A structure and method is described for fabricating a nuclear radiation induced damage resistant P-type buried channel charge-coupled device (P-BCD) which converts an optical image focused thereon into a time varying electrical signal. The invention uses a differentially related high level dosing of dopant in the buried channel accompanied by processing at minimum effective temperatures, thereby enhancing device tolerance to exposure to nuclear radiation induced displacement and ionization damage which otherwise would degrade the imaging performance of the device.

The present invention relates to a nuclear radiation induced displacement and ionization damage resistant semiconductor device which converts an optical image focused thereon into a time varying electrical signal. More particularly, it relates to a P-type buried channel charge-coupled device (P-BCD) which is uniquely doped and processed at minimum effective processing temperatures thereby enhancing device tolerance to exposure to nuclear radiation which otherwise would degrade the imaging performance of the device.
Electro-optical systems designed to sense images function by converting a spatially varying pattern of incident illumination falling upon a photo-sensitive surface into a time-varying electrical signal. The earliest such systems were mechanical scanners in which each picture element (pixel) was presented sequentially to an individual detector by means of rotating mirrors. The output of the detector was then a time-serial representation of the scene. Such imagers suffer from the fact that the detector is sensitive to photons from a given part of the scene only when that pixel is addressing the detector. If the scene being imaged consists of a large number of pixels, very poor overall sensitivity results.
Another class of imagers widely used in visible imaging, described in "Photoelectronic Imaging Devices" edited by L. M. Biberman and S. Nudelman (Plenum Press 1971), employs a position-controlled electron beam moving across a photo-sensitive surface in a raster fashion to detect an image focused onto that surface. Electron beams serve as nearly perfect commutator switches, sampling each of a plurality of pixels of the image in a time sequential manner. The surfaces used in such systems usually operate in a storage mode. In such a storage mode the photosensitive surface is charged by the scanning beam to a specified potential, which, in the absence of light, will be retained for a long time; that is until leakage processes give rise to a current, called "dark current", which discharges the surface. As long as the surface remains at the specified potential, it will accept no additional charge from the scanning beam.
However, light incident on the surface can give rise to currents which will discharge it, so that the beam current required to recharge it on the next pass is then proportional to the integrated photon flux incident on the photosensitive surface since the last pass. Such imagers are much more sensitive than those not using the storage mode, since the photosensitive surface is equivalent to many individual detectors, and all the light is detected, not just that incident during the brief interrogation period. All modern imagers employ this type of photon flux integration to exploit the sensitivity improvement which this mode of operation offers.
Both mechanical and electron beam scanners, however, have numerous disadvantages, and as a result, technologists have developed solid-state imaging systems using arrays of photosensitive elements for which the scanning function is accomplished by the application of electrical signals to interrogate one pixel at a time. Such scanning systems use several electrical control signals, with all electrodes of one type in an array being at the same voltage during one phase of the scanning cycle, and at a different voltage during other phases. In a carryover from electron beam tubes, such imagers operate the basic photosensitive device in the storage mode to enhance sensitivity. In addition to detection, self-scanned arrays also perform other signal processing functions, such as amplification, time delay and integration (TDI), multiplexing, anti blooming, background signal subtraction, etc. The material of choice for performing electronic functions such as these is silicon. When the spectral band in which imaging is to be done is one in which silicon can also serve as the photosensitive element, there is an ideal match, and the rapid progress in recent years in solid-state imagers for the visible spectrum attests to this fact.
Charge-coupled device (CCD) imagers are a particularly simple version of self-scanned solid state imagers and are described in "Imaging Devices Using the Charge-coupled Concept", by D. F. Barbe, Proceedings of the IEEE, Vol. 63, 38-67, January 1976. In the CCD imagers, each pixel consists of a metal-insulator semiconductor (MIS) structure, which, under appropriate bias voltages, establishes a potential minimum (well) in the semiconductor. When light is absorbed in the semiconductor, generating electron-hole pairs therein, minority carriers collect in charge packets at this potential well, while majority carriers are swept into the body of the semiconductor and merge with background carriers already there. The imager consists of a large array of such pixels, and thus can transfer charge packets in discrete time increments from one pixel to the next by forming a new potential well adjacent to the one holding the charge packet, and then eliminating the old well by changing the bias voltages that established it. Since the charge packets follow the potential wells, which are controlled by external voltages presented to the CCD array in various phases, transfer can be achieved in two spatial dimensions, and a two dimensional image achieved.
A CCD array is divided into vertical columns by channel stop diffusions, while electrodes running across the array at right angles to the channel stops divide the array into horizontal lines. In one version of the CCD imager, the electrodes are grouped into two sections: an integration section, in which the photon integration process takes place, and a storage section, in which the minority carrier packets are stored while being transferred to the output in a serial fashion. A horizontal readout register allows serial readout of data from the storage section. Both the storage section and the readout register are shielded from light, to prevent additional generation of carriers during the readout process.
In use, an image is focused on the optical integration section. Each pixel therein consists of several electrodes on which different voltages are applied to control the electrical potential in the semiconductor thereunder. The primary electrode of each pixel is held at a suitable voltage during a first phase of the control signal and the charge generated in the silicon by the incident light is separated by the fields existing therein. The minority carriers are swept into the potential wells beneath these electrodes and the majority carriers swept into the bulk silicon where they merge with the background carriers. Minority carriers generated by thermal processes are also swept into these potential wells, and comprise the "dark current", minimization of which is critical to successful CCD operation. To maintain the signal charges in the region where they were first generated each pixel is bounded in the direction of scan by other electrodes maintained at voltages which will not give rise to potential wells in the semiconductor, and in the direction perpendicular to the scan by the channel stop diffusions, that is regions of the semiconductor in which minority carriers are permanently prevented from entering by impurity atoms added during CCD manufacture. The amount of photon-generated charge collected in any given pixel is directly proportional to the number of photons incident on that pixel during the time over which light is integrated (the frame time), with a constant of proportionality being referred to as the quantum efficiency, ".eta.", usually considered to be spatially uniform over the array.
At the end of a relatively long integration period, the collected charges are transferred into the storage section in a short period of time by applying suitable clock pulses between a primary electrode and a plurality of secondary electrodes associated with each pixel in both the integration and storage sections. The secondary electrodes of each pixel which has been biased at voltages which constrain minority carriers from collecting under them are now biased at voltages such that potential minima form under them. Simultaneously, the bias voltage of the primary electrode is changed to a voltage such that the signal carriers are moved to the adjacent secondary electrode. By a sequence of such steps, the potential wells are moved toward the output register and the charge packets follow. Once the charge in each pixel in the integration section has been moved into the storage section, a new integration period or frame begins in the image section. During the new frame, while a new image is being integrated in the integration section, the charge constituting the first frame is moved, one line at a time, from the storage section into a serial readout register, and transferred horizontally to an output stage. The efficiency of charge transfer during each such step is called the Charge Transfer Efficiency (CTE), and is a critical parameter for CCDs. The signal arriving at the output at the time t.sub.ij is thus proportional to the light that fell on pixel ij during a particular frame, unless the transfer process causes charges to be delayed and become confused with a signal from pixel (i+1)j.
Electronic cameras featuring CCD imagers are used in a variety of military, scientific, medical, commercial, and consumer applications. For example, cam corders use a CCD imager. However, CCD vulnerability to nuclear radiation limits their use in important areas such as space surveillance, nuclear waste handling, scientific instrumentation, etc. During their early development period through the 1970s and 1980s, CCDs were found to suffer from the same radiation damage mechanisms which afflict other semiconductor devices using metal-insulator semiconductor (MIS) configurations, that is the buildup of electrical charge in the insulating layer and of surface states at silicon-insulator interfaces as a result of exposure to ionizing radiation. Early radiation effects research and development concentrated on such problems, and substantial progress was made in improving the CCD resistance to ionizing radiation, exposure to which is measured in terms of the total dose of ionizing radiation that has been absorbed, total dose usually being measured in rads (silicon).
As described in "CCDs in Astronomy" by J. Janesick, et al, Astronomical Society of the Pacific, Volume 8, Chapter 4, September 1989, as semiconductor fabrication technology advanced, larger arrays of pixels became possible which required that the minority carriers making up the charge packets be transported greater distances from a pixel site to the output gate (.apprxeq.1 cm, in some cases) without loss or delay. This imposed a requirement that did not apply to other MIS devices, that is that defects in the semiconductor capable of capturing and delaying minority carriers (called charge traps) be virtually eliminated from the silicon. Such traps degrade the Charge Transfer Efficiency, CTE, a parameter unique to CCD devices. CTE is usually very close to 1, so that it is easier described in terms of the Charge Transfer Inefficiency, CTI, which is defined as 1-CTE.
Process technologists have succeeded in reducing bulk defect concentrations to low levels in virgin devices. However, damage produced by nuclear radiation generates new crystalline defects, which serve as traps. The radiation damage mechanism which produces traps is called displacement damage, since it involves displacing a crystalline silicon atom from its position in the crystal lattice and forcing it into a position which it would not normally occupy. Displacement damage is different from ionization damage, but both can result from exposure to certain types of nuclear radiation. Because of the sensitivity of current CCD designs to radiation-induced charge traps, they are rendered unusable for some applications by radiation fluences which would be negligible by less demanding standards.
All modern CCD imagers take advantage of the fact that when electrons are the carrier in the charge packets, they move faster than their counterpart, holes. Thus, manufacturers of CCDs start with silicon which is P-type where electrical conduction is by the majority carrier, holes, which are positive carriers. Furthermore, the material used as the insulator in the metal insulator semiconductor (MIS) structure of which CCDs consist is silicon dioxide. These structures are then referred to as metal oxide semiconductor (MOS) devices, where MOS devices are a subset of MIS devices. Critical manufacturing decisions such as the specific insulator to be used, and the conductivity type of the starting material which will be employed determine many of the effects of nuclear radiation on the CCDs.
In order to understand the present invention it is important to consider briefly the details of nuclear radiation damage in CCDs. There is a large body of data on the response of CCDs to nuclear radiation, most of it gathered by space experimenters concerned about the naturally occurring nuclear radiation environment, see for example, SPIE Proceedings, February 1991, Volume 1447, Pages 70-86 by C. J. Dale and P. Marshall and Pages 87-108, by J. Janesick. To understand these data, consider the nature of the interactions between nuclear radiation and matter. When nuclear radiation passes through solids, energy is lost, either through ionization of the solids, or through non-ionizing energy loss (NIEL), i.e. atomic displacements. Most nuclear radiation types cause both types of damage and the partitioning between ionization and NIEL determines the mechanisms which dominate in any given environment. One MeV protons will displace about 0.5 atoms/proton in silicon and will deposit of the order of 1 Krad (Si) in ionization for 1E8 protons/sq cm. For most MOS structures, even unhardened commercial devices, 1 Krad will cause little degradation of device parameters. However, for large format CCDs, 5E7 defects/sq cm will degrade CTE by an unacceptable amount. Thus, in a proton environment, displacement damage will be a much greater threat than ionization. In a soft X-ray environment, on the other hand, displacement damage in silicon is energetically impossible, and ionization damage is the only concern. Intermediate between these extremes is the case of hard gamma rays such as those emitted by fission products. These photons can cause atomic displacements in silicon, yet their primary energy loss mechanism is electronic excitation. Since both displacement damage and ionization damage usually occur simultaneously, CCDs intended for use in a radiation environment must have "balanced" hardening, that is they must be hardened against damage mechanisms arising from both. Radiation effects scientists have made significant progress in hardening CCDs against total dose damage, but little in displacement damage hardening.
Several techniques exist for hardening CCDs against total ionizing dose, for example structural optimization, hardened circuit design, radiation tolerant operational procedures, and, finally, hardening of the manufacturing process used to build the device. Most of these require implementation by the manufacturer of the CCD, but manufacturers have been reluctant to implement them, since almost all applications for radiation hardened CCDs also require displacement damage hardening for which no techniques have been developed. The market for radiation hardened CCDs is not large enough to justify even minor changes in procedures if the resultant products are still unable to satisfy the customer's requirements. Total dose hardening methods must be understood, however, because the methods developed for displacement damage hardening must be compatible with them if balanced hardening is to be achieved.
The most succinct description of the technology for total dose hardening of CCDs is contained in a paper by N. S. Saks, et al in IEEE Transactions on Nuclear Science, NS-26, Pages 5074 et seq, December 1979. These authors built and tested CCDs in which the minority carriers making up the charge packets were holes, rather than electrons as used in most CCD imagers. Also, they used a construction technique in which the potential minimum was formed slightly below the silicon-silicon dioxide interface to avoid radiation-induced damage which concentrates at the interface. Their structures, called P buried channel CCDs (P-BCDs) used SiO.sub.2 /Si.sub.3 N.sub.4 gate insulators and show that devices made in this way did indeed have superior total dose hardness.
Unfortunately, imaging CCDs have never been fabricated with this technology so its advantages in nuclear hardness have never been verified. However, it will be shown that the Saks procedures are compatible with the new fabrication procedures, recommended for displacement damage hardness, which are the substance of this invention. Thus, balanced hardness can be achieved by the use of P-BCDs, modified as discussed below.
While most interactions between energetic particles and atoms in a solid transfer energy to an electron cloud causing excitation or ionization, a small fraction displace nuclei from their equilibrium positions in the lattice producing a displaced atom which occupies an interstitial position in the lattice and a vacancy comprising the lattice position formerly occupied by the displaced atom. These displaced nuclei are called primary knock-on atoms (PKAs). PKAs can produce additional vacancy-interstitial pairs by further collisions and if they are generated with sufficient energy, damage cascades will be formed. The fraction of the PKA energy that is dissipated in the production of displacements can be determined from the theory of energy partition.
Regardless of whether an atom is displaced as part of a damage cascade or as an isolated PKA, most of the vacancy-interstitial pairs produced annihilate each other by recombining with no permanent damage resulting. The vacancies that escape direct recombination migrate through the lattice and ultimately combine with other lattice anomalies forming one of the several possible stable defects that are capable of trapping minority carriers in silicon. For example, two vacancies may combine to form a divacancy which is stable up to about 300.degree. C. or a vacancy and a phosphorous (or oxygen) atom may form an E center (or A center) which is stable up to about 150.degree. C. (or 350.degree. C.). The vacancy itself is mobile at temperatures above 100.degree. K, and silicon crystals contain enough of the anomalies capable of combining with these vacancies to permit formation of stable defects for levels of radiation of common interest.
The importance of a given defect depends on the device characteristic being measured (i.e. dark current, CTE, etc.), and the density and electrical properties of the defect. For many applications, CTE degradation resulting from trapping of signal carriers at radiation-induced defects is the most serious problem arising from displacement damage. Analysis of the effect of radiation-induced traps on CTE shows that CCDs in which the minority carriers are electrons are adversely affected by two main classes of traps: (1) the divacancy formed when two vacancies combine to form a stable configuration and (2) the E-center formed when a vacancy and a phosphorous atom combine to form a stable configuration. These two traps are important in N-CCDs since either can trap an electron and hold it long enough to delay it relative to the main body of charge in a packet. However, in P-CCDs, the important trap would be the divacancy, since it is the only trap able to trap holes.

