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Optical communications technology has seen highly successful implementations in telecommunications and local area networks and is now being explored for data, control, and clock applications within digital systems, such as computers and signal processors. The requirements for optical interconnections within these systems are significantly different from those applications where optical communications are used today. Digital systems require short high-speed interconnections with miniature transmit/receive modules that dissipate little power. These interconnections must also be compatible with standard digital packaging, power supply voltages, and environmental conditions. This paper explores insertion opportunities for optical interconnections within digital systems, the implementation issues, and specific examples of this technology.

In the knowledge explosion, rapid development of information age, how quickly the user or users interested in useful information for feedback to the user problem to be solved in this article. This paper based on data mining, association rules to the model and classification model a combination of electronic books on the recommendation of the user's neighboring users interested in e-books to target users. Introduced the e-book recommendation and the key technologies, system implementation algorithms, and implementation process, was proved through experiments that this system can help users quickly find the required e-books.

Due to the improvement of the picture quality of closed-circuit television (CCTV), the demand for CCTV has increased rapidly and its market size has also increased. The current system structure of CCTV transfers compressed images without analysis received from CCTV to a control center. The compressed images are suitable for the evidence required for a criminal arrest, but they cannot prevent crime in real time, which has been considered a limitation. Thus, the present paper proposes a system implementation that can prevent crimes by applying a situation awareness system at the back end of the CCTV cameras for image acquisition to prevent crimes efficiently. In the system implemented in the present paper, the region of interest (ROI) is set virtually within the image data when a barrier, such as fence, cannot be installed in actual sites and unauthorized intruders are tracked constantly through data analysis and recognized in the ROI via the developed algorithm. Additionally, a searchlight or alarm sound is activated to prevent crime in real time and the urgent information is transferred to the control center. The system was implemented in the Raspberry Pi 2 board to be run in real time. The experiment results showed that the recognition success rate was 85% or higher and the track accuracy was 90% or higher. By utilizing the system, crime prevention can be achieved by implementing a social safety network.

The Southern African Large Telescope (SALT) software control system1 is realised as a distributed control system, implemented predominantly in National Instruments' LabVIEW. The telescope control subsystems communicate using cyclic, state-based messages. Currently, transmitting a message is accomplished by performing an HTTP PUT request to a WebDAV directory on a centralised Apache web server, while receiving is based on polling the web server for new messages. While the method works, it presents a number of drawbacks; a scalable distributed communication solution with minimal overhead is a better fit for control systems. This paper describes our exploration of the Data Distribution Service (DDS). DDS is a formal standard specification, defined by the Object Management Group (OMG), that presents a data-centric publish-subscribe model for distributed application communication and integration. It provides an infrastructure for platform- independent many-to-many communication. A number of vendors provide implementations of the DDS standard; RTI, in particular, provides a DDS toolkit for LabVIEW. This toolkit has been evaluated against the needs of SALT, and a few deficiencies have been identified. We have developed our own implementation that interfaces LabVIEW to DDS in order to address our specific needs. Our LabVIEW DDS interface implementation is built against the RTI DDS Core component, provided by RTI under their Open Community Source licence. Our needs dictate that the interface implementation be platform independent. Since we have access to the RTI DDS Core source code, we are able to build the RTI DDS libraries for any of the platforms on which we require support. The communications functionality is based on UDP multicasting. Multicasting is an efficient communications mechanism with low overheads which avoids duplicated point-to-point transmission of data on a network where there are multiple recipients of the data. In the paper we present a performance evaluation of DDS against the current HTTP-based implementation as well as the historical DataSocket implementation. We conclude with a summary and describe future work.

Implementations of the Semiconductor Equipment Communications Standard (SECS) are uneven across mask shop tool sets, which often implement only tool control functionality and ignore data collection. Furthermore, data collection, if implemented at all, typically exposes only a fraction of the information available within log files created by the tool. This leaves a veritable wealth of information languishing unused in tool log files – data that could provide key insights toward improvements in tool performance, processes and utilization. This paper discusses a reusable, lightweight framework for mining data from mask shop tool log files. It details the categories of data that can be mined using this framework, as well as different actions that can be triggered based on the data. The paper also proposes a generic log file format that mask shop tool vendors can implement on any tool to facilitate tool troubleshooting and simplify automated data collection.

For years, the technology of TFT-LCDs (thin-film-transistor liquid crystal displays) has grown very rapidly, especially in the market share and technical development of FPD industries. To effectively promote the industry's capacity for the mass production and quality control, it is urgent to design and develop LC cell optical parameter measurement systems. The goal of this paper is to develop a multiple-functional and cost-effective measurement system to lower the manufacturing cost for the industry. The optical parameters includes the pretilt angle, liquid crystal (LC) cell gap (or phase retardation), and twist angle, which highly influence the display quality. In this paper, we first study the past approaches and analyze their measurement performance. Then, a simple and cost-effective method is proposed to achieve the multiple functions. That is, in addition to the precise measurement of the three important optical parameters, the proposed system can measure the voltage-transmittance (V-T) curve. In our approach, the theoretical study, simulation, and experiment are performed to show the feasibility of the system implementation. Finally, the proposed system is developed to automatically measure the LC cell parameters. Experimental results indicate that the proposed measurement system gives a satisfactory result.

