Within the framework of a previously proposed vision system, a new part-segmentation algorithm, that breaks an object defined by its contour into its constituent parts, is presented. The contour is assumed to be obtained using an edge detector. This decomposition is achieved in two stages. The first stage is a preprocessing step which consists of extracting the convex dominant points (CDPs) of the contour. For this aim, we present a new technique which relaxes the compromise that exists in most classical methods for the selection of the width of the Gaussian filter. In the subsequent stage, the extracted CDPs are used to break the object into convex parts. This is performed as follows: among all the points of the contour only the CDPs are moved along their normals nutil they touch another moving CDP or a point on the contour. The results show that this part-segmentation algorithm is invariant to transformations such as rotation, scaling and shift in position of the object, which is very important for object recognition. The algorithm has been tested on many object contours, with and without noise and the advantages of the algorithm are listed in this paper. Our results are visually similar to a human intuitive decomposition of objects into their parts.

Introducing a mathematical model of noise in stereo images, we propose a new criterion for intelligent statistical inference about the scene we are viewing by using the geometric information criterion (geometric AIC). Using synthetic and real-image experiments, we demonstrate that a robot can test whether or not the object is located very far away or the object is a planar surface without using any knowledge about the noise magnitude or any empirically adjustable thresholds.

An analytic traffic model is presented to estimate the soft handoff rate in DS-CDMA cellular systems. The model is based on the fact that a mobile in soft handoff call is connected to two cell sites when it is in an overlapped region. The handoff rate is estimated by the mobility of mobiles, which is a function of the size and shape of cell area, and the call density and speed of mobiles in the area. Simulation results show good agreement with the analytical model.

Macro/microcellular systems have recently been proposed to accommodate both fast and slow moving users. If macrocells and microcells reuse the same frequency band in a macro/microcellular system, the interference between both types of cells can become a critical problem and degrade system capacity, particularly in CDMA systems. In this paper, Frequency Division CDMA (FD-CDMA) is applied to CDMA macro/spot-microcellular systems and uplink capacity is evaluated. The CDMA frequency band is divided into several subbands and both macrocells and microcells reuse the same subbands simultaneously. Interference signals from both types of cells are dispersed by dividing the frequency band, and performance degradation resulting from interference is reduced at both the macrocell and microcell. By reusing the same frequency band for macrocells and microcells, the system capacities become more flexible and can be changed according to variations in traffic. This paper describes the detail of the FD-CDMA system. Uplink capacities are calculated for some cell conditions such as microcell size or location through simulation evaluations. A comparison with a non-reuse subband system as well as results of adaptive control of subbands are described.

Cross talk in mode-division multiplexing system is studied. The mode patterns when the fiber is bent are observed in the experiment.

Wavelength Division Multiplexing (WDM) technology provides many options to the design of flexible alloptical networks. To exploit these options to their full potential, Photonic Integrated Circuits (PICs) for wavelength routing and switching will be indispensable. One of the basic building blocks of such PICs is the planar phased-array (PHASAR) wavelength demultiplexer. The monolithic integration of PHASARs with photodetectors, amplifiers, and other waveguide-based (passive) components is discussed.

Recently, a wavelength division multi/demultiplexing system has been viewed with keen interest because it is possible to increase the transmission capacity and system flexibility. An arrayed waveguide grating (AWG) type of Multi/demultiplexer which is one of the key components to realize such a system has been developed by using Planar Lightwave Circuits (PLCs). Newly designed optical circuits have been incorporated into the AWG to control the center wavelength and to expand the pass band width. The 3 dB pass band width is 1.4 times that of a conventional AWG. It is confirmed that the newly developed AWG has low polarization dependence, low temperature dependence and high reliability.

We propose an improved orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) signal detector which uses the minimum mean-square error (MMSE) noise feedback equalization (NFE). The input bit stream is trellis-coded to form OFDM signal blocks and the maximal ratio combining (MRC) is adopted at the receiver in order to improve the performance of the detector. As a result, we obtain significantly improved detection performance compared with the conventional OFDM receivers as follows. Using the proposed MMSE-NFE in the receiver, we can obtain the performance gain of about 1.5 dB to 2 dB in symbol energy to noise power spectral density (Es/No) for Doppler frequencies of fd=20 and 100 Hz, respectively, over the receiver with the MMSE linear equalization (LE) alone at symbol error rate (SER) of about 10-3. With MRC and trellis coding, the performance gain of about 11 dB in Es/No for fd=20 and 100 Hz at SER of about 10-3 is obtained.

