A tunneling magnetoresistive(TMR)-based logic-in- memory circuit, where storage functions are distributed over a logic-circuit plane, is proposed for a low-power VLSI system. Since the TMR device is regarded as a variable resistor with a non-volatile storage capability, any logic functions with external inputs and stored inputs can be performed by using the TMR-based resistor/transistor network. The combination of dynamic current-mode circuitry and a TMR-based logic network makes it possible to perform any switching operations without steady current, which results in power saving. A design example of an SAD unit for MPEG encoding is discussed, and its advantages are demonstrated.

We propose a modified Hidden Markov Model (HMM) with a view to improve gesture recognition using a moving camera. The conventional HMM is formulated so as to deal with only one feature candidate per frame. However, for a mobile robot, the background and the lighting conditions are always changing, and the feature extraction problem becomes difficult. It is almost impossible to extract a reliable feature vector under such conditions. In this paper, we define a new gesture recognition framework in which multiple candidates of feature vectors are generated with confidence measures and the HMM is extended to deal with these multiple feature vectors. Experimental results comparing the proposed system with feature vectors based on DCT and the method of selecting only one candidate feature point verifies the effectiveness of the proposed technique.

This study presents a method of realizing second order band-pass filters with planar inductive π-network. The proposed filter is more flexible in practical implementation than those using magnetic or electric coupling methods. Electromagnetic simulation results show that the bandwidth of the filter is quite insensitive to the variation in substrate thicknesses and physical layout. A 5.2 GHz filter prototype is designed and fabricated. The measured insertion loss is less than 2.3 dB in the designed pass band and the attenuations at the stop bands are all greater than 30 dB.

A new microstrip compatible phase shifter circuit is introduced. The phase shifter uses a strip-type electromagnetic bandgap (EBG) substrate in place of the solid metal ground plane. Such EBG substrates, when made of ferroelectric materials, can produce variable phase constants useful for phase shifter applications. Test models using two different EBG substrates with dielectric constants of 9.2 and 10.2 showed 44.5 degrees of phase difference with 1.7 dB of added insertion loss at 10 GHz from a line originally 504 degrees long.

This paper presents an overview of four on-going European research projects in the field of mobile and wireless communications leading to the next generations of wireless communications. The projects started in 2004. They investigate requirements and definition of access technology, network architecture, antennas and propagation, security, services, applications and socio-economic impact.

This paper introduces the design procedure of the contrived network TV broadcasting transcoder/encoder system, especially develops a new variable bit-rate (VBR) coding bit allocation strategy with a constraint channel bandwidth and consistent picture quality for multiple parallel video sequences broadcasting, which accommodates the complicated video sources with different frame rates and GOP structures, and combines the buffer control and the optimized macroblock (MB) coding mode selection. The proposed strategy absorbs several reasonable metrics in a hierarchical structure, and provides flexibility and promotion for resource allocation in multi-access scenario. Experimental results demonstrate the effect of the proposed scheme.

A method for detecting shallowly buried landmines using sequential ground penetrating radar (GPR) data is presented. After removing a dominant coherent component arising from the ground surface reflection from the GPR data, three kinds of target features related to wave correlation, energy ratio, and signal arrival time are extracted. Since the detection problem treated here is reduced to a binary hypothesis test, an approach based on a likelihood ratio test is employed as a detection algorithm. In order to check the detection performance, a Monte Carlo simulation is carried out for data generated by a two-dimensional finite-difference time domain (FDTD) method. Results given in the form of receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves show that good detection performance is obtained even for landmines buried at shallow depths under rough ground surfaces, where the responses from the landmines and that from the ground surface overlap in time.

This paper presents an analysis of the Slotted DS-CDMA system with modified node components in order to construct a load control structure in which the service rates of each node can be dynamically adapted without using feedback information. In contrast to the traditional Slotted DS-CDMA which is widely represented with single queue, prior emphasis of the approach is laid on the usage of an additional queue which is applied to manage the collided packet traffic while its queue size is also used as a load control parameter. Semi-Markov process is applied to describe the statistic behavior of the system in steady state. Trade-offs between two major performance parameters, i.e., delay and throughput, are presented and compared with those of the traditional system. Results obtained from the simulation and numerical analysis using queuing concept are compared. With these results, an advantage performance for group packets is shown, and we finally extend the concept based on the obtained results to describe a simple algorithm using one way control message as the tool to alleviate the stability problem.

