The transistor action with negative differential resistance (NDR) of a nanometer-thick metal (CoSi2)/insulator (CaF2) resonant tunneling transistor is discussed for two transistor structures. These transistors are composed of metal-insulator (M-I) heterostructures with two metallic (CoSi2) quantum wells and three insulator (CaF2) barriers grown on an n-Si (lll) substrate. One of the two structures has the base terminal connected to one of the quantum wells next to the collector, and the other, to one next to the emitter. Although base resistance is high maybe due to the damage caused during the fabrication process, the two transistors show different characteristics, as expected theoretically. Transfer efficiency α (= IC/IE) close to unity was obtained at 77 K for electrons through the resonant levels in M-I heterostructures.

In this paper, a fault model for multiple-valued programmable logic arrays (MV-PLAs) is proposed and the equivalences of faults of MV-PLA's are discussed. In a supposed multiple-valued NOR/TSUM PLA model, it is shown that multiple-valued stuck-at faults, multiple-valued bridging faults, multiple-valued threshold shift faults and other some faults in a literal generator circuit are equivalent or subequivalent to a multiple crosspoint fault in the NOR plane or a multiple fault of weights in the TSUM plane. These results lead the fact that multiple-valued test vector set which indicates all multiple crosspoint fault and all multiple fault of weights also detects above equivalent or subequivalent faults in a MV-PLA.

The classical supervised learning algorithms for optimizing multi-layered feedforward neural networks, such at the original back-propagation algorithm, suffer from several weaknesses. First, they have the possibility of being trapped at local minima during learning, which may lead to failure in finding the global optimal solution. Second, the convergence rate is typically too slow even if the learning can be achieved. This paper introduces a new learning algorithm which employs a genetic-type search during the learning phase of back-propagation algorithm so that the above problems can be overcome. The basic idea is to evolve the network weights in a controlled manner so as to jump to the regions of smaller mean squared error whenever the back-propagation stops at a local minimum. By this, the local minima can always be escaped and a much faster learning with global optimal solution can be achieved. A mathematical framework on the weight evolution of the new algorithm in also presented in this paper, which gives a careful analysis on the requirements of weight evolution (or perturbation) during learning in order to achieve a better error performance in the weights between different hidden layers. Simulation results on three typical problems including XOR, 3-bit parity and the counting problem are described to illustrate the fast learning behaviour and the global search capability of the new algorithm in improving the performance of back-propagated network.

Kalman filter is an essential tool in signal processing, modern control and communications. The filter estimates the states of a given system from noisy measurements, using a mean-square error criterion. Although Kalman filter has been shown to be very versatile, it has always been computationally intensive since a great number of matrix computations must be performed at each iteration. Thus the exploitation of this technique in broadband real time applications is restricted. The solution to these limitations appears to be in VLSI (very large scale integration) architectures for the parallel processing of data, in the form of systolic architectures. Systolic arrays are networks of simple processing cells connected only to their nearest neighbors. Each cell consists of some simple logic and has a small amount of local memory. Overall data flows through the array are synchronously controlled by a single main clock pulse. In parallel with the development of Kalman filter, the square root covariance and the square root information methods have been studied in the past. These square root methods are reported to be more accurate, stable and efficient than the original algorithm presented by Kalman. However it is known that standard SRIF is less efficient than the other algorithms, simply because standard SRIF has additional matrix inversion computation and matrix multiplication which are difficult to implement in terms of speed and accuracy. To solve this problem, we use the modified Faddeeva algorithm in computing matrix inversion and matrix multiplication. The proposed algorithm avoids the direct matrix inversion computation and matrix multiplication, and performs these matrix manipulations by Gauss elimination. To evaluate the proposed method, we constructed an efficient systolic architecture for standard SRIF using the COMPASS design tools. Actual VLSI design and its simulation are done on the circuits of four type processors that perform Gauss elimination and the modified Givens rotation.

Exact analytical solutions for the steady-state transmission and reflection characteristics of a nonlinear Fabry-Perot resonator applicable to bistable optical devices are derived. The resonator consists of a Kerr-like nonlinear film sandwiched by reflection mirrors made of a quarter-wave dielectric stack. An equivalent mirrorless model has been introduced to facilitate the analysis. For both positive and negative nonlinear coefficients, the rigorous solutions have been simply expressed in terms of Jacobian elliptic functions.

This paper presents an approach for assembly plan generation from an assembly illustration. Previously, we have already proposed an approach for the assembly plan related information acquisition from an assembly illustration, in which auxiliary lines were taken as clues. However, some ambiguity remains in dynamic information such as assembly operations and their execution order. We have verified through experiments that the ambiguity could be made clear by referring to the feedback information from the completed assemblage after the assembly operations shown in the current illustration. But in fact, in an assembly illustration there are not only the figures of mechanical parts and the auxiliary lines for visualizing their assembly relations, but explanatory words and explanatory lines as well. Explanatory words can basically be classified into two categories: instructions on assembly operations and mechanical part names. The former explicitly describes dynamic information such as the details of assembly operations. The latter also implies dynamic information such as the function of a mechanical part. Explanatory lines are usually drawn for making clear the explanatory relations. Naturally we consider that to integrate the information from explanatory words with that already obtained through the extraction of auxiliary lines will probably enable us to generate an unambiguous assembly plan from the currently observing illustration.

