This paper describes the wafer-level, three-dimensional packaging for MEMS in which sensors, actuators, electronic circuits and other functions are combined together in one integrated block. Si wafers with built-in MEMS functions were integrated with no change in thickness to ensure mechanical strength and improve heat dissipation. In the entire process of three-dimensional integration, Si wafers were processed at temperatures below 400C to prevent degradation of their built-in functions. A description is made of the low-temperature oxidation technology developed by us, which makes through-holes of high density and high aspect ratio in Si wafers with built-in functions by the Optical Excitation Electropolishing Method (OEEM) and forms an oxide film on the hole walls simply by replacing electrolyte. Next, a description is presented of the bumpless interconnection method which fills through-holes of stacked layers with metal by the molten metal suction method and of the electrocapillary effect as a countermeasure to prevent the filler metal from dropping out of holes under its own weight.

In this paper, we describe a method for estimating external camera parameters in real time. We investigated the effectiveness of this method for annotating real scenes with 3-D virtual objects on a wearable computer. The proposed method enables determining known natural feature points of objects through multiplied color histogram matching and template matching. This external-camera-parameter calculation method consists of three algorithms for PnP problems, and it uses each algorithm selectively. We implemented an experimental system based on our method on a wearable vision system. This experimental system can annotate real objects with 3D virtual objects by using the proposed method. The system was implemented in order to enable effective annotation in a mixed-reality environment on a wearable computing system. The system consists of an ultra small CCD camera set at the user's eye, an ultra small display, and a computer. This computer uses the proposed method to determine the camera parameters. It then renders virtual objects based on the camera parameters and synthesizes images on a display. The system works at 10 frames per second.

Antialiased is one of challenging problems to be solved for the high fidelity image synthesis in 3D graphics. In this paper a rasterization processor which is capable of single-pass full-screen antialiasing is presented. To implement a H/W accelerated single-pass antialiased rasterization processor at the reasonable H/W cost and minimized processing performance degradation, our work is mainly focused on the efficient H/W implementation of a modified version of the A-buffer algorithm. For the efficient handling of partial-pixel fragments of the rasterization phase, a new partial-pixel-merging scheme and a simple and efficient new dynamic memory management scheme are proposed. For the final blending of partial-pixels without loss of generality, a parallel subpixel blender is introduced. To study the feasibility of the proposed rasterization processor as a practical rasterization processor, a prototype processor has been designed using a 0.35 µm EML technology. It operates 100 MHz @3.3 V and has the rendering performance from 25M to 80M pixel-fragments/sec depending on the scene complexity.

In this paper, we address the problem of recovering the camera radial distortion coefficients from one image. The approach that we propose uses a special kind of snakes called radial distortion snakes. Radial distortion snakes behave like conventional deformable contours, except that their behavior are globally connected via a consistent model of image radial distortion. Experiments show that radial distortion snakes are more robust and accurate than conventional snakes and manual point selection.

We propose an efficient, low cost, multicast ATM switch which is fair to all inputs. The switch consists of a novel copy network which creates unicast packets in a fair manner, followed by a network that routes packets to their correct Address Translation Tables (ATT's) and ultimately a unicast routing network which ensures sequencing. The copy and routing networks are based on deflection routing. We show that our switch requires O(log N) stages and can be designed for any arbitrarily low level of packet loss. The theoretical results are backed up by simulations. Switching elements in both the copying and routing networks have O(1) bit complexity, making the overall bit level hardware complexity of the network O(N log N). The latency of the switch is proportional to the number of stages O(log N). Unlike other existing copy networks, our copy network drops packets in a fair manner and hence can provide quality of service (QoS) support. The switch is output queued and allows the delivery of multiple packets to the same destination during a time slot.

This paper describes the JAINTM JavaTM Call Control (JCC) Application Programming Interface (API), and its relationship to network protocols, in particular the Session Initiation Protocol (SIP). JCC is a high-level object-oriented open, standard API for Next Generation Network (NGN) softswitches that enables rapid creation, by third parties, of services that can run independently of the underlying network technology (e.g. wireless, wired, packet, IP, PSTN) and protocols. SIP is a protocol that has been proposed for a wide variety of uses in IP networks, including call control. We argue that instead of being competitors, JCC and SIP are complementary, with JCC offering higher-layer programming abstractions and protocol-independence, and demonstrate by examples how to map JCC version 1.0 to a SIP environment. We thus show that for common call control applications using JCC is simpler, faster and less maintenance intensive than using SIP directly.

In this paper, a discrete-time convergence theorem for continuous-state Hopfield networks with self-interaction neurons is proposed. This theorem differs from the previous work by Wang in that the original updating rule is maintained while the network is still guaranteed to monotonically decrease to a stable state. The relationship between the parameters in a typical class of energy functions is also investigated, and consequently a "guided trial-and-error" technique is proposed to determine the parameter values. The third problem discussed in this paper is the post-processing of outputs, which turns out to be rather important even though it never attracts enough attention. The effectiveness of all the theorems and post-processing methods proposed in this paper is demonstrated by a large number of computer simulations on the assignment problem and the N-queen problem of different sizes.

