The relative window method provides quantitative crosstalk delay degradation for the post-layout timing analysis in deep sub-micron VLSI design. However, to the best of our knowledge, the relative window method has not been applied to the crosstalk minimization in gridded channel routing problem. Most conventional crosstalk optimizers only use the coupling length to estimate the crosstalk. In this paper, we present a post-layout timing driven crosstalk optimizer based on the relative window method. According to the relative signal arrival time and the coupling length, we define a delay degradation graph to describe the crosstalks between nets in a routing solution. Our optimization goal is to maximize the time slack by iteratively improving the delay degradation graph without increasing the channel height. Benchmark data consistently show that our post-layout timing driven crosstalk optimizer can further improve the routing solution obtained by a conventional crosstalk optimizer.

This paper proposed a watermarking algorithm for image, which assumed an image compression based on DWT (Discrete Wavelet Transform). To reduce the amount of computation, this algorithm selects the watermarking positions by a threshold table which is statistically established from computing the energy correlation of the corresponding wavelet coefficients. The proposed algorithm can operate in a real-time if the image compression process operates in a real-time because the watermarking process was designed to operate in parallel with the compression process. Also it improves the property of losing the watermak and reducing the compresson ratio by the quantization and Huffman coding steps. It was done by considering the sign of the coefficients and the change in the value for watermarking. Visually recognizable pattern such as a binary image were used as the watermark. The experimental results showed that the proposed algorithm satisfied the properties of robustness and imperceptibility that are the major conditions of watermarking.

A fully integrated RF front-end for W-CDMA applications including a low noise amplifier, a down conversion mixer, a digitally programmable gain amplifier, an on-chip VCO, and a fractional-N frequency synthesizer is designed using a 0.35-µm CMOS process. A multi-stage ring shaped on-chip LC-VCO exhibiting bandpass characteristics overcomes the limitation of low-Q components in the tank circuits and improves the phase noise performance. The measured phase noise of the on-chip VCO is -134 dBc/Hz at 1 MHz offset. The receiver RF front-end achieves a NF of 3.5 dB, an IIP3 of -16 dBm, and a maximum gain of 80 dB. The receiver consumes 52 mA with a 3-V supply and occupies only 2 mm2 die area with minimal external components.

A linear-in-dB gain-control amplifier for direct conversion systems employs linearized transconductors in a core amp, a dc offset canceler, and a gain control circuit. The offset compensation circuit achieves a constant corner frequency over a gain range of 14 to 76 dB by simultaneous tuning of the transconductors.

A new class of ternary sequence having a zero-correlation zone (zcz), based on Hadamard matrices, is presented. The proposed sequence construction can simultaneously generate a finite-length ternary zcz sequence set and a periodic ternary zcz sequence set. The generated finite-length ternary zcz sequence set has a zero-correlation zone for an aperiodic function. The generated periodic ternary zcz sequence set has a zero-correlation zone for even and odd correlation functions.

A new inter-client synchronization framework employing a server-client coordinated adaptive playout and error control toward one-to-many (i.e., multicast) media streaming is discussed in this paper. The proposed adaptive playout mechanism controls the playout speed of audio and video by adopting the time-scale modification of audio. Based on the overall synchronization status as well as the buffer occupancy level, the playout speed of each client is manipulated within a perceptually tolerable range. By coordinating the playout speed of each client, the inter-client synchronization with respect to the target presentation time is smoothly achieved. Furthermore, RTCP-compatible signaling between the server and group-clients is performed to achieve the inter-client synchronization and error recovery, where the exchange of controlling message is restricted. Simulation results show the performance of the proposed multicast media streaming framework.

For an additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN) channel, a performance evaluation of parallel concatenated turbo trellis-coded modulation (turbo TCM) using bit-interleavers is reported. By obtaining weight distribution, the performance is evaluated by using a union bound method. Comparison between the result of evaluated performance and simulation results is shown, and the usefulness of the evaluated performance is shown. An optimum code and an optimum mapping are sought. The result of the optimum code with the optimum mapping is a new interleaver size N dependency which is proportional to N-3. It is better than the interleaver size dependency for Benedetto code with the natural mapping which is proportional to N-1. The reasons why these dependencies can happen are also discussed.

