The tectonic activities that precede significant earthquakes release electromagnetic (EM) waves that can be used as earthquake precursors. We have been observing EM radiation in the ELF (extremely low frequency) band at about 40 observation stations in Japan for predicting significant earthquakes. The recorded signals contain, however, several noise components generated from the ionosphere, human activity, and so on. Most background noise in observed signal is attributed to lightning in the tropics. This paper proposes method based on PCA (principal component analysis) to extract signals from large data sets. The good performance of the proposed method is confirmed.

Adaptive arrays with signal blocking have the advantages of fast convergence and robustness to pointing errors as well as of rejecting a coherent interference in addition to incoherent ones. In this paper, we propose a novel method for performance improvement in such arrays with no increase in complexity. The proposed method utilizes all of the array elements to obtain the adaptive output so that its performance is superior to that of the conventional method which does not utilize one of the elements. Their performances are compared analytically and by computer simulation.

This paper presents the design consideration of a polarization-transformation transmission filter, which is composed of a multilayered chiral slab. The optimal material parameters and thickness of each layer of the slab can be determined by using a genetic algorithm (GA). Substituting the constitutive relations for a chiral medium into Maxwell's equations, the electromagnetic field in the medium is obtained. A chain-matrix formulation is used to derive the relationship between the components of the incident, the reflected, and the transmitted electric fields. The cross- and co-polarized powers carried by the transmitted and reflected waves are represented in terms of their electric field components. The procedure proposed for the design of a polarization-transformation filter is divided into two stages. An ordinary filter without polarization-transformation and a polarization-transformation filter for the transmitted wave are designed with a multilayered non-chiral slab and a multilayered chiral slab at the first and the second stages, respectively. According to the specifications of the filters, two functionals are defined with the transmitted and reflected powers. Thus the optimal design of a polarization-transformation filter with the multilayered chiral slab is reduced to an optimization problem where the material parameters and thickness of each chiral layer are found by maximizing the functionals. Applying the GA to the maximization of the functionals, one can obtain the optimal material parameters and thicknesses of the multilayered chiral slab. Numerical results are presented to confirm the effectiveness of the two-stage design procedure. For three types of multilayered chiral slabs, optimal values of refractive indices, thicknesses, and chiral admittances are obtained. It is seen from the numerical results that the proposed procedure is very effective in the optimal design of polarization-transformation filters for the transmitted wave.

We present a physics-based circuit simulator employing the Monte Carlo (MC) particle technique, which serves as a bridge between the small-device physics and the circuit designs. Two different geometries of GaAs-MESFET's are modeled and analyzed by the simulator. The Y-parameters of the devices are extracted from the transient currents, and then translated into the S-parameters. The cut-off frequency (fT) is estimated from the Y-parameters. The minimum noise figure (Fmin) is also estimated by evaluating the fluctuation in the stationary current. The device, having the n+-region placed just at the drain side of the gate, exhibits the better performances in both fT and Fmin. The analysis on the equivalent circuit (EC) elements reveals that its better performances are mainly due to the reduced gate-source capacitance (Cgs) and the increased transconductance (gm0), which result from the shortened effective gate length (Lg) caused by the termination of the depletion region at the gate edge. The termination of the depletion region, however, causes the increase of the electric field, which results in the higher heat generation rate near the gate edge. It is proven that the physics-based circuit simulator developed here is fully effective to see the inside of the small-device and to model it for the millimeter-wave circuit design.

It is still an open question whether software agents should be personified in the interface. In order to study the effects of faces and facial expressions in the interface, a series of experiments was conducted to compare subjects' responses to and evaluation of different faces and facial expressions. The experimental results obtained demonstrate that: 1) personified interfaces help users engage in a task, and are well suited for an entertainment domain; 2) people's impressions of a face in a task are different from ones of the face in isolation. Perceived intelligence of a face is determined not by the agent's appearance but by its competence; 3) there is a dichotomy between user groups which have opposite opinions about personification. Thus, agent-based interfaces should be flexible to support the diversity of users' preferences and the nature of tasks.

