We present a technology based on Nb/NbxSi1-x/Nb junctions, with barriers near the metal-insulator transition, for applications in superconducting electronics (SCE) as an alternative to Nb/AlOx/Nb tunnel junctions. Josephson junctions with co-sputtered amorphous Nb-Si barriers can be made with a wide variety of electrical properties: critical current density (Jc), capacitance (C), and normal resistance (Rn) can be reliably selected within wide ranges by choosing both the barrier thickness and Nb concentration. Nonhysteretic Nb/NbxSi1-x/Nb junctions with IcRn products greater than 1 mV, where Ic is the critical current, and Jc values near 100 kA/cm2 have been fabricated and are promising for superconductive digital electronics. These barriers have thicknesses of several nanometers; this improves fabrication reproducibility and junction uniformity, both of which are necessary for complex digital circuits. Recent improvements to our deposition system have allowed us to obtain better uniformity across the wafer.

This paper proposes an efficient multiuser relay scheme in OFDMA systems. In the proposed scheme, multiple terminals transmit their data packets simultaneously in the same subband and multiple relay stations retransmit their received signals in different subbands after subband conversion. A base station (BS) extracts individual packets from received signals in the different subbands. In advance of data transmission, the BS selects appropriate terminals so that the BS can extract individual data packets successfully. Numerical results show that the proposed relay scheme achieves higher system throughput than the conventional relay scheme when scheduling is applied to a larger number of terminals than the number of relay stations.

The effect of wavefront compensation in beam transmission is estimated for ground to satellite laser communications. A numerical analysis is performed using the combination of the isoplanatic angle, the atmospheric coherence length and the point-ahead angle to find the aperture size of the beam transmission with which the wavefront compensation effect appears most strongly.

A fuel-supply system using movable fuel-supply vehicles (FSVs) is proposed and its performance is evaluated. Both FSVs and vehicles requesting fuel are equipped with networked sensors. The sensors in FSVs are location sensors, and those in vehicles requesting fuel are for determining the remaining amount of fuel and the location of the vehicle. The time from when a fuel request is generated until the request is satisfied is the most basic performance metric for this system. Explicit formulas for the probabilistic distribution of this request time are also derived. Numerical examples show that the number of movable FSVs can be smaller than that of fixed fuel stations by about 80% or more than two orders of magnitude. This result suggests that movable FSVs may reduce the cost of the fuel supply infrastructure for alternative-fuel vehicles such as fuel-cell vehicles.

The modulated scattering antenna array (MSAA) is composed of one normal antenna element and several modulated scattering elements (MSEs). In this paper, a 2-element MSAA is used as the receiving antenna in a 2 2 multiple input multiple output (MIMO) system. MIMO performance of MSAA with various array spacing is measured to investigate the relation between the array spacing and the MIMO performance of the MSAA experimentally in the non-line-of-sight (NLOS) indoor environment. It is found that the error vector magnitude (EVM) and the channel capacity, which reflect MIMO performance, can be affected by the array spacing. The measured results of the MSAA were compared with that of two-dipole antenna array at the same condition.

A method to construct Boolean functions with maximum algebraic immunity have been proposed in . Based on that method, we propose a different method to construct Boolean functions on even variables with maximum algebraic immunity in this letter. By counting on our construction, a lower bound of the number of such Boolean functions is derived, which is the best among all the existing lower bounds.

In order to explore the feasibility of large-scale subthreshold logic circuits and to clarify the lower limit of supply voltage (VDD) for logic circuits, the dependence of the minimum operating voltage (VDD min ) of CMOS logic gates on the number of stages, gate types and gate width is systematically measured with 90 nm CMOS ring oscillators (RO's). The measured average VDD min of inverter RO's increased from 90 mV to 343 mV when the number of RO stages increased from 11 to 1 Mega, which indicates the difficulty of VDD scaling in large-scale subthreshold logic circuits. The dependence of VDD min on the number of stages is calculated using the subthreshold current model with random threshold voltage (VTH) variations and compared with the measured results, and the tendency of the measurement is confirmed. The effect of adaptive body bias control to compensate purely random VTH variation is also investigated. Such compensation would require impractical inverter-by-inverter adaptive body bias control.

