The structure of the nanograting channel MOSFET was optimized by simply rounding the corners of the nanogratings. The current drivabilities of the optimized nanograting channel MOSFETs were enhanced by about 20% and 50% for both n-channel and p-channel MOSFETs, respectively. The mobility changes were analyzed on the basis of channel stress as well as theoretical change of mobilities by various surface orientations. The internal compressive stress of 0.23% was measured in the channel. By suppressing the electric field increase at the corner edge of the nanograting channel to less than 10%, the fabricated rounded nanograting MOSFETs achieved lifetimes of NBTI and TDDB as long as those of conventional planar devices.

A monolithic modulator driver IC based on InP HBTs with a new circuit topology -- called a functional distributed circuit (FDC) -- for over 80-Gb/s optical transmission systems has been developed. The FDC topology includes a wide-band amplifier designed using a distributed circuit, a digital function designed using a lumped circuit, and broadband impedance matching between the lumped circuit and distributed circuit to enable both wider bandwidth and digital functions. The driver IC integrated with a 2:1 multiplexing function produces 2.6-Vp-p (differential output: 5.2 Vp-p) and 2.4- Vp-p (differential output: 4.8 Vp-p) output-voltage swings with less than 450-fs and 530-fs rms jitter at 80 Gb/s and 90 Gb/s, respectively. To the best of our knowledge, this is equivalent to the highest data rate operation yet reported for monolithic modulator drivers. When it was mounted in a module, the driver IC successfully achieved electro-optical modulation using a dual-drive LiNbO3 Mach-Zehnder modulator up to 90 Gb/s. These results indicate that the FDC has the potential to realize high-speed and functional ICs for over-80-Gb/s transmission systems.

In deep submicron era, wire delay is no longer negligible and is becoming a dominant factor of the system performance. To cope with the increasing wire delay, several state-of-the-art architectural synthesis flows have been proposed for the distributed register architectures by enabling on-chip multicycle communication. In this article, we present a new performance-driven criticality-aware synthesis framework CriAS targeting regular distributed register architectures. To achieve high system performance, CriAS features a hierarchical binding-then-placement for minimizing the number of performance-critical global data transfers. The key ideas are to take time criticality as the major concern at earlier binding stages before the detailed physical placement information is available, and to preserve the locality of closely related critical components in the later placement phase. The experimental results show that CriAS can achieve an average of 14.26% overall performance improvement with no runtime overhead as compared to the previous art.

In this letter, we develop an analytical model for the drive-thru applications based on the IEEE 802.11p WAVE. The model shows that prioritizing the bitrates via the 802.11e EDCA mechanism leads to significant throughput improvement.

With the process scaling, the leakage current reduction has been the primary design concerns in a nanometer-era VLSI circuit. In this paper, we propose a new lithography process-aware edge effects correction method to reduce the leakage current in the shallow trench isolation (STI). We construct the various test structures to model Ileakage and Ileakage_fringe which represent the leakage currents at the center and edge of the transistor, respectively. The layout near the active edge is modified using the look-up table generated by the calibrated analytic model. On average, the proposed edge effects correction method reduces the leakage current by 18% with the negligible decrease of the drive current at sub-40nm DRAM device.

The National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT) vision and five network targets of research and development (R&D) of the NeW-Generation Network (NWGN) are presented in this letter. The NWGN is based on new design concepts that look beyond the next generation network (NGN). The NWGN will maintain the sustainability of our prosperous civilization and help resolve various social issues and problems by using information and communication technologies (ICTs). NICT's vision for NWGN is also presented in this letter. Based on this vision, 19 items concerning social issues and future social outlook are analyzed, and the functional requirements of the NWGN are extracted. The requirements are refined and categorized into five network targets that must be developed for realizing the vision.

In this paper, we present a discriminative word-character hybrid model for joint Chinese word segmentation and POS tagging. Our word-character hybrid model offers high performance since it can handle both known and unknown words. We describe our strategies that yield good balance for learning the characteristics of known and unknown words and propose an error-driven policy that delivers such balance by acquiring examples of unknown words from particular errors in a training corpus. We describe an efficient framework for training our model based on the Margin Infused Relaxed Algorithm (MIRA), evaluate our approach on the Penn Chinese Treebank, and show that it achieves superior performance compared to the state-of-the-art approaches reported in the literature.

