SoC has driven the evolution of embedded systems or consumer electronics. Multi-core/multi-IP is the key technology to integrate many functions on a SoC for future embedded applications. In this paper, the transition of SoC and its required functions for cellular phones as an example is described. And the state-of-the-art multi-core technology of homogeneous type and heterogeneous type are shown. When many cores and IPs are integrated on a chip, collaboration between cores and IPs becomes important to meet requirement. To realize it, "MPSoC Platform" concept and elementary technology for this platform is described.

In this paper, the new residue number system (RNS) moduli sets {22n, 2n -1, 2n+1 -1} and {22n, 2n -1, 2n-1 -1} are introduced. These moduli sets have 4n-bit dynamic range and well-formed moduli which can result in high-performance residue to binary converters as well as efficient RNS arithmetic unit. Next, efficient residue to binary converters for the proposed moduli sets based on mixed-radix conversion (MRC) algorithm are presented. The converters are ROM-free and they are realized using carry-save adders and modulo adders. Comparison with the other residue to binary converters for 4n-bit dynamic range moduli sets shown that the presented designs based on new moduli sets {22n, 2n -1, 2n+1 -1} and {22n, 2n -1, 2n-1 -1} are improved the conversion delay and result in hardware savings. Also, the proposed moduli sets can lead to efficient binary to residue converters, and they can speed-up internal RNS arithmetic processing, compared with the other 4n-bit dynamic range moduli sets.

In this paper, we focus on resource allocation schemes for minimizing the energy consumption of subscriber stations (SSs) in uplink flows of the IEEE 802.16 OFDMA systems. The resource allocation schemes assign subcarriers, powers, and data rates to each SS based on the measured signal to noise ratio (SNR) of the uplink channel and predefined modulation and coding scheme as system parameters. Previous research efforts to optimize resource allocation focus on the rate and throughput maximizations, and develop suboptimal heuristic algorithms. However, this paper intends to reduce the energy consumption of SSs by considering the relationship between energy efficiency and resource allocation. In order to clearly formulate the relationship, we use the Multiple Choice Knapsack (MCK) problem, which is proved to be an NP-hard problem. We propose two heuristic schemes to solve the NP-hard problem, which adaptively use the modulation and coding scheme, defined in the IEEE 802.16 OFDMA systems to minimize the required transmission power of each SS. Our simulation results show that the proposed schemes can reduce the energy consumption by up to 53% compared to the channel state information (CSI) scheme, which determines the modulation and coding level only considering the channel state information.

We propose a novel 50 Mb/s optical transmitter fabricated in a 0.6 µm BiCMOS technology for automotive applications. The proposed VCSEL driver chip was designed to operate with a single supply voltage ranging from 3.0 V to 5.25 V. A fully integrated feedforward current control circuit is presented to stabilize the optical output power without any external components. The experimental results show that the optical output power can be stable within a 1.1 dB range and the extinction ratio greater than 14 dB over the automotive environmental temperature range of -40 to 105.

This paper proposes an Integer Linear Programming (ILP)-based power minimization method by partitioning into regions, first, with three different VDD's(PM3V), and, secondly, with two different VDD's(PM2V). To reduce the solving time of triple-VDD case (PM3V), we also proposed a partitioned ILP method(p-PM3V). The proposed method provides 29% power saving on the average in the case of triple-VDD compared to the case of single VDD. Power reduction of PM3V compared to Clustered Voltage Scaling (CVS) was about 18%. Compared to the unpartitioned ILP formulation(PM3V), the partitioned ILP method(p-PM3V) reduced the total solution time by 46% at the cost of additional power consumption within 1.3%.

Silent data corruptions, which are induced by latent sector errors, phantom writes, DMA parity errors and so on, can be detected by explicitly issuing a read command to a disk controller and comparing the corresponding data with their checksums. Because some of the data stored in a storage system may not be accessed for a long time, there is a high chance of silent data corruption occurring undetected, resulting in data loss. Therefore, periodic checking of the entire data in a storage system, known as data scrubbing, is essential to detect such silent data corruptions in time. The errors detected by data scrubbing will be recovered by the replica or the redundant information maintained to protect against permanent data loss. The longer the period between data scrubbings, the higher the probability of a permanent data loss. This paper proposes a Markov failure and repair model to conservatively analyze the effect of data scrubbing on the reliability of a storage system. We show the relationship between the period of a data scrubbing operation and the number of data replicas to manage the reliability of a storage system by using the proposed model.

The distributed antenna system (DAS) offers significant power savings but only if the antennas are properly located. In this letter, we convert antenna location optimization to the codebook design problem. For the widely studied circular-layout DAS with uniform user distribution, we derive closed-form expressions for antenna locations that yield near-optimal performance. For more general user distribution and antenna topology, the codebook design algorithms can provide numerical optimization results with acceptable performance and low complexity.

