Reactive near field reflection characteristics of commercial RF absorbers are investigated to determine the minimum size of a reactive-field anechoic box necessary for measuring the reactive near field of an ESPAR antenna. The reflectivity of the absorber placed in close proximity to an antenna is inversely proportional to the distance between the antenna and the absorber. For carbon filled urethane foam tapered absorbers, we find that the backscattered reflection characteristics mainly depend on their tapered height rather than the thickness of absorber base. As a result, we show that carbon filled urethane foam pyramidal and wave surface shaped absorbers can be used to make reactive-field anechoic boxes. A prototype of a reactive-field anechoic box is presented and the distance from the absorber to the antenna is reduced to a wavelength. The prototype is verified by comparing its performance with that obtained from a large anechoic chamber.

In this paper, we propose topic extraction models based on statistical relevance scores between topic words and words in articles, and report results obtained in topic extraction experiments using continuous speech recognition for Japanese broadcast news utterances. We attempt to represent a topic of news speech using a combination of multiple topic words, which are important words in the news article or words relevant to the news. We assume a topic of news is represented by a combination of words. We statistically model mapping from words in an article to topic words. Using the mapping, the topic extraction model can extract topic words even if they do not appear in the article. We train a topic extraction model capable of computing the degree of relevance between a topic word and a word in an article by using newspaper text covering a five-year period. The degree of relevance between those words is calculated based on measures such as mutual information or the χ2-method. In experiments extracting five topic words using a χ2-based model, we achieve 72% precision and 12% recall for speech recognition results. Speech recognition results generally include a number of recognition errors, which degrades topic extraction performance. To avoid this, we employ N-best candidates and likelihood given by acoustic and language models. In experiments, we find that extracting five topic words using N-best candidate and likelihood values achieves significantly improved precision.

In this semi-tutorial paper, the reliability-based decoding approaches using the reprocessing of the most reliable information set are investigated. This paper somehow homogenizes and compares former different studies, hopefully improving the overall transparency, and completing each one with tricks provided by the others. A couple of sensible improvements are also suggested. However, the main goal remains to integrate and compare recent works based on a similar general approach, which have unfortunately been performed in parallel without much efforts of comparison up to now. Their respective (dis)advantages, especially in terms of average or maximum complexity are elaborated. We focus on suboptimum decoding while some works to which we refer were developed for maximum likelihood decoding (MLD). No quantitative error performance analysis is provided, although we are in a position to benefit from some qualitative considerations, and to compare different strategies in terms of higher or lower expected error performances for a same complexity. With simulations, however, it turns out that all considered approaches perform very closely to each other, which was not especially obvious at first sight. The simplest strategy proves also the fastest in terms of CPU-time, but we indicate ways to implement the other ones so that they get very close to each other from this point of view also. On top of relying on the same intuitive principle, the studied algorithms are thus also unified from the point of view of their error performances and computational cost.

A plane drawing of a graph is called a floorplan if every face (including the outer face) is a rectangle. A based floorplan is a floorplan with a designated base line segment on the outer face. In this paper we give a simple algorithm to generate all based floorplans with at most n faces. The algorithm uses O(n) space and generates such floorplans in O(1) time per floorplan without duplications. The algorithm does not output entire floorplans but the difference from the previous floorplan. By modifying the algorithm we can generate without duplications all based floorplans having exactly n faces in O(1) time per floorplan. Also we can generate without duplications all (non-based) floorplans having exactly n faces in O(n) time per floorplan.

In an orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) system, the bit error performance is degraded in the presence of multiple propagation paths whose excess delays are longer than the Guard Interval (GI), because the orthogonality between subcarriers cannot be maintained. Therefore, the GI has to be long enough for an expected delay spread of the channel. On the other hand, a long GI causes a decrease in transmission efficiency. In this paper, we propose a new OFDM demodulation method with a variable effective symbol duration, in order to improve the bit error performance in the presence of multipaths whose excess delays are longer than the GI. The proposed method can realize more stable radio communication systems under a multipath propagation environment even if a propagation path whose excess delay is longer than the GI exists. In other words, the proposed method can improve transmission efficiency without performance degradation by a shortened GI under the same environment. The principle of the proposed method is explained, and the bit error probability of the proposed method is analyzed theoretically in an AWGN channel and a multipath fading channel. The performance of the proposed method is then evaluated by computer simulation. The results show that the proposed method improves the system availability under more various multipath fading environments without changing the system parameters.

