Since digital hearing aids are sensitive to time delay and power consumption, the computational complexity of noise reduction must be reduced as much as possible. Therefore, some complicated algorithms based on the analysis of the time-frequency domain are very difficult to implement in digital hearing aids. This paper presents a new approach that yields an improved noise reduction algorithm with greatly reduce computational complexity for multi-channel digital hearing aids. First, the sub-band sound pressure level (SPL) is calculated in real time. Then, based on the calculated sub-band SPL, the noise in the sub-band is estimated and the possibility of speech is computed. Finally, a posteriori and a priori signal-to-noise ratios are estimated and the gain function is acquired to reduce the noise adaptively. By replacing the FFT and IFFT transforms by the known SPL, the proposed algorithm greatly reduces the computation loads. Experiments on a prototype digital hearing aid show that the time delay is decreased to nearly half that of the traditional adaptive Wiener filtering and spectral subtraction algorithms, but the SNR improvement and PESQ score are rather satisfied. Compared with modulation frequency-based noise reduction algorithm, which is used in many commercial digital hearing aids, the proposed algorithm achieves not only more than 5dB SNR improvement but also less time delay and power consumption.

Currently, IEEE802.11p and ARIB STD T-109 are available as the typical inter-vehicle communication (IVC) standards. Carrier sense multiple access/collision avoidance (CSMA/CA) and orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) are used in these standards. However, the performance degrades when there are hidden terminals. In this paper, IVC system that using a direct sequence spread spectrum (DS/SS) modulation scheme is discussed because it has code division multiple access (CDMA) capability. In DS/SS-IVC scheme, it is possible to avoid hidden terminal problem. On the other hand, near-far problem (NFP), multiple access interference (MAI) and interference by equivalent pseudo noise (PN) codes occurs in DS/SS communication. These problems cause performance degradation. In this paper, interference cancellation scheme and slotted ALOHA scheme with code sensing are applied so as to mitigate the impact of MAI, NFP and interference by equivalent PN code. By applying interference cancellation scheme and slotted ALOHA scheme with code sensing, the performance of DS/SS-IVC is improved. In this paper, location oriented PN code allocation is focused on as a method of PN code assignment. However, DS/SS-IVC scheme based on location oriented PN code allocation has a problem. Since each vehicle obtain PN code based on the position that is estimated by GPS, performance degrades when GPS positioning error occurs. Therefore, the positioning system of DS/SS-IVC scheme is also discussed in this paper. Elimination of ranging data that has large ranging error is proposed in addition to interference cancellation scheme and slotted ALOHA scheme with code sensing in order to improve the performance of positioning. From the simulation results, the positioning error can be mitigated by applying these proposed techniques.

Microwave systems have a number of promising applications in surveillance and monitoring systems. The main advantage of microwave systems is their ability to detect targets at distance under adverse conditions such as dim, smoky, and humid environments. Specifically, the wide bandwidth of ultra-wideband radar enables high range resolution. In a previous study, we proposed an accurate shape estimation algorithm for multiple targets using multiple ultra-wideband Doppler interferometers. However, this algorithm produces false image artifacts under conditions with severe interference. The present paper proposes a technique to suppress such false images by detecting inconsistent combinations of the radial velocity and time derivative of image positions. We study the performance of the proposed method through numerical simulations of a two-dimensional section of a moving human body, and demonstrate the remarkable performance of the proposed method in suppressing false image artifacts in many scenarios.

Many recent studies have focused on leveraging rich information types to increase useful information for improving fault localization effectiveness. However, they rarely investigate the impact of information richness on fault localization to give guidance on how to enrich information for improving localization effectiveness. This paper presents the first systematic study to fill this void. Our study chooses four representative information types and investigates the relationship between their richness and the localization effectiveness. The results show that information richness related to frequency execution count involves a high risk of degrading the localization effectiveness, and backward slice is effective in improving localization effectiveness.

