This paper presents a high-throughput bit-serial low-density parity-check (LDPC) decoder that uses an asynchronous interleaver. Since consecutive log-likelihood message values on the interleaver are similar, node computations are continuously performed by using the most recently arrived messages without significantly affecting bit-error rate (BER) performance. In the asynchronous interleaver, each message's arrival rate is based on the delay due to the wire length, so that the decoding throughput is not restricted by the worst-case latency, which results in a higher average rate of computation. Moreover, the use of a multiple-valued data representation makes it possible to multiplex control signals and data from mutual nodes, thus minimizing the number of handshaking steps in the asynchronous interleaver and eliminating the clock signal entirely. As a result, the decoding throughput becomes 1.3 times faster than that of a bit-serial synchronous decoder under a 90 nm CMOS technology, at a comparable BER.

In this paper, we propose a new system for controlling radiated sound directivity. The proposed system artificially induces a bending vibration on a planar diaphragm by vibrating it artificially using multiple vibrators. Because the bending vibration in this case is determined by not one but all of the accelerated vibrations, the vibration of the diaphragm can be controlled by modulating the accelerated vibration waveforms relatively for each frequency. As a consequence, the directivity of the radiated sound is also varied. To investigate the feasibility of this system, we constructed a prototype that has for a diaphragm a circular plate-one of the most typical shapes considered for discussing plate vibration-and three vibrators. The measurement data showed visually that with this system, surface vibration and sound directivity change depending on the phases of the accelerated vibrations.

In this letter, a simple product code is proposed for constant-amplitude biorthogonal multicode (CABM) modulation. In CABM modulation, vertical redundant bits are used for constant amplitude coding. The proposed product code can be constructed by using additional horizontal redundant bits. The hardware complexity of the encoder and decoder pair is very low. Simulation results show that the bit error rate performance of the system with the proposed coding scheme is improved as compared with conventional CABM demodulation.

This letter deals with an iterative decoding algorithm (IDA) for product codes. In the IDA, a soft-input and output iterative bounded-distance and encoding-based decoding algorithm is used for the component codes. Simulation results over an AWGN channel with BPSK modulation is presented and show the effectiveness of the IDA.

In this study we propose a manufacturing control framework based on radio-frequency identification (RFID) technology and a distributed information system to construct a mass-customization production process in a loosely coupled shop-floor control environment. On the basis of this framework, we developed RFID middleware and an integrated information system for tracking and controlling the manufacturing process flow. A bicycle manufacturer was used to demonstrate the prototype system. The findings of this study were that the proposed framework can improve the visibility and traceability of the manufacturing process as well as enhance process quality control and real-time production pedigree access. Using this framework, an enterprise can easily integrate an RFID-based system into its manufacturing environment to facilitate mass customization and a just-in-time production model.

Gamma correction is an essential function and is time consuming task in every display device such as CRT and LCD. And gray scale CCT reproduction in most LCD are quite different from those of standard CRT. An automated fast and accurate display adjusment method and system for gamma correction and for constant gray scale CCT calibration of mobile phone LCD is presented in this paper. We develop the test pattern disply and register control program in mobile phone and devleop automatic measure program in computer using spectroradimeter. The proposed system is maintain given gamma values and CCT values accuratly. In addition, This system is possible to fast mobile phone LCD adjusment within one hour.

This paper proposes methods to improve soft-input and soft-output decoding performance of BCH codes by sum-product algorithm (SPA). A method to remove cycles of length four (RmFC) in the Tanner graph has been proposed. However, the RmFC can not realize good decoding performance for BCH codes which have more than one error correcting capability. To overcome this problem, this paper proposes two methods. One is to use a parity check matrix of the echelon canonical form as the starting check matrix of RmFC. The other is to use a parity check matrix that is concatenation (ConC) of multiple parity check matrices. For BCH(31,11,11) code, SPA with ConC realizes Eb/No 3.7 dB better at bit error rate 10-5 than the original SPA, and 3.1 dB better than the SPA with only RmFC.

