This paper describes a SIFT (Scale Invariant Feature Transform) descriptor generation engine which features a VLSI oriented SIFT algorithm, three-stage pipelined architecture and novel systolic array architectures for Gaussian filtering and key-point extraction. The ROI-based scheme has been employed for the VLSI oriented algorithm. The novel systolic array architecture drastically reduces the number of operation cycle and memory access. The cycle counts of Gaussian filtering module is reduced by 82%, compared with the SIMD architecture. The number of memory accesses of the Gaussian filtering module and the key-point extraction module are reduced by 99.8% and 66% respectively, compared with the results obtained assuming the SIMD architecture. The proposed schemes provide processing capability for HDTV resolution video (1920 1080 pixels) at 30 frames per second (fps). The test chip has been fabricated in 65 nm CMOS technology and occupies 4.2 4.2 mm2 containing 1.1 M gates and 1.38 Mbit on-chip memory. The measured data demonstrates 38.2 mW power consumption at 78 MHz and 1.2 V.

This paper presents a low complexity partially folded architecture of transposed FIR filter and cubic B-spline interpolator for ATSC terrestrial broadcasting systems. By using the multiplexer, the proposed FIR filter and interpolator can provide high clock frequency and low hardware complexity. A binary representation method was used for designing the high order FIR filter. Also, in order to compensate the truncation error of FIR filter outputs, a fixed-point range detection method was used. The proposed partially folded architecture was designed and implemented with 90-nm CMOS technology that had a supply voltage of 1.1 V. The implementation results show that the proposed architectures have 12% and 16% less hardware complexity than the other kinds of architecture. Also, both the filter and the interpolator operate at a clock frequency of 200 MHz and 385 MHz, respectively.

In reconstruction-based super resolution, a high-resolution image is estimated using multiple low-resolution images with sub-pixel misalignments. Therefore, when only one low-resolution image is available, it is generally difficult to obtain a favorable image. This letter proposes a method for overcoming this difficulty for single- image super resolution. In our method, after interpolating pixel values at sub-pixel locations on a patch-by-patch basis by support vector regression, in which learning samples are collected within the given image based on local similarities, we solve the regularized reconstruction problem with a sufficient number of constraints. Evaluation experiments were performed for artificial and natural images, and the obtained high-resolution images indicate the high-frequency components favorably along with improved PSNRs.

The Millimeter-wave Mobile Camera (MiMoCam) developed by NHK STRL uses millimeter-wave band (42 GHz/55 GHz) to transmit Hi-Vision TV picture with high quality and low latency. Multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) technology which uses a number of antennas at both the transmitter and receiver can be adapted to use to transmit higher quality Hi-Vision TV picture. The camera was intended to be used in a studio environment where there is a high degree of multi-path, however there are also many requests for the MiMoCam to be used outdoor. This will present a different channel statistics where the camera will be operating in a near line-of-sight (LOS) environment without much reflected waves. We have conducted an outdoor transmission test and measured the outdoors transmission performance of the proposed MIMO system to clarify the possibility of using the MiMoCam in outdoor environment. This paper introduces the features of the MiMoCam system and the MIMO transmission technique used in the MiMoCam and presents the findings of this outdoor test. It was also confirmed that channel correlation of the MIMO propagation channels were suppressed by using orthogonally polarized waves and bit error rate (BER) characteristics with respect to the average receiving carrier-to-noise ratio (CNR) was improved. Finally, we could find the feasibility of the MiMoCam outdoor operation from these results.

In recent years, the usage of IPTV (Internet Protocol Television) has been increased. The reason is a technological convergence of broadcasting and telecommunication delivering interactive applications and multimedia content through high speed Internet connections. The main critical point of IPTV security requirements is subscriber authentication. That is, IPTV service should have the capability to identify the subscribers to prohibit illegal access. Currently, IPTV service does not provide a sound authentication mechanism to verify the identity of its wireless users (or devices). This paper focuses on a lightweight authentication and key establishment protocol based on the use of hash functions. The proposed approach provides effective authentication for a mobile user with a RFID tag whose authentication information is communicated back and forth with the IPTV authentication server via IPTV set-top box (STB). That is, the proposed protocol generates user's authentication information that is a bundle of two public keys derived from hashing user's private keys and RFID tag's session identifier, and adds 1 bit to this bundled information for subscriber's information confidentiality before passing it to the authentication server.

