A remote user authentication scheme without using smart cards

User authentication is one of the fundamental procedures to ensure secure communications over an insecure public network channel. Especially, due to tamper-resistance and convenience in managing a password file, various user authentication schemes using smart cards have been proposed. A smart card however far from ubiquitous because of the high cost of a smart card and the infrastructure requirements. In this paper, we study secure user authentication using only a common storage device such as a universal serial bus (USB) memory, instead of using smart cards. We first show that the existing schemes using smart cards cannot be immediately converted into schemes using a common storage device. We then propose a practical and secure user authentication scheme, capable of supporting the use of the common storage device, which retains all the advantages of schemes using smart cards.     

Anti-cloning protocol suitable to EPCglobal Class-1 Generation-2 RFID systems

Radio frequency Identification (RFID) systems are used to identify remote objects equipped with RFID tags by wireless scanning without manual intervention. Recently, EPCglobal proposed the Electronic Product Code (EPC) that is a coding scheme considered to be a possible successor to bar-code with added functionalities. In RFID-based applications where RFID tags are used to identify and track tagged objects, an RFID tag emits its EPC in plaintext. This makes the tag inevitably vulnerable to cloning attacks as well as information leakage and password disclosure. In this paper, we propose a novel anti-cloning method in accordance with the EPCglobal Class-1 Generation-2 (C1G2) standard. Our method only uses functions that can be supported by the standard and abides by the communication flow of the standard. The method is also secure against threats such as information leakage and password disclosure.     

Design of micromirror actuator by ionic polymer metal composites

Microactuators for micromirror system have found many applications in various areas including projection displays, optical switches, RF switches and so on. In this paper we demonstrated micromirror actuator using ionic polymer metal composites (IPMC) that is a suitable candidate, since it has many attractive qualities such as durability, aquatic, miniature and light-weighted. Specially, IPMC has extraordinary advantages which are simple bending motion for low driving voltage (1–2 V), low power consumption, and simple structure. The IPMC actuator is made of Nafion NE-1110 (Dupont Co, Ltd., 260 µm thick) layer and electrode (platinum) layers and driven by 1–4 V. The displacement measured vertically is 0.25 mm and tilting angle is 11.3°. The angular motion, which is more than 10°, is a good advantage in the field of display module. This paper shows that the IPMC actuator has enough possibility for other applications.     

Decentralised sampled-data control for large-scale systems with nonlinear interconnections

This paper presents a decentralised sampled-data control technique for a class of large-scale systems, which are considered to consist of linear subsystems and nonlinear interconnections. The decentralised sampled-data controller design problem is established using a closed-loop subsystem. Based on the controller design problem, the stability condition is derived for a closed-loop large-scale system, and the maximum interconnection bound is guaranteed to satisfy the stability condition. Also, its sufficient condition is formulated in terms of linear matrix inequalities. Finally, the effectiveness of the proposed technique is verified by using an example of the multi-machine power system.     

Formulating efficient software solution for digital image processing system

Digital image processing systems are complex, being usually composed of different computer vision libraries. Algorithm implementations cannot be directly used in conjunction with algorithms developed using other computer vision libraries. This paper formulates a software solution by proposing a processor with the capability of handling different types of image processing algorithms, which allow the end users to install new image processing algorithms from any library. This approach has other functionalities like capability to process one or more images, manage multiple processing jobs simultaneously and maintain the manner in which an image was processed for later use. It is a computational efficient and promising technique to handle variety of image processing algorithms. To promote the reusability and adaptation of the package for new types of analysis, a feature of sustainability is established. The framework is integrated and tested on a medical imaging application, and the software is made freely available for the reader. Future work involves introducing the capability to connect to another instance of processing service with better performance. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Approaches to extended non-quadratic stability and stabilization conditions for discrete-time Takagi–Sugeno fuzzy systems

This paper provides simple and effective linear matrix inequality (LMI) characterizations for the stability and stabilization conditions of discrete-time Takagi–Sugeno (T–S) fuzzy systems. To do this, more general classes of non-parallel distributed compensation (non-PDC) control laws and non-quadratic Lyapunov functions are presented. Unlike the conventional non-quadratic approaches using only current-time normalized fuzzy weighting functions, we consider not only the current-time fuzzy weighting functions but also the l-step-past (l?0) and one-step-ahead ones when constructing the control laws and Lyapunov functions. Consequently, by introducing additional decision variables, it can be shown that the proposed conditions include the existing ones found in the literature as particular cases. Examples are given to demonstrate the effectiveness of the approaches.     

Visual enhancement of old documents with hyperspectral imaging

Hyperspectral imaging (HSI) of historical documents is becoming more common at national libraries and archives. HSI is useful for many tasks related to document conservation and management as it provides detailed quantitative measurements of the spectral reflectance of the document that is not limited to the visible spectrum. In this paper, we focus on how to use the invisible spectra, most notably near-infrared (NIR) bands, to assist in visually enhancing old documents. Specifically, we demonstrate how to use the invisible bands to improve the visual quality of text-based documents corrupted with undesired artifacts such as ink-bleed, ink-corrosion, and foxing. For documents of line drawings that suffer from low contrast, we use details found in the invisible bands to enhance legibility. The key components of our framework involve detecting regions in the document that can be enhanced by the NIR spectra, compositing the enhanced gradient map using the NIR bands, and reconstructing the final image from the composited gradients. This work is part of a collaborative effort with the Nationaal Archief of the Netherlands (NAN) and Art Innovation, a manufacturer of hyperspectral imaging hardware designed specially for historical documents. Our approach is evaluated on historical documents from NAN that exhibit degradations common to documents found in most archives and libraries.     

Fundamental connections among the stability conditions using higher-order time-derivatives of Lyapunov functions for the case of linear time-invariant systems

It has already been recognized that looking for a positive definite Lyapunov function such that a high-order linear differential inequality with respect to the Lyapunov function holds along the trajectories of a nonlinear system can be utilized to assess asymptotic stability when the standard Lyapunov approach examining only the first derivative fails. In this context, the main purpose of this paper is, on one hand, to theoretically unveil deeper connections among existing stability conditions especially for linear time-invariant (LTI) systems, and from the other hand to examine the effect of the higher-order time-derivatives approach on the stability results for uncertain polytopic LTI systems in terms of conservativeness. To this end, new linear matrix inequality (LMI) stability conditions are derived by generalizing the concept mentioned above, and through the development, relations among some existing stability conditions are revealed. Examples illustrate the improvement over the quadratic approach.     

Analysis of zero-inflated clustered count data: A marginalized model approach

Min and Agresti (2005) proposed random effect hurdle models for zero-inflated clustered count data with two-part random effects for a binary component and a truncated count component. In this paper, we propose new marginalized models for zero-inflated clustered count data using random effects. The marginalized models are similar to Dobbie and Welsh’s (2001) model in which generalized estimating equations were exploited to find estimates. However, our proposed models are based on a likelihood-based approach. A Quasi-Newton algorithm is developed for estimation. We use these methods to carefully analyze two real datasets.