Stopping distance and stopping redundancy of product binary linear block codes is studied. The relationship between stopping sets in a few parity-check matrices of a given product code C and those in the parity-check matrices for the component codes is determined. It is shown that the stopping distance of a particular parity-check matrix of C, denoted Hp, is equal to the product of the stopping distances of the associated constituent parity-check matrices. Upper bounds on the stopping redundancy of C is derived. For each minimum distance d=2r, r≥ 1, a sequence of [n,k,d] optimal stopping redundancy binary codes is given such k/n tends to 1 as n tends to infinity.

Human interest in pictures dates back to 14,000 BC. Pictures can be drawn by hand or imaged by optical means. Over time pictures have changed from being rare and unique to ubiquitous and common. They have changed from treasures to transients. This paper summarizes many picture technologies, and discusses their dynamic range, their color and tone scale rendering. This paper discusses the interactions between advances in technology and the interests of its users over time. It is the combination of both technology and society's usage that has shaped imaging since its beginning and continues to do so.

A robust multichannel sound reproduction system that utilizes the relationship between the width of the actual control area and the control frequency of the control points is proposed. The reproduction accuracy of a conventional sound reproduction system is reduced by room environment variations when fixed inverse filter coefficients are used. This tendency becomes more significant when control points are arranged more closely. To resolve this problem, the frequency control band at every control point is switched to avoid degrading the reproduced sound in low frequencies, so the pass band range of the control points at both ears is only high-range. That of the other control points is the entire control range. Numerical simulation with real environmental data showed that improvement of the reproduction accuracy is about 6.1 dB on average, even with a temperature fluctuation of 5C as an environmental variation in the listening room.

Although it is very important to conduct listening tests when constructing a practical sound field reproduction system based on wave field synthesis, listening tests are very expensive. A localization model of synthesized sound images that predicts the results of listening tests is proposed. This model reduces the costs of constructing a reproduction system because it makes it possible to omit the listening tests. The proposed model uses the precedence effect and predicts the direction of synthesized sound images based on the inter-aural time difference. A comparison of the results predicted by the proposed model and the localized results of listening tests shows that the model accurately predicts the localized results.

An important issue in designing a TCP congestion control algorithm is that it should allow the protocol to quickly adjust the end-to-end communication rate to the bandwidth on the bottleneck link. However, the TCP congestion control may function poorly in high bandwidth-delay product networks because of its slow response with large congestion windows. In this paper, we propose an enhanced version of TCP Vegas called Quick Vegas, in which we present an efficient congestion window control algorithm for a TCP source. Our algorithm improves the slow-start and congestion avoidance techniques of original Vegas. Simulation results show that Quick Vegas significantly improves the performance of connections as well as remaining fair when the bandwidth-delay product increases.

The photo-mask cost of standard-cell-based ASICs has been increased so prohibitively that low-volume production LSIs are difficult to fabricate due to high non-recurring engineering (NRE) cost including mask cost. Recently, user-programmable devices, such as FPGAs are started to be used for low-volume consumer products. However, FPGAs cannot be replaced for general purpose because of its lower speed-performance and higher power consumption. In this paper, we propose the user-programmable architecture called VPEX (Via Programmable logic device using EXclusive-or array), in which the hardware logic can be programmed by changing layout patterns on 2 via-layers. The logic element (LE) of VPEX consists of complex-gate-type EXclusive OR (EXOR) and Inverter (NOT) gates. The single LE can output 12 logics which include NOT, Buffer (BUF), all 2-inputs logic functions, 3-inputs AOI21 and inverted-output multiplexer (MUXI) by changing via-1 layout pattern. Furthermore, via-1 layout is optimized for high-throughput EB direct writing, so mask-less programming will be realized in VPEX. We compared the performance of area, speed, and power consumption of VPEX with that of standard-cell-based ASICs and FPGAs. As a result, the speed performance of VPEX was much better than FPGAs and about 1.3-1.6 times worse than standard-cells. We believe that the combination of VPEX architecture and EB direct writing is the best solution for low-volume production LSIs.