A new blocking artifact reduction algorithm is proposed that uses block classification and feedforward neural network filters in the spatial domain. At first, the existence of blocking artifact is determined using statistical characteristics of neighborhood block, which is then used to classify the block boundaries into one of four classes. Thereafter, adaptive inter-block filtering is only performed in two classes of block boundaries that include blocking artifact. That is, in smooth regions with blocking artifact, a two-layer feedforward neural network filters trained by an error back-propagation algorithm is used, while in complex regions with blocking artifact, a linear interpolation method is used to preserve the image details. Experimental results show that the proposed algorithm produces better results than the conventional algorithms.

Wireless network systems introducing both of the cellular concept and the ad-hoc concept have been proposed. Communication between two nodes in a cell is guaranteed by relaying capability of the base station in these systems. Additionally, two nodes can directly communicate with each other while they are close to each other. We call this type of network a two-hop wireless network. The teletraffic performance of this network depends on various parameters such as the size of a cell, location of nodes, the communication range of nodes, channel assignment schemes, teletraffic behavior and so on. The purpose of this paper is to theoretically analyze the teletraffic performance of the network, which has been evaluated by computer simulation, by introducing a simple model. This paper shows a technique to analyze the performance in this model. Also, this paper considers the range in which the two-hop wireless network works well for the efficient use of channels.

An L-band low quiescent current and low distortion SiGe heterojunction bipolar transistor (HBT) driver amplifier having a self base bias control circuit is described. Since the size of this bias circuit is small and it does not need an external control circuit, it is easy to be integrated with the driver amplifier on a single chip. According to the output power level, the self base bias control circuit, which is the combination of a constant base voltage circuit and p-metal oxide semiconductor (MOS) FET current mirror with a constant current source, automatically controls the base voltage, and allows low quiescent current at low output power level and low distortion at high output power level. The simulated results show that the driver amplifier having the self base bias control circuit achieves 1 dB power compression point (P1 dB) improvement of 2.4 dB compared with the driver amplifier having a conventional constant base voltage under the same quiescent current condition. The fabricated driver amplifier with the proposed bias circuit shows high P1 dB of 15.0 dBm with low quiescent current of 15.3 mA.

We obtained a relation between the characteristics of optical life and panel structural factors which is one of the important factors for panel design of Plasma Display Panel (PDP). We introduced the equation under the consideration that dominant factor determining the characteristics of optical life is luminance degradation of phosphors and that ion bombardment causes luminance degradation of phosphors. This equation contains the following four panel structural factors such as gap between electrodes, gas pressure, gas kinds, and voltage. Furthermore, we compared the equation with experimental values as a verification.

We observed the log normal, log-Weibull and K-distributed sea-clutter from high sea state 7 with an X-band radar for grazing angles between 3.1 and 17.5. To determine the sea-clutter amplitude statistics, we introduced the Akaike Information Criterion (AIC), which is more rigorous fit of the distribution to the data than the least-squares method.

A novel multiple-valued transfer gate (T-gate) consisting of multiple-junction surface tunnel transistors (MJSTTs) and hetero-junction FETs (HJFETs) was developed and its operation was confirmed by both simulation and experiment. The number of the devices required to form the T-gate can be drastically reduced because of the high functionality of the MJSTT; namely only three MJSTTs and three HJFETs are required to fabricate the three-valued T-gate. This number of transistors is less than half that of a conventional circuit. The fabricated circuit exhibited a basic T-gate operation with various logic functions. Furthermore, only one T-gate is needed to form a multiple-valued D-flip-flop (D-FF) circuit.