This paper describes the design and implementation of Cascades, a scalable, flexible and composable middleware platform for multi-modal sensor networking applications. The middleware is designed to provide a way for application writers to use pre-packaged routines as well as incorporate their own application-tailored code when necessary. As sensor systems become more diverse in both hardware and sensing modalities, such systems support will become critical. Furthermore, the systems software must not only be flexible, but also be efficient and provide high performance. Experimentation in this paper compares and contrasts several possible implementations based upon testbed measurements on embedded devices. Our experimentation shows that such a system can indeed be constructed.

In a typical machine vision algorithm, a few complex operators may account for a significant fraction of the overall execution time. In addition to these, there are usually many simple 3x3 operators which are used over and over. Although individually fairly fast, these operators sometimes dominate the overall execution time because they are used so many times. And because they are fairly fast, little attention is paid to speeding them up. The many previous papers describing the SKIPSM paradigm have concentrated mainly on large-neighborhood operations, because speed improvements are the most dramatic in such cases. In this paper, SKIPSM implementations of some common 3x3 linearly-separable and nonseparable operators are considered. Examples include low-pass (i.e., blurring and smoothing) filters, band-pass filters, high-pass (i.e., edge detector) filters, and gradient operators. Speed comparisons between conventional implementations and SKIPSM implementations are presented.

This paper proposes an integrated framework for the high level design of high performance signal processing algorithms' implementations on FPGAs. The framework emerged from a constant need to rapidly implement increasingly complicated algorithms on FPGAs while maintaining the high performance needed in many real time digital signal processing applications. This is particularly important for application developers who often rely on iterative and interactive development methodologies. The central idea behind the proposed framework is to dynamically integrate high performance structural hardware description languages with higher level hardware languages in other to help satisfy the dual requirement of high level design and high performance implementation. The paper illustrates this by integrating two environments: Celoxica's Handel-C language, and HIDE, a structural hardware environment developed at the Queen's University of Belfast. On the one hand, Handel-C has been proven to be very useful in the rapid design and prototyping of FPGA circuits, especially control intensive ones. On the other hand, HIDE, has been used extensively, and successfully, in the generation of highly optimised parameterisable FPGA cores. In this paper, this is illustrated in the construction of a scalable and fully parameterisable core for image algebra's five core neighbourhood operations, where fully floorplanned efficient FPGA configurations, in the form of EDIF netlists, are generated automatically for instances of the core. In the proposed combined framework, highly optimised data paths are invoked dynamically from within Handel-C, and are synthesized using HIDE. Although the idea might seem simple prima facie, it could have serious implications on the design of future generations of hardware description languages.

The multisensor-multitarget Bayes filter is the foundation for multi-sensor-multitarget detection, tracking, and identification. This paper addresses the question of principled implementation of this filter. Algorithms can always be cobbled together using catch-as-catch-can heuristic techniques. In formal Bayes modeling one instead derives statistically precise, implementation-independent equations from which principle approximations can then be derived. Indeed, this has become the accepted methodology for single-sensor, single-target tracking R&D. In the case of the multitarget filter, however, partisans of a so-called "plain-vanilla Bayesian approach" have disparaged formal Bayes modelling, and have protrayed specific, ad hoc implementations as completely general, "powerful and robust computational methods." In this and a companion paper I expose the speciousness of such claims. This paper reviews the elements of formal Bayes modeling and approximation, describes what they must look like in the multitarget case, and contrasts them with the "plain-vanilla Bayesian approach."© (2004) COPYRIGHT SPIE--The International Society for Optical Engineering. Downloading of the abstract is permitted for personal use only.

This paper presents arithmetic implementations which use binary redundant numbers based on carry-save representations. It is well- known that constant-time addition, in which the execution delay is independent of operand length, is feasible only if the result is expressed in a redundant representation. Carry-save based formats are one type of a redundant representation which can lead to highly efficient implementations of arithmetic operations. In this paper, we discuss two specific carry-save formats that lead to particularly efficient realizations. We illustrate these formats, and the 'equal-weight grouping' (EWG) mechanism wherein bits having the same weight are grouped together during an arithmetic operation. This mechanism can reduce the area and delay complexity of an implementation. We present a detailed comparison of implementations based on these two carry-save formats including measurements from VLSI cell layouts. We then illustrate the application of these VLSI cells for multi-operand additions in fast parallel multipliers. Finally, we also indicate the relationship with previous results.© (2000) COPYRIGHT SPIE--The International Society for Optical Engineering. Downloading of the abstract is permitted for personal use only.

Perspective flightpath displays and the depiction of 3-D terrain are regarded as a potential means to increase safety. Although the technology to generate such presentations in real-time is available, other issues which are required for a safe introduction must still be resolved. This paper focuses on some of the major obstacles which are still present. It discusses several objections against perspective flightpath displays and shows why most of them are no longer justified. The potential for an increase in safety is related to navigation, guidance, and control task requirements, and potential implementations, ranging in complexity, to satisfy these requirements are discussed. This classification allows a gradual transition from today's 2-D symbolic displays to future spatial displays. The paper proposes an approach which supports an evolutionary introduction of 3-D navigation displays into the cockpit.© (1998) COPYRIGHT SPIE--The International Society for Optical Engineering. Downloading of the abstract is permitted for personal use only.

