In this paper, the device performances of sub-10 nm Vertical MOSFETs are investigated. One of the drawbacks of conventional planar MOSFETs is that in the sub-10 nm generation, its cutoff leakage current increases due to the short channel effects, but even more, its driving current decreases due to the quantum mechanical confinement effects such as the sub-band effect and the depletion of the inversion layer. It is shown for the first time that by downscaling the silicon pillar diameter from 20 nm to 4 nm, the Vertical MOSFET increases its driving current per footprint to about 2 times and suppresses its total cutoff leakage current per footprint to less than 1/60 at the same time. Moreover, the mechanisms of these improvements of Vertical MOSFET performances are clarified. The results of this work show that Vertical MOSFETs can overcome the drawbacks of conventional planar MOSFETs and achieve the high device performance through the sub-10 nm generation.

Minimizing the residual impurity gases is a key factor for reducing temporal dark image sticking. Therefore, this paper uses a vacuum-sealing method that minimizes the residual impurity gases by enhancing the base vacuum level, and the resultant change in temporal dark image sticking is then examined in comparison to that with the conventional sealing method using 42-in. ac-PDPs with a high Xe (11%) content. As a result of monitoring the difference in the display luminance, infrared emission, and perceived luminance between the cells with and without temporal dark image sticking, the vacuum-sealing method is demonstrated to reduce temporal dark image sticking by decreasing the residual impurity gases and increasing the oxygen vacancy in the MgO layer. Furthermore, the use of a modified driving waveform along with the vacuum-sealing method is even more effective in reducing temporal dark image sticking.

We propose a noise suppression algorithm with the Kalman filter theory. The algorithm aims to achieve robust noise suppression for the additive white and colored disturbance from the canonical state space models with (i) a state equation composed of the speech signal and (ii) an observation equation composed of the speech signal and additive noise. The remarkable features of the proposed algorithm are (1) applied to adaptive white and colored noises where the additive colored noise uses babble noise, (2) realization of high performance noise suppression without sacrificing high quality of the speech signal despite simple noise suppression using only the Kalman filter algorithm, while many conventional methods based on the Kalman filter theory usually perform the noise suppression using the parameter estimation algorithm of AR (auto-regressive) system and the Kalman filter algorithm. We show the effectiveness of the proposed method, which utilizes the Kalman filter theory for the proposed canonical state space model with the colored driving source, using numerical results and subjective evaluation results.

This paper proposes a new reset driving waveform to widen the driving margin under a low address voltage in AC-PDPs. The proposed reset waveform alters the wall charge distribution between the X-Y electrodes by applying an X-ramp bias prior to an address-period, thereby lowering the minimum level of the scan pulse (ΔVy) during an address-period without any misfiring discharge in the off-cells. When adopting the proposed reset waveform, the address discharge time delay is reduced by about 200 ns at an address voltage of 35 V, while the related dynamic driving margin is wide under a low address voltage condition. The related phenomena are also examined using the Vt close-curve method.

A high-speed drive technique is introduced in which addressing is done by eliminating, instead of accumulating, the wall charges. In the proposed scheme, wall charges are accumulated in all the cells in advance, and then the address discharges take place in selected cells to eliminate the wall charges. Sustain discharges are generated in these cells. In order to realize the proposed address scheme, re-designing of a setup waveforms was necessary. The data pulse of 1.33 µs wide and 84 V was realized in a Ne+10%Xe PDP. A contrast of 3,600:1 was obtained by providing one setup period in a TV field.

An atmospheric visibility measurement system capable of quantifying the most common operating range of onboard exteroceptive sensors is a key parameter in the creation of driving assistance systems. This information is then utilized to adapt sensor operations and processing or to alert the driver that the onboard assistance system is momentarily inoperative. Moreover, a system capable of either detecting the presence of fog or estimating visibility distances constitutes in itself a driving aid. In this paper, we first present a review of different optical sensors likely to measure the visibility distance. We then present our stereovision based technique to estimate what we call the "mobilized visibility distance". This is the distance to the most distant object on the road surface having a contrast above 5%. In fact, this definition is very close to the definition of the meteorological visibility distance proposed by the International Commission on Illumination (CIE). The method combines the computation of both a depth map of the vehicle environment using the "v-disparity" approach and of local contrasts above 5%. Both methods are described separately. Then, their combination is detailed. A qualitative evaluation is done using different video sequences. Finally, a static quantitative evaluation is also performed thanks to reference targets installed on a dedicated test site.

