Blocking artifacts are introduced in many block-based coding systems, and its reduction can significantly improve the subjective quality of compressed video. The H.264/AVC uses an in-loop deblocking filter to remove the blocking artifacts. The filter considers some coding conditions in its adaptive deblocking filtering such as coded block pattern (CBP), motion vector, macroblock type, etc. for inter-predicted blocks, however, it does not consider much for intra-coded blocks. In this paper, we utilize the human visual system (HVS) characteristic and the local characteristic of image blocks to modify the boundary strength (BS) of the intra-deblocking filter in order to gain improvement in the subjective quality and also to reduce the complexity in filtering intra coded slices. In addition, we propose a low-complexity deblocking method which utilizes the correlation between vertical and horizontal boundaries of a block in inter coded slices. Experimental results show that our proposed method achieves not only significant gain in the subjective quality but also some PSNR gain, and reduces the computational complexity of the deblocking filter by 36.23% on average.

This paper describes the outline of recent standardization activities for Radio on Fiber (RoF) transmitter by IEC TC103/WG5. RoF transmitter consists of optical fibers, electrical to optical (E/O) converter, and optical to electrical (O/E) converter. IEC TC103/WG5 is working on standardization on measurement method of E/O and O/E devices, and technical specification of RoF transmitter. This paper overviews those standardization activities which are being developed by TC103/WG5 as well as the National Committee of WG5.

We evaluated the single side-band phase noise of a 40 GHz beat signal generated by two free-running lasers. This allowed us to verify the utility of the two free-running lasers is verified as a light source for a next-generation radio-over-fiber system using frequency such as those in the millimeter-wave and terahertz bands. We also measured the phase noise of a frequency quadrupler using a Mach-Zehnder modulator for comparison. The phase noise of the two free-running lasers and the frequency quadrupler are -63.85 and -95.22 dBc/Hz at a 10 kHz offset frequency, respectively.

A multigate polycrystalline-silicon (poly-Si) thin-film transistor (TFT) is a recently popular topic in the field of Si devices. In this study, self-aligned planar metal double-gate poly-Si TFTs consisting of an embedded bottom metal gate, a top metal gate fabricated by a self-alignment process, and a lateral poly-Si film with a grain size greater than 2 µm were fabricated on a glass substrate at 550. The nominal field-effect mobility of an n-channel TFT is 530 cm2/Vs, and its subthreshold slope is 140 mV/dec. The performance of the proposed TFTs is superior to that of top-gate TFTs fabricated using equivalent processes.

The design and measured results of a 120 GHz/140 GHz dual-channel OOK (ON-OFF Keying) receiver are presented in this paper. Because a signal with very wide frequency width is difficult to process in a single-channel receiver, a dual-channel configuration with channel selection is adopted in the proposed receiver. The proposed receiver is fabricated using 65 nm CMOS technology. The measured data rate of 3.0 and 3.6 Gbps, minimum sensitivity of -25.6 and -27.1 dBm, communication distance of 0.30 and 0.38 m are achieved in the 120- and 140-GHz receiver, respectively. The correct channel selection is achieved in the 120-GHz receiver. These results indicate the possibility of the CMOS multiband receiver operating at over 100 GHz for low-power high-speed proximity wireless communication systems.

We propose a coherent optical and radio seamless network concept that allows broadband access without deployment of additional optical fibers within an optical fiber dead zone while enhancing network resilience to disasters. Recently developed radio-over-fiber (RoF) and digital coherent detection technologies can seamlessly convert between optical and radio signals. A millimeter-wave radio with a capacity greater than 10 Gb/s and high-speed digital signal processing is feasible for this purpose. We provide a preliminary demonstration of a high-speed, W-band (75–110 GHz) radio that is seamlessly connected to an optical RoF transmitter using a highly accurate optical modulation technique to stabilize the center frequencies of radio signals. Using a W-band digital receiver with a sensitivity of -37 dBm, we successfully transmitted an 18.6 Gb/s quadrature-phase-shift-keying signal through both air and an optical fiber.

We have investigated on a random-texturing process for multi-crystalline Si solar cells by plasmaless dry etching, with chlorine trifluoride (ClF3) gas treatments. The reflectance of textured surfaces was reduced to below 20% at a wavelength of 600 nm. In this study, we tried to improve the electrical characteristics by modifying the fabrication process. The substrate surfaces were dry etched by chlorine trifluoride gas and subsequently etched with an acid solution to form appropriate textured structures. The improved electrical characteristics were demonstrated.