We consider a single-link multi-source network with FAST TCP sources. We adopt a continuous-time dynamic model for FAST TCP sources, and propose a static model to adequately describe the queuing delay dynamics at the link. The proposed model turns out to have a structure that reveals the time-varying network feedback delay, which allows us to analyze FAST TCP with due consideration of the time-varying network feedback delay. Based on the proposed model, we establish sufficient conditions for the boundedness of congestion window of each source and for the global asymptotic stability. The asymptotic stability condition shows that the stability property of each source is affected by all other sources sharing the link. Simulation results illustrate the validity of the sufficient condition for the global asymptotic stability.

This paper proposes closed form solutions to the L2-sensitivity minimization subject to L2-scaling constraints for second-order state-space digital filters with real poles. We consider two cases of second-order digital filters: distinct real poles and multiple real poles. The proposed approach reduces the constrained optimization problem to an unconstrained optimization problem by appropriate variable transformation. We can express the L2-sensitivity by a simple linear combination of exponential functions and formulate the L2-sensitivity minimization problem by a simple polynomial equation. As a result, L2-sensitivity is expressed in closed form, and its minimization subject to L2-scaling constraints is achieved without iterative calculations.

We propose a novel short-range wireless communications technology that uses quasi-static electric fields; it enables data communication between devices separated by up to 10 cm via dielectric media at a speed of 10 Mbps. It is considered to be a secure wireless technology since communication area is restricted to below about 10 cm. To suppress electromagnetic radiation, we adopted a baseband transmission scheme in which the quasi-static electric field is directly modulated by 10 BASE-T data signals. Since the spectra of the data signals are concentrated to below 20 MHz, the amplitude of the electric field rapidly decreases outside the communication area. This contributes to enhancing security of the communications system. In this paper, we explain a basic principle of the short-range wireless communications technology. Since baseband data signals are carried by the quasi-static electric field, the quality of the communication is easily degraded by the existence of the earth ground. To isolate the communications system from the earth ground, we introduce a novel electro-optic sensor to receive the quasi-static electric field. With the electro-optic sensor, stable data communication is possible at 10 Mbps via dielectric materials, such as a wooden table.

This letter describes the importance of transition regions, e.g. at phoneme boundaries, for automatic speaker recognition compared with using steady-state regions. Experimental results of automatic speaker identification tasks confirm that transition regions include the most speaker distinctive features. A possible reason for obtaining such results is described in view of articulation, in particular, the degree of freedom of articulators. These results are expected to provide useful information in designing an efficient automatic speaker recognition system.

Supporting quality-of-service (QoS) of multimedia communications over IEEE 802.11 based ad hoc networks is a challenging task. This paper develops a simple 3-D Markov chain model for queuing analysis of IEEE 802.11 MAC layer. The model is applied for performance analysis of voice communications over IEEE 802.11 single-hop ad hoc networks. By using the model, we finish the performance optimization of IEEE MAC layer and obtain the maximum number of voice calls in IEEE 802.11 ad hoc networks as well as the statistical performance bounds. Furthermore, we design a fully distributed call admission control (CAC) algorithm which can provide strict statistical QoS guarantee for voice communications over IEEE 802.11 ad hoc networks. Extensive simulations indicate the accuracy of the analytical model and the CAC scheme.

Lots of revocable group signature schemes have been proposed so far. In one type of revocable schemes, signing and/or verifying algorithms have O(N) or O(R) complexity, where N is the group size and R is the number of revoked members. On the other hand, in Camenisch-Lysyanskaya scheme and the followers, signing and verifying algorithms have O(1) complexity. However, before signing, the updates of the secret key are required. The complexity is O(R) in the worst case. In this paper, we propose a revocable scheme with signing and verifying of O(1) complexity, where any update of secret key is not required. The compensation is the long public key of O(N). In addition, we extend it to the scheme with O()-size public key, where signing and verifying have constant extra costs.

This paper presents a numerical approach to the time-domain analysis of N-branch-line couplers. The approach is based on the modified central difference (MCD) method combined with internal boundary treatments, which consist of the time-domain scattering matrix for the three-port junction discontinuity. The behavior of the signal propagation including multiple reflections on the N-branch-line coupler with and without line loss is analyzed and demonstrated in the time domain. Additionally, the S-parameters obtained from Gaussian pulse responses of the N-branch-line directional couplers are shown. The simulated results are in good agreement with those of the commercial simulator.