In this paper, we extend two-image photometric stereo method to treat a concave polyhedron, and present an iterative algorithm to remove the influence of interreflections. By the method we can obtain the shape and reflectance of a concave polyhedron with perfectly diffuse (Lambertian) and unknown constant reflectance. Both simulation and experiment show the feasibility and accuracy of the method.

We can understand and recover a scene even from a picture or a line drawing. A number of methods have been developed for solving this problem. They have scarcely aimed to deal with scenes of multiple objects although they have ability to recognize three-dimensional shapes of every object. In this paper, challenging to solve this problem, we describe a method for deciding configurations of multiple objects. This method employs the assumption of coplanarity and the constraint of occlusion. The assumption of coplanarity generates the candidates of configurations of multiple objects and the constraint of occlusion prunes impossible configurations. By combining this method with a method of shape recovery for individual objects, we have implemented a system acquirig a three-dimensional information of scene including multiple objects from a monocular image.

This paper is concerned with the data compression and interpolation of multi-view image set. In this paper, we propose a novel disparity compensation scheme based on geometric relationship. We first investigate the geometric relationship between a point in the object space and its projection onto view images. Then, we propose the disparity compensation scheme which utilize the geometric constraints between view images. This scheme is used to compress the multi-view image into the structure of the triangular patches and the texture data on the surface of patches. This scheme not only compresses the multi-view image but also synthesize the view images from any viewpoints in the viewing zone. Also, this scheme is fast and have compatibility with 2-D interframe coding. Finally, we report the experiment, where two sets multi-view image were used as original images and the amount of data was reduced to 1/19 and 1/20 with SNR 34 dB and 20 dB, respectively.

Many methods, based on the concept of key-lock-pair have been proposed for access control in computer protection systems. However, the proposed methods still either lack of dynamic ability or need quite a lot of computation in performing requests of deleting users/files, inserting users/files, or updating access rights of users to files. In this paper we propose a two-key-lock-pair access control method that is based on the unique factorization theorem and a time stamp mechanism. Our method is dynamic and needs a minimum amount of computation in the sense that it only updates at most one key/lock for each access request, which has not been achieved before.

The stability of a terminated two-port network is investigated, and the stability conditions with only one inequality are obtained. Furthermore, the stability conditions with two inequalities, which are in the same form as those for the passive terminations known at the present time, are also obtained.

Optical WDM (Wavelength Division Multiplexing) technology is a method of exploiting the huge bandwidth of optical fibers. Local lightwave networks which use fixed wavelength transmitters and receivers can be built in a multihop fashion. In multihop local lightwave networks, packets arrive at their destination by hopping a number of intermediate nodes. The channel sharing schemes for multihop lightwave networks have been proposed for efficient channel utilization, but those schemes result in the degradation of network capacity and the user throughput. In this paper, we propose an improved WDM channel sharing scheme using the logically bidirectional perfect shuffle interconnection pattern, achieving smaller number of average hops for transmission and better channel utilization efficiency. Better channel utilization efficiency is obtained without much deteriorating the network capacity and the user throughput. TDMA (Time Division Multiple Access) protocol can be used to control the sharing of channels, and time delay and lost packet probability analysis based on TDMA is performed.

We developed a simple, practical, adaptive data compression algorithm of the LZ78 class. According to the Lempel-Ziv greedy parsing, a string boundary is not related to the statistical history modeled by finite-state sources. We have already reported an algorithm classifying data into subdictionaries (CSD), which uses multiple subdictionaries and conditions the current string by using the previous one to obtain a higher compression ratio. In this paper, we present a practical implementation of this method suitable for any kinds of data, and show that CSD is more efficient than the LZC which is the method used by the program compress available on UNIX systems. The CSD compression performance was about 10% better than that of LZC with the practical dictionary size, an 8k-entry dictionary when the test data was from the Calgary Compression Corpus. With hashing, the CSD processing speed became as fast as that of LZC, although the CSD algorithm was more complicated than LZC.

Dynamic programming based one dimensional-two dimensional adaptive pattern matching methods were investigated. In these methods, the reference pattern is represented as a sequence of directional vectors and the input pattern as two dimensional dot pattern. The input pattern needs no preskeletization or local feature analysis, and thus stroke order free top-down pattern matching is carried out. As the starting point, Rubber String Matching algorithm using fixed direction vectors was newly investigated. At latter stages, the reference pattern vectors were permitted some freedom in their directions to cope with abrupt aberrations in input pattern line segments, improving the flexibility of matching. Two cases were considered, allowing 45and approximately 20deviations from the vector directions. The 20version gave the best recognition score.