In QoS routing, load balancing routing algorithm for long-lived traffic can be used efficiently to minimize the number of routing update, control traffic overhead and computational overhead which mainly come from network traffic fluctuation. The congestion problem from short-lived traffic is however difficult to handle. A simple and robust algorithm is needed for short-lived traffic to reduce the traffic loss probability. In the paper, we proposed a new hybrid routing schemes for short-lived traffic and long-lived traffic. An alternate routing algorithm is applied for the short-lived traffic when congestion occurs. We restricted the number of additional hops in the path to minimize the negative effect of alternate routing algorithm. The proposed algorithm reduces packet loss probability from 0.6% to 1.7% under various link utilizations. We also compare our proposed algorithms with and without crank-back.

The rain attenuation in the 12-GHz band and one-minute-rain rate were measured in Tokyo over a four-year period (2000-2003). The statistical characteristics of this data are presented. The one-minute-rain rates at 0.01% of time percentage of year in Tokyo and Osaka are compared to other past and recent values. The comparison of measured rain attenuation in the 12-GHz band in Tokyo and Osaka with prediction by ITU-R methods is conducted. The root-mean-square prediction error of rain attenuation for the prediction by ITU-R Rec.P.618 is evaluated. Convective rain cell effects can be seen in the scatter diagram of one-minute-rain rate and rain attenuation. However, it is found that the effect is not properly accounted for by the slant path length adjustment factor of P.618-8. A reliable rain attenuation prediction requires some revisions of the slant path length adjustment factor with taking local weather characteristics into account for the P.618-8.

The measurement results of clear sky attenuation on an earth-satellite path at frequency Ku band in Laos are described. The measurement results show that diurnal clear sky noise vary with respect to humidity characteristics, which is a significant value in the early morning while low at daytime. The mean difference in variation is about 0.7 dB.

The aim of this work is to investigate the possibility of designing zero-knowledge identification schemes based on hard-on-average problems. It includes a new two-party identification protocol whose security relies on a discrete mathematics problem classified as DistNP-Complete under the average-case analysis, the so-called Distributional Matrix Representability Problem. Thanks to the use of the search version of the mentioned problem, the zero-knowledge property is formally proved by black-box simulation, and consequently the security of the proposed scheme is actually guaranteed. Furthermore, with the proposal of a new zero-knowledge proof based on a problem never used before for this purpose, the set of tools for designing cryptographic applications is enlarged.

In this paper, we propose a heuristic multicast routing algorithm, which minimizes the cost while satisfying both the wavelength required and hop length selection. The algorithm consists of two subproblems: the wavelength assignment & the routing path selection. For solving the wavelength assignment subproblem, an auxiliary graph is created where by the nodes and the links in the original network are transformed to the edges and the vertices, respectively, and the same availability wavelength of each edge is taken into a multicast group. Furthermore, for solving the routing path selection subproblem, the shortest-path routing strategy is adopted to choose transmission path between two multicast groups. Simulation results show that our algorithm performs much better than previously proposed algorithms with increasing call-connection probability by 28% and reducing the blocking probability by 52%.

We have developed a visualization system for dialog text exchanged in e-learning virtual classrooms. In this system, text-based online discussions among learners are effectively visualized as discussions held in a virtual classroom in cyberspace. Discussion participants are displayed as avatars. The virtual classroom maintains the interest of learners because it incorporates professional camerawork and switching know-how based on rules derived from an analysis of 42 TV programs. The gestures of the CG avatar depend on the dialog text. A series of virtual classroom experiments confirmed that elementary and junior high school students maintained an interest in using the system.