This paper presents a novel approach of analysing colour bleeding caused by image compression. This is achieved by isolating two components of colour bleeding, and evaluating these components separately. Although these specific components of colour bleeding have not been studied with great detail in the past, with the use of a synthetic test pattern -- similar to the colour bars used to test analogue television transmissions -- we have successfully isolated, and evaluated: "colour blur" and "colour ringing," as two separate components of colour bleeding artefact. We have also developed metrics for these artefacts, and tested these derived metrics in a series of trials aimed to test the colour reproduction performance of a JPEG codec, and a JPEG2000 codec -- both implemented by the developer IrfanView. The algorithms developed to measure these artefact metrics proved to be effective tools for evaluating and benchmarking the performance of similar codecs, or different implementations of the same codecs.

The purpose of the paper is to show that boundary implication results hold for complex-valued uncertain linear time-delay systems. The results are derived by the Lambert W function and yield tractable robust stability criteria for simultaneously triangularizable linear time-delay systems. The setting is similar to a recently reported extreme-point result, but the assumed uncertainty sets can be much more free in shape.

For a group of wirelessly networked robots, called "a robot swarm," to accomplish a unified task as a group, it is necessary to generate a set of common coordinates among all member robots and to notify each member robot of its heading direction in the generated common coordinates. However, when the member robots are not equipped with sensors to identify their locations or bearings, they can use only a ranging capability based in the wireless communication protocol being used to network them as a tool to generate a set of common coordinates among them. This paper presents the detailed principles of a method for generating a set of common coordinates/heading direction for a robot swarm with only ranging capability which we have proposed so far. After showing the theoretical Cramer-Rao lower-bound on the location estimation error variance, we demonstrate several computer simulation results for the proposed method with Received Signal Strength Indication (RSSI)-based ranging.

In this paper, we propose a Modified nested sparse grid based Adaptive Stochastic Collocation Method (MASCM) for block-based Statistical Static Timing Analysis (SSTA). The proposed MASCM employs an improved adaptive strategy derived from the existing Adaptive Stochastic Collocation Method (ASCM) to approximate the key operator MAX during timing analysis. In contrast to ASCM which uses non-nested sparse grid and tensor product quadratures to approximate the MAX operator for weakly and strongly nonlinear conditions respectively, MASCM proposes a modified nested sparse grid quadrature to approximate the MAX operator for both weakly and strongly nonlinear conditions. In the modified nested sparse grid quadrature, we firstly construct the second order quadrature points based on extended Gauss-Hermite quadrature and nested sparse grid technique, and then discard those quadrature points that do not contribute significantly to the computation accuracy to enhance the efficiency of the MAX approximation. Compared with the non-nested sparse grid quadrature, the proposed modified nested sparse grid quadrature not only employs much fewer collocation points, but also offers much higher accuracy. Compared with the tensor product quadrature, the modified nested sparse grid quadrature greatly reduced the computational cost, while still maintains sufficient accuracy for the MAX operator approximation. As a result, the proposed MASCM provides comparable accuracy while remarkably reduces the computational cost compared with ASCM. The numerical results show that with comparable accuracy MASCM has 50% reduction in run time compared with ASCM.

A three-dimensional semiconductor package structure with inter-chip connections was developed for broadband data transfer and low latency electrical communication between a high-capacity memory and a logic device interconnected by a feedthrough interposer (FTI) featuring a 10 µm scale fine-wiring pattern and ultra-fine-pitch through vias. This technology features co-existence of the wide-band memory accessibility of a system-on-chip (SoC) and the capability of memory capacity increasing of a system-in-package (SiP) that is made possible by the individual fabrication of memory and logic on independent chips. This technology can improve performance due to memory band widening and a reduction in the power consumed in inter-chip communications. This paper describes the concept, structure, process, and experimental results of prototypes of this package, called SMAFTI (SMAart chip connection with FeedThrough Interposer). This paper also reports the results of the fundamental reliability test of this novel inter-chip connection structure and board-level interconnectivity tests.

Information theoretic security is an important security notion in cryptography as it provides a true lower bound for attack complexities. However, in practice attacks often have a higher cost than the information theoretic bound. In this paper we study the relationship between information theoretic attack costs and real costs. We show that in the information theoretic model, many well-known and commonly used hash functions such as MD5 and SHA-256 fail to be preimage resistant.