The robust statistics has recently been adopted by the computer vision community. Various robust approaches in the computer vision research have been proposed in the last decade for analyzing the image motion from the image sequence. Because of the frequent violation of the Gaussian assumption of the noise and the motion discontinuities due to multiple motions, the motion estimates based on the straightforward approaches such as the least squares estimator and the regularization often produces unsatisfactory result. Robust estimation is a promising approach to deal with these problems because it recovers the intrinsic characteristics of the original data with the reduced sensitivity to the contamination. Several previous works exist and report some isolated results, but there has been no comprehensive analysis. In this paper robust approaches to the optical flow estimation based on the maximum likelihood estimators are proposed. To evaluate the performance of the M-estimators for estimating the optical flow, comparative studies are conducted for every possible combinations of the parameters of three types of M-estimators, two types of residuals, two methods of scale estimate, and two types of starting values. Comparative studies on synthetic data show the superiority of the M-estimator of redescending ψ-function using the starting value of least absolute residuals estimator using Huber scale iteration, in comparison with the other M-estimators and least squares estimator. Experimental results from the real image experiments also confirm that the proposed combinations of the M-estimators handle the contaminated data effectively and produce the better estimates than the least squares estimator or the least absolute residuals estimator.

Hot-carrier degradation of voltage controlled oscillator (VCO) was investigated by a reliability simulator known as BERT. The appropriate monitor of VCO frequency degradation shifts from the saturated drain current of an N MOSFET to linear drain current with an increase in VCO input voltage. The degradation of the VCO drastically increases with a small reduction in initial oscillation frequency. These results imply the need for an appropriate reliability margin around the standard operating point as well as a performance margin, which cannot be achieved by using conventional drain current monitors.

Here we report on a fabrication and a millimeter-wave performance of reliable and reproducible high-Tc superconducting (HTS) Josephson junctions on MgO substrates using a focused Ga ion beam (FIB). The junction normal resistance Rn can be controlled by making the junction in a series. The Rn depends on space between each junction in the series structure. A mechanism of the junction is proposed by measuring cross-sectional transmission electron microscopy (TEM) images and their X-ray spectra of Ga, Y, Ba, Cu, Mg and O. The junctions with more than 1 µm spaces, and flat and lateral structure are independent each other for the crystallization process. We observe the HTS mixer-antenna performance as fundamental/harmonic mixers in the wide frequency range up to 100 GHz.

A high-Tc superconducting filter of the planar structure is proposed for handling higher power signals and for miniaturizing the filter configuration. The filter is designed with a single disk-resonator shared by two degenerate modes to operate as a two-stage bandpass filter. Thereby the proposed filter is expected to possess high power handling capability as a conventional filter with two resonator disks does while the filter configuration is about a half in area compared to the conventional one. The Tchebyscheff type filter with 5.1 GHz center frequency and 2% relative bandwidth was fabricated using a high-Tc superconducting thin film. The passband insertion loss, Lo, was approximately 0.8 dB at 77 K. The low loss performance due to the superconductivity was observed at incident signal levels up to 41.2 dBm (around 15 W) at 20 K, which is limited by the power devices in the measurement setup. In addition, good linearity in the filter responses was confirmed by observing the intermodulation distortion with the two-tone method, which indirectly shows a stable operation with higher power incident signals.

We have developed a strato-mesospheric ozone monitoring system with a low noise SIS mixer, which receives 110.836 GHz millimeter-wave emission due to the rotational transition of ozone molecules (J=61,560,6). The system is completely standalone. We derived the altitude profile of ozone density between 25 km and 80 km from the observed spectrum. The receiver noise temperature was as low as 17 K (DSB), so that the altitude profile could be obtained every 3-10 minutes. The monitoring system can operate continuously over one year without any maintenance work, because it utilizes a 4 K closed cycle helium refrigerator and reliable Nb/AIOx/Nb SIS junctions. We used two acousto-optical spectrometers (AOSs) as real-time spectrometers because of their high resolution and simple construction. In an up-to-date system, one AOS would have a band-width of 65 MHz and the other, a band-width of 250 MHz with resolutions of 40 kHz and 250 kHz, respectively. A computer controls the entire system and is also used to analyze measured data. In this paper, we present the principles of system operation, the latest performance and the construction of the system, and some observed data.

In this paper, oscillation modes produced in a Josephson circuit and its application to digital systems are described. The analysis is performed using an analog simulator to model the Josephson junction, in addition to computer simulation. The experimental results concerning oscillation modes agree well with the simulation results. The main advantage of the mapping for the oscillation modes is that it allows understanding of the relationships among oscillation modes and circuit parameters at first sight. In addition, a novel application of nonlinear oscillation to digital systems is described.