Radiation hardened charge coupled device


A touch sensor integrated type display device includes gate lines, a gate insulating film, data lines formed to cross over the gate lines, thin film transistors formed in pixel regions, a first passivation layer that covers the thin film transistors, first electrodes disposed on the first passivation layer along the data lines with the gate lines interposed therebetween, a second passivation layer covering the first electrodes, pixel electrodes that are formed in the pixel regions to partially overlap the first electrodes, and second electrodes formed on the second passivation layer in parallel with the gate lines, each of the plurality of second electrodes is disposed between neighboring pixel electrodes with the gate lines interposed therebetween.

1. Field
This document relates to a touch sensor integrated type display device capable of recognizing a user's touch, and more particularly, to a touch sensor integrated type display device which is capable of increasing the sensitivity of a touch sensor by reducing the amount of change in electrostatic capacitance caused by a touch driving electrode.
2. Related Art
Various input devices, such as a keyboard, a mouse, a trackball, a joystick, a digitizer, and the like, are used to configure an interface between a user and home appliances or various information communication devices. However, the use of the above input devices requires the user to learn how to use them and involves inconvenience like the space occupied by them. Accordingly, there is a growing demand for input devices which are easy and simple to use and can reduce malfunctions. In response to this demand, a touch sensor was proposed to enable the user to directly touch the screen with their finger or a pen to input information.
The touch sensor is simple to use, has less malfunctions, and enables the user to input without using an additional input device. In addition, the touch sensor can be applied to various display devices because it enables the user to operate it quickly and easily through content displayed on the screen.
Touch sensors can be classified into add-on type and on-cell type. In the add-on type, a display device and a touch panel having a touch sensor are separately manufactured, and the touch panel is attached onto an upper substrate of the display device. In the on-cell type, a touch sensor is directly formed on the surface of an upper glass substrate of a display device.
However, the add-on type sensor has a structure in which the completed touch panel is mounted on the display device and has various problems, such as increased thickness or reduced visibility due to low brightness of the display device
In addition, the on-cell type touch sensor has a structure in which a touch panel is formed on the upper surface of the display device and can have a reduced thickness compared to the add-on type but still has the problem of the increase in entire thickness due to a driving electrode layer, a sensing electrode layer, and an insulation layer for insulating the driving electrode layer and the sensing electrode layer which constitute the touch sensor.
Accordingly, the need for a display device capable of solving the related art problems has arisen.

