An active shield circuit which effectively reduces the substrate noise on the entire area inside the guard ring regardless of the noise source position is proposed. Simulation result shows that the proposed circuit can reduce the noise level to -85 dB while a conventional guard ring gives -52 dB.

Integrated 900-MHz ISM band transceiver LSI for analog cordless telephone has been realized by cost-effective process technology with sufficient performance. This LSI consisted of fully integrated transceiver, from RF-LNA to audio amplifier for RX chain, from microphone's amplifier to RF-PA for TX chain, and integrated RX- and TX-LO consisting of PLLs and VCOs. In view of narrow signal bandwidth with analog modulation, extremely low phase noise at low offset frequency from carrier was required for integrated VCO. Also, in view of fully duplex operations, signal isolation between TX and RX was required. Despite such a high integration and high performance, chip cost had to be minimized for low-cost applications. The 12-dB SINAD RX sensitivity was -111.2 dBm, the output power of TX was +3 dBm, and the phase noise of integrated VCO was -77 dBc/Hz at 3 kHz offset away from carrier. The current consumption at fully duplex operation was 76 mA at 3.6 V power supply. The chip was realized by 0.8 µm standard silicon BiCMOS process.

The multi-channel Hybrid Fiber Coaxial (HFC) network is essentially a shared medium with multi-channels. Its operation requires the use of a scheduling algorithm to manage the data transmission within each channel. The Data-Over-Cable Service Interface Specification (DOCSIS) protocol is an important standard for HFC networks. Since this protocol does not explicitly specify the scheduling algorithm to be used, many alternative algorithms have been proposed. However, none of these algorithms are applicable to the scheduling of non-Unsolicited Grant Service (UGS) data in multi-channel HFC networks. Accordingly, the present study develops a multi-channel scheduling algorithm which optimizes the scheduling delay time of each transmitted non-UGS request. This algorithm manages the amount of data transmission in each upstream channel according to the overall network load and the bandwidth available in each channel. This study constructs a mathematical model of the algorithm and then uses this model as the basis for a series of simulations in which the performance of the scheduling algorithm is evaluated.

An improved method for extracting translation equivalents from bilingual comparable corpora according to contextual similarity was developed. This method has two main features. First, a seed bilingual lexicon--which is used to bridge contexts in different languages--is adapted to the corpora from which translation equivalents are to be extracted. Second, the contextual similarity is evaluated by using a combination of similarity measures defined in opposite directions. An experiment using Wall Street Journal and Nihon Keizai Shimbun corpora, together with the EDR bilingual dictionary, demonstrated the effectiveness of the method; it produced lists of candidate translation equivalents with an accuracy of around 30% for frequently occurring unknown words. The method thus proved to be useful for improving the coverage of a bilingual lexicon.

This paper describes two circuit techniques useful for the design of high density and high speed low cost double data rate memories. One is a highly flexible row and column redundancy circuit which allows the division of flexible row redundancy unit into multiple column redundancy unit for higher flexibility, with a new test mode circuit which enables the use of the finer pitch laser fuse. Another is a compact read data path which allows the smooth data flow without wait time in the high frequency operation with less area penalty. These circuit techniques achieved the compact chip size with the cell efficiency of 60.6% and the high bandwidth of 400 MHz operation with CL=2.5.

In this paper, we describe an accelerative current-programming method for active matrix OLED (AM-OLED) display. This new method uses common source configuration, "Acceleration Control" line and some mechanisms to prevent the programming current from flowing through OLED device. It would solve the basic problem of the current-programming pixel circuit: a long programming period, especially at the dark gray-level. The proposed method accelerates the current programming process at any gray levels, and it would be the solution for the problem.

The role of hydrogen in the Si film during excimer laser annealing (ELA) has been successfully studied by using a novel sample structure, which is stacked by a-Si film and SiN film. Hydrogen contents in the Si films during ELA are changed by preparing samples with hydrogen content of 2.3-8.2 at.% in the SiN films with a use of catalytic (Cat)-CVD method. For the low concentration of hydrogens in the Si film, the grain size increases by decreasing hydrogen concentration in the Si film, and the internal stress of the film decreases as increasing the shot number. For the high concentration of hydrogens in the Si film, hydrogen burst was observed at 500 mJ/cm2 and the dependence of the internal stress on the shot number becomes weak even at 318 mJ/cm2. These phenomena can be understood basically using the secondary grain growth mechanism, which we have proposed.

