The noise robustness of an audio fingerprinting system is one of the most important issues in music information retrieval by the content-based audio identification technique. In a real environment, sound recordings are commonly distorted by channel and background noise. Recently, Philips published a robust and efficient audio fingerprinting system for audio identification. To extract a robust and efficient audio fingerprint, Philips applied the first derivative (differential) to the frequency-time sequence of the perceptual filter-bank energies. In practice, however, the noise robustness of Philips' audio fingerprinting scheme is still insufficient. In this paper, we introduce an extension method of the audio fingerprinting scheme for the enhancement of noise robustness. As an alternative to frequency filtering, a type of band-pass filter, instead of a high-pass filter, is used to achieve robustness to background noise in a real situation. Our experimental results show that the proposed filter improves the noise robustness in audio identification.

GPS (Global Positioning System) is 3D positioning system which uses satellite signals, and it is used in various situations. The number of GPS satellites that we can see changes in measurement and the degree of error is increased between measurement points. Our aim is to reduce the degree of error through the experiment and simulation and, as a result, we have succeeded in reducing error in most of the examples.

We developed a system that detects the vehicle driving immediately ahead of one's own car in the same lane and measures the distance to and relative speed of that vehicle to prevent accidents such as rear-end collisions. The system is the first in the industry to use non-scanning millimeter-wave radar combined with a sturdy stereo image sensor, which keeps cost low. It can operate stably in adverse weather conditions such as rain, which could not easily be done with previous sensors. The system's vehicle detection performance was tested, and the system can correctly detect vehicles driving 3 to 50 m ahead in the same lane with higher than 99% accuracy in clear weather. Detection performance in rainy weather, where water drops and splashes notably degraded visibility, was higher than 90%.

We fabricate a 763-nm laser module based on second-harmonic generation using a direct-bonded quasi-phase-matched LiNbO3 ridge waveguide. We obtained a 0.84-mW output of 763 nm light using a 1526-nm distributed-feedback laser diode. We also demonstrate O2 gas detection using the module output.

In the present paper, we propose a method for reconstructing the surfaces of objects from stereo data. Both the fitness of stereo data to surfaces and interrelation between the surfaces are defined in the framework of a three-dimensional (3-D) Markov Random Field (MRF) model. The surface reconstruction is accomplished by searching for the most likely state of the MRF model. Three experimental results are shown for synthetic and real stereo data.

One of the challenging issues in affective computing is to give a machine the ability to recognize the affective states with intensity of a person. Few studies are directed toward this goal by categorizing affective behavior of the person into a set of discrete categories. But still two problems exist: gesture is not yet a concern as a channel of affective communication in interactive technology, and existing systems only model discrete categories but not affective dimensions, e.g., intensity. Modeling the intensity of emotion has been well addressed in synthetic autonomous agent and virtual environment literature, but there is an evident lack of attention in other important research areas such as affective computing, machine vision, and robotic. In this work, we propose an affective gesture recognition system that can recognize the emotion of a child and the intensity of the emotion states in a scenario of game playing. We used levels of cognitive and non-cognitive appraisal factors to estimate intensity of emotion. System has an intelligent agent (called Mix) that takes these factors into consideration and adapt the game state to create a more positive interactive environment for the child.

The feasibility of a new transistor structure was demonstrated through an experimental observation of current gain and voltage gain. The proposed transistor structure is a hot electron transistor without a base layer to minimize scattering. Electron emission from the emitter is controlled using positively biased Schottky gate electrodes located on both sides of the emitter mesa. Monte Carlo simulation shows an estimated delay time of 0.17 ps and low gate leakage current with open-circuit voltage gain over unity. To confirm the basic operation, the device with a 25 nm wide emitter was fabricated. To obtain saturated current-voltage characteristics, the emitter was surrounded by gates and parasitic regions were eliminated by electron beam lithography. The observed open-circuit voltage gain was 25. To obtain a low leakage current, an electron energy smaller than the Γ-L separation was necessary to maintain the ballistic nature of the electron. When the gate-emitter voltage was 0.8 V, the gate leakage current was only 4% of the collector current. Thus voltage amplication and current amplification were confirmed simultaneously.

A novel resonant tunneling diode (RTD) oscillator is proposed, which overcomes the problems of the conventional RTD oscillators, such as the low-frequency spurious oscillation and the bias instability. Our proposal consists of two RTDs connected serially, and the resonator connected to the node between two RTDs. This circuit separates the oscillation node from the bias nodes, and suppresses the above mentioned problems. This relaxes the severe restriction on the RTD area, and makes it possible to supply higher power to a load. Circuit simulation shows that with this circuit more than 2 mW power can be supplied to the 50 Ω resistive load at 100 GHz using RTDs having 105 A/cm2-peak current density and 20 µm2-area. It also shows that the dc-to-RF conversion efficiency is as good as that of conventional ones. Furthermore, we have studied the extension of this oscillator having 4 RTDs connected serially. Circuit simulations revealed that using this circuit the power can be doubled with a good conversion efficiency.