Touch sensor integrated type display device comprising a plurality of first and second electrodes


A system for updating a domain model and generating a formatted output is disclosed. The system comprises a template driven emitter which processes a template file. The template file comprises directives which direct extraction of data from a source data model into a target data model. The template file also comprises directives for manipulating the DOM tree of the data model. The template driven emitter generates a DOM tree for the source data model and a DOM tree for the template file. The template driven emitter utilizes the DOM tree to navigate the data model and extract data as specified according to the directives in the template file. The template file is written as a text file and expressed in XML.

Hyper Text Markup Language or HTML is synonymous with the Internet and the World Wide Web (WWW). HTML allows structural markup of WWW or 'Web' documents. XML or extensible Markup Language is well known in the art as a document markup language which offers human-readable semantic markup and is also machine-readable. As a result, XML provides the capability to create, parse and process networked data.
XML documents are composed of entities, which are storage units containing text and/or binary data. Text is composed of character streams that form both the document's character data content and the document's meta-data markup. The markup describes the document's storage layout and logical structure. XML also provides a markup mechanism to impose constraints on the storage layout and logical structure of documents, and it provides mechanisms that can be used for strong typing.
In style and structure, XML documents look quite similar to HTML documents. However, when a Web server with XML content prepares data for transmission, the Web server must generate a context wrapper with each XML fragment, including pointers to an associated Document Type Definition (DTD) and one or more style sheets for formatting. Clients for the Web server that process XML must be able to unpack the content fragment, parse the fragment in the context according to the DTD (if needed), render (if needed) in accordance with the specified style sheet guidelines, and correctly interpret the hypertext semantics (e.g. links) associated with each of the different document tags. It is understood that a DTD is not required for an XML document, instead, the author can simply use an application-specific tagset. However, a DTD is useful because it allows applications to validate the tagset for proper usage. The DTD specifies the set of required and optional elements and their attributes for documents to conform to that type. In addition, the DTD specifies the names of the tags and the relationships among elements in a document, for example, nesting of elements.
One of the main issues during the development of XML was expressing data stored in XML documents into various formats. This has given rise to the development of languages and standards such as XSL and XSLT from W3C. By using an XSL style sheet one is able to create an HTML representation of an XML document. Similarly, XSL style sheets are used to transform XML documents into an HTML representation. XSL implementations suffer two principal limitations. First, XSLT requires the definition of rules to transform specific types of XML elements into some other type of XML like structure. Although the result may simply comprise a stream, the navigation rules must be defined based on types and the execution of the navigation rules is based on the degree of uniqueness of the navigation. In other words, the execution is not a simple procedural operation. Secondly, XSLT has no formatting capability which means that formatting is performed using flow/format objects in XSL and is geared towards HTML forming. Therefore, the XSL standards fall short for generating code or non-*ML output from a data model.
Another issue is concerned with the transformation of XML data. Frequently, XML data needs to be transformed into another valid XML format. This often comprises an update activity not a creation activity. The updates are made to specific pre-existing XML data, for example, converting selected strings into an alternate format, which is not the same as creating a new document. To be effective, the transformation needs to include an efficient navigation mechanism.
Accordingly, there remains a need for a mechanism for navigating a data model and extracting specific data from the data model.

XML based system for updating a domain model and generating a formatted output

International Business Machines Corporation


A polysilicon thin film transistor liquid crystal display (polysilicon TFT LCD) has a panel, a common voltage layer, a plurality of display cells, a plurality of scan lines, a plurality data lines, and a plurality common voltage drivers. The scan lines and the data lines are coupled to the display cells. Each of the common voltage drivers is formed in the panel and is used to generate a common voltage and to apply the common voltage to the common voltage layer.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a polysilicon thin film transistor liquid crystal display (polysilicon TFT LCD), and more particularly, to a polysilicon thin film transistor liquid crystal display having a plurality of common voltage drivers.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Liquid crystal displays (LCDs) have been widely applied to a variety of information products, such as notebook computers and PDAs, because of their small size, low power consumption, and low radiation emission. Liquid crystal molecules are characterized by being capable of allowing different amounts of light to pass according to their rotation angles. Consequently, a liquid crystal display is able to generate rich and colorful images.
Currently, most LCDs are fabricated by an amorphous silicon thin film transistor process, and drivers for controlling the LCD are produced in the form of external ICs connected to the LCD panel. Nevertheless, as technological improvements are made, more and more LCDs are fabricated by polysilicon thin film transistor processes, which result in better display effects (e.g. higher resolution). In addition, related drivers and interface circuits are also integrated into the panel in the form of polysilicon thin film transistors so that the production cost is substantially reduced.
Generally speaking, the above-mentioned integrated polysilicon TFT LCD comprises a common voltage driver. The common voltage driver is normally a voltage follower having an operational amplifier. The conventional polysilicon TFT LCD has only one single voltage follower functioning as a common voltage driver. However, it is easy for the panel to have a non-uniform common voltage distribution because of the resistance-capacitance (RC) impedance of the common electrode conductive wires. This non-uniform distribution of the common voltage leads to poor display qualities. Refer to FIG. 1, which is a schematic diagram of a conventional polysilicon thin film transistor liquid crystal display 10. The polysilicon thin film transistor liquid crystal display 10 comprises a panel 12 having related drivers and interface circuits formed therein. The polysilicon thin film transistor liquid crystal display 10 further comprises a pixel region 14, a first data line driver 16A, a second data line driver 16B, a scan line driver 18, a common voltage driver 20, a timing control circuit 22, and an interface circuit 24. The pixel region 14, the first data line driver 16A, the second data line driver 16B, the scan line driver 18, the common voltage driver 20, the timing control circuit 22, and the interface circuit 24 are formed in the panel 12 in the form of polysilicon thin film transistors.
As shown in FIG. 1, an image signal is first transmitted to the polysilicon thin film transistor liquid crystal display 10, and transferred to related logic circuits such that corresponding images are displayed in the pixel region 14. The pixel region 14 comprises a plurality of display cells, each display cell being a pixel or a sub-pixel and driven by the first data line driver 16A, the second data line driver 16B, and the scan line driver 18. In addition, the timing control circuit 22 generates a timing signal for operating the first data line driver 16A, the second data line driver 16B, the scan line driver 18, and the interface circuit 24. The common voltage driver 20 is for providing a common voltage. However, due to the resistance-capacitance impedance of the conductive wires, non-uniform common voltage distribution readily occurs in the conventional polysilicon thin film transistor liquid crystal display 10.
Refer to FIG. 2, which is a timing diagram of common voltage Vcom of the polysilicon thin film transistor liquid crystal display panel 10 shown in FIG. 1. FIG. 2 illustrates the waveform of the common voltage Vcom of the common voltage driver 20 at the common voltage driver 20, point "A", and point "B" of the pixel region 14 shown in FIG. 1 respectively from top to bottom. As shown in FIG. 2, the common voltage Vcom is an alternating voltage, and therefore applied to the common electrode of each display cell by means of swing. However, since the lengths from the common voltage driver 20 to point "A" and to point "B" are not equal, and the resistance-capacitance effect is not negligible, the common voltage Vcom at point "A" and point "B" are delayed and decayed compared to the common voltage Vcom in the common voltage driver 20. When the delay or decay makes the phase and amplitude difference of Vcom at point "A" and point "B" too large, display quality of the polysilicon thin film transistor liquid crystal display is deteriorated.

