Fast Super‐Resolution Algorithm Based on Dictionary Size Reduction Using k‐Means Clustering

This paper proposes a computationally efficient learning‐based super‐resolution algorithm using k‐means clustering. Conventional learning‐based super‐resolution requires a huge dictionary for reliable performance, which brings about a tremendous memory cost as well as a burdensome matching computation. In order to overcome this problem, the proposed algorithm significantly reduces the size of the trained dictionary by properly clustering similar patches at the learning phase. Experimental results show that the proposed algorithm provides superior visual quality to the conventional algorithms, while needing much less computational complexity.     

Unsupervised regions based segmentation using object discovery

We present a new unsupervised algorithm to discovery and segment out common objects from multiple images. Compared with previous cosegmentation methods, our algorithm performs well even when the appearance variations in the foregrounds are more substantial than those in some areas of the backgrounds. Our algorithm mainly includes two parts: the foreground object discovery scheme and the iterative region allocation algorithm. Two terms, a region-saliency prior and a region-repeatness measure, are introduced in the foreground object discovery scheme to detect the foregrounds without any supervisory information. The iterative region allocation algorithm searches the optimal solution for the final segmentation with the constraints from a maximal spanning tree, and an effective color-based model is utilized during this process. The comparative experimental results show that the proposed algorithm matches or outperforms several previous methods on several standard datasets.     

镍基单晶高温合金短时时效过程中取向变化的原位研究

利用TEM和XRD原位研究了一种镍基单晶高温合金在时效过程中的取向变化.研究发现固溶-时效热处理后的初始样品内部不同γ′相之间存在~4°的小角度晶界.对材料在950℃下进行10 min短时时效处理,原位TEM和XRD结果表明γ′相的取向偏离初始取向~5°,且该取向变化在降温之后也不会完全恢复;该短时升、降温过程使γ′相的取向集中度增加.     

Highly Efficient Three Primary Color Organic Single‐Crystal Light‐Emitting Devices with Balanced Carrier Injection and Transport

Organic single crystals have a great potential in the field of organic optoelectronics because of their advantages of high carrier mobility and high thermal stability. However, the application of the organic single crystals in light‐emitting devices (OLEDs) has been limited by single‐layered structure with unbalanced carrier injection and transport. Here, fabrication of a multilayered‐structure crystal‐based OLED constitutes a major step toward balanced carrier injection and transport by introducing an anodic buffer layer and electron transport layer into the device structure. Three primary color single‐crystal‐based OLEDs based on the multilayered structure and molecular doping exhibit a maximum luminance and current efficiency of 820 cd cm^?2 and 0.9 cd A^?1, respectively, which are the highest performance to date for organic single‐crystal‐based OLEDs. This work paves the way toward high‐performance organic optoelectronic devices based on the organic single crystals.     

Adaptive quality of service‐based routing approaches: development of neuro‐dynamic state‐dependent reinforcement learning algorithms

In this paper, we propose two adaptive routing algorithms based on reinforcement learning. In the first algorithm, we have used a neural network to approximate the reinforcement signal, allowing the learner to take into account various parameters such as local queue size, for distance estimation. Moreover, each router uses an online learning module to optimize the path in terms of average packet delivery time, by taking into account the waiting queue states of neighbouring routers. In the second algorithm, the exploration of paths is limited to N‐best non‐loop paths in terms of hops number (number of routers in a path), leading to a substantial reduction of convergence time. The performances of the proposed algorithms are evaluated experimentally with OPNET simulator for different levels of traffic's load and compared with standard shortest‐path and Q‐routing algorithms. Our approach proves superior to classical algorithms and is able to route efficiently even when the network load varies in an irregular manner. We also tested our approach on a large network topology to proof its scalability and adaptability. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Virtual view synthesis using layered depth image generation and depth-based inpainting for filling disocclusions and translucent disocclusions

