This paper presents a cell-based all-digital phase-locked loop (ADPLL) with hierarchical gated digitally controlled oscillator (G-DCO) for low voltage operation, wide frequency range as well as low-power consumption. In addition, a new time-domain hierarchical frequency estimation algorithm (HFEA) for frequency acquisition is proposed to estimate the output frequency in 1.5MF (MF = 3 in this paper) cycles and this fast lock-in time is suitable to the dynamic voltage frequency scaling (DVFS) systems. A hierarchical G-DCO is proposed to work at low supply voltage to reduce the power consumption and at the same time to achieve wide frequency range and precise frequency resolution. The core area of the proposed ADPLL is 0.02635 mm2. In near-threshold region (VDD = 0.36 V), the proposed ADPLL only dissipates 68.2 µW and has a rms period jitter of 1.25% UI at 60 MHz output clock frequency. Under 0.5 V VDD operation, the proposed ADPLL dissipates 404.2 µW at 400 MHz. The fast lock-in time of 4.489 µs and the low jitter performance below 0.5% UI at 400 MHz output clock frequency in the proposed ADPLL are suitable in event-driven or DVFS applications.

Recently ICT has been improved rapidly, and it is likely to make a contribution to effective disaster response. However, ICT is not utilized effectively in disaster response because the environment for ICT management is not considered enough. In this paper, we retrieve lessons learned from actual response at the past disasters in Japan, and introduce them following disaster response process model based on human psychological manner. In another point, we suggest significance of Common Operational Picture with spatial information following advanced case study in the United States of America, and identify two essential issues for effective information and technology management. One is information status, such as statics or dynamic information. The other one is five elements for ICT management in disaster response: Governance, Standard Operating Procedures, Technology, Training and Exercise and Use.

In 1919 the Department of Electrical Engineering (EE) was established in Tohoku University (at that time, Tohoku Imperial University). In this Department a growing tendency towards research featured in science and technology for electrical communication. Great efforts made in these fields produced pioneering studies such as those of the Yagi-Uda antenna and slotted-anode type magnetrons in the late 1920s. The purpose of this article is to introduce the history of development of microwave electron-tube at Tohoku University, which was started with the Okabe's magnetron.

The coarse-grained reconfigurable architecture (CGRA) is a promising computing platform that provides both high performance and high power-efficiency. The computation-intensive portions of an application (e.g. loop nests) are often mapped onto CGRA for acceleration. However, mapping loop nests onto CGRA efficiently is quite a challenge due to the special characteristics of CGRA. To optimize the mapping of loop nests onto CGRA, this paper makes three contributions: i) Establishing a precise performance model of mapping loop nests onto CGRA, ii) Formulating the loop nests mapping as a nonlinear optimization problem based on polyhedral model, iii) Extracting an efficient heuristic algorithm and building a complete flow of mapping loop nests onto CGRA (PolyMAP). Experiment results on most kernels of the PolyBench and real-life applications show that our proposed approach can improve the performance of the kernels by 27% on average, as compared to the state-of-the-art methods. The runtime complexity of our approach is also acceptable.

A digital spatial modulation method has been demonstrated for a wireless power transmission system at 5.8 GHz. Interference of electromagnetic waves, which are radiated from the dual scatterers, successfully realizes the spatial modulation. The spatial modulation is performed with a digital modulation manner by controlling capacitances embedded in one of the dual scatterers so that the interference of the scattered waves is appropriately changed. Switch MMICs based on p-HEMT technology was newly developed for the spatial modulation. Measured insertion losses of the switch MMIC are 1.0 dB and 14 dB for on and off states at 5.8 GHz, respectively. The isolation is more than 20 dB. With the switch MMIC, digital spatial modulation characteristics were experimentally demonstrated at 5.8 GHz. One-bit amplitude shift keying (ASK) for 1 MHz signal was realized at 5.8 GHz, and two levels were clearly discriminated. The modulation factor is 36%. In addition, 2-bit ASK signal was detected at 7.1 GHz.

We present a low-jitter design for a 10-bit second-order frequency shift oscillator time-to-digital converter (FSOTDC). As described herein, we analyze the relation between performance and FSOTDC parameters and provide insight to support the design of the FSOTDC. Results show that an oscillator jitter limits the FSOTDC resolution, particularly during the first stage. To estimate and design an FSOTDC, the frequency shift oscillator requires an inverter of a certain size. In a standard 65-nm CMOS process, an SNDR of 64dB is achievable at an input signal frequency of 10kHz and a sampling clock of 2MHz. Measurements of the test chip confirmed that the measurements match the analyses.