A double layer stacked patch antenna with a size of 200×200×48mm3 is proposed in this investigation. To achieve a broad CP bandwidth that can cover universal UHF RFID applications (840-960MHz), a slot loaded circular patch antenna fed by an L-shaped probe is designed as the lower layer (main patch), while the top layer (parasitic patch) is a simple circular patch loaded with a cross-slot of dissimilar arm lengths. Besides demonstrating a broad 10-dB return loss bandwidth of 16% (823-966MHz) and a CP bandwidth (3-dB axial ratio) of 14.0% (837-963MHz), the proposed antenna also yields maximum gain and minimum radiation efficiency of 8.8dBic and 85%, respectively, across the universal UHF RFID bands.

This paper presents a design methodology for positioning sub-platform from the viewpoint of positioning for smartphone-based location-based services (LBS). To achieve this, we analyze a mechanism of positioning error generation including principles of positioning sub-systems and structure of smartphones. Specifically, we carry out the experiments of smartphone positioning performance evaluation by the smartphone basic API (Application Programming Interface) and by the wireless LAN in various environments. Then, we describe the importance of considering three layers as follows: 1) the lower layer that caused by positioning sub-systems, e.g., GPS, wireless LAN, mobile base stations, and so on; 2) the middle layer that caused by functions provided from the platform such as Android and iOS; 3) the upper layer that caused by operation algorithm of applications on the platform.

Product packaging is a significant factor in a buyer's purchasing decision. We have developed a method for creating package images reflecting consumers' taste impressions that balances the need to provide product information and the need to motivate purchasing. It uses a database showing the correspondence between adjectives and colors as extracted from consumer reviews. This correspondence is used to revise the colors in the original package image. Evaluation was done by having 40 participants drink target beverages and answer questions before and after drinking regarding their impressions of the taste and their desire to drink the beverage. The results revealed that displaying appropriately revised images reduced the gap between the expected taste when viewing the image and the actual taste. Displaying appropriately revised images should motivate purchasing decisions as well as increase product satisfaction.

The sense of presence, that is, the sense of the website being psychologically transported to the consumer, has been identified as an important factor for bringing back the feeling of sociability and physicality that is lost in online shopping. Previous research has investigated how visual content in the design can influence the sense of presence in a website, but the focus has been limited to the domestic electronic commerce context. In this paper, we conduct an experimental study in a cross-border electronic commerce context to evaluate the effect of country-related pictures on the perception of country presence, visual appeal and trust in a foreign online store. Two experimental conditions were considered: country-related pictures and generic pictures, each one evaluated for Thai and Singaporean websites. It was hypothesized that country-related content in pictures included in the design of the foreign online store would result in a higher level of country presence, and that this would in turn result in higher visual appeal and trust in the website. We conducted a survey among Japanese online consumers, with a total of 1991 participants obtained. The subjects were randomly assigned into four groups corresponding to the combination of country-of-origin of the website and picture condition. We used structural equation modeling in order to analyze the proposed hypotheses. The results showed that for both the Thai and Singaporean websites, country-related pictures resulted in higher country presence, and visual appeal was positively influenced by this increase in country presence. However, country presence did not have a direct effect on trust; this effect was completely mediated by visual appeal. We discuss these results and their implications for cross-border electronic commerce.

A simplified circuit has been utilized for fast computation of the current flowing in the cross-point memory array. However, the circuit has a constraint in that the selected cell is located farthest from current drivers so as to estimate the current degraded by metal wire resistance. This is because the length of the current path along the metal wire varies with the selected address in the cross-point memory array. In this paper, a new simplified circuit is proposed for calculating the current at every address in order to take account of the metal wire resistance. By employing the Monte Carlo simulation to solve the proposed simplified circuit, the current distribution across the array is obtained, so that failure rates of read disturbance and write error are estimated precisely. By comparing the conventional and the proposed simplified circuits, it was found that the conventional simplified circuit estimated optimistic failure rates for read disturbance and for write error when the wire resistance was prominent enough as a parasitic resistance.

