In this paper, we propose a new technique for the transient scattering problem of periodically arrayed dispersion media for the TE case by using a combination of the Fourier series expansion method (FSEM) and the fast inversion Laplace transform (FILT) method, and analyze the pulse response for various widths of the dispersion media. As a result, we clarified the influence of the dispersion media with an air region on the resulting waveform.

Salient region detection is a fundamental problem in computer vision and image processing. Deep learning models perform better than traditional approaches but suffer from their huge parameters and slow speeds. To handle these problems, in this paper we propose the multi-feature fusion network (MFFN) - a efficient salient region detection architecture based on Convolution Neural Network (CNN). A novel feature extraction structure is designed to obtain feature maps from CNN. A fusion dense block is used to fuse all low-level and high-level feature maps to derive salient region results. MFFN is an end-to-end architecture which does not need any post-processing procedures. Experiments on the benchmark datasets demonstrate that MFFN achieves the state-of-the-art performance on salient region detection and requires much less parameters and computation time. Ablation experiments demonstrate the effectiveness of each module in MFFN.

This paper presents an ultra-low-power class-AB bulk-driven operational transconductance amplifier operating in the subthreshold region. Employing the partial positive feedback in current mirrors, the effective transconductance and output voltage swing are enhanced considerably without additional power consumption and layout area. Both traditional and proposed OTAs are designed and simulated for a 180 nm CMOS process. They dissipate an ultra low power of 192 nW. The proposed OTA features not only a DC gain enhancement of 14 dB but also a slew rate improvement of 200%. In addition, the improved gain leads to a 5.3 times wider unity-gain bandwidth than that of the traditional OTA.

This paper considers a joint channel coding and random number generation from the channel output. Specifically, we want to transmit a message to a receiver reliably and at the same time the receiver extracts pure random bits independent of the channel input. We call this problem as the joint channel coding and intrinsic randomness problem. For general channels, we clarify the trade-off between the coding rate and the random bit rate extracted from the channel output by using the achievable rate region, where both the probability of decoding error and the approximation error of random bits asymptotically vanish. We also reveal the achievable rate regions for stationary memoryless channels, additive channels, symmetric channels, and mixed channels.

In the successive refinement problem, a fixed-length sequence emitted from an information source is encoded into two codewords by two encoders in order to give two reconstructions of the sequence. One of two reconstructions is obtained by one of two codewords, and the other reconstruction is obtained by all two codewords. For this coding problem, we give non-asymptotic inner and outer bounds on pairs of numbers of codewords of two encoders such that each probability that a distortion exceeds a given distortion level is less than a given probability level. We also give a general formula for the rate-distortion region for general sources, where the rate-distortion region is the set of rate pairs of two encoders such that each maximum value of possible distortions is less than a given distortion level.

This study proposes a multiple-output differential-input operational transconductance amplifier-C (MODI OTA-C) filter with an impedance scaler to detect cardiac activity. A ladder-type fifth-orderButterworth low-pass filter with a large time constant and low noise is implemented to reduce coefficient sensitivity and address signal distortion. Moreover, linearized MODI OTA structures with reduced transconductance and impedance scaler circuits for noise reduction are used to achieve a wide dynamic range (DR). The OTA-based circuit is operated in the subthreshold region at a supply voltage of 1 V to reduce the power consumption of the wearable device in long-term use. Experimental results of the filter with a bandwidth of 250 Hz reveal that DR is 57.6 dB, and the harmonic distortion components are below -59 dB. The power consumption of the filter, which is fabricated through a TSMC 0.18 µm CMOS process, is lower than 390 nW, and the active area is 0.135 mm2.

A logo is a symbolic presentation that is designed not only to identify a product manufacturer but also to attract the attention of shoppers. Shoe logos are a challenging subject for automatic extraction and recognition using image analysis techniques because they have characteristics that distinguish them from those of other products; that is, there is much within-class variation in the appearance of shoe logos. In this paper, we propose an automatic extraction and recognition method for shoe logos with a wide variety of appearance using a limited number of training samples. The proposed method employs maximally stable extremal regions for the initial region extraction, an iterative algorithm for region grouping, and gradient features and a support vector machine for logo recognition. The results of performance evaluation experiments using a logo dataset that consists of a wide variety of appearances show that the proposed method achieves promising performance for both logo extraction and recognition.

This paper proposes a fast safe-region generation method for several kinds of vicinity queries including set k nearest neighbor (NN) queries, ordered kNN queries, reverse kNN queries, and distance range queries. When a user is driving a car on a road network, he/she wants to know about objects located in the vicinity of the car. However, the result changes according to the movement of the car, and therefore, the user needs to request up-to-date result to the server. On the other hand, frequent requests for up-to-date results cause heavy loadings on the server. To cope with this problem efficiently, the idea of the safe-region has been proposed, however, it takes long processing time in existing works. This paper proposes a fast generation method of the safe-region applicable to several types of vicinity queries. Through experimental evaluations, we demonstrate that the proposed method outperforms the existing algorithms in the processing time by one or two orders of magnitude.