Because of the polarization dependencies of optical fiber transmission equipment, the polarization state of lightwaves inherently varies at the optical receiver input. Therefore the receiver output, especially the beat component, is very dependent on the polarization state. We derive a simple relation showing that the beat power of the lightwaves is proportional to the inner product of their Stokes vectors. Using this relation, we can systematically calculate the beat power. This calculation method can be applied to lightwaves of arbitrary polarization, such as a polarization-scrambled signal or partially polarized amplified spontaneous emission (ASE) in long-haul IM/DD systems, as well as to the signal and local oscillator lightwaves of coherent systems.

We had previously proposed a fuzzy logic-based buffer management scheme (BMS) called fuzzy early detection (FED), which was designed to improve transmission control protocol (TCP) performance over the unspecified bit rate (UBR) service of asynchronous transfer mode (ATM) networks. Since a weakness in FED was discovered later, we present a refined version of it named FED+ here. Maintaining the design architecture and the algorithm of FED, FED+ further adopts a specific per virtual connection accounting algorithm to achieve its design goals. The effects of TCP implementation, TCP maximum segment size, switch buffer size and network propagation delay on FED+ performance are studied through simulation. Its performance is then compared with those of pure early packet discard (EPD), P-random early detection (P-RED) and FED. Our evaluations show that FED+ is superior to the others if the issues of efficiency, fairness, robustness, buffer requirement and the ease of tuning control parameters of a BMS are considered collectively.

A new approach to optical clock distribution utilizing optical waveguide interconnect technology is introduced. In this paper, we develop a new algorithm for design and optimization of embedded optical clock distribution networks for printed wiring boards. The optimization approach takes into account bending and propagation losses of optical waveguides. Less than 26.1 psec in signal timing skew is obtained for a signal flight time of 614.38 psec. About 15% reduction in optical power consumption is also obtained over clock nets routed with existing (optical) methods.

This paper offers an initial analysis of economic and market issues in the development and deployment of mobile remote physiological monitoring services for medical patients through wireless wearable sensors and actuators. Examining the characteristics of the service technologies and related industries, this study focuses on the structure, participants and roles of standardisation of the layers within the emerging mobile remote physiological monitoring industry. The study concludes that the structure of the emerging mobile remote physiological monitoring industry will be oriented about service provision, be integrated with other personal / patient data storage services and be heavily influenced by the interplay of technological developments, the health market structure, existing players and regulation. Additionally, the keys players are likely to be the system integrators and service providers concentrating on large institutional customers. A focus of the paper is analysing both the causes and implications of a modular, horizontally layered industry structure likely to result from the mix of technologies, suppliers and customers as this market develops. The paper discusses why, although horizontal specialisation is the most likely outcome, there is little risk of key layers becoming commoditised. The paper also discusses the appropriate types and levels of standardisation and equipment certification activities that should be encouraged, along with from which groups and industries the pressure for these will come.

A traffic engineering problem in a network consists of setting up paths between the edge nodes of the network to meet traffic demands while optimizing network performance. It is known that total traffic throughput in a network, or resource utilization, can be maximized if a traffic demand is split over multiple paths. However, the problem formulation and practical algorithms, which calculate the paths and the load-splitting ratios by taking bandwidth, the route constraints or policies into consideration, have not been much touched. In this paper, we formulate the constrained multipath-routing problems with the objective of minimizing the maximum of link utilization, while satisfying bandwidth, the maximum hop count, and the not-preferred node/link list in Linear Programming (LP). Optimal solutions of paths and load-splitting ratios found by an LP solver are shown to be superior to the conventional shortest path algorithm in terms of maximum link utilization, total traffic volume, and number of required paths. Then, we propose a heuristic algorithm with low computational complexity that finds near optimal paths and load-splitting ratios satisfying the given constraints. The proposed algorithm is applied to Multi-Protocol Label Switching (MPLS) that can permit explicit path setup, and it is tested in a fictitious backbone network. The experiment results show that the heuristic algorithm finds near optimal solutions.

The artifacts of low-bit rate quantization in images cannot be removed satisfactorily by known methods. We propose decomposition of images as HSI and LSI (higher- and lower- significance images), followed by subsampling and reconstruction methods for LSI. Experiments show significant improvement in image quality, as compared to other methods.

