This paper presents a method for disambiguating word senses in Korean-Japanese machine translation by using a language independent ontology. This ontology stores semantic constraints between concepts and other world knowledge, and enables a natural language processing system to resolve semantic ambiguities by making inferences with the concept network of the ontology. In order to acquire a language-independent and reasonably practical ontology in a limited time and with less manpower, we extend the existing Kadokawa thesaurus by inserting additional semantic relations into its hierarchy, which are classified as case relations and other semantic relations. The former can be obtained by converting valency information and case frames from previously-built electronic dictionaries used in machine translation. The latter can be acquired from concept co-occurrence information, which is extracted automatically from a corpus. In practical machine translation systems, our word sense disambiguation method achieved an improvement of average precision by 6.0% for Japanese analysis and by 9.2% for Korean analysis over the method without using an ontology.

Interpolation surfaces, such as Bezier or B-spline surface, are usually used for representing smooth man-made objects and provide an excellent ability to control the shape of a surface by intuitively moving control points. In contrast, the fractal technique is used for creating various complex shapes, mainly of natural objects, that have self-similarity using simple procedures. We have proposed the "wrinkly surface (WR surface)" for combining the advantages of interpolation surfaces and fractals. In this paper, we propose the expansion of the construction scheme of the WR surface to irregular meshes. Control points of a WR surface are interpolated using the "Iterated Shuffle Transformation (IST)." Therefore, in order to achieve the expansion, we first generalize the IST on code spaces, and then propose multi-dimensional IST defined on geometric spaces. By creating various shape model examples, we demonstrate the usefulness of the WR surface as a modeling tool.

In this paper, a contention-based reservation MAC protocol is proposed for non-real-time burst traffic class in wireless ATM networks. The proposed protocol is characterized by the contention-based transmission of the reservation request and contention-free transmission of burst traffic. The design objective of the proposed protocol is to reduce contention delay during the contention phase of a connection. In order to reduce collision of reservation requests, the base station calculates the transmission probability based on the estimated load of reservation requests and the number of random access minislots, and broadcasts it over the frame header period of downlink channel. Wireless terminal, which has traffic burst, selects a random access minislot and transmits its reservation request with a received transmission probability. Based on the successfully received reservation, the scheduler allocates the uplink data slots to wireless terminal. Simulation results show that the proposed protocol can provide higher channel utilization, and furthermore, maintains constant delay performance in a heavy traffic environment.

This paper investigates the effect of fast cell selection (FCS) associated with fast packet scheduling methods and hybrid automatic repeat request (HARQ) with Chase combining, in which the optimum cell (or sector) transmitting a slot-assigned downlink shared channel (DSCH) is selected based on the received signal-to-interference power ratio (SIR), in high-speed downlink packet access (HSDPA). The Round robin (RR), Proportional fairness (PF) and Maximum carrier-to-interference power ratio (CIR) schedulers are used as the scheduling algorithm. The simulation results elucidate that although almost no additional diversity gain through FCS is obtained for the PF and Maximum CIR schedulers, the improvement in throughput by FCS coupled with the RR scheduler is achieved. Furthermore, we elucidate that the effect of FCS is small when only inter-sector FCS is performed; however, inter-cell FCS is effective in improving the radio link throughput for the access users with a lower received SIR near the cell edge. The radio link throughput at the cumulative distribution of 20% of soft handover users when both inter-sector and inter-cell FCS are performed is increased by approximately 20% and 60% for PF and RR schedulers, respectively, compared to that without FCS, i.e. with hard handover. We also show that when a traffic model such as the modified ETSI WWW browsing model is taken into account, the effect of FCS associated with the decreasing effect of fast packet scheduling is greater than that assuming continuous packet transmission. The user throughput at the cumulative distribution of 20% employing both inter-sector and inter-cell FCS is increased by approximately 60% compared to that without FCS.

In this paper, we propose a new neural filter to which the features related to a given task are input, called a neural filter with features (NFF), to improve further the performance of the conventional neural filter. In order to handle the issue concerning the optimal selection of input features, we propose a framework composed of 1) manual selection of candidates for input features related to a given task and 2) training with automatically selection of the optimal input features required for achieving the given task. Experiments on the proposed framework with an application to improving the image quality of medical X-ray image sequences were performed. The experimental results demonstrated that the performance on edge-preserving smoothing of the NFF, obtained by the proposed framework, is superior to that of the conventional neural and dynamic filters.