This paper describes a newly developed automatic direction control scheme for bi-directional bus repeaters that uses dynamic collaborative driving techniques. Repeater directions are rapidly determined by detecting the direction of control signal propagation through an additional control signal line that is driven by dynamic collaborative drivers. Application to an on-chip peripheral bus reduces control circuit transistor counts by about 75% and the number of control signal lines by about 50% without loss of speed. Experimental results for a 0.18-µm CMOS implementation indicate that the proposed scheme is four times faster than a conventional scheme with no bi-directional bus repeaters.

In this paper, we propose a driver identification method that is based on the driving behavior signals that are observed while the driver is following another vehicle. Driving behavior signals, such as the use of the accelerator pedal, brake pedal, vehicle velocity, and distance from the vehicle in front, were measured using a driving simulator. We compared the identification rate obtained using different identification models. As a result, we found the Gaussian Mixture Model to be superior to the Helly model and the optimal velocity model. Also, the driver's operation signals were found to be better than road environment signals and car behavior signals for the Gaussian Mixture Model. The identification rate for thirty driver using actual vehicle driving in a city area was 73%.

This paper presents a method of predicting future human driving behavior under the condition that its resultant behavior and past observations are given. The proposed method makes use of a dynamic Bayesian network and the junction tree algorithm for probabilistic inference. The method is applied to behavior prediction for a vehicle assumed to stop at an intersection. Such a predictive system would facilitate warning and assistance to prevent dangerous activities, such as red-light violations, by allowing detection of a deviation from normal behavior.

Driving methods for TFT-OLEDs are explained with their features and classified from the viewpoints of grayscale methods and uniformizing methods. This classification leads us to a novel proposal using time ratio grayscale and current uniformization. This driving method maintains current uniformity and simultaneously overcomes charging shortage of the pixel circuit for low grayscale levels and current variation due to the shift of operating points. Tolerance toward degraded characteristics, linearity of grayscale and luminance uniformity against degraded characteristics are confirmed using circuit simulation.

This paper presents the analysis of the stopping maneuver of the human driver by using a new three-dimensional driving simulator that uses CAVE, which provides stereoscopic immersive vision. First of all, the difference in the driving behavior between 3D and 2D virtual environments is investigated. Secondly, a GMDH is applied to the measured data in order to build a mathematical model of driving behavior. From the obtained model, it is found that the acceleration information has less importance in stopping maneuver under the 2D and 3D environments.

A large-swing, high-driving, low-power, class-AB buffer amplifier, which consists of a high-gain input stage and a unity-gain class-AB output stage, with low variation of quiescent current is proposed. The low power consumption and low variation of the quiescent output current are achieved by using a weak-driving and a strong-driving pseudo-source followers. The high-driving capability is mainly provided by the strong-driving pseudo-source follower whose output transistors are turned off in the vicinity of the stable state to reduce the power consumption and the variation of output current, while the quiescent state is maintained by the weak-driving pseudo-source follower. The error amplifiers with source-coupled pairs of the same type transistors are merged into a single error amplifier to reduce the area of the buffer and the current consumption. An experimental prototype buffer amplifier implemented in a 0.35-µm CMOS technology demonstrates that the circuit dissipates an average static power consumption of only 388.7 µW with the standard deviation of only 3.4 µW, which is only 0.874% at a power supply of 3.3 V, and exhibits the slew rates of 2.18 V/µs and 2.50 V/µs for the rising and falling edges, respectively, under a 300 Ω /150 pF load. Both of the second and third harmonic distortions (HD2 and HD3) are -69 dB at 20 kHz under the same load.

We presented a wall charge controlled ac PDP driving method which has advantages of less number of sub-fields and no dynamic false contours compared to the conventional driving method. In this method, a sub-field exhibited different light intensity according to the initial wall charge quantity set during the address period. Even though one can set 10 different wall charge states by changing the data pulse widths, we decided to define three states, 'on,' 'half-on,' and 'off.' By adding one state, the number of sub-field required to achieve 243 gray levels was reduced from 8 to 5. Furthermore, one can realize seven sub-fields, 255 gray level, complete stretched-out coding with which one can eliminate the dynamic false contours. Since this method can reduce number of sub-fields, it is suitable for higher resolution PDP's with more scan lines.

This paper deals with a first evaluation of the efficiency and the robustness of the real-time "v-disparity" algorithm in stereovision for generic road obstacles detection towards various types of obstacles (vehicle, pedestrian, motorbike, cyclist, boxes) and under adverse conditions (day, night, rain, glowing effect, noise and false matches in the disparity map). The theoretical good properties of the "v-disparity" algorithm--accuracy, robustness, computational speed--are experimentally confirmed. The good results obtained allow us to use this stereo algorithm as the onboard perception process for Driving Safety Assistance: conductor warning and longitudinal control of a low speed automated vehicle (using a second order sliding mode control) in difficult and original situations, at frame rate using no special hardware. Results of experiments--Vehicle following at low speed, Stop'n'Go, Stop on Obstacle (pedestrian, fallen motorbike, load dropping obstacle)--are presented.