The 4th harmonics of a Nd:YAG laser beam (266 nm) is applied to fabricate highly oriented Y1Ba2Cu3O7-δ -SrTiO3-Y1Ba2Cu3O7-δ multilayer structures. It has been shown that the emission temperature of a film surface will change during deposition, depending on deposition conditions, even though the heater temperature is constant. The change of substrate temperature is strongly correlated to film characteristics such as critical temperature, c-axis length, and resistivity. The insitu monitoring of the substrate temperature is useful for obtaining high-quality Y1Ba2Cu3O7-δ films reproducibly. It is also shown that a SrTiO3 layer prevents oxygen restoration in a Y1Ba2Cu3O7-δ underlayer. The relationship between oxygen deficiency and the annealing conditions is studied.

In this paper, an efficient voice/data integrated access algorithm for future personal communication networks (PCNs) is proposed and analyzed based on an equilibrium point analysis (EPA) method. A practical wireless communication channel may be impaired by noise and multipath distortion, and thus corrupted real-time packets have to recompete immediately in order to be transmitted within the stringent delay constraint. Also, real-time traffic users have to transmit their packets irrespective of the amount of non real-time data messages so that heavy non real-time traffic does not degrade the quality of real-time traffic. In the proposed algorithm, request subslots are distributed in the beginning of every slot to reduce access delay of real-time traffic. Moreover, slots are assigned to real-time traffic first and the remaining idle slots are assigned later to non real-time traffic by using the scheme of contention separation. We analyze the throughput and delay characteristics of this system based on an EPA mothod, and validate their performances by simulations. This scheme can support different quality of services (QoSs) imposed by different services efficiently and show good quality of real-time traffic, especially voice packets, no matter how heavy non real-time traffic is.

We discuss the requirements, a model and protocol for the out-channel interaction for PCS in Intelligent Networks. As PCS can utilize the DSSI function (i.e. location update, authentication), it is reasonable to consider a model and protocol of the interaction for PCS as well as DSSI. To obtain the model/protocol, two types of interactions, call-related and call-unrelated, are considered. It is necessary to enhance the Basic Call State Model (BCSM) for the former, and to introduce a state model similar to BCSM for the latter, which represents association management and component exchange between a user and the network. The authentication function allocation for the dominant traffic, location update, is discussed based on the model and protocol, and this can co-exist with the proposed generic model and protocol.

ISM band has been approved for spread spectrum communication in radio LAN in Japan since December 1992. This frequency band extends from 2.474 GHz to 2.5 GHz with 26 MHz bandwide. In an indoor environment, the maximum observed delay spread is 100-200 ns in a room, it is too short to generate a selective fading, thus flat fading conditions are often observed. Serve as an alleviation, we propose a new system of multi-antenna in base station (BS) and single antenna in mobile station (MS). In this system, MS should have a simple structure for its small size and energy-saving.

Recently, considerable attention has been devoted to the combination of direct sequence-code division multiple access (DS-CDMA) and multi-carrier (MC) modulation for high bit rate indoor wireless systems. In this work we consider the downlink of a cellular MC DS-CDMA system. In particular, we evaluate the performance of some detection schemes considering typical indoor radio channels. Channel estimation techniques are investigated and an effective sub-channel estimation technique is proposed. Moreover, we compare the performance of two equalization techniques combined with two space diversity combining schemes. The results show that good performance can be obtained by a post-detection diversity selection scheme combined with a MMSE equalization technique; moreover, if a proper guard time is selected, performance is almost independent of the number of paths of the channel's impulse response. Results are given in terms of BER obtained by means of analytical computations and simulations.

This paper considers the evaluation of the acquisition performance for an access channel preamble based on the random access procedure of direct sequence code division multiple access (DS/CDMA) reverse link. The parallel acquisition technique that employs the single-dwell and multiple-dwell (double-dwell) detection schemes is investigated. The acquisition performance for two detection schemes is compared in terms of the acquisition probablity and the mean acquisition time. The parallel acquisition is done by a bank of N parallel I/Q noncoherent correlators. Expressions on the detection, false alarm, and miss probabilities of the single-dwell and multiple-dwell (double-dwell) detection schemes are derived for the multiple H1 cells and multipath Rayleigh fading channel. Comparing the single-dwell detection scheme with the multiple-dwell (double-dwell) detection scheme in the case of employing the parallel acquisition technique in the reverse link, the numerical results show that the single-dwell detection scheme provides a better performance.

This paper compares the performance of an indoor cellular system in terms of capacity and channel assignment delay for different Dynamic Channel Assignment (DCA) and Fixed Channel Assignment (FCA) schemes. We refer to specific group of DCAs, namely Channel Segregation and Reuse Partitioning (RP). Our main concern is to show that these DCA schemes offer better performance than FCA. Since the structure and floor layout of a building will have a major influence on the propagation and hence on the cell shape, a path loss simulator is developed for predicting the path loss which is used in evolving base station layouts. Computer simulation, based on Monte Carlo method, is carried out using the path loss values and the base station layouts. The results indicate that increased traffic capacity can be achieved with all DCAs in comparison with FCA. The highest capacity and a shorter channel assignment delay are delivered by Self-Organized Reuse Partitioning DCA scheme.

