Parameter-optimized cubic convolution is used to accurately analyze the pitch center, rate and extent of vibrato tones. We interpolate the time-tracing fundamental frequencies of vibrato tones using parametric cubic convolution, and analytically estimate the positions and values of the extrema, which are used to analyze the characteristics of the vibrato. The optimal values of α, the parameter of the interpolation kernel, are also shown as a function of the normalized vibrato rates.

With no doubt the Internet will achieve advantages in exploiting software agents for applications, thanks to their autonomy in carrying out tasks. In such a scenario, appropriated methodologies are needed to manage the interactions among agents. The BRAIN framework proposes an interaction model based on roles, each one composed by a set of capabilities and an expected behavior. The achieved advantages are agent-oriented features, separation of concerns and reuse of solutions and experiences. In this paper we present two interaction infrastructures, Rolesystem and RoleX, which rely on the above mentioned role-based interaction model. These infrastructures allow agents to assume roles and to interact. An application example and the comparison with other approaches show the effectiveness of our approach.

The boundary element method (BEM), a representative method of numerical calculation of electromagnetic wave scattering, has been used for solving boundary integral equations. Using BEM, however, we finally have to solve a linear system of L equations expressed by dense coefficient matrix. The floating-point operation is O(L2) due to a matrix-vector product in iterative process. Greengard-Rokhlin's fast multipole algorithm (GRFMA) can reduce the operation to O(L). In this paper, we describe GRFMA and its floating-point operation theoretically. Moreover, we apply the fast Fourier transform to the calculation processes of GRFMA. In numerical examples, we show the experimental results for the computation time, the amount of used memory and the relative error of matrix-vector product expedited by GRFMA. We also discuss the convergence and the relative error of solution obtained by the BEM with GRFMA.

In this paper, a new grouping method for Group Technology using Self-Organizing Map (SOM) is proposed. The purpose of our study is to divide machines in a factory into any number of cells so that the machines in each cell can process a similar set of parts to increase productivity. A main feature of our method is to specify not only the number of the cells but also the maximum and minimum numbers of machines in a cell. Some experimental results show effectiveness of our proposed algorithm.

Reinforcement Learning (RL) is an efficient learning method for solving problems that learning agents have no knowledge about the environment a priori. Ant Colony System (ACS) provides an indirect communication method among cooperating agents, which is an efficient method for solving combinatorial optimization problems. Based on the cooperating method of the indirect communication in ACS and the update policy of reinforcement values in RL, this paper proposes the Q-ACS multiagent cooperating learning method that can be applied to both Markov Decision Processes (MDPs) and combinatorial optimization problems. The advantage of the Q-ACS method is for the learning agents to share episodes beneficial to the exploitation of the accumulated knowledge and utilize the learned reinforcement values efficiently. Further, taking the visited times into account, this paper proposes the T-ACS multiagent learning method. The merit of the T-ACS method is that the learning agents share better policies beneficial to the exploration during agent's learning processes. Meanwhile, considering the Q-ACS and the T-ACS as homogeneous multiagent learning methods, in the light of indirect media communication among heterogeneous multiagent, this paper presents a heterogeneous multiagent RL method, the D-ACS that composites the learning policy of the Q-ACS and the T-ACS, and takes different updating policies of reinforcement values. The agents in our methods are given a simply cooperating way exchanging information in the form of reinforcement values updated in the common model of all agents. Owning the advantages of exploring the unknown environment actively and exploiting learned knowledge effectively, the proposed methods are able to solve both problems with MDPs and combinatorial optimization problems effectively. The results of experiments on hunter game and traveling salesman problem demonstrate that our methods perform competitively with representative methods on each domain respectively.

Genetic algorithm (GA) is a widely used numerical technique to simplify some analytical solutions in electromagnetic theory. Genetic algorithms can be combined with the geometric optics method to tackle electromagnetic scattering problems. This paper presents an extrapolation procedure, which derived, as a first step, a functional representation of the radar cross section (RCS) of three different dielectric objects that was computed via the Mie solution or the method of moments (MOM). An algorithm was employed to fit the scattering characteristics of dielectric objects at high frequencies.

The performance enhancement technology for indoor-to-outdoor wireless communication systems is discussed in this study. In outdoor communication systems, transmitted signals may be severely degraded mainly by multipath fading effect of the channel and this problem can be overcome using conventional multiple antenna technology and array signal processing algorithms. But, since channel characteristics depend on both multipath fading and angle spread in indoor-to-outdoor communication systems, conventional algorithms which do not consider the effect caused by angle spread cannot give good results. In this letter, characteristics of indoor-to-outdoor channels are analyzed and a channel model suitable for this situation is proposed. And a new array antenna processing algorithm exploiting the concept of the mean steering vector is presented and the system performance is analyzed. It can be shown that the proposed algorithm outperforms conventional methods through computer simulations for the case in which signals sent from indoor transmitters arrive at outdoor receivers.

