In this paper, the magnetic field properties and the dosimetry at intermediate frequency (21 kHz) for an induction heater are investigated with the coil model, which is prescribed as substitute source model in the European standard EN50366 (CENELEC). The accuracy of the magnetic field vectors and the values of the induced current density, which are achieved with the coil model, are compared with the results of a realistic model of the induction heater obtained from the equivalent source model. It is shown that the coil model coincides well for the magnitude of the magnetic field strength around the induction heater. On the other hand, the dominant field vector of the coil model differs significantly from the real induction heater, which leads to induced current densities in the body model which are three time larger. Owing to these results, the applicability of the coil model prescribed in the EN50366 is confirmed for the induction heater.

The module-wise dynamic voltage and frequency scaling (MDVFS) scheme is applied to a single-chip H.264/MPEG-4 audio/visual codec LSI. The power consumption of the target module with controlled supply voltage and frequency is reduced by 40% in comparison with the operation without voltage or frequency scaling. The consumed power of the chip is 63 mW in decoding QVGA H.264 video at 15 fps and MPEG-4 AAC LC audio simultaneously. This LSI keep operating continuously even during the voltage transition of the target module by introducing the newly developed dynamic de-skewing system (DDS) which watches and control the clock edge of the target module.

This paper investigates the effects of group (or inter-destination) synchronization control over haptic media in a networked game where two players move objects competitively by manipulating haptic interface devices. The group synchronization control adjusts the output timing of haptic media among multiple players. By experiment, we demonstrate the effectiveness of the control. We also discuss the fairness between the two players quantitatively.

Admission control is becoming an essential technique for IP networks to provide full-fledged multimedia streaming services. Although signaling-based schemes are utilized to achieve this, these are difficult to deploy and can hardly achieve strict admission control taking the properties of packet arrival into consideration. In this paper, we propose a novel admission control strategy called the Tentative Accommodating and Congestion Confirming Strategy (TACCS). The main idea is to accommodate incoming flows tentatively and confirm congestion after a certain period. Since tentative accommodating enables us to generate the same situation as where incoming flows have been accommodated, TACCS makes it possible to control admission considering the properties of packet arrival after they have been accommodated, without collecting resource information in advance. From the results of mathematical analysis, we confirmed that TACCS enabled a domain to control admission without a centralized management agent and we provided guidelines for configuring parameters of TACCS.

This paper describes the author's perspective on multimedia quality prediction methodologies for multimedia communications in advanced mobile and internet protocol (IP)-based telephony, and reports related experiments and trials. First, the paper describes the need for perceptual QoS (Quality of Service) assessment in which various quality factors in multimedia communications for advanced mobile and IP-based telephony are analyzed. Then an objective quality prediction scheme is proposed from the viewpoints of quality measurement tools for each quality factor and an opinion model for compound quality factors in mobile and IP-based communications networks. Finally, the author's current trials of measurement tools and opinion models are described.

To support international medical collaboration activities carried out among Japan, Sri Lanka and other countries in Asia, we have been developing a collaboration system, which incorporates synchronous and asynchronous collaboration paradigms through network-effective persistent information sharing. The designed system facilitates synchronous collaborative work on maxillo-facial cases through real-time high-quality image delivery and by bringing the system database objects to a shared-workspace. The asynchronous activities are supported through a web based collaborative environment that enables both activity-centric and object-centric navigation of collaboration contents incorporated with email notifications of the system updates. Multimedia records of synchronous sessions are posted to the system database for later reviewing. Geographically dispersed groups experiencing different scales of network heterogeneities are served by a distributed application level multicast overlay and an adaptive multimedia delivery mechanism. The designed collaboration system also features several useful collaboration tools, user friendly GUI and ubiquitous connectivity.

With the increase of commercial multimedia applications using digital video, the security of video data becomes more and more important. Although several techniques have been proposed in order to protect these video data, they provide limited security or introduce significant overhead. This paper proposes a video security scheme for MPEG video compression standard, which includes two methods: DCEA (DC Coefficient Encryption Algorithm) and "Event Shuffle." DCEA is aim to encrypt group of codewords of DC coefficients. The feature of this method is the usage of data permutation to scatter the ciphertexts of additional codes in DC codewords. These additional codes are encrypted by block cipher previously. With the combination of these algorithms, the method provides enough security for important DC component of MPEG video data. "Event Shuffle" is aim to encrypt the AC coefficients. The prominent feature of this method is a shuffling of AC events generated after DCT transformation and quantization stages. Experimental results show that these methods introduce no bit overhead to MPEG bit stream while achieving low processing overhead to MPEG codec.

