Introducing a mathematical model of image noise, we formalize the problem of fitting a conic to point data as statistical estimation. It is shown that the reliability of the fitted conic can be evaluated quantitatively in the form of the covariance tensor. We present a numerical scheme called renormalization for computing an optimal fit and at the same time evaluating its reliability. We also present a scheme for visualizing the reliability of the fit by means of the primary deviation pair. Our method is illustrated by showing simulations and real-image examples.

We present a minimal lattice realization of MIMO linear discrete-time systems which interpolate the desired Markov and covariance parameters. The minimal lattice realization is derived via a recursive construction algorithm based on the state space description and it parametrizes all the interpolants.

This paper first presents the performance analysis of the NACF algorithm. The results show the possibility of the degradation in the convergence speed. To improve the convergence speed, the bias term is introduced into the NACF algorithm and its efficiency is investigated through the computer simulations.

This paper presents a binary neural network approach for link activation problems in multihop radio networks. The goal of the NP-complete problems is to find a conflict-free link activation schedule with the minimum number of time slots for specified communication requirements. The neural network is composed of NM binary neurons for scheduling N links in M time slots. The energy functions and the motion equations are newly defined with heuristic methods. The simulation results through 14 instances with up to 419 links show that the neural network not only surpasses the best existing neural network in terms of the convergence rate and the computation time, but also can solve large scale instances within a constant number of iteration steps.

Physical optics(PO) and the aperture field integration method (AFIM) give accurate and similar field patterns near the first few sidelobes of reflector antennas. It is widely accepted that the use of AFIM is restricted to norrower angles than PO. In this paper, uniform equivalent edge currents of PO and AFIM are compared analytically and their equivalence in high frequency in discussed. It is asymptotically verified that the patterns by AFIM are almost identical to PO fields in the full 360angular region, provided that AFIM uses the equivalent surface currents consisting of two components, that is, the geometrical optics(GO) reflected fields from the reflector and the incident fields from the feed source, the latter of which are often neglected. Slightly weaker equivalence is predicted for cross polarization patterns. Numerical comparison of PO and AFIM confirms all these results, the equivalence holds not only for large but also for a very small refiector of the order of one wavelength diameter.

This paper introduces a new method to recover 3-D road plane from its 2-D monocular perspective image. The research is aimed at the reconstruction of depth information from the 2-D visual input in road following and navigation. Planar road model is considered and the road-centered coordinate system which forms slope and turn angles with camera-centered coordinate system is used to describe boundary points on road plane. We develop approaches to find matching points of boundaries of road and to obtain angular parameters thereafter. A way of finding depth of matching points from the perspective images and angular parameters together is proposed. Therefore the 3-D road reconstruction can be replicated without introducing any parameters of inverse perspective.

This paper presents a new method for designing IIR Nyquist filters with zero intersymbol interference. It is shown that IIR Nyquist filters with zero intersymbol interference have some constraints on frequency response, i.e., both magnitude and phase error in passband are dependent on stopband error. Therefore, the frequency response is required to optimize only in stopband. The proposed procedure is based on the formulation of an eigenvalue problem by using Remez multiple exchange algorithm in stopband. Then, the filter coefficients can be computed by solving the eigenvalue problem, and the optimal solution with equiripple stopband response is easily obtained by applying an iteration procedure. The proposed procedure is more computationally efficient than the conventional methods.

This paper proposes a three-dimensional (3-D) band-limiting technique for a conversion of Simple Cubic Sampling into Body-Centered Cubic Sampling. Based on spectral distribution of the original signal, the proposed method adaptively varies the passband shape of a band-limiting filter in order to preserve informations of the original picture. By applying this method to 3-D moving pictures, we can preserve resolution on each axis without introducing heavy aliasing error and avoid degradation of picture quality such as ringing in still pictures or blurring in moving pictures. The examples given in this paper demonstrate these advantages.

This paper describes a trial of evaluating the proper characteristics of multiple sound insulatain systems from their output responses contaminated by unknown background noises. The unknown parameters of sound insulation systems are first estimated on the basis of hte linear time series on an intensity scale, describing functionally the input-output relation of the systems. Then, their output probability distributions are predicted when an arbitrary input noise passes through these insulation systems.