A novel hybrid numerical method, which is based on the extended spectral domain approach combined with the mode-matching method, is applied to evaluate the scattering parameter of waveguide discontinuities. The formulation procedure utilizes the biorthogonal relation in the transformation, and the Green's functions in the spectral domain are obtained easily even in the inhomogeneous lossy regions. The present method does not include the approximate perturbational scheme, and it can evaluate accurately and stably the scattering parameters of either for the thin or thick obstacles made of the wide variety of materials, the lossless dielectrics to highly conductive media, in short computation time. The physical phenomena of transmission through the lossy obstacles are investigated by numerical computations. The results are compared with FEM where FEM computations are feasible, although the FEM computations cannot cover the whole performances of the present method. The good agreement is observed in the corresponding range. The matrix size in this method is smaller than that of other methods. Therefore, the present method is numerically efficient and it would be able to apply for the integrated evaluation of a successive discontinuity. The resonant characteristics of rectangular waveguide cavity are analyzed accurately taking the conductor losses into consideration.

We have developed a 17-inch WXGA full-color polymer OLED display by using newly developed ink-jet printing method. On the ink-jet technology, both droplet volume and landing position were precisely controlled pixel by pixel in order to get luminance uniformity. A pixel circuit having Vth variation-cancellation was adopted and the circuit was modified to realize high uniformity and high gray scale reproduction under the short horizontal period operation. Correction on gamma profile difference among RGB OLEDs was achieved by optimizing on configuration between integrated source driver circuit and outer reference voltage circuit in spite of using a common source driver IC having only one gamma profile. Peak control system, that is important for the large size and high luminance display, was utilized and improved image quality on human feeling and actual power consumption. With these efforts a uniform picture with 260,000 colors and wide viewing angle was achieved. It was proved that the ink-jet method was the optimal manufacturing technology for large-size and high-resolution OLED displays. And we found there is no singular problem on the large size OLED display utilized the ink-jet technology.

In this paper, a novel technique using proportional current feedback is proposed to improve dynamic response of digital PWM DC-DC converters. Generally, digital controllers are implemented using microprocessors or DSPs. Additional A/D converters are required to sense feedback signals. Proposed simple structure makes it feasible to integrate both A/D converter and digital controller on a single chip. System complexity and hardware cost are therefore greatly reduced. A behavioral time domain circuit model is proposed and analyzed using MATLAB. Both simulation and experimental results showed satisfactory performance to meet power requirements of microprocessors.

In this paper a second order Volterra series model of an operational amplifier (opamp) circuit is presented. Such a model is suitable to the investigation of the rectification and demodulation effects of radio frequency (RF) interference superimposed on the nominal input signals and on the power supply voltage of an opamp. On the basis of the new model, some design criteria to improve the immunity of opamps to RF interference are proposed. Model predictions are verified by comparison with experimental test results.

This paper presents a low-power implementation scheme of interpolation FIR filters using distributed arithmetic (DA). The key idea of the proposed scheme involves look-up tables generating only nonnegative values. Thus, the proposed scheme can minimize the dynamic power consumption of interpolation FIR filters using DA without additional hardware. When used for implementing a pulse shaping filter for CDMA2000 mobile stations, the proposed filter not only has almost the same hardware complexity as the conventional one; it also has approximately 43% reduced power consumption.

A two stage non-scan design for testability method is proposed. The first stage selects test points based on an earlier testability measure conflict. A new design for testability algorithm is proposed to select test points by a fault-oriented testability measure conflict+ in the second stage. Test points are selected in the second stage based on the hard faults after the initial ATPG run of the design for testability circuit in the preliminary stage. The new testability measure conflict+ based on conflict analysis of hard-faults in the process of test generation is introduced, which emulates most general features of sequential ATPG. The new testability measure reduces testability of a fault to the minimum D or controllability of the primary outputs, and therefore, does not need observability measure any more. Effective approximate schemes are adopted to get reasonable estimation of the testability measure. A couple of effective techniques are also adopted to accelerate the process of the proposed design for testability algorithm. Experimental results show that the proposed method gets even better results than two of the recent non-scan design for testability methods nscan and lcdft.

Hash-based IP traceback is a technique to generate audit trails for traffic within a network. Using the audit trails, it reconstructs not only the true attack paths of a Distributed Denial of Service attack (DDoS attack), but also the true path of a single packet attack. However, hash-based IP traceback cannot identify attacker nodes themselves because it has no audit trail on the subnet's layer-2 network under the detected leaf router, which is the nearest node to an attacker node on a layer-3 network. We propose a layer-2 extension to hash-based IP traceback, which stores two identifiers with packets' audit trails while reducing the memory requirement for storing identifiers. One of these identifiers shows the leaf router's interface through which an attacking packet came, and the other represents the ingress port on a layer-2 switch through which the attacking packet came. We implement a prototype on FreeBSD and evaluate it in a preliminary experiment.

