Handprinted Chinese character recognition (HCCR) can be classified into two major approaches: statistical and structural. While neither of these two approaches can lead to a total and practical solution for HCCR, integrating them to take advantages of both seems to be a promising and obviously feasible approach. But, how to integrate them would be a big issue. In this paper, we propose an integrated HCCR system. The system starts from a statistical phase. This phase uses line-density-distribution-based features extracted after nonlinear normalization to guarantee that different writing variations of the same character have similar feature vectors. It removes accurately and efficiently the impossible candidates and results in a final candidate set. Then follows the structural phase, which inherits the line segments used in the statistical phase and extracts a set of stroke substructures as features. These features are used to discriminate the similar characters in the final candidate set and hence improve the recognition rate. Tested by using a large set of characters in a handprinted Chinese character database, the proposed HCCR system is robust and can achieve 96 percent accuracy for characters in the first 100 variations of the database.

Two types of hetero-epitaxial PbZr0. 48Ti0. 52O3 (PZT) capacitors were fabricated by pulsed laser deposition (PLD). One has an Au/PZT/SrRuO3(SRO)/SrTiO3(STO) structure with remanent polarization (Pr) of 32. 1 µC/cm2. The other has an Au/PZT/La-doped STO (La: STO) structure with Pr of 9. 6 to 13. 5 µC/cm2. X-ray diffraction patterns show that only the (00l) planes of the PZT and SRO are parallel to the substrate surface for the PZT/SRO/STO structure, however, a (111) plane of the PZT is observed, in addition to the (00l) planes, for the PZT/La: STO structure. High resolution-transmission electron microscope (HR-TEM) images show that the PZT/SRO interface is clean and coherent. However, spherical shape contrast with radius about 5 nm is observed at the PZT/La: STO interface. Diffusion of La and/or the contaminated surface of the La: STO substrate is thought to cause the differences in the PZT orientations and the interfaces, affecting the electrical characteristics of the capacitors.

Pb(ZrxTi1-x)O3 (PZT) thin films were prepared on various electrodes. When Ir system materials were used as electrodes, fatigue properties of PZT thin films were improved. Moreover, in the case of the PZT thin film on an Ir/IrO2 electrode, not only fatigue but imprint properties were clearly improved. We could find these improvements were caused by good barrier effect of IrO2 from secondary ion mass spectroscopy (SIMS) analysis. By applying these Ir system electrodes, we fabricated stacked capacitors on polycrystalline silicon (poly-Si) plugs. In spite of high temperature thermal processing, we found poly-Si plugs were ohmically connected with the bottom electrodes of the capacitors from hysteresis measurements and I-V characteristics, and could greatly expect them for practical use.

To investigate the possibility of their application to both high density dynamic and nonvolatile ferroelectric random access memories, heteroepitaxial BaxSr1-xTiO3 (BSTO) thin films with various Ba content from x=0 to 1. 0 were prepared on conductive SrRuO3 electrode films, and the crystallographic, dielectric and ferroelectric properties were investigated. The compositional phase boundary between paraelectric and ferroelectric phase at room temperature was located at about x = 0. 12 in the heteroepitaxial films, indicating a quite different composition to that of the bulk (x = 0. 70). At this composition of x = 0. 12, the dielectric constant attained the maximum value of 740 for the BSTO film with a thickness of 77 nm. The composition with a lager Ba content (x 0. 32) showed ferroelectricity at room temperature. The maximum value of remanent polarization of 2Pr = 0. 38 C/m2 was obtained at the composition of x = 0. 70 in this study.

Despite the fact that the necessity of FDT (formal description techniques) had been emphasized, many approaches to verifying feature interactions were insufficient. This paper proposes formal definitions for feature interactions which can occur when telecommunication services specified independently are operated in parallel. Seven types of feature interactions are defined formally.

In this article, we propose a square wave generator whose switching threshold values are switched by external inputs. This circuit is designed to simulate the synchronized luminescence of coupled fireflies. We investigate the behavior of the solutions in two coupled oscillators. The dynamics are demonstrated by a linear autonomous equation piecewisely, therefore, a one-dimensional return map is derived. We also prove the existence of stable in-phase synchronization in the coupled oscillator by using the return map, and we show the existence of regions of periodic solutions within a parameter space. Some theoretical results are confirmed by laboratory measurements.

