A versatile leaky-wave antenna based on stub-loaded rectangularwaveguide .III. Comparisons with measurements

For pt.II ibid., vol.46, no.7, p.1042-46. The article describes the measurements that verify the validity of the theoretical expressions for this new type of antenna. Measurements were made both at millimeter wavelengths (40 to 60 GHz) and in the X-band (8 to 12 GHz) frequency range and of two different quantities: the propagation wavenumbers β and α and radiation patterns. Comparisons were made with numerical values obtained from the theoretical expressions derived in parts I and II and very good agreement was found in all cases     

Object-oriented H.263 compatible video coding platform forconferencing applications

This paper describes a prototype video coding platform meant for the conception and testing of multimedia products such as next-generation videophones. The platform is largely based on ITU-T Recommendation H.263, with a number of additional object-oriented quality enhancement features which make it especially well suited for very low bit-rate coding of “head-and-shoulders” video material typical of real-time multimedia applications, video teleconferencing, and video telephony. These features consist of: (1) segmentation into objects of interest, (2) segmentation-based prefiltering, (3) model-assisted rate control, (4) adaptive vector quantization, and finally (5) segmentation-based postfiltering. In the spirit of Recommendation H.263, these enhancements are modular and can be selectively turned on or off, thereby enabling a wide variety of coding modes     

Interdiffusion behavior of Hg in HgTe/CdTe superlattices grown on Cd0.96Zn0.04 Te (211)B substrates by molecular beam epitaxy

Double-crystal x-ray rocking curve (DCRC) and secondary-ion mass-spectroscopy (SIMS) measurements have been performed to investigate the effect of rapid thermal annealing on the interdiffusion behavior of Hg in HgTe/CdTe superlattices grown on Cd_0.96Zn_0.04Te (211)B substrates by molecular beam epitaxy. The sharp satellite peaks of the DCRC measurements on a 100-period HgTe/CdTe (100Å/100Å) superlattice show a periodic arrangement of the superlattice with high-quality interfaces. The negative direction of the entropy change obtained from the diffusion coefficients as a function of the reciprocal of the temperature after RTA indicates that the Hg diffusion for the annealed HgTe/CdTe superlattice is caused by an interstitial mechanism. The Cd and the Hg concentration profiles near the annealed HgTe/CdTe superlattice interfaces, as measured by SIMS, show a nonlinear behavior for Hg, originating from the interstitial diffusion mechanism of the Hg composition. These results indicate that a nonlinear interdiffusion behavior is dominant for HgTe/CdTe superlattices annealed at 190°C and that the rectangular shape of HgTe/CdTe superlattices may change to a parabolic shape because of the intermixing of Hg and Cd due to the thermal treatment.     

Diurnal thermal cycling effects on microwave signatures of thin seaice

To investigate effects of diurnal thermal cycles on C-band polarimetric backscatter and millimeter-wave emission from sea ice, the authors carried out a winter experiment at the outdoor geophysical research facility (GRF) in the cold regions research and engineering laboratory (CRREL), the ice sheet grew from open sea water to a thickness of 10 cm in 2.5 days, during which they took polarimetric backscatter data with a C-band scatterometer, interlaced with brightness temperature measurements at 90 GHz in conjunction with meteorological and sea ice characterizations. The initial ice growth in the late morning was slow due to high insolation. As the air temperature dropped during the night, the growth rate increased significantly. Air temperature changed drastically from about -12 to -36°C between day and night, the diurnal thermal cycle repeated itself the next day and the growth rate varied in the same manner. Ice temperature profiles clearly show the diurnal response in the ice sheet with a lag of 2.5 h behind the time of the maximum short-wave incident solar radiation. The diurnal cycles are also evident in the millimeter-wave brightness temperature data, measured sea ice backscatter revealed substantial diurnal variations up to 6 dB with repeatable cycles in synchronization with the temperature cycles and the brightness temperature modulations, the diurnal cycles in backscatter indicate that the dominant scattering mechanism related to thermodynamic processes in sea ice is reversible, a diurnal backscatter model based on sea ice electrodynamics and thermodynamics explains the observed diurnal signature. This work shows that diurnal effects are important for inversion algorithms to retrieve sea ice geophysical parameters from remote sensing data acquired with a satellite synthetic aperture radar (SAR) or scatterometer on Sun-synchronous orbits     

