Using the transient current switch circuit in parallel with the energizing contacts, the slow decay of the contact current due to thermal fusion of metal was observed just after the contact voltage exceeded the melting contact voltage Um. At that time, the contact voltage was higher than the boiling contact voltage Ub. These results contradict Holm's θ theory. A new melting model of breaking mechanical contact is proposed. The area surrounding a cluster of contacting a-spots melts, the melt metal diffuses, and the contact spot thermally shrinks. Including the metal phase transition from solid to liquid, the increase of contact resistance is introduced to the electric circuit analysis. The numerical analysis agrees qualitatively with measured V-I characteristics.

We propose a user-defined on-demand matching strategy, called O-matching, in which users can control the order of matching arguments of each operation symbol. In ordinary matching schemes it is not important to set the order of matching, however, in on-demand matching schemes, it is very important since an input term may be changed while doing the on-demand matching process. O-matching is suitable to combine with the E-strategy, which is a user-defined reduction strategy in which users can control the order of reducing arguments. We show a sufficient condition under which the E-strategy with O-matching is correct for head normal forms, that is, any reduced term is a head normal form.

Moving object completion is a process of completing moving object's missing information based on local structures. Over the past few years, a number of computable algorithms of video completion have been developed, however most of these algorithms are based on the pixel domain. Little theoretical and computational work in video completion is based on the compressed domain. In this paper, a moving object completion method on the compressed domain is proposed. It is composed of three steps: motion field transferring, thin plate spline interpolation and combination. Missing space-time blocks will be completed by placing new motion vectors on them so that the resulting video sequence will have as much global visual coherence with the video portions outside the hole. The experimental results are presented to demonstrate the efficiency and accuracy of the proposed algorithm.

This paper presents a grouped scan slice encoding technique using scan slice repetition to simultaneously reduce test data volume and test application time. Using this method, many scan slices that would be incompatible with the conventional selective scan slice method can be encoded as compatible scan slices. Experiments were performed with ISCAS'89 and ITC'99 benchmark circuits, and results show the effectiveness of the proposed method.

Optical buffer memory for 10-Gb/s data signal is demonstrated experimentally using a polarization bistable vertical-cavity surface-emitting laser (VCSEL). The optical buffer memory is based on an optical AND gate function and the polarization bistability of the VCSEL. Fast AND gate operation responsive to 50-ps-width optical pulses is achieved experimentally by increasing the detuning frequency between an injection light into the VCSEL and a lasing light from the VCSEL. A specified bit is extracted from the 10-Gb/s data signal by the fast AND gate operation and is stored as the polarization state of the VCSEL by the polarization bistability. The corresponding numerical simulations are also performed using two-mode rate equations taking into account the detuning frequency. The simulation results confirm the fast AND gate operation by increasing the detuning frequency as well as the experimental results.

This letter proposes a busy-tone based scheme for reliable and efficient broadcasting in mobile ad hoc networks. Control packets such as RTS, CTS and ACK are ignored in the broadcast scheme, and two busy tones are used, one for channel reservation and the other for negative acknowledgement. Unlike traditional schemes for reliable broadcasting, the proposed scheme is highly efficient as it achieves both collision avoidance and fast packet loss recovery. Simulation results are presented which show the effectiveness of the proposed scheme.

This letter deals with robust interference suppression based on eigenanalysis interference canceller (EIC) with the joint code-aid and noise subspace-based correcting approach. It has been shown that the EIC is very sensitive to pointing error, especially when the interference number is overestimated. Based on the corrected steering angle, a proper blocking matrix of the EIC can be obtained to suppress the leakage of desired signal. Therefore, desired signal cancellation does not occur; even if the interference number is overestimated in constructing the interference subspace. Several computer simulations are provided to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach.

We have developed InGaAs-based VCSELs operating around 1.1 µm for high-speed optical interconnections. By applying GaAsP barrier layers, temperature characteristics were considerably improved compared to GaAs barrier layers. As a result, 25 Gbps 100 error-free operation was achieved. These devices also exhibited high reliability. No degradation was observed over 3,000 hours under operation temperature of 150 and current density of 19 kA/cm2. We also developed VCSELs with tunnel junctions for higher speed operation. High modulation bandwidth of 24 GHz and a relaxation oscillation frequency of 27 GHz were achieved. 40 Gbps error-free operation was also demonstrated.

