We describe an online method for selecting and annotating highlight scenes in soccer matches being televised. The stadium crowd noise and the play-by-play announcer's voice are used as input signals. Candidate scenes for highlights are extracted from the crowd noise by dynamic thresholding and spectral envelope analysis. Using a dynamic threshold solves the problem in conventional methods of how to determine an appropriate threshold. Semantic-meaning information about the kind of play and the related team and player is extracted from the announcer's commentary by using domain-based rules. The information extracted from the two types of audio input is integrated to generate segment-metadata of highlight scenes. Application of the method to six professional soccer games has confirmed its effectiveness.

Differential power analysis (DPA) is an effective technique that extracts secret keys from cryptographic systems through statistical analysis of the power traces obtained during encryption and decryption operations. This letter proposes symmetric discharge logic (SDL), a circuit-level countermeasure against DPA, which exhibits uniform power traces for every clock period by maintaining a set of discharge paths independent of input values. This feature minimizes differences in power traces and improves resistance to DPA attacks. HSPICE simulations for the test circuits using 0.18 µm TSMC CMOS process parameters indicate that SDL reduces power differences by an order of magnitude, compared to the existing circuit-level technique.

This paper presents a scalable FPGA/ASIC implementation architecture for high-speed parallel table-lookup-coding using multi-ported content addressable memory, aiming at facilitating effective table-lookup-coding solutions. The multi-ported CAM adopts a Flexible Multi-ported Content Addressable Memory (FMCAM) technology, which represents an effective parallel processing architecture and was previously reported in [1]. To achieve a high-speed parallel table-lookup-coding solution, FMCAM is improved by additional schemes for a single search mode and counting value setting mode, so that it permits fast parallel table-lookup-coding operations. Evaluation results for Huffman encoding within the JPEG application show that a synthesized semi-custom ASIC implementation of the proposed architecture can already reduce the required clock-cycle number by 93% in comparison to a conventional DSP. Furthermore, the performance per area unit, measured in MOPS/mm2, can be improved by a factor of 3.8 in comparison to parallel operated DSPs. Consequently, the proposed architecture is very suitable for FPGA/ASIC implementation, and is a promising solution for small area integrated realization of real-time table-lookup-coding applications.

As hardware platforms increase in computation capability, multiple filter coefficient adaptations between two neighboring input signals can be realized to achieve a high convergence rate. This study explores the data-reusing scheme based on the Normalized Least Mean Squared (NLMS) algorithm. Moreover, the impacts of the reusing times and input signal vector's variance to the convergence rate and misadjustment of an adaptive filter are theoretically derived and analyzed. A large number of reusing times was found to raise the convergence rate but also increase misadjustament, while a high variance of an input vector was found to lower misadjustment and expedite the convergence rate. To reduce computational complexity of the data-reusing scheme, this study develops the Fast Data-Reusing NLMS (FDRNLMS) algorithm. The proposed FDRNLMS requires minimal computation for the adaptation scaling factor, and only requires two more multiplication operations than NLMS in calculating each filter output. Additionally, the computation complexity of this FDRNLMS is independent of the number of reusing times. Therefore, the FDRNLMS proposed herein is superior to the NLMS and Least Mean Squared (LMS) algorithms using conventional data-reusing schemes which have computation complexity proportional to the number of reusing times.

This paper proposes a new countermeasure, Random Switching Logic (RSL), against DPA (Differential Power Analysis) and Second-Order DPA at the logic level. RSL makes a signal transition uniform at each gate and suppresses the propagation of glitch to allow power consumption to be independent of predictable data. Furthermore, we implement basic logic circuits on the FPGA (Field Programmable Gate Array) by using RSL, and evaluate the effectiveness. As a result, we confirm the fact that the secure circuit can be structured against DPA and Second-Order DPA.

This letter presents a clear and more accurate analytical model to evaluate the IEEE 802.11e enhanced distributed channel access (EDCA) protocol. The proposed model distinguishes internal collision from external collision. It also differentiates the two cases when the backoff counter decreases, i.e. an arbitration interframe space (AIFS) period after a busy duration and a time slot after the AIFS period. The analytical model is validated through simulation.

