A ridge-type Zn-indiffused Mach-Zehnder modulator operating at 1.55 µm wavelength is demonstrated on a z-cut LiNbO3 substrate for the first time. The measured results show that the values of voltage-length product can be reduced from 9.6 V-cm to 8.1 V-cm with the etched depth of 1.7 µm.

We propose a novel blind watermarking algorithm, called XFuseMark, which can hide a small, visually meaningful, grayscale logo in a host image instead of using a random-noise-like sequence based on the multiresolution fusion principles, and extract a recognizable version of the embedded logo even without reference to the original host data at the receiving end. XFuseMark is not only secure, i.e., only authorized users holding a private key are able to conduct the logo extraction operation, but also robust against noise addition and image compression. Experiments verify the practical performance of XFuseMark.

This paper describes a 0.13 µm CMOS Logic process compatible single poly gate type non-volatile (NV) memory with a differential cell architecture, which is tailored for a rewritable FUSE (CMOS-FUSE) for System-on-a Chip (SoC). This paper features the following points; 1) firstly quantified how much important is avoiding any additional process cost and area penalty rather than reducing the area of memory cell itself from the chip cost point of view for the new SoC applications. CMOS FUSE can provide cost-competitive than the high-density NV memories (50-fold higher density with 20% additional cost relative to CMOS FUSE) in the capacity range of 200 kbit for the SoC occupied the logic area of 40 mm2. 2) firstly discussed in detail how much the differential cell architecture can change a data retention characteristics including an activation energy (Ea), failure-rate, and tail-bits issues relative to the conventional one based on the measured data of 0.13 µm devices. Based on the measured data retention characteristics at 300, 250, and 200, it is found that the proposed differential approach makes it possible to increase Ea by 1.5 times (from 1.52 eV to 2.23 eV), which means it can be expected to realize a 20000-fold longer data retention characteristics at 105. Even if considering the tail-bit issues for mass-production, an over 700-fold longer data retention characteristics at 105 can be expected while keeping the same failure rate (0.01 ppm) relative to the conventional OR-logical architecture. No significant Vt shifts ( 140 mV and 200 mV) were observed even after applying surge stress of +2200 V from I/O pad and 1000-times cycling of write and erase operations, respectively. In addition, 1024-bit CMOS-FUSE module has been embedded in the SoC without any additional area penalty by being laid out just beneath the power ring for SRAM macro and the stable memory read operation was verified at VDD=1.0 V under a severe I/O switching noise and an unstable VDD/GND condition in the power up sequence.

We have exploited a high-power-tolerant variable optical attenuator (VOA) based on the fused fiber coupler in the all-fiber structure. A newly designed VOA employs the external modulation by forcing an axial stress in the tapered region of the fused fiber coupler. In the tapered region, the axial stress changes the refractive index of silica glasses resulting in a change in the coupling coefficient of the coupler. In this paper, we explain the principle of the novel device, VOA, and the optimized fabrication of the fused fiber coupler for the attenuation. The changes of the transmission spectrum for the coupler and the optical power spectrum for pump laser diode (LD), whose center wavelength is 1.47µm, versus the axial displacement were verified by experiment. The possibility of the wavelength uniformity less than 1dB over the range of 1460-1500nm was also obtained by another coupler under a different fabrication condition. The polarization-dependent loss (PDL) at 1.47µm wavelength was 0.65dB for a maximum displacement of 150µm. The designed device has an attractive feature of another output port of the coupler available as a monitoring tap. The device showed a high attenuation above 34dB and an insertion loss below 0.15dB. The all-fiber structure can provide less alignment, which in turn provides a high power tolerance. This novel design, moreover, has a simple and cost-effective structure.

