Many diverse methods have been developed in the field of biometric identification as a greater emphasis is placed on human-friendliness in the area of intelligent systems. One emerging method is the use of human footprint. However, in the previous research, there were some limitations resulting from the spatial resolution of sensors. One possible method to overcome this limitation is through the use additional information such as dynamic walking information in dynamic footprint. In this study, we suggest a new person recognition scheme based on overlapped foot shape and COP (Center Of Pressure) trajectory during one-step walking. And, we show the usefulness of the suggested method, obtaining a 98.6% recognition rate in our experiment with eleven people.

The present paper proposes differential transmission line structures on Si ULSI. Interconnect structures are examined using numerical results from a two-dimensional electromagnetic simulation (Ansoft, 2D Extractor). The co-planar and diagonal-pair lines are found to have superior characteristics for gigahertz signal propagation through long interconnects. The proposed diagonal-pair line can reduce the crosstalk noise and interconnect resource concurrently.

Evaluation of cyclic transitions in the discrete-time neural networks with antisymmetric and circular interconnection weights has been derived in an asymptotic mathematical form. The type and the number of limit cycles generated by circular networks, in which each neuron is connected only to its nearest neurons, have been investigated through analytical method. The results show that the estimated numbers of state vectors generating n- or 2n-periodic limit cycles are an exponential function of (1.6)n for a large number of neuron, n. The sufficient conditions for state vectors to generate limit cycles of period n or 2n are also given.

The development of multi-channel digital broadcasting has generated a demand not only for new services but also for smart and highly functional capabilities in all broadcast-related devices. This is especially true of TV receivers on the viewer's side. With the aim of achieving a friendly interface that anybody can use with ease, we built a prototype spoken dialogue interface for TV operation based on data collected by using Wizard of Oz method. At the current stage of our research, we are using this system to investigate the usefulness and problem areas of an interactive voice interface for TV operation.

The generalized fading amplitude can be expressed using the Nakagami-m distribution. The probability density function (PDF) for the sum of m-distributions is needed to evaluate performance of diversity combining technique such as equal gain combining (EGC) receiver. The approximated PDF for the sum of m-distributions gives simpler performance expression and reduces the computational complexity in evaluating EGC performance. We investigate the normalized approximation error of EGC performance. From the observed result, even for m > 2, the approximated BER is not accurate. For example, the normalized error is about 32% for m = 2 with 3 identical and independently distributed (IID) fading branches and 10 dB SNR.

In this letter, we propose an effective cooperative caching system under the assumption that each web object is accessed randomly. Under this assumption, the access frequency per unit time is given by Poisson distribution and the probability distribution of the web object in the future is derived. Based on this probability distribution, one can obtain the criterion to allocate the web objects with more access expected to the cache servers closer to clients. It is also shown that there is a tradeoff between the precision to allocate objects and the efficiency of caching.

In this letter, we investigate the path length priority effect of existing just-enough-time (JET) scheme for optical burst switching (OBS) in the multiple hop network environments. And, we propose a novel hop-by-hop priority increasing (HPI) scheme using the input fiber delay lines (FDLs) at each node. Simulation results showed that the proposed FDL/delayed reservation (DR) with HPI scheme can avoid the path length priority effect and enhance the end-to-end throughput in multiple hop network environments.

We propose a new data link protocol with an adaptive frame length control scheme for satellite networks. The wireless communication channel in satellite networks is subject to errors that occur with time variance. The frame length of the data link layer is another important factor that affects throughput performance in dynamic channel environments. If the frame length could be chosen adaptively in response to changes in the dynamically varying satellite channel, maximum throughput could be achieved under both noisy and non-noisy error conditions. So, we propose a frame length control scheme that acts adaptively to counter errors that occur with time variance. We model the satellite channel as a two-state Markov block interference (BI) model. The estimation of the channel error status is based on the short-term bit error rate and the duty cycle of noise bursts. Numerical and computer simulation results show that the proposed scheme can achieve high throughput for both dense and diffuse burst noise channels.