In emerging wearable sensor systems, it is crucial to save energy because these systems are severely energy-constrained. For making the sensors in these systems energy efficient, transmission power control (TPC) is widely used, and thus far, many TPC algorithms have been proposed in the literature. However, these TPC algorithms do not always work well in all wireless body channel conditions, which are capriciously varied due to diverse sensor environments such as sensor placements, body movements, and body locations. In this paper, we propose a simple TPC algorithm that quickly and stably approaches the optimal transmission power level and works well in all wearable sensor environments. We experimentally evaluated the proposed TPC algorithm and proved that it works well under all wireless body channel conditions.

Multiple-way (N-way) asynchronous arbitration is an important issue in asynchronous system design. In this paper, novel implementation methods of N-way asynchronous arbiters are presented. We first present N-way rectangle mesh arbiters using 2-way mutual exclusion elements. Then, N-way token-ring arbiters based on the non-return-to-zero signaling is also presented. The former can issue grant signals with the same percentage for all the arriving request signals while the latency is proportional to the number of inputs. The latter can achieve low latency and low energy arbitration for a heavy workload environment and a large number of inputs. In this paper, we compare their performances using the 28nm FD-SOI process technologies qualitatively and quantitatively.

New target specific absorption rate (SAR) values, calculated using a proposed reference dipole antenna and the reference flat phantom, are presented for an SAR validation test at 150MHz. The reference flat phantom recommended by the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) standard for 150MHz requires a significant amount of liquid owing to its large size. We conduct a numerical analysis in order to reduce the size of the flat phantom. The optimum size of the flat phantom is 780 (L1) × 540 (W) × 200 (H)mm3, which is approximately a 64% reduction in volume compared to the reference flat phantom. The length of the reference dipole antenna required for the optimized flat phantom (extrapolated from the reference values at 300MHz) becomes 760mm. The calculated and measured return losses (S11) of the antenna at 150MHz are 24.1dB and 22dB, respectively. The calculated and measured results for the return loss of the dipole antenna agree well and satisfy the IEC standard (> 20dB). The target SAR values derived from the numerical analysis are 1.08W/kg for 1g of tissue and 0.77W/kg for 10g of tissue for an SAR validation test at 150MHz.

Invention and development of the Yagi-Uda antenna in Tohoku University, Japan are described. Communication experiments in VHF and UHF frequency bands using transmitter and receiver developed in the same university as well as the Yagi-Uda antenna are also presented. Then, self-complementary antennas, which is the frequency independent antenna invented in Tohoku University are described. Analysis methods of large loop antennas is also presented.

Current mobile communication terminals are equipped with multiple RF circuits that cover all frequency bands assigned for the communication. In order to make efficient use of frequency spectrum and to reduce circuits in a terminal, a low-loss reconfigurable RF filter is necessary to flexibly change RF frequencies. In this paper, a new reconfigurable bandpass filter (BPF) having eight-frequency (three-bit) selection capability is proposed. It employs branch-line switched type variable resonators that provide low insertion loss. One of the design issues is how to control pass bandwidths among selectable frequencies. In order to analyze the bandwidth variation of the reconfigurable BPF, we calculate the changes of external Q and coupling coefficients. It is shown that the inductive coupling design can achieve less variation of bandwidth for the reconfigurable BPF, compared with commonly used capacitive coupling design. A prototype BPF on a printed circuit board with high dielectric constant substrate has been fabricated and evaluated in 2 GHz bands. It presents performance very close to the design results with respect to insertion loss, center frequency and passband bandwidth. Low insertion loss of less than 1 dB is achieved among the eight frequencies.

This paper presents a new way to classify different radiation sources by the parameter of directivity, which is a characteristic parameter of electromagnetic radiation sources. The parameter can be determined from measurements of the electric field intensity radiating in all directions in space. We develop three basic antenna models, which are for 3GHz operation, and set 125,000 groups of cube receiving arrays along the main lobe of their radiation patterns to receive the data of far field electric intensity in groups. Then the Back Propagation (BP) neural network and the Support Vector Machine (SVM) method are adopted to analyze training data set, and build and test the classification model. Owing to the powerful nonlinear simulation ability, the SVM method offers higher classification accuracy than the BP neural network in noise environment. At last, the classification model is comprehensively evaluated in three aspects, which are capability of noise immunity, F1 measure and the normalization method.