View synthesis is an efficient solution to produce content for 3DTV and FTV. However, proper handling of the disocclusions is a major challenge in the view synthesis. Inpainting methods offer solutions for handling disocclusions, though limitations in foreground-background classification causes the holes to be filled with inconsistent textures. Moreover, the state-of-the art methods fail to identify and fill disocclusions in intermediate distances between foreground and background through which background may be visible in the virtual view (translucent disocclusions). Aiming at improved rendering quality, we introduce a layered depth image (LDI) in the original camera view, in which we identify and fill occluded background so that when the LDI data is rendered to a virtual view, no disocclusions appear but views with consistent data are produced also handling translucent disocclusions. Moreover, the proposed foreground-background classification and inpainting fills the disocclusions with neighboring background texture consistently. Based on the objective and subjective evaluations, the proposed method outperforms the state-of-the art methods at the disocclusions.     

Low Cost BIST for Static and Dynamic Testing of ADCs

This paper presents a low cost test method for the static and dynamic characterization of analog-to-digital converters. The method is suitable for implementation in a SoC environment, as a built-in self test (BIST) solution. In the proposed approach, noise is used as the test signal. Theory of operation and practical results demonstrating the effectiveness of the method for INL, DNL, THD and SINAD characterization are presented. The BIST surface overhead caused by the noise generator is only 7.4% of the ADC total area. The reduced number of data samples required allows a reduction of about 7.5× in test time, in comparison to the histogram method.Maria da Gloria Cataldi Flores was born in Santa Maria, Brazil, in 1978. She received the electrical engineering degree in 2000 from Universidade Federal de Santa Maria (UFSM) and the M.S. degree engineering in 2003 from Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS), Brazil. Since then, she has been working as a design engineer in an EAS Supply brazilian company. Her main research interests include mixed-signal and analog testing and digital signal processing.Marcelo Negreiros was born in Porto Alegre, Brazil, in 1969. He received the electrical engineering degree in 1992 and the M.S. degree engineering in 1994, both from Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS), Brazil. Since then he was been working as an associate researcher in the Signal Processing Lab. (LaPSI) of the Electrical Engineering Department at UFRGS. Since 2000 he also works toward a Ph.D. in Computer Science from UFRGS. His main research interests include mixed-signal and analog testing and digital signal processing.Luigi Carro was born in Porto Alegre, Brazil, in 1962. He received the Electrical Engineering and the M.Sc. degrees from Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS), Brazil, in 1985 and 1989, respectively. From 1989 to 1991 he worked at ST-Microelectronics, Agrate, Italy, in the R&D group. In 1996 he received the Ph.D. degree in the area of Computer Science from Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS), Brazil. He is presently a lecturer at the Electrical Engineering Department of UFRGS, in charge of Digital Systems Design and Digital Signal processing disciplines at the graduate and undergraduate level. He is also a member of the Graduation Program in Computer Science of UFRGS, where he is responsible for courses in Embedded Systems, Digital Signal Processing, and VLSI Design. His primary research interests include mixed-signal design, digital signal processing, mixed-signal and analog testing, and fast system prototyping. He has published more than 90 technical papers in those topics and is the author of the book Digital Systems Design and Prototyping (in portuguese).Altamiro A Susin was born in Vacaria-RS, Brazil, in 1945. He received the Electrical Engineering and the MSc. degrees from Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS), Brazil, in 1972 and 1977, respectively. Since 1968 he worked in the start up of Computer Centers of two local Universities. In 1981 he got his Dr. Eng degree from Institut National Polytechnique de Grenoble-France. He is presently a lecturer at the Electrical Engineering Department of UFRGS, in charge of Digital Systems Design disciplines at the graduate and undergraduate level. He is also a member of the Graduation Program in Computer Science of UFRGS, where he is responsible by courses in VLSI Architecture and is also thesis director. His main research interests are Integrated Circuit Architecture, Embedded Systems, Signal Processing with more than 50 technical papers published in those domains. He is/was responsible for several R&D projects either funded with public and/or industry resources.Felipe Ricardo Clayton received the B.S. degree in Electrical Engineering from State University of Campinas (UNICAMP), Brazil, in 1986. He worked at CPqD (Brazilian PTT R&D Center) till 1996 designing analog and mixed signal circuits for telecom and automotive applications. From 1997 to the second half of 1998, he worked at Instituto Superior Técnico (IST), Lisbon, Portugal, under the guidance of Prof. Carlos Azeredo Leme on development of CMOS RF circuits. Since October 1998 he had worked for Motorola SPS. Now he is head of the Power Managment Group at Freescale.Cristiano Benevento received his B.S. degree in Electrical Engineering from Universidade Estadual de Campinas (Unicamp), Brazil, in 1997. He worked at Motorola Cellular Infrastructure Group until August 2000 as a Systems Engineer. He joined Motorola Semiconductor Product Sector in August 2000 as IC Designer for Power Management Group and is now at Freescale.     