This paper proposes a novel compressing and expanding (companding) system for OFDM wireless communications that minimizes the compression distortion and so reduces the peak power of OFDM symbols. OFDM systems suffer from large variations in instantaneous peak power. Such transients distort the signals when they are passed through a nonlinear high power amplifier (HPA) prior to transmission. Existing companding systems are far from perfect since the receiver can not accurately estimate the degree of compression applied by the transmitter and thus can not regenerate the original signal by expansion; the key problems are the band pass filter (BPF), HPA, and the noise component enhanced by the channel compensation filter. In the proposed companding system, each symbol is divided into segments, and series of consecutive segments are grouped into clusters. Each cluster is multiplied by a weight equal to the inverse of the largest instantaneous power within the cluster. The receiver estimates the weight used for each time cluster. The weights for all clusters are averaged to mitigate the weight estimation error. As a result, the proposed expander can accurately estimate the weights used and thus well suppress the compression distortion.

The EDD connection admission control scheme has been proposed for supporting real-time communication in packet-switched networks. In the scheme, when a connection establishment request occurs, the worst-case link delay in each link along the connection is calculated to determine whether the request can be accepted or not. In order to calculate the worst-case link delay, we must perform a check called the point schedulability check for each of some discrete time instants (checkpoints). Therefore when there are many checkpoints, the worst-case link delay calculation is time-consuming. We have proposed a high-speed calculation method. The method finds some checkpoints for which the point schedulability check need not be performed and removes such unnecessary checkpoints in advance before a connection establishment request occurs, and the check is performed for each of the remaining checkpoints after the request occurs. However, the method is not so effective under the situation that the maximum packet length in networks is large, because the method can find few unnecessary checkpoints under the situation. This paper proposes a new high-speed calculation method. We relax the condition which determines whether or not the point schedulability check need not be performed for each checkpoint in our previous method and derive a new condition for finding unnecessary checkpoints. Using the proposed method based on the new condition, we can increase the number of unnecessary checkpoints compared to our previous method. Numerical examples which are obtained by extensive simulation show that the proposed method can attain as much as about 50 times speedup.

The most powerful channel coding schemes, namely those based on turbo codes and low-density parity-check (LDPC) Gallager codes, have in common the principle of iterative decoding. However, the relative coding structures and decoding algorithms are substantially different. This paper presents a 2048-bit, rate-1/2 soft decision decoder for a new class of codes known as Turbo Gallager Codes. These codes are turbo codes with properly chosen component convolutional codes such that they can be successfully decoded by means of the decoding algorithm used for LDPC codes, i.e., the belief propagation algorithm working on the code Tanner graph. These coding schemes are important in practical terms for two reasons: (i) they can be encoded as classical turbo codes, giving a solution to the encoding problem of LDPC codes; (ii) they can also be decoded in a fully parallel manner, partially overcoming the routing congestion bottleneck of parallel decoder VLSI implementations thanks to the locality of the interconnections. The implemented decoder can support up to 1 Gbit/s data rate and performs up to 48 decoding iterations ensuring both high throughput and good coding gain. In order to evaluate the performance and the gate complexity of the decoder VLSI architecture, it has been synthesized in a 0.18 µm standard-cell CMOS technology.

The minimization problem of an L2-sensitivity measure subject to L2-norm dynamic-range scaling constraints is formulated for a class of two-dimensional (2-D) state-space digital filters. First, the problem is converted into an unconstrained optimization problem by using linear-algebraic techniques. Next, the unconstrained optimization problem is solved by applying an efficient quasi-Newton algorithm with closed-form formula for gradient evaluation. The coordinate transformation matrix obtained is then used to synthesize the optimal 2-D state-space filter structure that minimizes the L2-sensitivity measure subject to L2-norm dynamic-range scaling constraints. Finally, a numerical example is presented to illustrate the utility of the proposed technique.

We have fabricated and investigated InGaAs Esaki tunnel diodes, grown on GaAs or InP substrates, of varied defect densities. The tunnel diodes exhibit the same I-V characteristics in spite of the variation of defect density. Under the simple thermal annealing and forward current stress tests, the change in the valley current was not observed, indicating that defects were not increased. On the other hand, the reduction in the peak current due to the carbon diffusion was observed under both tests. The diffusion was enhanced by the stress current owing to the energy dissipation associated with the nonradiative electron-hole recombination. From the reduction rates of the peak current, we obtained the thermal and current-enhanced carbon diffusion constants in InGaAs, which are independent of defect density. Although thermal diffusion of carbon in InGaAs is comparable with that in GaAs, the current-induced enhancement of diffusion in InGaAs is extremely weaker than that in GaAs. The difference between activation energy of thermal and current-enhanced diffusion is 0.8 eV, which is independent of stress current density and close to InGaAs bandgap energy. This indicates that the current-enhanced diffusion is dominated by the energy dissipation associated with nonradiative band-to-band recombination. This enhancement mechanism well explains that the current-induced enhancement is independent of defect density and extremely weak. We also have found that the current-enhanced diffusion constant is approximately proportional to the square of current density, suggesting that the recombination in the depletion layer dominates the current-enhanced diffusion.

