In this paper, a multi-coded variable spreading gain (MC-VSG) CDMA system employing a binary transmission of MC signals by introducing a level clipper, termed MC-VSG BNet system, is proposed for a possible candidate of wireless personal area network (WPAN) and 3 G cellular applications. With an emphasis on the MC-VSG BNet physical layer and the system performance, we address the concise specification of the MC-VSG BNet system including the spreading code, level clipping, modulation, coding, and frame format. Especially, we focus on the level clipping of multi-level MC signals for both power- and cost-efficient implementation and the VSG code design fir high-rate transmissions. From the receiver performance based on simulation results, in addition to simple receiver structure, an acceptable performance degradation of the MC-VSG BNet system over the existing DS/CDMA system is observed, while guaranteeing an high bit rate transmission.

Face detection from cluttered images is very challenging due to the wide variety of faces and the complexity of image backgrounds. In this paper, we propose a neural network based approach for locating frontal views of human faces in cluttered images. We use a radial basis function network (RBFN) for separation of face and non-face patterns, and the complexity of RBFN is reduced by principal component analysis (PCA). The influence of the number of hidden units and the configuration of basis functions on the detection performance was investigated. To further improve the performance, we integrate the distance from feature subspace into the RBFN. The proposed method has achieved high detection rate and low false positive rate on testing a large number of images.

This paper presents a multiple-valued logic-in-memory circuit with real-time programmability. The basic component, in which a dynamic storage function and a multiple-valued threshold function are merged, is implemented compactly by using charge storage and capacitive coupling with a DRAM-cell-based circuit structure under a 0.8-µm CMOS technology. The pass-transistor network using these basic components makes it possible to realize any multiple-valued-inputs binary-outputs logic circuits compactly. As a typical example, a fully parallel multiple-valued magnitude comparator is also implemented by using the proposed DRAM-cell-based pass-transistor network. Its execution time and power dissipation are reduced to about 11 percent and 29 percent, respectively, in comparison with those of a corresponding binary implementation. A prototype chip is also fabricated to confirm the basic operation of the proposed DRAM-cell-based logic-in-memory circuit.

The transient phenomenon of electromagnetic waves caused by a time dependent resistive screen in a waveguide is treated by using Wiener-Hopf technique. A boundary-value problem is formulated to describe the phenomenon, in which the resistivity of screen varies from infinite to zero in dependence on time. Application of the Fourier transformation with respect to time derives a Wiener-Hopf equation, which is solved by a commonly known decomposition procedure. The transient field is derived from the solution of the equation in terms of the Fourier inverse transform. By using the incomplete Lipschitz-Hankel integral for the computation of the field, numerical examples are given and the transient phenomenon is discussed.

This paper proposes a test generation method using a compacted test table and a test generation method using a compacted test plan table for RTL data path circuits with DFT where hierarchical test generations are applicable. Moreover, a heuristic algorithm for a compacted test plan table generation is proposed. The proposed methods could shorten test lengths for some RTL data path circuits compared with the conventional hierarchical test generation method.

Test compression/decompression is an efficient method for reducing the test application cost. In this paper we propose a test generation method for obtaining test-patterns suitable to test compression by statistical coding. In general, an ATPG generates a test-pattern that includes don't-care values. In our method, such don't-care values are specified based on an estimation of the final probability of 0/1 occurrence in the resultant test set. Experimental results show that our method can generate test patterns that are able to be highly compressed by statistical coding, in small computational time.

Recent physiological studies on synaptic plasticity have shown that synaptic weights change depending on fine timing of presynaptic and postsynaptic spikes. Here, we show that a phenomenon similar to stochastic resonance with respect to background noise is observed on spike-timing dependent synaptic plasticity (STDP) that can contribute to stable propagation of precisely timed spikes in a multi-layered feedforward neural network.

