The rapid growth of multimedia applications has increased interest in the compression of video data. This paper presents a new method for improving the compression ratio of video data, which can be easily used in a multilayer environment for error resilience applications as well. Data of four luminance blocks in a macroblock are processed and arranged in such a way that important macroblock data is compressed in one block(A), while the rest of the three remaining data blocks(H,V,D) are given difference values in the horizontal, vertical and diagonal directions. This results in a reduced bitstream size because of the low-valued data present in the three blocks(H,V,D), giving better compression at low bitrates. In an error resilient environment, the important data block in a macroblock is transmitted in a secure channel while the remaining three blocks with difference data are sent via a lossy channel. If error occurs in the lossy channel, picture can still be reconstructed with reasonably good quality using only the block data that is transmitted in the secure channel.

In this paper, we present a model for evaluating the effectiveness of (2, 1, m) convolutional-code-based packet-level FEC, under the condition of a limited buffer size in which the number of available packets is restricted for recovery. We analytically derive the post-reconstruction receiving rate, i.e., the probability that a lost packet is received or recovered before the buffer limit is reached. We show numerical examples of the analytical results and demonstrate that the buffer size at the same level as m gives sufficient recovery performance.

For the efficient multicast distribution services on the Internet, suppressing the influence of packet loss is important issues. As a solution of this problem, Forward Error Correction (FEC) based on Reed-Solomon codes is usually used. However, in the case of content delivery services for a large amount of data, this approach is not suitable. In this paper, we focus on the erasure codes which are new approach of FEC and propose the efficient multicast video distribution method which combines the multicast distribution using erasure codes and direct request to the server. We implement proposal method and confirm its efficiency from the viewpoints of redundancy and processing time.

Two rotational transformations are used to derive a new expression for the symbol error probability (SEP) of an M-ary phase shift keying (MPSK) with an I-Q unbalance over additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN) and Rician fading channels. We used the new expression to investigate the effect of the I-Q unbalance on the MPSK SEP performance. Our investigation confirms that this approach is a convenient way to evaluate the average SEP of an MPSK for various cases of the Rician factor.

We derive and analyze a bit error rate (BER) expression of a Gray coded rectangular QAM (R-QAM) signal with maximal ratio combining (MRC) diversity reception over Nakagami-n (Rician) fading channels. The derived result is provided in terms of the Whittaker function and the confluent hypergeometric function. Because the derived expression is general, it can readily allow numerical evaluation for various cases of practical interest such as line-of-sight (LOS) or satellite communication channel analysis.

This letter derives a new exact and general closed-form expression involving a two-dimensional joint Gaussian Q-function for the symbol error rate (SER) of M-ary Phase Shift Keying (MPSK) under an additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN) channel. By using two rotations of coordinates the correlation coefficient between two Gaussian random vectors is provided, then with the derived correlation coefficient that characterizes the two-dimensional joint Gaussian Q-function, a new expression for the SER of MPSK is presented. The derived new SER expression offers a convenient method to evaluate the performances of MPSK for various cases of practical interest.

This paper describes techniques of scoring prosodic proficiency of English sentences spoken by Japanese. The multiple regression model predicts the prosodic proficiency using new prosodic measures based on the characteristics of Japanese novice learners of English. Prosodic measures are calculated by comparing prosodic parameters, such as F0, power and duration, of learner's and native speaker's speech. The new measures include the approximation error of the fitting line and the comparison result of prosodic parameters for a limited segment of the word boundary rather than the whole utterance. This paper reveals that the introduction of the new measures improved the correlation by 0.1 between the teachers' and automatic scores.