Broadening the frequency bandwidth of antennas has been one of the major subjects concerning antenna design technologies. Two of the major subjects for microstrip antennas, which appeared in the 1970s, have also been the broadening of the frequency bandwidth and the sharing of multifrequency bands. In this paper, we describe the broadband and multiband techniques of printed antennas, and show the configurations of realized broadband and multiband antennas and their characteristics. Here, resonant-type microstrip antennas, planar monopole antennas, fractal antennas and ultra-wideband printed antennas are introduced. The optimum design techniques using a genetic algorithm are introduced for developing broadband and multiband printed antennas. The usefulness of this method is verified by the simulation and experimental results of the fabricated planar monopole antenna which has ultrawide-band characteristics.

Network survivability is one of the most pivotal issues in optical WDM networks. In particular, if a conduit is cut, approximately 16 terabits per millisecond can be lost in recent technology. A huge loss even by a single conduit failure fatally damages the performance and operation of the whole network. In this paper, we propose a new heuristic algorithm, called the Generalized Minimum-Cost (GMC) selection algorithm, to choose a pair of working and backup path which firstly minimizes total number of required wavelengths of working and backup path and secondly distributes lightpath request traffic into whole network links, if there are several pairs to require the same number of minimum wavelengths, in order to achieve load-balancing effect. GMC selection algorithm contains several formulas to get Working and Backup path Reservation Cost (WBRC) which can be obtained through heuristic GMC function. By using WBRC, our GMC selection algorithm achieves superior performance compared to the current Combined Min-Cost (CMC) selection algorithm and random selection algorithm in terms of the amount of wavelength consumption and blocked lightpath requests, especially on the relatively less-connected New Jersey LATA and 28-node US networks. Furthermore, we suggest a maximum number of non-blocked lightpath requests against single link failure in simulated networks for network operators to consider acceptable maximum traffic on their networks, so that they can provide 100% restoration capability in a single link failure without lightpath request blocking. We also analyze the complexity of the GMC selection algorithm and verify that the complexity of the GMC selection algorithm is lower than that of the CMC selection algorithm if the number of lightpath requests is sufficiently large.

The theory of the method of moments (MoM), which has been widely used as a numerical technique for analyzing the characteristics of antennas and scatterers, is described. First, the steps of MoM to solve integral equations for conducting wires and planes are presented. It is pointed out that MoM combined with Galerkin's method yields highly accurate results. The importance of ensuring the continuity condition of current on conducting bodies is emphasized and numerical examples for a conducting structure involving junctions of wire segments and planar segments are presented. Finally, MoM for dielectric scatterers including recent developments is described.

An efficient computational Zero-Knowledge Proof of Knowledge whose security relies on the NP-completeness of the Independent Set Problem is presented here. The proposed algorithm is constructed from a bit commitment scheme based on the hardness of the Discrete Logarithm Problem, which guarantees the fulfillment of soundness, completeness and computational zero-knowledge properties, and allows avoiding the use of the Graph Isomorphism Problem, which is present in every known Zero-Knowledge Proofs for the Independent Set Problem.

We investigate the error exponent in the lossy source coding with a fidelity criterion. Marton (1974) established a formula of the reliability function for the stationary memoryless source with finite alphabet. In this paper, we consider a stationary memoryless source assuming that the alphabet space is a metric space and not necessarily finite nor discrete. Our aim is to prove that Marton's formula for the reliability function remains true even if the alphabet is general.

Most of commercial websites provide customers with menu-driven navigation and keyword search. However, these inconvenient interfaces increase the number of mouse clicks and decrease customers' interest in surfing the websites. To resolve the problem, we propose an information retrieval assistant using a natural language interface in online sales domains. The information retrieval assistant has a client-server structure; a system connector and a NLP (natural language processing) server. The NLP server performs a linguistic analysis of users' queries with the help of coordinated NLP agents that are based on shallow NLP techniques. After receiving the results of the linguistic analysis from the NLP server, the system connector interacts with outer information provision systems such as conventional information retrieval systems and relational database management systems according to the analysis results. Owing to the client-server structure, we can easily add other information provision systems to the information retrieval assistant with trivial modifications of the NLP server. In addition, the information retrieval assistant guarantees fast responses because it uses shallow NLP techniques. In the preliminary experiment, as compared to the menu-driven system, we found that the information retrieval assistant could reduce the bothersome tasks such as menu selecting and mouse clicking because it provides a convenient natural language interface.