This paper presents a test vector modification method for reducing average power dissipation during test application for a full-scan circuit. The method first identifies a set of don't care (X) inputs of given test vectors, to which either logic value 0 or 1 can be assigned without losing fault coverage. Then, the method reassigns logic values to the X inputs so as to decrease switching activity of the circuit during scan shifting. Experimental results for benchmark circuits show the proposed method could decrease switching activity of a given test set to 45% of the original test sets in average.

This paper presents a practical fault model for delay testing, called a multiple-threshold gate-delay fault model, to obtain high quality tests that guarantee the detection of delay faults for various extra-delays. Fault efficiencies for multiple thresholds of the extra-delay are introduced as a coverage metric that describes the quality of tests. Our approach guarantees that each gate-delay fault is tested on the path that is almost the longest one passing through the faulty line by using two-pattern tests with pattern-independent timing. We present the procedures of the path selection, fault simulation, and the test generation, where the path-status graph technique is used as not to rely on the enumeration of paths. Experimental results for benchmark circuits demonstrate that the proposed metric gives useful information that transition fault efficiency cannot, and that the proposed test generation can achieve high fault efficiencies for multiple-threshold gate-delay faults.

The increase of test time of embedded DRAMs (e-DRAM) is one of the key issues of System-on-chip (SOC) device test. This paper proposes to put the repair analysis function on chip as Built In Self Repair (BISR). BISR is performed at 166 MHz as at-speed of e-DRAM with using low cost automatic test equipment (ATE). The area of the BISR is 1.7 mm2. Using error storage table form contributes to realize small area penalty of repair analysis function. e-DRAM function test time by BISR was about 20% less than the conventional method at wafer level testing. Moreover, representative samples are produced to confirm repair analysis ability. The results show that all of the samples are actually repaired by repair information generated by BISR.

Load/unload techniques are widely used in mobile hard disk drives which have to endure external shocks frequently. ABS designs must consider both the load/unload performance and the shock resistance performance. Three ABS designs with different positions of the suction force center are studied in simulation. It is observed that when the position of the suction force center moves frontward, the anti-shock performance improves, but the unload performance degrades, and vice versa. A slider is not necessary to be designed to have its suction force center significantly behind of its geometric center, as the traditional load/unload sliders do. Instead, the suction force center can be designed near the geometric center if the hook limiter is used.

This paper deals with a mathematical formulation of the scattering from a periodic surface with finite extent. In a previous paper the scattered wave was shown to be represented by an extended Floquet form by use of the periodic nature of the surface. This paper gives a new interpretation of the extended Floquet form, which is understood as a sum of diffraction beams with diffraction orders. Then, the power flow of each diffraction beam and the relative power of diffraction are introduced. Next, on the basis of a physical assumption such that the wave scattering takes place only from the corrugated part of the surface, the amplitude functions are represented by the sampling theorem with unknown sample sequence. From the Dirichlet boundary condition, an equation for the sample sequence is derived and solved numerically to calculate the scattering cross section and optical theorem. Discussions are given on a hypothesis such that the relative power of diffracted beam becomes almost independent of the width of surface corrugation.

In this paper, we present a new soft-decision iterative decoding algorithm using an efficient minimum distance search (MDS) algorithm. The proposed MDS algorithm is a top-down and recursive MDS algorithm, which finds a most likely codeword among the codewords at the minimum distance of the code from a given codeword. A search is made in each divided section by a "call by need" from the upper section. As a consequence, the search space and computational complexity are reduced significantly. The simulation results show that the proposed decoding algorithm achieves near error performance to the maximum likelihood decoding for any RM code of length 128 and suboptimal for the (256, 37), (256, 93) and (256, 163) RM codes.

This paper proposes a channel monitor-based unequal error protection scheme using a dynamic OFDM subcarrier assignment technique for broadband video transmission systems in frequency selective fading environments. In the proposed system, to achieve stable regeneration of the received video, subcarriers with relatively high channel gain are assigned to the high priority data (HPD) in the MPEG data. To further guarantee a required transmission quality of the HPD, the proposed system also employs subcarrier transmission power control with delay profile information (DPI) feedback-type channel estimation technique. Computer simulation confirms that the proposed technique is effective in preventing quality degradation with about 20 dB lower transmission power than the conventional systems in frequency selective fading environments.