To elucidate the mechanism of topographic organization, we propose a simple topographic mapping formation model from generalized cell layer to generalized cell layer. Here generalized cell layer means that we consider arbitrary cell neighborhood relations. In our previous work we investigated a topographic mapping formation model between one dimensional cell layers. In this paper we extend the cell layer structure to any dimension. In our model, each cell takes a binary state value and we consider a class of learning principles which are extensions of Hebb's rule and Anti-Hebb's rule. We pay special attention to correlation type learning rules where a synaptic weight value is increased if pre and post synaptic cell states have the same value. We first show that a mapping is stable with respect to the correlational learning if and only if it is semi-embedding. Second, we introduce a special class of weight matrices called band type and show that the set of band type weight matrices is strongly closed and such a weight matrix can not yield a topographic mapping. Third, we show by computer simulations that a mapping, if it is defined by a non band type weight matrix, converges to a topographic mapping under the correlational learning rules.

This paper presents a comparison of the throughput performance employing hybrid automatic repeat request (HARQ) with packet combining, such as Type-I with packet combining (simply Chase combining hereafter) and Type-II (Incremental redundancy hereafter), using turbo coding in a multipath fading channel in high speed downlink packet access (HSDPA). We apply a multipath interference canceller (MPIC) to remove the influence of severe multipath interference. Link level simulation results show that the maximum throughput using Incremental redundancy with 64QAM is improved by approximately 5-8% compared to that using Chase combining, and that the required average received signal energy of 12 code channels per chip-to-background noise spectrum density (Ec/N0) at the throughput of 4 Mbps with Incremental redundancy is decreased by approximately 1.0 dB rather than that with Chase combining when the vehicular speed is higher than approximately 30 km/h. Furthermore, we elucidate based on the system level simulation that although no improvement is obtained in a slow mobility environment such as the average vehicular speed of 3 km/h, the achieved throughput of Incremental redundancy is increased by approximately 5-6% and 13% for the average vehicular speed of 30 km/h and 120 km/h, respectively, compared to that with Chase combining.

In this paper, we propose an RTP/UDP/IP header compression method, Multiple-Reference Compression (MRC), which is designed for mobile multimedia communications. MRC is a compression method that calculates differences from the multiple reference headers that have already been sent and inserts them into a compressed header. The receiver can decompress the compressed header as long as at least one of the reference headers is correctly received and decompressed. MRC improves robustness against packet losses compared with CRTP defined in IETF RFC2508, and imposes less overheads and computational burden than robust header compression (ROHC) defined in RFC3095. We also implemented MRC and other header compression algorithms into our mobile testbed, and conducted multimedia streaming experiments over the testbed. The results of the experiments show that MRC offers the same level of packet loss rate as Legacy RTP for both audio and video streams, and provides better media quality than Legacy RTP and CRTP on error-prone radio links. Header compression robust against packet losses is expected as a key technology for VoIP and multimedia streaming services over 3G and future mobile networks.

This paper investigates the optimum adaptive antenna array beam forming (AAA-BF) configuration considering the diversity effect provided by transmit diversity (TD) in a multipath fading channel in the W-CDMA forward link. Computer simulation results show that the required transmit signal energy per bit-to-background noise power spectrum density ratio (Eb/N0) at the average block error rate (BLER) of 10-2 using AAA-BF coupled with TD is decreased by approximately 1.0 dB compared to that of AAA-BF assuming the identical number of total antennas when the capacity, i.e., the number of simultaneously accommodated users with the transmission power proportional to the symbol rate, normalized by processing gain, Pg, is below approximately 20%. However, we find that in an interference-limited channel, when the capacity normalized by Pg is above approximately 30%, AAA-BF employing all antennas accommodates a larger capacity compared to AAA-BF coupled with TD because of a sufficient interference suppression effect due to a much narrower beam width despite the absence of the antenna diversity effect. This paper also elucidates in a multi-cell model that AAA-BF employing all antennas can accommodate approximately 1.5 times more users with the average BLER of 10-2 and with the outage probability of 5%, compared to the case with AAA-BF coupled with TD, when the total number of antennas is 8.