This paper describes a unique, linear, sensitive, optically triggered RF switch for use in antenna switching, antenna reconfiguration, and microwave circuit control. California Microwave, Inc. is actively seeking practical implementations of such switches for several applications, most notably our Synaptic antenna, and have trademarked the devices as PhotistorsTM. Three key technologies are necessary for the successful implementation of Synaptic antennas: PhotistorsTM, optical sources, and digital control. The scope of this paper will be limited to PhotistorsTM and their application. Steve Wojtczuk of Spire Corp. has been responsible for the design and fabrication of the current iteration of these devices. The following topics will be presented: (1) an introduction to this technology, (2) details of the switches, (3) current applications, and (4) future development.© (1996) COPYRIGHT SPIE--The International Society for Optical Engineering. Downloading of the abstract is permitted for personal use only.

The Radiological Society of North America (RSNA) has sponsored demonstrations of the DICOM Standard. The technical details of the demonstrations were initially defined by the MedPACS section of NEMA beginning in 1992 and in subsequent years by RSNA. The Mallinckrodt Institute of Radiology was awarded a series of contracts by the RSNA to provide Central Test Node (CTN) software at the RSNA annual meetings to help vendors demonstrate interoperability. A goal of the early demonstrations was to have vendors communicate with one implementation of the Standard to minimize the amount of testing that needed to be performed prior to the RSNA Annual Meetings. Now that the Standard is better understood and implementations are more mature, vendors are offering more commercial products that utilize the Standard and which communicate with equipment manufactured by other vendors. The DICOM Standard is a technical specification which defines interfaces between equipment. These interfaces are currently defined for network, point to point and disk media. As a technical specification, the Standard does not tell the reader how to design an implementation nor does it provide insight into the thought process of the writers. This paper describes some of the implementation questions and issues that we have seen while working with the CTN software and vendors during the last four years. Examples of problem areas include application entity titles, generation of DICOM unique identifiers and queries for the query/retrieve service classes. The DICOM Standard defines the message formats for association negotiation and exchange of data across the network but provides flexibility in how these messages are used. A specific example is that an application is allowed to propose every service class defined by the Standard when requesting an association but may choose to exchange messages using only one service class once the association is established (for example, storage of CR data). We captured messages sent by vendor applications to the CTN during the 1995 RSNA DICOM demonstration. This paper will discuss some of the ways that vendors have chosen to propose associations and how they utilized the Standard to perform query/retrieve operations.© (1996) COPYRIGHT SPIE--The International Society for Optical Engineering. Downloading of the abstract is permitted for personal use only.

This paper discusses free-space optical interconnects from four perspectives: need, system architectures, major enabling technology, and component and system packaging. The need for such interconnection in telecommunication/datacommunication switching networks and fine- grained parallel computers is described. Since most of the envisioned systems fall into the two architectural classes of optical backplanes and 3-D systems, the paper describes these classes in detail. And the reader is introduced to the major enabling technology of smart pixel arrays. Finally, the paper describes attempts to implement free-space optical interconnect systems and some of the interesting thermal management issues that these implementations raise.© (1996) COPYRIGHT SPIE--The International Society for Optical Engineering. Downloading of the abstract is permitted for personal use only.

A rich theoretical background to the problems that occur in the automation of material handling can be found in operations research, production engineering, systems engineering and automation, more specifically machine vision, literature. This work has contributed towards the design of intelligent handling systems. This paper will review the application of these automated material handling and packing techniques to industrial problems. The discussion will also highlight the systems integration issues involved in these applications. An outline of one such industrial application, the automated placement of shape templates on to leather hides, is also discussed. The purpose of this system is to arrange shape templates on a leather hide in an efficient manner, so as to minimize the leather waste, before they are automatically cut from the hide. These pieces are used in the furniture and car manufacturing industries for the upholstery of high quality leather chairs and car seats. Currently this type of operation is semi-automated. The paper will outline the problems involved in the full automation of such a procedure.

Robots operating in unstructured environments require continuous utilization of sensors and intelligence for adapting to changing situations. In this paper a control method to achieve this goal is described and preliminary experiments are discussed. The control scheme is based on a hierarchically organized set of planning-executing-monitoring (PEM) cycles. Every PEM cycle is a goal-oriented module, which consists of three generic activities -- planning, executing, and monitoring -- and a separate meta control mechanism, which takes care of the control of generic activities inside a PEM cycle. We present our design experiments beginning from the development of a PEM-based logical model for an autonomous machine, and continue to the development of an implementation model for a loading manipulator control system. The laboratory implementations in two industrial robot environments are also described as well as plans for PEM-control implementation for a heavy-duty manipulator designed for loading paper rolls in harbor sites.

The paper discusses different types of optical implementations of symbolic substitution. A distinction is made between fixed rule systems and dynamic rule systems. The paper also addresses the issue of miniaturization and integration.

