In a previous study about a combinatorial optimization problem solver using neural networks, since the Hopfield method, convergence to the optimum solution sooner and with more certainty is regarded as important. Namely, only static states are considered as the information. However, from a biological point of view, dynamical systems have attracted attention recently. Therefore, we propose a "dynamical" combinatorial optimization problem solver using hysteresis neural networks. In this paper, the proposed system is evaluated by the N-Queen problem.

A high efficient HBT MMIC power amplifier with a new on-chip bias control circuit was proposed for PCS applications. By adjusting the quiescent current in accordance with the output power levels, the average power usage efficiency of the power amplifier is improved by a factor of 1.4. The bias controlled power amplifier, depending on low (high) output power levels, shows 62(103) mA of quiescent current, 16(28) dBm output power with 7.5(35.4)% of power-added efficiency(PAE), -46(-45) dBc of adjacent-channel power ratio (ACPR), and 23.7(26.9) dB of gain

A new blind identification method of transfer functions between variables in feedback systems is introduced for single sweep type of MEG data. The method is based on the viewpoint of stochastic/statistical inverse problems. The required conditions of the model are stationary and linear Gaussian processes. Raw MEG data of the brain activities are heavily contaminated with several noises and artifacts. The elimination of them is a crucial problem especially for the method. Usually, these noises and artifacts are removed by notch and high-pass filters which are preset automatically. In the present paper, we will try two types of more careful preprocessing procedures for the identification method to obtain impulse functions. One is a careful notch filtering and the other is a blind source separation method based on temporal structure. As results, identifiably of transfer functions and their impulse responses are improved in both cases. Transfer functions and impulse responses identified between MEG sensors are obtained by using the method in Appendix A, when eyes are closed with rest state. Some advantages of the blind source separation method are discussed.

With the aim of enabling concatenative synthesis of expressive speech, we herein report progress towards developing robust and automatic algorithms for paralinguistic annotation of very large recorded-speech corpora. In particular, we describe a method of combining robust acoustic-prosodic and cepstral analyses to locate centres of acoustic-phonetic reliability in the speech stream, wherein physiologically meaningful parameters related to voice quality can be estimated more reliably. We then report some evaluations of a specific voice-quality parameter known as the glottal Amplitude Quotient (AQ), which was proposed in [2],[6] and is here measured automatically at centres of reliability in continuous speech. Analyses of a large, single-speaker corpus of emotional speech first validate the perceptual importance of the AQ parameter in quantifying the mode of phonation along the pressed-modal-breathy continuum, then reveal some of its phonetic, prosodic, and paralinguistic dependencies.

In this work, we review our recent efforts to make effective use of atomistic calculations for the advancement of VLSI process simulation. We focus on three example applications: the behavior of implanted fluorine, arsenic diffusion and activation, and the impact of charge interactions on doping fluctuations.

In this paper we consider blind source separation (BSS) problem of signals which are spatially uncorrelated of order four, but temporally correlated of order four (for instance speech or biomedical signals). For such type of signals we propose a new sufficient condition for separation using fourth order statistics, stating that the separation is possible, if the source signals have distinct normalized cumulant functions (depending on time delay). Using this condition we show that the BSS problem can be converted to a symmetric eigenvalue problem of a generalized cumulant matrix Z(4)(b) depending on L-dimensional parameter b, if this matrix has distinct eigenvalues. We prove that the set of parameters b which produce Z(4)(b) with distinct eigenvalues form an open subset of RL, whose complement has a measure zero. We propose a new separating algorithm which uses Jacobi's method for joint diagonalization of cumulant matrices depending on time delay. We empasize the following two features of this algorithm: 1) The optimal number of matrices for joint diago- nalization is 100-150 (established experimentally), which for large dimensional problems is much smaller than those of JADE; 2) It works well even if the signals from the above class are, additionally, white (of order two) with zero kurtosis (as shown by an example).

