A novel driving concept, "pulse-width modulation with current uniformization," is proposed for thin-film transistor driven organic light-emitting diode displays (TFT-OLEDs). An example of this driving concept is the combination of "pulse-width modulation with a self-biased inverter" and a "time-ratio grayscale with current uniformization." Its driving operation is confirmed by circuit simulation. It is found that this driving method can compensate the characteristic deviations and degradations of both TFTs and OLEDs and immensely improve luminance uniformity. Finally, its driving operation is also confirmed by an actual pixel equivalent circuit.

A practical optical character reader is required to deal with not only common fonts but also complex designed fonts. However, recognizing various kinds of decorative character images is still a challenging problem in the field of document image analysis. Since appearances of such decorative characters are complicated, most general character recognition systems cannot give good performances on decorative characters. In this paper, an algorithm that recognizes decorative characters by structural analysis using a graph-matching technique is proposed. Character structure is extracted by using topographical features of multi-scale images, and the extracted structure is represented by a graph. A character image is recognized by matching graphs of the input and standard patterns. Experimental results show the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm.

This study examines treatment of a boundary between media to simulate an acoustic field using the CIP method. The handling of spatial derivatives of fields is extremely important for CIP acoustic field analysis. We demonstrate a method of handling this boundary and report results of CIP acoustic field analysis using the present treatment.

Internet access traffic follows hourly patterns that depend on various factors, such as the periods users stay on-line at the access point (e.g. at home or in the office) or their preferences for applications. The clustering of Internet users may provide important information for traffic engineering and billing. For example, it can be used to set up service differentiation according to hourly behavior, resource optimization based on multi-hour routing and definition of tariffs that promote Internet access in low busy hours. In this work, we propose a methodology for clustering Internet users with similar patterns of Internet utilization, according to their hourly traffic utilization. The methodology resorts to three statistical multivariate analysis techniques: cluster analysis, principal component analysis and discriminant analysis. The methodology is illustrated through measured data from two distinct ISPs, one using a CATV access network and the other an ADSL one, offering distinct traffic contracts. Principal component analysis is used as an exploratory tool. Cluster analysis is used to identify the relevant Internet usage profiles, with the partitioning around medoids and Ward's method being the preferred clustering methods. For the two data sets, these methods lead to the choice of 3 clusters with different hourly traffic utilization profiles. The cluster structure is validated through discriminant analysis. It is also evaluated in terms of several characteristics of the user traffic not used in the cluster analysis, such as the type of applications, the amount of downloaded traffic, the activity duration and the transfer rate, resulting in coherent outcomes.

With the rapid progress of electronic and information technology, an expectation for the realization of body area network (BAN) has risen. However, on-body transmission characteristics are greatly dependent on the frequency, and a high-speed transmission is difficult due to the remarkable signal attenuation at higher frequencies. In this study, we proposed a pulse transmission system with the frequencies at dozens of mega-hertzes. The system was based on an impulse radio (IR) scheme with bi-phase modulation. By using the frequency-dependent finite difference time domain (FD2TD) method, we investigated the on-body transmission characteristics and derived a path loss expression. Based on the transmission characteristics, we also investigated the influences of white Gaussian noises and other narrow-band interferences on the communication link budget and bit error rate (BER) performance. The results have shown the feasibility of the proposed on-body IR communication system.

For a digitally controlled phase-locked loop (PLL), we evaluate the use of a clock-period comparator (CPC). In this PLL, only the frequency lock operation should be performed; however, the phase lock operation is also simultaneously achieved by performing the clock-period comparison when the phases of the reference signal and the output signal approach each other. Theoretically a lock-up operation was conducted. In addition, we succeeded in digitizing a voltage controlled oscillator (VCO) with a linear characteristic. We confirmed a phase lock operation with a slight loop characteristic through SPICE simulation.