In this paper, we examine the polarimetric characteristics and the potential of the coherent decomposition in polarimetric synthetic aperture radar (SAR) interferometry. Coherent scattering decomposition based on the coherence optimization can separate effective phase center of different scattering mechanisms and can be used to generate canopy digital elevation model (DEM). This decomposition is applied to a simplified stochastic scattering model such as forest canopy. However, since the polarimetric characteristics are not well understood when the decomposition is carried out, we investigate its characteristics and potential using polarimetric entropy-alpha and three-component scattering matrix decomposition. The results show that the first and third components correspond to the lower and upper layer, respectively, in ideal case. In this investigation, SIR-C/X-SAR data of the Tien Shan flight-pass are used.

This paper proposes a new method to recover the sign of local Gaussian curvature from multiple (more than three) shading images. The information required to recover the sign of Gaussian curvature is obtained by applying Principal Components Analysis (PCA) to the normalized irradiance measurements. The sign of the Gaussian curvature is recovered based on the relative orientation of measurements obtained on a local five point test pattern to those in the 2-D subspace called the eigen plane. Using multiple shading images gives a more accurate and robust result and minimizes the effect of shadows by allowing a larger area of the visible surface to be analyzed compared to methods using only three shading images. Furthermore, it allows the method to be applied to specular surfaces. Since PCA removes linear correlation among images, the method can produce results of high quality even when the light source directions are not widely dispersed.

We propose a new field of application for machine vision, a machine-vision-based cash-register system. We show that the overall system of color analysis for such an application should include the method of color distribution analysis which we propose, and that the analysis of shape and size is important. We present our test results and identify a few technical issues which may have to be considered for its practical utilization.

We describe a simple all-optical wavelength converter based on a Fabry-Perot semiconductor optical amplifier (FPSOA). We measure its static characteristics in detail and successfully demonstrate its dynamic wavelength-conversion operation (both inverted and non-inverted) at 2.5 Gbit/s. This is the first demonstration of FPSOA-based wavelength conversion. Quasi-digital response is also observed. Low input power, ease of fabrication and good compatibility with WDM networks are important advantages of FPSOA.

Bidirectional reflection distribution functions (BRDFs) of commercially pure titanium sheets with three different kinds of surface morphology were measured. Those experimental BRDFs were analyzed by using Phong's reflection model. Topographic measurements of the specimens' surfaces were performed with using a stylus-method. An explicit microfacet model based on topographic data was proposed. With using the explicit microfacet model and geometrical optics the calculated BRDFs were obtained and then compared with the experimental BRDFs. Both of them were in a good agreement. Through this comparison physical meanings of Phong's reflection model were discussed. We concluded that with using the explicit microfacet model it will be possible to calculate the BRDF of the materials' surface in arbitrary illumination conditions and that this modeling will be useful to develop new aesthetic surface appearance in material industries, computer graphics, architectural design and surface science.

Layered multicast approach enables IP multicast to adapt to heterogeneous networks. In layered multicast, each layer of a session is sent to separate multicast groups. These layers will be transmitted on the same route, or on different routes. However, traditional congestion control schemes of layered multicast do not consider the case when layers of a session are transmitted on different routes. In this paper, at first we show that in sparse-mode routing protocols like PIM-SM and CBT, layers of a session can be mapped to different Rendezvous Points or cores due to the bootstrap mechanism. It means that layers of a session can be transmitted on different routes. We then show that traditional congestion control schemes of layered multicast do not work properly in sparse-mode routing regions. At last we introduce Rendezvous Point based Layered Multicast (RPLM), a novel congestion control scheme suitable for sparse-mode routing regions, and show that RPLM works efficiently in regions using sparse mode routing protocols. RPLM uses per-RP packet loss rate instead of the overall one to detect congestion on each route, and can react to congestion quickly by dropping the highest layer on the congested route. In addition, RPLM simultaneously drops all the layers those are useless in quality's improvement to prevent bandwidth waste.

Telepresentations will be popular in the future of ubiquitous digital media. To realize a telepresentation easily over the Internet, we design a communication protocol to control a remote material (digital media) used in a telepresentation. We describe our proposed protocol; RMOP (Remote Material Operation Protocol) in this paper. This protocol specifies commands for material operations such as synchronization of slides, drawing, and pointing. Since this protocol just specifies the common formats through IP networks independent of special functions of presentation tools, it can be applied to various presentation tools. To design the protocol, we consider the trade-off between reliability of IP multicast and practical availability in the actual Internet. We adopt the reliable multicast mechanism to improve reliability but not to lose practicality in the protocol. Also, we describe an implementation of our prototype system using RMOP for a telepresentation. Then we show some evaluations such as the protocol overhead and comparisons with the other existing systems. Last, we show a case study of a telepresentation over the Internet using our system.