This paper presents a low complexity algorithmic framework for finding a broadcasting schedule in a low-altitude satellite system, i.e., the satellite broadcast scheduling (SBS) problem, based on the recent modeling and computational methodology of factor graphs. Inspired by the huge success of the low density parity check (LDPC) codes in the field of error control coding, in this paper, we transform the SBS problem into an LDPC-like problem through a factor graph instead of using the conventional neural network approaches to solve the SBS problem. Based on a factor graph framework, the soft-information, describing the probability that each satellite will broadcast information to a terminal at a specific time slot, is exchanged among the local processing in the proposed framework via the sum-product algorithm to iteratively optimize the satellite broadcasting schedule. Numerical results show that the proposed approach not only can obtain optimal solution but also enjoys the low complexity suitable for integral-circuit implementation.

In this paper, we propose a novel sound field reproduction system that uses the simultaneous perturbation (SP) method as well as two fast convergence techniques. Sound field reproduction systems that reproduce any desired signal at listener's ear generally use fixed preprocessing filters that are determined by the transfer functions from loudspeakers to control points in advance. However, control point movement results in severe localization errors. Our solution is a sound field reproduction system, based on the SP method, which uses only an error signal to update the filter coefficients. The SP method can track all control point movements but suffers from slow convergence. Hence, we also propose two methods that offer improved convergence speeds. One is a delay control method that compensates the delay caused by back-and-forth control point movements. The other is a compensation method that offsets the localization error caused by head rotation. Simulations demonstrate that the proposed methods can well track control point movements while offering reasonable convergence speeds.

In this paper, we present a new extension of the butterfly digraph, which is known as one of the topologies used for interconnection networks. The butterfly digraph was previously generalized from binary to d-ary. We define a new digraph by adding a signed label to each vertex of the d-ary butterfly digraph. We call this digraph the dihedral butterfly digraph and study its properties. Furthermore, we show that this digraph can be represented as a Cayley graph. It is well known that a butterfly digraph can be represented as a Cayley graph on the wreath product of two cyclic groups [1]. We prove that a dihedral butterfly digraph can be represented as a Cayley graph in two ways.

This paper presents a new strategy to detect and diagnose fault of a manipulator based on the expression with a Probabilistic Production Rule (PPR). Production Rule (PR) is widely used in the field of computer science as a tool of formal verification. In this work, first of all, PR is used to represent the mapping between highly quantized input and output signals of the dynamical system. By using PR expression, the fault detection and diagnosis algorithm can be implemented with less computational effort. In addition, we introduce a new system description with Probabilistic PR (PPR) wherein the occurrence probability of PRs is assigned to them to improve the robustness with small computational burden. The probability is derived from the statistic characteristics of the observed input and output signals. Then, the fault detection and diagnosis algorithm is developed based on calculating the log-likelihood of the measured data for the designed PPR. Finally, some experiments on a controlled manipulator are demonstrated to confirm the usefulness of the proposed method.

An age-group classification method based on a fusion of different classifiers with different two-dimensional feature extraction algorithms is proposed. Theoretically, an integration of multiple classifiers can provide better performance compared to a single classifier. In this paper, we extract effective features from one sample image using different dimensional reduction methods, construct multiple classifiers in each subspace, and combine them to reduce age-group classification errors. As for the dimensional reduction methods, two-dimensional PCA (2DPCA) and two-dimensional LDA (2DLDA) are used. These algorithms are antisymmetric in the treatment of the rows and the columns of the images. We prepared the row-based and column-based algorithms to make two different classifiers with different error tendencies. By combining these classifiers with different errors, the performance can be improved. Experimental results show that our fusion-based age-group classification method achieves better performance than existing two-dimensional algorithms alone.

This paper proposes a novel signal estimation method that uses a tensor product expansion. When a bivariable function, which is expressed by two-dimensional matrix, is subjected to conventional tensor product expansion, two single variable functions are calculated by minimizing the mean square error between the input vector and its outer product. A tensor product expansion is useful for feature extraction and signal compression, however, it is difficult to separate global noise from other signals. This paper shows that global noise, which is observed in almost all input signals, can be estimated by using a tensor product expansion where absolute error is used as the error function.

In this paper, we propose a modified reproduction strategy of a Genetic Algorithm (GA) utilizing a Self-Organizing Map (SOM) with a novel updating rule of binary weight vectors based on a significance of elements of inputs. In this rule, an updating order of elements is decided by considering fitness values of individuals in a population. The SOM with the proposed updating rule can realize an effective reproduction.