An annoying problem encountered in automatic seal imprint verification is that for seal imprints may have a lot of variations, even if they are all produced from a single seal. This paper proposes a new automatic seal imprint verification system which adds an imprint quality assessment function to our previous system in order to solve this problem, and also examines the verification performance of this system experimentally. This system consists of an imprint quality assessment process and a verification process. In the imprint quality assessment process, an examined imprint is first divided into partial regions. Each partial region is classified into one of three quality classes (good quality region, poor quality region, and background) on the basis of characteristics of its gray level histogram. In the verification process, only good quality partial regions of an examined imprint are verified with registered one. Finally, the examined imprint is classified as one of two types: a genuine and a forgery. However, as a result of quality assessment, if the partial regions classified as poor quality are too many, the examined imprint is classified as ambiguous" without verification processing. A major advantage of this verification system is that this system can verify seal imprints of various qualities efficiently and accurately. Computer experiments with real seal imprints were performed by using this system, previous system (without image quality assessment function) and document examiners of a bank. The results of these experiments show that this system is superior in the verification performance to our previous system, and has a similar verification performance to that of document examiners (i.e., the experimental results show the effectiveness of adding the image quality assessment function to a seal imprint verification system).

This paper describes and analyzed several indices in assessing algorithms of data compression of electrocardiograms, such as the cross correlation (CC), the percent root mean square difference (PRD), and a new measure of standardized root mean square difference (SRD). Although these indices are helpful to objectively evaluate the algorithms, the visual examination of the reconstructed waveform is indispensable to decide the optimal compression ratio. This paper presents the clinical significance of selected waveforms which are prone to be distorted or neglected in the restored waveforms but are crucial for cardiologists to diagnose the patient. A database of electrocardiograms is also proposed for the comparative evaluation of compression algorithms.

The paper indicates the importance of suitability assesment in speech synthesis applications. Human factors involved in the use of a synthetic speech are first discussed on the basis of an example of a newspaper company where synthetic speech is extensively used as an aid for proofreading a manuscript. Some findings obtained from perceptual experiments on the subjects' preference for paralinguistic properties of synthetic speech are then described, focusing primarily on the suitability of pitch characteristics, speaker's gender, and speaking rates in the task where subjects are asked to proofread a printed text while listening to the speech. The paper finally claims the need for a flexibile speech synthesis system which helps the users create their own synthetic speech.

This paper proposes M-ary/SSMA using co-channel interference cancellation techniques and presents comparisons with conventional DS/SSMA and other systems. First, ideal models of DS/SSMA and M-ary/SSMA using co-channel interference cancellation techniques are analyzed. In the cancellation circuit of DS/SSMA, when an error bit of other user's data arises, the received signal is degraded by "voltage addition" of the error sequence. While, in M-ary/SSMA, it is degraded by only "power addition" of the error code. Therefore, though the circuits are complicated, bit error rate of the proposed system can be improved considerably. Further, improvement of spectral efficiency in these systems are shown for several bit error rate and chip waveforms.

This paper proposes a superposed SSMA (Spread Spectrum Multiple Access)-QPSK (Quadrature Phase Shift Keying) signal transmission scheme over high speed QPSK signals to achieve higher frequency utilization efficiency and to facilitate lower power transmitters for SSMA-QPSK signal transmission. Experimental results show that the proposed scheme which employs the coding-rate of one-half FEC (Forward Error Correction) and a newly proposed co-channel interference cancellation scheme for SSMA-QPSK signals can transmit twenty SSMA-QPSK channels simultaneously over a nonlinearly amplified high speed QPSK signal transmission channel and achieve as ten times SSMA channels transmission as that without co-channel interference cancellation when the SSMA-QPSK signal power to the high speed QPSK signal power ratio equals -30dB. Moreover, cancellation feasibility generation of the interference signals replica through practical hardware implementation is clarified.

Spread spectrum (SS) communication systems have been studied and developed for commercial applications such as mobile communications, consumer communications and so on. The reason is that SS communication systems have various characteristic features, such as, robust immunity to interference and jamming, achieving privacy in communication and random access capability (spread spectrum multiple access: SSMA). The performance of the systems, mainly, depends on modulation method of spreading the spectrum. This paper introduces recent several methods of modulation in SS communication systems. First, direct-sequence (DS), which is a fundamental modulation in SS communication system, and M-ary/SSMA, which can increase the number of multiple access users, are described. For increasing the data rate per user, parallel SS, parallel combinatory SS and a code division multiplex using orthogonal Manchester coded M-sequences are introduced. Second, frequency hopping (FH), in which the spectrum of signal is spread by hopping carrier frequency, and related systems are shown. Finally, from a viewpoint of communication theory, spectral efficiency (i.e., data rate the number of multiple access users/bandwidth) of systems relating spreading codes are discussed. As a result, maximum spectral efficiency can be obtained by appropriate spreading factor for each spreading code.

It is difficult for a receiver in Asynchronous SSMA systems to eliminate co-channel interference, when the receiver doesn't know the sequence of the co-channel interference. In this paper, a filter for eliminating co-channel interference without using the knowledge of the sequence of co-channel interference in an asynchronous SSMA system, in which each transmitter/receiver is assigned an infinite number of sequences and select a sequence secretly for information security. The filter gathers the co-channel interference energy into some puleses and scatters the signal energy widely. The receiver can clip the co-channel interference energy by losing small amount of signal energy. This is a new solution for the near-far problem in an asynchronous SSMA system using secret sequences.