Music style is one of the features that people used to classify music. Discovery of music style is helpful for the design of content-based music retrieval systems. In this paper we investigated the mining and classification of music style by melody from a collection of MIDI music. We extracted the chord from the melody and investigated the representation of extracted features and corresponding mining techniques for music classification. Experimental results show that the classification achieved 64% to 84% accuracy for two-way classification.

This paper studies on a fast approach for the eigenproblems of correlation matrices used in direction-of-arrival (DOA) estimation algorithms, especially for the case that the number of arriving waves is a few. The eigenvalues and the corresponding eigenvectors can be obtained in a very short time by the algebraic solvent of up to quartic polynomials. We also confirm that the present approach does not make the accuracy worse when it is implemented by finite word-length processors like digital signal processor (DSP) or field programmable gate array (FPGA).

This paper describes a rhythm pattern accuracy diagnosis system based on the rhythm pattern matching algorithm and a diagnosis feedback method by employing the SVM technique. A beat rhythm pattern is recorded by a PC and analyzed with an algorithm including cluster-analysis-based pattern matching. Rhythm performance is represented by a performance feature vector, which features note length deviation, note length instability, and tempo instability. The performance feature vector is effective for objectively evaluating the accuracy of rhythm patterns objectively. In addition, this system has the music experts' knowledge base, which is calculated from the performance feature vectors associated with the experts' subjective evaluation by listening to the performance. The system generates both an objective measuring report, and experts' comments for learners. Reproductivity of experts' comments is statistically indicated to be excellent for eight rhythm patterns, two tempo levels, and eight users. Reliability of experts' comments are also described considering the threshold of the decision function of SVM. Subjective evaluation of the system is carried out by fifteen users by a questionnaire using the SD method. As a result of factor analysis for the sixteen questions, four factors named "Audio-visual representation," "User-friendliness," "Reliability," and "Window representation," are extracted. Users' four factor scores indicate that the system is reliable and easy to use.

The problem of the super-resolution time delay estimation of the real stationary signals is addressed in this paper. The time delay estimation is first converted into a frequency estimation problem. Then a MUSIC-type algorithm to estimate the subsequent frequency from the single-experiment data is proposed, which not only avoids the mathematical model mismatching but also utilizes the advantages of the subspace-based methods. The mean square errors (MSEs) of the time delay estimate of the MUSIC-type method for varying signal-to-noise (SNR) and separation of two received signal components are shown to illustrate that they approximately coincide with the corresponding Cramer-Rao bound (CRB). Finally, the comparison between the MUSIC-type method and the other conventional methods is presented to show the advantages of the proposed method in this paper.

Computing the Eigen Value Decomposition (EVD) of a symmetric matrix is a frequently encountered problem in adaptive (or smart or software) antenna signal processing, for example, super resolution DOA (Direction Of Arrival) estimation algorithms such as MUSIC (MUltiple SIgnal Classification) and ESPRIT (Estimation of Signal Parameters via Rotational Invariance Technique). In this paper the hardware architecture of the fast EVD processor of symmetric correlation matrices for the application of an adaptive antenna technology such as DOA estimation is proposed and the basic idea is also presented. Cyclic Jacobi method is well known for the simplest algorithm and easily implemented but its convergence time is slower than other factorization algorithm like QR-method. But if considering the fast parallel computation of the EVD with a hardware architecture like ASIC (Application Specific Integrated Circuit) or FPGA (Field Programmable Gate Array), the Jacobi method can be a appropriate solution, since it offers a quite higher degree of parallelism and easier implementation than other factorization algorithms. This paper computes the EVD using a Jacobi-type method, where the vector rotations and the angles of the rotations are obtained by CORDIC (COordinate Rotation DIgital Computer). The hardware architecture suitable for ASIC or FPGA with fixed-point arithmetic is presented. Because it consists of only shift and add operations, this hardware friendly feature provides easy and efficient implementation. In this paper, the computational load, the estimate of circuit scale and expected performance are discussed and the validation of fixed-point arithmetic for the practical application to MUSIC DOA estimation is examined.

This paper addresses the single channel speech enhancement method which utilizes the mean value and variance of the logarithmic noise power spectra. An important issue for single channel speech enhancement algorithm is to determine the trade-off point for the spectral distortion and residual noise. Thus the accurate discrimination between speech spectral and noise components is required. The conventional methods determine the trade-off point using parameters obtained experimentally. As a result spectral discrimination is not adequate. And the enhanced speech is deteriorated by spectral distortion or residual noise. Therefore, a criteria to determine the point is necessary. The proposed method determines the trade-off point of spectral distortion and residual noise level by discrimination between speech spectral and noise components based on statistical criteria. The spectral discrimination is performed using hypothesis testing that utilizes means and variances of the logarithmic power spectra. The discriminated spectral components are divided into speech-dominant spectral components and noise-dominant ones. For the speech-dominant ones, spectral subtraction is performed to minimize the spectral distortion. For the noise-dominant ones, attenuation is performed to reduce the noise level. The performance of the method is confirmed in terms of waveform, spectrogram, noise reduction level and speech recognition task. As a result, the noise reduction level and speech recognition rate are improved so that the method reduces the musical noise effectively and improves the enhanced speech quality.

