A second-order CMOS continuous-time bandpass filter with a tuneable 4-12 MHz center frequency (fc) is presented. The Design has been done by using a new second-order block which is based on Gm-C method. This Gm-C filter achieves a dynamic range of 30 dB for 1% IM3, and Q equal to 58 at 12 MHz, while dissipating only 10.5 mW from 3.3 V power supply in 0.35 µm CMOS process. The on-chip indirect automatic tuning circuit uses a phase-locked loop which sets filter center frequency to an external reference clock.

Developing embedded parallel image processing applications is usually a very hardware-dependent process, often using the single instruction multiple data (SIMD) paradigm, and requiring deep knowledge of the processors used. Furthermore, the application is tailored to a specific hardware platform, and if the chosen hardware does not meet the requirements, it must be rewritten for a new platform. We have proposed the use of design space exploration [9] to find the most suitable hardware platform for a certain application. This requires a hardware-independent program, and we use algorithmic skeletons [5] to achieve this, while exploiting the data parallelism inherent to low-level image processing. However, since different operations run best on different kinds of processors, we need to exploit task parallelism as well. This paper describes how we exploit task parallelism using an asynchronous remote procedure call (RPC) system, optimized for low-memory and sparsely connected systems such as smart cameras. It uses a futures [16]-like model to present a normal imperative C-interface to the user in which the skeleton calls are implicitly parallelized and pipelined. Simulation provides the task dependency graph and performance numbers for the mapping, which can be done at run time to facilitate data dependent branching. The result is an easy to program, platform independent framework which shields the user from the parallel implementation and mapping of his application, while efficiently utilizing on-chip memory and interconnect bandwidth.

We extend a graph spectral method for extracting clusters from graphs representing pairwise similarity between data to hypergraph data with hyperedges denoting higher order similarity between data. Our method is robust to noisy outlier data and the number of clusters can be easily determined. The unsupervised method extracts clusters sequentially in the order of the majority of clusters. We derive from the unsupervised algorithm a semi-supervised one which can extract any cluster irrespective of its majority. The performance of those methods is exemplified with synthetic toy data and real image data.

Movement of the thighs is an important factor for studying gait cycle. In this paper, a hybrid hidden Markov model (HMM)/Kalman filter (KF) scheme is proposed to track the hip angle during gait cycles. Within such a framework, HMM and KF work in parallel to estimate the hip angle and detect major gait events. This approach has been applied to study gait features of different subjects and compared with video based approach. Experimental results indicate that 1.) the swing angle of the hip can be detected with simple hardware configuration using biaxial accelerometers and 2.) the hip angle can be tracked for different subjects within the error range of -5°+5°.

This paper deals with a secret key agreement problem from correlated random numbers. It is proved that there is a pair of linear matrices that yields a secret key agreement in the situation wherein a sender, a legitimate receiver, and an eavesdropper have access to correlated random numbers. A relation between the coding problem of correlated sources and a secret key agreement problem from correlated random numbers are also discussed.

In 2005, Yong and Lee proposed a buyer-seller fingerprinting protocol using symmetric and commutative encryptions. They claimed that their protocol was practical and anonymous since they used symmetric and commutative encryptions. However, an attacker can get the content embedded with one or more honest buyers' fingerprints using man-in-the-middle attack. In this letter, we point out the weakness and propose methods for improving to their protocol.

This paper proposes a gonio-spectral imaging system for measuring light reflection on an object surface by using two robot arms, a multi-band lighting system, and a monochrome digital camera. It allows four degrees of freedom in incident and viewing angles necessary for full parametrization of a reflection model function. Spectral images captured for various incident and viewing angles are warped as if they were all captured from the same viewing direction. The intensity of reflected light is thus recorded in a normalized image form for any incident and viewing directions. The normalized images are used to estimate reflection model parameters at each surface point. To ensure point-wise reflection modeling, a calibration method is also proposed based on a geometrical model of the robot arms and camera. The proposed system can deal with objects with surface texture. Experiments are done on system calibration, reflection model, and spectral estimation. The results using colored objects show the feasibility of the proposed imaging system.