This paper proposes an efficient adaptive depth-map coding scheme for generating virtual-view images in 3D-video. Virtual-view images can be generated by view-interpolation based on the decoded depth-map of the image. The proposed depth-map coding scheme is designed to have a new gray-coding-based bit-plane coding method for efficiently coding the depth-map images on the object-boundary areas, as well as the conventional DCT-based coding scheme (H.264/AVC) for efficiently coding the inside area images of the objects or the background depth-map images. Simulation results show that the proposed coding scheme, in comparison with the H.264/AVC coding scheme, improves the BD-rate savings 6.77%-10.28% and the BD-PSNR gains 0.42 dB-0.68 dB. It also improves the subjective picture quality of synthesized virtual-view images using decoded depth-maps.

In this letter, we propose distorted scenes enhancement algorithm in order to provide end user perceptual QoE-guaranteed IPTV service. The block edge detection with weight factor and partition-based local color values method can be applied for the degraded video frames which are affected by network transmission errors such as out of order, jitter, and packet loss to improve QoE efficiently. Based on the result of quality metric after using the distorted scenes enhancement algorithm, the distorted scenes have been restored better than others.

We propose a parametric packet-layer model for monitoring audio quality in multimedia streaming services such as Internet protocol television (IPTV). This model estimates audio quality of experience (QoE) on the basis of quality degradation due to coding and packet loss of an audio sequence. The input parameters of this model are audio bit rate, sampling rate, frame length, packet-loss frequency, and average burst length. Audio bit rate, packet-loss frequency, and average burst length are calculated from header information in received IP packets. For sampling rate, frame length, and audio codec type, the values or the names used in monitored services are input into this model directly. We performed a subjective listening test to examine the relationships between these input parameters and perceived audio quality. The codec used in this test was the Advanced Audio Codec-Low Complexity (AAC-LC), which is one of the international standards for audio coding. On the basis of the test results, we developed an audio quality evaluation model. The verification results indicate that audio quality estimated by the proposed model has a high correlation with perceived audio quality.

In this paper, we discuss QoE (Quality of Experience) requirements for MVV (Multi-View Video) and audio transmission over IP networks and study the effect of the playout buffering time, contents and viewpoint change interfaces on the QoE and user's behavior. Unlike previous works, which mainly discuss MVV transmission from aspects of video codecs, we study MVV and audio transmission under various IP traffic and delay conditions by experiment. We compare two schemes: a scheme that the user watches from a single viewpoint and the one that he/she can choose one viewpoint from many ones. As a result, we show that the users prefer the scheme where they can choose one viewpoint from many ones. We have found that when using proper buffering time, the users feel faster viewpoint changes; it improves their satisfaction compared to that when they watch on a single viewpoint. We have also noticed that the user pays more attention to the degradation of the video when watching on a single viewpoint. We have observed that the users tend to change the viewpoint more frequently in light traffic and low delay.

In this letter, a highly linear 1.22 GHz current mirror based differential RF programmable gain amplifier (RFPGA) for digital TV tuner applications is proposed and implemented using 0.18-µm CMOS process. The fabricated RFPGA shows a maximum power gain of 9 dB, an OIP3 of 23.5 dBm, and an accurate dB-linear discrete gain step control while consuming 36 mA from a 1.8-V supply voltage.

We propose a new Internet group management protocol (IGMP) which can be used in passive optical network (PON) especially for IPTV services which dramatically reduces the channel change response time caused by traditional IGMP. In this paper, the newly proposed IGMP is introduced in detail and performance analysis is also included. Simulation results demonstrated the performance of the newly proposed IGMP, whereby, viewers can watch the shared IPTV channels without the channel change response time when channel request reaches a threshold.

A high performance highly integrated sub-GHz wideband differential low-noise amplifier (LNA) for terrestrial and cable digital TV tuner applications is realized in 0.18 µm CMOS technology. A noise-canceling topology using a feed-forward current reuse common-source stage is presented to obtain low noise characteristics and high gain while achieving good wideband input matching within 48-860 MHz. In addition, linearization methods are appropriately utilized to improve the linearity. The implemented LNA achieves a power gain of 20.9 dB, a minimum noise figure of 2.8 dB, and an OIP3 of 24.2 dBm. The chip consumes 32 mA of current at 1.8 V power supply and the core die size is 0.21 mm2.

The security level of an internet protocol television (IPTV) digital right management (DRM) system ultimately relies on protection of secret keys. Well known devices for the key protection include smartcards and battery backup SRAMs (BB-SRAMs); however, these devices could be vulnerable to various physical attacks. In this paper, we propose a secure and cost-effective design of a cryptographic system on chip (SoC) that integrates the BB-SRAM with a cell-based design technique. The proposed SoC provides robust safeguard against the physical attacks, and satisfies high-speed and low-price requirements of IPTV set-top boxes. Our implementation results show that the maximum encryption rate of the SoC is 633 Mb/s. In order to verify the data retention capabilities, we made a prototype chip using 0.18 µm standard cell technology. The experimental results show that the integrated BB-SRAM can reliably retain data with a 1.4 µA leakage current.