In recent years, network analysis has revealed that some real networks have the properties of small-world and/or scale-free networks. In this study, a simple Genetic Algorithm (GA) is regarded as a network where each node and each edge respectively represent a population and the possibility of the transition between two nodes. The characteristic path length (CPL), which is one of the most popular criteria in small-world networks, is derived analytically and shows how much the crossover operation affects the path length between two populations. As a result, the crossover operation is not so useful for shortening the CPL.

The character projection (CP) lithography is utilized for maskless lithography and is a potential for the future photomask fabrication. The drawback of the CP lithography is its low throughput and leads to a price rise of IC devices. This paper discusses a technology mapping technique for enhancing the throughput of the CP lithography. The number of electron beam (EB) shots to project an entire chip directly determines the fabrication time for the chip as well as the throughput of CP equipment. Our technology mapping technique maps EB shot count-effective cells to a circuit in order to increase the throughput of CP equipment. Our technique treats the number of EB shots as an objective to minimize. Comparing with a conventional technology mapping, our technology mapping technique has achieved 26.6% reduction of the number of EB shots for the front-end-of-the-line (FEOL) process without any performance degradation of ICs. Moreover, our technology mapping technique has achieved a 54.6% less number of EB shots under no performance constraints. It is easy for both IC designers and equipment developers to adopt our technique because our technique is a software approach with no additional modification on CP equipment.

This paper proposes a new efficient method of characterizing a memory compiler in order to reduce the computation time and remove human error. The new features that make our method greatly efficient are the following three points: (1) high-speed circuit simulation of the whole memory module using a hierarchical LPE (Layout Parasitic Extractor) and a hierarchical circuit simulator, (2) automatic generation of circuit simulation input data from corresponding parameterized description termed the template file, and (3) carefully selected environmental conditions of circuit level simulator and minimizing the number of runs of it. We demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method by application to the single-port SRAM generators using 90 nm CMOS technology.

The extended version of spectral domain approach (ESDA) is applied to evaluate the scattering characteristics of discontinuities in coaxial line. Discontinuities may be in inner and/or outer conductor of coaxial line. This method secures the high accuracy by considering the singularities of fields near the conductor edge properly. The computational labor of the new method is far lighter than that of FEM, so that novel method is suitable for the time consuming iterative computation such as fitting procedure in material evaluation or optimization of antenna design.

Our investigation of diamond-like carbon (DLC) nano-springs with a 130 nm spring-section diameter, which were fabricated by focused-ion-beam chemical vapor deposition (FIB-CVD), showed for the first time that nanosprings can be stretched. We observed large displacements of the FIB-CVD nanosprings using in situ optical microscopy; in other words, the nanosprings showed behavior similar to that of macroscale springs. In addition, we investigated the dependence of the spring constant of DLC nanosprings on spring diameter. The spring constants, measured using commercially available cantilevers, ranged from 0.47 to 0.07 N/m. The diameter dependence of spring constant can be accurately expressed by the conventional formula for a coil spring. The estimated shear modulus of the DLC nano-springs was about 70 GPa. This value is very close to the value of conventional coil springs made of steel. Furthermore, we measured the stiffness of a DLC nanospring annealed at 1000 in vacuum. The stiffness was decreased to approximately half of the stiffness of the nanospring without annealing.

This letter presents an efficient Signed-Power-of-Two (SPT) term allocation for filter coefficients in order to improve the BER characteristics of digital communication systems. The performance of the present allocation is evaluated by BER characteristics through digital modulation simulations and FPGA-based digital implementation.

We propose a shot reduction technique of character projection (CP) Electron Beam Direct Writing (EBDW) using combined cell stencil (CCS) or the advanced process technology. CP EBDW is expected both to reduce mask costs and to realize quick turn around time. One of major issue of the conventional CP EBDW, however, is a throughput of lithography. The throughput is determined by numbers of shots, which are proportional to numbers of cell instances in LSIs. The conventional shot reduction techniques focus on optimization of cell stencil extraction, without any modifications on designed LSI mask patterns. The proposed technique employs the proposed combined cell stencil, with proposed modified design flow, for further shot reduction. We demonstrate 22.4% shot reduction within 4.3% area increase for a microprocessor and 28.6% shot reduction for IWLS benchmarks compared with the conventional technique.

