In this paper, we address the task of incremental language modeling for automatic transcription of broadcast news speech. Daily broadcast news naturally contains new words that are not in the lexicon of the speech recognition system but are important for downstream applications such as information retrieval or machine translation. To recognize those new words, the lexicon and the language model of the speech recognition system need to be updated periodically. We propose a method of estimating a list of words to be added to the lexicon based on some time-series text data. The experimental results on the RT04 Broadcast News data and other TV audio data showed that this method provided an impressive and stable reduction in both out-of-vocabulary rates and speech recognition word error rates.

Thanks to recent improvements in road heating technology, traffic problems due to icy roads are decreasing. However, there has always been concern about the high operational and maintenance cost associated with road heating. One way to reduce the cost is to reduce the time when power is applied for preheating because it is often applied even when a road is not likely to be icy. The authors believe that, if it is possible to forecast accurately whether a road will become icy, unnecessary preheating can be greatly reduced. This paper presents an algorithm for forecasting physical road conditions. The algorithm divides the weather conditions that people perceive daily into 11 patterns. The comparison between the changes in road conditions as determined by our method and known changes in road conditions has shown a 12% increase over previous methods in forecasting accuracy.

In road-vehicle communication systems, the transmission rate between user terminals in the vehicle and the access points degrades due to changing path-loss and time-varying fading. In this paper, we used an inter-vehicle packet relay technique to improve channel quality in road-vehicle communication systems. We evaluated this method using numerical analysis to validate our method.

We present generic frameworks for constructing efficient broadcast encryption schemes in the subset-cover paradigm, introduced by Naor et al., based on various key derivation techniques. Our frameworks characterize any instantiation completely to its underlying graph decompositions, which are purely combinatorial in nature. These abstract away the security of each instantiated scheme to be guaranteed by the generic one of the frameworks; thus, give flexibilities in designing schemes. Behind these, we present new techniques based on (trapdoor) RSA accumulators utilized to obtain practical performances. We then give some efficient instantiations from the frameworks, via a new structure called subset-incremental-chain. Our first construction improves the currently best schemes, including the one proposed by Goodrich et al., without any further assumptions (only pseudo-random generators are used) by some factors. The second instantiation, which is the most efficient, is instantiated based on RSA and directly improves the first scheme. Its ciphertext length is of order O(r), the key size is O(1), and its computational cost is O(n1/klog2 n) for any (arbitrary large) constant k; where r and n are the number of revoked users and all users respectively. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first explicit collusion-secure scheme in the literature that achieves both ciphertext size and key size independent of n simultaneously while keeping all other costs efficient, in particular, sub-linear in n. The third scheme improves Gentry and Ramzan's scheme, which itself is more efficient than the above schemes in the aspect of asymptotic computational cost.

Under the broadband-ubiquitous environment, digital content creation/distribution will be the key factor to activating new industries. This paper first describes the impact of a broadband-ubiquitous environment on digital content creation/distribution; then it proposes new models for digital content creation/distribution businesses. In a broadband-ubiquitous environment, the key is creation of moving picture content; thus the paper describes a system that allows non-CG experts to make CG movies easily.

An InGaP/GaAs HBT MMIC amplifier with an active balun has been developed for ultra-wideband radio systems (UWB). The MMIC was designed to drive a self-complementary antenna with a balanced mode, where an input impedance is 60π ohms. The MMIC consists of a common mode negative feed back ultra-wideband amplifier circuit, an active balun circuit, and a high impedance drive circuit. The developed amplifier provides a 3-dB gain roll-off bandwidth from 2.4 GHz to 10.8 GHz with a 14.1-dB linear power gain, and a linear power output up to 3 dBm. The developed amplifier with the active balun provides a 3-dB gain roll-off bandwidth from 2.3 GHz to 8.6 GHz with a 21.3-dB power gain in a balanced mode, and a linear power output up to 0.6 dBm. The measured total group delay is less than 32 psec. Output signals at the balanced output terminals of the MMIC were kept inverted with a steep pulse shape for an impulse input signal of 57-psec pulse width.

This letter proposes a novel geographic channel assignment (GCA) framework for dynamic channel allocation (DCA) in broadband wireless access networks (BWANs). The proposed GCA scheme is based on the characteristics of radio propagation, which focuses on the relationship between transmission distances and communication parameters, e.g., signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) etc., and uses a signal-aware distance estimation scheme to determinate an appropriate channel for communication. This method significantly increases the capacity of the BWA system. Simulation results show that the GCA framework can yield approximate two times throughput of the IEEE 802.16 standard specifications as well as obtain significantly lower call blocking probability compared with classical channel assignment methods.

