New designs of MAXFLAT discrete and differentiating Hilbert transformers are presented using their interrelationships with digital differentiators. The new designs have the explicit formulas for their tap-coefficients, which are further modified to obtain a new class of narrow transition band filters, with a performance comparable to the Chebyshev filters.

Multicast ATM switch is in great demand for the future communication network. We have proposed the Batcher banyan network with cell copy preparation stages as a transit switch. It performs cell replication with small hardware increase. On the trunkline, multicast traffic is quite little, thus hardware for cell copy can be sustained small. In those previous works, the effect of the external blocking was omitted. In this paper, we propose a multicast switching network which adopts the incomplete copy network that we have proposed, and examine several strategies to prevent the external blocking for this switching network. Namely, the input buffer method with an arbitration network is applied. For multicast usage, we propose two modifications. One is to arbitrate after cell replication for the sake of simple control and small hardware. The other is to annex a cell distribution network for smoothing biased cell arrival. Biased cell arrival occurs because the output of the incomplete copy network is not uniform. Simulation results show the effectiveness of the proposed method.

This paper presents a system-level bus architecture validation technique and shows its application to a consumer product design. This technique enables the entire system to be validated with bus cycle accuracy using bus architecture level models derived from their corresponding behavioral level models. Experimental results from a digital still camera (DSC) system design show that our approach offers much faster simulation speed than register transfer level (RTL) simulators. Using this fast and accurate validation technique, bus architecture designs, validations and optimizations can be effectively carried out at system-level and total turn around time of system designs can be reduced dramatically.

Borehole radar is known as a powerful technique for monitoring of subsurface structures such as water flow. However, conventional borehole radar systems are operated in the frequency range lower than 100 MHz and the resolution is poor to measure a surface roughness and an inner structure of subsurface fractures directly. In order to monitor the water flow, these characteristics of subsurface fractures are important. We developed a polarimetric borehole radar system using dipole antennas and axial slot antennas and have found that this system can provide more information than conventional borehole radar. However, the relationship between the characteristic of subsurface fracture and the measured polarimetric radar information has not been clear. In this paper, we simulate electromagnetic wave scattering from subsurface fractures having a rough surface by Finite-Difference Time-Domain (FDTD) technique and discuss the relationship between a surface roughness of subsurface fracture and the polarimetric information. It is found that the subsurface fracture having strong cross-polarized components can be estimated to be rough surface fracture. The full polarimetric single-hole radar measurement was carried out at the Mirror Lake site, NH, USA. In this experiment, we found that subsurface fractures can be classified into some groups by an energy scattering matrix, and found that the subsurface fracture estimated to have a rough surface corresponds to that has higher water permeability.

In Synthetic Aperture Radar Interferometry (InSAR), phase unwrapping holds the key to accurate inversion of digital elevation data. Two new techniques are introduced in this paper that can perform automatic phase unwrapping. The first one is an "optimal" branch-cut algorithm and the second one a hybrid branch-cut/least-square technique, in which pole locations form the weighting basis for the weighted least-square approach. Application of both techniques to ERS-1 data indicates that the height inversion errors are comparable and offer over fifty percent reduction in root mean square (rms) height error compared to the straight least squares method and over thirty-five percent reduction in rms height error compared to the weighted least squares method based on coherence data weighting schemes. The hybrid technique is especially appealing due to its computational efficiency and robustness when compared to traditional branch-cut algorithms.

The maximum likelihood estimate of a mixture model is usually found by using the EM algorithm. However, the EM algorithm suffers from a local optima problem and therefore we cannot obtain the potential performance of mixture models in practice. In the case of mixture models, local maxima often have too many components of a mixture model in one part of the space and too few in another, widely separated part of the space. To escape from such configurations we proposed a new variant of the EM algorithm in which simultaneous split and merge operations are repeatedly performed by using a new criterion for efficiently selecting the split and merge candidates. We apply the proposed algorithm to the training of Gaussian mixtures and the dimensionality reduction based on a mixture of factor analyzers using synthetic and real data and show that the proposed algorithm can markedly improve the ML estimates.