In order to achieve adaptive channel coding and adaptive modulation, the main causes of degradation to system performance are the decoder selection error and modulator estimation error. The utilization of supplementary information, in an estimation system utilizing channel estimation results, blind modulation estimation, and blind encoder estimation using several decoders information and encoder transitions have been considered to overcome these two problems. There are however many issues in these methods, such as the channel estimation difference between transmitter and receiver, computational complexity and the assumption of perfect Channel State Information (CSI). Our proposal, on the other hand, decreases decoder and demodulator selection error using a Hidden-Markov Model (HMM). In order to estimate the switching patterns of the encoder and modulator, our proposed system selects the maximum likelihood encoder and modulator transition patterns using both encoder and modulator transition probability based on the HMM obtained by CSI and also Decoder and Demodulator Selection Error probabilities. Therefore, the decoder and demodulation results can be achieved efficiently without any restraint on the pattern of switching encoder and modulation.

This paper investigates the parameter tying structures of a mixture of factor analyzers (MFA) and discriminative training of MFA for speaker identification. The parameters of factor loading matrices or diagonal matrices are shared in different mixtures of MFA. Then, minimum classification error (MCE) training is applied to the MFA parameters to enhance the discrimination ability. The result of a text-independent speaker identification experiment shows that MFA outperforms the conventional Gaussian mixture model (GMM) with diagonal or full covariance matrices and achieves the best performance when sharing the diagonal matrices, resulting in a relative gain of 26% over the GMM with diagonal covariance matrices. The improvement is more significant especially in sparse training data condition. The recognition performance is further improved by MCE training with an additional gain of 3% error reduction.

In this paper, an efficient architecture for an adaptive Reed-Solomon decoder is presented, where the block length n and the message length k can be varied from their minimum allowable values up to their selected values. This eliminates the need of inserting zeros before decoding shortened RS codes. And the error-correcting capability t can be changed adaptively to channel state at every codeword block. The decoder allows efficient decoding in both burst mode and continuous mode, and it permits 3-step pipelined processing based on the modified Euclid's algorithm. Each step in decoding is designed to be clocked by a separate clock. Thus, each step can be efficiently pipelined with no help of multiplexing. Also, it makes it possible to employ no additional buffer even when the decoder input and output clocks are different. The adaptive RS decoder over GF(28) having the error-correcting capability of upto 10 has been designed in VHDL, and successfully synthesized in an FPGA chip. It can be used in a wide range of applications because of its versatility.

Projection-based model reductions become a necessity for efficient interconnect modeling and simulations. In order to choose the order of the reduced system that can really reflect the essential dynamics of the original interconnect, the residual error of the transfer function can be considered as a stopping criteria to terminate the Arnoldi iteration process. Analytical expressions of this residual error are derived in detail. Furthermore, it can be found that the approximate transfer function can also be expressed as the original interconnect model with some additive perturbations. The perturbation matrix only involves resultant vectors at the previous step of the Arnoldi algorithm. These error information will provide a guideline for the order selection scheme used in the Krylov subspace model-order algorithm.

In orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) systems with differential phase shift keying (DPSK), it is possible to apply differential modulation either in the time or frequency domain depending on the condition of fading channels, such as the Doppler frequency shift and the delay spread. This paper proposes a simple calculation method, that is, an approximate closed-form equation of the bit error rate (BER) in DPSK/OFDM systems mentioned above over both time and frequency selective Rician fading channels. The validity of the proposed method is demonstrated by the fact that the BER performances given by the derived equation coincide with those by Monte Carlo simulation.

We discuss a typical profile of the k-error linear complexity for balanced binary exponent periodic sequences and the number of periodic distinct sequences by their profiles. A numerical example with period 16 is also shown.

In this paper, we consider a mobile system consisting of a single isolated circular cell with K independent users simultaneously sharing the channel using binary DS-CDMA to establish a full duplex channel with the base station. Both coherent and differential detection RAKE receivers with Maximal Ratio Combining (MRC) techniques are considered. The performance of two uplink/downlink receivers in Nakagami wideband fading channel is studied. Our approach relies on the use of total instantaneous interference power calculations instead of the use of average power approximations. We analyzed and derived new exact formulae for bit error probabilities for the considered system, and presented a set of numerical results both for the exact formulae and Gaussian approximation. The performance comparisons suggest that the exact formulae provide superior performance to Gaussian approximation especially at low number of users and either high fading parameters of the desired user or low fading parameters of the MAIs.

