One of the most basic characteristics of the image is accompanied by its blur. It was 1962 that I had discovered for the first time in the world that the blur was a Gaussian type. In this paper the outline is described about historical details concerning this circumstances.

Computation of scale space images requires numerical integration of partial differential equations, which demands large computational costs especially in nonlinear cases. In this paper, we present a computational scheme for nonlinear scale spaces based on iterated filtering of original images. This scheme is found to be a special case of numerical integration with a particularly adapted integration steplength. We show the stability of the iteration with local windows and that with global ones and analyze the deformation of edge waveforms in the filtering. Computational costs are evaluated experimentally for both local and global windows and finally we apply the nonlinear multi-scale smoothing to contrast enhancement of images.

We describe a multiresolution 3D active balloon model to trace the boundaries of moving object. This model is able to analyze a shape hierarchically using 3D scale-space. The 3D scale-space can be determined by changing the parameters of the active balloon. We extended 2D process-grammar to describe the deformation process between a shape and a sphere, based on topological scale-space analysis. The geometric invariant features were used to analyze the deformation of nonrigid shapes. We analyzed the motion of a heart by using MRI data.

This paper presents a new hierarchical scheduling method for a large-scale manufacturing system based on the hybrid Petri-net model, which consists of CPN (Continuous Petri Net) and TPN (Timed Petri Net). The study focuses on an automobile production system, a typical large-scale manufacturing system. At a high level, CPN is used to represent continuous flow in the production process of an entire system, and LP (Linear Programming) is applied to find the optimal flow. At a low level, TPN is used to represent the manufacturing environment of each sub-production line in a decentralized manner, and the MCT algorithm is applied to find feasible semi-optimal process sequences for each sub-production line. Our proposed scheduling method can schedule macroscopically the flow of an entire system while considering microscopically any physical constraints that arise on an actual shop floor.

A dual-modulus (divide-by-128/129) prescaler has been designed based on 0.25-µm CMOS technology employing new D-flip-flops. The new D-flip-flops are free from glitch problems due to internal charge sharing. Transistor merging technique has been employed to reduce the number of transistors and to secure reliable high-speed operation. At the 2.5-V supply voltage, the prescaler using the proposed dynamic D-flip-flops can operate up to the frequency of 2.95-GHz, and consumes about 10% and about 27% less power than Yuan/Svensson's and Huang's circuits, respectively.

The validity and capability of an iterative coupling scheme between single-particle frozen-field Monte Carlo simulations and nonlinear Poisson solutions for achieving self-consistency is investigated. For this purpose, a realistic 0.1 µm lightly-doped-drain (LDD) n-MOSFET with a maximum doping level of about 2.5 1020 cm-3 is simulated. It is found that taking the drift-diffusion (DD) or the hydrodynamic (HD) model as initial simulation leads to the same Monte Carlo result for the drain current. This shows that different electron densities taken either from a DD or a HD simulation in the bulk region, which is never visited by Monte Carlo electrons, have a negligible influence on the solution of the Poisson equation. For the device investigated about ten iterations are necessary to reach the stationary state after which gathering of cumulative averages can begin. Together with the absence of stability problems at high doping levels this makes the self-consistent single-particle approach (SPARTA) a robust and efficient method for the simulation of nanoscale MOSFETs where quasi-ballistic transport is crucial for the on-current.

This is the first paper to report the influence of fuzzy thresolding-based buffer management scheme on the end-to-end delay performance of cell switching networks including asynchronous transfer mode (ATM) networks. In this approach, the fraction of the selectively blocked cells, corresponding to the difference of cell loss due to buffer overflow, between the traditional fixed and fuzzy schemes, are re-routed to their final destinations. A 50-switch, representative, cell-switching network under fuzzy thresholding is first modeled, second, simulated on a testbed consisting of a network of 25+ Pentium workstations under Linux, configured as a loosely-coupled parallel processor, and third, its performance is studied under realistic input traffic conditions. A total of 10,000 user calls, generating between 1.0 and 1.5 million ATM cells, is stochastically distributed among the nodes. Performance analysis reveals that for different input traffic distributions ranging from light to moderate to heavy traffic, the re-routing approach successfully routes these blocked cells, although it causes the average end-to-end cell delay in the network to increase, compared to the fixed scheme, by a factor ranging from 1.65 for relatively light traffic to 6.7 for heavy traffic.

