The fabrication of a grating structure formed by a solid-state electrolyte layer on a dye-TiO$_{2}$ film by the nanoimprinting technique using a polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) stamp and its application in photoelectric conversion devices are described. The PDMS grating pattern is imprinted from blu-ray disc recordable. A silver electrode was deposited on the patterned solid-state electrolyte layers. Surface plasmon resonance (SPR) excitation was observed in the fabricated solar cells by irradiation with white light. The photoelectric conversion properties were measured to study the effect of the two types of SPR excitations, i.e., the propagating surface plasmon on the Ag grating surface and the localized surface plasmon from the Au nanoparticles on TiO$_{2}$.

A processing system with multiple field programmable gate array (FPGA) cards is described. Each FPGA card can interconnect using six I/O (up, down, left, right, front, and back) terminals. The communication network among FPGAs is scalable according to user design. When the system operates multi-dimensional applications, transmission efficiency among FPGA improved through user-adjusted dimensionality and network topologies for different applications. We provide a fast and flexible circuit configuration method for FPGAs of a multi-dimensional FPGA array. To demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method, we assess performance and power consumption of a circuit that calculated 3D Poisson equations using the finite difference method.

The dynamic routing and wavelength assignment (RWA) problem in wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) optical networks with sparse wavelength conversion has been a hot research topic in recent years. An optimized algorithm based on a multiple-layered interconnected graphic model (MIG) for the dynamic RWA is presented in this paper. The MIG is constructed to reflect the actual WDM network topology. Based on the MIG, the link cost is given by the conditions of available lightpath to calculate an initial solution set of optimal paths, and by combination with path length, the optimized solution using objective function is determined. This approach simultaneously solves the route selection and wavelength assignment problem. Simulation results demonstrate the proposed MIG-based algorithm is effective in reducing blocking probability and boosting wavelength resource utilization compared with other RWA methods.

We have investigated both the film thickness and surface potential of organic semiconductors deposited on two kinds of electrodes by the simultaneous observation with the dynamic force microscopy (DFM)/Kelvin-probe force microscope (KFM). To clarify the interfacial properties of organic semiconductor, we fabricated samples that imitated the organic light emitting diode (OLED) structure by depositing bis [$N,N '$-(1-naphthyl)-$N,N '$-phenyl] benzidine ($alpha$-NPD) and tris (8-hydroxyquinolinato) aluminum (Alq$_{3}$), respectively, on indium-tin-oxide (ITO) as anode and aluminum (Al) as cathode by the vacuum evaporation deposition using intersecting metal shadow masks. This deposition technique enables us to fabricate four different areas in the same substrate. The crossover area of the deposited thin films were measured by the DFM/KFM, the energy band diagrams were depicted and we considered that the charge behavior of the organic semiconductor depended on the material and the structure.

This paper seeks to improve power-performance efficiency of embedded systems by the use of dynamic reconfiguration. Programmable logic devices (PLDs) have the competence to optimize the power consumption by the use of partial and/or dynamic reconfiguration. It is a non-exclusive approach, which can use other power-reduction techniques simultaneous, and thus it is applicable to a myriad of systems. The power-performance improvement by dynamic reconfiguration was evaluated through an augmented reality system that translates Japanese into English. It is a wearable and mobile system with a head-mounted display (HMD). In the system, the computing core detects a Japanese word from an input video frame and the translated term will be output to the HMD. It includes various image processing approaches such as pattern recognition and object tracking, and these functions run sequentially. The system does not need to prepare all functions simultaneously, which provides a function by reconfiguration only when it is needed. In other words, by dynamic reconfiguration, the spatiotemporal module-based pipeline can introduce the reduction of its circuit amount and power consumption compared to the naive approach. The approach achieved marked improvements; the computational speed was the same but the power consumption was reduced to around $rac{1}{6}$.