The present paper clarifies that the variance of the maximum likelihood estimator (MLE) of a parameter does not reach the Cramer-Rao lower bound (CRLB) when fitting a straight-line to observed two-dimensional data. In addition, the variance of the MLE can be shown to be equal to the CRLB only if observed noise reduces to a one-dimensional Gaussian variable. For most practical applications, it can be assumed that noise is added only to the range direction. In this case, the MLE is clearly an asymptotically effective estimator. However, even if we assume such a noise model, ML line-fitting to the data from many points of view has a high computational cost. The present paper proposes an alternative fitting method in order to provide a cost-effective unbiased estimator. The reliability of this new method is analyzed statistically and by computer simulation.

This study proposes an amplitude limiting type spread spectrum communication to be applied to extremely low power radio wave communicaion and evaluates capability of the code division multiplex. First, changes in output from the correlation device, maximum power, and in allowable noise power are compared by computer simulation for the case where the number of multiplex channels is increased. Second, possible relationship between noise intensity and error rate is measured by actual loading experiments using a device developed for trial purpose. Third, majority decision logic is proposed for the said device to realize amplitude limiting type code division multiplex easily. When the amplitude is limited, the maximum power can be controlled at about 2 dB, and channels with more than half of the number of spread sign can be used. It is revealed that, in the spread spectrum, alteration of the number of multiplex channels is made easy by application of this method.

New interference cancellation technique using time division reference signal is proposed for optical synchronous code-division multiple-access (CDMA) systems with modified prime sequence codes. In the proposed system one user in each group is not allowed to access the network at each time, and this unallowable user's channel is used as a reference signal for other users in the same group at the time. The performance of the proposed system using an avalanche photodiode (APD) is analyzed where the Gaussian approximation of the APD output is employed and the effects of APD noise, thermal noise, and interference for the receiver are included. The proposed cancellation techniqus is shown to be effective to improve the bit error probability performance and to alleviate the error floor when the number of users and the received optical power are not appreciably small.

A hardware algorithm for modular division is proposed. It is based on the extended Euclidean algorithm (EEA). The procedure for finding the multiplicative inverse in EEA is modified so that it calculates the quotient. Modular division is carried out through iteration of simple operations, such as shifts and additions. A redundant binary representation is employed so that additions are performed without carry propagation. An n-bit modular division is carried out in O(n) clock cycles. The length of each clock cycle is constant independent of n. A modular divider based on the algorithm has a bit-slice structure and is suitable for VLSI implementation.

In this paper, we propose a camera calibration method that estimates both intrinsic parameters (perspective and distortion) and extrinsic parameters (rotational and translational). All camera parameters can be determined from one or more images of planar pattern consists of parallelogramatic grid points. As far as the pattern can be visible, the relative relations between camera and patterns are arbitrary. So, we have only to prepare a pattern, and take one or more images changing the relative relation between camera and the pattern, arbitrarily; neither solid object of ground truth nor precise z-stage are required. Moreover, constraint conditions that are imposed on rotational parameters are explicitly satisfied; no intermediate parameter that connected several actual camera parameters are used. Taking account of the conflicting fact that the amount of distortion is small in the neighborhood of the image center, and that small image has poor clues of 3-D information, we adopt iterative procedure. The best parameters are searched changing the size and number of parallelograms selected from grid points. The procedure of the iteration is as follows: The perspective parameters are estimated from the shape of parallelogram by nonlinear optimizations. The rotational parameters are calculated from the shape of parallelogram. The translational parameters are estimated from the size of parallelogram by least squares method. Then, the distortion parameters are estimated using all grid points by least squares method. The computer simulation demonstrates the efficiency of the proposed method. And the results of the implementation using real images are also shown.

3D model-based coding methods that need 3D reconstruction techniques are proposed for next-generation image coding methods. A method is presented that reconstructs 3D shapes of dynamic objects from image sequences captured using two cameras, thus avoiding the stereo correspondence problem. A coaxial camera system consisting of one moving and one static camera was developed. The optical axes of both cameras are precisely adjusted and have the same orientation using an optical system with true and half mirrors. The moving camera is moved along a straight horizontal line. This method can reconstruct 3D shapes of static objects as well as dynamic objects using motion vectors calculated from the moving camera images and revised using the static camera image. The method was tested successfully on real images by reconstructing a moving human shape.

