Recently, wearable wireless devices or terminals have become hot a topic not only in research but also in business. Implantable wireless devices can temporarily be utilized to monitor a patient's condition in an emergency situation or to identify people in highly secured places. Unlike conventional wireless devices, wearable or implantable devices are used on or in the human body. In this sense, body-centric wireless communications (BCWCs) have become a very active area of research. Radio-frequency or microwave medical devices used for cancer treatment systems and surgical operation have completely different functions, but they are used on or in the human body. In terms of research techniques, such medical devices have a lot of similarities to BCWCs. The antennas to be used in the vicinity of the human body should be safe, small and robust. Also, their interaction with the human body should be well considered. This review paper describes some of the wearable antennas as well as implantable antennas that have been studied in our laboratory.

This paper shows accuracy of using azimuth-variable path-loss fitting in white-space (WS) boundary-estimation. We perform experiments to evaluate this method, and demonstrate that the required number of sensors can be significantly reduced. We have proposed a WS boundary-estimation framework that utilizes sensors to not only obtain spectrum sensing data, but also to estimate the boundaries of the incumbent radio system (IRS) coverage. The framework utilizes the transmitter position information and pathloss fitting. The pathloss fitting describes the IRS coverage by approximating the well-known pathloss prediction formula from the received signal power data, which is measured using sensors, and sensor-transmitter separation distances. To enhance its accuracy, we have further proposed a pathloss-fitting method that employs azimuth variables to reflect the azimuth dependency of the IRS coverage, including the antenna directivity of the transmitter and propagation characteristics.

In recent years, various Portable Navigation Devices (PND) such as smart-phones are becoming popular as a vehicle navigation device. To compare with a conventional built-in navigation system, PND has advantages that it is low cost and easily mounted to the vehicle. On the other hand, PND has also disadvantage that in the most case it cannot obtain the reliable vehicle speed information such as wheel pulse information and that induces degradation of vehicle trajectory estimation (dead-reckoning). The vehicle trajectory estimation is the positioning method using inertial sensors, and generally used when GPS is not available. So in urban area where GPS signals are blocked or reflected by tall buildings, the degradation of vehicle trajectory estimation may cause the severe increase of position error. Accordingly, in this study two approaches are proposed to improve vehicle trajectory estimation with PND. The first one is the accurate speed estimation using time-series tightly coupled integration of accelerometer, gyro, and Doppler shift of GPS. And the second one is the correction of trajectory error using backward refinement that can work even in real-time processing. The experimental result in Shinjuku which is dense urban city shows that the error of vehicle trajectory estimation was reduced to 1/4 compared with the previous method.

In many movies, social conditions and awareness of the issues of the times are depicted in any form. Even if fantasy and science fiction are works far from reality, the character relationship does mirror the real world. Therefore, we try to understand social conditions of the real world by analyzing the movie. As a way to analyze the movies, we propose a method of estimating interpersonal relationships of the characters, using a machine learning technique called Markov Logic Network (MLN) from movie script databases on the Web. The MLN is a probabilistic logic network that can describe the relationships between characters, which are not necessarily satisfied on every line. In experiments, we confirmed that our proposed method can estimate favors between the characters in a movie with F-measure of 58.7%. Finally, by comparing the relationships with social indicators, we discussed the relevance of the movies to the real world.

In our previous work [12], [13], we introduced generalized feed-forward shift registers (GF2SR, for short) to apply them to secure and testable scan design, where we considered the security problem from the viewpoint of the complexity of identifying the structure of GF2SRs. Although the proposed scan design is secure in the sense that the structure of a GF2SR cannot be identified only from the primary input/output relation, it may not be secure if part of the contents of the circuit leak out. In this paper, we introduce a more secure concept called strong security such that no internal state of strongly secure circuits leaks out, and present how to design such strongly secure GF2SRs.

In this paper, we propose the novel concept of a spectrum database for improving the efficiency of spectrum utilization. In the current design of TV white space spectrum databases, a propagation model is utilized to determine the spectrum availability. However, this propagation model has poor accuracy for radio environment estimation because it requires a large interference margin for the PU coverage area to ensure protection of primary users (PUs); thus, it decreases the spectrum sharing efficiency. The proposed spectrum database consists of radio environment measurement results from sensors on mobile terminals such as vehicles and smart phones. In the proposed database, actual measurements of radio signals are used to estimate radio information regarding PUs. Because the sensors on mobile terminals can gather a large amount of data, accurate propagation information can be obtained, including information regarding propagation loss and shadowing. In this paper, we first introduce the architecture of the proposed spectrum database. Then, we present experimental results for the database construction using actual TV broadcast signals. Additionally, from the evaluation results, we discuss the extent to which the proposed database can mitigate the excess interference margin.