This paper presents a new blind identification method of nonminimum phase FIR systems and an adaptive blind equalization for PAM/QAM inputs without employing higher-order statistics. They are based on the observation that the absolute mean of a second-order white sequence can measure whether the sequence is higher-order white or not. The proposed methods are new alternatives to many higher-order statistics approaches. Some computer simulations show that the absolute mean is exactly estimated and the proposed methods can overcome the disadvantages of the higher-order statistics approaches.

Hybrid direct sequence/slow frequency hopping-time division duplex (DS/SFH-TDD) multiple access system has some good features of each system. However it has a problem of hit between multiple users. If the designed frequency hopping patterns are inadequate, the quality of the multiple access system is degraded due to the frequent hit. In this paper, we propose an adaptive hopping pattern control system which is able to avoid the multiple access interference of hit. The proposed system decreases the influence of hit and increases the user capacity in the cell. And this adaptive hopping pattern control is applied to both single-cell and multi-cell systems. By computer simulation to evaluate the performance of this system, we found that this system is effective in increasing the multiple access capability.

In this paper, we evaluate the bit error rate (BER) performance of a coordinate interleaved trellis coded QPSK with T-algorithm. We employ a coordinate interleaving which breaks up burst errors, caused by fading, more effectively than symbol interleaving. We employ a rate-1/2 convolutional codes and the performance is evaluated on Rayleigh fading channels in terms of bit error rate (BER) by analysis and computer simulation. We consider using of the code which having a long effective code length (ECL). For this reason, we employ a decoder based on T-algorithm instead of Viterbi algorithm to avoid the complexity in the decoding. As the results, we achieve satisfactory BER performance with a slight computation in the decoding algorithm and the finite interleaving size.

The advantages of the use of directional antennas for portable telephones are demonstrated. They contribute to (1) reduction of power absorption into a head, (2) reduction of multi-path interference, and (3) power saving and increase of a battery life time. This paper compares directional and omni-directional antennas existing near the head of operator, in terms of radiation patterns with a head and the power absorbed into a head. It is pointed out that radiation patterns with a head are more or less directive for both types of antennas, while the power absorbed into a head is much smaller for directional antennas.

This paper presents a configuration of circularly polarized annular-ring microstrip antenna (ARMSA) and its design method to obtain high gain and low axial ratio including the analysis of finite ground plane effect using G.T.D. for personal satellite communication use. The ARMSA excited at TM21 mode through co-planar branch-line hybrid coupler for circular polarization produces a conical pattern which has high gain in low elevation angle. The relation of gain and axial ratio versus the dielectric constant of substrate are shown and the existence of the dielectric constant which satisfies two requirements, that is, high gain and low axial ratio are clarified. For car-top application, experimental results in the L-band showed satisfactory characteristics for vehicle antenna.

For Nakagami-Rice fading environment which seems to become a principle propagation environment in the next generation wideband and high-capacity mobile systems such as personal communications, we have previously proposed an approximated evaluation scheme for wideband digital transmission characteristics such as errors due to intersymbol interference of multipath waves. We called the scheme 'Equivalent Transmission-Path (ETP) Model.' In this paper, through a discussion about more general equivalent propagation channel expressions, we clarify a theoretical foundation of the ETP model and extend the model to have an ability of expression of instantaneous fading condition varying with time. Also the appropriateness of the instantaneous expression is examined by a computer simulation analysis. Based on this model, statistics of link quality and service availability in Nakagami-Rice fading environments are discussed.

As the demand of wireless personal communications networks increases, detailed chracteristics of indoor radio propagation in UHF band are required. In this paper, multipath fading characteristics at 1 GHz in an indoor mobil (walking speed) channel are investigated. By using a computer-controlled antenna scanner, signal strength was measured at 1400 points with a quarter wavelength resolution, which forms a two-dimensional fading map. The fading characteristics were found to be mainly dominated by the signals through the LOS path and the reflected paths due to two side-walls and one front-wall. It is analytically shown that middle-scale (over three wavelengths) fading is caused by the reflection from the side-walls, and periodical small-scale (equal to or less than a wavelength) fading is caused by the reflection from the front-wall. A software simulator based on geometric optics was developed in order to predict the measured fades. A modified algorithm for the two-dimensional ray launching technique which removes the necessity of checking the "multiple-counted rays" is presented. Comparison between measurements and predictions shows good agreement highlighting the usefulness of the two-dimensional simulator as a tool for channel design.