In a society preoccupied with gradual erosion of electronic privacy, loss of privacy in the current Domain Name System is an important issue worth considering. In this paper, we first review the DNS and some security & privacy threats to make average users begin to concern about the significance of privacy preservation in DNS protocols. Then, by an careful survey of four noise query generation based existing privacy protection approaches, we analyze some benefits and limitations of these proposals in terms of both related performance evaluation results and theoretic proofs. Finally, we point out some problems that still exist for research community's continuing efforts in the future.

We have studied transmission property of electron in vertical MOSFET (V-MOSFET) from the viewpoint of quantum electro-dynamics. To obtain the intuitive picture of electron transmission property through channel of the V-MOSFET, we solve the time-dependent Schrodinger equation in real space by employing the split operator method. We injected an electron wave packet into the body of the V-MOSFET from the source, and traced the time-development of electron-wave function in the body and drain region. We successfully showed that the electron wave function propagates through the resonant states of the body potential. Our suggested approaches open the quantative and intuitive discussion for the carrier dynamics in the V-MOSFET on quantum limit.

We propose a character size optimization technique to reduce the number of EB shots of multi-column-cell (MCC) lithographic systems in which transistor patterns are projected with multiple column cells in parallel. Each and every column cell is capable of projecting patterns with character projection (CP) and variable shaped beam (VSB) methods. Seeking the optimal character size of characters contributes to minimizing the number of EB shots and reducing the fabrication cost for ICs. Experimental results show that the character size optimization achieved 70.6% less EB shots in the best case with an available electron beam (EB) size. Our technique also achieved 40.6% less EB shots in the best case than a conventional character sizing technique.

This paper proposes a robust state observer for multi-input multi-output LTI systems. Unknown inputs of polynomial form and high-frequency measurement noises are considered in the system model. The unknown inputs and the noises are not in the same form. Multiple integrations of both the observer error signal and the measurement output are used for the observer design. The existence condition of the proposed observer is shown to be the same as that of the proportional-integral (PI) observer. Computer simulations show the effectiveness of the proposed observer.

We exhibit a simple procedure to find how classical signals should be processed in cluster-state quantum computation. Using stabilizers characterizing a cluster state, we can easily find a precise classical signal-flow that is required in performing cluster-state computation.

In this work, a divide-by-2 injection locked frequency divider (ILFD) operating in the V-band with a low DC power consumption has been developed in a commercial 0.13-µm Si RFCMOS technology. The bias current path was separated from the injection signal path, which enabled a small supply voltage of 0.5 V, leading to a DC power consumption of only 0.31 mW. To the authors' best knowledge, this is the lowest power consumption reported for mm-wave ILFDs at the point of writing. All inductors and interconnection lines were designed based on EM (electromagnetic) simulator for precise prediction of circuit performance. With varactor tuning voltage ranged for 0-1.2 V, the free-running oscillation frequency varied from 27.43 to 28.06 GHz. At 0 dBm input power, the frequency divider exhibited a locking range of 5.8 GHz from 53 to 58.8 GHz without external tuning mechanism. The fabricated circuit size is 0.72 mm 0.62 mm including the RF and DC supply pads.

This paper describes an efficient image enhancement method based on the Multi-Scale Retinex (MSR) approach for pre-processing of video applications. The processing amount is drastically reduced to 4 orders less than that of the original MSR, and 1 order less than the latest fast MSR method. For the efficient processing, our proposed method employs multi-stage and multi-rate filter processing which is constructed by a x-y separable and polyphase structure. In addition, the MSR association is effectively implemented during the above multi-stage processing. The method also modifies a weighting function for enhancement to improve color rendition of bright areas in an image. A variety of evaluation results show that the performance of our simplified method is similar to those of the original MSR, in terms of visual perception, contrast enhancement effects, and hue changes. Moreover, experimental results show that pre-processing of the proposed method contributes to clear foreground object separation.

A multiple-input switched-capacitor DC-DC converter which can realize long battery runtime is proposed in this letter. Unlike conventional converters for a back-lighting application, the proposed converter drives some LEDs by converting energy from solar cells. Furthermore, the proposed converter can charge a lithium battery when an output load is light. The validity of circuit design is confirmed by theoretical analyses, simulations, and experiments.

We try to use a computer algebra system Mathematica as a test case generation system. In test case generation, we generally need to solve equations and inequalities. The main reason why we take Mathematica is because it has a built-in function to solve equations and inequalities. In this paper, we deal with both black-box testing and white-box testing. First, we show two black-box test case generation procedures described in Mathematica. The first one is based on equivalence partitioning. Mathematica explicitly shows a case that test cases do no exist. This is an advantage in using Mathematica. The second procedure is a modification of the first one adopting boundary value analysis. For implementation of boundary value analysis, we give a formalization for it. Next, we show a white-box test case generation procedure. For this purpose, we also give a model for source programs. It is like a control flow graph model. The proposed procedure analyzes a model description of a program.

In this work, we propose a scheme of routing table compaction for IP forwarding engines based on ternary content addressable memory (TCAM). Our scheme transforms the original routing table into a form with only disjoint prefixes. The most prevalent next hop of the routing table is then calculated and the route prefixes corresponding to the next hop are replaced by one TCAM entry. In combination with Espresso-II logic minimization algorithm, the proposed scheme reduces the TCAM storage requirements by more than 75% compared to the original routing tables. We also present an effective approach to support incremental updates.