In this paper, we present the Tangible Media Control System (TMCS), which allows users to manipulate media contents through physical objects in an intuitive way. Currently, most people access digital media contents by exploiting GUI. However, it only provides limited manipulation of the contents. The proposed system, instead of a mouse and a keyboard, adopts two types of tangible objects, i.e. a RFID-enabled object and a tracker-embedded object. The TMCS enables users to easily access and control digital media contents through tangible objects. In addition, it supports an interactive media controller which can be used to synthesize media contents according to users' taste. It also offers personalized contents, which suits users' preferences, by exploiting context such as the users' profile and situational information. Accordingly, the TMCS demonstrates that tangible interfaces with context can provide more effective interfaces to satisfy users' demands. Therefore, the proposed system can be applied to various interactive applications such as multimedia education, entertainment, multimedia editor, etc.

This letter describes an efficient architecture for a Software Defined Radio (SDR) Wideband Code Division Multiple Access (WCDMA) receiver using for high performance wireless communication systems. The architecture is composed of a Radio Frequency (RF) front-end, an Analog-to-Digital Converter (ADC), and a Quadrature Amplitude Modulation (QAM) demodulator. A coherent demodulator, with a complete digital synchronization scheme, achieves the bit-error rate (BER) of 10-6 with the implementation loss of 0.5 dB for a raw Quadrature Phase Shift King (QPSK) signal.

Regarding IP-based video applications over wireless networks, the multi-layer header overhead may significantly affect the estimation of target video encoding bit rate and the effective throughput of wireless network. Based on the existing header structure of video packets, this study intends to deal with the header overhead problem from the end-to-end viewpoint. This paper first proposes a simple yet robust closed-form that can determine accurately and timely the optimal video payload length at the video sender based on the current wireless channel condition. The contribution can effectively improve the WLAN throughput and enhance the error resilience effect of scalable video data simultaneously. This study further explores the impact of multi-layer header overhead to the video coding work and proposes a Dynamic Header Overhead Accommodation (DHOA) scheme, which is executed in the video compression layer, to adjust dynamically the available video encoding bits for accommodating the header overhead in advance. The contributions of this paper are robust for various IP implementations such as IPSec (IP Security) over different 802.11 standards. Analytical and simulation results verify the accuracy and effectiveness of the proposed closed-form and header accommodation method. Using DHOA, the bandwidth mismatch between the actual bandwidth demand of packetized video data and the available network bandwidth is no more than 1.1% regardless of the packet sizes used in this paper.

Interactive multimedia applications (IMAs) require not only adequate bandwidth to support large volume data transmission but also bounded end-to-end transmission delay between end users. This study proposes a Delay and Degree constrained Multicasting Spanning Tree (D2MST) algorithm to build an any-to-any share tree for IMAs. D2MST comprises root selection and spanning tree generation. A weighting function is defined based on the novel concept of network center and gravity to choose the root of a share tree. From the root, a spanning tree is built by incrementally connecting nodes with larger "power" to the tree so that the degree constraint is satisfied. Simulation results show that D2MST can successfully generate a Δ-constraint MST in which a high percentage of nodes can interact within the bounded delay.

A new impulse noise detection algorithm is presented, which can successfully remove impulse noise from corrupted images while preserving image details. The impulse detection algorithm is combined with median filtering to achieve noise removal. The main advantage of the proposed algorithm is that it can detect the impulse noise with high accuracy while reducing the probability of detecting image details as impulses. Also, it can be applied iteratively to improve the quality of restored images. It is efficient and low in complexity. Furthermore, it requires no previous training. Extensive experimental results show that the proposed approach significantly outperforms many well-known techniques.

In this paper, we present a minimum-maximum exclusive weighted-mean filtering algorithm with adaptive window. Image pixels within the varying size of the window are ranked and classified as minimum-maximum and median levels, and then passed through the weighted-mean of median level and identity filters, respectively. The filtering window size is adaptively increasing according to noise ratio without noise measurement. Extensive simulations show that the proposed filter performs better than other median/rank-type filters in removing impulse noise of highly corrupted images.