One of the challenging issues in affective computing is to give a machine the ability to recognize the affective states with intensity of a person. Few studies are directed toward this goal by categorizing affective behavior of the person into a set of discrete categories. But still two problems exist: gesture is not yet a concern as a channel of affective communication in interactive technology, and existing systems only model discrete categories but not affective dimensions, e.g., intensity. Modeling the intensity of emotion has been well addressed in synthetic autonomous agent and virtual environment literature, but there is an evident lack of attention in other important research areas such as affective computing, machine vision, and robotic. In this work, we propose an affective gesture recognition system that can recognize the emotion of a child and the intensity of the emotion states in a scenario of game playing. We used levels of cognitive and non-cognitive appraisal factors to estimate intensity of emotion. System has an intelligent agent (called Mix) that takes these factors into consideration and adapt the game state to create a more positive interactive environment for the child.

A self-starting pulse laser with an erbium-doped fiber cooled at liquid-nitrogen temperature was demonstrated. The self-starting-pulse fiber-ring laser can produce an approximately 1 ns pulse train without the need for devices for polarization control and compensation of birefringence.

In this paper, we propose a new method that can remove view-disturbing noises from stereo images. One of the thorny problems in outdoor surveillance by a camera is that adherent noises such as waterdrops on the protecting glass surface lens disturb the view from the camera. Therefore, we propose a method for removing adherent noises from stereo images taken with a stereo camera system. Our method is based on the stereo measurement and utilizes disparities between stereo image pair. Positions of noises in images can be detected by comparing disparities measured from stereo images with the distance between the stereo camera system and the glass surface. True disparities of image regions hidden by noises can be estimated from the property that disparities are generally similar with those around noises. Finally, we can remove noises from images by replacing the above regions with textures of corresponding image regions obtained by the disparity referring. Experimental results show the effectiveness of the proposed method.

With advent of the ubiquitous network era and due to recent progress of III-V nanotechnology, the present III-V heterostructure microelectronics will turn into what one might call III-V heterostructure nanoelectronics, and may open up a new future in much wider application areas than today, combining information technology, nanotechnology and biotechnology. Instead of the traditional top-down approach, new III-V heterostructure nanoelectronics will be formed on nanostructure networks formed by combination of top-down and bottom-up approaches. In addition to communication devices, emerging devices include high speed digital LSIs, various sensors, various smart-chips, quantum LSIs and quantum computation devices covering varieties of application areas. Ultra-low power quantum LSIs may become brains of smart chips and other nano-space systems. Achievements of new functions and higher performances and their on chip integration are key issues. Key processing issue remains to be understanding and control of nanostructure surfaces and interfaces in atomic scale.

We study the coupled spatio-temporal variations of the electron density and the electric field (electron plasma oscillations) in high-electron mobility transistors using the developed device model. The excitation of electron plasma oscillations in the terahertz range of frequencies might lead to the emission of terahertz radiation. In the framework of the model developed, we calculate the resonant plasma frequencies and find the conditions for the plasma oscillations self-excitation (plasma instability) We show that the transit-time effect in the high-electric field region near the drain edge of the channel of high-electron mobility transistors can cause the self-excitation of the plasma oscillations. It is shown that the self-excitation of plasma oscillations is possible when the ratio of the electron velocity in the high field region, ud, and the gate length, Lg, i.e., the inverse transit time are sufficiently large in comparison with the electron collision frequency in the gated channel, ν. The transit-time mechanism of plasma instability under consideration can superimpose on the Dyakonov-Shur mechanism predicted previously strongly affecting the conditions of the instability and, hence, terahertz emission. The instability mechanism under consideration might shed light on the origin of terahertz emission from high electron mobility transistors observed in recent experiments.

Plasma oscillations in nanometer field effect transistors are used for detection and generation of electromagnetic radiation of THz frequency. Following first observations of resonant detection in 150 nm gate length GaAs HEMT, we describe recent observations of room temperature detection in nanometer Si MOSFETs, resonant detection in GaN/AlGaN HEMTs and improvement of room temperature detection in GaAs HEMTs due to the drain current. Experiments on spectrally resolved THz emission are described that involve room and liquid helium temperature emission from nanometer GaInAs and GaN HEMTs.

Switching characteristics such as wavelength dependency and phase dependency are investigated for our proposed switch which consists of waveguide-type Raman amplifiers and 3-dB couplers. As a result, the available range of wavelength and phase shift due to nonlinear effect are estimated about 20 nm around 1.55 µm and about 10 degrees, respectively.

