The segmentation performance of fresh tea sprouts is inadequate due to the uncontrollable posture. A novel method for Fresh Tea Sprouts Segmentation based on Capsule Network (FTS-SegCaps) is proposed in this paper. The spatial relationship between local parts and whole tea sprout is retained and effectively utilized by a deep encoder-decoder capsule network, which can reduce the effect of tea sprouts with uncontrollable posture. Meanwhile, a patch-based local dynamic routing algorithm is also proposed to solve the parameter explosion problem. The experimental results indicate that the segmented tea sprouts via FTS-SegCaps are almost coincident with the ground truth, and also show that the proposed method has a better performance than the state-of-the-art methods.

A 2-D beam scanning array antenna fed by a compact 16-way 2-D beamforming network (BFN) designed in Broadside Coupled Stripline (BCS) is addressed. The proposed 16-way 2-D BFN is formed by interconnecting two groups of 4x4 Butler Matrix (BM). Each group is composed of four compact 4x4 BMs. The critical point of the design is to propose a simple and compact 4x4 BM without crossover in BCS to achieve a better transmission coefficient of the 16-way 2-D BFN with reduced size of merely 0.8λ0×0.8λ0×0.04λ0. Moreover, the complexity of the interface connection between the 2-D BFN and the 4x4 patch array antenna is reduced by using probe feeding. The 16-way 2-D BFN is able to produce the phase shift of ±45°, and ±135° in x- and y- directions. The 2-D BFN is easily integrated under the 4x4 patch array to form a 2-D phased array capable of switching 16 beams in both elevation and azimuth directions. The area of the proposed 2-D beam scanning array antenna module has been significantly reduced to 2λ0×2λ0×0.04λ0. A prototype operating in the frequency range of 4-6GHz is fabricated and measured to validate the concept. The measurement results agree well with the simulations.

Unsupervised domain adaptation (DA) is a challenging machine learning problem since the labeled training (source) and unlabeled testing (target) sets belong to different domains and then have different feature distributions, which has recently attracted wide attention in micro-expression recognition (MER). Although some well-performing unsupervised DA methods have been proposed, these methods cannot well solve the problem of unsupervised DA in MER, a. k. a., cross-domain MER. To deal with such a challenging problem, in this letter we propose a novel unsupervised DA method called Joint Patch weighting and Moment Matching (JPMM). JPMM bridges the source and target micro-expression feature sets by minimizing their probability distribution divergence with a multi-order moment matching operation. Meanwhile, it takes advantage of the contributive facial patches by the weight learning such that a domain-invariant feature representation involving micro-expression distinguishable information can be learned. Finally, we carry out extensive experiments to evaluate the proposed JPMM method is superior to recent state-of-the-art unsupervised DA methods in dealing with cross-domain MER.

In this paper, an ultra-thin wave absorber using a resistive patch array closely-placed in front of a back-metal is designed. The positively large susceptance is required for the patch array to cancel out the negatively large input susceptance of the short-circuited ultra-thin spacer behind the array. It is found that the array needs the gap of 1mm, sheet resistance of less than 20Ω/sq. and patch width of more than 15mm to obtain the zero input susceptance of the absorber with the 1/30 wavelength spacer. Moreover, these parameters were designed considering the electromagnetic coupling between the array and back-metal, and the square patch array absorbers with the thickness from 1/30 to 1/150 wavelength were designed.

We have proposed a waveguide to microstrip line transition, which perpendicularly connects one waveguide into two microstrip lines. It consists of only a waveguide and a dielectric substrate with copper foils. A backshort waveguide for typical transitions is not needed. Additionally, the transition does not require via holes on the substrate. These innovations simplify the structure and the manufacturing process. We assume that our transition and antennas are co-located on the substrate. We reduced the undesirable radiation from the transition so as not to contaminate the desirable radiation pattern. In this paper, we address output phase of our transition. Since the transition has two MSL output ports connecting to different radiation elements, the phase error between two dividing signals leads to beam shift in the radiation pattern. Unfortunately, misalignment of etching pattern between copper layers of the substrate is unavoidable. The structural asymmetry causes the phase error. In order to tolerate the misalignment, we propose to add a pair of open stubs to the transition. We show that the structure drastically stabilizes the output phase. Though the stubs create some extra radiation, we confirm that the impact is not significant. Moreover, we fabricate and measure a prototype antenna that uses the transition. In the case of with stubs, the radiation pattern is unchanged even if the misalignment is severe.