An information retrieval model that intends to conceptually deal with the documents in the Internet is proposed. The first half of this model is a stage to select the documents, which may meet the user's long-term interests, by employing a filtering or retrieval system. The latter half is a stage for linear document arrangement and for adjacent cluster based browsing. For the document collection filtered out, similarity matrices are computed and then the documents are arranged such that the highly similar ones are adjacently placed. By this treatment the documents are considered to form the clusters, some of which are adjacently placed when they include similar documents. A user can satisfy her/his needs by first browsing in the clusters containing documents highly similar to a query, and next by extending the browsing process into the clusters adjacent to the ones just examined. In the adjacent clusters the documents having no keywords common to but conceptually related to the query can be found. Computational and statistical evaluations were done on two standard test collections. A virtual space navigator is also designed by using JAVA to assist a user in the browsing task.

In this paper, the analysis, design and experimental results of active array applicator are presented. The injection-locking technique is used to alter the magnitude of the microwave sources so that the steering of near fields can be achieved. This technique can be applied for microwave hyperthermia cancer treatment to provide the large uniform temperature distribution. The complexity of the system can be reduced by using this technique. The study shows that the temperature distribution can be controlled by varying the modulation index, modulating frequency and initial phase of modulating signal. The temperature distribution is also affected by applicator configuration, spacing between applicators, and heating time. The Spectral Domain approach is used to analyze the near field and then the near field data are used to find the temperature distribution by using the Finite Difference method. The study is carried out at frequency of 2,450 MHz. This design is useful for implementation of the low cost steerable applicator.

The pre-Rake system is known as a technique in TDD DS/CDMA system to reduce the mobile complexity and achieve the same BER performance like Rake receiver. The pre-Rake system itself is not optimum, since the channel impulse responses of uplink and downlink are slightly different in TDD system, so the signal- to-noise ratio (SNR) can be maximized with a matched filter based Rake receiver, which has not been considered in the conventional pre-Rake system. Furthermore pre-Rake system is sensitive to the Doppler frequency. Even though the pre-Rake system has the ability to suppress other user interference, it is not efficient to maximize the received signal in high Doppler frequency. However, Rake combiner is utilized for the detection method in our proposed system. So the maximized signal can keep the orthogonality better than the pre-Rake system and our proposed system can compensate the Doppler frequency effect. From these reasons, our system achieves better BER performance than that of the pre-Rake system with increasing the number of users in high Doppler frequency.

Wang et al., in 2000, proposed a generalized group-oriented threshold signature scheme and a generalized authenticated encryption scheme with shared verification. Tseng et al., in 2001, showed that both schemes are insecure, because any attacker is able to reveal the group secret keys from two previously valid threshold signatures. They further presented two improvements on Wang et al.'s schemes to against the attacks. Unfortunately, this paper will show that the improved schemes are still breakable.

This letter proposes a method which can embed index data such as memos into JPEG images. The method embeds digital watermarks using the quantitative relation between quantized DCT coefficients in JPEG images. In the method, we can embed extra data to represent index data and can extract the index data without parameters used in embedding process. Furthermore, the method is tolerant of JPEG recompression and prevents the degradation of image quality by rewriting index data.

An n-detection testing for stuck-at faults can be used not only for delay fault testing but also for detection of unmodeled faults. We have developed a hybrid BIST circuit; that is, a method consisting of a shift register with partial rotation and a procedure that selects test vectors from ATPG ones. This testing method can perform at-speed testing with high stuck-at fault coverage. During the at-speed testing, a subset of the ATPG vectors is input by using a low-speed tester. Computer simulations on ISCAS'85, ISCAS'89, and ITC'99 circuits are conducted for n = 1, 2, 3, 5, 10, and 15. The simulation results show that the amount of test vectors can be reduced to ranging from 52.3% to 0.9% in comparison with that of the ATPG vectors. As a result, the proposed method can reduce the cost of at-speed testing.