This paper presents novel techniques for blind separation and blind extraction of instantaneously mixed binary sources, which are suitable for the case with less sensors than sources. First, a solvability analysis is presented for a general case. Necessary and sufficient conditions for recoverability of all or some part of sources are derived. A new deterministic blind separation algorithm is then proposed to estimate the mixing matrix and separate all sources efficiently in the noise-free or low noise level case. Next, using the Maximum Likelihood (ML) approach for robust estimation of centers of clusters, we have extended the algorithm for high additive noise case. Moreover, a new sequential blind extraction algorithm has been developed, which enables us not only to extract the potentially separable sources but also estimate their number. The sources can be extracted in a specific order according to their dominance (strength) in the mixtures. At last, simulation results are presented to illustrate the validity and high performance of the algorithms.

We describe progress we have achieved in the development of our quantum transport modeling for nano-scale devices. Our simulation is based upon either the non-equilibrium Green's function method (NEGF) or the quantum correction (QC) associated with density gradient method (DG) and/or effective potential method (EP). We show the results of our modeling methods applied to several devices and discuss issues faced with regards to computational time, open boundary conditions, and their relationship to self-consistent solution of the Poisson-NEGF equations. We also discuss those for efficiently tailored QC Monte Carlo techniques.

Impact ionization and thermionic tunnelling as two possible breakdown mechanisms in scaled pseudomorphic high electron mobility transistors (PHEMTs) are investigated by Monte Carlo (MC) device simulations. Impact ionization is included in MC simulation as an additional scattering mechanism whereas thermionic tunnelling is treated in the WKB approximation during each time step in self-consistent MC simulation. Thermionic tunnelling starts at very low drain voltages but then quickly saturates. Therefore, it should not drastically affect the performance of scaled devices. Impact ionization threshold occurs at greater drain voltages which should assure a reasonable operation voltage scale for all scaled PHEMTs.

The paper overviews and surveys Japan's reflector antennas for earth stations and radio telescopes since the 1960's. Some interferometers for radio astronomy are included. Japanese original technologies regarding reflector antenna design and measurement are also described. There are 35 figures and 3 tables.

In DS-CDMA mobile radio communications systems, transmit power control (TPC) is indispensable to regulate the variations in the received signal power produced by multipath fading. However, a practical TPC raises and lowers the mobile transmit power only at discrete time instants (the TPC rate is on the order of 1-2 kHz) and by a finite step size of the order of 1 dB. Therefore, TPC cannot completely compensate the received signal power variations and hence, the transmission performance degrades in a fast fading channel. The objective of this paper is to understand how TPC acts in a fast fading channel with antenna diversity reception and, based on this understanding, to model the TPC operation.

This paper presents a framework for modeling and mixed-mode simulation of circuits/interconnects and electromagnetic (EM-) radiations. The proposed framework investigates the signal integrity in VLSI chips, packages and wiring boards at the GHz-band level, and verifies the electromagnetic interference (EMI) and the electromagnetic compatibility (EMC) of high-speed systems. In our framework, the frequency characteristics of interconnects and EM-radiations are extracted by the full-wave FDTD simulation. The macromodels of interconnects are synthesized as SPICE subcircuits, and the impulse responses of EM-radiations are stored in the database. Once the macromodels are synthesized, the circuit simulation with the consideration of EM-effects can be performed by using SPICE. The EM-field distributions can be also easily calculated by taking convolutions of pre-simulated EM impulse responses and the SPICE results.

This paper introduces a way to realize high-pass, band-stop and all-pass transfer functions using two-integrator loop structure consisting of loss-less and lossy integrators. The basic circuit configuration is constructed with five Operational Transconductance Amplifiers (OTAs) and two grounded capacitors. It is shown that the circuit can realize their circuit transfer functions by choosing the input terminals, and that the circuit parameters can also be independently set by the transconductance gains with the proportional block. Although the basic circuit configuration has been known, it seems that the feature for realizing the high-pass, the band-stop and the all-pass transfer functions makes the structure more attractive and useful. An example is given together with simulated results by PSPICE.