With our ever increasing dependence on computers, many governments around the world have started to investigate strengthening the regulations on vulnerabilities and their lifecycle management. Although many previous works have studied this problem space for mainstream software packages and web applications, relatively few have studied this for consumer IoT devices. As our first step towards filling this void, this paper presents a pilot study on the vulnerability disclosures and patch releases of three prominent consumer IoT vendors in Japan and three in the United States. Our goals include (i) characterizing the trends and risks in the vulnerability lifecycle management of consumer IoT devices using accurate long-term data, and (ii) identifying problems, challenges, and potential approaches for future studies of this problem space. To this end, we collected all published vulnerabilities and patches related to the consumer IoT products by the included vendors between 2006 and 2017; then, we analyzed our dataset from multiple perspectives, such as the severity of the included vulnerabilities and the timing of the included patch releases with respect to the corresponding disclosures and exploits. Our work has uncovered several important findings that may inform future studies. These findings include (i) a stark contrast between how the vulnerabilities in our dataset were disclosed in the two markets, (ii) three alarming practices by the included vendors that may significantly increase the risk of 1-day exploits for customers, and (iii) challenges in data collection including crawling automation and long-term data availability. For each finding, we also provide discussions on its consequences and/or potential migrations or suggestions.

Real-time monitoring of heart rate (HR) and body temperature (BT) is crucial for the prognosis and the diagnosis of cardiovascular disease and healthcare. Since current monitoring systems are too rigid and bulky, it is not easy to attach them to the human body. Also, their large current consumption limits the working time. In this paper, we develop a wireless sensor patch for HR and BT by integrating sensor chip, wireless communication chip, and electrodes on the flexible boards that is covered with non-toxic, but skin-friendly adhesive patch. Our experimental results reveal that the flexible wireless sensor patch can efficiently detect early diseases by monitoring the HR and BT in real time.

We propose waveguide to microstrip line transitions for automotive millimeter wave radar modules. The transitions perpendicularly connect one waveguide and one or two microstrip lines. The configuration is simple because it consists of a waveguide and a dielectric substrate with copper foils. Additionally the transitions do not need via holes on the substrate. It leads to lower costs and improved reliability. We have already proposed a via-less transition by using multi-stage impedance transformers. The impedance transformers are used for suppressing undesirable radiation from the transition as well as impedance matching. In this paper, we propose a new transition with the microstrip lines on the long axis of the waveguide while most transitions place the microstrip lines on the minor axis (electric field direction) of the waveguide. Though our transition uses bend structures of microstrip lines, which basically cause radiation, our optimized configuration can keep small radiation. We also design a transition with a single microstrip line. The proposed transition with 2 microstrip lines can be modified to the 1 microstrip line version with minimum radiation loss. Electromagnetic simulations confirm the small radiation levels expected. Additionally we fabricate the transitions with back to back structure and determine the transmission and radiation performance. We also fabricates the transition for a patch array antenna. We confirm that the undesirable radiation from the proposed transition is small and the radiation pattern of the array antenna is not worsen by the transition.

As the display resolution increases, an effective image upscaling technique is required for recent displays such as an ultra-high-definition display. Even though various image super-resolution algorithms have been developed for the image upscaling, they still do not provide the excellent performance in the ultra-high-definition display. This is because the texture creation capability in the algorithms is not sufficient. Hence, this paper proposes an efficient texture creation algorithm for enhancing the texture super-resolution performance. For the texture creation, we build a database with random patches in the off-line processing and we then synthesize fine textures by employing guided filter in the on-line real-time processing, based on the database. Experimental results show that the proposed texture creation algorithm provides sharper and finer textures compared with the existing state-of-the-art algorithms.

An equivalent circuit of a circular patch array absorber has been proposed, however the method to identify a winding ratio of a transformer in its circuit have never been reported. In this paper, it is indicated that the ratio is proportionate to the area ratio between patch and unit cell of the absorber, and the design method of the winding ratio is proposed. The winding ratio derived by the proposed method is agreed well with that by using electromagnetic simulator within 3% error. Moreover, the operating frequency and 15 dB bandwidth of the fabricated absorber designed by proposed method are agreed with those derived by the circuit simulation within 0.4% and 0.1% errors. Thus the validity of the proposed method is verified.

This study discusses an area-averaged incident power density to estimate surface temperature elevation from patch antenna arrays with 4 and 9 elements at the frequencies above 10 GHz. We computationally demonstrate that a smaller averaging area (1 cm2) of power density should be considered at the frequency of 30 GHz or higher compared with that at lower frequencies (4 cm2).

In this paper we report the convergence acceleration effect of the extended node patch preconditioner for the iterative full-wave electromagnetic finite element method with more than ten million degrees of freedom. The preconditioner, which is categorized into the multiplicative Schwarz scheme, effectively works with conventional numerical iterative matrix solving methods on a parallel computer. We examined the convergence properties of the preconditioner combined with the COCG, COCR and GMRES algorithms for the analysis domain encompassed by absorbing boundary conditions (ABC) such as perfectly matched layers (PML). In those analyses the properties of the convergence are investigated numerically by sweeping frequency range and the number of PMLs. Memory-efficient nature of the preconditioner is numerically confirmed through the experiments and upper bounds of the required memory size are theoretically proved. Finally it is demonstrated that this extended node patch preconditioner with GMRES algorithm works well with the problems up to one hundred million degrees of freedom.