This paper presents a Field-Programmable Digital Filter (FPDF) IC that employs carry-propagation-free redundant arithmetic algorithms for faster computation and multiple-valued current-mode circuit technology for high-density low-power implementation. The original contribution of this paper is to evaluate, through actual chip fabrication, the potential impact of multiple-valued current-mode circuit technology on the reduction of hardware complexity required for DSP-oriented programmable ICs. The prototype FPDF fabrication with 0.6 µm CMOS technology demonstrates that the chip area and power consumption can be reduced to 41% and 71%, respectively, compared with the standard binary logic implementation.

This paper proposes a novel extraction method of line parameters for multi-coupled lines on high-speed and high-density PCBs, where it uses TDR measurement in time domain and S-parameter measurement in frequency domain. The accuracy of the proposed method have been verified experimentally by comparing the crosstalk noise in the time domain, where (1) the proposed method extracts RLGC matrices by measuring the test pattern, (2) the crosstalk noise is obtained through SPICE simulation using the extracted RLGC matrices, and (3) the SPICE-simulated crosstalk noise is compared with the measured crosstalk noise. From the crosstalk noise comparison, the proposed method is proven to be very accurate. For N-coupled lines, the proposed method doesn't require expensive 2N-port probe for N-coupled lines but only two-port probe, which provides a simple, accurate, and economic extraction method of line parameters for multi-coupled line on the PCB. In the early stage of PCB design, the proposed method is very useful, because it extracts accurate interconnection parameters of each test board and enables to compensate various side effects due to the variation of PCB fabrication process. Also, the proposed method is necessary to analyze the signal integrity of future high-density and high-speed digital system on PCBs.

This paper studies the local Poisson property of aggregated IP traffic. First, it describes the scenario where IP traffic presents a Poisson-like characteristic within some limited range of time scales when packets from independent traffic streams are aggregated. Each of the independent traffic streams corresponds to a series of correlated IP packets such as those of a transport connection. Since the Poisson-like characteristic is observed only within some limited range of time scales, we call this characteristic the local Poisson property. The limited range of time scales of the local Poisson property can be estimated from a network configuration and characteristics of transport connections. Second, based on these observations, we seek the possibility to apply an ordinary Poisson process to evaluation of the packet loss probability in IP networks. The analytical investigation, where IP traffic is modeled by a superposition of independent branching Poisson processes that presents the local Poisson property, suggests that the packet loss probability can be estimated by a finite-buffer queue with a Poisson process when the buffer size is within a certain range. The investigation is verified by simulations. These findings expand the applicability of conventional Poisson-based approaches to IP network design issues.

This paper presents an algorithm for fingerprint image restoration using Digital Reaction-Diffusion System (DRDS). The DRDS is a model of a discrete-time discrete-space nonlinear reaction-diffusion dynamical system, which is useful for generating biological textures, patterns and structures. This paper focuses on the design of a fingerprint restoration algorithm that combines (i) a ridge orientation estimation technique using an iterative coarse-to-fine processing strategy and (ii) an adaptive DRDS having a capability of enhancing low-quality fingerprint images using the estimated ridge orientation. The phase-only image matching technique is employed for evaluating the similarity between an original fingerprint image and a restored image. The proposed algorithm may be useful for person identification applications using fingerprint images.

This paper addresses the routing and wavelength assignment (RWA) problem in a wavelength routed all optical network. One of the main issues is the assignment of the limited number of wavelengths over each physical fiber connection so that high aggregate capacity can be achieved. In a typical mesh topology, this problem has been shown to be NP-hard. In this paper, we propose a new heuristic based algorithm building upon one of the best known wavelength assignment algorithms proposed by Zhang and Acampora. The salient feature of the proposed algorithm is to consider the inherent multihop nature of the underlying mesh topology. We demonstrate that the proposed algorithm reduces the complexity by an order of magnitude, while at the same time achieving significantly lower blocking probability.

Efficient mixing of microwave signals is an important issue for new radio over fiber telecommunications systems. In this paper, we propose a novel device based on two cascaded semiconductor optical amplifiers working in a non-linear regime and a loss section in between Results show potential performance improvement as compared to other technological approaches for photonic microwave mixers.

In this paper, the authors intend to propose a new untraceable blind signature scheme based on the RSA cryptosystem. This paper applies the Extended Euclidean algorithm to our blind signature scheme. Compared with other blind signature schemes, our proposed scheme can meet the all requirements of a blind signature scheme. The security of the proposed scheme, as did that of the RSA cryptosystem, depends on the difficulty of solving the factoring problem.

