It was previously shown that the number of array elements must exceed the number of sources for multiple target direction of arrival (DOA) tracking. This is clearly not practical for code-division multiple access (CDMA) communications since the number of mobile users is very large. To overcome the restriction, adaptive angle tracking approaches employing the code-matched filters and parallel Kalman/H∞ algorithms are presented in this paper. The proposed approaches are applied to the base station of a mobile communication system. Different from Kalman prediction algorithm which minimize the squared tracking error, the adaptive H∞ filtering algorithm is a worst case optimization. It minimizes the effect of the worst disturbances (including modeling error of direction matrix models and array structure imperfection, process noise, and measurement noise). Hence, the difficult problem of tracking the crossing mobiles can be successfully handled by using the code-matched filters. Computer simulation is provided for illustrating the effectiveness of the adaptive angle tracking approaches.

In this paper, a method of detecting overlapping speech segments in meetings is proposed. It is known that the eigenvalue distribution of the spatial correlation matrix calculated from a multiple microphone input reflects information on the number and relative power of sound sources. However, in a reverberant sound field, the feature of the number of sources in the eigenvalue distribution is degraded by the room reverberation. In the Support Vector Machines approach, the eigenvalue distribution is classified into two classes (overlapping speech segments and single speech segments). In the Support Vector Regression approach, the relative power of sound sources is estimated by using the eigenvalue distribution, and overlapping speech segments are detected based on the estimated relative power. The salient feature of this approach is that the sensitivity of detecting overlapping speech segments can be controlled simply by changing the threshold value of the relative power. The proposed method was evaluated using recorded data of an actual meeting.

To clarify the transmission characteristics and near magnetic field on the angle pattern for the parallel transmission lines, the authors investigate how influence the angled pattern on the transmission lines by experiment and calculation. The angled patterns on the transmission lines are straight, right angle and curve. It shows that the suppression of EMI radiation at the angled pattern on the parallel transmission lines of the magnetic head is essential. In addition, it is suggested that angle pattern might be one of cause for the signal distortion and specific EMI radiation at high frequency.

In this paper an analysis of component and system reliability for lattice systems is proposed when component failures are not statistically independent. We deal the case that the failure rate of a component depends on the number of the adjacent failed components. And we discuss the maintainability of the system when a failed component is replaced by a spare component. At first we discuss the approximated reliability of each component. Then we estimate the mean number of failed components. Furthermore, the system reliability is approximated by using the component reliability.

A function approximation based on an orthonormal wave function expansion in a complex space is derived. Although a probability density function (PDF) cannot always be expanded in an orthogonal series in a real space because a PDF is a positive real function, the function approximation can approximate an arbitrary PDF with high accuracy. It is applied to an actor-critic method of reinforcement learning to derive an optimal policy expressed by an arbitrary PDF in a continuous-action continuous-state environment. A chaos control problem and a PDF approximation problem are solved using the actor-critic method with the function approximation, and it is shown that the function approximation can approximate a PDF well and that the actor-critic method with the function approximation exhibits high performance.

A probability density distribution of the envelope of maximal-ratio combiner output in a very generally distributed fading channel is derived. The derived formula has a series expanded form consisting of positive terms of the well-known m-distribution and is practical for numerical calculation, approximation and analysis.

The optical network represents a promising approach to achieve a scalable backbone network. In backbone networks, survivability is important because high volumes of traffic are prone to be damaged by faulty equipment. Various design methods for survivable optical networks have been proposed, although none considering the simultaneous maintenance of multiple transmission lines has been proposed to our knowledge. This paper proposes a design method for survivable optical networks where multiple transmission lines sharing common transmission equipment may suffer simultaneous damage, due to failure in the transmission equipment. Moreover, two transmission lines can be maintained simultaneously. A mathematical programming model to obtain the optimum lightpath arrangement is presented assuming three kinds of lightpath recovery schemes. The relation between the required transmission line capacity and the combination pattern of two transmission lines that undergo maintenance is clarified using the proposed design method.