In this paper, an electromagnetic plane wave diffraction by finite number of loaded thick slits on infinitely long perfectly electric conductor (PEC) screen is analyzed. Here we formulate the problem by utilizing the Kobayashi Potential (KP) method, which is a kind of eigenfunction expansion method in terns of Weber-Schafheitlin discontinuous integrals. The multiple scattering contributions between the slits are analytically included in the formulation. The solution derived here may provide us with precise numerical result, so it may be considered as a reference solution to other numerical and approximate analyses.

A high frequency approximation method is proposed to obtain the scattering from rectangular dielectric cuboids. Our formulation is based on a Kirchhoff type aperture integration of the equivalent current sources over the surface of the scattering bodies. The derived formulae have been used to get the radar cross section of cuboids, and the results are compared with those by other methods, such as physical optics, geometrical theory of diffraction, the HFSS simulation and measurements. Good agreement has been observed to confirm the validity of our method.

Remote Access Trojans (RAT) is a spyware which can steal the confidential information from a target organization. The detection of RATs becomes more and more difficult because of targeted attacks, since the victim usually cannot realize that he/she is being attacked. After RAT's intrusion, the attacker can monitor and control the victim's PC remotely, to wait for an opportunity to steal the confidential information. As this situation, the main issue we face now is how to prevent confidential information being leaked back to the attacker. Although there are many existing approaches about RAT detection, there still remain two challenges: to detect RAT sessions as early as possible, and to distinguish them from the normal applications with a high accuracy. In this paper, we propose a novel approach to detect RAT sessions by their network behavior during the early stage of communication. The early stage is defined as a short period of time at communication's beginning; it also can be seen as the preparation period of the communication. We extract network behavior features from this period, to differentiate RAT sessions and normal sessions. For the implementation and evaluation, we use machine learning techniques with 5 algorithms and K-Fold cross-validation. As the results, our approach could detect RAT sessions in the communication's early stage with the accuracy over 96% together with the FNR of 10% by Random Forest algorithm.

This paper deals with the security of chaos-based “true” random number generators (RNG)s. An attack method is proposed to analyze the security weaknesses of chaos-based RNGs and its convergence is proved using a master slave synchronization scheme. Attack on a RNG based on a double-scroll attractor is also presented as an example. All secret parameters of the RNG are revealed where the only information available is the structure of the RNG and a scalar time series observed from the double-scroll attractor. Simulation and numerical results of the proposed attack method are given such that the RNG doesn't fulfill NIST-800-22 statistical test suite, not only the next bit but also the same output bit stream of the RNG can be reproduced.

In this letter, we propose a blind adaptive algorithm for joint compensation of inter-block interference (IBI) and frequency-dependent IQ imbalance using a single time-domain equalizer. We combine the MERRY algorithm for IBI suppression with the differential constant modulus algorithm to compensate for IQ imbalance. The effectiveness of the proposed algorithm is shown through computer simulations.

This paper proposes the first (practical) inner product encryption (IPE) scheme that is adaptively secure and fully attribute-hiding (attribute-hiding in the sense of the definition by Katz, Sahai and Waters), while the existing (practical) IPE schemes are either fully attribute-hiding but selectively secure or adaptively secure but weakly attribute-hiding. The proposed IPE scheme is proven to be adaptively secure and fully attribute-hiding under the decisional linear assumption in the standard model. The IPE scheme is comparably as efficient as the existing (practical) attribute-hiding IPE schemes. We also present a variant of the proposed IPE scheme with the same security that achieves shorter public and secret keys. A hierarchical IPE scheme can be constructed that is also adaptively secure and fully attribute-hiding under the same assumption. In this paper, we extend the dual system encryption technique by Waters into a more general manner, in which new forms of ciphertext and secret keys are employed and new types of information theoretical tricks are introduced along with several forms of computational reduction.

In this paper, a method for designing of Incremental Granular Model (IGM) based on integration of Linear Regression (LR) and Linguistic Model (LM) with the aid of fuzzy granulation is proposed. Here, IGM is designed by the use of information granulation realized via Context-based Interval Type-2 Fuzzy C-Means (CIT2FCM) clustering. This clustering approach are used not only to estimate the cluster centers by preserving the homogeneity between the clustered patterns from linguistic contexts produced in the output space, but also deal with the uncertainty associated with fuzzification factor. Furthermore, IGM is developed by construction of a LR as a global model, refine it through the local fuzzy if-then rules that capture more localized nonlinearities of the system by LM. The experimental results on two examples reveal that the proposed method shows a good performance in comparison with the previous works.