In retrieving information from databases widely distributed in a network, the first thing to do is to search and find the database where the required information is stored. We call this the information searches rather than the retrievals. In this paper, we present a search and retrieval method for multimedia information, especially images. First, we formalize the general elements of information search and introduce a new search concept based on entropy reduction. Next, we discuss recent new technologies for image retrieval and introduce a new image retrieval system called VideoReality. Third, we present several methods of searching in the network- for example, the Internet robot TITAN, and a new search method for images distributed in the network that is based on the hierarchical structure of image retrieval. Finally, we discuss the network control and design concepts appropriate for information search and retrival.

This paper describes the effects of operating temperature on delay time in a 1-V multi-threshold CMOS(MTCMOS) circuit, Delay-time analysis including the temperature factor shows that the delay-time variation of the CMOS circuit becomes amall for low-voltage operation and the variation is mainly determined by the threshold voltage and its variation-rate with temperature. As a design method of a MTCMOS circuit with both high-threshold and low-threshold MOSFETs, optimization of the low-threshold voltage at which the delay-time of the circuit is independent of operating temperature is described in detail. The validity of the design method is confirmed by the evaluation of a gate-chain TEG and a 1-V 12 K-gate digital-filter LSI fabricated with o.5-µm MTCMOS technology.

The effect of silicone vapour concentration on the contact failure was examined by using micro relays and motor brush-slip ring(commutator) contacts, [(CH3) 2SiO]4: D4 was used as a vapour source of silicone contamination. Because the influence of the vapour of the silicone on the contact surface can not be avoided at all times due to its gradual evaporation in the atmosphere. The contact failure caused by the silicone vapour was confirmed as formation of SiO2 on the contact surfaceby analysis of EPMA and XPS. A minimum limiting concentration level which does not affect contact reliability was found. This limiting level was 10 ppm(O.13mg/l). Validity of the limiting level was confirmed by the relationships among concentration, temperature, SiO2 film thickness and contact resistance. Furthermore, the effect of the degree of silicone polymerization on the limiting concentration was derived by an empirical formula. This silicone is found to have polymerization degree larger than D7: n=7. These results were confirmed by the contact failure data due to the silicone contamination.

This paper discusses a massively parallel interconnection scheme for multithreaded architecture and introduces a new class of direct interconnection networks called the hierarchical Multidimensional Directed Cycles Ensemble (hMDCE). Its suitability for massively parallel systems is discussed. The network is evolved from the Multidimensional Directed Cycles Ensemble (MDCE) network, where each node is substituted by lower-level sub-networks. The new network addresses some serious problems caused by the increasing scale of parallel systems, such as longer latency, limited throughput and high implementation cost. This paper first introduces the MDCE network and then presents and examines in detail the hierarchical MDCE network. Bisection bandwidth of hMDCE is considerably reduced from its ancestor MDCE and the network performs significantly higher throughput and lower latency under some practical implementation constraints. The gate count and delay time of the compiled circuit for the routing function are insignificant. These results reveal that the hMDCE network is an important candidate for massively parallel systems interconnection.

The objective of this paper is to find a parametric representation for the vocal-tract log-area function that is directly and simply related to basic acoustic characteristics of the human vocal-tract. The importance of this representation is associated with the solution of the articulatory-to-acoustic inverse problem, where a simple mapping from the articulatory space onto the acoustic space can be very useful. The method is as follows: Firstly, given a corpus of log-area functions, a parametric model is derived following a factor analysis technique. After that, the articulatory space, defined by the parametric model, is filled with approximately uniformly distributed points, and the corresponding first three formant frequencies are calculated. These formants define an acoustic space onto which the articulatory space maps. In the next step, an independent component analysis technique is used to determine acoustic and articulatory coordinate systems whose components are as independent as possible. Finally, using singular value decomposition, acoustic and articulatory coordinate systems are rotated so that each of the first three components of the articulatory space has major influence on one, and only one, component of the acoustic space. An example showing how the proposed model can be applied to the solution of the articulatory-to-acoustic inverse problem is given at the end of the paper.