Accumulation of non-equilibrium longitudinal optical (LO) phonons (termed hot phonons) is considered as a possible cause for limitation of frequency of operation of GaN-based high-electron-mobility transistors (HEMTs). The experimental data on noise temperature of hot electrons at a microwave frequency as a function of supplied electric power is used to extract information on hot phonons: the hot-phonon lifetime, the equivalent hot-phonon temperature, the effective occupancy of hot-phonon states involved into electron-LO-phonon interaction. The possible ways for controlling the hot-phonon effect on electron drift velocity through variation of electron density, channel composition, and hot-phonon lifetime are discussed. The expected dependence of hot-electron drift velocity on hot-phonon lifetime is confirmed experimentally. A self-consistent explanation of different frequency behaviour of InP-based and GaN-based HEMTs is obtained from a comparative study of hot-phonon effects.

In this paper, Morse code is selected as a communication adaptive device for persons whose hand coordination and dexterity are impaired by such ailments as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, multiple sclerosis, muscular dystrophy, and other severe handicaps. Morse code is composed of a series of dots, dashes, and space intervals, and each element is transmitted by sending a signal for a defined length of time. A suitable adaptive automatic recognition method is needed for persons with disabilities due to their difficulty in maintaining a stable typing rate. To overcome this problem, the proposed method combines the support vector machines method with a variable degree variable step size LMS algorithm. The method is divided into five stages: tone recognition, space recognition, training process, adaptive processing, and character recognition. Statistical analyses demonstrated that the proposed method elicited a better recognition rate in comparison to alternative methods from the literature.

According to the Gestalt principals, this paper presents a recognition method of grouping areas in trademark images modeling features for measuring the attraction degree between couples of image components. This investigation would be used for content-based image retrieval from the view of mirroring human perception for images. Depending on variability in human perception for trademark images, the proposed method finds grouping areas by calculating Mahalanobis distance with the features to every combination of two components in images. The features are extracted from every combination of two components in images, and the features represent proximity, shape similarity, and closure between two components. In addition, changing combination of the features, plural grouping patterns are output. Besides, this paper shows the efficiency and limits of the proposed method from experimental results. In the experiments, 104 participants have perceived grouping patterns to 74 trademark images and the human perceptions have been compared with outputs by the proposed method for the 74 images.

In this paper, ultra-wideband (UWB) multiple access systems are introduced by using direct-sequence (DS) and hybrid direct-sequence time-hopping (DS/TH) code division multiple access (CDMA) that use arbitrary chip-duty of the spreading sequences. The bit error probabilities are presented. First of all, the variances of the multiple access interference are developed by investigating the collision properties of the signals. Afterward, various approximations are applied. The standard Gaussian approximation (SGA) for the DS system is shown to become extremely optimistic as the chip-duty becomes low. Though the hybrid system performs better, the SGA still remains optimistic. To obtain accurate results, Holtzman's simplified improved Gaussian approximation (SIGA) and Morrow and Lehnert's improved Gaussian approximation (IGA) are used. A shortcoming of the SIGA is rediscovered that renders it unusable for low-duty DS systems, especially, at high signal-to-noise ratio. However, for the hybrid system, the SIGA works as an excellent tool. The IGA is used to get accurate results for the low-duty DS systems. It is shown that lowering of chip-duty by keeping chip rate and chip length unchanged improves performance for asynchronous DS and both asynchronous and synchronous hybrid systems. However, under the same processing gain, a high-duty system performs better than a low-duty system. Performance of synchronous DS system remains independent of chip-duty.

This paper presents a hybrid decimal division algorithm to improve division speed. The proposed hybrid algorithm employs either non-restoring or restoring algorithm on each digit to reduce iterative computations. The selection of the algorithm is based on the relative remainder values with respect to the half of its divisor. The proposed algorithm requires maximum 7n+4 add/subtract operations for an n-digit quotient, whereas other restoring or non-restoring schemes comprise more than 10n+1 operations.

A great deal of research has been made to model the vagueness and uncertainty in information retrieval. One such research is fuzzy ranking models, which have been showing their superior performance in handling the uncertainty involved in the retrieval process. However, these conventional fuzzy ranking models have a limited ability to incorporate the user preference when calculating the rank of documents. To address this issue, in this study we develop a new fuzzy ranking model based on the user preference. Through the experiments on the TREC-2 collection of Wall Street Journal documents, we show that the proposed method outperforms the conventional fuzzy ranking models.

In this letter two noise-predictive equalization schemes, which are based on zero-forcing (ZF) and minimum mean square error (MMSE) criteria, are presented for unique-word (UW) based single-carrier systems. The correlation properties of the noises in the outputs of the frequency domain equalizer are exploited to predict and cancel the noise contained in the estimation of data. Theoretical analyses show that both of the proposed techniques perform better than the conventional frequency domain equalizers. Simulation results have confirmed the significant performance improvement they could achieve.