This paper offers an initial analysis of economic and market issues in the development and deployment of mobile remote physiological monitoring services for medical patients through wireless wearable sensors and actuators. Examining the characteristics of the service technologies and related industries, this study focuses on the structure, participants and roles of standardisation of the layers within the emerging mobile remote physiological monitoring industry. The study concludes that the structure of the emerging mobile remote physiological monitoring industry will be oriented about service provision, be integrated with other personal / patient data storage services and be heavily influenced by the interplay of technological developments, the health market structure, existing players and regulation. Additionally, the keys players are likely to be the system integrators and service providers concentrating on large institutional customers. A focus of the paper is analysing both the causes and implications of a modular, horizontally layered industry structure likely to result from the mix of technologies, suppliers and customers as this market develops. The paper discusses why, although horizontal specialisation is the most likely outcome, there is little risk of key layers becoming commoditised. The paper also discusses the appropriate types and levels of standardisation and equipment certification activities that should be encouraged, along with from which groups and industries the pressure for these will come.

Many diverse methods have been developed in the field of biometric identification as a greater emphasis is placed on human-friendliness in the area of intelligent systems. One emerging method is the use of human footprint. However, in the previous research, there were some limitations resulting from the spatial resolution of sensors. One possible method to overcome this limitation is through the use additional information such as dynamic walking information in dynamic footprint. In this study, we suggest a new person recognition scheme based on overlapped foot shape and COP (Center Of Pressure) trajectory during one-step walking. And, we show the usefulness of the suggested method, obtaining a 98.6% recognition rate in our experiment with eleven people.

As one of control command input methods for functional electrical stimulation (FES) system, using the head movements was considered in this paper. In order to detect the head movements, we designed a prototype control command input device using acceleration sensors and verified its validity in experiments. The experimental results showed that the head movements in the lateral flexion and in the flexion/extension were highly detected and separated by the acceleration sensors.

This paper describes an adaptive fingerprint-sensing scheme for a user authentication system with a fingerprint sensor LSI to obtain high-quality fingerprint images suitable for identification. The scheme is based on novel evaluation indexes of fingerprint-image quality and adjustable analog-to-digital (A/D) conversion. The scheme adjusts dynamically an A/D conversion range of the fingerprint sensor LSI while evaluating the image quality during real-time fingerprint-sensing operation. The evaluation indexes pertain to the contrast and the ridgelines of a fingerprint image. The A/D conversion range is adjusted by changing quantization resolution and offset. We developed a fingerprint sensor LSI and a user authentication system to evaluate the adaptive fingerprint-sensing scheme. The scheme obtained a fingerprint image suitable for identification and the system achieved an accurate identification rate with 0.36% of the false rejection rate (FRR) at 0.075% of the false acceptance rate (FAR). This confirms that the scheme is very effective in achieving accurate identification.

We have shown that a photonic sensor can be used as an electric-field probe for planar near-field measurements of X-band antennas. Because an antenna on the photonic sensor is small (about 0.1 λ) compared to the wavelength, the photonic sensor can directly measure the amplitude and the phase of the electric field close (about 0.3 λ) to the apertures of antennas without disturbing the electric field to be measured. Therefore we can obtain the antenna pattern by transforming the measured electric field without probe compensation. To verify the merits of the photonic sensor, we have evaluated the antenna patterns of a standard gain horn antenna and a microstrip array antenna at 9.41 GHz. Comparing the results obtained using the photonic sensor with those obtained using the conventional open-ended waveguide probe and other methods, we have shown that the antenna patterns agree with each other within 1 dB over wide ranges of directivity.

We propose an efficient motion estimation algorithm to search an additional area according to the motion of a camcorder, which is obtained from a gyro sensor. When the camcorder moves, the background moves in the opposite direction. The proposed algorithm searches three regions, one around the center, another around the predicted region and another in the background around the region associated with the camcorder motion. Compared to conventional algorithms without the last region, the proposed one reduces the amount of computation to 1/5 while maintaining or enhancing the quality.

An optical fiber biosensor using adsorption LB films has been investigated for the application to the glucose detection in blood. The adsorption LB film containing glucose oxidase (GOD: the enzyme in human body) was deposited on the core portion of optical fiber and the variation of absorption spectra due to the reactions of GOD, glucose, and hemoglobin was measured. The relatively high response time of 60 s and glucose sensitivity as low as 20 mg/dl were obtained. The results demonstrate that the optical fiber bio-sensor using adsorption LB film can be used as a glucose sensor.

An amperometric thin-film glucose biosensor based on a plasma-polymerized film using hexamethyldisiloxane as the monomer is presented. The plasma-polymerized film, achieved in plasma in the vapor phase, offers a new alternative for use in the design of the electrode-enzyme interface of biosensors. The film shows promise of high sensor performance; namely, rapid sensor response, low noise, a wide dynamic range, reproducibility, and reduction in the effects of interfering materials such as ascorbic acid. In this study, we examined the usefulness of the hexamethyldisiloxane plasma-polymerized film and investigated how the thickness of the plasma-polymerized film on a platinum electrode affected sensor characteristics: the selectivity for hydrogen peroxide versus interfering agents, the sensor response due to enzymatic reaction, and oxygen depletion.