Satellite tracking and imaging is conducted by the ANU Research School of Astronomy and Astrophysics (RSAA) and Electro-Optic Systems at Mount Stromlo as part of the Space Environment Management Cooperative Research Centre to support debris tracking. To optimally design adaptive optics systems for those applications, it is important to know the atmospheric profile, i.e. how the turbulence is distributed as a function altitude. We have designed a new stereo-SCIDAR instrument1 to conduct a site characterisation campaign at Mount Stromlo site. This paper summarises our current progress: specifications, design choices and post-processing techniques. In particular, we compare two different post-processing algorithms for stereo-SCIDAR, using simulated data cubes. One of the codes is implemented by the RSAA, the other by the Centre for Advanced Instrumentation, University of Durham. The comparison shows that the current implementations of both codes produce decent results. However, we can see potential for further improvements.

Many articles on neural networks focus on learning, and restrict themselves to a limited class of simple neurons. The present paper is a tutorial designed, by contrast, to emphasize the "domain-specific" structure of neural networks, as well as to emphasize that technologists have much to learn from the study of neurobiological systems. The paper does not discuss optical implementations the author would appreciate comments on the feasibility of such implementations for the neural (and schema) networks described here.

Given a map in which each position is associated with a traversability cost, the path planning problem is to find a minimum-cost path from a source position to every other position in the map. The paper proposes a dynamic programming algorithm to solve the problem, and analyzes the exact number of operations that the algorithm takes. The algorithm accesses the map in a highly regular way, so it is suitable for parallel implementation. The paper describes two general methods of mapping the dynamic programming algorithm onto the linear systolic array in the Warp machine developed by Carnegie Mellon. Both methods have led to efficient implementations on Warp. It is concluded that a linear systolic array of powerful cells like the one in Warp is effective in implementing the dynamic programming algorithm for solving the path planning problem.

ARINC 818, titled Avionics Digital Video Bus (ADVB), is the standard for cockpit video that has gained wide acceptance in both the commercial and military cockpits including the Boeing 787, the A350XWB, the A400M, the KC- 46A and many others. Initially conceived of for cockpit displays, ARINC 818 is now propagating into high-speed sensors, such as infrared and optical cameras due to its high-bandwidth and high reliability. The ARINC 818 specification that was initially release in the 2006 and has recently undergone a major update that will enhance its applicability as a high speed sensor interface. The ARINC 818-2 specification was published in December 2013. The revisions to the specification include: video switching, stereo and 3-D provisions, color sequential implementations, regions of interest, data-only transmissions, multi-channel implementations, bi-directional communication, higher link rates to 32Gbps, synchronization signals, options for high-speed coax interfaces and optical interface details. The additions to the specification are especially appealing for high-bandwidth, multi sensor systems that have issues with throughput bottlenecks and SWaP concerns. ARINC 818 is implemented on either copper or fiber optic high speed physical layers, and allows for time multiplexing multiple sensors onto a single link. This paper discusses each of the new capabilities in the ARINC 818-2 specification and the benefits for ISR and countermeasures implementations, several examples are provided.

Modern Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (ISR) systems are increasingly being assembled from autonomous systems, so the resulting ISR system is a System of Systems (SoS). In order to take full advantage of the capabilities of the ISR SoS, the architecture and the design of these SoS should be able to facilitate the benefits inherent in a SoS approach - high resilience, higher level of adaptability and higher diversity, enabling on-demand system composition. The tasks performed by ISR SoS can well go beyond basic data acquisition, conditioning and communication as data processing can be easily integrated in the SoS. Such an ISR SoS can perform data fusion, classification and tracking (and conditional sensor tasking for additional data acquisition), these are extremely challenging tasks in this context, especially if the fusion is performed in a distributed manner. Our premise for the ISR SoS design and deployment is that the system is not designed as a complete system, where the capabilities of individual data providers are considered and the interaction paths, including communication channel capabilities, are specified at design time. Instead, we assume a loosely coupled SoS, where the data needs for a specific fusion task are described at a high level at design time and data providers (i.e., sensor systems) required for a specific fusion task are discovered dynamically at run time, the selection criteria for the data providers being the type and properties of data that can be provided by the specific data provider. The paper describes some of the aspects of a distributed ISR SoS design and implementation, bringing examples on both architectural design as well as on algorithm implementations.

Pattern matching tools have become increasingly common in physical design flows for verification and layout analysis. Recently developed topological-based pattern matching engines offer several advantages over conventional three-value logic implementations. In this paper the use of such topological engines is explored for measuring physical design regularity, driving improvements in overall regularity, and for implementing targeted enhancements for suboptimal layout configurations.

Many military and civilian applications depend on the ability to remotely sense chemical clouds using hyperspectral imagers, from detecting small but lethal concentrations of chemical warfare agents to mapping plumes in the aftermath of natural disasters. Real-time operation is critical in these applications but becomes diffcult to achieve as the number of chemicals we search for increases. In this paper, we present efficient CPU and GPU implementations of matched-filter based algorithms so that real-time operation can be maintained with higher chemical-signature counts. The optimized C++ implementations show between 3x and 9x speedup over vectorized MATLAB implementations.