Unlike in existing mobile networks, a variety of services having different quality requirements will be provided in future mobile networks, where any single group of service users can not characterize the whole traffic distribution in the system. Beginning at the mobile network design, the population of service subscribers is estimated and then base stations are located. As the service market evolves, the volume of users might grow or the population of users distributed between the multiple services as well as the located cells might change. In this case, two questions are of interest: how much growth in user population and what change in user distribution can be accommodated in the current cell configuration. If such shifts could not be admitted, current frequency and base station allocations should be expanded or reallocated. In this paper, we provide a framework that can decide whether the present network configuration is able to admit the changes of interest. Admissibility decision rules are addressed with proofs.

An adaptive array antenna should be applied for suppression of CCI in the spatial domain. However, the adaptive array antenna has some problems as follows. Because the adaptive array antenna takes a long time to converge to the optimum antenna weights, it's hard to track in case of quick varying channel. On the other hand, processing burden increases with the number of elements in the array antenna. To solve these problems, we propose an adaptive array antenna using array antenna as element antennas, the so-called "Layered array antenna." At the 1st layer, sector area are defined. We can change the sector areas according to the DOA distribution, because the sector areas are defined by the antenna weights. At the 2nd layer, MMSE is performed. Interference that couldn't be suppressed at the 1st layer is suppressed at the 2nd layer. By the proposed system, we confirmed higher convergence speed while relieving processing complexity.

In this paper, three multiple access schemes, single carrier (SC)-CDMA, multicarrier (MC)-CDMA, and frequency & time spread (FTS)-CDMA, with space time transmit diversity (STTD) are presented for a broadband mobile communication system. In general, broadband communication systems are easily affected by severe frequency selective fading which results in the degradation of the system performance due to the multipath. In order to improve the system performance in such a fading environment, STTD is applied to these CDMA systems. Computer simulation is carried out to evaluate the system performance, and the BER results are compared with each other. From the simulation results, it is found that the performance of MC-CDMA with STTD is better than that of the other systems, and SC-CDMA cannot improve the system performance by using STTD.

An algorithm for augmenting a binary linear code is presented. The input to the code augmenting algorithm is (n,k,d) code C and the output is an (n,k*,d) augmented code C (k* k) satisfying C C and the Gilbert bound. The algorithm can be considered as an efficient implementation of the proof of Gilbert bound; for a given binary linear code C, the algorithm first finds a coset leader with the largest weight. If the weight of the coset leader is greater than or equal to the minimum distance of C, the coset leader is included to the basis of C.

A fast capture algorithm of the initial attitude is proposed for the spacecraft using reaction wheels. This algorithm is composed of two steps. The first step deals with absorption of the initial angular momentum of the spacecraft into the reaction wheels and the second step a rest-to-reset large angle maneuver for sun tracking. A criterion of the initial attitude capture and a controller for the fast large angle maneuver method are presented under considering constraints of the reaction wheels. Simulation results show that the proposed algorithm has several advantages of the initial attitude capture and fast large angle maneuver. This algorithm can be applied to the near minimum time rotation control of the spacecraft.

This paper proposes a design method of 2-D variable IIR digital filters with high frequency tuning accuracy. In the proposed method, a parallel complex allpass structure is used as the prototype structure of the 2-D variable digital filters in order to obtain low sensitivity characteristic. Because the proposed 2-D variable digital filter is composed of first-order complex allpass sections connected in parallel, the proposed variable digital filter possesses several advantages such as low sensitivity characteristic in the passband, simple stability monitoring and high parallelism. In order to improve the frequency tuning accuracy of the proposed variable digital filter, each first-order complex allpass section is substituted by a new first-order complex allpass section with low sensitivity characteristic. Moreover, the coefficient sensitivity analysis of a 2-D parallel complex allpass structure is presented. Numerical examples show that the proposed 2-D variable IIR digital filter has high tuning accuracy under the finite coefficient wordlength.

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.

The interaction between slider, lubricant and disk surface is becoming the most crucial robustness concern of advanced data storage systems. This paper reports comparative studies among various techniques for the measurement of head-disk spacing. It is noticed that the triple harmonic method gives a reading much closer to the reading of the head-disk spacing obtained optically at on-track center case, comparing with the PW50 method. Specially prepared disks with different carbon overcoat thickness (6.5 nm, 11 nm, 16 nm and 22 nm) were also used to study the reliability and repeatability of the triple harmonic method.