Autonomous ad hoc networks are networks with nodes belonging to different authorities, and cooperative behavior of nodes is not guaranteed in such networks. In this paper, defense mechanisms are introduced to protect nodes against injecting traffic attacks in an autonomous ad hoc network, and to stimulate nodes to forward packets for each other. We have a cross-layer approach in the design of our mechanisms, and nodes use information from medium access control (MAC) layer for selecting a good route. In addition, nodes attempt to drop packets of those nodes that violate MAC layer backoff mechanism. Analytical and simulation results demonstrate the effectiveness of our proposed mechanisms in the presence of injecting traffic attacks and MAC layer misbehaviors in an ad hoc network that consists of selfish nodes.

We demonstrated a novel technique to fabricate nanosized structures on a Nafion membrane, using thermal nanoimprinting with alinebreak $5 imes 5$,$mu $m$^{mathrm{2}}$ square pattern Si mold without any polymer damage. A 24,MPa thermal imprinting pressure was used for 10,min. We observed high aspect ratio ($sim$1:10) pillars on the surface after imprinting at 200$^{circ}$C. Finally, we used a novel quartz mold with a 200,nm resolution dot pattern.

Efficiency of the photovoltaic-assisted UHF CMOS rectifier, which is one example realization of the synergistic ambient energy harvesting concept, has been improved by symmetric PV cell structure. Balanced biasing for the n-channel and p-channel diode-connected MOSFETs realized by the symmetric PV cells effectively compensates Vths and prevents useless leakage current, resulting in the improved efficiency of the rectifier under low input power conditions. In addition, by extending the balanced biasing concept, output-voltage-boosted PV cell structure was proposed and found to be effective for further improving the efficiency of the rectifier. As a result, under a typical indoor lighting condition of 300lx, power conversion efficiency of 25.4% was achieved at -20dBm of 920MHz RF input and 47kΩ output loading conditions, being 3.6 times larger than a conventional rectifier without PV assistance.

This paper reviews several trials of re-designing conventional communication medium, i.e., characters, for enriching their functions by using data-embedding techniques. For example, characters are re-designed to have better machine-readability even under various geometric distortions by embedding a geometric invariant into each character image to represent class label of the character. Another example is to embed various information into handwriting trajectory by using a new pen device, called a data-embedding pen. An experimental result showed that we can embed 32-bit information into a handwritten line of 5 cm length by using the pen device. In addition to those applications, we also discuss the relationship between data-embedding and pattern recognition in a theoretical point of view. Several theories tell that if we have appropriate supplementary information by data-embedding, we can enhance pattern recognition performance up to 100%.

Video streaming uploading over vehicular ad hoc networks (VANETs) can support many interesting applications. Due to the high mobility and dynamic topology of VANETs, how to support video streaming using wireless communications between vehicles and road-side access points still remains an open issue. In this paper, we propose a geographical uploading scheme, called MPVUS, which uses the moving prediction to keep the stable forwarding and reduce the high link failure probability over VANETs. The scheme also decides the AP switch opportunity by traffic flow estimation, so as to adjust the forwarding direction timely to avoid the short-sighted switch decision. Simulation results demonstrate the effectiveness of our scheme, which can achieve good performance in terms of the start-up delay, playback interruption ratio and video frame distortion.

Cloud computing is becoming increasingly popular. A large number of data are outsourced to the cloud by data owners motivated to access the large-scale computing resources and economic savings. To protect data privacy, the sensitive data should be encrypted by the data owner before outsourcing, which makes the traditional and efficient plaintext keyword search technique useless. So how to design an efficient, in the two aspects of accuracy and efficiency, searchable encryption scheme over encrypted cloud data is a very challenging task. In this paper, for the first time, we propose a practical, efficient, and flexible searchable encryption scheme which supports both multi-keyword ranked search and parallel search. To support multi-keyword search and result relevance ranking, we adopt Vector Space Model (VSM) to build the searchable index to achieve accurate search results. To improve search efficiency, we design a tree-based index structure which supports parallel search to take advantage of the powerful computing capacity and resources of the cloud server. With our designed parallel search algorithm, the search efficiency is well improved. We propose two secure searchable encryption schemes to meet different privacy requirements in two threat models. Extensive experiments on the real-world dataset validate our analysis and show that our proposed solution is very efficient and effective in supporting multi-keyword ranked parallel searches.