In this letter we propose a filter for extracting a quasi-periodic signal from a noisy observation using wavelets. It is assumed that the instantaneous frequency of the signal is known. A particularly difficult task when the frequency and amplitude of the desired signal are varying with time is shown. The proposed algorithm is compared with three other methods.

In the beginning of the new century, many information appliance (IA) products will replace traditional electronic appliances to help people in smart, efficient, and low-cost ways. These successful products must be capable of communicating multimedia information, which is embedded into the electronic appliances with high integration, innovation, and power-throughput tradeoff. In this paper, we develop a codesign procedure to analyze, compare, and emulate the multimedia communication applications to find the candidate implementations under different criteria. The experimental results demonstrate that in general, memory technology dominates the optimal tradeoff and ALU improvements impact greatly on particular applications. The results also show that the proposed procedure is effective and quite efficient.

A novel SC (Switched-Capacitor) offset- and gain-compensated sample/hold circuit is presented. It is implemented by a new topology which reduces the effects due to the imperfections of op-amp. Simulation results indicate that the circuit achieves high accuracy without requiring high-quality components.

In this paper, we consider the coherent radar detection of rapid fluctuating signals in the Gaussian noise. This problem has been previously solved by employing the GLR technique, but we use the ALR to improve the detection performance. So, after deriving an approximate ALR detector, we compare the new detector with the GLR and Square-law detectors and we show its superiority.

We propose a new CALL (Computer-Assisted Language Learning) system for non-native learners of Japanese using speech recognition methods. The aim of the system is to help them develop natural pronunciation by automatically detecting their pronunciation errors and then providing effective feedback instruction. An automatic scoring method based on HMM log-likelihood is used to assess their pronunciation. Native speakers' scores are normalized by the mean and standard deviation for each phoneme and are used as threshold values to detect pronunciation errors. Unlike previous CALL systems, we not only detect pronunciation errors but also generate appropriate feedback to improve them. Especially for the feedback of consonants, we propose a novel method based on the classification of the place and manner of articulation. The effectiveness of our system is demonstrated with preliminary trials by several non-native speakers.

This paper describes a new individual identification system employing a novel application of the PC/SS scheme. Since the proposed system requires no magnetic information, it is robust to various changes in environment. Moreover, it is applicable to contemporary identification systems as an officer identifies one's face with the card's portrait at immigration. In addition, cooperation with existing identification systems using magnetic information and this proposed system provides more secure identification. The proposed system embeds a cardholder-related information that forms a watermark generated by the modulating manner of the PC/SS scheme into cardholder's portrait printed on the card using a simple watermarking scheme also proposed in this paper. Experimental results show that the proposed system extracts embedded information correctly as its fundamental ability. Furthermore, various properties of this system have been investigated, and it has been found that the spatial resolution of scanners is the most dominant to the performance of the proposed system.

This paper presents the bit error rate (BER) upper bounds for trellis coded asymmetric 8PSK (TC-A8PSK) system using the Ka-band satellite in the rain fading environment. The probability density function (PDF) for the rain fading random variable can be theoretically derived by assuming that the rain attenuation can be approximated to a log-normal distribution and the rain fading parameters are calculated by using the rain precipitation data from the Crane global model. Furthermore, we analyze the BER upper bounds of TC-A8PSK system according to the number of states in the trellis diagram and the availability of channel state information (CSI). In the past, Divsalar and Simon has analyzed the BER upper bounds of 2-state TCM system in Rician fading channels; however, this paper is the first to analyze the BER upper bounds of TCM system in the rain fading channels. Finally, we summarize the dominant six factors which are closely related to the BER upper bounds of TC-A8PSK satellite system in the rain fading channel as follows: (1) frequency band, (2) rain intensity, (3) elevation angle, (4) bit energy to noise ratio, (5) asymmetric angle, and (6) availability of CSI.

This letter proposes a modified synchronous acquisition method using code-orthogonalizing filters (COFs) in an asynchronous direct sequence (DS) / CDMA. Improvements on the average acquisition time for several conditions are shown.