This paper describes mobile backhaul optical access network designs for future cellular systems, in particular, for those systems that exploit coordinated multipoints (CoMP) transmission/reception techniques. Wavelength-division-multiplexing passive optical networks (WDM-PON) are primarily considered and two proposals to enhance mobile backhaul capability of WDM-PONs for CoMP are presented. One is physical X2 links that support dedicated low latency and high capacity data exchange between base stations (BSs). The other is multicasting in WDM-PONs. It effectively reduces data/control transmission time from central node to multiple BSs joining CoMP. Evaluation results verify that the proposed X2 links and the multicasting enable more BSs to join CoMP by enhancing the mobile backhaul capability, which results in improved service quality for users.

In this paper, we propose an improved seam merging method for content-aware image resizing. This method merges a two-pixel-width seam element into one new pixel in image reduction and inserts a new pixel between the two pixels in image enlargement. To preserve important contents and structure, our method uses energy terms associated with importance and structure. Our method preserve the main structures by using a cartoon version of the original image when calculating the structure energy. In addition, we introduce a new energy term to suppress the distortion generated by excessive reduction or enlargement in iterated merger or insertion. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed method can produce satisfactory results in both image reduction and enlargement.

A LNA, an RF front-end and a 6th–order complex BPF for reconfigurable low-IF receivers are demonstrated in this work. Due to the noise cancellation, the two-stage LNA presents a low NF of 2.8 to 3.3 dB from 0.8 to 6 GHz. Moreover, the LNA delivers two kinds of gain curves with IIP3 of -2.6 dBm by employing the capacitive degeneration and the resistive gain-curve shaping in the second stage. The flicker noise corner frequency of the down-converter has been considered and the measured fC of the RF front-end is 200 kHz. The RF front-end also provides two kinds of gain curves. For the low-frequency mode, the conversion gain is 28.831.1 dB from 800 MHz to 2.4 GHz. For the high-frequency mode, the conversion gain is 26.827.4 dB from 3 to 5 GHz. The complex BPF is realized with gm-C LPFs by shifting the low-pass frequency response. With variable transconductances and capacitors, a fixed ratio of the centre frequency to the bandwidth (2) is achieved by varying the bandwidth and the centre frequency of the LPF simultaneously. The complex BPF has a variable bandwidth from 200 kHz to 6.4 MHz while achieving an image rejection of 44 dB.

In this letter, a low complexity decoder for non-binary low-density parity-check (LDPC) codes in a multiple-input and multiple-output (MIMO) channel is proposed employing Quasi-orthogonal space-time block code (QOSTBC). The complexity of the proposed decoding algorithm involved grows linearly with the number of transmit antennas and order of Galois Field.

Context awareness is one of the ultimate goals of ubiquitous computing, and spatial information plays an important role in building context awareness. In this paper, we propose a new interoperable spatial information model, which is based on ucode relation (ucR) and Place Identifier (PI), for realizing ubiquitous spatial infrastructure. In addition, we propose a design environment for spatial information database using our model. Our model is based on ucode and its relation. ucode is 128 bits number and the number itself has no meaning. Hence, it is difficult to manage the relation between ucodes without using a tool. Our design environment provides to describe connection between each ucode visually and is able to manipulate data using the target space map interactively. To evaluate the proposed model and environment, we designed three spaces using our tool. In addition, we developed a web application using our spatial model. From evaluation, we have been showed that our model is effective and our design environment is useful to develop our spatial information model.

We deal with the scattering of a scalar plane wave by a half plane with a sinusoidally deformed edge from a straight edge by a physical optics approximation. The normal incidence of a plane wave to an edge is assumed. A contribution of an edge to the field integral is asymptotically evaluated and the basic properties of the scattering caused by the edge deformation is clarified. The scattering pattern has peaks at specific scattering angles, which agree with diffraction angles calculated by the well-known grating formula for normal incidence. Some numerical examples are shown and it is shown that the results are in good agreement with the results obtained by the GTD method for low angle incidence.

Streak cameras are now widely used for measurements of ultra short phenomena, such as those in semi conductor luminescence and plasma gaseous discharge. To further improve the temporal resolution and carry out higher-dimensional measurements, it is necessary to understand the electron beam behavior in detail. Thus, numerical simulations play an important role in the analysis of the streak camera. The authors have been working on the development of a numerical simulation code that uses the finite difference method (FDM) for electric field analysis, the Runge-Kutta (R-K) method for charged particle motion determination, and the particle-in-cell (PIC) method for charge density calculation. However, the use of the PIC method leads to inaccuracy in the charge density calculation in cases of high-density electron beams. To improve the accuracy of the conventional analysis of the streak camera, we perform the boundary element (BE) analysis of the streak camera.