Order-Preserving Encryption (OPE) is an encryption system that preserves the numerical (or alphabetical) order of plaintexts. Since many operations of communications and databases are based on order relations of data (plaintexts), OPE is regarded as a core technique for various applications. However, the intrinsic property of OPE makes constructing an efficient and secure OPE system hard to achieve. In particular, OPE can guarantee only limited security compared to general encryption systems. Only a few results on OPE systems were presented, and no theoretical research based on provable security has been presented until recently. Lately, some approaches have been suggested. However, every known result is unsatisfactory for formalizing the provable security of OPE systems. In this paper, we propose a new OPE system that employs only a simple pseudorandom number function, and therefore has an advantage for practical usage.

Breast cancer is a serious disease across the world, and it is one of the largest causes of cancer death for women. The traditional diagnosis is not only time consuming but also easily affected. Hence, artificial intelligence (AI), especially neural networks, has been widely used to assist to detect cancer. However, in recent years, the computational ability of a neuron has attracted more and more attention. The main computational capacity of a neuron is located in the dendrites. In this paper, a novel neuron model with dendritic nonlinearity (NMDN) is proposed to classify breast cancer in the Wisconsin Breast Cancer Database (WBCD). In NMDN, the dendrites possess nonlinearity when realizing the excitatory synapses, inhibitory synapses, constant-1 synapses and constant-0 synapses instead of being simply weighted. Furthermore, the nonlinear interaction among the synapses on a dendrite is defined as a product of the synaptic inputs. The soma adds all of the products of the branches to produce an output. A back-propagation-based learning algorithm is introduced to train the NMDN. The performance of the NMDN is compared with classic back propagation neural networks (BPNNs). Simulation results indicate that NMDN possesses superior capability in terms of the accuracy, convergence rate, stability and area under the ROC curve (AUC). Moreover, regarding ROC, for continuum values, the existing 0-connections branches after evolving can be eliminated from the dendrite morphology to release computational load, but with no influence on the performance of classification. The results disclose that the computational ability of the neuron has been undervalued, and the proposed NMDN can be an interesting choice for medical researchers in further research.

In this letter, we propose a secrecy criterion for outsourcing encrypted databases. In encrypted databases, encryption schemes revealing some information are often used in order to manipulate encrypted data efficiently. The proposed criterion is based on inference analysis for databases: We simulate attacker's inference on specified secret information with and without the revealed information from the encrypted database. When the two inference results are the same, then secrecy of the specified information is preserved against outsourcing the encrypted database. We also show that the proposed criterion is decidable under a practical setting.

A feedback vertex set F of an undirected graph G is a vertex subset of G whose removal results in a forest. Such a set F is said to be independent if F forms an independent set of G. In this paper, we study the problem of finding an independent feedback vertex set of a given graph with the minimum number of vertices, from the viewpoint of graph classes. This problem is NP-hard even for planar bipartite graphs of maximum degree four. However, we show that the problem is solvable in linear time for graphs having tree-like structures, more specifically, for bounded treewidth graphs, chordal graphs and cographs. We then give a fixed-parameter algorithm for planar graphs when parameterized by the solution size. Such a fixed-parameter algorithm is already known for general graphs, but our algorithm is exponentially faster than the known one.

A class-E power amplifier (PA) with novel dynamic biasing scheme is proposed to enhance power added efficiency (PAE) over a wide power range. A look-up table (LUT) adjusts input power and drain supply voltage simultaneously to keep switch mode condition of a power transistor and to optimize the PAE. Experimental results show that the class-E PA using the proposed scheme with harmonic suppression filter gives the PAE higher than 80% over 8.5,dB range with less than 40,dBc harmonic suppression.

Accessing a geo-location database is one of the approaches for a secondary user (SU) to obtain the list of available channels for its operation. Channel availability is calculated based on information stored in the geo-location database and information submitted by the SU so that primary users (PU) are protected from harmful interference. The available channel checking process is modeled as a number of intersection tests between the protected contours of PUs and the operation area of the SU regarding to all potential channels. Existing studies indicated that these intersection tests consume time and introduce overhead to the database, especially when the contours or the operation areas are represented by n-polygons and the number of vertices n is a large number. This paper presents a novel method of determining available channels which reduces the number of intersection tests. By submitting SU's preferred channels or the number of channels to be checked to the database, the calculation time and database's load will be reduced significantly. This paper also presents analysis and simulation results of the database workload and the average number of channels obtained per query on different query methods. Suitable query method can be selected based on the number of similar channels in neighbor areas and the maximum number of intersection tests.