In this letter, we propose an efficient transmission slot selection scheme for Band Division Multi-Carrier-CDMA (BD-MC-CDMA) systems under the constraints of packet loss and delay bound for each individual session. By utilizing channel dynamics together with the delay deadline and loss history, one can determine whether to transmit or not during each time slot, based on the prediction of future channel variations. To validate the efficiency of the proposed algorithm, we model each sub-band as a discrete time Markov Chain using a finite state Markov channel (FSMC) and derive the criteria required for transmission decision. Simulation results show that our proposed scheme can satisfy quality of service (QoS) requirements for real-time traffic with minimum use of resources, while increasing throughput of non-real-time traffic with the resources saved from real-time traffic.

We present a design of knowledge circulation framework for quality of service (QoS) control of multimedia communication service (MCS). This framework aims to realizing user oriented and resource aware MCS by enabling effective placement of QoS control knowledge on the network. In this paper, we propose a conceptual design of the framework with knowledge-based multiagent system. In this framework, QoS control knowledge is actively circulated by getting on the agents. We implement a prototype of real-time bidirectional MCS (videoconference system) using this framework, and show initial experiment results using it to evaluate the effectiveness of the framework.

This paper proposes the MultiPath streaming scheme with Media Synchronization control (MPMS) for audio-video transmission in wireless ad hoc networks. In many audio-video streaming applications, media compensate each other from a perceptual point of view. On the basis of this property, we treat the two streams as separate transport streams, and then the source transmits them into two different routes if multiple routes to the destination are available. The multipath transmission disturbs the temporal structure of the streams; in MPMS, the disturbance is remedied by media synchronization control. In order to implement MPMS in this paper, we enhance the existing Dynamic Source Routing (DSR) protocol. We compare the application-level QoS of MPMS and three other schemes for audio-video transmission by simulation with ns-2. In the simulation, we also assess the influence of the multipath transmission on other traffic. The simulation result shows that MPMS is effective in achieving high QoS at the application-level.

In this paper we present a network layer based admission control and simple class based service differentiation model to support QoS in mobile ad hoc network. Our distributed admission control procedure works along with the route finding phase of reactive routing protocols for mobile ad hoc network (AODV, DSR etc). We also propose a simple class based distributed service differentiation system to support QoS once a traffic is admitted by our admission control mechanism. The proposed service differentiation is based on DiffServ model and includes modifications like configuration of each node with edge and core functionality, dynamic selection of edge/core functionality, use of minimal and simple classes. Simulation results show that our system allows seven times more real time traffic in the network than the proposed QoS for AODV model while satisfying the demanded end-to-end delay and providing low jitter.

Traditional network-level Quality of Service (QoS) techniques are efficient from a network perspective, but they have not provided end-to-end QoS that is satisfactory to users. In this letter, a Coordinated Packet Discard scheme for the distribution of end-to-end QoS requirements into local loss constraints, as well as provision of local loss assurance is proposed. Experiments demonstrate its advantages on increasing QoS-satisfied user ratio and improving network efficiency.

This paper presents a framework for automatic video region-of-interest determination based on visual attention model. We view this work as a preliminary step towards the solution of high-level semantic video analysis. Facing such a challenging issue, in this work, a set of attempts on using video attention features and knowledge of computational media aesthetics are made. The three types of visual attention features we used are intensity, color, and motion. Referring to aesthetic principles, these features are combined according to camera motion types on the basis of a new proposed video analysis unit, frame-segment. We conduct subjective experiments on several kinds of video data and demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed framework.

To offer location based services, service providers need to have access to Location Information (LI) regarding the users which they wish to serve; this is a potential privacy threat. We propose the use of constraints, i.e. statements limiting the use and distribution of LI, that are securely bound to the LI, as a means to reduce this threat. Constraints may themselves reveal information to any potential LI user--that is, the constraints themselves may also be a privacy threat. To address this problem we introduce the notion of a LI Preference Authority (LIPA). A LIPA is a trusted party which can examine LI constraints and make decisions about LI distribution without revealing the constraints to the entity requesting the LI. This is achieved by encrypting both the LI and the constraints with a LIPA encryption key, ensuring that the LI is only revealed at the discretion of the LIPA.