For tracking electromigration induced evolution of voids a diffuse interface model is applied. We assume an interconnect as two-dimensional electrically conducting via which contains initially a circular void. The diffuse interface governing equation was solved applying a finite element scheme with a robust local grid adaptation algorithm. Simulations were carried out for voids exposed to high current. An influence of the void dynamics on the resistance of interconnect is investigated. In the case of the interconnect via it was shown that a migrating void exactly follows the current flow, retaining its stability, but due to change of shape and position causes significant fluctuations in interconnect resistance.

This paper proposes a new method for image segmentation and extraction using nonlinear cellular networks. Flexible segmentation of complicated natural scene images is achieved by using resistive-fuse networks, and each segmented regions is extracted by nonlinear oscillator networks. We also propose a nonlinear cellular network circuit implementing both resistive-fuse and oscillator dynamics by using pulse-modulation techniques. The basic operation of the nonlinear network circuit is confirmed by SPICE simulation. Moreover, the 1010-pixel image segmentation and extraction are demonstrated by high-speed circuit simulation.

Generalized Pulse Spectrum Technique (GPST) is a method to solve the inverse problems of wave-propagation and diffusion-dominated phenomena, and therefore has been popularly applied in image reconstruction of time-resolved diffuse optical tomography. With a standard GPST for simultaneous reconstruction of absorption and scattering coefficients, the products of the gradients of the Green's function and the photon-density flux, based on the photon-diffusion equation, are required to calculate the diffusion-related Jacobian matrix. The adversities are of two-folds: time-consuming and singular in the field near the source. The latter causes a severe insensitivity of the algorithm to the scattering changes deep inside tissue. To cope with the above difficulties, we propose in this paper a modified GPST algorithm that only involves the Green's function and the photon-density flux themselves in the scattering-related matrix. Our simulated and experimental reconstructions show that the modified algorithm can significantly improve the quality of scattering image and accelerate the reconstruction process, without an evident degradation in absorption image.

A technique was developed to reconstruct the cross-sectional image of the absorption distribution in a diffuse medium using backscattered light. In this technique, we illuminate an object with an ultra-short pulse, and measure the time-resolved pulse shape of the light backscattered from the object. The absorption distribution of the scattering object can be estimated using the propagation-path distribution of photons at each detection time and the optical impulse response of backscattered light. In a simulation, the effectiveness of this technique was verified in the cases of a layered absorber and a three dimensional absorber. The nonlinear relationship between the depth of the probing region and the propagation time was clarified. The accuracy of the image reconstruction was significantly improved by the aperiodic sampling of the backscattered impulse response according to the nonlinear relation. The feasibility of the proposed technique was verified in the experiment with a model phantom.

A highly reliable single-poly flash technology named ie-Flash (inverse gate electrode Flash), which can be embedded in a standard CMOS process without any process modifications, has been developed. The ie-flash cell consists of two elementary cells for OR-logical reading, resulting in significant improvement of reliability. 5 V-programming with 1 ms duration and 1.2 V-read operation of 35 bit memory modules fabricated by a 0.14 µ m CMOS process is demonstrated. This flash technology will extends not only testing cost reduction of the system-on-a chip by replacing laser-link but also provides flexibility of programmable logic applications.

We propose a low-cost, high-uniformity, and low excess loss star coupler. The proposed star coupler comprises a planar lightguide, a diffuser, and polymer optical fibers (POFs). High-uniformity of optical power distribution was enabled by utilizing the diffused light transmission. Input light is diffused by the diffuser that is attached between the input POFs and the planar lightguide and transmitted through the planar lightguide. The optimum width-to-length ratio of the lightguide is clarified through simulations and experiments. We fabricated the star couplers based on the optimum width-to-length ratio for evaluation. The fabricated 1616 star coupler showed the excellent uniformity at the distribution ratio of 0.8 dB and the excess loss of 3.3 dB. The fabricated star coupler also provides a wide tolerance for misalignment. The maximum number of nodes to assure high transmission quality and the bandwidth of the proposed star coupler are discussed. The proposed star coupler is remarkably cost effective since it can be produced by injection-molding technology. The proposed star coupler enables easy multi-channel interconnection.