This study involves implementing an intelligent controller using the fuzzy control algorithm to minimize cold weld and splash in inverter AC spot welding. This study presents an experimental curve of a welding output current and the maximum value of the Instantaneous Heating Rate (IHRmax) using the contact diameter of an electrode as the parameter. It also presents the experimental curve of a welding output current and the slope (S) of the instantaneous dynamic resistance using the instantaneous contact area of an electrode as the parameter. To minimize cold weld and splash, this study proposes an intelligent controller that controls the optimum welding current in real time by estimating the contact diameter of an electrode and the contact area of the initial welding part.

The self-timed pipeline (STP) is one of the most promising VLSI/SoC architectures. It achieves efficient utilization of tens of billions of transistors, consumes ultra low power, and is easy-to-design because of its signal integrity and low electro-magnetic interference. These basic features of the STP have been proven by the development of self-timed data-driven multimedia processors, DDMP's. This paper proposes a novel scheme of interacting self-timed (clockless) pipelines by which the various distributed and interconnected pipelines can achieve highly functional stream processing in future giga-transistor chips. The paper also proposes a set of elementary coupling control modules that facilitate various combinations of flow-thru processing between pipelines, and then discusses the practicality of the proposed scheme through the LSI design of application modules such as a priority-based queue, a mutual interconnection network, and a pipelined sorter.

Ball Grid Array packages in which I/O pins are arranged in a grid array pattern realize a number of connections between chips and a printed circuit board, but it takes much time in manual routing. We propose a fast routing method for 2-layer Ball Grid Array packages that iteratively modifies via assignment. In experiments, in most cases, via assignment and global routing on both of layers in which all nets are realized and the violation of wire congestion on layer 1 is small are speedily obtained.

We have introduced a new ultrasonic-based localization method that requires only one ultrasonic receiver to locate transmitters. In our previous reports [1],[2], we conducted several fundamental experiments, and proved the feasibility and accuracy of our system. However the performance in a more realistic environment has not yet been evaluated. In this paper, we have extended our localization system into a robot tracking system, and conducted experiments where the system tracked a moving robot. Localization was executed both by our proposed method and by the conventional TOA method. The experiment was repeated with different density of receivers. Thus we were able to compare the accuracy and the scalability between our proposed method and the conventional method. As a result 90-percentile of the position error was from 6.2 cm to 14.6 cm for the proposed method, from 4.0 cm to 6.1 cm for the conventional method. However our proposed method succeeded in calculating the position of the transmitter in 95% out of total attempts of localization with sparse receivers (4 receivers in about 5 m 5 m area), whereas the success rate was only 31% for the conventional method. From the result we concluded that although the proposed method is less accurate it can cover a wider area with sparse receivers than the conventional method. In addition to the dynamic tracking experiments, we also conducted some localization experiments where the robot stood still. This was because we wanted to investigate the reason why the localization accuracy degraded in the dynamic tracking. According to the result, the degradation of accuracy might be due to the systematic error in localization which is dependent on the geometric relationship between the transmitter and the receiver.

To mitigate the asynchronous ICI (Inter-Cell Interference), SCM (Spatial Covariance Matrix) of the asynchronous ICI plus background noise should be accurately estimated for MIMO-OFDMA (Multiple-input Multiple-output-Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiple Access) system. Generally, it is assumed that the SCM of the asynchronous ICI plus background noise is estimated by using training symbols. However, it is difficult to measure the interference statistics for a long time and considering that training symbols are not appropriate for OFDMA system such as LTE (3GPP Long Term Evolution). Therefore, noise reduction method is required to improve the estimation accuracy. Although the conventional time-domain low-pass type weighting method can be effective for noise reduction, it causes significant estimation error due to the spectral leakage in practical OFDM system. Therefore, we propose a time-domain sinc type weighing method which can not only reduce noise effectively minimizing estimation error caused by the spectral leakage but also can be implemented using frequency-domain weighted moving average filter easily. We also consider the iterative CFR (Channel Frequency Response) and SCM estimation method which can effectively reduce the estimation error of both CFR and SCM, and improve the performance for LTE system. By using computer simulation, we show that the proposed method can provide up to 2.5 dB SIR (Signal to Interference Ratio) gain compared with the conventional method, and verify that the proposed method is attractive and suitable for implementation with stable operation.