Model-Driven Engineering and Domain-Specific Modeling Languages are encouraging an increased used of metamodels for the definition of languages and tools. Although the Meta Object Facility language is the standard for metamodeling, there are alternative metamodeling languages that are aimed at satisfying specific requirements. In this context, sharing information throughout different domains and tools requires not only being able to translate models between modeling languages defined with the same metamodeling language, but also between different metamodeling languages. This paper addresses this latter need describing a general technique to define transformations that perform this translation. In this work, two case studies illustrate the application of this process.

We propose a novel 50 Mb/s optical transmitter fabricated in a 0.6 µm BiCMOS technology for automotive applications. The proposed VCSEL driver chip was designed to operate with a single supply voltage ranging from 3.0 V to 5.25 V. A fully integrated feedforward current control circuit is presented to stabilize the optical output power without any external components. The experimental results show that the optical output power can be stable within a 1.1 dB range and the extinction ratio greater than 14 dB over the automotive environmental temperature range of -40 to 105.

Break arcs are generated between silver electrical contacts in a DC 42 V-10 A resistive circuit. Break arcs are driven by the radial magnetic field. The magnetic field is formed between the electrical contacts with a permanent magnet embedded in the cathode. The arc motion is taken with a high-speed camera and contact surfaces are observed after break operations. Experimental results with the magnet are compared with those without the magnet to confirm the effect of the embedded magnet. For break operations with the magnet following results are shown. Break arcs are rotationally driven by the radial magnetic field in the direction according to Lorentz force. The shortening effect of the arc duration is confirmed. The traces of the arc spots on the contact surfaces are ring-shaped, wide and uniform. This result shows the prevention effect of local erosion of electrical contacts. The rotational frequency of the break arc depends on the Lorentz force with the radial magnetic field.

A compact (13.38.05.6 mm) 40 Gbit/s 1.55-µm electroabsorption (EA) modulator monolithically integrated distributed feedback (DFB) laser diode (EML) [1] module integrated with a driver IC has been developed. Its compactness was realized by employing a broadband feed-through and a bias tee which were accurately designed by 3-dimensional (3D) electromagnetic simulation. It was confirmed that the simulation results of the frequency response and the actual measurement results are corresponding well. Clear eye opening of the 40 Gbit/s optical output waveform of the fabricated EML module was observed. Degradation was not observed even when the 40 Gbit/s electrical signal was launched into the module via the flexible printed circuit (FPC).

A general-purpose multi-Gbps LVDS driver is presented with a new distortion-free level conversion scheme. For high-speed transmission, a dynamic pre-emphasis scheme is also proposed with overdriving current effectively distributed in time. The proposed LVDS driver achieves supply-insensitive duty preservation with a reduction of switching noise by 50-percent.

Two-dimensional resonant optical scanners actuated by vertical electrostatic combs with a unique electrical isolation structure have been developed. The isolation on the movable frame surrounding 1 mm-diameter gimbal mirror is made by trenching the top silicon layer of an SOI wafer with leaving the thick bottom layers. Thanks to the large mass of the frame, the resonant frequencies range in 65.0-89.2 Hz for the frame and in 11.9-36.8 kHz for the mirror in a 4 mm4 mm chip. The resultant frequency ratio of the fast/slow axes reaches over 500 and such a high frequency ratio is utilized to display QVGA image by raster scanning of a laser beam.

We propose a polymeric waveguide optical switch using a novel drive mechanism. The switch uses a flexible polymeric waveguide film where trenches are formed at cross-points of the waveguides. Light passes through the trench while it is closed. When the trench opens, light path changes by total internal reflection between the air gap and the polymeric waveguide. Therefore, we can control light paths by changing the trench state between closed and open one. In order to realize this, a rotating arm is inserted near the trench. As rotational force transfers to the trench through the arm and the film, the trench switches from closed to open state and vice versa. We investigated this rotary drive mechanism by three-dimensional (3D) structural analysis, designed the optical switch, and experimentally demonstrated the switching operation.