The radar cross section (RCS) of a dielectric-coated cylindrical cavity was measured and the measurements were compared with those calculated according to the iterative physical optics (IPO). The IPO analysis used the equivalent-impedance boundary condition (EIBC) based on transmission-line theory which takes into account the thickness of the coating. It was consequently found that this condition is much more effective than the ordinary-impedance boundary condition based on the intrinsic impedance of the material.

Uniform color spaces are very important in color engineering, image source coding and multimedia information processing. In spite of many efforts have been paid on the subject, however, construction of an exact uniform color space seems difficult until now. Existing approaches mainly used local and heuristic approximations. Moreover, there seemed also certain confusion in definitions of the uniform spaces. In this paper we discuss the issue from a point of view of global Riemannian geometry. The equivalence between global and local definitions of uniform space are shown. Then both an exact and a simplified algorithm are presented to uniformize either a part or the totality of a color space. These algorithms can be expected to find applications in optimal quantization of color information.

The surface film of a slip ring is important for the sliding contact phenomenon. The surface film is affected by atmospheric temperature, humidity and air pressure. The main objective of our study is to examine the effect of oxygen gas on the sliding contact phenomenon. In the present experiment, we examined the contact voltage drop for continuous sliding when the atmosphere is changed from low pressure to atmospheric pressure by introducing oxygen (O2 20%+N2 80%) or nitrogen gas. As a result, the contact voltage drop increases rapidly with increasing gas pressure, and its fluctuation also becomes large. These phenomena are observed in both cases of oxygen (O2 20%+N2 80%) and nitrogen introduction. The results clearly show that the sudden increase of contact voltage drop is affected by factors other than the oxide film. Actually, the oxide film is not formed in the nitrogen atmosphere. Furthermore, the frictional coefficient of carbon and copper ring is changed at ambient atmosphere. It is inferred from these data that the contact voltage drop may be affected by the frictional coefficient. When the gas pressure decreases again, the contact voltage drop does not suffer from the effect of ambient gas. Therefore, only the resistance of the oxide film appears to affect contact voltage drop. In this paper, the effect of sliding contact phenomenon on the contact voltage drop by gas adsorption and film generation was examined.

It is known that MUSIC and ESPRIT algorithms can estimate simultaneously both the instantaneous Direction of Arrival (DOA) and the instantaneous Angular Spread (AS) in multiple scattering environments. These algorithms use the Extended Array Mode Vector (EAMV) with complex angle. The previous work evaluated the performance of those algorithms by comparing the estimated DOA and the estimated AS with the DOA and the AS given in the EAMV, which uses the first-order approximation. Thus, this evaluation method has not clearly reflected the estimation accuracy of MUSIC and ESPRIT. This paper presents the joint estimation performance of MUSIC and ESPRIT by introducing the criteria for evaluation. For this, the spatial signature (SS) is reconstructed from the estimates of the DOA and the AS, and compared to the true SS in the meaning of data fitting.

In this paper, we review the progress in BiSrCaCuO-2212 Intrinsic Josephson junctions (IJJs) by summarizing our recent results in fabrication and high frequency experiments. Using a double-side fabrication process, a well defined number of intrinsic Josephson junctions in a well defined geometry can be fabricated. The junctions in the stack are quite homogeneous, and the power distribution of external irradiation among the junctions is even. Shapiro steps are clearly observed up to 2.5 THz, and the general condition for the occurrence of Shapiro steps at frequency frf is that it should be much greater than the plasma frequency fpl. Under certain conditions the Shapiro steps are zero-crossing, making some applications possible, such as quantum voltage standard etc.

A new method is proposed for determining the parasitic extrinsic resistances of MESFETs and HEMTs from the measured S-parameters under active bias. The proposed method is based on the fact that the difference between drain resistance (Rd) and source resistance (Rs) can be found from the measured S-parameters under zero bias condition. It is possible to define the new internal device including intrinsic device and three extrinsic resistances by eliminating the parasitic imaginary terms. Three resistances can be calculated easily via the presented explicit three equations, which are induced from the fact that 1) the real parts of Yint,11 and Yint,12 of intrinsic Y-parameters are very small or almost zero, 2) the transformation relations between S-, Z-, and Y-matrices. The modelled S-parameters calculated by the obtained resistances and all the other equivalent circuit parameters are in good agreement with the measured S-parameters up to 40 GHz.