This paper overviews the high-speed power-line communication (PLC) technology, and the related standardization and regulatory activities are described. PLC modems of 200 Mbps class become a practical use stage in the West, and the standardization activity is active now. The discussion for deregulation is being continued in also Japan, and regulation values have been proposed. Another topic in this paper is a sensor network application of PLC, which is an indoor fine-grained localization system by acoustic Direct-Sequence Code Division Multiplexed (DS-CDM) signals. The obtained average accuracy of the localization in a 4 m2 plane was 1 cm if there was no obstacle. To realize the localization system, some novel ideas, such as PLC speakers, a synchronization method based on the zero-crossing timing of the mains frequency, and integrated wired/wireless PLC, are introduced.

Road traffic incidents analysis has shown that a third of them occurs without any conflict which indicates problems with road following. In this paper a driving safety assistance system is introduced, whose aim is to prevent the driver drifting off or running off the road. The road following system is based on a frontal on-board monocular camera. In order to get a high degree of reliability and robustness, an original combination of three different algorithms is performed. Low level results from the first two algorithms are used to compute a reliability indicator and to update a high level model through the third algorithm using Kalman filtering. Searching areas of the road sides for the next image are also updated. Experimental results show the reliability and the robustness of this original association of three different algorithms. Various road situations are addressed, including roads with high curvature. A multi-lanes extension is also presented.

Broadcast encryption technology enables a sender to send information securely to a group of receivers excluding specified receivers over a broadcast channel. In this paper, we propose a new key-tree structure based on Rabin cryptosystem, and an access control scheme using the structure. We show the security of the access control scheme and construct a new broadcast encryption scheme based on it. The proposed broadcast encryption scheme is a modification of the complete subtree method and it reduces the number of keys a receiver stores to one. There have been proposed some modifications of the complete subtree method which minimize the number of keys for a receiver to one, and the most efficient one among them with respect to the computational overhead at receivers is based on RSA cryptosystem. The computational overhead at receivers in our scheme is around log2e times smaller than the most efficient previously proposed one, where e is a public exponent of RSA, and the proposed scheme is the most efficient among tree based one-key schemes. This property is examined by experimental results. Our scheme achieves this reduction in the computational overhead in exchange for an increase in the size of nonsecret memory by [log n * few (e.g. eight)] bits, where n is the total number of receivers.

For hybrid Multimedia-on-Demand (MoD) systems which support broadcast, batch and interactive services, the charging scheme employed plays an important role in the delivery of good service quality to users, while also determining the revenue generated for the service provider. In this letter a new charging scheme is proposed. This scheme provides the same quality of service to the users as previous charging schemes while providing higher revenue. Numerical results are presented to evaluate the performance of the new charging scheme in comparison with previous schemes.

In this paper we propose a road object extraction technique based on an active contour model (snake) considering inertia and differential features in a movie. Different energy functions can be applicable to snake in order to use information of various objects and various environments. Using many methods for tracking a moving object, snake can be applied to a scene frame by frame. Initial positions of the control points in a frame can refer to the results in the previous frame. We focus on the inertia that works between object shapes in the previous and present frames. In this research inertia is the tendency of a control point to resist its changes in its state of motion in an image space. We introduce an external energy for snake based on inertia of control points. Internal energy functions based on differential features of road geometry are also introduced to extract straight, circular and S-shaped road segments smoothly. The proposed method is applied to extract road geometry from a movie taken by a camera equipped on the flont of a vehicle. Experimental results indicate the availability of the proposed method which is to extract road geometry smoothly and to improve its robustness.

In the field of industrial manufacturing, visual pattern inspection is an important task to prevent the inclusion of incorrect parts. There have been demands for such methods able to handle factors caused by positional and rotational alignment, and illumination changes. In this paper, we propose a discrimination method called Trinarized broad-edge and Gray-scale Hybrid Matching (TGHM). The method is highly reliable due to gray-scale cross correlation which has a high pattern discrimination efficiency, with high-speed position and rotation alignment using the characteristics of trinarized broad-edge representation which has high data compressibility and illumination-resistant variability. In an example in which the method is applied to mis-collation inspection equipment of a bookbinding machine, it is confirmed that the processing speed is 24,000 sheets/hour, the error detection rate is 100.0%, and the mis-alarm rate is less than 0.002%, and it is verified that the method is practical.

This letter describes experiments conducted to measure the interference effects of two kinds of UWB sources, which are OFDM UWB source and pulse radio UWB source, to broadcasting relay system and SDMB system. The received power degradation of a broadcasting system is presented. experimental results show that UWB system can coexist 35 m distance as close as to in-band broadcasting network and can also coexist 1.8 m as close as with the SDMB terminal without causing any dangerous interference.