Face recognition algorithm based on compressed sensing and sparse representation is hotly argued in these years. The scheme of this algorithm increases recognition rate as well as anti-noise capability. However, the computational cost is expensive and has become a main restricting factor for real world applications. In this paper, we introduce a GPU-accelerated hybrid variant of face recognition algorithm named parallel face recognition algorithm (pFRA). We describe here how to carry out parallel optimization design to take full advantage of many-core structure of a GPU. The pFRA is tested and compared with several other implementations under different data sample size. Finally, Our pFRA, implemented with NVIDIA GPU and Computer Unified Device Architecture (CUDA) programming model, achieves a significant speedup over the traditional CPU implementations.

This paper will introduce a new Multitarget Multi-Bernoulli (MeMBer) recursion for tracking targets traveling under multiple motion models. The proposed interacting multiple model MeMBer (IMM-MeMBer) filter uses Jump Markov Models (JMM) to extended the basic MeMBer recursion to allow for multiple motion models. This extension is implemented using both the SMC and GM based MeMBer approximations. The recursive prediction and update equations are presented for both implementations. Each multiple model implementation is validated against its respective standard MeMBer implementation as well as against each other. This validation is done using a simulated scenario containing multiple maneuvering targets. A variety of metrics are observed including target detection capability, estimate accuracy and model likelihood determination.

State-of-the-art hardware-in-the-loop (HWIL) test facilities have been established and in operation at the U.S. Army's Aviation and Missile Research, Development, and Engineering Center (AMRDEC) in McMorrow Laboratories, on Redstone Arsenal Alabama for over 37 years. These facilities have been successfully developed and employed supporting numerous tactical and interceptor missile systems. The AMRDEC HWIL facilities are constantly in a state state of modification and revision supporting evolving test requirements related to increasingly complex sensor suites, guidance implementations, and employment strategies prevalent within both existing and emerging aviation and missile programs. . This paper surveys the role of the U.S. Army Aviation and Missile Research, Development, and Engineering Center (AMRDEC) in the development and operation of HWIL test facilities and the implementation of new, innovative technologies that have been integrated within facility test assets. This technology spans both the Near IR (NIR- 1.064um) and IR (3 - 12um) and RF (2 - 95 GHz) operating ranges. The AMRDEC HWIL facilities represent the highest degree of simulation fidelity, integrating all the major parts of a HWIL simulation including tactical missile and seeker hardware, executive control software, scene generation, and NIR, IR or RF scene projection systems. Successful incorporation of scene generation and projection technologies have become a key thrust of the AMRDEC HWIL development focus, with the intention to adapt and anticipate emerging test element requirements necessitated by future system sensing technologies.

A roadmap has been proposed to optimize the simulation of breast anatomy by parallel implementation, in order to reduce the time needed to generate software breast phantoms. The rapid generation of high resolution phantoms is needed to support virtual clinical trials of breast imaging systems. We have recently developed an octree-based recursive partitioning algorithm for breast anatomy simulation. The algorithm has good asymptotic complexity; however, its current MATLAB implementation cannot provide optimal execution times. The proposed roadmap for efficient parallelization includes the following steps: (i) migrate the current code to a C/C++ platform and optimize it for single-threaded implementation; (ii) modify the code to allow for multi-threaded CPU implementation; (iii) identify and migrate the code to a platform designed for multithreaded GPU implementation. In this paper, we describe our results in optimizing the C/C++ code for single-threaded and multi-threaded CPU implementations. As the first step of the proposed roadmap we have identified a bottleneck component in the MATLAB implementation using MATLAB's profiling tool, and created a single threaded CPU implementation of the algorithm using C/C++'s overloaded operators and standard template library. The C/C++ implementation has been compared to the MATLAB version in terms of accuracy and simulation time. A 520-fold reduction of the execution time was observed in a test of phantoms with 50- 400 μm voxels. In addition, we have identified several places in the code which will be modified to allow for the next roadmap milestone of the multithreaded CPU implementation.

Nowadays everywhere we come across electronic devices and now the world has become entirely mobile with so many new electronic equipments. The number of computing and telecommunications devices is increasing and consequently the focus on how to connect them to each other. The usual solution is to connect the device with cables or using infra red light to make file transfer and synchronizations possible but infrared light requires line of sight. To solve these problems a new technology,Wibree radio technology complements other local connectivity technologies, consuming only a fraction of the power compared to other radio technologies, enabling smaller and less costly implementations and being easy to integrate with Bluetooth solutions, Furthermore it can be also used to enable communication between several units such as small radio LANs.This paper focuses on why this technology has got large attention although there are pro's and con's with respect to other technologies.

At W. M. Keck Observatory we recently examined and prototyped what it would take to adapt publish-subscribe middleware, namely Data Distribution Service (DDS), to a remote procedure call (RPC) style peer-to-peer architecture. The design and prototype was based on the middleware neutral Common Services Framework (CSF) in use by NSO for the Advanced Technology Solar Telescope (ATST). The paper describes the process used to adapt DDS for RPC style commands. It highlights the differences encountered between the RTI and PrismTech implementations, and contrasts the ICE based connection service in CSF to one based on DDS.

The paper describes a field programmable gate array implementation of the main part of speech recognition system - feature extraction. In order to accelerate recognition the whole cepstral analysis scheme is implemented in hardware by the use of intellectual property cores. Two field programmable gate array devices are used for evaluation. Comparative experimental results of four different implementations are presented. They grounds achieved 29 times faster speech analysis in comparison with software based analysis subsystem.