In this paper, the Voronoi region of the transmitted codeword is employed to improve the sphere bound on the maximum-likelihood decoding (MLD) performance of binary linear block codes over additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN) channels. We obtain the improved sphere bounds both on the frame-error probability and the bit-error probability. With the framework of the sphere bound proposed by Kasami et al., we derive the conditional decoding error probability on the spheres by defining a subset of the Voronoi region of the transmitted codeword, since the Voronoi regions of a binary linear block code govern the decoding error probability analysis over AWGN channels. The proposed bound improves the sphere bound by Kasami et al. and the sphere bound by Herzberg and Poltyrev. The computational complexity of the proposed bound is similar to that of the sphere bound by Kasami et al.

This paper presents a strategy, Weighted Voting of Discriminative Regions (WVDR), to improve the face recognition performance, especially in Small Sample Size (SSS) and occlusion situations. In WVDR, we extract the discriminative regions according to facial key points and abandon the rest parts. Considering different regions of face make different contributions to recognition, we assign weights to regions for weighted voting. We construct a decision dictionary according to the recognition results of selected regions in the training phase, and this dictionary is used in a self-defined loss function to obtain weights. The final identity of test sample is the weighted voting of selected regions. In this paper, we combine the WVDR strategy with CRC and SRC separately, and extensive experiments show that our method outperforms the baseline and some representative algorithms.

Process and temperature variations have become a serious concern for ultra-low voltage (ULV) technology. The clock generator is the essential component for the ULV very-large-scale integration (VLSI). MOSFETs that are operated in the sub-threshold region are widely applied for ULV technology. However, MOSFETs at subthreshold region have relatively high variations with process and temperature. In this paper, process and temperature variations on the clock generators have been studied. This paper presents an ultra-low voltage 2.4GHz CMOS voltage controlled oscillator with temperature and process compensation. A new all-digital auto compensated mechanism to reduce process and temperature variation without any laser trimming is proposed. With the compensated circuit, the VCO frequency-drift is 16.6 times the improvements of the uncompensated one as temperature changes. Furthermore, it also provides low jitter performance.

This study mainly involved examining a high-directivity radiation system with spherical dielectric resonator as pseudo multipole source. The method of spherical wave expansion is focused on wherein the plane wave that is infinitely spread can be radiated from or absorbed by multipoles at the origin. It is not possible to explain this phenomenon by Huygens' principle, which is a basic principle of aperture antenna theory. Thus, in the study, a high-directivity beam design is proposed by synthesizing spherical waves. The directivity of the synthesized spherical wave corresponds with the angular momentum and angle, which is an uncertainty relation different from that of the aperture source. The estimation of the effective aperture of the synthesized spherical wave indicates that the wave intrinsic source is assumed to exist at the surface of the cutoff region. Finally, the results reveal that a radiation system without a singular point can be composed using a spherical dielectric resonator. The study discusses the potential of a high-directivity radiation system constructed by a multi-mode degenerate spherical dielectric resonator as a pseudo multipole source.

In this paper, we propose to use a strategy for the two-user Gaussian X channel with limited receiver cooperation in the general case consisting of two parts: 1) the transmission scheme where the superposition coding is used and 2) the cooperative protocol where the two-round strategy based on quantize-map-and-forward (QMF) is employed. We image that a Gaussian X channel can be considered as a superposition of two Gaussian interference channels based on grouping of the sent messages from each transmitter to the corresponding receivers. Finally, we give an achievable rate region for the general case of this channel.

Labeling a salient region accurately in video with cluttered background and complex motion condition is still a challenging work. Most existing video salient region detection models mainly extract the stimulus-driven saliency features to detect the salient region in video. They are easily influenced by the cluttered background and complex motion conditions. It may lead to incomplete or wrong detection results. In this paper, we propose a video salient region detection framework by fusing the stimulus-driven saliency features and spatiotemporal consistency cue to improve the performance of detection under these complex conditions. On one hand, stimulus-driven spatial saliency features and temporal saliency features are extracted effectively to derive the initial spatial and temporal salient region map. On the other hand, in order to make use of the spatiotemporal consistency cue, an effective spatiotemporal consistency optimization model is presented. We use this model optimize the initial spatial and temporal salient region map. Then the superpixel-level spatiotemporal salient region map is derived by optimizing the initial spatiotemporal salient region map. Finally, the pixel-level spatiotemporal salient region map is derived by solving a self-defined energy model. Experimental results on the challenging video datasets demonstrate that the proposed video salient region detection framework outperforms state-of-the-art methods.