A probe-fed U-shaped cross-sectional antenna with tuning stubs on a U-shaped ground plane is proposed for wideband applications. The bottom of the antenna is etched to form tuning stubs for impedance matching. The simulated results of return loss, co- and cross-polarized patterns are presented and compared with the measured ones. Characteristics of a constructed antenna prototype at the operating frequency show that the antenna has an impedance bandwidth (2:1 VSWR) of 37.44% and average gain level of 8.5 dBi. Good radiation characteristics of the proposed antenna have been obtained that is the cross-polarization level and front-to-back ratio in both E- and H-planes across the large bandwidth are better than 22 dB and 12 dB, respectively.

In this paper, we propose a protocol for multicast communication called Multicast Datagram Transfer Protocol (MDTP) to provide multicast for video broadcasting service on the Internet. MDTP is a one-to-many multicast communication protocol, which is constructed based on IPv4 unicast protocol by utilizing IP Router Alert Option, and it uses unicast addressing and unicast routing protocol. A mechanism is presented to allow a router to remove identical video stream, to duplicate a video stream, and to forward each copy of the duplicated video stream to its destinations. Ordinary IP routers that do not support MDTP will treat the MDTP packets as normal unicast packets. Hence, gradual deployment is possible without tunneling technique. With a delegation mechanism, MDTP router is also able to handle request from clients, and serve the requested video stream. The simulation results show that the average bandwidth usage of MDTP is close to the average bandwidth usage of IP multicast. MDTP also has greater efficiency than XCAST, and its efficiency becomes significant for a large number of clients.

The generalized sorting problem is to find the first k largest elements among n input elements and to report them in a sorted order. In this paper, we propose a fast generalized sorting algorithm under the single hop wireless networks model with collision detection (WNCD). The algorithm is based on the maximum finding algorithm and the sorting algorithm. The key point of our algorithm is to use successful broadcasts to build broadcasting layers logically and then to distribute the data elements into those logic layers properly. Thus, the number of broadcast conflicts is reduced. We prove that the average time complexity required for our generalized sorting algorithm is Θ(k + log(n - k)). When k = 1, our generalized sorting algorithm does the work of finding maximum, and when k = n, it does the work of sorting. Thus, the analysis of our algorithm builds a connection between the two extremely special cases which are maximum finding and sorting.

When digital broadcasting services are provided through cable television (CATV) networks, viewers watching interactive programs such as quizzes or auctions may respond to the program within a short period. If these responses are transmitted in the upstream channel of the CATV networks using TCP/IP, they will result in burst traffic. The numerous TCP connections will trigger congestion in the upstream transmission facilities and will cause a significant delay in conventional Internet services such as web-browsing. The present paper proposes a new method of controlling the CATV upstream channel to avoid such congestion. We introduce class-based queues at each cable TV station, in which each service class is related to a type of interactive service. The status of the queue is relayed to the cable modems of subscribers using a CATV-specific MAC protocol. This queue-status information is used to suspend further initiation of TCP connections at cable modems. As a result, the TCP connections will be arbitrated in the CATV network, while the delay of the response transmission is traded for smoothing of the burst traffic. We numerically evaluate the effect of the proposed method using the time distribution of responses to an actual quiz program. The results show that the proposed method successfully suppresses interference of the burst traffic with conventional best-effort services.

At present, a demand to the technology of contents distribution by which each user can request the desired content through network is increasing. There are some merits and demerits respectively with the existing on-demand systems for contents distribution, such as the methods based on broadcast and select transfer or multicast one. In this paper, we propose a hybrid scheduling method which adaptively uses both broadcasting and multicasting in order to improve the system efficiency. Adequate channel boundary to adopt two different transfer mechanisms is found through analytical consideration. Also, performance improvement of our proposal is verified in terms of response time and request blocking rate through computer simulation.

In wired networks, broadcast and multicast transmissions can be easily achieved by data link layer (layer 2). Nevertheless, it is a big challenge to safely transfer broadcast or multicast data frames over multihop mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs) due to the high bit error rate, the high collision probability and the lack of acknowledgment. Additionally, most of MANET's routing protocols rely on the broadcast function to exchange essential routing packets between mobile nodes and need the multicast function to make more efficient use of network bandwidth for some particular multimedia applications. From our observations, the efficiency of the unicast/multicast routing protocol of finding the path/tree is highly dependent on supported broadcast schemes of the underlying media access control (MAC) protocol. Therefore, in this paper, we illustrate the uncertain broadcast problem due to no replying acknowledgment from any recipients when mobile nodes deliver broadcast frames in wireless networks. We, then, propose a novel reliable broadcast scheme to solve this problem as well as a reliable multicast scheme to enhance the network utilization in data link layer. Simulation results show that the proposed scheme, which is still compatible with IEEE 802.11 standard, can efficiently minimize the bandwidth consumption as well as propagation delay.