Temperature dependence of drain current is analyzed in detail in terms of mobility and threshold voltage. From the analyses, it is proved that a point exists that the drain current is fixed without depending on temperature when the MOSFET operates in strong inversion. Applying this characteristic, a CMOS temperature-voltage converter operating in strong inversion with high linearity is proposed. SPICE simulation and experimental results are shown, and the corresponding performances are discussed.

This paper discusses performance issues for a sensor network. It describes the unique features of the sensor network and discusses studies on its protocols. Performance measures for the sensor network are investigated and studies related to them are surveyed. As an example of performance measures, this paper analyzes a sensor network's availability, which is the probability that all the sensor nodes are working without any of them having run out of energy. An explicit formula for the sensor network availability is derived, and the optimal placement of sensor nodes is investigated.

A high-speed 3-D camera has a future possibility of wide variety of application fields such as quick inspection of industrial components, observation of motion/destruction of a target object, and fast collision prevention. In this paper, a row-parallel position detector for a high-speed 3-D camera based on a light-section method is presented. In our row-parallel search method, the positions of activated pixels are quickly detected by a row-parallel search circuit in pixel and a row-parallel address acquisition of O(log N) cycles in N-pixel horizontal resolution. The architecture keeps high-speed position detection in high pixel resolution. We have designed and fabricated the prototype position sensor with a 12816 pixel array in 0.35 µm CMOS process. The measurement results show it achieves quick activated-position acquisition of 450 ns for "beyond-real-time" 3-D imaging and visual feedback. The high-speed position detection of the scanning sheet beam is demonstrated.

An Anomaly detection sensor, to detect an abnormal use of system resources or an abnormal behavior of authorized users, uses various measures and decides on the basis of threshold value. However, it has high false alarm rate, and it make it hard to merchandise. Also, it is not easy to have a threshold which is suitable for installation environment. In this paper, we propose a method to automatic generation of proper threshold of each sensor, and the threshold is applied for an integrated decision. Also, we propose a computing method for a correlation of heterogeneous detection sensors. As we use the correlation to integrate and decide the opinions of each sensor, false positive can be greatly reduced.

Schottky gas sensors of CO were fabricated using high quality AlGaN/GaN/Si heterostructures. The CO sensors show good sensitivity in the temperature range of 250 to 300 (530%, at 160 ppm CO in N2) and fast response comparable with SnO2 sensors. A two-region linear regime was observed for the dependence of sensitivity on CO concentration. GaN sensors on Si substrate offer the possibility of integration with Si based electronics. The gas sensors show slow response with time, the change of material properties possibly in the presence of large thermal stress.

This paper proposes a novel CMOS built-in current sensor (BICS) for on-line current testing. Proposed BICS detects abnormal current in circuit under test (CUT) and makes a Pass/Fail signal through comparison between the CUT current and the duplicated inverter current. This circuit consists of two current-to-voltage conversion transistors, a full swing generator, a voltage comparator, and an inverter block. It requires 16 transistors. Since this BICS does not require the extra clock, the added extra pin is only one output pin. Furthermore, the BICS does not require test mode selection. Therefore the BICS can be applied to on-line current testing. The validity and effectiveness are verified through the HSPICE simulation of circuits with defects. When the CUT is an 8 8 parallel multiplier, the area overhead of the BICS is about 4.34%.

In our previous research, we proposed a nonlinear digital filter to Estimate the Smoothed and Differential values of the sensor inputs by using Sliding mode system (ESDS). This estimator is able to eliminate impulsive noise efficiently from time series data. We applied this filter to processing outputs of robot sensors, and it became possible to perform robust environment recognition. ESDS is designed using a theory of variable structure system (VSS) with sliding mode. In short, ESDS is a nonlinear filter. Therefore, it is very difficult to clarify the behavior of the system analytically. Consequentially, we deal with the step function with impulsive noise as an example, and we attempt to eliminate this impulsive noise by keeping the sudden shift of signals. In this case, there is a trade-off between the noise elimination ability and the tracking performance for an input signal. Although ESDS is a nonlinear filter, it has the same trade-off as linear filters such as a low-pass filter. In order to satisfy these two conditions simultaneously, we use two filters whose parameters are independent of each other. Furthermore, in order to repress the adverse affect of impulsive noise in the steady-state, we introduced the boundary layer. Generally, a boundary layer is used so as to inhibit the harmful effect of chattering. Chattering is caused in the sliding mode system when the state of the system vibrates on the switching line of a sliding mode system. By introducing the boundary layer to ESDS, we can repress the adverse effect of impulsive noise in the steady-state. According to these considerations, we clarify the relationship between these characteristics of ESDS and the arbitrary parameters.