This paper deals with a method for designing the driving circuit of an electroluminescent (EL) element whose power consumption is lower and the deviation of output voltage is smaller even when the EL element is replaced with another of a different shape. In this driving circuit, an AC voltage raised by a step-up transformer is supplied to the EL element. The oscillation conditions in the orthodox driving circuits were theoretically analyzed, and a new driving circuit which incorporates these characteristics is proposed. A new prototype driving circuit taking the resonance characteristics between the capacitance of the element and the inductance of the transformer into consideration was made. In the experiment, an inorganic AC EL cable-type element was used as the load of the driving circuit as its impedance can be easily adjusted by changing its length. In comparison with orthodox circuits, the power consumption was lower and the changes in the output voltage were smaller in the new prototype circuit even when the changes in the impedance were large.

We have developed a super-fast response OCB (Optically self-Compensated Birefringence) mode TFT-LCD by using capacitively coupled driving method (CC driving method). Response time with this driving method has been improved by the twice or more compared with that of a conventionally driven TFT-LCD. Even at a low temperature, 0 degree, this panel can response within one field time, 16.7 ms, between every gray scale levels. We developed a prototype OCB mode LCD with newly designed compensation films, that achieved a wide viewing angle characteristic of 160 degrees horizontally and 140 degrees vertically under the condition of that the contrast ratio exceeds 10:1.

The applications of reactance-loaded beam tilting dipole antennas have been reported by many researchers. The reactance elements loaded on the applications reported up to date have been used only for the purpose of beam tilting. This paper presents the basic characteristics of the beam tilting dipole antenna element in which one reactance element is used for the impedance matching at the feed point. The radiation pattern is tilted by the properly determined driving point position, and the loading reactance is used to obtain forced resonance without great changes in tilt angle. The numerical results demonstrate that the reactance element should be loaded in the region where the driving point is placed to obtain forced resonance of the antenna with little changes in beam tilt angle. In case the proposed forced resonant beam tilting antenna with 0.8λ length is driven at 0.2λ from the center, the main beam tilt angle of 57.7 degrees, the highest power gain of 8.6 dB, and VSWR=2.2 are obtained.

A high performance voltage down converter (VDC) is proposed in this paper. The proposed VDC can automatically control the driving current in seven phases to reduce the fluctuation of output voltage in VDC. By using above new flexible control technology of driving current, the fluctuation of output voltage can be suppressed to less than 10% and the average consuming current of VDC can be suppressed to 34 µA, even if the operation frequency is 200 MHz at the average driving current 100 mA. Therefore, the proposed VDC can operate with large driving current, low-power consumption and good response at the same time. Above all, this technology is very suitable for high perform ULSIs which require large load current, very low-power and high speed operation.

We have analyzed a displayed image of TFT-LCD three-dimensionally in case of low power drive using Multi-Field Driving Method (MFD). We have also proposed a concept of multi-media driving method using MFD in which a displayed image was divided into some interlaced subfield images and the number of interlaced subfields can be changed depending on the moving quantities of displayed images. This method made it possible not only to reduce a driving power consumption in case of still images to less than half, compared to that with conventional methods, but also to maintain high moving image quality.

In order to improve the running durability of organic electroluminescent devices (OELDs), the doping sites of molecular OELDs were optimized, and the frequency responses of the optimized devices were examined for Mg-In/bis (10-hydroxybenzo[h]quinolinate) beryllium (BeBq2)/N, N'-diphenyl-N, N'-(3-methylphenyl)-1, 1'-biphenyl-4, 4'-diamine (TPD)/4, 4', 4"-tris (3-methylphenylphenylamino) triphenylamine (MTDATA)/ITO. The TPD hole transport layer was the optimum doping site for 5, 6, 11, 12-tetraphenylnaphthacene (rubrene) dopant, and a very high efficiency of 13 cd/A at 0. 13 kcd/m2 was obtained for yellow emission. Half-decay times under a constant direct current density of 1. 0 mA/cm2 from an initial luminance of 0. 13 kcd/m2 extended to longer than 26,000 hours. The luminance of the optimized device decreases lineally with respect to the logarithm of the frequency as the frequency increases in the range from 1 kHz to 0. 3 MHz when a square wave with a duty ratio of 50% and a maximum voltage of 5.0 V is applied. A new driving method involving frequency modulation is proposed. This may offer accurate control of pixel luminance, and enable simple driving circuits adapted to highly integrated digital LSI chips, or the concept of system on glass.