A simple method has been proposed for the measurement of the output power and phase characteristics of the 3rd-order inter-modulation distortion (IM3) components appearing in multistage power amplifiers. By adopting a unique definition of the phase for the IM3 components that is independent of the delay time caused by transmission lines and other instrument devices, it is possible to measure the phase, merely by using a vector signal analyzer. It is demonstrated that an accurate estimation of the IM3 characteristics of two-stage cascaded power amplifiers for cellular radio handheld terminals can be made by using the IM3 characteristics of the 1st and 2nd-stage amplifiers as measured by the proposed method. The results indicate that it is possible to reduce the dissipation power by 18% at 28 dBm RF output power with respect to conventional measurement methods. Further studies show that the error in the resultant vector of the estimated IM3 is less than 1 dB, when the asymmetry characteristics of the IM3 sidebands in the 2nd-stage amplifier are less than 7.3%.

A rigorous analysis for a TM010 mode cylindrical cavity with insertion holes is presented on the basis of the Ritz-Galerkin method to realize accurate measurements of the complex permittivity of liquid. The effects of sample insertion holes, a dielectric tube, and air-gaps between a dielectric tube and sample insertion holes are taken into account in this analysis. The validity of this method is verified from measured results of some kinds of liquid.

A CMOS DFE (decision feedback equalization) receiver with a clock-data skew compensation was implemented for the SSTL (stub-series terminated logic) SDRAM interface. The receiver consists of a 2 way interleaving DFE input buffer for ISI reduction and a X2 over-sampling phase detector for finding the optimum sampling clock position. The measurement results at 1.2 Gbps operation showed the increase of voltage margin by about 20% and the decrease of time jitter in the recovered sampling clock by about 40% by equalization in an SSTL channel with 2 pF 4 stub load. Active chip area and power consumption are 3001000 µm2 and 142 mW, respectively, with a 2.5 V, 0.25 µm CMOS process.

In this paper, we present a predictive control method, based on Fuzzy Neural Network (FNN), for the control of chaotic systems without precise mathematical models. In our design method, the parameters of both predictor and controller are tuned by a simple gradient descent scheme, and the weight parameters of the FNN are determined adaptively throughout system operations. In order to design the predictive controller effectively, we describe the computing procedure for each of the two important parameters. In addition, we introduce a projection matrix for determining the control input, which decreases the control performance function very rapidly. Finally, we depict various computer simulations on two representative chaotic systems (the Duffing and Hénon systems) so as to demonstrate the effectiveness of the new chaos control method.

Support vector algorithms try to maximize the shortest distance between sample points and discrimination hyperplane. This paper suggests the total margin algorithms which consider the distance between all data points and the separating hyperplane. The method extends and modifies the existing algorithms. Experimental studies show that the total margin algorithms provide good performance comparing with the existing support vector algorithms.

Transitional fundamental frequency (F0) characteristics comprise a crucial part of F0 dynamics in singing. This paper examines the F0 characteristics during the note transition period. An analysis of the singing voice of a professional baritone strongly suggests that asymmetries exist in the mechanisms used for controlling rising and falling. Specifically, the F0 contour in rising transitions can be modeled as a step response from a critically-damped second-order linear system with fixed average/maximum speed of change, whereas that in falling transitions can be modeled as a step response from an underdamped second-order linear system with fixed transition time. The validity of the model is examined through auditory experiments using synthesized singing voice.

In this paper, we propose a noise-robust automatic speech recognition system that uses orthogonalized distinctive phonetic features (DPFs) as input of HMM with diagonal covariance. In an orthogonalized DPF extraction stage, first, a speech signal is converted to acoustic features composed of local features (LFs) and ΔP, then a multilayer neural network (MLN) with 153 output units composed of context-dependent DPFs of a preceding context DPF vector, a current DPF vector, and a following context DPF vector maps the LFs to DPFs. Karhunen-Loeve transform (KLT) is then applied to orthogonalize each DPF vector in the context-dependent DPFs, using orthogonal bases calculated from a DPF vector that represents 38 Japanese phonemes. Each orthogonalized DPF vector is finally decorrelated one another by using Gram-Schmidt orthogonalization procedure. In experiments, after evaluating the parameters of the MLN input and output units in the DPF extractor, the orthogonalized DPFs are compared with original DPFs. The orthogonalized DPFs are then evaluated in comparison with a standard parameter set of MFCCs and dynamic features. Next, noise robustness is tested using four types of additive noise. The experimental results show that the use of the proposed orthogonalized DPFs can significantly reduce the error rate in an isolated spoken-word recognition task both with clean speech and with speech contaminated by additive noise. Furthermore, we achieved significant improvements when combining the orthogonalized DPFs with conventional static MFCCs and ΔP.