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.

This paper shows that the induced peak voltage on the short monopole antenna by the EM field radiated from a small gap discharge when the gap width was experimentally changed from 10 to 360µm was not directly proportional to the discharge voltage between the gap. It was found that the 10mm short monopole antenna induced peak voltage had a peak value between 40 and 60µm gap width.

This paper presents the detailed investigations on a simple multi-band method that allows inverted-F antennas (IFAs) to achieve good impedance matching in many different frequency bands. The impressive simplicity of the method arises from its sharing of a shorting strip among multiple branch elements to simultaneously generate independent resonant modes at arbitrary frequencies. Our simulation and measurement results clarify that, by adjusting the number of branch elements and their lengths, it is very easy to control both the total number of resonant modes and the position of each resonant frequency with impedance matching improved concurrently by adjusting properly the distance ds between the feeding and shorting points. The effectiveness of the multi-band method is verified in antenna miniaturization designs, not only in the case of handset antenna, but also in the design upon an infinite ground plane. Antenna performance and operation principles of proposed multi-band models in each case are analyzed and discussed in detail.

This paper reports on the trending literature of occlusion handling in the task of online visual tracking. The discussion first explores visual tracking realm and pinpoints the necessity of dedicated attention to the occlusion problem. The findings suggest that although occlusion detection facilitated tracking impressively, it has been largely ignored. The literature further showed that the mainstream of the research is gathered around human tracking and crowd analysis. This is followed by a novel taxonomy of types of occlusion and challenges arising from it, during and after the emergence of an occlusion. The discussion then focuses on an investigation of the approaches to handle the occlusion in the frame-by-frame basis. Literature analysis reveals that researchers examined every aspect of a tracker design that is hypothesized as beneficial in the robust tracking under occlusion. State-of-the-art solutions identified in the literature involved various camera settings, simplifying assumptions, appearance and motion models, target state representations and observation models. The identified clusters are then analyzed and discussed, and their merits and demerits are explained. Finally, areas of potential for future research are presented.

Graphical User Interfaces (GUIs) are critical for the security, safety and reliability of software systems. Injection attacks, for instance via SQL, succeed due to insufficient input validation and can be avoided if contract-based approaches, such as Design by Contract, are followed in the software development lifecycle of GUIs. This paper proposes a model-based testing approach for detecting GUI data contract violations, which may result in serious failures such as system crash. A contract-based model of GUI data specifications is used to develop test scenarios and to serve as test oracle. The technique introduced uses multi terminal binary decision diagrams, which are designed as an integral part of decision table-augmented event sequence graphs, to implement a GUI testing process. A case study, which validates the presented approach on a port scanner written in Java programming language, is presented.

This paper demonstrates the resonant power supply noise reduction effects of STO thin film decoupling capacitors, which are embedded in interposers. The on-interposer STO capacitor consists of SrTiO2 whose dielectric constant is about 20 and is sandwitched by Cu films in an interposer. The on-interposer STO capacitors are directly connected to the LSI PADs so that they provide large decoupling capacitance without package leadframe/bonding wire inductance, resulting in the reduction of the resonant power supply noise. The measured power supply waveforms show significant reduction of the power supply noise, and the Shmoo plots also show the contribution of the STO capacitors to the robust operations of LSIs.

A power allocation to active and reactive power in stochastic resonance is discussed for energy harvesting from noise. It is confirmed that active power can be increased at stochastic resonance, in the same way of the relationship between energy and phase at an appropriate setting in resonance.

In wireless sensor networks, or WSNs, a malicious node is able to cover itself by switching between good and bad behaviors. Even when running under a reputation mechanism, such a node can still behave maliciously now and then so long as its reputation is within the acceptable level. To address this inconsistent behavior issue, a combined approach of statistic reputation and time series is proposed in this study, in which the negative binomial reputation is applied to rate the nodes' reputation and concept of time series is borrowed to analyze the reputation results. Simulations show that the proposed method can effectively counter inconsistent behavior nodes and thus improves the overall system performance.