A mobile station (MS) positioning method using signal strength is an algorithm to estimate the geographical position of a target MS based on measured strength of signals transmitted to/from the MS from/to multiple base stations (BSs) at known geographical positions. This paper proposes a novel MS positioning method using signal strength in cellular systems. The primary sources of position location error for positioning methods using signal strength are multipath fading and shadowing. Although signal strength averaging can help to reduce the effect of multipath fading, the effect of shadowing still remains. In order to eliminate the error caused by shadowing, the proposed method applies a statistical approach and a minimum mean squared error (MMSE) criterion to determine a position estimate. The performance of the proposed method is compared to that of a maximum likelihood (ML) positioning method and a cell-site positioning method. The performance is obtained by computer simulations and field experiments. A computer simulation result shows that the proposed method can determine position estimates in higher probability than the ML method. Also, it is shown that the proposed method provides higher accuracy than the ML method and the cell-site method.

In 2002, Hwang, Lee, and Lai presented an attack on the untraceability property of Fan and Lei's partially blind signature scheme. In this letter, their attack is demonstrated as being invalid.

Binary and ternary 5-bit programmable dispersion matrix, based on fiber Bragg reflectors, is built to control a two-channel receive/transmit beamformer at 1550 nm. RF phase measurements for the 32/31 delay configurations are presented. The programmable dispersion matrix is fully demonstrated and characterized for RF signals from 0.2 to 1 GHz.

The system uses spectral shaping of a supercontinuum source followed by wavelength-to-time mapping to generate ultra wideband RF waveforms with arbitrary modulation. It employs an adaptive computer control to mitigate the non-ideal features inherent in the optical source and in the spectrum modulation process. As proof of concept, ultra-wideband frequency hopped CDMA waveforms are demonstrated.

A new CMOS 1/x circuit is presented in this letter. The output amplitude of the proposed circuit can be adjusted by a bias current. The proposed circuit can be used to realize a current-to-voltage converter and a current-mode divider. The proposed circuits have been fabricated in a 0.5 µm CMOS process. Experimental results show that under the linear error less than 1%, the input range of the proposed 1/x circuit can be up to 1.5 V for the supply voltages of 1.5 V and the power dissipation is 0.24 mW. The experimental results are given to demonstrate the proposed circuits.

A novel optical modulation scheme is proposed for synthesizing a pair of dual-mode optical BPSK signals with an orthogonal phase relationship via a LiNbO3 Mach-Zehnder modulator (MZM) with dual RF signal inputs and a carrier suppression feature, which enables the generation of a crosstalk-free QPSK signal at the photodetection stage. With this method, one can compensate the drawback, that is bandwidth broadening, in our previously proposed method where a dual-mode optical QPSK signal is generated on the basis of narrow-angle modulated QPSK signal injection into a double-sideband suppressed carrier MZM device. We have carried out experiments for 60 GHz performance demonstration of this QPSK signal generation mechanism, and the results indicate the effectiveness of the present scheme.

We report on the first demonstration of single sideband (SSB) modulated time stretch system. In addition, we present an analytical model relating the system performance to the phase and amplitude mismatches in the SSB modulator. The results show that, fortuitously, the system is tolerant to such mismatches. In particular, using commercially available components,the dispersion induced power penalty can be kept below 2.5 dB over 4-20 GHz bandwidth for any stretch factor. The experiments demonstrate 120 Gsample/s real-time capture of a 20 GHz SSB-modulated microwave signal.

The design of the analog part of a mixed analog-digital IC for a commercial wireless burglar alarm system is presented as an example of a very low-power VLSI design for battery-operated systems. The main constraint is battery life, which must be at least five years (with standard camera-battery). An operational amplifier, a power supply monitor and an oscillator are the core of the design. The operational amplifier absorbs 1.5 µA while the entire analog part absorbs 4 µA. Measures on each single part show compliance with specification. Test on working environment show its full functionality. Even though the example is application specific, the design solutions and each single element can also be utilized in many other battery-operated low-frequency devices (e.g. environmental parameter monitoring).