This paper presents a new approach to the recovery of 3-D structure from multiple pairs of images from different viewpoints. Searching for the corresponding points between images, which is common in stereopsis, is avoided. Extracted edges from input images are projected back into 3-D space, and their intersections are calculated directly. Many false intersections may appear, but if we have many pair images, true intersections are extracted by appropriate thresholding. Octree representation of the intersections enables this approach. We consider a way to treat adjacent edge piexels as a line segment rather than as individual points, which differs from previous works and leads to a new algorithm. Experimental results using both synthetic and actual images are also described.

We have made an exhaustive computation to establish that 33 comparisons never sort 13 items. The computation was carried out within 10 days by a workstation. Since merge insertion sort [Ford, et al. A tournament problem, Amer. Math. Monthly, vol. 66, (1959)] uses 34 comparisons for sorting 13 items, our result guarantees the optimality of the sorting procedure to sort 13 items as far as the number of comparisons is concerned. The problem has been open for nearly three decades since Mark Wells discovered that 30 comparisons are required to sort 12 items in 1965.

ACk is the class of problems solvable by an alternating Turing machine in space O(log n) and alternation depth O(logk n) [S. A. Cook, A taxonomy of problems with fast parallel algorithms, Inform. Contr. vol. 64]. We consider a game played by two persons: each player alternately moves a marker along an edge of a given digraph, and the first palyer who cannot move loses the game. It is shown that the problem to determine whether the first player can win the game on a digraph with n nodes exactly after logk n moves is complete for ACk nuder NC1 reducibility.

We studied the selective epitaxy of GaAs grown by a technique called pulsed-jet epitaxy. Pulsed-jet epitaxy is a kind of atomic layer epitaxy (ALE) based on low-pressure metalorganic vapor-phase epitaxy (MOVPE). We compared growth behavior and layers grown by ALE and MOVPE. During ALE we supplied trimethylgallium (TMGa) and arsine (AsH3) alternately; however, during MOVPE we supplied TMGa and AsH3 simultaneously. At a growth temperature of 500, we obtained a better growth selectivity using ALE than using MOVPE. The lateral thickness profile of the ALE-grown GaAs layer at the edge of SiO2 mask was uniform. In contrast, the MOVPE growth rate was enhanced near the mask edge. Using ALE, we selectively grew GaAs epilayers even at mask openings with submicron widths. Scanning electron microscopy revealed that the ALE selectively grown structures had an uniform thickness profile, though the facets surrounding the structures depended on the orientation of mask stripes. After MOVPE, however, the (001) surface of the deposited layer was not flat because of the additional lateral diffusion of the growth species from the gas phase and/or the mask surface and some crystal facets. The experimental results show that, using ALE, we can control the shape of selectively grown structures. Selective epitaxy by ALE is a promising technique for fabricating low-dimensional quantum effect devices.

We report the development of high-performance small-scale AlGaAs/GaAs collector-up heterojunction bipolar transistors (C-up HBT) with a carbon (C)-doped base layer. Oxygen-ion (O+) implantation is used to define their intrinsic emitter/base junctions and zinc (Zn)-diffusion is used to lower the resistivity of their O+-implanted extrinsic base layers. The highly resistive O+-implanted AlGaAs layer in the extrinsic emitter region sufficiently suppresses electron injection even under high-forward-bias conditions, allowing high collector current densities. The use of a C-doped base is especially effective for small-scale C-up HBT's because it suppresses the undesirable turn-on voltage shift caused by base dopant diffusion in the intrinsic area around the collector-mesa perimeter that occurs during the high-temperature Zn-diffusion process after implantation. Even in a small-scale trasistor with a 2 µm2 µm collector, a current gain of 15 is obtained. A microwave transistor with a 2 µm10 µm collector has a cutoff frequency fT of 68 GHz and a maximum oscillation frequency fmax of 102 GHz. A small-scale C-up HBT with a 2 µm2 µm collector shows a higher fmax of 110 GHz due to reduced base/collector capacitance CBC and its fmax remains above 100 GHz, even at a low collector current of 1 mA. The CBC of this device is estimated to be as low as 2.2 fF. Current gain dependence on collector size is also investigated for C-up HBT's and it is found that the base recombination current around the collector-mesa perimeter reduces the current gain.

The static and dynamic characteristics of the lateral IGBT on the SOI film when the collector voltage of the IGBT is applied to the substrate are invesigated for its application to the high side switch. The measurements on the blocking capability and the switching characteristics under an inductive load are carried out with varying the thickness of the SOI film. The 260 V IGBT can be fabricated on the 5 µm thick SOI film without the special device structure. It is confirmed that the switching speed depends strongly on the SOI film thickness, not on the substrate bias. The dynamic latch-up current during the turn-off transient increases with the decrease in the SOI film thickness. This is caused by the large transient substrate current. This paper exhibits that applying the collector voltage of the IGBT to the substrate makes it possible to improve the characteristics of the IGBT on the thin SOI film.