The voltage island style has been widely accepted as an effective way to design low power high performance chips. This paper proposes an automated voltage island generation flow in standard cell based designs. Two important objectives in voltage island designs are addressed in this flow: 1) reducing power dissipation under given performance constraints; 2) reducing implementation overheads, mainly layout overheads caused by cell clustering to form islands. The first objective is handled with timing and power driven netweighting and timing analysis in voltage assignment. For the second objective, we propose layout aware voltage assignment, i.e., voltage assignment during placement. We iteratively perform the following to adjustments: adjustment on voltage assignment to facilitate voltage island generation, and adjustment on cell locations to cluster cells in voltage islands. These iterations lead to a flow featured with tightly integrated voltage assignment and cell placement. Experimental results have demonstrated the advantages of our approach.

Guiding and nanofocusing of a two-dimensional (2D) optical beam in a negative-dielectric-gap waveguide is studied theoretically. An index-guiding method along the dielectric core embedded in the negative-dielectric-gap is proposed and the confinement properties of the 2D optical beam are studied by the effective-refractive-index method and FDTD simulations. We have shown that the lateral beam width of the 2D optical beam can be shrunk to zero beyond the diffraction limit. A tapered negative-dielectric-gap waveguide using adiabatic propagation achieves nano-focusing and can be applied to nano-optical couplers. This is a gateway from conventional dielectric waveguides to nano-optical integrated circuits.

Complex thin oxide films with electro-optic (EO) properties are promising for use in advanced optical devices because of their large EO effect. We developed a method of aerosol deposition (AD) for fabricating EO films. The mechanism for AD is based on the solidification by impact of submicron particles onto a substrate. Since particles in AD films preserve their crystalline structure during the formation of film, epitaxial growth is not necessary for exhibiting the EO effect. Highly transparent Pb(Zr, Ti)O3 films, which have acceptable transmittance loss for use as optical devices, were directly deposited on glass substrates by AD. We found the Pb(Zr, Ti)O3 film by AD produced a fairly high EO coefficient (>150 pm/V), approximately 10 times larger than that of LiNbO3. A Fabry-Perot (FP) optical modulator was developed with EO films fabricated by AD. We demonstrated the modulation of optical intensity with an electrical field applied to an EO film made of ferroelectric Pb (Zr, Ti)O3.

The relationship between the topology and collective function of a nonlinear oscillator network was investigated using nonlinear electrochemical oscillators. The constitutive experiments showed that the physiological robustness in the living system is due to their topological redundancy and asymmetry in the nonlinear network.

In this paper, we describe detailed experimental demonstrations of blue/violet light generation by the injection of ultrashort optical pulses into photonic crystal fibers (PCFs). Two lightwaves appear one on each side of the injected pulses in the spectral domain. They simultaneously evolve in the PCFs, changing their center wavelengths so as to spectrally stand apart from each other. Such behaviors are explained on the basis of the theory of nonlinear optics. The final center-wavelength difference between the two lightwaves at the end of the PCFs, depending on the power density of the injected pulse, is increased up to a limit imposed by the PCFs. Owing to this increase, the shorter wavelength limit reaches approximately 400 nm, which shows that short-pulse injection in PCFs is a promising method of realizing simple blue/violet light sources.

Mobile-agent-based distributed computing is one of the most promising paradigms to support autonomic computing in a large-scale of distributed system with dynamics and diversity: mobile agents traverse the distributed system and carry out a sophisticated task at each node adaptively. In mobile-agent-based systems, a larger number of agents generally require shorter time to complete the whole task but consume more resources (e.g., processing power and network bandwidth). Therefore, it is indispensable to keep an appropriate number of agents for the application on the mobile-agent-based system. This paper considers the mobile agent population control problem in dynamic networks: it requires adjusting the number of agents to a constant fraction of the current network size. This paper proposes algorithms inspired by the single species population model, which is a well-known population ecology model. These two algorithms are different in knowledge of networks each node requires. The first algorithm requires global information at each node, while the second algorithm requires only the local information. This paper shows by simulations that the both algorithms realize self-adaptation of mobile agent population in dynamic networks, but the second algorithm attains slightly lower accuracy than the first one.