In this paper, a method is proposed to construct an n-out-of-n visual secret sharing scheme for gray-scale images, for short an (n,n)-VSS-GS scheme, which is optimal in the sense of contrast and pixel expansion, i.e., resolution. It is shown that any (n,n)-VSS-GS scheme can be constructed based on the so-called polynomial representation of basis matrices treated in [15],[16]. Furthermore, it is proved that such construction can attain the optimal (n,n)-VSS-GS scheme.

In this paper, we present new stability conditions for a class of large-scale hybrid dynamical systems composed of a number of interconnected hybrid subsystems. The stability conditions are given in terms of discontinuous Lyapunov functions of the stable hybrid subsystems. Furthermore, the stability conditions are represented by LMIs (Linear Matrix Inequalities) which are computationally tractable.

In this letter a low-complexity and low-power realization of the 2D discrete-cosine-transform and its inverse (DCT/IDCT) is presented. A VLSI circuit based on the Chen algorithm with the distributed arithmetic approach is described. Furthermore low-power design techniques, based on clock gating and data driven switching activity reduction, are used to decrease the circuit power consumption. To this aim, input signal statistics have been extracted from H.263/MPEG verification models. Finally, circuit performance is compared to known software solutions and dedicated full-custom ones.

In order to clarify the receiver sensitivity of remote keyless entry systems operating at 314 MHz, the radiation characteristics of a cabin antennas must be studied. For this purpose, electromagnetic simulations are very useful but the multiple reflected waves present in the cabin must be accurately estimated. No prior study examined the radiation characteristics of cabin antennas. This paper introduces an accurate simulation method. A MM (Method of Moments) simulator is selected because it can simulate multiple reflected waves. Initial studies are being performed to find the calculation requirements and ensuring convergence of multiple reflected wave structures. Next, calculation requirements for car analyses such as convergence parameters and computer abilities are studied. The calculation time is 11 hours by a personal computer. 1.1 GB of RAM is also needed. Many calculated results such as three-dimensional radiation patterns and induced currents on the car's body are obtained. The radiation pattern varies with antenna position, and polarization changes are shown. In order to ensure that the results are accurate, measurements are made on a one seventh scale model of a car. The good agreement of measured and calculated results verifies the validity of the simulation method. The influence of multiple reflected waves on the radiation patterns is also experimentally studied. The conclusion is that the MM method is shown to be useful in estimating the radiation pattern of cabin antennas. Interesting calculation results are also shown.

Precise interconnect analysis is strongly required for giga-scale integration the operation frequency of which is excess 10 GHz. In this study, detailed and accurate analyses of a coaxial interconnect and an actual rectangular interconnect have been performed by the direct evaluation of Maxwell's equations and the finite element method, respectively. It has been revealed that there are two propagation modes for LSI interconnects: skin depth limited propagation mode and interconnect induced slow wave mode. In a miniaturized interconnect, the propagation mode is the interconnect induced slow wave mode; therefore, we cannot obtain the light-speed propagation due to such an interconnect-induced effect. In order to overcome this speed limitation or to improve signal integrity, it is essential to introduce a short interconnect for a miniaturized structure, and a much larger interconnect than the skin depth. We propose a gas-isolated interconnect as a candidate for an ultimately low-k structure in order to increase the signal-propagation speed. By the introduction of such structures, the performance of miniaturized devices in the deep submicron region will be effectively enhanced.

In this paper, characteristics of a digital system dedicated to the fast execution of the FDTD algorithm, widely used for electromagnetic simulation, are presented. Such system is conceived as a module communicating with a host personal computer via a PCI bus, and is based on a VLSI ASIC, which implements the "field-update" engine. The system structure is defined by means of a hardware description language, allowing to keep high-level system specification independent of the actual fabrication technology. A virtual implementation of the system has been carried out, by mapping such description in a standard-cell style on a commercial 0.35 µm technology. Simulations show that significant speed-up can be achieved, with respect to state-of-the-art software implementations of the same algorithm.

In this paper, a new image synthesis model based on a set of wavelet bases is proposed. In the proposed model, images are approximated by the sum of synthesis functions that are translated to image edge positions. By applying the proposed model to sketch-based image coding, no iterative image recovery procedure is required for image decoding. In the design of the synthesis functions, we define the synthesis functions as a linear combination of wavelet bases. The coefficients for wavelet bases are obtained from an iterative procedure. The vector quantization is applied to the vectors of the coefficients to limit the number of the synthesis functions. We apply the proposed synthesis model to the sketch-based image coding. Image coding experiments by eight synthesis functions and a comparison with the orthogonal transform methods are also given.