Recent work on joint word segmentation, POS (Part Of Speech) tagging, and dependency parsing in Chinese has two key problems: the first is that word segmentation based on character and dependency parsing based on word were not combined well in the transition-based framework, and the second is that the joint model suffers from the insufficiency of annotated corpus. In order to resolve the first problem, we propose to transform the traditional word-based dependency tree into character-based dependency tree by using the internal structure of words and then propose a novel character-level joint model for the three tasks. In order to resolve the second problem, we propose a novel semi-supervised joint model for exploiting n-gram feature and dependency subtree feature from partially-annotated corpus. Experimental results on the Chinese Treebank show that our joint model achieved 98.31%, 94.84% and 81.71% for Chinese word segmentation, POS tagging, and dependency parsing, respectively. Our model outperforms the pipeline model of the three tasks by 0.92%, 1.77% and 3.95%, respectively. Particularly, the F1 value of word segmentation and POS tagging achieved the best result compared with those reported until now.

Reversible data hiding is a technique in which hidden data are embedded in host data such that the consistency of the host is perfectly preserved and its data are restored during extraction of the hidden data. In this paper, a linear prediction technique for reversible data hiding of audio waveforms is improved. The proposed variable expansion method is able to control the payload size through varying the expansion factor. The proposed technique is combined with the prediction error expansion method. Reversible embedding, perfect payload detection, and perfect recovery of the host signal are achieved for a framed audio signal. A smaller expansion factor results in a smaller payload size and less degradation in the stego audio quality. Computer simulations reveal that embedding a random-bit payload of less than 0.4 bits per sample into CD-format music signals provide stego audio with acceptable objective quality. The method is also applied to G.711 µ-law-coded speech signals. Computer simulations reveal that embedding a random-bit payload of less than 0.1 bits per sample into speech signals provide stego speech with good objective quality.

This paper proposes a method of watermarking for digital audio signals based on adaptive phase modulation. Audio signals are usually non-stationary, i.e., their own characteristics are time-variant. The features for watermarking are usually not selected by combining the principle of variability, which affects the performance of the whole watermarking system. The proposed method embeds a watermark into an audio signal by adaptively modulating its phase with the watermark using IIR all-pass filters. The frequency location of the pole-zero of an IIR all-pass filter that characterizes the transfer function of the filter is adapted on the basis of signal power distribution on sub-bands in a magnitude spectrum domain. The pole-zero locations are adapted so that the phase modulation produces slight distortion in watermarked signals to achieve the best sound quality. The experimental results show that the proposed method could embed inaudible watermarks into various kinds of audio signals and correctly detect watermarks without the aid of original signals. A reasonable trade-off between inaudibility and robustness could be obtained by balancing the phase modulation scheme. The proposed method can embed a watermark into audio signals up to 100 bits per second with 99% accuracy and 6 bits per second with 94.3% accuracy in the cases of no attack and attacks, respectively.

A major challenge in wideband spectrum sensing, in cognitive radio system for example, is the requirement of a high sampling rate which may exceed today's best analog-to-digital converters (ADCs) front-end bandwidths. Compressive sampling is an attractive way to reduce the sampling rate. The modulated wideband converter (MWC) proposed recently is one of the most successful compressive sampling hardware architectures, but it has high hardware complexity owing to its parallel channels structure. In this paper, we design a single channel sub-Nyquist sampling scheme to bring substantial savings in terms of not only sampling rate but also hardware complexity, and we also present a wideband power spectrum sensing and reconstruction method for bandlimited wide-sense stationary (WSS) signals. The total sampling rate is only one channel rate of the MWC's. We evaluate the performance of the sensing model by computing the probability of detecting signal occupancy in terms of the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) and other practical parameters. Simulation results underline the promising performance of proposed approach.