In order to maintain the diversity of structures in the population and prevent premature convergence, I have developed a new genetic algorithm called DCGA. In the experiments on many standard benchmark problems, DCGA showed good performances, whereas with harder problems, in some cases, the phenomena were observed that the search was stagnated at a local optimum despite that the diversity of the population is maintained. In this paper, I propose methods for escaping such phenomena and improving the performance by reinitializing the population, that is, a method called each-structure-based reinitializing method with a deterministic structure diverging procedure as a method for producing new structures and an adaptive improvement probability bound as a search termination criterion. The results of experiments demonstrate that DCGA becomes robust in harder problems by employing these proposed methods.

In this paper, genetic algorithms is employed to determine the shape of a conducting cylinder buried in a half-space. Assume that a conducting cylinder of unknown shape is buried in one half-space and scatters the field incident from another half-space where the scattered filed is measured. Based on the boundary condition and the measured scattered field, a set of nonlinear integral equations is derived and the imaging problem is reformulated into an optimization problem. The genetic algorithm is then employed to find out the nearly global extreme solution of the object function such that the shape of the conducting scatterer can be suitably reconstructed. In our study, even when the initial guess is far away from the exact one, the genetic algorithm can avoid the local extremes and converge to a reasonably good solution. In such cases, the gradient-based methods often get stuck in local extremes. Numerical results are presented and good reconstruction is obtained both with and without the additive Gaussian noise.

We have developed an airport monitoring system that traces the movement of airplanes in the parking areas of airports. For this system, we have developed an image processing method, a two-stage normalized background subtraction method that can detect moving objects and determine the sizes of those objects under illumination changes, which are inevitable for outdoor monitoring systems. The two-stage method consists of local and global normalized subtraction. With this method, airplanes can be detected in a stable manner under illumination changes, which means that the brightness in each pixel is not constant due to changes in atmospheric phenomena, such as the shadows of clouds. And false detection problems due to the presence of boarding bridges are solved by utilizing differences in motion between an airplane and the boarding bridge, such as the direction of movement. We have evaluated this method using 140 hours of video images that contain scenes with a variety of conditions, such as the presence of cloud shadows, the turning on and off of lights, night, rainfall and so on. As a result, we have confirmed a 95% level of accuracy of airplane detection. This system is now in operation at Kansai International Airport and is performing most satisfactorily.

As a new category of the optical application system integrated with electronics, the opto-electronic information system (OEIS) is presented. Combination of the different characteristic technologies, optics and electronics, is expected to be useful for development of an effective and high-performance information systems. The properties of the optical technologies such as parallelism, high-speed, and large information capacity can be utilized for information processing. Even if some of the functions are emulated by the electronics, the optics give more effective solutions. To implement the OEIS, various optoelectronic devices and fabrication technologies are available including vertical cavity surface emitting lasers and spatial light modulators. There are two forms of system construction for the OEIS: an application of optics to an electronic-based system and the reversed form. As examples of the OEIS, the parallel matching architecture (PMA) and the thin observation module by bound optics (TOMBO) are presented. The PMA is an architecture of parallel computing system specified for global processing. This architecture shows a typical strategy to utilize the optical interconnection capability with flexibility of the electronic technology. The TOMBO presents possibility of morphological conversion using combination of the optical and electronic technologies. A compound-eye imaging system and post digital processing enable us to realize a very thin image capturing system. The issues related on development of the OEIS are proper usage of optics, effective fusion of the optical and electronic technologies, methodologies for system construction, fabrication supporting tools, and development of attractive demonstrators other than communication and interconnection fields.

A digital noncoherent demodulation scheme is presented for reception of Gaussian frequency shift keying (GFSK) signals with small modulation index. The proposed differential demodulator utilizes oversampled signals to estimate the symbol timing and to compensate the frequency offset. The performance of the proposed receiver is evaluated in terms of the bit-error rate (BER). Numerical results show that the proposed demodulator provides performance comparable to that of conventional baseband differential demodulator, while significantly reducing the implementation complexity suitable for single chip integration with direct conversion radio frequency module. Finally the performance of the proposed receiver is improved by adding a simple decision feedback module.

This paper presents a novel approach to water pollution detection from remotely sensed low-platform mounted visible band camera images. We examine the feasibility of unsupervised segmentation for slick (oily spills on the water surface) region labelling. Adaptive and non adaptive filtering is combined with density modeling of the obtained textural features. A particular effort is concentrated on the textural feature extraction from raw intensity images using filter banks and adaptive feature extraction from the obtained output coefficients. Segmentation in the extracted feature space is achieved using Gaussian mixture models (GMM).