This paper describes IP traffic, especially the control of VoIP traffic, on the carrier-scale, and proposes algorithms for it. It examines a case that has already been introduced in the United States and discusses the trend of standardization for this control. Control techniques that will be introduced into the IP network in the future are considered from the viewpoints of both "quality" that users receive and the "control" that carriers perform.

The international telecommunication standards bodies such as ITU-T, ATM Forum, and IETF recommend the dual leaky bucket for the traffic specifications for VBR service. On the other hand, recent studies have demonstrated multiple time-scale burstiness in compressed video traffic. In order to fill this gap between the current standards and real traffic characteristics, we present a standard-compatible traffic parameter selection method based on the notion of a critical time scale (CTS). The defined algorithm is optimal in the sense that it minimizes the required amount of link capacity for a traffic flow under a maximum delay constraint. Simulation results with compressed video traces demonstrate the efficiency of the defined traffic parameter selection algorithm in resource allocation.

A mesh-connected processor array consists of many similar processing elements (PEs), which can be executed in both parallel and pipeline processing. For the implementation of an array of large numbers of processors, it is necessary to consider some fault tolerant issues to enhance the (fabrication-time) yield and the (run-time) reliability. In this paper, we introduce the 1(1/2)-track switch torus array by changing the connections in 1(1/2)-track switch mesh array, and we apply our approximate reconfiguration algorithm to the torus array. We describe the reconfiguration strategy for the 1(1/2)-track switch torus array and its realization using WSI, especially 3-dimensional realization. A hardware realization of the algorithm is proposed and simulation results about the array reliability are shown. These imply that a self-reconfigurable system with no host computer can be realized using our method, hence our method is effective in enhancing the run-time reliability as well as the fabrication-time yield of processor arrays.

In this paper, we propose the evolutionary algorithm-based reasoning system and its design methodology. In the proposed design methodology, reasoning rules behind the past cases in each task (in each case database) are extracted through genetic algorithms and are expressed as truth tables (we call them 'evolved truth tables'). Circuits for the reasoning systems are synthesized from the evolved truth tables. Parallelism in each task can be embedded directly in the circuits by the hardware implementation of the evolved truth tables, so that the high speed reasoning system with small or acceptable hardware size is achieved. We developed a prototype system using Xilinx Virtex FPGA chips and applied it to the gene boundary reasoning (GBR) and English pronunciation reasoning (EPR), which are very important practical tasks in the genome science and language processing field, respectively. The GBR and the EPR prototype systems are evaluated in terms of the reasoning accuracy, circuit size, and processing speed, and compared with the conventional approaches in the parallel AI and the artificial neural networks. Fault injection experiments are also carried out using the prototype system, and its high fault-tolerance, or graceful degradation against defective circuits that suits to the hardware implementation using wafer scale LSIs is demonstrated.

In this paper, we shall construct mathematical theory based on the concept of set-valued mappings, suitable for available operation of network systems extraordinarily complicated and diversified on large scales. Fundamental conditions for availability of system behaviors of such network systems are clarified in a form of fixed point theorem for system of set-valued mappings.

In this paper, we propose an ECG waveform compression technique based on the matching pursuit. The matching pursuit is an iterative non-orthogonal signal expansion technique. A signal is decomposed to atoms in a function dictionary. The constraint to the dictionary is only the over-completeness to signals. The function dictionary can be defined to be best match to the structure of the ECG waveform. In this paper, we introduce the multiscale analysis to the implementation of inner product computations between signals and atoms in the matching pursuit iteration. The computational cost can be reduced by utilization of the filter bank of the multiscale analysis. We show the waveform approximation capability of the matching pursuit with multiscale analysis. We show that a simple 4-tap integer filter bank is enough to the approximation and compression of ECG waveforms. In ECG waveform compression, we apply the error feed-back procedure to the matching pursuit iteration to reduce the norm of the approximation error. Finally, actual ECG waveform compression by the proposed method are demonstrated. The proposed method achieve the compression by the factor 10 to 30. The compression ratio given by the proposed method is higher than the orthogonal wavelet transform coding in the range of the reconstruction precision lower than 9% in PRD.