Various network resources, including wireless access services and multimedia appliances (device) are expected to be available in ubiquitous computing environments. Since resource availability can change when a user migrates from one place to another, functions to monitor the availability of resources in use and, if necessary, switch from obsolete resources to new ones are necessary for continuous service provision. This paper proposes adaptive terminal middleware called AMID that performs policy-based dynamic resource selection and host-based session management to ease network administrative tasks, and hide session failures and resource changes from applications and a user. AMID supports two kinds of mobility; session maintenance on vertical handoff and device handoff (service mobility). By AMID, a mobile host keeps entire handoff control and session state to eliminate the need for network-layer or intermediate-node mobility support, and mitigate responsibility of devices for session management. AMID realizes a Reliable Virtual Socket (RVS), on top of real sockets, which employs a seamless session handoff mechanism for resource changes, and a reliable session resume mechanism against unplanned disconnection of a wireless link. It achieves seamless session handoff through a proactive soft handoff method; to conceal setup and signaling latency, it initiates setup procedures with neighbor resources in advance of actual handoff and utilizes multiple wireless interfaces and devices redundantly. We implemented AMID and a follow-me audio application on top of it to evaluate the performance. Redirection of audio streams from built-in speakers to external ones, and handoff between 802.11b and Cellular are autonomously performed when a user migrates in the house. We confirmed that AMID achieved reliable session maintenance against wireless link failure, concealed latency of handoff management, and prevented packet loss during handoff.

Constraints have been used extensively for the construction of graphical user interfaces. User interface constraints that are declarative are more favorable but require sophisticated constraint planning algorithms. Constraint planning algorithms proposed previously are getting more and more complicated as they were asked to handle more general requirements. We believe that the difficulty is mainly caused by the complicated data structure that is translated directly from the problem. By a transformation, we propose a simplified graph model for the problem and prove that the constraint planning problem can be reduced to finding feedback vertex sets on the simplified graph model. We also consider the general problem of handling non-uniform user interface constraints.

We investigated the intercalation of water into BaMgAl10O17:Eu2+ (BAM), a blue phosphor that is used in plasma display panels. The adsorption and desorption characteristics of water with BAM have hysteresis; showing that water is intercalated into BAM. Using thermal analysis techniques, we suggested that water hydrated to barium ions caused oxidation. We found that the water intercalated into BAM played an important role in the oxidation of Eu2+ between 450 and 600, and contributed to a 10% degradation of luminance. In contrast, oxidation due to oxygen is a principal factor in degradation above 600 through baking process in air.

The detection performance of coherent OFDM receivers significantly depends on the accuracy of channel estimation. The accuracy of channel estimation can be improved by properly post-processing the channel estimate using a so-called channel estimation filter (CEF). Minimum mean-squared error (MMSE) filter is known optimum as the CEF, but it may not be practical due to its implementation complexity. We consider the use of a reduced-complexity CEF whose tap coefficient is real-valued and symmetrically weighted (RSW). The optimum RSW CEF is analytically designed using the SNR and multi-path intensity profile of the channel. For further improvement, we also propose a method to adapt the coefficient of the RSW CEF to the channel condition. Numerical results show that the proposed RSW CEF can provide channel estimation performance comparable to that of linear MMSE filter, while significantly reducing the computational complexity. In addition, the proposed RSW CEF can provide performance robust to unknown timing offset with a fractional dB loss compared to the optimum one.

One-dimentional equivalent circuit model of a heterostructure InAlAs/InGaAs/InP metal-semiconductor-metal photodetector is discussed. In this photodetector, InGaAs is used as an optical absorption layer and the InAlAs is used for Schottky barrier enhanement. The measured S11 parameter deviates from equi-resistance lines on the Smith chart, indicating the equivalent circuit is different from the conventional equivalent circuit using a series resistance, a depletion region capacitance and a depletion region resistance. The difference is due to band discontinuity at the heterojunctions, and we propose a equivalent circuit taking account of the band discontinuity. The band discontinuity is expressed by parallel combination of a resistance and a capacitance. The measured S11 parameter can be fitted well with the calculated S11 parameter from the proposed equivalent circuit, and we can successfully extract the device parameters from the fitted curve.

For the reception of MC-CDMA signals in a frequency-selective fading channel, frequency-domain equalization is necessary before despreading. In this paper, joint antenna diversity combining and one-tap frequency-domain equalization is considered (simply referred to as the joint antenna diversity & equalization, in this paper). A receiver structure for joint antenna diversity & equalization is presented and the unified weights based on minimum mean square error (MMSE) criterion are found in the presence of multi-users with different spreading factors and transmit powers. For comparison, antenna diversity combining after despreading using MMSE combining (MMSEC) is also considered. The achievable bit error rate (BER) performances with joint antenna diversity & equalization and with antenna diversity after MMSEC despreading in a frequency-selective Rayleigh fading channel are evaluated by computer simulations and compared.