High-Tc superconductors convincingly showed that these materials are essentially natural arrays of Josephson junctions formed in atomic scale. In this paper, in-plane aligned a-axis-oriented YBa2Cu3O7-δ (YBCO) thin films were successfully grown on LaSrGaO4(LSGO) (100) substrates which were cleaned by ion-beam. Voltage jumps with hysteresis implying intrinsic Josephson effects are observed in c-axis direction. This result suggest that it is possible to achieve planar intrinsic Josephson devices which have applications in high frequency electronics, such as voltage standards, Josephson masers and so on.

The size dependent properties of the intrinsic Josephson junctions in Bi2Sr2CaCu2Oy single crystal mesas in the external magnetic field are studied. The mesas of (1-140) µm long with 7-29 junctions were fabricated and their current-voltage characteristics were measured in external magnetic field applied parallel to the CuO2 layers up to 0.16 T. In zero magnetic field, multiple resistive branches with large hysteresis were observed in the current-voltage characteristics for the fabricated mesas. Almost identical critical currents were also observed for all the junctions in each mesa. With applied magnetic field, Ic of the longer mesas showed a complex magnetic field dependence as compared to that of the short mesas (of about 1 µm in length). It was observed that the lower critical magnetic field of the junctions decreased and approached a constant value with increasing number of junctions and also with increasing length of the junctions. Similar magnetic behavior was obtained by numerical simulations based on coupled sine-Gordon equations for such stacked junctions.

In recent years, several inverse solutions of magnetoencephalography (MEG) have been proposed. Among them, the multiple signal classification (MUSIC) method utilizes spatio-temporal information obtained from magnetic fields. The conventional MUSIC method is, however, sensitive to Gaussian noise and a sufficiently large signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) is required to estimate the number of sources and to specify the precise locations of electrical neural activities. In this paper, a new algorithm for solving the inverse problem using the fourth order MUSIC (FO-MUSIC) method is proposed. We apply it to the MEG source estimation problem. Numerical simulations demonstrate that the proposed FO-MUSIC algorithm is more robust against Gaussian noise than the conventional MUSIC algorithm.

In this paper, we propose a method to reconstruct current distributions in the human brain from neuromagnetic measurements. The proposed method is based on the weighted lead-field synthetic (WLFS) filtering technique with the weighting factors calculated from the results of previous source space scanning. In this method, in addition to the depth normalization technique, weighting factors of the WLFS are determined by the cost values previously calculated based on the multiple signal classification (MUSIC) scan. We performed computer simulations of this method under noisy measurement conditions and compared the results to those obtained with the conventional WLFS method. The results of the simulations indicate that the proposed method is effective for the reconstruction of the current distributions in the human brain using magnetoencephalographic (MEG) measurements, even if the signal-to-noise ratio of the measured data is relatively low. We applied the proposed method to the magnetoencephalographic data obtained during a mental image processing task that included object recognition and mental rotation operations. The results suggest that the proposed method can extract the neural activity in the extrastriate visual region and the parietal region. These results are in agreement with the results of previous positron emission tomography (PET) and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies.

This paper proposes a new method to recover the sign of local Gaussian curvature from multiple (more than three) shading images. The information required to recover the sign of Gaussian curvature is obtained by applying Principal Components Analysis (PCA) to the normalized irradiance measurements. The sign of the Gaussian curvature is recovered based on the relative orientation of measurements obtained on a local five point test pattern to those in the 2-D subspace called the eigen plane. Using multiple shading images gives a more accurate and robust result and minimizes the effect of shadows by allowing a larger area of the visible surface to be analyzed compared to methods using only three shading images. Furthermore, it allows the method to be applied to specular surfaces. Since PCA removes linear correlation among images, the method can produce results of high quality even when the light source directions are not widely dispersed.

This paper describes performance enhancement of high-resolved delay time estimation by pattern diversity of wheel-shaped dipole antennas for the MUSIC algorithm. We propose that the wheel-shaped dipole antennas are used to average covariance matrices weightedly with their pattern diversity without decreasing the matrix dimension and to obtain freedom of selecting sweeping frequencies. It is numerically confirmed that the wheel-shaped dipole antennas can be used to enhance capability of the delay time estimation.

The boundary integral equation (BIE) on interior walls with surface impedance conditions is implemented to the iterative physical optics method and how to treat the singularities involved in the BIE of an impedance cavity is described. Singular integrals over a rectangular region can be represented by simple elementary functions.

This paper shows a comparison between several procedures to represent the Physical Optics (PO) current density into a hybrid Moment-Method-Physical-Optics (MM-PO) code. Some numerical results demonstrate that a set of basis functions suitable for the Method of Moments (MM) may be inappropriate to model the PO currents. A new evaluation of the PO operator is proposed. The radiation can be analytically determined and, since it includes a linear interpolation of the phase, it can be applied over large triangular domains. This allows a drastic reduction of the computational cost, maintaining or even improving the level of accuracy.