Organic static induction transistors (OSITs) with vertical structure have advantage of lower operational voltage compared to the organic field effect transistors with conventional lateral structure. In this study, OSITs based on pentacene films were applied to fabricate the organic inverters which can operate at low voltage. The experimental results demonstrate that organic inverters based on the OSITs show basic transfer characteristics and a low operational voltage of 2 V.

In this paper, we propose to employ a characteristic function based non-Gaussianity measure as a one-unit contrast function for independent component analysis. This non-Gaussianity measure is a weighted distance between the characteristic function of a random variable and a Gaussian characteristic function at some adequately chosen sample points. Independent component analysis of an observed random vector is performed by optimizing the above mentioned contrast function (for different units) using a fixed-point algorithm. Moreover, in order to obtain a better separation performance, we employ a mechanism to choose appropriate sample points from an initially selected sample vector. Finally, some computer simulations are presented to demonstrate the validity and effectiveness of the proposed method.

In the optimum design of contactors, it is important to analyze the dynamic behaviors. In this paper, it proposes a new computational approach for analyzing dynamic characteristic of the energy-saving and bouncing-reducing double-coil contactor. According to the contactor's unique characteristic that it has two transferable coils, the paper builds two different sets of equations. One describes the period before the transfer position, and the other describes the period after the transfer position. The equations deal with the electrical circuit, electromagnetic field that can be calculated by using 3-D finite element method and mechanical system considering the influence of friction. The validity of the proposed method is confirmed by experiment. Finally, the paper gives an optimum design for the transfer position of the two coils. The result of the optimum design reduces both of the first and the second bounces of the movable contact.

To clarify the transmission characteristics and near magnetic field on the angle pattern for the parallel transmission lines, the authors investigate how influence the angled pattern on the transmission lines by experiment and calculation. The angled patterns on the transmission lines are straight, right angle and curve. It shows that the suppression of EMI radiation at the angled pattern on the parallel transmission lines of the magnetic head is essential. In addition, it is suggested that angle pattern might be one of cause for the signal distortion and specific EMI radiation at high frequency.

In this letter, we discussed some properties of characteristic generators for a finite Abelian group code, proved that any two characteristic generators can not start (end) at the same position and have the same order of the starting (ending) components simultaneously, and that the number of all characteristic generators can be directly computed from the group code itself. These properties are exactly the generalization of the corresponding trellis properties of a linear code over a field.

Stratospheric platforms have been recently proposed as a new wireless infrastructure for realizing the next generation of communication systems. To provide high quality services, an investigation of the wireless stratospheric platform channel is essential. This paper proposes a definition and describes an analysis of the wireless channel for the link between stratospheric platforms and terrestrial mobile users based on an experiment in a semi-urban environment. Narrowband channel characteristics are presented in terms of Ricean factor (K factor) and local mean received power over a wide range of elevation angles ranging from 10to 90. Finally, we evaluated average bit error probability based on the proposed channel model to examine the channel performance. For the environment in which the measurements were conducted, we find that elevation angles greater than 40yield better performance.

We propose a cell library development methodology for throughput enhancement of character projection equipment. First, an ILP (Integer Linear Programming)-based cell selection is proposed for the equipment for which both of the CP (Character Projection) and VSB (Variable Shaped Beam) methods are available, in order to minimize the number of electron beam (EB) shots, that is, time to fabricate chips. Secondly, the influence of cell directions on area and delay time of chips is examined. The examination helps to reduce the number of EB shots with a little deterioration of area and delay time because unnecessary directions of cells can be removed. Finally, a case study is shown in which the numbers of EB shots are shown for several cases.