This paper presents a method for tuning the structure of a causal network (CN) to evaluate a learner's profile for a learning assistance system that employs hierarchically structured learning material. The method uses as an initial CN structure causally related inter-node paths that explicitly define the learning material structure. Then, based on this initial structure other inter-node paths (sideway paths) not present in the initial CN structure are inferred by referring to the learner's database generated through the use of a learning assistance system. An evaluation using simulation indicates that the method has an inference probability of about 63% and an inference accuracy of about 30%.

This investigation of the temperature and illumination effects on the AlGaN/GaN HFET threshold voltage shows that it shifts about -1 V under incandescent lamp or blue LED illumination, while almost no shift takes place under red LED illumination. The temperature coefficient for the threshold voltage shift is +3.44 mV/deg under the illuminations and +0.28 mV/deg in darkness. The threshold voltage variation can be attributed to a virtual back-gate effect caused by light-generated buffer layer potential variations. The expressions for the potential variation are derived using Shockley-Read-Hall (SRH) statistics and the Maxwell-Boltzmann distribution for the carriers and deep traps in the buffer layer. The expressions indicate that large photoresponses will occur when the electron concentration in the buffer layer is extremely small, that is, highly resistive. In semi-insulating substrates, the substrate potential varies so as to keep the trap occupation function constant. The sign and the magnitude of the threshold voltage variation are explained by the shift of the pinning energy calculated from the Fermi-Dirac distribution function.

This paper studies bit-interleaved coded modulation with iterative decoding (BICM-ID) systems that employ multi-dimensional mappings of M-ary constellations to improve the error performance over Rayleigh fading channels. Based on the analytical evaluations of the asymptotic bit error probability (BEP), the distance criteria for the mapping designs can be obtained. A binary switching algorithm (BSA) is then applied to find the optimal mappings with respect to the asymptotic performance. Simulation and analytical results show that the use of multi-dimensional mappings of M-ary constellations can significantly improve the error performance.

This paper presents a method of simple adaptive control (SAC) using neural networks for a class of nonlinear systems with bounded-input bounded-output (BIBO) and bounded nonlinearity. The control input is given by the sum of the output of the simple adaptive controller and the output of the neural network. The neural network is used to compensate for the nonlinearity of the plant dynamics that is not taken into consideration in the usual SAC. The role of the neural network is to construct a linearized model by minimizing the output error caused by nonlinearities in the control systems. Furthermore, convergence and stability analysis of the proposed method is performed. Finally, the effectiveness of the proposed method is confirmed through computer simulation.

In this paper we propose a chip-level receiver for optical frequency hopping code-division multiple-access (FH-OCDMA) systems. The proposed chip-level receiver for FH-OCDMA consists of an arrayed waveguide grating (AWG), and photo-detector (PD) for each mark chip, and uses the principles of the chip-level receiver. We analyze the error rate performance of the FH-OCDMA system with the proposed chip-level receiver with treating APD noise, thermal noise, and multi-user interference (MUI) using a Gaussian approximation. We compare the performance of the proposed chip-level receiver to that of the conventional correlation receiver. We show that the proposed chip-level receiver has a better bit error probability and can accommodate more users than the conventional correlation receiver.

In order to improve the forward link capacity of cdma2000 HRPD (High Rate Packet Data) or CDMA2000 1xEV-DO, it is significant to overcome multi-path interference. This paper focuses on FDE (Frequency Domain Equalization) with MMSE (Minimum Mean Square Error) criterion. On top of that, backward compatibility with HRPD should be maintained, in other words common channels such as the pilot channel should not be changed. Thus, the PN (Pseudo Noise) spread pilot block without CP (Cyclic Prefix) signals has to be dealt with for FDE. However, this will cause the conventional channel estimation accuracy to deteriorate. In order to improve the estimation accuracy of the conventional method, this paper presents a MRC (Maximal Ratio Combining) spectrum estimator, IPI (Inter-Path Interference) canceller, and path searcher. The results obtained from computer simulations reveal that the proposed method can improve the PER (Packet Error Rate) performance significantly. If compared with Rake combiner and TDE (Time Domain Equalization) with NLMS (Normalized Least Mean Square) scheme, the maximum data rates at a fixed PER of 1% can be increased by 5 to 8 times and 1.25 to 2.67 times, respectively.