This letter deals with the Slepian-Wolf coding problem for general sources. The second-order achievable rate region is derived using quantity which is related to the smooth max-entropy and the conditional smooth max-entropy. Moreover, we show the relationship of the functions which characterize the second-order achievable rate region in our study and previous study.

This article presents efficient strategies for evacuating from an unknown affected area in a plane. Evacuation is the process of movement away from a threat or hazard such as natural disasters. Consider that one or n(n ≥ 3) agents are lost in an unknown convex region P. The agents know neither the boundary information of P nor their positions. We seek competitive strategies that can evacuate the agent from P as quickly as possible. The performance of the strategy is measured by a competitive ratio of the evacuation path over the shortest path. We give a 13.812-competitive spiral strategy for one agent, and prove that it is optimal among all monotone and periodic strategies by showing a matching lower bound. Also, we give a new competitive strategy EES for n(n ≥ 3) agents and adjust it to be more efficient with the analysis of its performance.

In this paper, we first analyze the discriminative power in the Best Match (BM) 25 formula and provide its calculation method from the Bayesian point of view. The resulting, derived discriminative power is quite similar to the exponential inverse document frequency (EIDF) that we have previously proposed [1] but retains more preferable theoretical advantages. In our previous paper [1], we proposed the EIDF in the framework of the probabilistic information retrieval (IR) method BM25 to address the instance search task, which is a specific object search for videos using an image query. Although the effectiveness of our EIDF was experimentally demonstrated, we did not consider its theoretical justification and interpretation. We also did not describe the use of region-of-interest (ROI) information, which is supposed to be input to the instance search system together with the original image query showing the instance. Therefore, here, we justify the EIDF by calculating the discriminative power in the BM25 from the Bayesian viewpoint. We also investigate the effect of the ROI information for improving the instance search accuracy and propose two search methods incorporating the ROI effect into the BM25 video ranking function. We validated the proposed methods through a series of experiments using the TREC Video Retrieval Evaluation instance search task dataset.

A network-based remote host clock skew measurement involves collecting the offsets, the differences between sending and receiving times, of packets from the host within a period of time. Although the variant and immeasurable delay in each packet prevents the measurer from getting the real clock offset, the local minimum delays and the majority of delays delineate the clock offset shifts, and are used by existing approaches to estimate the skew. However, events during skew measurement like time synchronization and rerouting caused by switching network interface or base transceiver station may break the trend into multi-segment patterns. Although the skew in each segment is theoretically of the same value, the skew derived from the whole offset-set usually differs with an error of unpredictable scale. In this work, a method called dynamic region of offset majority locating (DROML) is developed to detect multi-segment cases, and to precisely estimate the skew. DROML is designed to work in real-time, and it uses a modified version of the HT-based method [8] both to measure the skew of one segment and to detect the break between adjacent segments. In the evaluation section, the modified HT-based method is compared with the original method and with a linear programming algorithm (LPA) on accumulated-time and short-term measurement. The fluctuation of the modified method in the short-term experiment is 0.6 ppm (parts per million), which is obviously less than the 1.23 ppm and 1.45 ppm from the other two methods. DROML, when estimating a four-segment case, is able to output a skew of only 0.22 ppm error, compared with the result of the normal case.

Vector data differs in the rasterized height field by data type. It is difficult to render dynamic vectors on height field because their shapes and locations may change at any time. This letter proposes a novel method: View-dependent Projective Atlases (VdPAs). As an intermediate data source, VdPAs act as rendering targets which enable height field and vectors to be rasterized at the same resolution. Then, VdPAs can be viewed as super-tiles. State of art height field rendering algorithms can be used for scenario rendering. Experimental results demonstrate that atlases are able to make dynamic vectors to be rendered on height field with real-time performance and high quality.

We consider the distributed source coding system of two correlated Gaussian Vector sources Yl=t(Yl1, Yl2),l=1,2 which are noisy observations of correlated Gaussian scalar source X0. We assume that for each (l,k)∈{1,2}, Ylk is an observation of the source X0, having the form Ylk=X0+Nlk, where Nlk is a Gaussian random variable independent of X0. We further assume that Nlk, (l,k)∈{1,2}2 are independent. In this system two correlated Gaussian observations are separately compressed by two encoders and sent to the information processing center. We study the remote source coding problem where the decoder at the center attempts to reconstruct the remote source X0. The determination problem of the rate distortion region for this communication system can be regarded as an extension of the Gaussian CEO problem to the case of vector observations. For each vector observation we can obtain an estimation on X0 from this observation. Those estimations are sufficient statistics on X0. Using those sufficient statistics, we determine the rate distortion region by showing that it coincides with the rate distortion region of the CEO problem where the scalar observations of X0 are equal to the estimations computed from the vector observations. We further extend the result to the case of L terminal and general vector observations.