A Water Stable,Near‐Zero‐Strain O3‐Layered Titanium‐Based Anode for Long Cycle Sodium‐Ion Battery

Layered transition metal (TM) oxides of the stoichiometry Na_xMO₂ (M = TM) have shown great promise in sodium‐ion batteries (SIBs); however, they are extremely sensitive to moisture. To date, most reported titanium‐based layered anodes exhibit a P2‐type structure. In contrast, O3‐type compounds are rarely investigated and their synthesis is challenging due to their higher percentage of unstable Ti³⁺ than the P2 type. Here, a pure phase and highly crystalline O3‐type Na_0.73Li_0.36Ti_0.73O₂ with high performance is successfully proposed in SIBs. This material delivers a reversible capacity of 108 mAh g^?1 with a stable and safe potential of 0.75 V versus Na/Na⁺. In situ X‐ray diffraction reveals that this material does not undergo any phase transitions and exhibits a near‐zero volume change upon Na⁺ insertion/de‐insertion, which ensures exceptional long cycle life over 6000 cycles. Importantly, it is found that this O3‐Na_0.73Li_0.36Ti_0.73O₂ shows superior moisture stability, even when immersed into water, which are both elusive for conventional layered TM oxides in SIBs. It is believed that the small interlayer distance and high occupation of interlayer vacancy promise such unprecedented water stability.     

Projected gradient descent based on soft thresholding in matrix completion

Matrix completion is the extension of compressed sensing. In compressed sensing, we solve the underdetermined equations using sparsity prior of the unknown signals. However, in matrix com- pletion, we solve the underdetermined equations based on sparsity prior in singular values set of the unknown matrix, which also calls low-rank prior of the unknown matrix. This paper firstly introduces basic concept of matrix completion, analyses the matrix suitably used in matrix completion, and shows that such matrix should satisfy two conditions： low rank and incoherence property. Then the paper provides three reconstruction algorithms commonly used in matrix completion： singular value thresholding algorithm, singular value projection, and atomic decomposition for minimum rank ap- proximation, puts forward their shortcoming to know the rank of original matrix. The Projected Gradient Descent based on Soft Thresholding （STPGD）, proposed in this paper predicts the rank of unknown matrix using soft thresholding, and iteratives based on projected gradient descent, thus it could estimate the rank of unknown matrix exactly with low computational complexity, this is verified by numerical experiments. We also analyze the convergence and computational complexity of the STPGD algorithm, point out this algorithm is guaranteed to converge, and analyse the number of it- erations needed to reach reconstruction error. Compared the computational complexity of the STPGD algorithm to other algorithms, we draw the conclusion that the STPGD algorithm not only reduces the computational complexity, but also improves the precision of the reconstruction solution.     

位置服务信息安全防护

随着无线通信技术和智能移动终端的快速发展,基于位置的服务(LBS)在军事、交通、物流等诸多领域得到了广泛应用,它能够根据移动对象的位置信息提供个性化服务。在人们享受各种位置服务的同时,移动对象个人信息泄露的隐私威胁也渐渐成为一个严重的问题。为移动用户提供位置服务的同时,保护移动用户的位置隐私也至关重要。本文就位置业务隐私保护技术和位置业务隐私管控手段进行了探讨。