The performance of a passive RFID system in a dense multi-reader environment is limited by both reader-to-reader interference and reader-to-tag interference. In this paper, we formulate a practical RFID system model which takes into account the non-linear demodulation of the tags and the transmission spectrum of the readers. Using this model, we derive a novel linear programming formulation to obtain the optimum communication probability of the readers for a given reader deployment scenario. We then propose two novel distributed interference avoidance algorithms based on the detect-and-abort principle for multi-channel readers which can effectively mitigate the reader-to-tag interference as well as the reader-to-reader interference. Computer simulations show that the proposed algorithms can improve the successful communication probability and fairness among readers in dense reader environments, compared with the conventional listen-before-talk algorithm.

In this paper, we propose two weighting techniques to improve performances of query expansion in biomedical document retrieval, especially when a short biomedical term in a query is expanded with its synonymous multi-word terms. When a query contains synonymous terms of different lengths, a traditional IR model highly ranks a document containing a longer terminology because a longer terminology has more chance to be matched with a query. However, such preference is clearly inappropriate and it often yields an unsatisfactory result. To alleviate the bias weighting problem, we devise a method of normalizing the weights of query terms in a long multi-word biomedical term, and a method of discriminating terms by using inverse terminology frequency which is a novel statistics estimated in a query domain. The experiment results on MEDLINE corpus show that our two simple techniques improve the retrieval performance by adjusting the inadequate preference for long multi-word terminologies in an expanded query.

In a frequency-selective multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) channel, the optimum transmission is achieved by beamforming with eigenvectors obtained at each discrete frequency point, i.e., an extension of eigenbeam-space division multiplexing (E-SDM). However, the calculation load of eigenvalue decomposition at the transmitter increases in proportion to the number of frequency points. In addition, frequency-independent eigenvectors increase the delay spread of the effective channel observed at the receiver. In this paper, we propose a pseudo eigenvector scheme for the purpose of mitigating the calculation load and maintaining frequency continuity (or decreasing the delay spread). First, we demonstrate that pseudo eigenvectors reduce the delay spread of the effective channels with low computational complexity. Next, the practical performance of the pseudo E-SDM (PE-SDM) transmission is evaluated. The simulation results show that PE-SDM provides almost the same or better performance compared with E-SDM when the receiver employs a time-windowing-based channel estimation available in the low delay spread cases.

In this paper, we propose a novel analysis method for large-scale networks with consideration of the behavior of the congestion control mechanism of TCP. In the analysis, we model the behavior of TCP at end-host and network link as independent systems, and combine them into a single system in order to analyze the entire network. Using this analysis, we can analyze a large-scale network, i.e. with over 100/1,000/10,000 routers/hosts/links and 100,000 TCP connections very rapidly. Especially, a calculation time of our analysis, it is different from that of ns-2, is independent of a network bandwidth and/or propagation delay. Specifically, we can derive the utilization of the network links, the packet loss ratio of the link buffer, the round-trip time (RTT) and the throughput of TCP connections, and the location and degree of the network congestion. We validate our approximate analysis by comparing analytic results with simulation ones. We also show that our analysis method treats the behavior of TCP connection in a large-scale network appropriately.

The major application of digital data hiding techniques is to deliver confidential data secretly via public but unreliable computer networks. Most of the existing data hiding schemes, however, exploit the raw data of cover images to perform secret communications. In this paper, a novel data hiding scheme was presented with the manipulation of images based on the compression of side-match vector quantization (SMVQ). This proposed scheme provided adaptive alternatives for modulating the quantized indices in the compressed domain so that a considerable quantity of secret data could be artfully embedded. As the experimental results demonstrated, the proposed scheme indeed provided a larger payload capacity without making noticeable distortions in comparison with schemes proposed in earlier works. Furthermore, this scheme also presented a satisfactory compression performance.

A new scheme for reducing optical beat interference noise in a reflective semiconductor optical amplifier based wavelength division multiplexed/subcarrier multiplexing -- passive optical network is proposed. This method uses an Fabry Perot laser locked by modulated lights from optical network units in a central office. As an experimental verification, it is reported that carrier to noise ratio is enhanced by 10 dB and power penalty is improved by 16 dB.

A 128128 pixel functional image sensor was implemented. The sensor was able to capture images at 1,000 frame/s and extract the sizes and positions of 10 objects/frame when clocked at 8 MHz. The size of each pixel was 18 µm18 µm and the fill factor was 28%. The chip, 3.24 mm3.48 mm in size, was implemented with a 0.35 µm CMOS sensor process; the power consumption was 29.7 mW at 8 MHz.