A Low-Power Wide-Dynamic-Range Analog VLSI Cochlea

Low-power wide-dynamic-range systems are extremely hard to build. The biological cochlea is one of the most awesome examples of such a system: It can sense sounds over 12 orders of magnitude in intensity, with an estimated power dissipation of only a few tens of microwatts. In this paper, we describe an analog electronic cochlea that processes sounds over 6 orders of magnitude in intensity, and that dissipates 0.5 mW. This 117-stage, 100 Hz to 10 KHz cochlea has the widest dynamic range of any artificial cochlea built to date. The wide dynamic range is attained through the use of a wide-linear-range transconductance amplifier, of a low-noise filter topology, of dynamic gain control (AGC) at each cochlear stage, and of an architecture that we refer to as overlapping cochlear cascades. The operation of the cochlea is made robust through the use of automatic offset-compensation circuitry. A BiCMOS circuit approach helps us to attain nearly scale-invariant behavior and good matching at all frequencies. The synthesis and analysis of our artificial cochlea yields insight into why the human cochlea uses an active traveling-wave mechanism to sense sounds, instead of using bandpass filters. The low power, wide dynamic range, and biological realism make our cochlea well suited as a front end for cochlear implants.     

Optimal capacity placement for path restoration in STM or ATMmesh-survivable networks

The total transmission capacity required by a transport network to satisfy demand and protect it from failures contributes significantly to its cost, especially in long-haul networks. Previously, the spare capacity of a network with a given set of working span sizes has been optimized to facilitate span restoration. Path restorable networks can, however, be even more efficient by defining the restoration problem from an end to end rerouting viewpoint. We provide a method for capacity optimization of path restorable networks which is applicable to both synchronous transfer mode (STM) and asynchronous transfer mode (ATM) virtual path (VP)-based restoration. Lower bounds on spare capacity requirements in span and path restorable networks are first compared, followed by an integer program formulation based on flow constraints which solves the spare and/or working capacity placement problem in either span or path restorable networks. The benefits of path and span restoration, and of jointly optimizing working path routing and spare capacity placement, are then analyzed     

Buffering packetised data: an examination of the crossover effect

Buffer analysis has traditionally relied heavily on the use of traffic models with short range (exponentially decaying) autocorrelation, e.g. Poisson and Markov modulated Poisson processes. Recent literature has suggested the presence of traffic with slowly (hyperbolically) decaying autocorrelation functions; these sources collectively and individually seem to be exhibiting the phenomenon of long range dependence (LRD). Furthermore, it has been claimed that this sort of traffic may exhibit behaviour, when buffered, that is advantageous in that a smaller buffer may be required than would be the case with non-LRD traffic. This phenomenon has been named the crossover effect, and the authors quantify its relevance to ATM networking, using simulation studies of a homogenous mix of chaotic sources. These show that there is a crossover effect, but the key finding is that this effect is much nearer to a buffer length of zero than was predicted by previous theoretical studies, actually occurring at a value so low that it has no practical significance     

Inference and retrieval of facial images

Attempts have been made to extend SQL to work with multimedia databases. We are reserved on the representation ability of extended SQL to cope with the richness in content of multimedia data. In this paper we present an example of a multimedia database system, Computer Aided Facial Image Inference and Retrieval system (CAFIIR). The system stores and manages facial images and criminal records, providing necessary functions for crime identification. We would like to demonstrate some core techniques for multimedia database with CAFIIR system. Firstly, CAFIIR is a integrated system. Besides database management, there are image analysis, image composition, image aging, and report generation subsystems, providing means for problem solving. Secondly, the richness of multimedia data urges feature-based database for their management. CAFIIR is feature-based. A indexing mechanism,iconic index, has been proposed for indexing facial images using hierarchical self-organization neural network. The indexing method operates on complex feature measures and provides means for visual navigation. Thirdly, special retrieval methods for facial images have been developed, including visual browsing, similarity retrieval, free text retrieval and fuzzy retrieval.     

Positive identification of the specificity of polymerase chain reaction product

A method of positive identification of the specificity of polymerase chain reaction (PCR) product using internal oligonucleotide probe is introduced. The hybridization was done on the agarose gel which was dried after electrophoresis. Detection of the expression of T cell receptor a chain variable (TCR V alpha) genes on mRNA level was used as the experimental model. Twenty nine TCR V alpha gene subfamilies could be distinguished clearly in healthy human peripheral blood lymphocytes by this method. Positive identification of PCR product on dried agarose gel by internal oligonucleotide probe is relatively simple and less time consuming.