Polysilicon thin film transistor liquid crystal display having a plurality of common voltage drivers


Provided is an apparatus and method for super-resolution enhancement processing. The apparatus includes a low-resolution image capturing unit, a patch pair generating unit, a patch pair database, and a high-resolution image reconstructing unit. The low-resolution image capturing unit captures a low-resolution image. The patch pair generating unit divides each of a plurality of high-resolution images into patches and generates a plurality of patch pairs composed of medium-frequency patches and high-frequency patches for the patches. The patch pair database stores the plurality of patch pairs generated by the patch pair generating unit. The high-resolution image reconstructing unit divides the low-resolution image into patches, searches in the patch pair database for a patch pair including a medium-frequency patch that is similar to that of the low-resolution image, and generates a reconstructed high-resolution image by inserting a high-frequency patch included in the found patch pair into a corresponding patch of the low-resolution image.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to adjusting the resolution of an image, and more particularly, to an apparatus and method for super-resolution enhancement processing to generate a high-resolution image from a low-resolution image.
2. Description of the Related Art
In general, zooming and interpolation or filtering is used to change a low-resolution image obtained by remote capturing into a perceivable high-resolution image. In other words, interpolation is performed between low-resolution pixels or groups composed of a plurality of pixels to estimate high-resolution pixels or image data is filtered to improve high-frequency information of edges in an image. However, when interpolation is used, a high-resolution image can be generated, but high-frequency image data required to improve the sharpness of the image cannot be obtained. When filtering is used, the sharpness of the image can be improved, but the noise of the image increases, causing degradation in the visual quality of a high-resolution image.
Super-resolution enhancement processing is intended to generate a high-resolution image having finer details than a high-resolution image generated by interpolation such as bilinear interpolation or Bicubic interpolation or filtering. U.S. Pat. No. 6,766,067 and U.S. Patent Publication No. 2004-0218834 disclose techniques for super-resolution enhancement processing. U.S. Pat. No. 6,766,067 deals with high-resolution improvement processing for still images and U.S. Patent Publication No. 2004-0218834 deals with high-resolution improvement processing for moving images.

Apparatus and method for super-resolution enhancement processing


A user of services is enabled to utilize a highly value-added service employing secret data of the user without presenting the data to the service provider side. In a system in which a server is coupled with a client via a communication network, the client inputs and sends a service identifier to the server, receives a program to execute the service from the server, inputs secret data as client controlled data from an input device and sends a server control data request to the server, and then receives the requested data from the server. The input data is irreversibly processed by use of the program and received data such that the client sends results of the process to an expert on the server side to receive an advice of the expert. By referring to the advice, the service user inputs evaluation of the outputted results. The steps beginning at the data request input are repeatedly conducted until the evaluation becomes satisfactory, thereby transmitting the process results to the server.

The present invention relates to a method of and a system for online interactive service using a high-speed communication network such as a B-ISDN or a bi-directional CATV network, for example, to a method and a system in which, like in such a highly value-added service necessitating secret data of a service receiver (client) as a virtual try-on function of apparel goods in CATV shopping or in a pre-designing function of financial service items such as an education loan, the service can be received without presenting the secret data to the service providing (server) side.
Conventionally, as a typical example of an online interactive service system via a high-speed communication network, there has been a home-shopping (CATV shopping) system using bi-directionality of a CATV as described in page 200 of "Well Understandable Guide to Distribution Industry" edited by Fuji Financial Data Laboratory and published in 1992 from Nippon Jitsugyo Shuppan.
In the CATV shopping system, a consumer selectively calls a desired goods guide program and transmits order information (including a program number and an item number) of a favorite item of goods via a CATV line to a retailer, thereby making a sales contract.
Moreover, according to description in pages 43 to 49 of "TV Shopping Age" written by Kensuke Kojima and published in 1994 from Chuoh Keizai Sha, almost all kinds of goods are available in recent CATV shopping systems and the share of sales of apparel goods is remarkably increased in a reliable fashion and hence the apparel goods are expected as main goods for sales.
Many apparel goods are relatively expensive and the sale thereof depends highly on preference of consumers. Consequently, most consumers consider to first actually put a desired item on to confirm "appearance" and "comfortness" thereof (through the try-on) before deciding the purchasing of the item. Conventionally, a considerable number of commodities purchased in CATV shopping systems have been returned. This situation also occurs because of unavailability of the try-on service. Naturally, due to a characteristic of CATV shopping, it is in principle impossible that the consumer actually (physically) conducts the try-on of an article of apparel goods. However, using "virtual try-on function" to confirm appearance and comfortness in the information processing world, the try-on can be accomplished by the conventional technology. That is, when the function is provided as a highly value-added service in the CATV shopping, the ratio of articles returned primarily because of difference in image and/or size can be decreased. Furthermore, it is possible to enhance utilization of users of TV shopping who have avoided the TV shopping because of unavailability of the try-on.
However, the virtual try-on function is achieved on assumption of utilization of data indicating physical characteristics related to privacy of the consumer. When such data having high secrecy is passed to the server to request the overall process, the service receiver has psychological hesitation due to possibility of ill-intended use thereof and hence it is afraid that this may limit utilization of the CATV shopping system. The present invention has been made in consideration of the problem above.

Trying-on apparel virtually (electronically) while protecting private data using irreversible process


A magnetic disk drive improved in reliability of data retrieve. This invention prevents the drive from decoding already-written old data. The failure decoding is caused by a deviation in a write operation, by a malfunction of a writing head and so on. When data in a sector is renewed, the sector's location and renewal frequency information are saved not only in the sector of the disk media but also in a temporary memory. When the magnetic disk drive is in an idle mode, those renewal information written in the sector and stored in the temporary memory, are checked. If both renewal information match, the data is regarded “not old” and the information about the sector in the temporary memory is deleted. In the deleting operation, check mark information indicating that the written data has been checked is written in the sector of the magnetic disk medium.

In general magnetic disk drives, positional information used to position a magnetic head is written in a servo area as servo information on a magnetic disk medium. Data information is written to areas, called sectors, between servo information.
The magnetic head senses servo information at certain time intervals, specifies the position of its track and/or its position in a radial direction while performing a sequence of positioning operations such as "following" and/or "seek".
The magnetic head comprises a combination type magnetic head in which an MR head using a magnetoresitive effect in reproduction and a thin film head using a thin film technique for coil production in record are mounted on corresponding sliders, respectively.
In data renewal, the magnetic disk drive generally uses a method of directly writing new data over old-written data without erasing the old data, which is referred to as "overwrite".
A. When data is to be renewed, it is important to accurately position the magnetic head at the center of the track. To position the magnetic head less accurately causes the respective positions of the already written data and new data to be written to deviate from their proper positions. In this case, a part of the old data, which is not renewed or updated by the new data, could remain present and be possibly decoded.
Most of positioning errors of the magnetic head which would occur due to various causes can be eliminated by the servo control circuit. However, with vibrations at a frequency higher than a sensing cycle of the servo information, the prior-art positioning errors can not be reduced. Therefore, it is very difficult to completely eliminate the remaining old data.
In order to solve this problem, JP-A-6-338010 has proposed a method of preventing old data decoding, by positioning a head at a plurality of different positions on a magnetic disk medium when data is to be decoded, and checking to see whether or not respective data to be decoded coincide.
In this method, 1) since the head is positioned at a plurality of different positions on the magnetic disk medium and the data are compared, the magnetic disk should be rotated at least twice and data reproduction time increases; and 2) this method is not effective for an abnormal operation and failure of the writing head.
B. With the complex magnetic head, there are the problems of an abnormal operation and a failure of the writing head. Old writing heads each comprise a ring-like magnetic core of high permeability and a coil wound around the core in which a current is caused to flow through the coil to produce a magnetic field, which writes information to a magnetic disk medium.
The causes of malfunctions in the writing head are 1) disconnection and short-circuits in the coils/current paths through which the currents flow, 2) corrosion of the writing head itself, physical/mechanical breakage of the writing head due to contact with the magnetic disk medium, and a deterioration in the performance of the magnetic core; and 3) an increase in the spacing between the writing head and the magnetic disk medium due to the depositing of foreign substances on the surface of the magnetic head facing the medium. These events greatly reduce the writing magnetic field, so that it is impossible to erase the old data completely by renewing the old data with new data or by writing new data over the old data.
In order to sense the state in which old data remains due to abnormality of the writing head, a history of data renewal in the location where the old data remains must be managed. To this end, it could be considered to use, for example, a method of mounting a semiconductor memory on the magnetic disk drive to thereby leave history information. According to this method, both the positioning errors on the writing head and abnormality of the writing head are eliminated. Writing and recording information to and from the semiconductor memory is performed at very high speeds and the processing time hardly increases.
JP-A-5-66999 discloses storing and managing management information on a cache management table of a RAM.
When data renewal information in all the sectors are to be stored in a semiconductor memory, however, the capacity of the semiconductor memory needs to increase, which runs counter to cost reduction. Since a capacity of the semiconductor memory necessary to store the data renewal information is about 1/1000 of the whole data quantity and if it is considered that the cost of the semiconductor memory is several hundreds times high per unit storage capacity compared to the cost of the magnetic writing medium, the cost of the whole magnetic disk drive would increase about scores of percents.