By treating each different output pattern as a state, we propose a low power architecture for pipelined circuits using bipartition. It is possible that the output of a pipelined circuit transit mainly among some of different states. If some few states dominate most of the time, we could partition the combinational portion of a pipelined circuit into two blocks: one that contains the few states with high activity is small and the other that contains the remainder with low activity is big. The original pipelined circuit is bipartitioned into two individual pipelined circuits. An additional combination logic block is introduced to control which of the two partitioned blocks to work. Power reduction is based on the observation that most time the small block is at work and the big one is at idle. In order to minimize the power consumption of this architecture, we present an algorithm that can improve the efficiency of this additional control block. Experiments with MCNC benchmarks show high percentage of power saving by using our new architecture for low power pipelined circuit design.

Unfolding originally introduced by McMillan is gaining ground as a partial-order based method for the verification of concurrent systems without state space explosion. However, it can be exposed to redundancy which may increase its size exponentially. So far, there have been trials to reduce such redundancy resulting from conflicts by improving McMillan's cut-off criterion. In this paper, we show that concurrency is also another cause of redundancy in unfolding, and present an algorithm to reduce such redundancy in live, bounded and reversible Petri nets which is independent of any cut-off algorithm.

In a distributed concurrent system such as a computer communication network, the system components communicate with each other via communication links in order to accomplish a desired distributed application. If the links are dynamically established among the components, the system configuration as well as its behavior becomes complex. In this paper, we give formal specification of such a dynamically reconfigurable system in which the components are modeled by communicating finite state machines executed concurrently with the communication links which are dynamically established and disconnected. We also present an algorithm to validate the safety and link-related properties in the specified behavior. Finally, we design and implement a simulator and a validator that enables execution and validation of the given specification, respectively.

This paper proposes a new method to improve cooperation in concurrent systems within the framework of Multi-Agent Systems (MAS). Since subsystems work concurrently, achieving appropriate cooperation among them is important to improve the effectiveness of the overall system. When subsystems are modeled as agents, it is easy to explicitly deal with the interactions among them since they can be modeled naturally as communication among agents with intended information. Contrary to previous approaches which provided the syntax of communication protocols without semantics, we focus on the semantics of cooperation in MAS and aim at allowing agents to exploit the communicated information for cooperation. This is attempted by utilizing more coarse-grained communication based on the different perspective for the balance between formality and richness of communication contents so that each piece of communication contents can convey more meaningful information in application domains. In our approach agents cooperate each other by giving feedbacks based on the metaphor of explanation which is widely used in human interactions, in contrast to previous approaches which use direct orders given by the leader based on the pre-defined cooperation strategies. Agents show the difference between the proposal and counter-proposals for it, which are constructed with respect to the former and given as the feedbacks in the easily understandable terms for the receiver. From the comparison of proposals agents retrieve the information on which parts are agreed and disagreed by the relevant agents, and reflect the analysis in their following behavior. Furthermore, communication contents are annotated by agents to indicate the degree of importance in decision making for them, which contributes to making explanations or feedbacks more understandable. Our cooperation method was examined through experiments on the design of micro satellites and the result showed that it was effective to some extent to facilitate cooperation among agents.

In this paper, we consider a simple development process consisting of design and debug phases, which is derived from actual concurrent development process for embedded software at a certain company. Then we propose two-phase project control that examines the initial development plan at the end of design phase, updates it to the current status of the development process and executes the debug phase under the new plan. In order to show the usefulness, we define three imaginary projects based on actually executed projects in a certain company: the project that executes debug phase under initial plan, the project that applies the proposed approach, and the project that follows a uniform plan. Moreover, to execute these projects, we use the project simulator, which has already been developed based on GSPN model. Judging from the number of residual faults in all products, we found that project B is the best among them.

Verification of responsive communication protocols is to determine whether they can recover to a normal state within a predetermined time, even when they enter an abnormal state due to any fault. In this paper, we propose a new verification method for responsive communication protocols using virtual system states, each of which represents several system states. Next, in order to evaluate the effectiveness of the new method, we develop a verification tool based on the proposed method. Then we apply the tool to a broadcasting protocol and measure several metrics on the tool. The experimental results show that (1) the number of system states, (2) the amount of memory used by the tool, and (3) the execution time of the tool, can be drastically reduced.