Recursive programs are often easier to read and write than iterative ones, but their execution frequently requires large numbers of procedure calls and stack operations. This causes problems in program optimization related to inline coding and the locality of data references. In addition to these problems, defining programs recursively sometimes leads to repetitive execution of similar computations, causing programs to have exponential time complexity. As a result, recursion removal methods, which transform a given recursive program to an iterative one without using the stack and increasing the amount of computation time, have been studied since the 1970s. In 1998, our group proposed a recursion removal method for a linear recursive program. In this paper, we extend the method to deal with non-linear recursive programs with one descent function (RPODs), which are programs of the form f(x) = if p(x) then b(x) else a(c(x),f(d(x)),f(d2(x)),...,f(dn(x))). First, we define the cumulative function for an RPOD. Next, based on the new cumulative function, several transformation techniques for RPODs are shown. These include a unified method of deriving logarithmic-order iterative programs or loop-free programs. Finally, the relationships between our method and various tupling strategies are discussed.

We propose a new diversity scheme for orthogonal frequency division multiplexing/multi-input multi-output (OFDM/MIMO) systems. The proposed scheme, named turbo layered space-frequency coded OFDM (TLSFC-OFDM), exploits the turbo principle with space hopping (SH). The TLSFC-OFDM system with SH provides a spatial coding so that we can obtain the transmit diversity. We also introduce a successive interference cancellation (SIC) algorithm that requires no ordering and fewer iterations to converge. As a result, this scheme reduces computational complexity. Computer simulation results show that the unordered SIC-based TLSFC-OFDM system outperforms the OFDM/H-BLAST system. It is also shown that the proposed system can operate even with fewer receive antennas than transmit antennas.

This paper describes a new probabilistic sentence reduction method using maximum entropy model. In contrast to previous methods, the proposed method has the ability to produce multiple best results for a given sentence, which is useful in text summarization applications. Experimental results show that the proposed method improves on earlier methods in both accuracy and computation time.

The Time Domain Electromagnetic Method (TDEM) survey is one of the several geophysical exploration methods. In the conventional TDEM survey, an induction coil is used as the magnetometer. However, the measurement depth is limited to about 500 m. Using high Tc SQUIDs, there are expectations of large bandwidth and high sensitivity for the TDEM. We developed the high Tc SQUID TDEM system. We have reduced the system noise by developing a 20 mm20 mm step-edge type direct coupled SQUID and a low noise direct readout flux locked loop (FLL) circuit. We have also improved the slew rate, optimizing the parameter of the FLL circuit. Consequently, the system noise of less than 0.2 pT/Hz1/2 at 1 kHz was achieved in the earth's magnetic field. The slew rate was 7.3 mT/sec. We conducted field trials and confirmed that the TDEM using high Tc SQUIDs obtains information of deeper region with high precision compared with the TDEM using induction coils.

To enable the use of passive transmission lines (PTLs) for the interconnection of single-flux-quantum (SFQ) circuits, we have implemented a driver and a receiver and have developed a method for designing SFQ circuits with passive interconnections. Basic components and properties of passive interconnections, such as the frequency characteristics of the driver and receiver, the PTL delay, and the crosstalk between PTLs, have been experimentally verified. Our developed components and design method have been applied to actual SFQ circuits, such as a 44 switch having block-to-block passive interconnections and a 22 switch having gate-to-gate passive interconnections. We have also shown the advantages of PTLs over Josephson transmission lines (JTLs). We also discuss the prospects of SFQ circuits having passive interconnections.

Projection-based model reductions become a necessity for efficient interconnect modeling and simulations. In order to choose the order of the reduced system that can really reflect the essential dynamics of the original interconnect, the residual error of the transfer function can be considered as a stopping criteria to terminate the Arnoldi iteration process. Analytical expressions of this residual error are derived in detail. Furthermore, it can be found that the approximate transfer function can also be expressed as the original interconnect model with some additive perturbations. The perturbation matrix only involves resultant vectors at the previous step of the Arnoldi algorithm. These error information will provide a guideline for the order selection scheme used in the Krylov subspace model-order algorithm.