The wireless sensor network is a resource-constrained self-organizing system that consists of a large number of tiny sensor nodes. Due to the low-cost and low-power nature of sensor nodes, sensor nodes are failure-prone when sensing and processing data. Most presented fault-tolerant research for wireless sensor networks focused on crash faults or power faults and less on Byzantine faults. Hence, in this paper, we propose a power-saving data aggregation algorithm for Byzantine faults to provide power savings and high success rates even in the environment with high fault rates. The algorithm utilizes the concept of Byzantine masking quorum systems to mask the erroneous values and to finally determine the correct value. Our simulation results demonstrate that when the fault rate of sensor nodes is up to 50%, our algorithm still has 48% success rate to obtain the correct value. Under the same condition, other fault-tolerant algorithms are almost failed.

A wide range, low jitter Duty Cycle Corrector (DCC) based on continuous-time integrator is proposed. It introduces little added jitter in the sampling edge, which make it good candidate for pipelined ADC application. The circuit is implemented in CMOS 0.35 µm 2P4M Mixed Signal process. The experimental results show the circuit can work for a wide frequency range from 500 kHz to 280 MHz, with a correction error within 50%1% under 200 MHz, and the acceptable duty cycle can be as wide as 1-99% for low frequency inputs.

In this paper, we solve the call admission control (CAC) and routing problem in an integrated network that handles several classes of calls of different values and with different resource requirements. The problem of maximizing the average reward (or cost) of admitted calls per unit time is naturally formulated as a semi-Markov Decision Process (SMDP) problem, but is too complex to allow for an exact solution. Thus in this paper, a policy gradient algorithm, together with a decomposition approach, is proposed to find the dynamic (state-dependent) optimal CAC and routing policy among a parameterized policy space. To implement that gradient algorithm, we approximate the gradient of the average reward. Then, we present a simulation-based algorithm to estimate the approximate gradient of the average reward (called GSMDP algorithm), using only a single sample path of the underlying Markov chain for the SMDP of CAC and routing problem. The algorithm enhances performance in terms of convergence speed, rejection probability, robustness to the changing arrival statistics and an overall received average revenue. The experimental simulations will compare our method's performance with other existing methods and show the robustness of our method.

Overlay networks which are dynamically created over underlying IP networks are becoming widely used for delivering multimedia contents since they can provide several additional user-definable services. Multiple overlay paths between a source-destination overlay node pair are designed to improve service robustness against failures and bandwidth fluctuation of the underlying networks. Multimedia traffic can be distributed over those multiple paths in order to maximize paths' utilization and to increase application throughputs. Most of flow-based routing algorithms consider only common metrics such as paths' bandwidth or delay, which may be effective for data applications but not for real-time applications such as Voice over IP (VoIP), in which different levels of such performance metrics may give the same level of the performance experienced by end users. This paper focuses on such VoIP overlay networks and proposes a novel alternative path based flow routing algorithm using an application-specific traffic metric, i.e. "VoIP Path Capacity (VPCap)," to calculate the maximum number of QoS satisfied VoIP flows which may be distributed over each available overlay path at a moment. The simulation results proved that more QoS-satisfied VoIP sessions can be established over the same multiple overlay paths, comparing to traditional approaches.

The very fast transients of micro-gap discharges driven by low voltage electrostatic discharging (ESDs) are investigated in the time domain. We previously developed a 12 GHz wideband measurement setup consisting of a distributed constant line system, however the observed transients due to micro-gap discharges had very fast rise times of 34 ps or less, which reached the limitation on our system. In this paper, we proposed a method for estimating wideband transients beyond the measurement limit by using the transmission loss of a high performance coaxial transmission line. The proposed method is validated by estimating an impulsive voltage waveform with rise/fall time of 16 ps from the waveform measured through a semi-rigid coaxial cable with a length of 10 m.

In this paper the time-domain analysis of two parallel traces is investigated. First, the telegrapher's equations for transmission line are applied to the parallel traces on printed circuit board (PCB), and are solved by using the mode decomposition technique. The time-domain solutions are then obtained by using the inverse Laplace transform. Although the Fourier-transform technique is also applicable for this problem, the solution is given numerically. Contrarily, the inverse Laplace transform successfully leads to an analytical expression for the transmission characteristics. The analytical expression is represented by series, which clearly explains the coupling mechanism. The analytical expression for the fundamental section of a meander delay line is investigated in detail. The analytical solution is validated by measurements, and the characteristics of the distortions in the output waveforms of meander delay lines due to the crosstalk are also investigated.

The polarization dependence of the resonance wavelength of long period fiber gratings (LPFGs) that employ the photoelastic effect is investigated based on a simple model. The proposed model for estimating the birefringence of these LPFGs provides a good explanation of the experimental results.