Power supply rejection ratio (PSRR) characteristics of a switched capacitor filter (SCF) is improved when using an equal level diagram design of a leapfrog type filter. By using this design method, it is shown that PSRR of a SCF measured is improved about 20 dB.

We present a novel kind of integrate-and-fire circuit (IFC) with two periodic inputs: a pulse-train stimulation input and a base input. We clarify that the system state is quantized by the pulse-train stimulation input. Then the system dynamics is described by a return map with quantized state (Qmap). By changing the shape of the base input, various Qmaps can be obtained. The Qmap exhibits co-existence state of various super-stable periodic orbits, and the IFC outputs one of corresponding super-stable periodic pulse-trains depending on the initial state. For a typical case, we clarify the number of co-existing periodic pulse-trains theoretically for the stimulation frequencies. Constructing a simple test circuit, typical phenomena can be verified in the laboratory.

Near-optimality of subcodes of the cyclic Hamming codes is demonstrated on the binary additive channel whose noise process is the two-state homogeneous Markov chain, which is a model of bursty communication channels.

A coded modulation scheme based on a low density parity check (LDPC) code is presented. A modified sum-product algorithm suitable for the LDPC-coded modulation scheme is also devised. Several simulation results show the excellent decoding performance of the proposed coding scheme. For example, an LDPC-coded 8PSK scheme of block length 3976 symbols achieves the symbol error probability 10-5 at only 1.2 dB away from the Shannon limit of the channel.

Although research into multimodal interfaces has been around for a long time, we believe that some basic issues have not been studied yet, e.g. the choice of modalities and their combinations is usually made without any quantitative evaluation. This study seeks to identify the best combinations of modalities through usability testing. How do users choose different interaction modes when they work on a particular application? Two experimental evaluations were conducted to compare interaction modes on a CAD system and a map system respectively. For the CAD system, the results show that, in terms of total manipulation time (drawing and modification time) and subjective preferences, the "pen + speech + mouse" combination was the best of the seven interaction modes tested. On the map system, the results show that the "pen + speech" combination mode is the best of fourteen interaction modes tested. The experiments also provide information on how users adapt to each interaction mode and the ease with which they are able to use these modes.

The heterogeneous autonomous decentralized system technology offers a way to integrate different types of context-related autonomous decentralized (sub) systems into a coherent system. The aim of this research is to model and evaluate the communication capacity among the subsystems connected by communication gateways of a heterogeneous autonomous decentralized system. Failures of subsystems and communication gateways in the system are taken into account. We use graphs to represent the topologies of heterogeneous autonomous decentralized systems and use the residual connectedness reliability (RCR) to characterize the communication capacity among its subsystems connected by its gateways. This model enables us to share research results obtained in residual connectedness reliability study in graph theory. Not to our surprise, we learnt soon that computing RCR of general graphs is NP-hard. But to our surprise, there exist no efficient approximation algorithms that can give a good estimation of RCR for an arbitrary graph when both vertices and edges may fail. We proposed in this paper a simulation scheme that gave us good results for small to large graphs but failed for very large graphs. Then we applied a theoretical bounding approach. We obtained expressions for upper and lower bounds of RCR for arbitrary graphs. Both upper and lower bound expressions can be computed in polynomial time. We applied these expressions to several typical graphs and showed that the differences between the upper and lower bounds tend to zero as the sizes of graphs tend to infinite. The contributions of this research are twofold, we find an efficient way to model and evaluate the communication capacity of heterogeneous autonomous decentralized systems; we contribute an efficient algorithm to estimate RCR in general graph theory.

Today, people want highly-customized products to satisfy their individual requirements. However traditional manufacturing technology is not geared towards high-mix, low-volume manufacturing. Holonic Manufacturing Systems (HMS) is a new paradigm to bridge this divide. HMS offers enterprises a new breed of technology to continuously reconfigure themselves to manufacture a larger variety of products in smaller batch sizes, and do this profitably. A suitable metaphor for implementing the holonic manufacturing system is the emerging IEC function block architecture. The paper describes how function blocks can be used to build such holonic manufacturing systems. We also illustrate the merits of our approach through a real-world engine assembly line being developed by DaimlerChrysler.

The software rejuvenation is one of the most effective preventive maintenance technique for operational software systems with high assurance requirement. In this paper, we propose the workload-based software rejuvenation scheme for a server type of software system, and develop stochastic models to determine the optimal software rejuvenation schedules for some dependability measures. In numerical examples, we evaluate quantitatively the performance of workload-based software rejuvenation scheme and compare it with the time-based rejuvenation scheme.

The current-voltage characteristics of InP-based HBTs with InAlAs-InP composite emitters have been measured as a function of the thickness of the InP layer in the emitter. As the thickness varies, characteristics such as the gain and the ideality factor vary qualitatively as expected from the changes in position of the InAlAs barrier in the emitter. Quantitatively, however, the variations indicate that the interfaces vary systematically with InP thickness, becoming more abrupt for emitters with thicker InP layers.

Rectangular/circular-to-radial waveguide tra-nsformers through a ring slot have been proposed for the feeder of radial line slot antennas (RLSAs) in millimeter wave application. Rotating electric modes are excited by a set of ring slot and perturbation dog bone slot. Basic operation is observed in 12 GHz band. Concentric array radial line slot antennas fed by these transformers are fabricated and the antenna gain of 26.9 dBi with the efficiency more than 60% is measured. The applicability for millimeter wave is verified for 38 GHz band RLSA fed by the rectangular waveguide. The measured gain of the antenna is 22.5 dBi with the efficiency of 53% with the diameter of 46mm and 26.4 dBi with 61% with the diameter of 66mm.