The paper introduces both high-speed transmission and quality of system to offer the Internet services on a HFC (Hybrid Fiber Coaxial) network. This utilizes modulating the phase and the amplitude to the signal of the IPMS (Internet Protocol Multicasting Service). An IP-cable transmitter, IP-cable modem, and IP-cable management servers that support 30-Mbps IPMS on the HFC were developed. The system provides a 21 Mbps HDTV transporting stream on a cable TV network. It can sustain a clear screen for a long time.

Recently, frequency-domain equalization (FDE) has been attracting much attention as a way to improve single-carrier (SC) signal transmission in a frequency-selective wireless channel. Since the SC signal spectrum is spread over the entire signal bandwidth, FDE can take advantage of channel frequency-selectivity and achieve the frequency diversity gain. SC with FDE is a promising wireless signal transmission technique. In this article, we review the pioneering research done on SC with FDE. The principles of simple one-tap FDE, channel estimation, and residual inter-symbol interference (ISI) cancellation are presented. Multi-input/multi-output (MIMO) is an important technique to improve the transmission performance. Some of the studies on MIMO/SC with FDE are introduced.

This paper discusses the discourse understanding process in spoken dialogue systems. This process enables a system to understand user utterances from the context of a dialogue. Ambiguity in user utterances caused by multiple speech recognition hypotheses and parsing results sometimes makes it difficult for a system to decide on a single interpretation of a user intention. As a solution, the idea of retaining possible interpretations as multiple dialogue states and resolving the ambiguity using succeeding user utterances has been proposed. Although this approach has proven to improve discourse understanding accuracy, carefully created hand-crafted rules are necessary in order to accurately rank the dialogue states. This paper proposes automatically ranking multiple dialogue states using statistical information obtained from dialogue corpora. The experimental results in the train ticket reservation and weather information service domains show that the statistical information can significantly improve the ranking accuracy of dialogue states as well as the slot accuracy and the concept error rate of the top-ranked dialogue states.

In this paper, we propose a new approximate algorithm for the model predictive control (MPC) problem with a time-varying reference of hybrid systems. The proposed algorithm consists of an offline computation and an online computation. In the offline computation, candidates of mode sequences are derived. In the online computation, after the mode sequence is uniquely decided among candidates, the finite-time optimal control problem, i.e., the quadratic programming problem, is solved. So by applying the proposed algorithm, the computational amount of the online computation is decreased. First, the MPC problem with a time-varying reference is formulated. Next, the proposed algorithm is explained, and the accuracy of the obtained approximate solution is discussed. Finally, the effectiveness of the proposed method is shown by a numerical example.

This paper studies switched dynamical systems based on a simplified model of two-paralleled dc-dc buck converters in current mode control. In the system, we present novel four switching rules depending on both state variables and periodic clock. The system has piecewise constant vector field and piecewise linear solutions: they are well suited for precise analysis. We then clarify parameter conditions that guarantee generation of stable 2-phase synchronization and hyperchaos for each switching rule. Especially, it is clarified that stable synchronization is always possible by proper use of the switching rules and adjustment of clock period. Presenting a simple test circuit, typical phenomena are confirmed experimentally.

Conventional radar imaging systems use Fourier transform for image formation, but due to the target's complicated motion the Doppler spectrum is time-varying and thus the reconstructed image becomes blurred even after applying standard motion compensation algorithms. Therefore, sophisticated algorithms such as polar reformatting are usually employed to produce clear images. Alternatively, Joint Time-Frequency (JTF) analysis can be used for image formation which produces clear image without using polar reformatting algorithm. In this paper, a new JTF-based method is proposed for image formation in inverse synthetic aperture radars (ISAR). This method uses minimum entropy criterion for optimum parameter adjustment of JTF algorithms. Short Time Fourier Transform (STFT) and Fractional Fourier Transform (FrFT) are applied as JTF for time-varying Doppler spectrum analysis. Both the width of Gaussian window of STFT and the order of FrFT, α, are adjusted using minimum entropy as local and total measures. Furthermore, a new statistical parameter, called normalized correlation, is defined for comparison of images reconstructed by different methods. Simulation results show that α-order FrFT with local adjustment has much better performance than the other methods in this category even in low SNR.