For an additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN) channel, a performance evaluation of parallel concatenated turbo trellis-coded modulation (turbo TCM) using bit-interleavers is reported. By obtaining weight distribution, the performance is evaluated by using a union bound method. Comparison between the result of evaluated performance and simulation results is shown, and the usefulness of the evaluated performance is shown. An optimum code and an optimum mapping are sought. The result of the optimum code with the optimum mapping is a new interleaver size N dependency which is proportional to N-3. It is better than the interleaver size dependency for Benedetto code with the natural mapping which is proportional to N-1. The reasons why these dependencies can happen are also discussed.

Because of the polarization dependencies of optical fiber transmission equipment, the polarization state of lightwaves inherently varies at the optical receiver input. Therefore the receiver output, especially the beat component, is very dependent on the polarization state. We derive a simple relation showing that the beat power of the lightwaves is proportional to the inner product of their Stokes vectors. Using this relation, we can systematically calculate the beat power. This calculation method can be applied to lightwaves of arbitrary polarization, such as a polarization-scrambled signal or partially polarized amplified spontaneous emission (ASE) in long-haul IM/DD systems, as well as to the signal and local oscillator lightwaves of coherent systems.

In this letter, a new extended recursive least squares (RLS) algorithm is proposed for the identification of fading channels. We extend the standard RLS algorithm by converting the linear regression model into a state-space model. The unknown terms of the extended model are obtained by estimating the values which minimize the mean squared error (MSE). The proposed algorithm has lower computational complexity than the Kalman filter combined with the hypermodel described in, and exhibits superior performance in simulation than the existing RLS algorithms, namely the exponentially weighted RLS algorithm with a fixed forgetting factor (EW-RLS), and the RLS algorithm with a variable forgetting factor (VFF-RLS).

In this paper, we consider QoS-guaranteed wavelength allocation for WDM networks with limited-range wavelength conversion. In the wavelength allocation, the pre-determined number of wavelengths are allocated to each QoS class depending on the required loss probability. Moreover, we consider two wavelength selection rules and three combinations of the rules. We analyze the connection loss probability of each QoS class for a single link using continuous-time Markov chain. We also investigate the connection loss probability for a uni-directional ring network by simulation. In numerical examples, we compare connection loss probabilities for three combinations of selection rules and show how each combination of selection rules affects the connection loss probability of each QoS class. Furthermore, we show how wavelength conversion capability affects the connection loss probability. It is shown that the proposed allocation with appropriate wavelength selection rule is effective for QoS provisioning when the number of wavelengths is large. We also show the effective combination of wavelength selection rules for the case with small wavelength conversion capability.

This paper proposed a watermarking algorithm for image, which assumed an image compression based on DWT (Discrete Wavelet Transform). To reduce the amount of computation, this algorithm selects the watermarking positions by a threshold table which is statistically established from computing the energy correlation of the corresponding wavelet coefficients. The proposed algorithm can operate in a real-time if the image compression process operates in a real-time because the watermarking process was designed to operate in parallel with the compression process. Also it improves the property of losing the watermak and reducing the compresson ratio by the quantization and Huffman coding steps. It was done by considering the sign of the coefficients and the change in the value for watermarking. Visually recognizable pattern such as a binary image were used as the watermark. The experimental results showed that the proposed algorithm satisfied the properties of robustness and imperceptibility that are the major conditions of watermarking.

Management of diet and exercise is especially significant in preventing "lifestyle-related diseases" for patients and subclinical cases. This paper introduces a questionnaire survey on diabetic regimens that targets 38 professional users such as physicians and nurses at a diabetic clinic. Based on the results of the questionnaire survey, a design concept for a wearable healthcare support system has been developed to provide patients with timely instruction in accordance with their current context. On the basis of this design concept, we developed a prototype of a wearable healthcare support system called "LifeMinder". "LifeMinder" is composed of a wristwatch-shaped wearable sensor module and a personal digital assistant (PDA). The sensor module measures 3-axis acceleration, pulse rate, galvanic skin reflex (GSR), and skin temperature. The PDA receives this data via BluetoothTM and recognizes the patient's general behavior such as "walking" or "eating". The recognition of these behaviors reduces the patient's mental and physical burden in daily healthcare and assists in support of medical treatment.