We have been investigating an orthogonal frequency division multiple access (OFDMA) based cellular system that is called "dynamic parameter controlled orthogonal frequency and time division multiple access (DPC-OF/TDMA)" for the development of beyond third generation (B3G) mobile communication systems. Moreover, we have already proposed a time alignment control (TAC) to compensate propagation delays that induce a multiple-access interference (MAI) in the uplink OFDMA. However, that TAC includes a large amount of computations. This means that it is quite difficult for the OFDMA systems to implement TAC into volume-limited hardware devices such as field programmable gate array (FPGA). Thus, we propose a new complexity-reduced TAC (CRTAC) in this paper. CRTAC can be implemented into such devices easily. In this paper, we show some computer simulation results, and then evaluate the error rate performances of DPC-OF/TDMA employing CRTAC. Moreover, we also show the benefit of the reasonable level of the implementation complexity made by CRTAC.

Visual criteria for diagnosing liver diseases, such as cirrhosis, from ultrasound images can be assisted by computerized texture classification. This paper proposes a system applying a PNN (Pyramid Neural Network) for classifying the hepatic parenchymal diseases in ultrasonic B-scan texture. In this study, we propose a multifractal-dimensions method to select the patterns for the training set and the validation sets. A modified box-counting algorithm is used to calculate the dimensions of the B-scan images. FDWT (Fast Discrete Wavelet Transform) is applied for feature extraction during the preprocessing. The structure of the proposed neural network is testified by training and validation sets by cross-validation method. The performance of the proposed system and a system based on the conventional multilayer network architecture is compared. The results show that, compared with the conventional 3-layer neural network, the performance of the proposed pyramid neural network is improved by efficiently utilizing the lower layer of the neural network.

In difficult classification problems of the z-dimensional points into two groups giving 0-1 responses due to the messy data structure, we try to find the denser regions for the favorable customers of response 1, instead of finding the boundaries to separate the two groups. Such regions are called the bumps, and finding the boundaries of the bumps is called the bump hunting. The main objective of this paper is to find the largest region of the bumps under a specified ratio of the number of the points of response 1 to the total. Then, we may obtain a trade-off curve between the number of points of response 1 and the specified ratio. The decision tree method with the Gini's index will provide the simple-shaped boundaries for the bumps if the marginal density for response 1 shows a rather simple or monotonic shape. Since the computing time searching for the optimal trees will cost much because of the NP-hardness of the problem, some random search methods, e.g., the genetic algorithm adapted to the tree, are useful. Due to the existence of many local maxima unlike the ordinary genetic algorithm search results, the extreme-value statistics will be useful to estimate the global optimum number of captured points; this also guarantees the accuracy of the semi-optimal solution with the simple descriptive rules. This combined method of genetic algorithm search and extreme-value statistics use is new. We apply this method to some artificial messy data case which mimics the real customer database, showing a successful result. The reliability of the solution is discussed.

We proposed a method for suppressing arc ignition in mechanical contact devices using a transient current switch and a capacitor. We applied the method to conventional reed switches. For the electric circuit analysis, we clarified the momentary voltage-current characteristics at breaking operation of reed switches by FEM analysis. We could also estimate the capacitance of the contact electrodes at the metal bridge rupture by FEM analysis, and would derive the non-arcing condition using SPICE simulation. The suitable capacitor value in the transient current circuit for arc ignition suppression would be depend on the load impedance, the power supply, the time depending contact resistance R(t)s, the contact capacitance, and the minimum arc voltage and current.

To one double-breaker model, experimental investigation on blow open force was carried out. It demonstrates that the ratio between the emerging blow open force and arc power FB/ui decreases with the arcing time, the contact gap has less effect on FB/ui, and the characteristics of the blow open force are similar when the peak value of the short circuit current is beyond 4 kA. Then, according to the experimental data and conclusions, considering the influence of blow open force, the interruption process of molded case circuit breakers (MCCBs) was investigated. It demonstrates the blow open force has significant influence on interruption process and the proposed method is effective to evaluate new design of MCCBs.

This letter proposes a compensation method that can alleviate the problem of I/Q mismatch generated in the direct-conversion receiver of OFDM systems. In the proposed method, the amount of I/Q mismatch is estimated using null-carriers in transmitted signals, and it is subtracted from received symbols to suppress I/Q mismatch effects. Simulations show experiments that the proposed method can effectively eliminate the I/Q mismatch effects.