Accurate stereo matching remains a challenging problem in case of weakly-textured areas, discontinuities and occlusions. In this letter, a novel stereo matching method, consisting of leveraging feature ensemble network to compute matching cost, error detection network to predict outliers and priority-based occlusion disambiguation for refinement, is presented. Experiments on the Middlebury benchmark demonstrate that the proposed method yields competitive results against the state-of-the-art algorithms.

In this paper, a printed elliptical monopole antenna for wideband circular polarization is proposed. The antenna's structure is asymmetric with regard to the microstrip line. The section of the ground plane that overlaps the elliptical patch is removed. With simulations, the relationship between the antenna's geometrical parameters and the antenna's axial ratio of circularly polarized wave is clarified. The operational principle for wideband circular polarization is explained by the simulated electric current distributions. The simulated and measured bandwidths of the 3dB-axial ratio with a 2-VSWR is approximately 88.4% (2.12GHz-5.47GHz) and 83.6% (2.20GHz-5.36GHz), respectively.

Power packet is a unit of electric power transferred by a pulse with an information tag. This letter discusses up-stream dispatching of required power at loads to sources through density modulation of power packet. Here, power is adjusted at a proposed router which dispatches power packets according to the tags. It is analyzed by averaging method and numerically verified.

A novel rendering algorithm with a best-matching patch is proposed to address the noise artifacts associated with Monte Carlo renderings. First, in the sampling stage, the representative patch is selected through a modified patch shift procedure, which gathers homogeneous pixels together to stay clear of the edges. Second, each pixel is filtered over a discrete set of filters, where the range kernel is computed using the selected patches. The difference between the selected patch and the filtered value is used as the pixel error, and the single filter that returns the smallest estimated error is chosen. In the reconstruction stage, pixel colors are combined with features of depth, normal and texture to form a cross bilateral filter, which highly preserves scene details while effectively removing noise. Finally, a heuristic metric is calculated to allocate additional samples in difficult regions. Compared with state-of-the art methods, the proposed algorithm performs better both in visual image quality and numerical error.

Object tracking is one of the fundamental problems in computer vision. However, there is still a need to improve the overall capability in various tracking circumstances. In this letter, a patches-collaborative compressive tracking (PCCT) algorithm is presented. Experiments on various challenging benchmark sequences demonstrate that the proposed algorithm performs favorably against several state-of-the-art algorithms.

Patch clamp measurement technique is one of the most important techniques in the field of electrophysiology. The elucidation of the channels, nerve cells, and brain activities as well as contribution of the treatment of neurological disorders is expected from the measurement of ion current. A current-to-voltage converter, which is the front end circuit of the patch clamp measurement system is fabricated using 0.18µm CMOS technology. The current-to-voltage converter requires a resistance as high as 50MΩ as a feedback resistor in order to ensure a high signal-to-noise ratio for very small signals. However, the circuit becomes unstable due to the large parasitic capacitance between the poly layer and the substrate of the on-chip feedback resistor and the instability causes the peaking at lower frequency. The instability of a current-to-voltage converter with a high-resistance as a feedback resistor is analyzed theoretically. A compensation circuit to stabilize the amplifier by driving the N-well under poly resistor to suppress the effect of parasitic capacitance using buffer circuits is proposed. The performance of the proposed circuit is confirmed by both simulation and measurement of fabricated chip. The peaking in frequency characteristic is suppressed properly by the proposed method. Furthermore, the bandwidth of the amplifier is expanded up to 11.3kHz, which is desirable for a patch clamp measurement. In addition, the input referred rms noise with the range of 10Hz ∼ 10kHz is 2.09 Arms and is sufficiently reach the requirement for measure of both whole-cell and a part of single-channel recordings.

For the realization of a high-efficiency antenna for 60GHz-band wireless personal area network, we propose placing a CMOS RF circuit and an antenna on opposing sides of a silicon chip. They are connected with low loss by a coaxial-line structure using a hole opening in the chip. Since the CMOS circuit is driven differentially, a differential-feed antenna is used. In this paper, we design and measure a differential-feed square patch antenna on a silicon chip. To enhance the radiation efficiency, it is placed on a 200µm thick resin layer. The calculated radiation efficiency of 79% includes the connection loss. A prototype antenna is measured in a reverberation chamber, and its radiation efficiency is estimated to be about 81±3%.

A double layer stacked patch antenna with a size of 200×200×48mm3 is proposed in this investigation. To achieve a broad CP bandwidth that can cover universal UHF RFID applications (840-960MHz), a slot loaded circular patch antenna fed by an L-shaped probe is designed as the lower layer (main patch), while the top layer (parasitic patch) is a simple circular patch loaded with a cross-slot of dissimilar arm lengths. Besides demonstrating a broad 10-dB return loss bandwidth of 16% (823-966MHz) and a CP bandwidth (3-dB axial ratio) of 14.0% (837-963MHz), the proposed antenna also yields maximum gain and minimum radiation efficiency of 8.8dBic and 85%, respectively, across the universal UHF RFID bands.