Magnetic disk drive improved in a reliability of data retrieve

Hitachi Global Storage Technologies Japan Ltd.


Adaptive Modulation and Coding Scheme (MCS) selection is used in many wireless communication systems. The goal of Adaptive MCS selection is to use the most suitable MCS for any particular channel conditions. Often, the MCS selection is based on channel measurements by the client terminal. The relationship between the block error rate (BLER) and the Signal-to-Interference-plus-Noise Ratio (SINR) is not linear. The BLER is often determined by the lowest SINR rather than the average SINR experienced by the set of bits that are part of the block. The Exponential Effective SINR Mapping (EESM) method is often used to compute effective SINR for adaptive MCS selection. However, the complexity of selecting the optimum channel feedback from the client terminal to the base station is typically high. A method and apparatus are disclosed that enable EESM for selecting the most suitable MCS with reduced complexity and reduced power consumption.

As shown in FIG. 1, a wireless communication system 10 comprises elements such as client terminal or mobile station 12 and base stations 14. Other network devices which may be employed, such as a mobile switching center, are not shown. In some wireless communication systems there may be only one base station and many client terminals while in some other communication systems such as cellular wireless communication systems there are multiple base stations and a large number of client terminals communicating with each base station.
As illustrated, the communication path from the base station (BS) to the client terminal direction is referred to herein as the downlink (DL) and the communication path from the client terminal to the base station direction is referred to herein as the uplink (UL). In some wireless communication systems the client terminal or mobile station (MS) communicates with the BS in both DL and UL directions. For instance, this is the case in cellular telephone systems. In other wireless communication systems the client terminal communicates with the base stations in only one direction, usually the DL. This may occur in applications such as paging.
The base station to which the client terminal is communicating with is referred as the serving base station. In some wireless communication systems the serving base station is normally referred as the serving cell. The terms base station and a cell may be used interchangeably herein. In general, the cells that are in the vicinity of the serving cell are called neighbor cells. Similarly, in some wireless communication systems a neighbor base station is normally referred as a neighbor cell. A neighbor cell that is a candidate for handover or reselection is referred as a target cell herein. Whenever a cell becomes a serving cell for a client terminal, that cell is referred as visited cell herein.
In order to improve system capacity, peak data rate and coverage reliability, the signal transmitted to a particular user can be adapted by the base station to compensate for the signal quality variations. This process is known as link adaptation. In cellular wireless communication systems, the quality of the signal received by a client terminal depends on the channel quality from the serving cell, the level of interference from neighbor cells, and the noise level. One of the well known techniques for link adaptation is the Adaptive Modulation and Coding (AMC). With AMC, the modulation and coding formats are changed to match the prevailing radio channel capacity for each client terminal. In a system with AMC, client terminals close to the base station may be typically assigned higher-order modulation and high code rate, for example 64-Quadrature Amplitude Modulation (QAM) with high code rate, but the modulation-order and the code rate may decrease as the distance from the base station increases.
In the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) Long Term Evolution (LTE) wireless communication system, the base station typically selects the modulation scheme and code rate depending on a prediction of the downlink channel conditions. An important input to this selection process is the Channel Quality Indicator (CQI) feedback transmitted by the client terminal in the uplink. The CQI feedback is an indication of the data rate which can be supported by the channel, taking into account the Signal-to-Interference-plus-Noise Ratio (SINR) and the capabilities of the client terminal's receiver.
The CQI feedback is derived from the downlink received signal quality, which may be based on the measurements of the downlink reference signals which are transmitted by the base station. The client terminal indicates the highest Modulation and Coding Scheme (MCS) that it can decode with a Block Error Rate (BLER) probability not exceeding a specified level, e.g., 10%. Thus the information received by the base station takes into account the capabilities of the client terminal's receiver, and not just the prevailing radio channel quality. The highest selected MCS is mapped to one of the possible CQI values based on mapping specified by the wireless communication system specification. Hence a client terminal that is designed with advanced signal processing algorithms can report a higher CQI and may achieve a higher data rate.
A key issue in system level performance is the need to predict a BLER from the instantaneous SINR for each subcarrier of an OFDM symbol. For example, the same SINR under static and various fading conditions may yield different BLER depending on the specific conditions. Therefore, a link quality model such as Effective Exponential SINR Mapping (EESM) may be used for mapping a set of instantaneous SINRs to a single effective SINR for predicting the BLER under any given channel conditions. The objective of EESM is to find a compression function that maps the set of SINRs to a single value that is a good predictor of the actual BLER for a given MCS. FIG. 2 illustrates the EESM methodology. Note that EESM is one of the commonly used methods for the link quality model and other models are possible. For illustrating the present invention the EESM link model is used.
The mapping of the effective SINR value to the corresponding BLER value may use either a look-up table for the mapping function or use an approximate analytical expression. The EESM method estimates the effective SINR using the following formula:
                              γ          eff                =                              EESM                                      (                                                γ                  k                                ,                β                            )                                =                                    -              β                                                                                ln                                            (                                                      1                    N                                                                                ∑                                              k                        =                        0                                                                    N                        -                        1                                                                                ⅇ                                              -                                                                              γ                            k                                                    β                                                                                )                                                                        EQ        .                                                    (          1          )                    Where, γ is a vector [γ0, γ1, . . . , γN-1] of the per-subcarrier SINR values, which may be typically different in a frequency selective channel. The parameter β may be determined for each CQI and this value is used to adjust EESM function to compensate the difference between the actual BLER and the predicted BLER.
The β values are specific to each CQI and are optimized based on offline simulations performed across different fading profiles and SINRs, and are used to establish the mapping between instantaneous SINR and effective SINR. For example, in 3GPP LTE wireless communication system, there are 16 possible CQIs to be considered for channel quality feedback reports as shown in the table contained in FIG. 3. Using the Additive White Gaussian Noise (AWGN) performance charts as a reference, the BLER value of each CQI for different fading propagation conditions is mapped to an AWGN equivalent SINR. The AWGN SINR for each CQI is denoted as SINRAWGN.
During normal operation, the γeff needs to be computed from the set of per subcarrier SINRs for each possible value of CQI and the corresponding β value. In the case of a 3GPP LTE wireless communication system, there may be up to 1200 subcarriers when using a 20 MHz channel bandwidth. Therefore, EQ. (1) may need to be evaluated for up to 1200 subcarriers (N=1200) and the computations have to be repeated for 16 different CQIs and the corresponding β. This is a non-trivial task that can be resource intensive.
The final output of the EESM process is the highest CQI with an effective SINR greater than SINRAWGN as an optimum CQI for given channel conditions. Conventionally, two methods are used to reduce complexity of γeff computations. One method is to estimate the effective SINR starting from the highest CQI and decrement the CQI index such that at most within 15 iterations the optimum CQI can be selected in case of 3GPP LTE wireless communication system. The computed effective SINR γeff is compared against the SINRAWGN for the current CQI candidate. If the computed γeff is lower than the SINRAWGN for the current CQI, then the γeff computation is performed for the next lower CQI and its corresponding β. This process is repeated until the point where the γeff is equal to or greater than the required SINRAWGN for the current CQI. Another method for finding the optimum CQI with reduced complexity is to perform a binary search or other search mechanisms such that, in case of 15 different CQIs, within five steps the best CQI may be selected as shown with example in FIG. 4. Such techniques may be computer processor intensive and time consuming. This can be detrimental to the operation of the wireless device and the overall communication system.

Method and apparatus for reduced complexity CQI feedback in wireless communication systems


Various embodiments of a system and method for persisting application state data are disclosed. The system may include a server cluster networked to a persistent data store such as a database resident on a backend system. Each server of the cluster may include a server container providing services for one or more applications along with a persistence mechanism. The persistence mechanism may be able to detect changes to the state of an application and persist only the portion of the application state that changed to the remote, persistent data store. In some embodiments, the persistence mechanism may be a Java Data Object (JDO) persistence manager which provides object persistence and transaction support while masking the peculiarities of resource managers for particular databases.

