various environments and the experimental results revealed that the method can reduce the load by 32-64% without significantly affecting the estimation accuracy.

A new unsupervised classification method is proposed for polarimetric SAR images to keep the spatial coherence of pixels and edges of different kinds of targets simultaneously. We consider the label scale variability of images by combining Inhomogeneous Markov Random Field (MRF) and Bayes' theorem. After minimizing an energy function using an expansion algorithm based on Graph Cuts, we can obtain classification results that are discontinuity preserving. Using a NASA/JPL AIRSAR image, we demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method.

This paper proposes a wide-locking range divide-by-3 frequency divider employing 3D helical inductors fabricated in the 0.18-µm 1P6M CMOS technology. The divider consists of an nMOS cross-coupled LC oscillator and two injection MOSFETs in series with the cross-coupled NMOSFETs, and the LC resonator is composed of two 3D helical inductors and varactors. The aim of using 3D inductor is to reduce chip size. At the supply voltage of 1.2 V, the divider free-running frequency is tunable from 2.1 GHz to 2.6 GHz, and at the incident power of 0 dBm the locking range is about 2.11 GHz (29.16%), from the incident frequency 5.99 GHz to 8.1 GHz. The core power consumption is 4.56 mW. The die area is 0.6640.831 mm2.