Efficient extraction of interconnect parasitic parameters has become very important for present deep submicron designs. In this paper, the improved boundary element method (BEM) is presented for 3-D interconnect resistance extraction. The BEM is accelerated by the recently proposed quasi-multiple medium (QMM) technology, which quasi-cuts the calculated region to enlarge the sparsity of the overall coefficient matrix to solve. An un-average quasi-cutting scheme for QMM, advanced nonuniform element partition and technique of employing the linear element for some special surfaces are proposed. These improvements considerably condense the computational resource of the QMM-based BEM without loss of accuracy. Experiments on actual layout cases show that the presented method is several hundred to several thousand times faster than the well-known commercial software Raphael, while preserving the high accuracy.

In this study, a multiple U-shaped slot microstrip patch antenna for application to the 5 GHz band is designed and fabricated. To obtain sufficient bandwidth in the operating band, foam is inserted between the substrate and ground plane, the type of form is styrofoam, the coaxial probe source is used, and the position of the probe shift is adjusted from the center to the left. The measured result (5.02-5.955 GHz) of the fabricated antenna satisfies the conditions of VSWR < 2.0 in 5 GHz band (5.15-5.35 GHz, 5.47-5.725 GHz, 5.725-5.825 GHz), gain of 3.88-9.28 dBi, and broad radiation pattern.

In this letter, we evaluate the performance of Optical Cross Connect (OXC) architectures equipped with limited-range wavelength converters. Performance will be evaluated according to both an optimum and a random output wavelength assignment strategy. Analytical and simulation results show the possibility to reduce the conversion degree of the Wavelength Converters while keeping network performance high.

The facility layout problem is one of the most fundamental quadratic assignment problems in operations research. In this paper, we present an improved genetic algorithm for solving the facility layout problem. In our computational model, we propose several improvements to the basic genetic procedures including conditional crossover and mutation. The performance of the proposed method is evaluated on some benchmark problems. Computational results showed that the improved genetic algorithm is capable of producing high-quality solutions.

This paper proposes the optimum design for adaptively controlling the spreading factor in Orthogonal Frequency and Code Division Multiplexing (OFCDM) with two-dimensional spreading according to the cell configuration, channel load, and propagation channel conditions, assuming the adaptive modulation and channel coding (AMC) scheme employing QPSK and 16QAM data modulation. Furthermore, we propose a two-dimensional orthogonal channelization code assignment scheme to achieve skillfully orthogonal multiplexing of multiple physical channels. We first demonstrate the reduction effect of inter-code interference by the proposed two-dimensional orthogonal channelization code assignment. Then, computer simulation results show that in time domain spreading, the optimum spreading factor, except for an extremely high mobility case such as for the fading maximum Doppler frequency of fD = 1500 Hz, becomes SFTime = 16. Furthermore, it should be decreased to SFTime = 8 for such a very fast fading environment using 16QAM data modulation. We also clarify when the channel load is light such as Cmux/SF = 0.25 (Cmux and SF denote the number of multiplexed codes and total spreading factor, respectively), the required average received signal energy per symbol-to-noise power spectrum density ratio (Es/N0) is reduced as the spreading factor in the frequency domain is increased up to say SFFreq = 32 for QPSK and 16QAM data modulation. When the channel load is close to full such as when Cmux/SF = 0.94, the optimum spreading factor in the frequency domain is SFFreq = 1 for 16QAM data modulation and SFFreq = 1 to 8 for QPSK data modulation according to the delay spread. Consequently, by setting several combinations of spreading factors in the time and frequency domains, the near maximum link capacity is achieved both in cellular and hotspot cell configurations assuming various channel conditions.

This paper describes a second-order continuous-time ΔΣ modulator for a W-CDMA receiver, which operates at a supply voltage of 0.9 V, the lowest so far reported for W-CDMA. Inverter-based balanced OTAs without using differential pair are proposed for a low-voltage operation. Circuit parameters are optimized by system simulations. The modulator was implemented in a 0.13-µm CMOS technology. It consumes only 1.5 mW. The measured SNDR is 50.9 dB over a bandwidth of 1.92 MHz.

We propose a novel approach based on wavelet decomposition for progressive full spectral rendering. In the fourth progressive stage, our method renders an image that is 95% similar to the final non-progressive approach but requires less than 70% of the execution time. The quality of the rendered image is visually plausible that is indistinguishable from that of the non-progressive method. Our approach is graceful, efficient, progressive, and flexible for full spectral rendering.