1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to computer systems, and more particularly to the persistence of application state in a distributed container environment.
2. Description of the Related Art
Distributed applications are often implemented as part of commercial and non-commercial business solutions for an enterprise. For example, a company may leverage the use of an enterprise application that includes various databases distributed across multiple computers. Applications of this type, which support E-commerce, typically support hundreds or thousands of sessions simultaneously during periods of peak utilization. For scalability and fault tolerance, the servers running such applications may be clustered.
In some application server cluster implementations state and/or session information for an application running on a server may only be stored locally to that server and therefore, may not be available to any other members of the cluster. Load balancing, in such a clustered system, may amount to nothing more than the round-robin assignment of new sessions to cluster members. Once a particular session is assigned to a given server, all requests associated with that session must be forwarded to assigned server who has sole access to the state data for that session. If the sessions assigned to one server of the cluster generate significantly more requests than the sessions assigned to another member of the cluster, then the actual workload of the two nodes may be disparate and the goal of load balancing within the cluster may not be achieved.
Storing application state data only locally to a given server within a cluster may also have implications in the area of failure recovery. If a server in a cluster fails, state information for the applications running in that server may be lost. Another server in the cluster may be able to take the place of the failed server within the cluster configuration, but may not be able to resume processing the applications from the point where the server failure occurred. For example, client sessions handled by the failed server may have to be restarted from an initial point. If one or more users have spent non-negligible time/effort in promoting their sessions to the state at which the server failed, the need to restart these sessions from scratch may be highly unsatisfactory. One solution to this problem may be to persist application state information to a persistent store that can be accessed by multiple cluster members
Typically, application state persistence is achieved through serialization. Serialization allows an object graph to be serialized into a stream, which can be associated with a file. An instance is serialized by passing it as a parameter to the writeObject method of ObjectOutputStream. The entire graph of objects reachable from the instance in then serialized into the stream. The object graph is later reconstructed by de-serializing the data from an ObjectInputStream.
Serialization lacks features that may be desirable for distributed application systems. For example, there is no support for transactions. Without concurrency control, there is nothing to prevent multiple application component instances from serializing to the same file, thus corrupting state data. Serialization also lacks the ability to perform queries against the data. The granularity of access is an entire object graph, making it impossible to access a single instance or subset of the serialized data. Serialization includes no mechanism to determine when persistence updates should be performed. It therefore falls to the application developer to code the invocation points for serialization. Typically, this is done upon each request and results in large and for the most part unnecessary transfers of data among cluster members. Serialization and the corresponding storing of data can be very time consuming operations.
Also, a single serialization typically, cannot store all the data needed by an application. Applications must manage multiple serializations, either in the same file or in multiple files. Serialization lacks support for identity and the coordinated management of the instances in storage and memory. Therefore, developers must take extreme care to avoid storing and loading redundant instances. If different parts of a large application read the same serialization more than once, multiple copies of this instance will reside in memory. Redundant copies would make the coordination of separate updates extremely difficult. These issues collectively produce a high level of complexity, which often results in a lack of maintainability and can constrain scalability, which is crucial to most enterprise applications.

State data persistence in a distributed computing environment


A system and method for a generating a data stream for encoding by combining data from a multiple of sources. In order to maintain a continuous phase in the combined data stream, any phase differentials between the data supplied from the multiple sources are eliminated upon combination of the source data. The phase differential between the data from any two different sources is eliminated by trimming data from one of the sources such that when the trimmed data is combined with the data from the other source the resulting combined stream has a continuous phase.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a data processing apparatus for and a data processing method of encoding dividing information data supplied together with a reference timing with a plurality of sources being successively switched, into data of a predetermined processing unit to encode them, and which are suitable for use in edition of data to be recorded on a digital video disk (DVD), for example.
2. Description of the Related Art
In a field of a digital audio data compression technique, a subband coding (SBC) system, an adaptive transform coding (ATC) system and so on are generally employed in order to reduce a data amount. A digital equipment for recording audio data thus coded on a recording medium, transmitting them to a transmission line or processing them may be increased in the future. In these coding systems, a digital audio data is divided into a block unit (audio frame unit) and then coded.
In the above subband coding system, an input audio signal is divided into signals of plural frequency bands and each of the divided signals of the plural frequency bands is independently coded by utilizing deviation of electric powers in each of the frequency bands. Specifically, the input audio signal is divided into the signals of plural subbands, which reduces deviation of a signal energy in each of the subbands, thereby a dynamic range being reduced. A bit corresponding to the signal energy of each of the subbands is allocated.
When the input audio signal is divided into the signals of the subbands, dichtomization of the frequency band is repeatedly carried out by using a plurality of orthogonal mirror filters (QMF), thereby the tree-structured subbands being obtained. Signal samples in the divided low frequency band and the divided high frequency band are thinned out to 1/2, thereby sampling frequencies thereof becoming a half.
In a transform coding system, an input audio signal is subjected to linear transformation for increasing concentration of electric power and then quantized, thereby a coding efficiency being improved. A transform coding allocating adaptively a bit is particularly called the adaptive transform coding system. Fourier transform, cosine transform or the like, for example, is employed as the above linear transform.
When the subband coding system or the adaptive transform coding system is employed, if a signal is quantized after being subjected to some weighting by using a psycho-acoustic characteristic so that deterioration of the signal in a band which human being can perceive should be minimum, then it is possible to further improve a total coding quality.
Psycho-acoustic weighting is a weighting method of sequentially calculating a temporal threshold value of an audible range by using an absolute threshold value thereof and a relative threshold value thereof determined by a masking effect. Bit allocation is carried out based on the above temporal threshold value.
A typical algorithm of an audio data coding system will be described in accordance with an algorithm of MPEG/Audio standard.
Initially, an input PCM audio data linearly quantized with 16 bits, for example, is converted from that of a time domain into signals of 32 frequency bands. A masking level for masking a quantization error based on the psycho-acoustic characteristic is calculated in order to allocate bits upon quantization.
The converted signals obtained as described above are quantized in accordance with the bit allocation based on the psycho-acoustic characteristic mode and then coded, thereafter being inserted into a frame together with a data which a user can arbitrarily define.
When the coded data is decoded, the data which a user can arbitrarily define is separated therefrom and the frame is deblocked and block data is decoded and inverse-quantized with reference to a supplied side information about the bit allocation. Then, the inverse-quantized signal is converted reversely to the coding processing, thereby the signal of the time domain being restored.
In the above MPEG/Audio standard, algorithm of three kinds, i.e., layer I, layer II and layer III are prescribed. In this case, while an algorithm becomes complicated in an order of the layer I, the layer II and the layer III, a sound quality is at the same time improved in the above order. The sound quality also depends upon a bit rate to be used. While bit rates of 14 kinds ranging from 32 kb/s to 448 kb/s, 384 kb/s and 320 kb/s are respectively prescribed for the layers I to III, respective target bit rates of the layers I to III are limited.
When, for example, the algorithm of the layer II is employed, as shown in FIG. 1, an audio data is processed by an audio frame unit (one audio frame unit includes 1152 samples according to the layer II) and thereby converted into coded audio data, i.e, a bit stream.
As a digital signal processing technique is developed recently, a digital video disk (DVD) for storing data of one movie amount in an optical disk (whose diameter is 120 mm) is developed. This DVD video disk is manufactured by multiplexing coded video data, coded audio data an coded attached information such as a superimposed dialogue or the like to record the multiplexed data on one optical disk. Fabrication of a master disk of this DVD video disk is called authoring.
When an audio data is encoded in a system for carrying out the authoring, if there is only one digital audio tape loaded onto an audio reproducing apparatus for reproducing an audio tape, then continuous processing of the audio tape from the head thereof makes encoded audio frames successive throughout.
If a plurality of digital audio tapes are loaded into the audio reproducing apparatus, then when a digital audio tape loaded into the audio reproducing apparatus is exchanged for another one, it is impossible to obtain a phase difference (offset) between an audio frame of an audio data reproduced from the previously loaded digital audio tape and the latest reference timing (video frame) thereof. Therefore, an audio frame of an audio data to be reproduced from a newly loaded digital audio tape and the audio frame of the previously loaded digital audio tape are prevented from becoming continuous.
Specifically, when the audio data is encoded, a plurality of audio samples as one processing unit (an audio frame) are calculated. Since the number of the audio samples to be encoded is set to a value which is convenient to the coding calculation, a frame period of the audio frame inevitably has no relation with a period of a processing unit of video data (a period of a video frame, i.e., a time code frame).
Therefore, if the audio data is encoded with the audio and video frames being not synchronized with each other, then the audio samples having the same time code value may be inserted into different audio frames depending upon the coding processing (i.e., reproducibility may be lacked)
This lack of reproducibility will specifically be described with reference to FIG. 2. When audio data of a tape TAPE1 and a tape TAPE2 are jointed, "a margin" where the same data are recorded is generally provided. It is assumed that audio data of the tape TAPE1 is switched to that of the tape TAPE2 at a start point P of a time code frame TN of the margin.
It is assumed that an audio frame including a data of a sound obtained when the tape TAPE1 at a point P is reproduced is an audio frame A1frame(N). It is assumed that an audio frame including a data of a sound obtained when the tape TAPE2 at the above point P is reproduced is an audio frame A2frame(N).
When the TAPE 2 is reproduced, a phase difference between the audio frame thereof and the time code frame is generally different from that between the time code frame and the audio frame obtained when the TAPE 1 is reproduced. In the example shown in FIG. 2, phase differences of the audio frames A1frame(N+1) and A2frame(N+1) with respect to the start point P are .pi.1 and .pi.2, respectively.
When the data streams obtained from the encoded audio data of the tapes TAPE1 and TAPE2 are jointed so that the audio frame A1frame(N) should be followed by the audio frame A2frame(N+1) to prevent the data at the start point P from being encoded twice, as shown in FIG. 2, two portions obtained by encoding the same audio data are repeatedly produced and further a time base shift of .pi.1-.pi.2 is produced after the joint point of the tapes TAPE1 and TAPE2, which disables a correct decoding processing of a DVD player. Therefore, an authoring system carrying out such edition has a disadvantage.
Since .pi.1>.pi.2 is established in the example shown in FIG. 2, the same data is encoded twice, which leads to a backward shift of time base. If .pi.1<.pi.2 is established, then some audio data is not encoded, which leads to a forward shift of time base.
In order to make audio frames of different tapes continuous, two methods can be considered: a first method of previously storing a plurality of audio data in some suitable means to thereafter edit them so that all the audio frames should be continuous; and a second method of dividing an audio data at a silent portion whose data may be encoded twice or removed if audio frames of different tapes are not aligned.
If the first method is employed, then a memory having a large capacity is required disadvantageously. If the second method is employed, then it is not practical because there is no ground that a silent portion is regularly produced on a tape.