In CDMA mobile cellular systems, wireless quality is improved by soft handoff techniques. However, it requires to hold multiple channels of cells, which is likely to increase call blocking at wired channels. It is therefore necessary to consider the entire system including the wired and wireless portions of systems for investigating an effectiveness of the soft handoff. In this paper, we also clarify the effect of interference power from mobile stations that are not in the soft handoff because of lack of wired channels. In the analysis, we model three-way soft handoff which has not been considered in past researches. We also show the effect of a call admission control to wireless quality.

In this paper, we have proposed a new method for diffuse liver disease classification with sonogram, including the normal liver, hepatitis and cirrhosis, from a new point of view "scale. " The new system utilizes a multiscale analysis tool, called wavelet transforms, to analyze the ultrasonic liver images. A new set of features consisting of second order statistics derived from the wavelet transformed images is employed. From these features, we have found that the third scale is the representative scale for the classification of the considered liver diseases, and the horizontal wavelet transform can improve the representation of the corresponding features. Experimental results show that our method can achieve about 88% correct classification rate which is superior to other measures such as the co-occurrence matrices, the Fourier power spectrum, and the texture spectrum. This implies that our feature set can access the granularity from sonogram more effectively. It should be pointed out that our features are powerful for discriminating the normal livers from the cirrhosis because there is no misclassification samples between the normal liver and the cirrhosis sets. In addition, the experimental results also verify the usefulness of "scale" because our multiscale feature set can gain eighteen percent advantage over the direct use of the statistical features. This means that the wavelet transform at proper scales can effectively increase the distances among the statistical feature clusters of different liver diseases.

The resistive-fuse network for early vision was studied using circuit simulation to clarify the potential of implementation with resonant tunneling diodes (RTDs). To over-come the fundamental problem of the RTD network, i.e., the RTDs cannot perform simulated annealing (SA), pseudo SAs were proposed. These methods are based on the time-variation of the input signal strength, and are found to be effective in restoring images. A resistive-fuse network is shown to be one of the most promising applications of RTDs.

A new approach is presented for recovering the 3-D shape from shading image. Photometric Stereo Method (PSM) is generally based on the direct illumination. PSM in this paper is modified with the indirect diffuse illumination method (IDIM), and then applied to hybrid reflectance model which consists of two components; the Lambertian reflectance and the specular reflectance. Under the hybrid reflectance model and the indirect diffuse illumination circumstances, the 3-D shape of objects can be recovered from the surface normal vector extracted from the surface roughness, the surface reflectance ratio, and the intensity value of a pixel. This method is rapid because of using the reference table, simplifies the restriction condition about the reflectance function in prior studies without any loss in performance, and can be applied to various types of surfaces by defining general reflectance function.

To make a fast Bi-CMOS SRAM yield high without speed degradation, three defect-repair methods, the address comparison method, the fuse decoder method and the distributed fuse method, were considered in detail and their advantages and disadvantages were made clear. The distributed fuse method is demonstrated to be further improved by a built-in fuse word driver and a built-in fuse column selector, and fuse analog switches. This enhanced distributed fuse scheme was examined in a fast Bi-CMOS SRAM. A maximun access time of 14 ns and a chip size of 8.8 mm17.4 mm are expected for a 4 Mb Bi-CMOS SRAM in the future.

By optimizing the structure of erbium-doped fibers, high efficiency such as a gain coefficient of 6.3dB/mW, or a slope efficiency of 92.6% have been realized with very flat wavelength dependence. Though the optimized structure has high NA, the splice loss with standard fibers can be lowered by the additional arc technique. The carbon coated fiber with a fatigue parameter over 150 guarantees the reliability, even when wounded on a small coil. In-line isolators and WDM couplers have been also developed. An amplifier module has been assembled, resulting in an output power more than +16dBm owing to the high performance of each component.