In this paper, the bit error rate (BER) and the outage probability are presented for a maximal ratio combining (MRC) two-dimensional (2D)-RAKE receiver operating in a correlated frequency-selective Nakagami-m fading environment with multiple access interference. A simple approximated probability distribution function of the signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio (SINR) is derived for the receiver with multiple correlated antennas and RAKE branches in arbitrary fading environments. The combined effects of spatial and temporal diversity order, average received signal-to-noise ratio, the number of multiple access interference, angular spread, antennae spacing and multi-path Nakagami-m fading environment on the system performance are illustrated. Numerical results indicate that the performance of the 2D-RAKE receiver depends highly on the operating environment and antenna array configuration. The performance can be improved by increasing the spatio-temporal diversity gains and antenna spacing.

In cellular systems, a code division multiple access (CDMA) technology with array antennas can significantly reduce interferences by taking advantage of the combination of spreading spectrum and spatial filtering. We investigate performance of cellular CDMA systems through adopting two types of array antennas, switched beam forming (SBF) and tracking beam forming (TBF) in the base station. Through Monte-Carlo simulations, we evaluate average bit-error-rate (BER) and outage probability of the systems under log-normal shadowing channels with multi-cell environment. When we consider 2 beams and 4 beams per sector for the SBF method, it is observed that the TBF method gives at least 10% and 30% capacity improvement over the SBF method in aspects of 10-3 BER and 1% outage probability, respectively.

This letter presents an alternative analytical expression for the symbol error probability (SEP) of the coherent M-ary phase shift keying (M-PSK) system when an arbitrary phase error exists in an additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN) channel. Unlike the previous work, it is shown that the SEP performance of the M-PSK system can be completely characterized by the one- and two-dimensional Gaussian Q-functions. The new expression is numerically more convenient to manipulate than the previous results by replacing the integral operations with the built-in functions commonly available in various mathematical software tool libraries.

FEC (Forward Error Correction) is widely used to recover packet loss over the Internet since it does not involve additional network delay. However, FEC still needs much additional network bandwidth for redundancy, and does not consider the priority or the importance of video frames to generate redundant data. In this paper, we present Periodic FEC (PFEC) to make up for the shortcomings of FEC. PFEC divides frames into high-priority frames and low-priority frames, and gives redundancy only to high-priority frames. As specific examples, we describe two types of PFEC: Media-Independent PFEC and Media-Dependant PFEC. Moreover, based on the two-state continuous time Markov chain, we propose redundancy control algorithms of the PFEC schemes that can adjust the amount of redundancy to optimal levels depending on network loss conditions. For better performance, we also consider UEP (Unequal Error Protection) based on PFEC that gives redundancy to low-priority frames as well as high-priority frames. Experimental results show that compared with FEC, PFEC reduces the amount of redundancy considerably but degrades PSNR slightly, and UEP based on PFEC economizes redundancy without the degradation of the PSNR.

Digital halftoning is used to quantize a grayscale image to a binary image. Error diffusion halftoning generates a high-quality binary image, but also generates some defects such as the warm effect, sharpening, and so forth. To reduce these defects, Kite proposed a modified threshold modulation method that utilizes a multiplicative parameter for controlling sharpening. Nevertheless, some degradation was observed near the edges of objects with a large luminance change. In this paper, we propose a method of controlling the multiplicative parameter in proportion to the magnitude of the local edge slope. The results of computer simulation show a greater reduction of sharpening in the halftone image. In particular, there is a great improvement in the quality of the edges of objects with a large luminance change.

The control problem of hybrid systems have received considerable attention. However, because of the existence of constraints and the combinatorial nature of continuous time and discrete event dynamics, the understanding of hybrid systems is rather limited at present. Only optimal control approaches were proposed based on heuristic rules. Few theoretical properties of system can be predicted until now. In this paper, we consider the tracking control problem of hybrid plants represented by MLD model to follow a family of reference signals produced by an external generator. Some new results are presented. The internal model principle of continuous system is extended to hybrid systems so as to solve the problem.