The application of High Performance Computing (HPC) technology to remote sensing data processing is one solution to meet the requirements of remote sensing real- or near-real-time processing capabilities. We presented a cluster-based parallel processing system for HJ-1 satellites data, named Cluster Pro. This paper presents the basic architecture and implementation of the system. We did imagery mosaic experiment with the Cluster Pro, where the HJ-1 CCD data in Beijing city was used. The experiments showed that the Cluster Pro was a useful system to improve the efficiency of data processing. Further work would focus on the comprehensive parallel design and implementations of remote sensing data processing.

Efficient Global Optimization (EGO) is a competent evolutionary algorithm which can be useful for problems with expensive cost functions [1,2,3,4,5]. The goal is to find the global minimum using as few function evaluations as possible. Our research indicates that EGO requires far fewer evaluations than genetic algorithms (GAs). However, both algorithms do not always drill down to the absolute minimum, therefore the addition of a final local search technique is indicated. In this paper, we introduce three "endgame" techniques. The techniques can improve optimization efficiency (fewer cost function evaluations) and, if required, they can provide very accurate estimates of the global minimum. We also report results using a different cost function than the one previously used [2,3].

Mask order automation has increased steadily over the years through a variety of individual mask customer implementations. These have been supported by customer-specific software at the mask suppliers to support the variety of customer output formats. Some customers use the SEMI P10 1 standard, some use supplier-specific formats, and some use customer-specific formats. Some customers use little automation and depend instead on close customer-supplier relationships. Implementations are varied in quality and effectiveness. A major factor which has prolonged the adoption of more advanced and effective solutions has been a lack of understanding of the economic benefits. Some customers think standardized automation mainly benefits the mask supplier in order entry automation, but this ignores a number of other significant benefits which differ dramatically for each party in the supply chain. This paper discusses the nature of those differing advantages and presents simple models suited to four business cases: integrated device manufacturers (IDM), fabless companies, foundries and mask suppliers. Examples and estimates of the financial advantages for these business types will be shown.

Grid is a resource management technology which provides infrastructures to execute applications. Grid manages resources and provides an infrastructure composed of computing, storage and other resources. While Grid assumes existence of network which connects resources, network used to be considered as a non-manageable resource. However, in these several years, an idea and implementations to use bandwidth of network as a manageable resource have been proposed and demonstrated. Using this kind of schemes together with optical circuit (path) switching technology, a high-performance, energy-efficient and low-cost IT infrastructure can be realized. In this paper, the G-lambda project and its experiments, in which lambdas (optical paths) are reserved and used by requests from applications and middleware, are introduced.

Non-rigid multi-modal volume registration is computationally intensive due to its high-dimensional parameter space, where common CPU computation times are several minutes. Medical imaging applications using registration, however, demand ever faster implementations for several purposes: matching the data acquisition speed, providing smooth user interaction and steering for quality control, and performing population registration involving multiple datasets. Current GPUs offer an opportunity to boost the registration speed through high computational power at low cost. In our previous work, we have presented a GPU implementation of a non-rigid multi-modal volume registration that was 6 - 8 times faster than a software implementation. In this paper, we extend this work by describing how new features of the DX10-compatible GPUs and additional optimization strategies can be employed to further improve the algorithm performance. We have compared our optimized version with the previous version on the same GPU, and have observed a speedup factor of 3.6. Compared with the software implementation, we achieve a speedup factor of up to 44.

The polar format algorithm (PFA) is a well known method for forming imagery in both the radar community and the medical imaging community. PFA is attractive because it has low computational cost, and it partially compensates for phase errors due to a target's motion through resolution cells (MTRC). Since the imaging scenarios for remote sensing and medical imaging are traditionally different, the PFA implementation is different between the communities. This paper describes the differences in PFA implementation. The performance of two illustrative implementations is compared using synthetic radar and medical imagery.

The probability hypothesis density (PHD) filter has attracted increasing interest since the author first introduced it in 2000. Potentially practical computational implementations of this filter have been devised, based on sequential Monte Carlo or on Gaussian mixture techniques. Research groups in at least a dozen different nations are investigating the PHD filter and its generalization, the CPHD filter, for use in various applications. Some of this work suggests that these filters may, under certain circumstances, outperform conventional multitarget filters such as MHT and JPDA. This paper summarizes these research efforts and their findings.

Unmanned vehicles (UxV) operate in numerous environments, with air, ground and marine representing the majority of the implementations. All unmanned vehicles, when traversing unknown space, have similar requirements. They must sense their environment, create a world representation, and, then plan a path that safely avoids obstacles and hazards. Traditionally, each unmanned vehicle class used environment specific assumptions to create a unique world representation that was tailored to it operating environment. Thus, an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) used the simplest possible world representation, where all space above the ground plane was free of obstacles. Conversely, an unmanned ground vehicle (UGV) required a world representation that was suitable to its complex and unstructured environment. Such a clear cut differentiation between UAV and UGV environments is no longer valid as UAVs have migrated down to elevations where terrestrial structures are located. Thus, the operating environment for a low flying UAV contains similarities to the environments experienced by UGVs. As a result, the world representation techniques and algorithms developed for UGVs are now applicable to UAVs, since low flying UAVs must sense and represent its world in order to avoid obstacles. Defence R&D Canada (DRDC) conducts research and development in both the UGV and UAV fields. Researchers have developed a platform neutral world representation, based upon a uniform 2 1 / 2 -D elevation grid, that is applicable to many UxV classes, including aerial and ground vehicles. This paper describes DRDC's generic world representation, known as the Global Terrain map, and provides an example of unmanned ground vehicle implementation, along with details of it applicability to aerial vehicles.