Connectedness oriented communication denotes a mode of communication in which the activities of communication are more important than the contents of communication. It is targeted at maintaining and enhancing human social relationships. As our lifestyles and societies are shifting along with the progress of Information Technology, communication media that are connectedness oriented will play an important role. In this paper we propose a media called FaintPop, which is an example of such new media that are suitable for connectedness oriented communication. It is a communication media designed for a community, with which the sense of connectedness can be shared among members. Furthermore, it provides a general overview of the communication activities occurring in the community. We discuss several principles and points in designing the media, especially about the interaction of the users. Results and findings from the experiment using the media are reported.

This paper addresses issues regarding to the development of teleconferencing support collaboration focusing on the realistic sensation domain. It argues that the gaze communications are the important mechanisms to enable visual channel and social presence in human-human communications. We propose a new aspect to establish multiple eye contacts and community awareness in multiparty videoconference (VC). The participants can aware of being recognized from any remote sites while they are talking with each other. Community awareness means the ability to aware of group communication in the videoconference. The participant can recognize of who is talking with whom and any communicative groups in a conference. An intelligent image arrangement through a unique position of camera is built and simulated. The systematic placement of images serves the gaze communications by utilizing the characteristic of gaze direction and image's position. The experimental results show that the proposed approach has the significant improvement in the interpersonal communication compared with the conventional VC system.

In story-based communication, where a message is conveyed in story form, it is important to embody the story with expressive materials. However, it is quite difficult for users to create rich multimedia contents using multimedia editing tools. This paper proposes a web-based multimedia environment, SPOC (Stream-oriented Public Opinion Channel), aiming at helping non-skillful people to convert their stories into TV-like programs very easily. The system can produce a digital camera work for graphics and video clips as well as generate an agent animation automatically according to a narration text. Findings in evaluation experiments showed that SPOC is easy-to-use and easy-to-learn for novice users. Given a short instruction, the subjects not only mastered the operations of the software, but also succeeded in creating highly original programs. In subjective evaluation, the subjects answered that they enjoyed using the software without feeling difficulty. These results suggest that this system reduces user's cost in making a program, and encourages communication in a network community.

The purpose of this study is to design a humanoid robotic hand system that is capable of conveying feelings and sensitivities by finger movement for the non-verbal communication between men and robots in the near future. In this paper, studies have been made in four steps. First, a small-sized and light-weight robotic hand was developed to be used as the humanoid according to the concept of extracting required minimum motor functions and implementing them to the robot. Second, basic characteristics of the movement were checked by experiments, simple feedforward control mechanism was designed based on velocity control, and a system capable of tracking joint time-series change command with arbitrary pattern input was realized. Third, tracking performances with regard to sinusoidal input with different frequencies were studied for evaluation of the system thus realized, and space- and time-related accuracy were investigated. Fourth, the sign language motions were generated as examples of information transmission by finger movement. A series of results thus obtained indicated that this robotic hand is capable of transmitting information promptly with comparatively high accuracy through the movement.

In this paper, we propose a new haptic interface for two-handed manipulation. The system, named the SPIDAR-G&G system, consists of a pair of string-based 6DOF haptic devices called SPIDAR-G for both hands. By grasping the grip of each SPIDAR-G in each of the user's hands, the user can manipulate one virtual object with their right hand and the other one with their left hand cooperatively, while the user senses interaction force. We evaluated the system by measuring the completion time of a 3D pointing task, and demonstrated enhanced interactivity with virtual objects.

In this paper, a new method for displaying a surface deformation is proposed to provide sufficient realism in virtual environment. The approach selected in this paper is based on the fuzzy model and it is sufficient that only one additional rule be added to the fuzzy model to display a surface deformation. Furthermore, designers can easily determine which parameters should be used and how much they should be changed in order to alter shapes as required. The proposed method, thus, is a simple, but effective technique that can also be applied to real time operation and makes it possible to act on several surface points simultaneously. The results of the computer simulation are also given to demonstrate the validity of the proposed algorithm.