System and method for combining two data streams while maintaining the continuous phase throughout the combined data stream


The present invention proposes an LED dimming module (10) comprising two LED strings (1,2), the first LED string (1) comprising at least one color converted blue or UV LED (1a) and the second LED string (2) comprising at least one amber light emitting LED (2a), the LED module further comprising control means (3) connected to the first and second LED string (1,2), said control means (3) being designed to selectively vary a current provided to the first LED string (1) such that a non-linear dimming curve (13b) of the resulting emitted light is obtained, said dimming curve (13b) approaching the planckian curve (9) on the CIE chromaticity diagram.

The present invention relates to a light emitting diode (LED) module with enhanced dimming properties. In particular, the present invention relates to a LED module comprising two LED strings that are designed to be controlled independently such that a dimming curve of the resulting emitted light is obtained which approaches a planckian dimming curve. The present invention further relates to a lamp comprising such a dimming module.
Incandescent light sources when dimmed, e.g. from 100% to 5% of their intensity, change their color temperature from about 2700K to 1900K. Thereby, the resulting dimming curve of the emitted light ideally follows the planckian curve in the CIE chromaticity diagram as shown by curve 7a in FIGS. 2a and 2b.
LED lighting devices comprising a wide variety of LEDs or LED modules are well-known in the prior art. Also, dimmable LED devices are known in which the current provided to the LED is varied in order to adjust the intensity of the light emitted by the LEDs of the module. In general, this is obtained by providing a pulse width modulated driving current to the LED to be dimmed.
Changing the color temperature of the light emitted by such a LED lighting device is generally addressed by RGB or similar three to four channel solutions. Thereby, such a lighting device comprises at least three to four LED strings, each comprising different monochromatic LEDs of respectively red, green and blue color, said LEDs being provided with different driving currents.
These solutions however need a sophisticated control respectively driving unit such as for example a several channel pulse width modulation microcontroller.
DE 10 2004 047 766 A1 for example relates to such a RGB lighting device with at least four LED modules, whereby the light of at least two of the four LED modules is suitable for being mixed to white light. Thereby, LEDs of the different LED modules have peak wavelengths of between 455 to 485 nm, 512 to 538 nm, 580 to 594 nm and 608 to 626 nm respectively. A provided control unit is designed for dimming of at least three of the four LED modules. By means of the lighting device white light with a desired correlated color temperature and a high color rendering index is provided.
EP 1 462 711 A1 relates to a white LED that can be modified to freely set a color temperature as well as to improve a color rendering property. Thereby, a correction-color LED or LEDs having a peak wavelength in a specific wavelength region in association with a white LED are provided to make a color temperature-regulable LED which permit the correction of not only a color temperature but also a color rendering property by means of color-mixture of the correction-color LED and the white LED considering the color temperature and a spectrum distribution of the white LED. The color temperature-regulable LED is especially useful as a shadowless operating light, a living room light and a decorative light.


A cervical spine support is described for use in exercises such for abdominal muscle strengthening. The support is formed of a hollow elongate flexible bag which contains a conformable material such as a granular material selected for its ability to conform to the shape of a person's cervical spine. The granular material is capable of flowing during use so as to provide a surface support that is comfortable to the user. Other conformable materials can be used such as a gel or air.

Devices for assisting a person for sit-up exercises are well known in the art. See for example U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,863,158 to Tassone; 5,122,107 to Gardner; 5,169,372 to Tecco and 5,267,931 to Faetini. The devices shown and described in these patents have shortcomings in the support of the head during a stomach muscle building exercise. The exercise bar shown in the Tassone patent employs a rigid neck bow that cannot comfortably adjust to a person's neck. The harness described in the Gardner patent employs a complex web of support straps using fixed width straps behind the neck and under the head.
The device shown in Tecco is also a rigid neck support which can, depending upon the selected embodiment be painful to use. The device described in the patent to Faetini uses a fixed contoured cervical support design to provide the desired neck support.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,295,949 describes a neck immobilizing elongate elastic neck band for rehabilitation of a neck injury. The neck band is resiliently stretchable and has a pocket to receive one of several types of inserts. The neck band is made with a stiffener whose function is to maintain a flat configuration for the neck band though the stiffeners will conform to the bend of the neck band around the neck of a person. The inserts are made of a semi-rigid pliable material which when placed within the pocket of the neck band immobilize the neck.
These prior art devices are in some cases somewhat painful to use and in others not sufficiently conforming to provide the desired comfort and ease of use as an abdominal muscle exercising support.


In order to reduce the weight, cost and complexity of an active antenna array, designed for use with a plurality of different mobile telecommunications systems (multi-band system), the array comprises a plurality of antenna elements, which are divided into a plurality of antenna groups; a plurality of RF transceivers, which are divided into transceiver sets, wherein each transceiver of a set is arranged to operate on a different mobile telecommunications system, and including respective phase shifting and feeding networks coupled between each transceiver set and a respective antenna group, so that each transceiver of a set is coupled to each antenna element of the respective antenna group.

Active Antenna Arrays (AAA), otherwise known as smart antennas, have recently gained popularity as candidate technology for base stations (BS) of future cellular/mobile networks. In the context of AAA, each radiator of the BS antenna array is fed by a dedicated RF transceiver /RF front-end, as shown in FIG. 1. In FIG. 1, a base station 2 has an active antenna array comprising a series of N antenna elements 41 . . . 4N, each being coupled to a respective RF transceiver 61 . . . 6N. Typically each RF transceiver comprises a transmit path which includes a digital to analog converter DAC, a frequency up-conversion stage and a power amplifier PA, and a receive path which includes a low noise amplifier, a frequency down-conversion stage and an analog to digital converter ADC. Appropriate phase shifts are applied, either in the transceivers, or in baseband signal processing, to the transmit and receive paths of the array in order to "steer" the antenna beam.
Current and future base stations may be required to support different mobile telecommunication systems, e.g. 2G (e.g. GSM), 3G (e.g. WCDMA) or 4G (e.g. LTE), operating on different frequencies, which may be in a range from 400 MHz to 2.6 GHz. This might require separate antenna array configurations for each system, which is clearly costly and generally inconvenient


A three-wheeled vehicle is disclosed having a vehicle frame supported by front ground engaging members and a single rear ground engaging member. The vehicle includes an engine positioned forward of an operator area and a swing arm coupled to the single rear ground engagement member. The operator area of the vehicle may include seating for a driver and a passenger.