This paper presents a routing methodology and a routing algorithm used in designing Gb/s LSIs with deep-submicron technology. A routing method for controlling wire width and spacing is adopted for net groups classified according to wire length and maximum-allowable-delay constraints. A high-performance router using this method has been developed and can handle variable wire widths, variable spacing, wire shape control, and low-delay routing. For multi-terminal net routing, a modification of variable-cost maze routing (GVMR) is effective for reducing wire capacitance (net length) and decreasing net delay. The methodology described here has been used to design an ATM-switch LSI using 0. 25-µm CMOS/SIMOX technology. The LSI has a throughput of 40 Gb/s (2. 5 Gbps/pin) and an internal clock frequency of 312 MHz.

A new numerical approach for the analysis of electromagnetic scattering from a body moving in an arbitrary direction is described. A time dependent grid generation is applied to solve these problems. We are treating this method for a quasi-stationary field. Some numerical results are compared with the exact ones and excellent agreement between them is obtained.

A new type of fiber Fabry-Perot interferometer buried in a fiber connector housing was proposed. The transmission spectra revealed double peaks due to birefringence in the fiber and the peak separation showed a temperature dependence as large as -7. 7 MHz/deg, which was 2 orders of magnitude larger than that estimated from the thermal characteristics of its component materials.

We have developed a half-duplex spread spectrum-direct sequence (SS-DS) 2. 4 GHz band transceiver (T/R) unit having a smaller size and lower power consumption. A highly efficient elastic SAW convolver with chirp interdigital transducers (IDTs) has been used in the correlation circuit of receiver unit. The code shift keying (CSK) modulation is used in the T/R unit. The size of T/R unit is 90 50 11 mm and the weight is 75 grams. The power consumption of T/R unit is 1. 4 watts. We found that the bit error rate (BER) was less than 10-6 over the range of 0-150 m outdoors and 0-80 m indoors without a digital error detection and correction method. In this case, the data rate was 102 kbps and the transmit RF power was 2. 5 mW/MHz. The electrical characteristics, anti-interference and anti-multipath fading were also evaluated.

This paper proposes a new methodology for diagnosing transistor leakage faults with information on IDDQ and logic values at primary output lines. A hierarchical approach is proposed to identify the faults that do not exist in the circuit through comparing their IDDQ and logic behaviors predicted by simulation with observed responses. Several techniques for handling intermediate faulty voltages in fault simulation are also proposed. Further, an approach is proposed to generate diagnostic vectors based on IDDQ information. In addition, a method for identifying IDDQ equivalent faults is proposed to reduce the time needed for diagnostic vector generation and to improve diagnostic resolution. Experimental results show that the proposed methodology often confines diagnosed faults to only a few gates.

Silva et al. has suggested a criterion based on incidence matrix to verify if a given extended free choice net has a live and bounded marking. This paper shows that this criterion is a necessary and sufficient condition that a given net is a state machine allocatable (SMA) net. This result gives a polynomial algorithm to verify SMA net.

In this work, a new algorithm for tracking the directions-of-arrival (DOA's) of moving targets by introducing a linear approximation is proposed. The targets are assumed to move with constant angular velocities within a short time and emitting continuously narrow-band signals that impinge on an array of sensors. Therefore the trajectories of targets can be approximated by linear functions of time, which consist of the DOA's and the angular velocities, within the short time. In the condition that the number of targets is known and the outputs vector of the sensors including the additive white complex Gaussian noises is observed continuously, a cost function which consists of the squared residual error vectors is defined. The estimation of the DOA's and the angular velocities of targets is performed by minimizing this cost function. By estimating both the DOA's and the angular velocities at the same time, the proposed algorithm is able to improve the tracking performance for rapidly moving targets. In computer simulations, the performance of the proposed algorithm is compared with the ESPRIT method, which is one of the typical subspace methods with super resolution.

The metal/ferroelectric material/metal/oxide insulating material/Si substrates (MFMIS) structure was realized by using Pb(Zr0. 4Ti0. 6)O3 (PZT) thin film. PZT(330 nm thick) thin film was sandwiched between the upper electrode of Ti/Pt-Rh (about 380 nm thick and 123 microns in diameter) and the lower electrode of Pt-Rh/Ti (about 380 nm thick and 378 microns in diameter). The MFM structures mentioned above were prepared on metal oxide semiconductor (MOS structures). Pt-Rh and Ti lower electrodes were directly deposited on a poly-Si MOS electrode with sputtering, and PZT layer was prepared using the sol-gel method. In order to maximize induced charge density in the MOS gate, diameters of the upper and the lower electrodes were adjusted, and the MFM area-to-MOS area ratio was optimized. By using the area ratio of 0. 11 a memory window of 2. 4 V was obtained.