Noncoherent detectors for use in acquiring data-modulated direct-sequence spread-spectrum (DS/SS) signals are considered in this paper. Taking data modulation and timing uncertainty into account and using the generalized maximum likelihood (GML) or maximum likelihood (ML) detection approaches, we derive optimal detectors in the sense of Bayes or Neyman-Pearson and propose various suboptimal detectors. A simple systematic means for their realization is suggested and the numerical performance of these detectors is presented. We also compare their performance with that of the noncoherent combining (NC1) detector that had been proposed to serve the same need. Numerical results show that even the proposed suboptimal detectors can outperform the NC1 detector in most cases of interest.

This paper presents the fast cell search time performance based on laboratory and field experiments of a 2-step cell search algorithm that uses scrambling code masking for inter-cell asynchronous wideband DS-CDMA (W-CDMA) mobile radio. The scrambling code is masked at different time positions during each scrambling period on the forward-link common control channel (CCH) to detect the scrambling code timing at the mobile receiver. Experiments were conducted using the CCH-to-dedicated traffic channel (DTCH) power ratio, R of 3 dB, 10 DTCHs, and 16 scrambling codes in a single-cell and two-cell models. The field experimental results show that the cell search time of about 600 msec was achieved in vehicular environments at the detection probability of 90% and the average received Eb/N0 (N0 is the background noise without interference) of 13-15 dB for DTCH, even in the worst case scenario when the received signal power ratios of the CCH from two cell sites were 0 dB. The cell search time that was achieved with the 3-step cell search algorithm previously proposed by the authors is estimated from the experimental results; the cell search can be accomplished within about 720 msec at a probability of 96% for 512 scrambling codes and 16 scrambling code groups.

We propose a unique word detection scheme having the correction of the phase ambiguity that remains in the output of a carrier recovery circuit for QPSK systems. The performance of the proposed scheme is analyzed by obtaining the probability generating function (PGF) for the output of the detector. The PGF is obtained from the z-transform of the probability density function (PDF) for each matched symbol with the reference symbol and by using the characteristics at this time that the random variables for matched symbols are independent and identically distributed. Then the total PGF for a unique word is obtained from powering the PGF for the individual symbol. From the total PGF, the length of a UW and the threshold value for detection can be obtained with a detection probability defined in a required system specification.

In this letter, the constant amplitude transmission for orthogonal multicode systems is discussed. In order to obtain the high power efficiency, we require the high power amplifier which has non-linear characteristic. The nonlinear distortion, however, may occur because of the multicode signals having large amplitude fluctuations. If we can achieve the constant amplitude transmission, the nonlinear distortion can be neglected. In this letter, I investigate the property of the information bit streams that can achieve the constant amplitude transmission and show that the bent sequences can achieve the constant amplitude transmission.

We propose a new interference cancellation technique using reference signals for optical synchronous code-division multiple-access (CDMA) systems. In the proposed system, we use the signature code sequences composed of the group information codes and the modified prime code sequences. The group information codes are added in the forefront of the signature code sequences to estimate the amount of the multiple access interference (MAI). The proposed cancellation scheme can be realized with the simpler structure than the conventional canceller using the time division reference signal, because it can reduce the number of optical correlators from P to two where P is the prime number. We analyze the performance of the proposed system with considering the effects of the MAI, avalanche photodiode (APD) noise, and thermal noise. We show that the proposed canceller has better bit error probability than the conventional canceller.

This article addresses two issues. Firstly, the convergence property of conjugate gradient (CG) algorithm is investigated by a Chebyshev polynomial approximation. The analysis result shows that its convergence behaviour is affected by an acceleration term over the steepest descent (SD) algorithm. Secondly, a new CG algorithm is proposed in order to boost the tracking capability for time-varying parameters. The proposed algorithm based on re-initialising forgetting factor shows a fast tracking ability and a noise-immunity property when it encounters an unexpected parameter change. A fast tracking capability is verified through a computer simulation in a system identification problem.