This paper proposes a novel pre-FFT type OFDM adaptive array antenna called "Eigenvector Combining." The eigenvector combining array antenna is a realization of a post-FFT type OFDM adaptive array antenna through a pre-FFT signal processing, so it can achieve excellent performance with less computational complexity and shorter training symbols. Numerical results demonstrate that the proposed eigenvector combining array antenna shows excellent bit error rate performance close to the lower bound just with 2 OFDM symbol-long training symbols.

A state space compression method based on multivariate analysis was developed and applied to reinforcement learning for high-dimensional continuous state spaces. First, useful components in the state variables of an environment are extracted and meaningless ones are removed by using multiple regression analysis. Next, the state space of the environment is compressed by using principal component analysis so that only a few principal components can express the dynamics of the environment. Then, a basis of a feature space for function approximation is constructed based on orthonormal bases of the important principal components. A feature space is thus autonomously construct without preliminary knowledge of the environment, and the environment is effectively expressed in the feature space. An example synchronization problem for multiple logistic maps was solved using this method, demonstrating that it solves the curse of dimensionality and exhibits high performance without suffering from disturbance states.

In this letter, we study the problem of designing an efficient power and bit allocation scheme in the context of a hierarchical image transmission system based on an embedded multi-carrier modulation (EMCM) scheme over digital subscriber line. Authors describe a novel algorithm that performs power minimization under bit rate constraint and QoS requirement. It is based on the Hughes-Hartogs algorithm, and successively allocates the bits of the high, then low priority data streams. Simulations that assess the performance of the proposed algorithm are also provided and discussed; they demonstrate the interest of the proposed scheme.

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%.

One of the key technologies to realize future broadband mobile communications is orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) transmission. However, the peak-to-average power ratio (PAPR) in OFDM transmission is so much larger than that in single carrier transmission that its adoption in mobile communication systems is uncertain. This paper evaluates the transmission performance possible with iterative peak reduction to design more efficient OFDM transmitters. The PAPR reduction effect and bit error rate (BER) performance are clarified by computer simulations. We calculate the set PAPR value that achieves a target PAPR in the iterative peak reduction method. The required Eb/N0 performance is evaluated under the calculated PAPR condition. The results are effective in designing the back-off value of a transmission power amplifier given fixed transmission quality and computational complexity.

Natural, continuous tone images have a very important property of high correlation of adjacent pixels. Images which we wish to compress are usually non-stationary and can be reasonably modeled as smooth and textured areas separated by edges. This property has been successfully exploited in LOCO-I and CALIC by applying gradient based predictive coding as a major de-correlation tool. However, they only examine the horizontal and vertical gradients, and assume the local edge can only occur in these two directions. Their over-simplified assumptions hurt the robustness of the prediction in higher complex areas. In this paper, we propose an accurate gradient selective prediction (AGSP) algorithm which is designed to perform robustly around any type of image texture. Our method measures local texture information by comparison and selection of normalized scalar representation of the gradients in four directions. An adaptive predictor is formed based on the local gradient information and immediate causal pixels. Local texture properties are also exploited in the context modeling of the prediction error. The results we obtained on a test set of several standard images are encouraging. On the average, our method achieves a compression ratio significantly better than CALIC without noticeably increasing of computational complexity.

In this paper, we proposed a new Two-Dimensional Linear Discriminant Analysis (2DLDA) method, based on Two-Dimensional Principle Component Analysis (2DPCA) concept. In particular, 2D face image matrices do not need to be previously transformed into a vector. In this way, the spatial information can be preserved. Moreover, the 2DLDA also allows avoiding the Small Sample Size (SSS) problem, thus overcoming the traditional LDA. We combine 2DPCA and our proposed 2DLDA on the Two-Dimensional Linear Discriminant Analysis of principle component vectors framework. Our framework consists of two steps: first we project an input face image into the family of projected vectors via 2DPCA-based technique, second we project from these space into the classification space via 2DLDA-based technique. This does not only allows further reducing of the dimension of feature matrix but also improving the classification accuracy. Experimental results on ORL and Yale face database showed an improvement of 2DPCA-based technique over the conventional PCA technique.