We fabricated 50-nm-gate InAlAs/InGaAs high electron mobility transistors (HEMTs) lattice-matched to InP substrates by using a conventional process under low temperatures, below 300C, to prevent fluorine contamination and suppress possible diffusion of the Si-δ-doped sheet in the electron-supply layer, and measured the DC and RF performance of the transistors. The DC measurement showed that the maximum transconductance gm of a 50-nm-gate HEMT is about 0.91 S/mm. The cutoff frequency fT of our 50-nm-gate HEMT is 362 GHz, which is much higher than the values reported for previous 50-nm-gate lattice-matched HEMTs. The excellent RF performance of our HEMTs results from a shortening of the lateral extended range of charge control by the drain field, and this may have been achieved because the low-temperature fabrication process suppressed degradation of epitaxial structure.

The reduction of the drain current for InGaAs/AlGaAs pseudomorphic high electron mobility transistors (PHEMTs) has been observed due to the RIE-damage induced under the gate region. However, it has been found that the drain current can be recovered after the gate-drain reverse current stress even at room temperature. The recovery rate of the drain current strongly depends on the gate-drain reverse current density. The activation energy of the recovery rate has been confirmed to decrease from 0.531 eV to 0.119 eV under the gate-drain reverse current stress. This phenomenon can be understood as a recombination enhanced defect reaction of holes generated by the avalanche breakdown. The non-radiative recombination of holes at the defect level is believed to enhance the recovery of the RIE-damage.

In the theory of average-case NP-completeness, Levin introduced the polynomial domination and Gurevich did the average polynomial domination. Ben-David et al. proved that if P-samp (the class of polynomial-time samplable distributions) is polynomially dominated by P-comp (the class of polynomial-time computable distributions) then there exists no strong one-way function. This result will be strengthened by relaxing the assumption from the polynomial domination to the average polynomial domination. Our results also include incompleteness for average polynomial-time one-one reducibility from (NP,P-samp) to (NP,P-comp). To derive these and other related results, a prefix-search algorithm presented by Ben-David et al. will be modified to survive the average polynomial domination.

The temperature compensation technique of InGaP/GaAs power heterojunction bipolar transistor (HBT) with novel bias circuit using Schottky diodes has been developed. The variation in the quiescent current to the temperature is less than 30% from -30C to 90C by this technique, where that is about 125% by the conventional bias circuit. The RF performance of the power HBT MMIC with novel bias circuit shows flat temperature characteristics enough to be used for power application of wireless communications.

An efficient numerical source model is proposed to calculate the induced current densities in the human body from low-frequency inhomogeneous magnetic fields emitted by electronic devices. Due to the complex geometrical structure of electronic devices (e.g. household appliances, power tools), an efficient equivalent source model based on magnetic elementary dipoles is used instead of the real device or the approximated source model (current loop). Subsequently, the validity of the method proposed is confirmed.

Generally, the wavelet transform is applied for watermarking, where a whole image is transformed to the frequency domain. However, many schemes which adopt the wavelet transform are weak for StirMark attack designed to affect locally such as rotation, extension, reduction, etc. In this paper, we propose a new scheme which applies the wavelet transform locally and has a tolerance for StirMark attack. How to maintain the quality of the watermarked image is also shown.

We describe a new system for high-speed wireless access systems between base stations and mobile terminals. In the proposed system, the base station has an array antenna and tracks mobile terminals by using a new tracking algorithm. A radio-on-fiber technique is used to simplify and miniaturize the components of the base station. Estimating the direction-of-arrival of the signals from a mobile terminal is important in implementing the proposed system. We propose a new tracking algorithm that uses directions-of-arrival, angular velocities of mobile terminals, and scatter modeling in multipath communications channels to improve the tracking performance. We also developed experimental equipment to demonstrate the feasibility of the proposed millimeter-wave broadband wireless access system and the efficiency of the tracking algorithm using an array antenna system. In this paper, we describe our system and present a new approach for tracking mobile terminals, which is the key feature of the system. We also discuss our simulation and experimental results.

This paper presents a new adaptive blind separation of sources (BSS) method for linear and non-linear mixtures. The sources are assumed to be statistically independent with non-uniform and symmetrical PDF. The algorithm is based on both simulated annealing and density estimation methods using a neural network. Considering the properties of the vectorial spaces of sources and mixtures, and using some linearization in the mixture space, the new method is derived. Finally, the main characteristics of the method are simplicity and the fast convergence experimentally validated by the separation of many kinds of signals, such as speech or biomedical data.

Surface passivation process of GaN utilizing electron-cyclotron-resonance (ECR) excited plasma has been characterized and optimized for realization of stable operation in GaN-based high-power/high-frequancy electronic devices. From XPS analysis, the NH4OH treatment as well as the ECR-N2 and ECR-H2 plasma treatments were found to be effective in removing natural oxide and contaminants from the GaN surface. The SiNx/GaN structure prepared by the ECR excited plasma chemical vapor deposition (ECR-CVD) process showed better C-V behavior compared to the SiO2/GaN structure. Surface treatment process using the ECR plasma improved interface properties and achieved the Dit value of 21011 cm-2 eV-1 or less. An estimate of the valence band offset by XPS showed that the present SiNx/n-GaN structure has a type-I band lineup, suitable for the surface passivation of GaN-based devices. No pronounced stress remained at the SiNx/GaN interface, which was confirmed by Raman spectroscopy.

The capacity of quantum channel with product input states was formulated by the quantum coding theorem. However, whether entangled input states can enhance the quantum channel is still open. It turns out that this problem is reduced to a special case of the more general problem whether the capacity of product quantum channel exhibits additivity. In the present study, we apply one of the quantum Arimoto-Blahut type algorithms to the latter problem. The results suggest that the additivity of product quantum channel capacity always holds and that entangled input states cannot enhance the quantum channel capacity.