This paper proposes a modified per-survivor iterative timing recovery scheme, which exploits a new split-preamble strategy in conjunction with a per-survivor processing soft-output Viterbi algorithm (PSP-SOVA). The conventional split-preamble strategy places a preamble at the beginning of a data sector and uses it to run a phase-locked loop during acquisition to find an initial phase/frequency offset. However, the proposed scheme splits the preamble into two parts. The first part is placed at the beginning of the data sector, whereas the second part is divided into small clusters, each of which is then embedded uniformly within the data stream. This split preamble is utilized to adjust the branch metric calculation in PSP-SOVA to ensure that the survivor path occurs in a correct direction. Results indicate that the proposed scheme yields a better performance than a conventional receiver with separate timing recovery and turbo equalization, and the iterative timing recovery scheme proposed in [1],[2], especially when the timing jitter is large. In addition, we also show that the proposed scheme can automatically correct a cycle slip much more efficiently than the others.

In this letter, we propose a set of Space-Time Block Codes (STBC) equipped with 4 transmit antennas to transmit one additional information bit achieving rate-9/8. To maintain full rank property of the coding gain matrix, one new orthogonal STBC code with full rate is proposed in this letter. Simulation results show that this method achieves good bit error rate (BER) performance with a small gap compared to that of the rate-1 case and throughput in the high SNR region.

A new kind of 3D power divider based on a half-mode substrate integrated circular cavity (HSICC) is proposed. This novel power divider can reduce the size of a power divider based on normal substrate integrated circular cavity (SICC) by nearly a half. To verify the validity of the design method, a two-way X-band HSICC power divider using low temperature co-fired ceramic (LTCC) technology is designed, fabricated and measured.

This paper proposes Bayesian context clustering using cross validation for hidden Markov model (HMM) based speech recognition. The Bayesian approach is a statistical technique for estimating reliable predictive distributions by treating model parameters as random variables. The variational Bayesian method, which is widely used as an efficient approximation of the Bayesian approach, has been applied to HMM-based speech recognition, and it shows good performance. Moreover, the Bayesian approach can select an appropriate model structure while taking account of the amount of training data. Since prior distributions which represent prior information about model parameters affect estimation of the posterior distributions and selection of model structure (e.g., decision tree based context clustering), the determination of prior distributions is an important problem. However, it has not been thoroughly investigated in speech recognition, and the determination technique of prior distributions has not performed well. The proposed method can determine reliable prior distributions without any tuning parameters and select an appropriate model structure while taking account of the amount of training data. Continuous phoneme recognition experiments show that the proposed method achieved a higher performance than the conventional methods.

In this paper, we propose a method for robot self-position identification by active sound localization. This method can be used for autonomous security robots working in room environments. A system using an AIBO robot equipped with two microphones and a wireless network is constructed and used for position identification experiments. Differences in arrival time to the robot's microphones are used as localization cues. To overcome the ambiguity of front-back confusion, a three-head-position measurement method is proposed. The position of robot can be identified by the intersection of circles restricted using the azimuth differences among different sound beacon pairs. By localizing three or four loudspeakers as sound beacons positioned at known locations, the robot can identify its position with an average error of 7 cm in a 2.53.0 m2 working space in the horizontal plane. We propose adjusting the arrival time differences (ATDs) to reduce the errors caused when the sound beacons are high mounted. A robot navigation experiment was conducted to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed position-identification system.

This paper proposes a new Ad-Hoc network system which comprises the multiple relay access points (APs) with multi channels. Ad-Hoc network systems are recently proposed and incorporated for the communication infrastructure, which relays wireless transmission among access points (APs) in wireless LAN (WLAN) system. System throughput is decreased due to hidden terminal problem when only a single channel is used for the Ad-Hoc network. In order to solve this problem, a new system with multi channels is proposed. However, even if the multi channels are employed, the co- and/or adjacent-channel interference occurs due to hidden terminal problem and multiple APs in a limited space, when considering a simultaneous transmit and reception at the relay AP. In this paper, we develop an Ad-Hoc network testbed which can reduce and avoid co- and/or adjacent-channel interference by using vertically arranged antenna configuration and distributed channel allocation scheme. Moreover, the effectiveness of our testbed is clarified by applying actual WLAN signals.