An efficient algorithm is proposed for finding all solutions of piecewise-linear resistive circuits containing bipolar transistors. This algorithm is based on a powerful test (termed the LP test) for nonexistence of a solution in a given region using linear programming (LP). In the LP test, an LP problem is formulated by surrounding the exponential functions in the Ebers-Moll model by right-angled triangles, and it is solved by LP, for example, by the simplex method. In this paper, it is shown that the LP test can be performed by the dual simplex method, which makes the number of pivotings much smaller. Effectiveness of the proposed technique is confirmed by numerical examples.

In wireless communications, a smart antenna system utilizes an antenna array to acquire the spatial signatures of transmitted signals. This system uses the difference in the spatial signatures or the direction of arrival (DOA) of signals to correctly obtain the desired signal. This can reduce co-channel interference, mitigate the fading phenomenon caused by multipath transmissions, improve the communication quality and increase the system capacity. The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the performance of smart antennas using four beamforming algorithms applied to a wideband code division multiple access (W-CDMA) system. The simulation results show that, based on the same power consumption at the transceiver and using a Rake receiver, a W-CDMA system with a smart antenna can operate at a lower bit error rate at the specific signal to noise ratio (SNR). Moreover, the smart antenna system accommodates more users at the specific signal to interference ratio (SIR), even though a certain angle difference exists between the actual DOAs and the estimated DOAs.

We propose a new phase interpolator that provides precise fractional phase pulses without the need to adjust circuit constants. The variable phases are produced by detecting the coincidence of two voltages, the ramp wave and the threshold voltage. The new phase interpolator can keep the same ramp wave slope and the same threshold voltage for different output phases. This significantly reduces the power dissipation of the voltage comparator. This phase interpolator can be applied to various timing circuits and clock generators, such as frequency multipliers and direct digital synthesizers. We present a novel frequency doubler, a novel frequency tripler, a direct digital synthesizer (DDS), and a novel wideband DDS (WDDS) as applications of our new phase interpolator, which uses 0.35-mm CMOS process technology. Experimental results confirm the functionarity of the new phase interpolator. An 8-bit complete DDS IC dissipates only 2.1 mA at a 50-MHz clock rate and a supply voltage of 2.8 V.

In cryptography, we want a Boolean function which satisfies PC(l) of order k for many (l,k). Let PCn(l,k) be a set of Boolean functions with n input bits satisfying PC(l) of order k. From a view point of construction, it is desirable that there exists (l0,k0) such that PCn(l0, k0) PCn(li,ki) for many i 1. In this paper, we show a negative result for this problem. We prove that PCn(l1,k1) PCn(l2,k2) for a large class of l1, k1, l2 and k2.

This paper shows an extensive software performance analysis of dedicated hash functions, particularly concentrating on Pentium III, which is a current dominant processor. The targeted hash functions are MD5, RIPEMD-128 -160, SHA-1 -256 -512 and Whirlpool, which fully cover currently used and future promised hashing algorithms. We try to optimize hashing speed not only by carefully arranging pipeline scheduling but also by processing two or even three message blocks in parallel using MMX registers for 32-bit oriented hash functions. Moreover we thoroughly utilize 64-bit MMX instructions for maximizing performance of 64-bit oriented hash functions, SHA-512 and Whirlpool. To our best knowledge, this paper gives the first detailed measured performance analysis of SHA-256, SHA-512 and Whirlpool.

This paper proposes a new method to estimate the channel impulse response for Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) mobile radio transmission. The method employs the Recursive Least Squares (RLS) algorithm so as to exploit the correlations in frequency and time domains, and can improve the estimation accuracy. It is also applicable to both the regular and scattered pilot schemes. Computer simulations demonstrate effectiveness of the method applied to the scattered pilot scheme.

A novel compact T/R (Transmit/Receive) switching circuit for wideband T/R modules has been proposed. It employs quadrature couplers and gate-and-drain-driven HPAs to remove circulators or T/R switches from a conventional T/R module, and T/R switching is made with controlling biasing conditions of the FETs in HPAs. Furthermore, an optimum biasing condition and design of output matching circuit of the HPA have been studied to reduce loss in RX-mode, and the validity of the method has been confirmed by measurements.