Product return is a critical but controversial issue. To deal with such a vague return problem, businesses must improve their information transparency in order to administrate the product return behaviour of their end users. This study proposes an intelligent return administration expert system (iRAES) to provide product return forecasting and decision support for returned product administration. The iRAES consists of two intelligent agents that adopt a hybrid data mining algorithm. The return diagnosis agent generates different alarms for certain types of product return, based on forecasts of the return possibility. The return recommender agent is implemented on the basis of case-based reasoning, and provides the return centre clerk with a recommendation for returned product administration. We present a 3C-iShop scenario to demonstrate the feasibility and efficiency of the iRAES architecture. Our experiments identify a particularly interesting return, for which iRAES generates a recommendation for returned product administration. On average, iRAES decreases the effort required to generate a recommendation by 70% compared to previous return administration systems, and improves performance via return decision support by 37%. iRAES is designed to accelerate product return administration, and improve the performance of product return knowledge management.

A semi-analytical method for a planar periodic array formed by a finite number of magnetized ferrite circular cylinders is presented using a model of layered cylindrical structures. The method uses the T-matrix approach and the extraction of the reflection and transmission matrices based on the cylindrical harmonic mode expansion. Based on the proposed method, plane wave scattering by the finite number of magnetized ferrite circular cylinders is numerically studied from the viewpoint of realization the electronic switching and electronic scanning effects by varying the applied magnetic field.

To reduce the power dissipation of the receiver in accordance with the intensity of the received signal, we developed the first intra-symbol intermittent (ISI) radio-frequency (RF) front end with 0.35-µm CMOS technology. In the demodulation mechanism, the RF output of the low-noise amplifier (LNA) is down-converted to an intermediate frequency (IF) by the mixer, and the LNA and mixer operate synchronously and intermittently within the length of a single symbol. Because the time-averaged power consumption is proportional to the operating time, the demodulation can be performed with low power by making the total operating time short. We experimentally demonstrate that demodulation (BPSK: 9.6 kbps) is properly achieved with the operating-time ratio of 12%. This ISI operation of the RF front end is enabled by a newly devised fast-transition LNA and mixer. A theoretical analysis of aliasing noise reveals that RF ISI operation is more useful than current-control with continuous operation and that an operating-time ratio of 10% is optimal.

NTRU is a public key cryptosystem based on hard problems over lattices. In this paper, we present efficient methods for convolution product computation which is a dominant operation of NTRU. The new methods are based on the observation that repeating patterns in coefficients of an NTRU polynomial can be used for the construction of look-up tables, which is a similar approach to the sliding window methods for exponentiation. We provide efficient convolution algorithms to implement this idea, and we make a comprehensive analysis of the complexity of the new algorithms. We also give software implementations over a Pentium IV CPU, a MICAz mote, and a CUDA-based GPGPU platform. According to our analyses and experimental results, the new algorithms speed up the NTRU encryption and decryption operations by up to 41%.

The Linking Open Data (LOD) cloud is a collection of linked Resource Description Framework (RDF) data with over 31 billion RDF triples. Accessing linked data is a challenging task because each data set in the LOD cloud has a specific ontology schema, and familiarity with the ontology schema used is required in order to query various linked data sets. However, manually checking each data set is time-consuming, especially when many data sets from various domains are used. This difficulty can be overcome without user interaction by using an automatic method that integrates different ontology schema. In this paper, we propose a Mid-Ontology learning approach that can automatically construct a simple ontology, linking related ontology predicates (class or property) in different data sets. Our Mid-Ontology learning approach consists of three main phases: data collection, predicate grouping, and Mid-Ontology construction. Experiments show that our Mid-Ontology learning approach successfully integrates diverse ontology schema with a high quality, and effectively retrieves related information with the constructed Mid-Ontology.

This article presents a differential fault analysis (DFA) technique using round addition for a generalized Feistel network (GFN) including CLEFIA and RC6. Here the term “round addition” means that the round operation executes twice using the same round key. The proposed DFA needs bypassing of an operation to count the number of rounds such as increment or decrement. To verify the feasibility of our proposal, we implement several operations, including increment and decrement, on a microcontroller and experimentally confirm the operation bypassing. The proposed round addition technique works effectively for the generalized Feistel network with a partial whitening operation after the last round. In the case of a 128-bit CLEFIA, we show a procedure to reconstruct the round keys or a secret key using one correct ciphertext and two faulty ciphertexts. Our DFA also works for DES and RC6.