A novel technique for automatic segmentation of a brain region in single channel MR images for visualization and analysis of a human brain is presented. The method generates a volume of brain masks by automatic thresholding using a dual curve fitting technique and by 3D morphological operations. The dual curve fitting can reduce an error in curve fitting to the histogram of MR images. The 3D morphological operations, including erosion, labeling of connected-components, max-feature operation, and dilation, are applied to the cubic volume of masks reconstructed from the thresholded brain masks. This method can automatically segment a brain region in any displayed type of sequences, including extreme slices, of SPGR, T1-, T2-, and PD-weighted MR image data sets which are not required to contain the entire brain. In the experiments, the algorithm was applied to 20 sets of MR images and showed over 0.97 of similarity index in comparison with manual drawing.

Write linear density limit is defined to analyze the magnetic recording process in computer hard disk drives at extremely high recording densities. The digital data with pseudo random sequences are recorded numerically in longitudinal media at different densities by a micromagnetic simulation model. A thin film write head and an ideal GMR read head are utilized in the record and read-back process, respectively. A novel method has been utilized to study the write linear density limit: the simulated read back voltage and the respected linear superposed pulses are compared to find the distortion in the record process. When a severe distortion shows up, the corresponding linear density is considered as the write linear density limit. By the novel method, the write linear density limit is analyzed with different parameters of the recording media.

The mobile system has been taking an important role as the infrastructure of the advanced information society. First, as the telecommunication infrastructure, it enabled us to communicate with anybody, anytime, and anywhere. Next, as the multimedia infrastructure, it enabled us to send, receive, and retrieve data. Now, as the IT infrastructure, it enables us to purchase commodities, transact business, and enjoy entertainment on-line. The mobile system has morphed into the third generation in almost two decades. Several mobile services have been introduced in each generation to feature the above infrastructures. This paper describes the authors' views on how mobile services have contributed to the advance of the information society in the past three generations. It also discusses what role the future mobile system should take in realizing the wealthier information society.

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.

Low-profile inverter power supplies are increasingly required for backlight systems of liquid crystal displays (LCDs). A great deal of attention has been focused on the application of piezoelectric transformers (PTs) to such power supplies. To miniaturize PT inverters still further, PTs need to have sufficient high voltage-step-up-ratio, which can be achieved by a multilayered PT. First, this paper describes a method for simulating such performance using a distributed constant equivalent circuit model. The results of the simulation for a multilayered PT operated in the third order longitudinal vibration mode show that the resistance of internal electrodes causes the dominant loss factor. Next, a power inverter incorporating the multilayered PT was fabricated. This power inverter can be operated over a wide input DC voltage range from 7-20 V. Regarding a conventional inverter drive circuit, when input DC voltage range was extended, the inverter efficiency remarkably decreased. For the reason, we developed a new inverter circuit, which is equipped with an automatic drive voltage control circuit to maintain the drive voltage to the PT at a constant value. As a result, the fabricated power inverter exhibited more than 90% overall efficiency and 3.5 W output power, which is enough to light up a 12.1-inch color LCD. The maximum luminance efficiency on a light transmission plate of the backlight was as high as 30 cd/m2/W.

A performance comparison is developed between a chaotic communication system and a spread spectrum system with similar features in terms of bandwidth and transceiver structure but based on more conventional Gold sequences. Comparison is made in the presence of noise and multipath contributions which degrade the channel quality. It is shown that, because of its more favourable correlation properties, the chaotic scheme exhibits lower error rates, at a parity of the bandwidth expansion factor. The same favourable correlation properties are also used to explain and show, through a numerical example, the benefits of chaotic segments in a multi-user environment.

It has been established that the criteria for space-time convolutional code (STCC) are based on the maximization of the minimum rank and the minimum determinant of distance matrix over quasistatic flat Rayleigh fading channel. This letter presents a new criterion, i.e., modified trace criterion which maximizes both the minimum trace and the average trace of distance matrix for a new STCC. A new STCC is systematically searched so as to maximize the minimum trace and the average trace, and shown to be superior to other known codes in quasistatic flat Rayleigh fading channel.