We present a new method called the slope nucleation method (SNM) for the growth of high-quality organic 4-dimethylamino-N-methyl-4-stilbazolium tosylate (DAST) crystals. The SNM features the ability to control the nucleation position and the growth orientation of DAST crystals in spontaneous nucleated growth. X-ray diffraction (XRD) rocking curve measurements indicate that the SNM is effective for obtaining high-quality DAST crystals as compared to conventional spontaneous nucleation methods. We evaluated the electro-optic (EO) properties of DAST crystals by an external EO probing technique because DAST crystals are expected to be used in transverse-field probing. DAST crystals exhibits nearly five-times EO sensitivity enhancement as compared to inorganic KTiOPO4 (KTP) crystals at 90 kHz. The larger EO signal power obtained from the DAST crystal was almost constant at low frequencies (30 Hz to 90 kHz), whereas the KTP crystal could not respond below 180 Hz. We also observed excellent signals at all measured points due to the improved crystallinity of the crystal grown by the SNM.

Some electromechanical devices and systems produced using MEMS fabrication processes are detailed. Two precision measurement metrologies for inspecting electromechanical products are also described. As the trend of electromechanical devices has been towards smaller and smaller sizes possessing robust mechanisms and powerful functions, micro-electric-mechanical system (MEMS) devices are becoming more the choice for meeting such requirements. Three MEMS examples are discussed in detail in this paper: CMOS compatible sensors, RF/microwave components, and packaged and integrated passive devices. The design thinking of a new free-fall sensor, which is an accelerometer and possesses a surprisingly low frequency response and broad bandwidth, is mentioned. In addition, an AVID (dvanced ibrometer/nterferometer evice) system for measuring tiny displacement as well as a Morphinscope system that has the advantage of a confocal microscope combined with a photon tunneling microscope and both developed by NTU's MEMS/NEMS group, are discussed. The excellent sensing ability of the free-fall sensor and the accuracy resolution of the two measurement systems are proved by experimental verification.

We propose a new scheme of indoor optical wireless LAN based on a special CMOS image sensor (CIS), which realizes a low-power compact communication module with large uplink capacity due to space division multiple access. In our scheme, all nodes and a hub utilize the CIS as a photoreceiver as well as a position-sensing device for finding the positions of the communication modules, while a single large photodiode is used in the conventional systems. Although conventional image sensors cannot detect modulated signals because they integrate photocurrents, our CIS has a high-speed readout function for receiving optical data from the specific pixels receiving optical signals. The advantages of the proposed scheme are 1) compact embodiment of the communication module due to no need of the bulky mechanical components for searching the other modules, 2) space division multiple access, which leads to 3) large capacity of uplink, and 4) applicability of simple modulation and coding schemes for optical signals. In our scheme, diffusive and narrow beam lights are complementally used for position detection and communication, respectively, which leads to the advantage 5) low power consumption of both light emitter and receiver circuits. To demonstrate two basic functional modes of our CIS: an IS (image sensor) mode and a COM (communication) mode, we fabricate an 88-pixel CIS by use of a 0.8µm BiCMOS technology. In the experiments, the image of a light source is successfully captured in the IS mode for integration time of 29.6msec and optical power of 1.1nW. After the functional mode of the pixel receiving the light is changed to the COM mode, the eye pattern of the modulated light is obtained from the pixel at frequency of 1MHz. We also fabricate a test pixel circuit with in-pixel amplifier, with which operation speed is improved to 100MHz.

This paper proposes a high-resolution CMOS image sensor, which has Hadamard transform function. This Hadamard transform circuit consists of two base generators, an array of pixel circuits, and analog-to-digital converters. In spite of simple composition, a base generator outputs a variety of bases, a pixel circuit calculates a two-dimensional base from one-dimensional bases and outputs values to common line for current addition, and analog-to-digital converter converts current value to digital value and stabilize a common line voltage for elimination of parasitic capacitance. We simulated these circuit elements and optimized using SPICE. Basic operations of this Hadamard transform circuit are also confirmed by simulation. A 256 256 pixel test chip was designed in 4.73 mm 4.73 mm area with 0.35 µm CMOS technology. A fill factor of this chip is 42% and dynamic range is 55.6 [dB]. Functions of this chip are Hadamard transform, Harr transform, projection, obtaining center of gravity, and so on.

The main contribution of this work is to propose energy-efficient protocols that compute the sum of n numbers over any commutative and associative binary operator stored in n wireless sensor nodes arranged in a two-dimensional grid of size nn. We first present a protocol that computes the sum on a Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) in O(r2+(n/r2)1/3) time slots with no sensor node being awake for more than O(1) time slots, where r is the transmission range of the sensor nodes. We then go on to present a fault-tolerant protocol which computes the sum in the same number of time slots with no sensor node being awake for more than O(log r) time slots. Finally, we show that in a WSN where the sensor nodes are empowered with the ability to dynamically adjust their transmission range r during the execution of the protocol, the sum can be computed in O(log n) time slots and no sensor node needs to awake for more than O(log n) time slots.