A survey was conducted on the use of ICT by visually impaired people. Among 304 respondents, 81 used smartphones and 44, tablets. Blind people used feature phones at a higher rate and smartphones and tablets at lower rates than people with low vision. The most popular smartphone model was iPhone and the most popular tablet model was iPad. While almost all blind users used the speech output accessibility feature and only a few of them used visual features, low vision users used both visual features such as Zoom, Large text, and Invert colors and speech output at high rates both on smartphones and tablets. The most popular text entry methods were different between smartphones and tablets. For smartphones flick and numeric keypad input were popular among low vision users while voice input was the most popular among blind users. For tablets a software QWERTY keyboard was the most popular among both blind and low vision users. The advantages of smartphones were access to geographical information, quick Web browsing, voice input, and extensibility for both blind and low vision users, object recognition for blind users, and readability for low vision users. Tablets also work as a vision aid for people with low vision. The drawbacks of smartphones and tablets were text entry and touch operation difficulties and inaccessible apps for both blind and low vision users, problems in speech output for blind users, and problems in readability for low vision users. Researchers and makers of operating systems (OS) and apps should assume responsibility for solving these problems.

Secure sets and defensive alliances in graphs are studied. They are sets of vertices that are safe in some senses. In this paper, we first present a fixed-parameter algorithm for finding a small secure set, whose running time is much faster than the previously known one. We then present improved bound on the smallest sizes of defensive alliances and secure sets for hypercubes. These results settle some open problems paused recently.

To represent interactive objects, we propose a choice-disjunctive declaration statement of the form $S add R$ where S, R are the (procedure or field) declaration statements within a class. This statement has the following semantics: request the user to choose one between S and R when an object of this class is created. This statement is useful for representing interactive objects that require interaction with the user.

This paper describes a simple-yet-effective control method for a DC-DC buck converter with voltage mode control (VMC), with a triangular wave generator (TWG) which regulates the slope of triangular wave based on the input and output voltages of the converter. Using the proposed TWG, both the load and line transient responses are improved. Since the TWG provides a line feed-forward control for the line transient response, it increases the open-loop bandwidth, and then better dynamic performance is obtained. Additional required circuit components are only a voltage controlled linear resistor (VCR) and a voltage controlled current source (VCCS). Compared with the conventional voltage control, the proposed method significantly improves the line and load transient responses. Furthermore this triangular wave slope regulation scheme is simple compared to digital feed-forward control scheme that requires non-linear calculation. Simulation results shows the effectiveness of the proposed method.

We aim at constructing adaptive oblivious transfer protocols, enjoying fully simulatable security, from various well-known assumptions such as DDH, d-Linear, QR, and DCR. To this end, we present two generic constructions of adaptive OT, one of which utilizes verifiable shuffles together with threshold decryption schemes, while the other uses permutation networks together with what we call loosely-homomorphic key encapsulation schemes. The constructions follow a novel designing approach called “blind permutation”, which completely differs from existing ones. We then show that specific choices of the building blocks lead to concrete adaptive OT protocols with fully simulatable security in the standard model under the targeted assumptions. Our generic methods can be extended to build universally composable (UC) secure OT protocols, with a loss in efficiency.

A dynamic controller, based on the Stability Transformation Method (STM), has been used to stabilize unknown and unstable periodic orbits (UPOs) in dynamical systems. An advantage of the control method is that it can stabilize unknown UPOs. In this study, we introduce a novel control method, based on STM, to stabilize UPOs in DC-DC switching power converters. The idea of the proposed method is to apply temporal perturbations to the switching time. These perturbations are calculated without information of the locations of the target orbits. The effectiveness of the proposed method is verified by numerical simulations and laboratory measurements.

This paper presents a novel signal analysis algorithm, named High-order Bi-orthogonal Fourier Transform (HBFT), which can be seen as an expansion of Fourier transform. The HBFT formula and discrete HBFT formula are derived, some of their main characteristics are briefly discusses. This paper also uses HBFT to analyze the multi-LFM signals, obtain the modulate rate parameters, analyze the high dynamic signals, and obtain the accelerated and varying accelerated motion parameters. The result proves that HBFT is suitable for analysis of the non-stability signals with high-order components.

The current development of video quality assessment algorithms suffers from the lack of available video sequences for training, verification and validation to determine and enhance the algorithm's application scope. The Joint Effort Group of the Video Quality Experts Group (VQEG-JEG) is currently driving efforts towards the creation of large scale, reproducible, and easy to use databases. These databases will contain bitstreams of recent video encoders (H.264, H.265), packet loss impairment patterns and impaired bitstreams, pre-parsed bitstream information into files in XML syntax, and well-known objective video quality measurement outputs. The database is continuously updated and enlarged using reproducible processing chains. Currently, more than 70,000 sequences are available for statistical analysis of video quality measurement algorithms. New research questions are posed as the database is designed to verify and validate models on a very large scale, testing and validating various scopes of applications, while subjective assessment has to be limited to a comparably small subset of the database. Special focus is given on the principles guiding the database development, and some results are given to illustrate the practical usefulness of such a database with respect to the detailed new research questions.