Data retrieval is used to obtain a particular data item from a database. A user requests an item in the database from a database server by sending a query, and obtains the item from an answer to the query. Security requirements of data retrieval include protecting the privacy of the user, the secrecy of the database, and the consistency of answers. In this paper, a data retrieval scheme which satisfies all the security requirements is defined and an efficient construction is proposed. In the proposed construction, the size of a query and an answer is O((log N)2), and the size of data published by the database server when the database is updated is only O(1). The proposed construction uses the Merkle tree, a commitment scheme, and Oblivious Transfer. The proof of the security is given under the assumption that the used cryptographic schemes are secure.

A remote user authentication scheme is a two-party protocol whereby an authentication server in a distributed system confirms the identity of a remote individual logging on to the server over an untrusted, open network. Recently, Lee et al. have proposed an efficient nonce-based scheme for remote user authentication using smart cards. This work reviews Lee et al.'s authentication scheme and provides a security analysis on the scheme. Our analysis shows that Lee et al.'s scheme does not achieve its basic aim of authenticating remote users and furthermore has a very hazardous method for changing passwords. In addition, we recommend some changes to the scheme so that it can attain at least its main security goal.

We propose a new method of logic synthesis for dual-rail RSFQ (rapid single-flux-quantum) digital circuits. RSFQ circuit technology is one of the strongest candidates for the next generation technology of digital circuits. For representing logic functions, we use a root-shared binary decision diagram (RSBDD) which is a directed acyclic graph constructed from binary decision diagrams. In the method, first we construct an RSBDD from given logic functions, and then reduce the number of nodes in the constructed RSBDD by variable re-ordering. Finally, we synthesize a dual-rail RSFQ circuit from the reduced RSBDD. We have implemented the method and have synthesized benchmark circuits. We have synthesized dual-rail circuits that consist of about 27% fewer logic elements than those synthesized by a Transduction-based method on average.

In this paper, the performance of IEEE 802.11b WLAN under the interference of IEEE 802.15.4 WPAN is analyzed. An analytic model for the coexistence of IEEE 802.15.4 and IEEE 802.11b is presented. Packet error rate, average transmission time, and throughput are evaluated.

Multisignature schemes enable us to integrate multiple signatures into a single short signature. In 2001, Mitomi and Miyaji proposed a general model of multisignatures, in which signed messages are flexible and the signing order is verifiable and flexible. Several schemes that satisfy these properties have been proposed, but to the best of our knowledge, their verifiable orders are limited to only sequential structures unlike some order-verifiable (but not message-flexible) multisignatures. We define a signing structure as a labeled tree, which can represent any natural signing order including series-parallel graphs, and formalize a general model of multisignatures that makes good use of our structure. We present a security model for such signatures, give the construction based on the general aggregate signature developed by Boneh et al., and provide a security proof in the random oracle model.

The performance of a force feedback system is disturbed by delay that arises from the time required for transmission and processing of data. We used a psychophysical method to measure how much a user's subjective impression of elasticity associated with delays of feedback force deviated from the original physical elasticity. The results show that users' point of subjective equality (PSE) for their subjective impression of elasticity decreased as the delay of feedback force increased. We proposed a model that estimates the PSE of elasticity from the variables that can be physically measured. Another experiment was conducted to examine the model's prediction, which the results supported.

This paper presents moment method analysis of a plane wave generator in an oversized rectangular waveguide; its finite size is taken into account. Power divisions of the series of coupling windows and eigenmode excitation coefficients in the oversized waveguide are quantitatively evaluated by the analysis. In order to have a better understanding of array design, the relation between these mode coefficients and the radiation patterns is discussed. Control of the mode coefficients in the oversized waveguide is directly related to the far-field radiation pattern synthesis. These calculated results are verified by measurements in the 61.25 GHz band.

This letter develops an efficient CPM demodulator which provides soft outputs for use in coded CPM. The proposed algorithm offers reduced-complexity soft output detection in which the number of matched filters and trellis states is appreciably reduced. The complexity reduction is achieved by approximating the CPM signal using the Laurent representation. A simulation study of iterative decoding of serially concatenated CPM with an outer code was performed. The performance degradation of the proposed algorithm relative to optimal full complexity generation of soft outputs was found to be small.