In this paper, we present a method to automatically acquire a large-scale vocabulary of evaluative expressions from a large corpus of blogs. For the purpose, this paper presents a semi-supervised method for classifying evaluative expressions, that is, tuples of subjects, their attributes, and evaluative words, that indicate either favorable or unfavorable opinions towards a specific subject. Due to its characteristics, our semi-supervised method can classify evaluative expressions in a corpus by their polarities, starting from a very small set of seed training examples and using contextual information in the sentences the expressions belong to. Our experimental results with real Weblog data as our corpus show that this bootstrapping approach can improve the accuracy of methods for classifying favorable and unfavorable opinions. We also show that a reasonable amount of evaluative expressions can be really acquired.

This paper presents interference suppression using a subband adaptive array (SBAA) for uplink space-time block coding (STBC) code division multiple access (CDMA) under a frequency selective fading (FSF) channel. The proposed scheme utilizes CDMA with STBC and a receive array antenna with SBAA processing at the receiver. The received signal is converted into the frequency domain before despreading and adaptive processing is performed for each subband. A novel SBAA construction is introduced to process CDMA signals based on STBC. To improve the performance of the proposed scheme, we evaluate STBC-SBAA using spreading codes cyclic prefix (CP). Simulation results demonstrate an improved performance of the proposed system for single and multiuser environments compared to competing related techniques.

Inter-Vehicle Communication (IVC) is one of the most important technologies to realize advanced Intelligent Transport Systems (ITS). We extensively apply the IVC technology to the communications between pedestrians and vehicles. We call this kind of communications VPEC (Vehicle-PEdestrian Communications). The objective of this paper is to present an effective control scheme for VPEC and to evaluate the performance of proposed scheme by experiments. We deal with direct communications between pedestrians and vehicles. Due to the battery shortage of pedestrians' terminals (p-node), we have presented a reflect-transmission scheme. In this paper, we propose a new access protocol for reflect-transmission scheme, and show its validity by various experiments with several vehicles.

This paper describes the distortion properties created by self-phase modulation in super wideband FM converted 40 AM/30 64-QAM CATV and super-high-frequency RF converted 8 BS/12 CS TV signal transmission based on the optical SSB modulation scheme.

This paper presents a frequency offset estimation scheme for Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplex (OFDM) direct conversion receivers. The key idea is to use a differential filter for reduction of DC offset. Frequency offset is estimated in the presence of time-varying DC offset. In order to overcome the varying DC levels under automatic gain control (AGC) circuits, a threshold level is set for the output of the differential filter. The proposed compensation scheme offers superior frequency offset estimation when compared with a conventional scheme with a high pass filter.

A new method is presented in order to improve the transient response of distributed amplifiers. The method is based on fitting the parameters of the distributed amplifier to those of a predesigned lowpass filter. Analytical expressions are derived to show the performance of the new structure. Three distributed amplifiers are designed based on the proposed method and it has been shown that the new method can significantly improve the transient response of the amplifier. It has been shown that the new method can improve the other characteristics of the distributed amplifier too. The effects of parasitic and lossy elements has also been considered and it has been shown that such effects doesn't violate the generality of the proposed theory.

This paper reviews and discusses devices, circuits, and signal processing techniques for CMOS imaging SoC's based on column-parallel processing architecture. The pinned photodiode technology improves the noise characteristics at the device level to be comparable to CCD image sensors and as a result, low-noise design in CMOS image sensors has been shifted to the reduction of noise at the circuit level. Techniques for reducing the circuit noise are discussed. The performance of the imaging SoC's greatly depends on that of the analog-to-digital converter (ADC) used at the column. Three possible architectures of the column-parallel ADC are reviewed and their advantage and disadvantage are discussed. Finally, a few applications of the device and circuit techniques and the column-parallel processing architecture are described.

We achieved the first 10 Gb/s WDM transmission at 1064 and 1550 nm over 24 km of photonic crystal fiber (PCF). We confirmed an improvement in the bit error rate (BER) performance after the transmission, namely "negative power penalties" of -0.5 and -0.3 dB at 1064 and 1550 nm, respectively. Our experimental result and theoretical estimation revealed that the signal degradation induced by the chromatic dispersion can be effectively suppressed by employing the pre-chirp technique with a conventional Z-cut lithium niobate (LN) modulator. We also show theoretically that we can expect to realize 10 Gb/s transmission over a 24 km PCF with negligible BER degradation in the 1060 to 1600 nm wavelength range by using the pre-chirp technique.