The ALMA Common Software (ACS) provides the software infrastructure used by ALMA and by several other telescope projects, thanks also to the choice of adopting the LGPL public license. ACS is a set of application frameworks providing the basic services needed for object oriented distributed computing. Among these are transparent remote object invocation, object deployment and location based on a container/component model, distributed error, alarm handling, logging and events. ACS is based on CORBA and built on top of free CORBA implementations. Free software is extensively used wherever possible. The general architecture of ACS was presented at SPIE 2002. ACS has been under development for 6 years and it is midway through its development life. Many applications have been written using ACS; the ALMA test facility, APEX and other telescopes are running systems based on ACS. This is therefore a good time to look back and see what have been until now the strong and the weak points of ACS in terms of architecture and implementation. In this perspective, it is very important to analyze the applications based on ACS, the feedback received by the users and the impact that this feedback has had on the development of ACS itself, by favoring the development of some features with respect to others. The purpose of this paper is to describe the results of this analysis and discuss what we would like to do in order to extend and improve ACS in the coming years, in particular to make application development easier and more efficient.

The incorporation of hyperspectral sensors aboard airborne/satellite platforms is currently producing a nearly continual stream of multidimensional image data, and this high data volume has soon introduced new processing challenges. The price paid for the wealth spatial and spectral information available from hyperspectral sensors is the enormous amounts of data that they generate. Several applications exist, however, where having the desired information calculated quickly enough for practical use is highly desirable. High computing performance of algorithm analysis is particularly important in homeland defense and security applications, in which swift decisions often involve detection of (sub-pixel) military targets (including hostile weaponry, camouflage, concealment, and decoys) or chemical/biological agents. In order to speed-up computational performance of hyperspectral imaging algorithms, this paper develops several fast parallel data processing techniques. Techniques include four classes of algorithms: (1) unsupervised classification, (2) spectral unmixing, and (3) automatic target recognition, and (4) onboard data compression. A massively parallel Beowulf cluster (Thunderhead) at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland is used to measure parallel performance of the proposed algorithms. In order to explore the viability of developing onboard, real-time hyperspectral data compression algorithms, a Xilinx Virtex-II field programmable gate array (FPGA) is also used in experiments. Our quantitative and comparative assessment of parallel techniques and strategies may help image analysts in selection of parallel hyperspectral algorithms for specific applications.

To meet the demand for more reliable sensory data, longer sensor calibration cycles, and more useful information for operators at NASA's Kennedy Space Center (KSC), NASA's Instrumentation Branch and ASRC's Advanced Electronics and Technology Development Laboratory at the KSC are developing custom intelligent sensors based on the IEEE 1451 family of smart-sensor standards. The KSC intelligent sensors are known as Smart Networked Elements (SNEs), and each SNE includes transducers and their associated Transducer Electronic Data Sheets (TEDS), signal conditioning, analog-to-digital conversion, software algorithms for performing health checks on the data, and a network connection for sending data to other SNEs and higher-level systems. The development of the SNE has led to the definition of custom architectures, protocols, IEEE 1451 implementations, and TEDS, which are presented in this paper. The IEEE 1451 standards describe the architecture, message formats, software objects, and communication protocols within the smart sensor. Because of the standard's complexity, KSC has simplified the IEEE 1451 architecture and narrowed the scope of software objects to be included in the SNE to create a "light" IEEE 1451 implementation, and has used the manufacturer-defined TEDS to customize the SNE with health indicators. Furthermore, KSC has developed a protocol that allows the SNEs to communicate over an Ethernet network while reducing bandwidth requirements.

In this paper, full implementations of structural health monitoring systems for long-span bridges and large-span domes are introduced. The frameworks of the health monitoring systems are introduced. The types and locations of sensors are also presented. The data acquisition system, including scheme of data acquisition system, strategies of collecting data, instrument and software used in the data acquisition system, is described. The data transmitting system, data management system and warning system are also designed. Based on the data collected by the structural health monitoring systems, response and dynamic properties of the structures, and the loads are statistically analyzed. Finite element (FE) model is updated based on the measured data by structural health monitoring.

This paper presents an analysis of the requirements for instruments for meteorological applications, presents different implementation options with their prime benefits and drawbacks and discusses the optimization space. The different scanner options with their influence on the architecture of the optical system and the focal plane assembly are addressed. This leads to different candidate implementations. For those the optimization space is described leading to a preferred solution in form of a rotating reflective optics, an in-field spectral separation and a matrix based focal plane assembly. The main advantages of such a system are its flexibility with respect to the possible number of spectral channels, the possible radiometric resolution, and the variability of the geometrical resolution. It is shown that results of a first design iteration demonstrate the feasibility of the chosen approach.