Developing a non-intrusive packet-layer model is required to passively monitor the quality of experience (QoE) during service. We propose a packet-layer model that can be used to estimate the video quality of IPTV using quality parameters derived from transmitted packet headers. The computational load of the model is lighter than that of the model that takes video signals and/or video-related bitstream information such as motion vectors as input. This model is applicable even if the transmitted bitstream information is encrypted because it uses transmitted packet headers rather than bitstream information. For developing the model, we conducted three extensive subjective quality assessments for different encoders and decoders (codecs), and video content. Then, we modeled the subjective video quality assessment characteristics based on objective features affected by coding and packet loss. Finally, we verified the model's validity by applying our model to unknown data sets different from training data sets used above.

This paper presents a reconfigurable SAD Tree (RSADT) architecture based on adaptive sub-sampling algorithm for HDTV application. Firstly, to obtain the the feature of HDTV picture, pixel difference analysis is applied on each macroblock (MB). Three hardware friendly sub-sampling patterns are selected adaptively to release complexity of homogeneous MB and keep video quality for texture MB. Secondly, since two pipeline stages are inserted, the whole clock speed of RSADT structure is enhanced. Thirdly, to solve data reuse and hardware utilization problem of adaptive algorithm, the RSADT structure adopts pixel data organization in both memory and architecture level, which leads to full data reuse and hardware utilization. Additionally, a cross reuse structure is proposed to efficiently generate 16 pixel scaled configurable SAD (sum of absolute difference). Experimental results show that, our RSADT architecture can averagely save 61.71% processing cycles for integer motion estimation engine and accomplish twice or four times processing capability for homogeneous MBs. The maximum clock frequency of our design is 208 MHz under TSMC 0.18 µm technology in worst work conditions(1.62 V, 125C). Furthermore, the proposed algorithm and reconfigurable structure are favorable to power aware real-time encoding system.

Though millimeter wave applications have attracted much attention in recent years, they have not yet been put to practical use. The major reason for the failure may be a large transmission loss peculiar to the short wavelength. In order to overcome the inconvenience, it may be promising to introduce the technology of millimeter-wave NRD-guide circuits. In this technology, not only NRD-guide but also Gunn diodes and Schottky diodes play the important role in high bit-rate millimeter-wave applications. A variety of practical millimeter wave wireless systems have been proposed and fabricated. Performances and applications of them are discussed in detail as well.

A transmission line created by cables adjoined by connectors is influenced by noise from connectors with contact failure, and such noise degrades communication quality. The authors used a model of a connector with increased contact resistance in a coaxial cable and measured the electromagnetic near-field around a cable while changing positions of the model. In this paper, the result shows that the radiated electromagnetic field has no relationship with the position along the cable of a connector with increased contact resistance, when the contact condition of connector, contact resistance value, measurement position, and length of a transmission line are constant.

This paper proposes an adaptive transmission control method for massive and intensive telecommunication traffic generated by communication-broadcasting integrated services. The proposed method adaptively controls data transmissions from viewers depending on the congestion states, so that severe congestion can be effectively avoided. Furthermore, it utilizes the broadcasting channel which is not only scalable, but also reliable for controlling the responses from vast numbers of viewers. The performance of the proposed method is evaluated through experiments on a test bed where approximately one million viewers are emulated. The obtained results quantitatively demonstrate the performance of the proposed method and its effectiveness under massive and intensive traffic conditions.

Liquid crystal (LC) lenses that have hole-patterned electrodes and are driven by two voltages used as imaging devices are reported. Two different LC lenses are applied in image formation systems. One LC lens is used with a polarizer in a relay lens scope, and another LC lens that is polarization independent is used in a TV lens. Both LC lenses play roles of focusing elements in lens systems; objects are separately brought into focus by the LC lenses. Very sharp black-and-white and color images are formed by the systems.

We propose an IP broadcasting system architecture using passive optical networks (PON) utilizing the optical broadcast links of a PON with a downstream bandwidth allocation algorithm to provide a multi-channel IP broadcasting service to home subscribers on single broadband IP network infrastructures. We introduce the design and adaptation of the optical broadcast links to effectively broadcast video contents to home subscribers. We present a performance analysis that includes the downstream bandwidth utilization efficiency of the broadcast link and the bandwidth control of the IP broadcasting and Internet data. Our analysis and simulation results show that the proposed system can provide 100 HDTV channels to every user over fiber lines. We also propose an IPTV channel selection mechanism in an ONT by selecting a broadcast stream. We developed and evaluated a prototype that can achieve a 15-msec IPTV channel selection speed.