In order to clarify the receiver sensitivity of remote keyless entry systems operating at 314 MHz, the radiation characteristics of a cabin antennas must be studied. For this purpose, electromagnetic simulations are very useful but the multiple reflected waves present in the cabin must be accurately estimated. No prior study examined the radiation characteristics of cabin antennas. This paper introduces an accurate simulation method. A MM (Method of Moments) simulator is selected because it can simulate multiple reflected waves. Initial studies are being performed to find the calculation requirements and ensuring convergence of multiple reflected wave structures. Next, calculation requirements for car analyses such as convergence parameters and computer abilities are studied. The calculation time is 11 hours by a personal computer. 1.1 GB of RAM is also needed. Many calculated results such as three-dimensional radiation patterns and induced currents on the car's body are obtained. The radiation pattern varies with antenna position, and polarization changes are shown. In order to ensure that the results are accurate, measurements are made on a one seventh scale model of a car. The good agreement of measured and calculated results verifies the validity of the simulation method. The influence of multiple reflected waves on the radiation patterns is also experimentally studied. The conclusion is that the MM method is shown to be useful in estimating the radiation pattern of cabin antennas. Interesting calculation results are also shown.

In this paper, we propose the code orthogonalizing filter (COF) based adaptive array antenna using sample matrix inversion with common correlation matrix (CCM-SMI) of time domain signals for multicarrier DS/CDMA systems. The conventional array antenna system calculates the weight using the correlation matrix of individual subcarrier's signals. On the other hand, our proposed system calculates the weight using the correlation matrix of time domain signals before FFT operation, so it can reduce the calculation time and the complexity of weight calculation than the conventional scheme, to maintain the system performance. Moreover, we consider the code orthogonalizing filter to reduce the demerit of adaptive array antenna system using sample matrix inversion algorithm with common correlation matrix that requires heavy computational complexity while the signal environment frequently changes. Our proposed system obtains more accurate channel response vector using COF than that of the conventional CCM-SMI based on the matched filter, without increasing the matrix size. The performance is evaluated in term of bit error probability. From the analysis and simulation results, it is shown that our proposed scheme achieves better BER performance than that of the conventional system.

Incremental evolution with learning (IEWL) is proposed for the development of autonomous robots, and the validity of the method is evaluated with a real mobile robot to acquire a complex task. Development of the control system for a complex task, i.e., approaching toward a target object by avoiding obstacles in an environment, is incrementally carried out in two-stage. In the first-stage, controllers are developed to avoid obstacles in the environment. By using acquired knowledge of the first-stage, controllers are developed in the second-stage to approach toward the target object by avoiding obstacles in the environment. It is found that the use of learning in conjunction with incremental evolution is beneficial for maintaining diversity in the evolving population. The performances of two controllers, one developed by IEWL and the other developed by incremental evolution without learning (IENL), are compared on the given task. The experimental results show that robust performance is achieved when controllers are developed by IEWL.

New methods for digital image watermarking based on the characteristics of vector quantization (VQ) are proposed. In contrast with conventional watermark embedding algorithms to embed only one watermark at a time into the original source, we present one algorithm to embed multiple watermarks for copyright protection. The embedding and extraction processes are efficient for implementing with conventional VQ techniques, and they can be accomplished in parallel to shorten the processing time. After embedding, embedder would output one watermarked reconstruction image and several secret keys associated with the embedded watermarks. These secret keys are then registered to the third party to preserve the ownership of the original source in order to prevent the attackers from inserting counterfeit watermarks. Simulation results show that under no attacks, the embedded watermarks could be perfectly extracted. If there are some intentional attacks in our simulation, all the watermarks could survive to protect the copyrights. Therefore, we are able to claim the robustness, usefulness, and ease of implementation of our algorithm.

Dual-Banyan is a buffered banyan asynchronous transfer mode (ATM) switch encompassing bifurcated queueing as its buffering strategy. This paper describes an efficient analytical model, based on iterative calculations, for performance evaluation of the Dual-Banyan switch under uniform and non-uniform traffic patterns with much less time than the simulation. The efficiency of the given model is verified through a comparison with simulation results. Another benefit of our model is the possibility to adopt it in any non-uniform incoming traffic. At last, we compare performance of Dual-Banyan switch and Input Buffer Banyan, and show that Dual-Banyan switch has significant better performance levels.