Tiny and Blurred Face Alignment for Long Distance Face Recognition

Applying face alignment after face detection exerts a heavy influence on face recognition. Many researchers have recently investigated face alignment using databases collected from images taken at close distances and with low magnification. However, in the cases of home‐service robots, captured images generally are of low resolution and low quality. Therefore, previous face alignment research, such as eye detection, is not appropriate for robot environments. The main purpose of this paper is to provide a new and effective approach in the alignment of small and blurred faces. We propose a face alignment method using the confidence value of Real‐AdaBoost with a modified census transform feature. We also evaluate the face recognition system to compare the proposed face alignment module with those of other systems. Experimental results show that the proposed method has a high recognition rate, higher than face alignment methods using a manually‐marked eye position.     

High Performance Piezoelectric Microspeakers and Thin Speaker Array System

This paper reports on an improved piezoelectric microspeaker with a high sound pressure level of 90 dB, a total harmonic distortion of less than 15%, and coherence higher than 0.9. The fabricated Pb(Zr,Ti)O₃ (PZT) microspeakers have a thickness of only 1 mm including the speaker frame and an active area of 18 mm×20 mm. To achieve higher sound pressure and lower distortion, the PZT piezoelectric microspeaker has a well‐designed speaker frame and a piezoelectric diaphragm consisting of a tilted PZT membrane and silicone buffer layer. From the simulation and measurement results, we confirmed that the silicon buffer layer can lower the first resonant frequency, which enhances the microspeaker's sound pressure at a low frequency range and can also reduce useless distortion generated by the harmonics. The fabricated PZT piezoelectric microspeakers are implemented on a multichannel speaker array system for personal acoustical space generation. The output sound pressure at a 30 cm distance away from the center of the speaker line array is 15 dB higher than the sound pressure at the neighboring region 30 degrees from the vertical axis.     

A novel simplified process for fabricating a very high densityp-channel trench gate power MOSFET

A novel simplified fabrication method of a very high density p-channel trench gate power MOSFET using four mask layers and nitride/TEOS sidewall spacers is realized. The proposed process showed improved on-resistance characteristics of the device with increasing cell density and the cost-effective production capability due to the lesser number of processing steps. By using this process technique, a remarkably increased high density (100 Mcell/inch²) trench gate power MOSFET with a cell pitch of 2.5 μm could be effectively realized. The fabricated device had a low specific on-resistance of 1.1 mΩ-cm² with a breakdown voltage of -36 V     

A compact free electron laser investigation

An electron beam source based on pseudospark discharge was successful in operation at the beam voltage of 200keV and beam current of 2kA. The detailed design of a compact free electron laser using an electron beam by a pseudospark discharge is described. The compact free electron laser consists of a smaller Marx generator with 6 capacitors and switches, a water capacitance of 6nF and a beam source with a high brightness of 3×10¹¹ A/(m rad)². The computer simulation shows that an output power of 101MW is expected at a frequency of 38GHz with a beam energy of 300keV, a current of 2kA and a beam emittance of 48mm mraa.     

Er-doped glass ridge-waveguide amplifiers fabricated with a collimated sputter deposition technique

We report a new fabrication process for Er-doped glass ridge waveguides. The process does not require etching of an Er-doped film in defining the lateral dimension of a waveguide, but involves a liftoff process using polyimide as a sacrificial layer. An Er-doped soda-lime silicate glass film (1.5 /spl mu/m thick) was deposited at 350/spl deg/C using a collimated sputtering technique. Conventional sputtering techniques have been known to be incompatible with a liftoff process. The collimated sputtering, however, allowed us easy liftoff of Er-doped films, and produced well-defined ridges with smooth surface profiles. A 1.7-cm-long waveguide thus fabricated shows a 1.55-/spl mu/m signal enhancement of 15.4 dB with a 980-nm pump power of 40 mW. This enhancement fully compensates for both Er absorption and waveguide losses, and results in a gain of 7.2 dB.     

A Fully Integrated Thin‐Film Inductor and Its Application to a DC‐DC Converter

This paper presents a simple process to integrate thin‐film inductors with a bottom NiFe magnetic core. NiFe thin films with a thickness of 2 to 3 μm were deposited by sputtering. A polyimide buffer layer and shadow mask were used to relax the stress of the NiFe films. The fabricated double spiral thin‐film inductor showed an inductance of 0.49 μH and a Q factor of 4.8 at 8 MHz. The DC‐DC converter with the monolithically integrated thin‐film inductor showed comparable performances to those with sandwiched magnetic layers. We simplified the integration process by eliminating the planarization process for the top magnetic core. The efficiency of the DC‐DC converter with the monolithic thin‐film inductor was 72% when the input voltage and output voltage were 3.5 V and 6 V, respectively, at an operating frequency of 8 MHz.     

Analysis of a Parasitic‐Diode‐Triggered Electrostatic Discharge Protection Circuit for 12 V Applications

In this paper, an electrostatic discharge (ESD) protection circuit is designed for use as a 12 V power clamp by using a parasitic‐diode‐triggered silicon controlled rectifier. The breakdown voltage and trigger voltage (V_t) of the proposed ESD protection circuit are improved by varying the length between the n‐well and the p‐well, and by adding n+/p+ floating regions. Moreover, the holding voltage (V_h) is improved by using segmented technology. The proposed circuit was fabricated using a 0.18‐μm bipolar‐CMOS‐DMOS process with a width of 100 μm. The electrical characteristics and robustness of the proposed ESD circuit were analyzed using transmission line pulse measurements and an ESD pulse generator. The electrical characteristics of the proposed circuit were also analyzed at high temperature (300 K to 500 K) to verify thermal performance. After optimization, the V_t of the proposed circuit increased from 14 V to 27.8 V, and V_h increased from 5.3 V to 13.6 V. The proposed circuit exhibited good robustness characteristics, enduring human‐body‐model surges at 7.4 kV and machine‐model surges at 450 V.     

A new approach to cell size scaling with a multi-dual cell and a buffer/background programming of unified RAM

New investigations are presented here on a high-density and DRAM-like high-speed non-volatile memory (NVM) application of unified RAM (URAM). For a high-density application of URAM, multiple data storage is demonstrated with a multi-dual cell (MDC). Because each NVM state can be split by programming with a one-transistor (1T) DRAM without a capacitor, the total number of memory states can be doubled. Furthermore, a high-speed DRAM-level NVM scheme is proposed for the joint operation of 1T DRAM buffer programming and NVM post-background programming. The MDC and the proposed scheme are unique URAM properties that can extend the application range of memory devices.     

Enhancement of the Performance of a Reflective SOA-Based Hybrid WDM/TDM PON System With a Remotely Pumped Erbium-Doped Fiber Amplifier

A passive optical network (PON) architecture based on a hybrid wavelength-division multiplexing (WDM) and time-division multiplexing (TDM) PON system with a remotely pumped erbium-doped fiber amplifier (EDFA) is presented as an excellent candidate for use in a next-generation optical access network. The remotely pumped EDFA operates as a bidirectional amplifier and provides a 15-dB gain to both upstream signals and seed light sources, so the sensitivity of upstream transmission is greatly improved. An upstream transmission of 1.25 Gb/s with a low seed channel power of -14 dBm is made feasible over a total reach of 25 km for 32-WDM channels and 16-TDM splits by the use of the remotely pumped EDFA. This scheme has advantages that it uses a single transmission fiber for both down-and up-stream signals and that it reduces the Rayleigh scattering contribution.