This paper presents the system issues involved with the transmission of pre-encoded VBR MPEG video using CBR service. Conventional wisdom suggests that lossless delivery of VBR video using CBR service requires bandwidth to be reserved at the peak rate resulting in low bandwidth utilization. We calculate the minimum rate at which bandwidth must be reserved on a network in order to provide continuous playback of an MPEG encoded video bitstream. Simulation results using the frame size traces from several pre-encoded MPEG bitstreams and several buffer sizes demonstrate that this minimum reservation rateis much lower than the peak rate when a relatively small playback buffer size is used, resulting in much higher bandwidth utilization. Procedures for performing connection setup and lossless realtime video playback between the video server and the client are outlined. Methods for incorporating VCR-like features such as pauseandfast forward/reversefor Video-on-Demand (VoD) applications are presented.

In this paper, we present an exact analysis and an efficient matrix-analytic procedure to numerically evaluate the performance of cellular mobile networks with hand-off. In high-capacity micro-cell cellular radio communication networks, a cell boundary crossed by moving users can generate many hand-off attempts. This paper considers such a priority scheme that some channels and buffers are reserved for hand-off calls to reduce the forced termination of calls in progress. Performance characteristics we obtained include blocking probability, channel utilization, average queue length and average waiting time for hand-off calls. Using the matrix-analytic solution for the stationary state probability distribution, we also derive the probability distribution of the waiting time of a hand-off call. Numerical results show how priority can be provided to hand-off calls according to the number of reserved channels and buffer size. They also clarify the effect of the hand-off priority scheme on the standard deviation of waiting time of a hand-off call.

String grammars (languages) have been extensively studied from 60's. On the other hand, the transformational grammar, proposed by N. Chomsky, contains the transformation from the set of derivation trees of context-free language to the surface set. And the grammar regarded a tree as an input sentence to some transducer. After that from latter half of 60's, the studies of acceptors, transducers, and so on, whose input is a tree, have been studied extensively. And recently some pushdown tree automata were introduced, and their fundamental properties and some other various properties were investigated [11]-[17]. Furthermore, a top-down pushdown tree transducer (t-PDTT for short), which is an extension of a top-down pushdown automaton (t-PDTA for short), was introduced and its fundamental properties were investigated [19]. In this paper, we define the various subclasses of context-free tree grammar (CFTG for short) by the combination of variables contained in the rules. Furthermore, we consider a monadic case of CFTG which is a special case of CFTG. Based on these definitions, we classify the subclasses of CFTG, and we investigate some inclusion properties of subclasses of CFTL (where CFTL indicates the class of context-free tree languages).

In the usual optical flow detection, the gradient constraint, which expresses the relationship between the gradient of the image intensity and its motion, is combined with the least-squares criterion. This criterion means assuming that only the time derivative of the image intensity contains noise. In this paper, we assume that all image derivatives contain noise and derive a new optical flow detection technique. Since this method requires the knowledge about the covariance matrix of the noise, we also discuss a method for its estimation. Our experiments show that the proposed method can compute optical flow more accurately than the conventional method.

This paper proposes Channel Reservation for Ahead Cells (CRAC)" scheme for street micro-cellular systems. The scheme enables mobiles to reserve the same channel over several cells at once. This paper analyzes both CRAC and FCA (Fixed Channel Assignment) in a ring-shaped service area where high speed mobiles and low speed mobiles move. In the analysis, the priority control which prioritizes hand-off calls and reservation calls over new calls over new calls is also taken into account. Obtained results include the blocking rate, the forced call termination rate, the average number of channel changings and the system utilization. From numerical results, CRAC is found to perform better than FCA with regard to the average number of channel changings and the forced call termination rate.

In this paper, we propose an analytic model using a semi-markov process for parallel computers which provides hardware support for a cache coherence mechanism. The model proposed here, the Semi-markov Memory and Cache coherence Interference model, can be used for the performance prediction of cache coherence based parallel computers since it can be easily applied to descriptions of the waiting states due to network contention or memory interference of both normal data accesses and cache coherence requests. Conventional analytic models using stochastic processes to describe parallel computers have the problem of numerical explosion in the number of states necessary as the system size increases even for simple parallel computers without cache coherence mechanisms. The number of states required by constructing our proposing analytic model, however, does not depend on the system size but only on the kind of cache coherence protocol. For example, the number of states for the Synapse cache coherence protocol is only 20, as is described in this paper. Using the proposed analytic model, we investigate several comparative experiments with widely known simulation results. We found that there is only a 7.08% difference between the simulation and our analytic model, while our analytic model can predict the performance of a 1,024 processor system in the order of microseconds.