A new mixed-voltage I/O buffer for low-voltage low-latency operation is proposed in this paper. The proposed buffer adopts a novel delay-based timing-control scheme to efficiently avoid problems like gate-oxide stress and hot-carrier degradation. The proposed timing-control scheme also allows the buffer to have a lower latency for transmitting data by avoiding the use of timing-critical circuits like series-connected transmission gates (TGs) and triple-stacked transistors. The latency for receiving data at low supply voltage is also reduced by employing a variable stacked transistor gate-biasing scheme. Comparison results in an 80-nm CMOS process indicated that the proposed mixed-voltage I/O buffer improved up to 79.3% for receiving the external data and up to 23.8% for transmitting the internal data at a supply voltage of 1.2 V.

The proportionate normalized least mean square algorithm (PNLMS) greatly improves the convergence of the sparse impulse response. It exploits the shape of the impulse response to decide the proportionate step gain for each coefficient. This is not always suitable. Actually, the proportionate step gain should be determined according to the difference between the current estimate of the coefficient and its optimal value. Based on this idea, an approach is proposed to determine the proportionate step gain. The proposed approach can improve the convergence of proportionate adaptive algorithms after a fast initial period. It even behaves well for the non-sparse impulse response. Simulations verify the effectiveness of the proposed approach.

In this paper, we propose a file replication method to achieve load balancing in terms of write access to storage device ("write storage access load balancing" for short) in unstructured peer-to-peer (P2P) file-sharing networks in which the popularity trend of queried files varies dynamically. The proposed method uses a write storage access ratio as a load balance index value in order to stabilize dynamic P2P file-sharing environments adaptively. In the proposed method, each peer autonomously controls the file replication ratio, which is defined as a probability to create the replica of the file in order to uniform write storage access loads in the similar way to thermal diffusion phenomena. Theoretical analysis results show that the behavior of the proposed method actually has an analogy to a thermal diffusion equation. In addition, simulation results reveal that the proposed method has an ability to realize write storage access load balancing in the dynamic P2P file-sharing environments.

With the process scaling, the leakage current reduction has been the primary design concerns in a nanometer-era VLSI circuit. In this paper, we propose a new lithography process-aware edge effects correction method to reduce the leakage current in the shallow trench isolation (STI). We construct the various test structures to model Ileakage and Ileakage_fringe which represent the leakage currents at the center and edge of the transistor, respectively. The layout near the active edge is modified using the look-up table generated by the calibrated analytic model. On average, the proposed edge effects correction method reduces the leakage current by 18% with the negligible decrease of the drive current at sub-40nm DRAM device.

Owing to their ultra-wideband characteristics, tapered slot antennas (TSAs) are used as element antennas in wideband phased arrays. However, when the size of a TSA is reduced in order to prevent the generation of a grating lobe during wide-angle beam scanning, the original ultra-wideband characteristics are degraded because of increased reflections from the ends of the tapered slot aperture. To overcome this difficulty, we propose a new antenna structure in which parallel-plate waveguides are added to the TSA. The advantage of this new structure is that the reflection characteristics of individual antenna elements are not degraded even if the width of the antenna aperture is very small, i.e., approximately one-half the wavelength of the highest operating frequency. In this study, we propose a procedure for designing the new antenna through numerical simulations by using the FDTD method. In addition, we verify the performance of the antenna array by experiments.

Chiba et al. (2006) proposed a framework of program transformation of term rewriting systems by developed templates. Contrast to the previous framework of program transformation by templates based on lambda calculus, this framework provides a method to verify the correctness of transformation automatically. Tupling (Bird, 1980) is a well-known technique to eliminate redundant recursive calls for improving efficiency of programs. In Chiba et al.'s framework, however, one can not use tuple symbols to construct developed templates. Thus their framework is not capable of tupling transformations. In this paper, we propose a more flexible notion of templates so that a wider variety of transformations, including tupling transformations, can be handled.

This paper is in response to the report of Ahn, Mun, Kim, Oh, and Han published in IEICE Trans. INF. & SYST., Vol.E91-D, No.4, 2008, 1215-1217. They tried to extend their previous paper that published on IEICE Trans. INF. & SYST., Vol.E86-D, No.12, 2003, 2790-2793. However, we will point out that their extension is based on the detailed data of knowing the frequency of three types. Their new occurrence information based on intuitionistic fuzzy set for medical diagnosis of headache becomes redundant. We advise researchers to directly use the detailed data to decide the diagnosis of headache.

In this paper, we present an effective overlay real-time video multicast system over the Internet. The proposed system effectively integrates overlay multicast technology and video compression technology. Overlay multicast tree and target bit rate are determined to satisfy the given average delay constraint, and H.263+ rate control is implemented to enhance the human visual perceptual quality over the multicast tree. Finally, experimental results are provided to show the performance of the proposed overlay video multicast system over the Internet.

The purpose of this study is to show a class of near shift-invariant and orientation-selective transform based on even-stacked cosine-modulated filter banks (ECFBs) which originally have been proposed by Lin and Vaidyanathan. It is well-known that ECFBs can be designed by the modulation of just one prototype filter and guarantee the linear phase property. We extend this class to delay-less oversampled ECFB and show two additional attractive features; high directional selectivity and near shift-invariant property. In this paper, these properties are verified by theoretical analysis and demonstrations.

A semi-coherent multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) scheme, which only requires one of its receivers to operate coherently while others can be non-coherent, is proposed. In this scheme, the information symbols at the non-coherent receivers are estimated with the aid of a coherent receiver through a covariance estimator, thus allowing signals to be decoded coherently in the final stage. Results show that the proposed system is able to provide performance on par with that of the more complicated fully coherent MIMO systems.