This letter deals with eigenspace-based (ESB) beamforming based on the decision-directed (DD) correction with robust capability. It has been shown that the output of the ESB beamformer includes the desired signal and noise under small pointing errors. In conjugation with DD and soft decision decoding scheme, the proposed approach can be used to form a robust DD-ESB beamformer without any specific training sequence. Computer simulations are provided to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed beamformer.

A critical problem with wireless LAN-based positioning systems is the degradation in position estimation accuracy due to complex variation in the strength of the received signal, which originates in the nature of the underlying wireless channel. Handling such variation effectively is essential for the creation of practical wireless LAN-based positioning systems. In this paper, we propose a collaborative mechanism for correcting position estimation errors. The main objective is to assist users in correcting estimation errors manually by providing access to a shared body of accumulated information on corrections made by many other users. In particular, the mechanism is designed to enable any group of users to collaboratively build upon this body of information. Finally, we evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed mechanism through experiments. The results confirm that the proposed mechanism can provide effective estimation error correction in a realistic environment.

The actual blurring function or point spread function (PSF) in an image, in most cases, is similar to a parametric or ideal model. Recently proposed blind deconvolution methods employ this idea for learning during the estimation of PSF. Its dependence on the estimated values may result in ineffective learning when the model is erroneously selected. To overcome this problem, we propose to exploit the image maxima in order to extract a reference point spread function (RPSF). This is only dependent on the degraded image and has a structure that closely resembles a parametric motion blur assuming a known blur support size. Its usage will result in a more stable learning and estimation process since it does not change with respect to iteration or any estimated value. We define a cost function in the vector-matrix form which accounts for the blurring function contour as well as learning towards the RPSF. The effectiveness of using RPSF and the proposed cost function under various motion directions and support sizes will be demonstrated by the experimental results.

The separation and localization of sound source signals are important techniques for many applications, such as highly realistic communication and speech recognition systems. These systems are expected to work without such prior information as the number of sound sources and the environmental conditions. In this paper, we developed a dodecahedral microphone array and proposed a novel separation method with our developed device. This method refers to human sound localization cues and uses acoustical characteristics obtained by the shape of the dodecahedral microphone array. Moreover, this method includes an estimation method of the number of sound sources that can operate without prior information. The sound source separation performances were evaluated under simulated and actual reverberant conditions, and the results were compared with the conventional method. The experimental results showed that our separation performance outperformed the conventional method.

A class of balanced semi-bent functions with an even number of variables is proposed. It is shown that they include one subclass of semi-bent functions with maximum algebraic degrees. Furthermore, an example of semi-bent functions in a small field is given by using the zeros of some Kloosterman sums. Based on the result given by S.Kim et al., an example of infinite families of semi-bent functions is also obtained.

Distributed hash tables (DHTs) enable companies or campuses to use voice over IP (VoIP) systems in private networks at low cost. However, DHTs incur latency stretch caused by a topology mismatch between the application layer and the physical layer. Reducing this latency stretch is critical when implementing real-time applications that use DHTs, such as VoIP systems. This letter proposes a new method for reducing the latency stretch by creating node IDs, which form structured overlays that consider node proximity. Simulation results show that the proposed method is superior to Chord in terms of the distance between nodes, look-up path length, network burden, and look-up latency.

We report on the enhancement of system detection efficiency in a superconducting nanowire single-photon detector (SNSPD) by applying the optical cavity structure. The nanowire was made using 4-nm-thick NbN thin films and covered with an SiO cavity and Au mirror designed for 1300-1600 nm wavelengths. The device is mounted into fiber-coupled packages, and installed in a practical multichannel system based on GM cryocoolers. System detection efficiency depends on the absorptance of cavity structure, and reached 28% and 40% at 1550 nm and 1310 nm wavelengths, respectively. These values were considerably higher than an SNSPD without optical cavity.