Digital imagery is important in many applications today, and the security of digital imagery is important today and is likely to gain in importance in the near future. The emerging international standard ISO/IEC JPEG-2000 Security (JPSEC) is designed to provide security for digital imagery, and in particular digital imagery coded with the JPEG-2000 image coding standard. One of the primary goals of a standard is to ensure interoperability between creators and consumers produced by different manufacturers. The JPSEC standard, similar to the popular JPEG and MPEG family of standards, specifies only the bitstream syntax and the receiver's processing, and not how the bitstream is created or the details of how it is consumed. This paper examines the interoperability for the JPSEC standard, and presents an example JPSEC consumption process which can provide insights in the design of JPSEC consumers. Initial interoperability tests between different groups with independently created implementations of JPSEC creators and consumers have been successful in providing the JPSEC security services of confidentiality (via encryption) and authentication (via message authentication codes, or MACs). Further interoperability work is on-going.

In research conducted at academic and community hospitals in the United States since 2001, this paper examines complex human and technological relationships employed to renegotiate behavior within hospital administrative and clinical cultures. In the planning and implementation of PACS in a four-facility hospital we will enter into what can be described as processes of "adoption" and "resistance", seemingly opposite approaches to system implementation, which I argue are in fact key responses to planning, design, and customization of imaging and information systems in a context of convergence. In a larger context of convergence known as NBIC tools (nanotechnology, biotechnology, information technology, and cognitive sciences) it has become increasingly clear to leaders in the field that it is essential to redesign organizational technologies. A novel system has little chance of being fully utilized by conventional organizational structures in an era of system convergence. The challenge of embracing a larger systems perspective lies in opening untapped potential within the healthcare enterprise by preparing the ground for reflection on new approaches to training, and bridging specialized knowledge across computer engineering, clinical decision making, and organizational perspectives for the benefit of patient care. Case studies will demonstrate how organizational and system design technologies are crucial in insuring that PACS implementation strategies can encourage the emergence of new levels of quality for patient care. The goal is to provide successful design-build models that are true to organizational specificity, persons, and clinical practices undergoing change and uncertainty.

Managing medical digital information objects, and in particular medical images is an enterprise-grade problem. Firstly, there is the sheer amount of digital data that is generated in the proliferation of digital (and film-free) medical imaging. Secondly, the managing software ought to enjoy high availability, recoverability and manageability that are found only in the most business-critical systems. Indeed, such requirements are borrowed from the business enterprise world. Moreover, the solution for the medical information management problem should too employ the same software tools, middlewares and architectures. It is safe to say that all first-line medical PACS products strive to provide a solution for all these challenging requirements. The DICOM standard has been a prime enabler of such solutions. DICOM created the interconnectivity, which made it possible for a PACS service to manage millions of exams consisting of trillions of images. With the more comprehensive IHE architecture, the enterprise is expanded into a multi-facility regional conglomerate, which presents extreme demands from the data management system. HIPPA legislations add considerable challenges per security, privacy and other legal issues, which aggravate the situation. In this paper, we firstly present what in our view should be the general requirements for a first-line medical PACS, taken from an enterprise medical imaging storage and management solution perspective. While these requirements can be met by homegrown implementations, we suggest looking at the existing technologies, which have emerged in the recent years to meet exactly these challenges in the business world. We present an evolutionary process, which led to the design and implementation of a medical object management subsystem. This is indeed an enterprise medical imaging solution that is built upon respective technological components. The system answers all these challenges simply by not reinventing wheels, but rather reusing the best “wheels” for the job. Relying on such middleware components allowed us to concentrate on added value for this specific problem domain.

Nowadays, in computer-generated diffractive optical element design or correlation filter computation, cell-oriented techniques incepted in the 1960’s or early 1970’s are sometimes still being used. It can seem surprising since point-oriented techniques have proved to provide better performance than cell-oriented ones. In this paper, we show that unless extremely short computation times are required, cell-oriented techniques should be avoided and point-oriented techniques should be preferably used because they always provide significantly better performance for a given space-bandwidth product: we extend the approach we already used for the implementation of correlation filters onto spatial light modulators (SLMs) to the design of diffractive optical elements (DOEs) and their implementation onto SLMs. In any case, even if the design is much simpler and the physical meaning clearly appears when cell-oriented methods are used, the performance in terms of diffraction efficiency and signal to noise ratio remains poor. An objective comparison is given with the help of the optimal trade-off framework. Simulations as well as experimental results are provided for various cell-oriented and point-oriented methods. Optical implementations are carried out with a twisted nematic liquid crystal SLM.

This article presents strategies, implementations and applications of handling infrared FPA data streams at high data rates on most recent standard PCs. Those data streams require maximum data throughput of modern PCs. Real-time non-uniformity correction (gain and offset correction) of those high speed infrared FPA data streams will be discussed. The performance of PC based systems for Real-Time data Acquisition and data Hard Disk Storage (RT-AHDS) will be described in more detail. Some of the Thermosensorik systems for use in research and development, as well as in in-line testing systems in industry for various applications will be presented. This paper describes some of the demanding tasks for the PC based concept, as well as some major advantages.