In this paper, an ER (Error-Reduction) algorithm-based method for removal of adherent water drops from images obtained by a rear view camera mounted on a vehicle in rainy conditions is proposed. Since Fourier-domain and object-domain constraints are needed for any ER algorithm-based method, the proposed method introduces the following two novel constraints for the removal of adherent water drops. The first one is the Fourier-domain constraint that utilizes the Fourier transform magnitude of the previous frame in the obtained images as that of the target frame. Noting that images obtained by the rear view camera have the unique characteristics of objects moving like ripples because the rear view camera is generally composed of a fish-eye lens for a wide view angle, the proposed method assumes that the Fourier transform magnitudes of the target frame and the previous frame are the same in the polar coordinate system. The second constraint is the object-domain constraint that utilizes intensities in an area of the target frame to which water drops have adhered. Specifically, the proposed method models a deterioration process of intensities that are corrupted by the water drop adhering to the rear view camera lens. By utilizing these novel constraints, the proposed ER algorithm can remove adherent water drops from images obtained by the rear view camera. Experimental results that verify the performance of the proposed method are represented.

This study analyzes the absolute stability in P and PD type fuzzy logic control systems with both certain and uncertain linear plants. Stability analysis includes the reference input, actuator gain and interval plant parameters. For certain linear plants, the stability (i.e. the stable equilibriums of error) in P and PD types is analyzed with the Popov or linearization methods under various reference inputs and actuator gains. The steady state errors of fuzzy control systems are also addressed in the parameter plane. The parametric robust Popov criterion for parametric absolute stability based on Lur'e systems is also applied to the stability analysis of P type fuzzy control systems with uncertain plants. The PD type fuzzy logic controller in our approach is a single-input fuzzy logic controller and is transformed into the P type for analysis. In our work, the absolute stability analysis of fuzzy control systems is given with respect to a non-zero reference input and an uncertain linear plant with the parametric robust Popov criterion unlike previous works. Moreover, a fuzzy current controlled RC circuit is designed with PSPICE models. Both numerical and PSPICE simulations are provided to verify the analytical results. Furthermore, the oscillation mechanism in fuzzy control systems is specified with various equilibrium points of view in the simulation example. Finally, the comparisons are also given to show the effectiveness of the analysis method.

A simple and novel residual acoustic echo cancellation method that employs binary masking is proposed to enhance the speech quality of hands-free communication in an automobile environment. In general, the W-disjoint orthogonality assumption is used for blind source separation using multi-microphones. However, in this Letter, it is utilized to mask the residual echo component in the time-frequency domain using a single microphone. The experimental results confirm the effectiveness of the proposed method in terms of the echo return loss enhancement and speech enhancement.

According to a new kind of permanent contactor, this paper analyses the dynamic behavior of the contactor with and without current-feedback system. And it presents a method to obtain the dynamic characteristics of the contactor with current-feedback system. The experiments prove that the method is correct. Then, it compares the contactor without current-feedback system with the one with current-feedback system. The result shows that the contactor with current-feedback system can avoid this flaw of the contactor without current-feedback system.

Let G(s)=C(sI - A)-1B+D be a given system where entries of A,B,C,D are polynomials in a parameter k. Then H∞ norm || G(s) ||∞ of G(s) is a function of k, and [9] presents an algorithm to express 1/(||G(s) ||∞)2 as a root of a bivariate polynomial, assuming feedthrough term D to be zero. This paper extends the algorithm in two ways: The first extension is the form of the function to be expressed. The extended algorithm can treat, not only H∞ norm, but also functions that appear in the celebrated KYP Lemma. The other extension is the range of the frequency. While H∞ norm considers the supremum of the maximum singular value of G(i ω) for the infinite range 0 ≤ω ≤ ∞ of ω, the extended algorithm treats the norm for the finite frequency range ω ≤ ω ≤ ω- (ω, ω- ∈ R ∪ ∞). Those two extensions allow the algorithm to be applied to wider area of control problems. We give illustrative numerical examples where we apply the extended algorithm to the computation of the frequency-restricted norm, i.e., the supremum of the maximum singular value of G(i ω) (ω- ≤ ω ≤ ω-).

In this letter, we present the impact of carrier frequency offset (CFO) in dual-hop orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) systems with a fixed relay for frequency-selective fading channels. Approximate expressions of the average signal-to-noise ratios (SNRs) for both downlink and uplink are obtained and validated by simulations. It is shown that dual-hop systems have slightly worse average SNR degradation than single-hop systems. We also show that the average SNR degradation due to the CFO varies according to the gap between average received SNRs for the first and the second hop.

A spectrum sharing method is proposed for systems that share the same frequency band or adjacent bands with services that have different priorities. The proposed method adaptively controls transmission power according to information provided by the high-priority system receivers. We give the theoretical capacities achieved by low-priority systems when the proposed method and a conventional method (constant transmit power) are applied. Numerical results confirm that the proposed method attains 1.5-2 times larger capacity than the conventional method.