Although the line-of-sight (LoS) is expected to be useful as input methodology for computer systems, the application area of the conventional LoS detection system composed of video camera and image processor is restricted in the specialized area, such as academic research, due to its large size and high cost. There is a rapid eye motion, so called 'saccade' in our eye motion, which is expected to be useful for various applications. Because of the saccade's very high speed, it is impossible to track the saccade without using high speed camera. The authors have been proposing the high speed vision chip for LoS detection including saccade based on the pixel parallel processing architecture, however, its resolution is very low for the large size of its pixel. In this paper, we propose and discuss an architecture of the vision chip for LoS detection including saccade based on column-parallel processing manner for increasing the resolution with keeping high processing speed.

We show the equivalence between the conventional frame synchronization in single-carrier systems and integer part estimation of frequency offset in OFDM systems and propose an efficient synchronization scheme. The proposed scheme achieves both OFDM symbol/frame timing and frequency offset estimation with only one well-designed OFDM training symbol, while previous synchronization algorithms need two OFDM training symbols at least. Numerical analysis shows that the proposed frequency estimator nearly achieves the Cramér-Rao lower bound for the variance of the frequency offset estimate, despite the reduction in the training sequence length.

The security notion of indifferentiability was proposed by Maurer, Renner, and Holenstein in 2004. In 2005, Coron, Dodis, Malinaud, and Puniya discussed the indifferentiability of hash functions. They have shown that the Merkle-Damgård construction is not secure in the sense of indifferentiability. In this paper, we analyze the security of single-block-length and rate-1 compression functions in the sense of indifferentiability. We formally show that all single-block-length and rate-1 compression functions, which include the Davies-Meyer compression function, are insecure. Furthermore, we show how to construct a secure single-block-length and rate-1 compression function in the sense of indifferentiability. This does not contradict our result above.

This paper presents media processor architectures for automotive applications. Media processing applications with their requirements for LSI implementations are first described for vision based driver assistance as well as graphical user interface for car navigation using 3D graphics. Then, parallel processing architectures for vision and graphics in these applications are reviewed with their performance and cost. After that, future trends of automotive media processing such as integration of vision and 3D graphics functions are shown with their applications and the required performance. Moreover, parallel processing architectures are discussed for the integration of vision and graphics. Finally, an prospect of a next-generation media processing LSI for automotives is provided.

This study presents a partition decoding algorithm for an (mN, mK) binary image of an (N, K) Reed Solomon code over GF(2m). A proposed partition decoding algorithm includes several steps. Firstly we compute m's segmental reliability values of a received subvector of length N and determine which one with the least segmental reliability value. A permutation is performed on a binary generator matrix of an RS code and a received vector, which are then partitioned into two submatrices and two subvectors. The first subvector of length N(m-1) associate with the first submatrix and the second subvector with the least segmental reliability value relates to the second submatrix. Secondly, an MLD algorithm based on the first submatrix is employed to decode the first subvector. Thirdly, an MLD algorithm based on a BCH generator matrix is employed to decode the second subvector. A codeword is finally outputted after performing the inverse permutation on a concatenation of code vectors decoded from these two decoding. The error coefficient and minimum Hamming distance of the code sequences generated in the first submatrix are fewer than those of a corresponding binary image. Simulation results show that at low and medium SNRs, the effect of error coefficient becomes more significant than that of minimum Hamming distance. Minimum Hamming distances and error coefficients of code sequences generated in the first submatrices and their corresponding binary images have been explored in this work. For (60,36,7)RS(b), (155,125,7)RS(b), (155,105,11)RS(b) and (889, 847,7))RS(b) being binary images of (15,9,7)RS, (31,25,7)RS, (31,21,11)RS and (127,121,7)RS codes respectively, with BPSK signaling over AWGN channels, the decoding performances of proposed partition decoding algorithm are a little poorer than those of MLD [10] by 1.0 to 1.4 dB at BER 10-5, but better than those of GMD decoding by [1] 0.8 to 1.1 dB. For SNR of 5 dB, proposed partition decoding algorithm only takes 50% to 60% amount of bit operations of an MLD [10]. Under a constraint of decoding complexity, proposed partition decoding algorithm may be a solution to decode binary images of long RS codes, which provides superior performance to GMD decoding with much lower complexity than an MLD.