Cognitive radio ad hoc networks can be used to solve the problems of limited available spectrum and inefficient spectrum usage by adaptively changing their transmission parameters. Routing protocol design has a significant impact on the network performance. However, an efficient protocol that takes account of primary user flows and the long-term channel assignment issue in route selection is still missing. In this paper, we propose AODV-cog, a cognitive routing protocol for CSMA/CA ad hoc networks based on AODV. AODV-cog chooses a route by considering the effect on the primary users, available channel bandwidth and link reliability. AODV-cog also takes account of future channel utilization which is an important but underexplored issue. AODV-cog switches channels for secondary user flows when network congestion occurs. We use theoretical analysis and computer simulations to show the advantage of AODV-cog over existing alternatives.

We consider a location-aware store-carry-forward routing scheme based on node density estimation (LA Routing in short), which adopts different message forwarding strategies depending on node density at contact locations where two nodes encounter. To do so, each node estimates a node density distribution based on information about contact locations. In this paper, we clarify how the estimation accuracy affects the performance of LA Routing. We also examine the performance of LA Routing when it applies to networks with homogeneous node density. Through simulation experiments, we show that LA Routing is fairly robust against the accuracy of node density estimation and its performance is comparable with Probabilistic Routing even in the case that that node density is homogeneous.

RC4 is a widely-used stream cipher, adopted in many standard protocols, such as WEP, WPA and SSL/TLS, as a standard encryption algorithm. Isobe et al. proposed a plaintext recovery attack on RC4 in the broadcast setting, where the same plaintext is encrypted with different secret keys. Their attack is able to recover the first 257bytes by exploiting the biases of the initial bytes of a keystream. In this paper, we propose two types of full plaintext recovery attacks that are able to recover all the bytes, even after the 258th byte, of a plaintext, unlike Isobe et al.'s attack. To achieve this, we combine the use of multiple keystream biases appropriately. The first attack utilizes the initial byte biases and Mantin's long-term bias. This attack can recover the first 1000 terabytes of a plaintext from 234 ciphertexts with a probability of almost one. The second attack is based on two long-term biases. Since this attack does not rely on the biases of the initial bytes of the RC4 keystream, it can recover any byte of a plaintext, even if the initial bytes are disregarded. Given 235 ciphertexts encrypted by different keys, any byte of a target plaintext can be recovered with a probability close to one.

A design strategy (the required ECC strength and the judgment method of the dominant error mode) of error-prediction low-density parity-check (EP-LDPC) error-correcting code (ECC) and error-recovery schemes for scaled NAND flash memories is discussed in this paper. The reliability characteristics of NAND flash memories are investigated with 1X, 2X and 3Xnm NAND flash memories. Moreover, the system-level reliability of SSDs is analyzed from the acceptable data-retention time of the SSD. The reliability of the NAND flash memory is continuously degrading as the design rule shrinks due to various problems. As a result, future SSDs will not be able to maintain system-level reliability unless advanced ECCs with signal processing are adopted. Therefore, EP-LDPC and error-recovery (ER) schemes are previously proposed to improve the reliability. The reliability characteristics such as the bit-error rate (BER) versus the data-retention time and the effect of the cell-to-cell interference on the BER are measured. These reliability characteristics obtained in this paper are stored in an SSD as a reliability table, which plays a principal role in EP-LDPC scheme. The effectiveness of the EP-LDPC scheme with the scaling of the NAND flash memory is also discussed by analyzing the cell-to-cell interference. An interference factor $alpha$ is proposed to discuss the impact of the cell-to-cell coupling. As a result, the EP-LDPC scheme is assumed to be effective down to 1Xnm NAND flash memory. On the other hand, the ER scheme applies different voltage pulses to memory cells, according to the dominant error mode: program-disturb or data-retention error dominant mode. This paper examines when the error mode changes, corresponding to which pulse should be applied. Additionally, the estimation methods of the dominant error mode by ER scheme are also discussed. Finally, as a result of the system-level reliability analysis, it is concluded that the use of the EP-LDPC scheme can maintain the reliability of the NAND flash memory in 1Xnm technology node.