A new application of the factorization method is reported for 3-D shape reconstruction from endoscope image sequences. The feasibility of the method is verified with some theoretical considerations and results of extensive experiments. This method was developed by Tomasi and Kanade, and improved by Poelman and Kanade, with the aim of achieving accurate shape reconstruction by using a large number of points and images, and robustly applying well-understood matrix computations. However, the latter stage of the method, called normalization, is not as easily understandable as the use of singular value decomposition in the first stage. In fact, as shown in this report, many choices are possible for this normalization and a variety of results have been obtained depending on the choice. This method is easy to understand, easy to implement, and provides sufficient accuracy when the approximation used for the optical system is reasonable. However, the details of the theoretical basis require further study.

This paper addresses the problem of estimating 3-D motion of a rigid object from a sequence of monocular 2-D images. The surface of object is assumed to be modeled with several patches, each of which is expressed by an implicit equation. The proposed method estimates the pose (i.e., the location and orientation) of object that corresponds to each image in the sequence: The sequence of the estimated poses gives the motion of the object. The estimation is done by solving a system of equations, each of which is typically an algebraic equation of low degree, that is derived from the expressions of the surface patches and image contours data: so the method does not require establishing the correspondence between successive two frames in the image sequence or computing optic flow. Allowing several-patch models for objects enables the proposed approach to deal with a great variety of objects. The paper includes a numerical example, where our aproach has been applied to a polyhedral object modeled with several patches.

Orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) has been receiving a lot of attention in the field of broadcasting because of its ruggedness under multipath environments. One of important issues to realize high quality reception of OFDM signals is to correct frequency and timing offsets between the transmitter and receiver so that orthogonality of the carriers can be maintained. This paper discusses a frequency and timing period acquisition technique for OFDM systems. A new offset estimation technique is introduced that detects both the frequency and timing peirod offsets at the same time by using only one pilot symbol with its suitable frequency assignment. A pseudo noise (PN) sequence is also introduced to assign these frequencies of the pilot symbol so that the frequency acquisition range can be widened. Numerical examples are given to show the estimate variances of the proposed frequency and timing period estimator over both additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN) and multipath fading channels. Also the bit error rate (BER) performance for an open loop acquisition system is examined.

In this paper, a feasible optical code-division multiple-access (CDMA) technique is proposed for high-speed computer networks using prime codes and optical signal processing to guarantee real-time data communications. All-optical architectures for fastly tunable CDMA encoders and decoders are presented, which can be feasibly implemented in the optical domain by using electrooptic switches and optical delay lines. This can support an ultrahigh throughput and a very fast reconfiguration time. Furthermore, we present a self-synchronized sample technique to ensure the correct phase synchronization between optical clock stream and asynchronous electronic data at each electrooptic modulator of an optical CDMA transmitter.

In order to produce high quality multimedia contents efficiently, DTPP -desktop program production system- has been proposed. The DTPP is capable of supporting all the necessary procedures of program production, from planning to broadcasting, by molding each process into the desktop environment of program producers. The DTPP system consists of multimedia terminals, a media server, a computing server, and network system. In the DTPP, new technological concepts such as cooperative program production, indexing and utilization of attribute information of images, and video components and spatio-temporal editing will be installed.

Three dimensional model based coding methods are proposed as next generation image coding methods. These new representations need 3D reconstruction techniques. This paper presents a method that extracts the surfaces of static objects that occlude other objects from a spatiotemporal image captured with straight-line camera motion. We propose the concept of occlusion types and show that the occlusion types are restricted to only eight patterns. Furthermore, we show occlusion type pairs contain information that confirms the existence of surfaces. Occlusion information gives strong cues for segmentation and representation. The method can estimate not only the 3D positions of edge points but also the surfaces bounded by the edge points. We show that combinations of occlusion types contain information that can confirm surface existence. The method was tested successfully on real images by reconstructing flat and curved surfaces. Videos can be hierarchically structured with the method. The method makes various applications possible, such as object selective image communication and object selective video editing.