Based on sliding-window rule application and extraction filtering, we present a framework for extracting multi-slot frames describing chemical reactions from Thai free text with unknown target-phrase boundaries. A supervised rule learning algorithm is employed for automatic construction of pattern-based extraction rules from hand-tagged training phrases. A filtering method is devised for removal of incorrect extraction results based on features observed from text portions appearing between adjacent slot fillers in source documents. Extracted reaction frames are represented as concept expressions in description logics and are used as metadata for document indexing. A document knowledge base supporting semantics-based information retrieval is constructed by integrating document metadata with domain-specific ontologies.

The purpose of this study was to clarify whether viewers can perceive a digitally deteriorated image while pursuing a speedily moving digitally compressed image. We studied the perception characteristics of false contours among the various digital deteriorations for the four types of displays i.e. CRT, PDP, EL, LCD by changing the gradation levels and the speed of moving image as parameters. It is known that 8 bits is not high enough resolution for still images, and it is assumed that 8 bits is also not enough for an image moving at less than 5 deg/sec since the tracking accuracy of smooth pursuit eye movement (SPEM) is very high for a target moving at less than 5 deg/sec. Given these facts, we focused on images moving at more than 5 deg/sec. In our results, the images deteriorated by a false contour at a gradation level less than 32 were perceived by every subject at almost all velocities, from 5 degrees/sec to 30 degrees/sec, for all four types of displays we used. However, the perception rate drastically decreased when the gradation levels reached 64, with almost no subjects detecting deterioration for gradation levels more than 64 at any velocity. Compared to other displays, LCDs yielded relatively high recognition rates for gradation levels of 64, especially at lower velocities.

This paper proposes a novel image segmentation method based on Clausius entropy and adaptive Gaussian mixture model for detecting moving objects in a complex environment. The results suggest that the proposed method performs better than existing methods in extracting the foreground in various video sequences composed of multiple objects, lighting reflections, and background clutter.

In this paper, we analyze recurrence relations generalized from the Tower of Hanoi problem of the form T(n,α,β) = min 1 ≤ t ≤ n {αT(n-t,α,β) + βS(t,3)} , where S(t,3) = 2t - 1 is the optimal total number of moves for the 3-peg Tower of Hanoi problem. It is shown that when α and β are natural numbers, the sequence of differences of T(n,α,β)'s, i.e., {T(n,α,β) - T(n-1,α,β)}, consists of numbers of the form β 2i αj (i, j ≥ 0) lined in the increasing order.

In group location management, when a transportation system (TS) with mobile stations (MSs) changes location area (LA), only a single group location update by the TS is needed, instead of multiple individual location updates by MSs riding on the TS. Therefore, group location management significantly reduces location update signaling of the current individual location management. In this paper, we further improve the conventional group location management, by paging cells containing the route of public TS within an LA only, if an incoming call arrives at an MS riding on the TS, based on the observation that public TS, such as bus, subway, and train, follows a fixed route; its movement is not random. The performance of the proposed scheme is analyzed in terms of total signaling cost based on the modeling of public TS route. Numerical results reveal that the proposed scheme significantly outperforms the conventional scheme from the aspect of total signaling cost, at the expense of small network overhead due to the additional queries needed to acquire public TS route information.

A dominant-mode rectangular cavity antenna design yielding an improved bandwidth is experimentally verified. Simple field theories indicate that extending the aperture height should increase the antenna bandwidth without shifting the operation frequency. Antenna samples built from a 4.4 dielectric constant material produce 3-dB efficiency bandwidths of 15 and 23 percent for the respective cavity height-to-width ratios of 0.5 and 0.75 at 7 GHz.

This letter presents a method to enable the precoder design for intrablock MMSE equalization with previously proposed oblique projection framework. The joint design of the linear transceiver with optimum block delay detection is built. Simulation results validate the proposed approach and show the superior BER performance of the optimized transceiver.