With the rapid growth of high performance ICT (Information Communication Technologies) devices such as smart phones and tablet PCs, multitasking has become one of the popular ways of using mobile devices. The reasons users have adopted multitask operation are that it reduces the level of dissatisfaction regarding waiting time and makes effective use of time by switching their attention from the waiting process to other content. This is a good solution to the problem of waiting; however, it may cause another problem, which is the increase in traffic volume due to the multiple applications being worked on simultaneously. Thus, an effective method to control throughput adapted to the multitasking situation is required. This paper proposes a transmission rate control method for web browsing that takes multitasking behavior into account and quantitatively demonstrates the effect of service by two different field experiments. The main contribution of this paper is to present a service design process for a new transmission rate control that takes into account human-network interaction based on the human-centered approach. We show that the degree of satisfaction in relation to waiting time did not degrade even when a field trial using a testbed showed that throughput of the background task was reduced by 40%.

The potential of infrastructureless vehicular ad hoc networks (VANETs) for providing multihop applications is quite significant. Although the Epidemic Routing protocol performs well in highly mobile and frequently disconnected VANETs with low vehicle densities or light packet traffic loads, its performance degrades greatly in environments of high vehicle density together with heavy packet traffic loads that create serious bandwidth contention and frequent collisions. We propose a new epidemic routing protocol in urban environments called Greedy Zone Epidemic Routing (GZER), in which the neighbors of a vehicle are divided into different zones according to their physical locations. Each vehicle maintains a summary vector (SV) of packets buffered locally and zone summary vectors (ZSVs) of all packets buffered in each zone. Whether the infection will be transmitted in each zone is decided by the difference between SV and ZSV. Simulation results show that the proposed GZER protocol outperforms the existing solutions significantly, especially in the environments of high vehicle densities together with heavy packet traffic loads.

The sense of presence is crucial to evaluate the performance of audio-visual (AV) equipment and content. Previously, the overall presence was evaluated for a set of AV content items by asking subjects to judge the presence of the entire content item. In this study, the sense of presence is evaluated for a time-series using the method of continuous judgment by category. Specifically, the audio signals of 40 content items with durations of approximately 30 s each were recorded with a dummy head, and then presented as stimuli to subjects via headphones. The corresponding visual signals were recorded using a video camera in the full-HD format, and reproduced on a 65-inch display. In the experiments, 20 subjects evaluated the instantaneous sense of presence of each item on a seven-point scale under two conditions: audio-only or audio-visual. At the end of the time-series, the subjects also evaluated the overall presence of the item by seven categories. Based on these results, the effects of visual information on the sense of presence were examined. The overall presence is highly correlated with the ten-percentile exceeded presence score, S10, which is the score that is exceeded for the 10% of the time during the responses. Based on the instantaneous presence data in this study, we are one step closer to our ultimate goal of developing a real-time operational presence meter.

This paper presents a framework for reducing the energy consumption of embedded real-time systems. We implemented the presented framework as both an optimization toolchain and an energy-aware real-time operating system. The framework consists of the integration of multiple techniques to optimize the energy consumption. The main idea behind our approach is to utilize trade-offs between the energy consumption and the performance of different processor configurations during task checkpoints, and to maintain memory allocation during task context switches. In our framework, a target application is statically analyzed at both intra-task and inter-task levels. Based on these analyzed results, runtime optimization is performed in response to the behavior of the application. A case study shows that our toolchain and real-time operating systems have achieved energy reduction while satisfying the real-time performance. The toolchain has also been successfully applied to a practical application.

This paper proposes a name-based routing mechanism called Routing Guidance Name (RGN) that offers new routing management functionalities within the basic characteristics of CCN. The proposed mechanism names each CCN router. Each router becomes a Data Provider for its name. When a CCN Interest specifies a router's name, it is forwarded to the target router according to the standard mechanism of CCN. Upon receiving an Interest, each router reacts to it according to RGN. This paper introduces a new type of node called a Scheduler which calculates the best routes based on link state information collected from routers. The scheduler performs its functions based on RGN. This paper discusses how the proposed system builds CCN FIB (Forwarding Information Base) in routers. The results of experiments reveal that RGN is more efficient than the standard CCN scheme. It is also shown that the proposal provides mobility support with short delay time. We explain a practical mobile scenario to illustrate the advantages of the proposal.