A cross-coupled charge pump with internal pumping capacitor, which is advantageous from a point of minimizing TFT-LCD driver IC module, is newly proposed in this paper. By using NMOS and PMOS diodes connected to boosting nodes from VIN nodes, the pumping node is precharged to the same value at the pumping node in starting pumping. Since the first-stage charge pump is designed differently from the other stage pumps, a back current of pumped charge from charge pumping node to input stage is prevented. As a pumping clock driver is located in front of pumping capacitor, the driving capacity is improved by reducing a voltage drop of the pumping clock line from parasitic resistor. Finally, a layout area is decreased more compared with the conventional cross-coupled charge pump by using a stack-MIM capacitor. A proposed charge pump for TFT-LCD driver IC is designed with 0.13 µm triple-well DDI process, fabricated, and tested.

"Dive into the Movie (DIM)" is a name of project to aim to realize a world innovative entertainment system which can provide an immersion experience into the story by giving a chance to audience to share an impression with his family or friends by watching a movie in which all audience can participate in the story as movie casts. To realize this system, several techniques to model and capture the personal characteristics instantly in face, body, gesture, hair and voice by combining computer graphics, computer vision and speech signal processing technique. Anyway, all of the modeling, casting, character synthesis, rendering and compositing processes have to be performed on real-time without any operator. In this paper, first a novel entertainment system, Future Cast System (FCS), is introduced which can create DIM movie with audience's participation by replacing the original roles' face in a pre-created CG movie with audiences' own highly realistic 3D CG faces. Then the effects of DIM movie on audience experience are evaluated subjectively. The result suggests that most of the participants are seeking for higher realism, impression and satisfaction by replacing not only face part but also body, hair and voice. The first experimental trial demonstration of FCS was performed at the Mitsui-Toshiba pavilion of the 2005 World Exposition in Aichi Japan. Then, 1,640,000 people have experienced this event during 6 months of exhibition and FCS became one of the most popular events at Expo.2005.

This paper proposes a performance model for design of pipelined analog-to-digital converters (ADCs). This model includes the effect of overdrive voltage on the transistor, slewing of the operational amplifier, multi-bit structure of multiplying digital to analog converter (MDAC) and technology scaling. The conversion frequency of ADC is improved by choosing the optimum overdrive voltage of the transistor, an important consideration at smaller design rules. Moreover, multi-bit MDACs are faster than the single-bit MDACs when slewing occurs during the step response. The performance model of pipelined ADC shown in this paper is attractive for the optimization of the ADC's performances.

Design automation of LCD driver circuits is not sophisticatedly established. Display fineness of an LCD panel depends on a performance metric, ratio of pixel voltage to video voltage (RPV). However, there are several other important metrics, such as area, and the best circuit cannot be decided uniquely. This paper proposes a design automation technique for a LCD column driver to provide several circuit design results with different performance so that designers can select an appropriate design among them. The proposed technique is evaluated with an actual design data, and experimental results show that the proposed method successfully performs technology migration by transistor sizing. Also, the proposed technique is experimentally verified from points of solution quality and computational time.

We demonstrate a novel display structure for color electronic paper for the first time. Fully transparent amorphous oxide TFT array is directly deposited onto color filter array and combined with E Ink Imaging Film. Taking advantage of the transparent property of the oxide TFT, the color filter and TFT array are positioned at the viewing side of the display. This novel "Front Drive" display structure facilitates the alignment of the color filter and TFT dramatically.

This paper tries to answer the following question: What type of support should be given to an automobile driver when it is determined, via some method to monitor the driver's behavior and the traffic environment, that the driver's intent may not be appropriate to a traffic condition? With a medium fidelity, moving-base driving simulator, three conditions were compared: (a) Warning type support in which an auditory warning is given to the driver to enhance his/her situation recognition, (b) action type support in which an autonomous safety control action is executed to avoid an accident, and (c) the baseline condition in which no driver support is given. Results were as follows: (1) Either type of driver support was effective in accident prevention. (2) Acceptance of driver support functions varied context dependently. (3) Participants accepted a system-initiated automation invocation as long as no automation surprises were possible to occur.