The present application is a continuation of U.S. patent application Ser. No. 15/374,720, filed on Dec. 9, 2016, which is a continuation of U.S. patent application Ser. No. 14/639,475, filed on Mar. 5, 2015, which is a continuation of U.S. patent application Ser. No. 13/425,949, filed on Mar. 21, 2012, which claims priority to U.S. Provisional Patent Application Ser. No. 61/454,911, filed Mar. 21, 2011, the complete disclosures of which are expressly incorporated by reference herein.
The present disclosure relates to a three-wheeled street worthy vehicle.
Three-wheeled vehicles are known, for example see U.S. Pat. Nos. 7,648,148 and 7,464,781, the subject matter of which is incorporated herein by reference.
The vehicles depicted therein are straddle type vehicles. Side by side vehicles are also known; for example, see the Campagna T-Rex and V-13R vehicles. The subject matter of these vehicles is incorporated herein by reference.


Roughness is added to the surface of a bluff body in a relative motion with respect to a fluid. The amount, size, and distribution of roughness on the body surface is controlled passively or actively to modify the flow around the body and subsequently the Vortex Induced Forces and Motion (VIFM). The added roughness, when designed and implemented appropriately, affects in a predetermined way the boundary layer, the separation of the boundary layer, the level of turbulence, the wake, the drag and lift forces, and consequently the Vortex Induced Motion (VIM), and the fluid-structure interaction. The goal of surface roughness control is to increase Vortex Induced Forces and Motion. Enhancement is needed in such applications as harnessing of clean and renewable energy from ocean/river currents using the ocean energy converter VIVACE (Vortex Induced Vibration for Aquatic Clean Energy).

The statements in this section merely provide background information related to the present disclosure and may not constitute prior art.
Roughness is added to the surface of a bluff body in a relative motion with respect to a fluid. The amount, size, and distribution of roughness on the body surface is controlled passively or actively to modify the flow around the body and subsequently the Vortex Induced Forces and Motion (VIFM). The added roughness, when designed and implemented appropriately, affects in a predetermined way the boundary layer, the separation of the boundary layer, the level of turbulence, the wake, the drag and lift forces, and consequently the Vortex Induced Motion (VIM), and the fluid-structure interaction. The goal of surface roughness control is to increase Vortex Induced Forces and Motion, which in some applications can provide enormous benefits, such as in the harnessing of clean and renewable energy from ocean/river currents using the ocean energy converter VIVACE (Vortex Induced Vibration for Aquatic Clean Energy). The name of the present teachings is VIM-Enhance and is based on Surface Roughness Control (SRC). It is hereafter referred to as VIM-Enhance+SRC
Further areas of applicability will become apparent from the description provided herein. It should be understood that the description and specific examples are intended for purposes of illustration only and are not intended to limit the scope of the present disclosure.

This patent is subject to a terminal disclaimer.

Enhancement of vortex induced forces and motion through surface roughness control

The Regents of The University of Michigan


For a buffer amplifier provided near a solid state imaging device for photoelectrically converting an optical image by an image forming optical system and amplifying the signal of the output end, the temperature rise of the solid state imaging device is reduced by reducing the electric power consumption in a non-signal reading out period in which no driving signal is applied against a signal reading out period in which an image signal is output from the output end of this solid state imaging device by applying a driving signal to the solid state imaging device.

Field of the Invention and Related Art Statement
This invention relates to an imaging system for providing an amplified electrical image signal for input to a visual display, wherein heat buildup in the amplification of the electrical image signal is inhibited by a reduction in the power consumption of an imaging means during periods when no readout of the electrical image signal occurs.
Recently there are suggested various imaging apparatuses each using a solid state imaging device such as a CCD (charge coupled device). There are also suggested various endoscopes each using said solid state imaging device as a special imaging apparatus. In such endoscopes, there is known a method in which a color filter is provided integrally with or separately from the CCD and a method in which three primary color lights are radiated as sequentially switched to the CCD. Their detailed formations are mentioned, for example, in the publications of Japanese Patent Application Laid Open Nos. 65962/1976 and 54933/1980.
Also, the actual fitting around the solid state imaging device of such apparatus and the transmission of an output signal therein are mentioned in detail, for example, in the publications of Japanese Utility Model Application Publication No. 19122/1977 and Japanese Patent Application Laid Open No. 61588/1986.
FIG. 1 shows an electronic endoscope apparatus 1 of a prior art example similar to the one disclosed, for example, in Japanese Patent Application Laid Open No. 65962/1976.
This electronic endoscope apparatus 1 comprises an electronic scope 2, a video processor (called also an apparatus body) 5 having a light source section 3 feeding an illuminating light to this electronic scope 2 and a signal processing section 4 processing the signal for the imaging means of the electronic scope 2 built-in and a color monitor 6 displaying a standard video signal produced by processing the signal in the signal processing section.
Said electronic scope 2 has an elongate insertable section 7 and a thick operating section formed at the rear end of this insertable part 7. A light guide 9 transmitting the illuminating light is inserted through the insertable section 7 so that, when the light guide 9 extended out of the operating section 8 is fitted at the end to the light source section 3, the illuminating light may be fed from the light source section 3.
That is to say, when a white light emitted from a lamp 11 is condensed by a lens 12 and is passed through a rotary filter 14 rotated and driven by a motor 13, color transmitting filters 15R, 15G and 15B transmitting the lights of respective wavelength regions of red (R), green (G) and blue (B) and fitted in the peripheral direction of this rotary filter 14 will be sequentially interposed into the light path and the light will be thereby converted to RGB sequential lights. These RGB (sequential) lights are condensed by a lens 16 and are radiated to the light guide 9 on one end surface. The RGB lights are transmitted by this light guide 9 and are emitted to the object side through an illuminating lens 18 from the end surface on the scope tip section 17 side.
The reflected light from the object is made by an objective lens 19 fitted to the scope tip section 17 to form an object image on a CCD 21 as a solid state imaging device arranged in its focal plane. The object image is photoelectrically converted by the CCD 21 and is stored as an electric charge corresponding to the object image.
In said CCD 21, when a CCD driving signal from a CCD driver 22 within the video processor 5 is applied, an electric charge will be read out. This read-out signal is amplified in the current by a buffer amplifier 23 and is transmitted to a pre-processing circuit 25 within the video processor 5 through a transmitting cable 24 inserted through the scope, that is, the insertable section 7 and the cord extended out of the operating section 8.
In this pre-processing circuit 25, a base band signal is extracted from a signal output from the CCD 21 as synchronized with a horizontal transfer clock of a CCD driving signal and gamma not illustrated within the pre-processing circuit 25 is corrected. This signal having had the gamma corrected is converted to a digital signal by an A/D converter 26 and is sequentially written by a control signal of a controlling section 28 into R, G and B memories 27R, 27G and 27B for synchronization.
For example, the signal photoelectrically converted by the CCD 21 under the illuminating light of red having passed through the red color transmitting filter 15 is written into the R memory 27R.
The respective signals temporarily written into these memories 27R, 27G and 27B are simultaneously read out and are converted to synchronized digital RGB signals which are converted to standard analogue RGB signals by D/A converters 29R, 29G and 29B. These RGB signals are input into enhancing circuits 31R, 31G and 31B for visibly improving the sharpness, are enhanced in the outlines and are then output to a color monitor 6 through buffer amplifiers 32R, 32G and 32B to color-display the object image.
By the way, a synchronizing signal is input into the controlling section 28 from a synchronizing signal generator 33 and the A/D conversion of the A/D converter 26, the reading/writing of the memories 27R, 27G and 27B, the D/A conversion of the D/A converters 29R, 29G and 29B, the rotating speed of the motor 13 and the timing of the driving signal of the CCD driver 22 are controlled as synchronized with this synchronizing signal.
Generally, in the electronic endoscope apparatus including the prior art example shown in this drawing, various parts are diagnosed by inserting the electronic endoscope 2 into a body cavity or are treated by passing a treating instrument or the like through a channel not illustrated provided within the insertable section 7.
So that these functions may be well developed, the outside diameter and rigid part length of the tip section 17 are required to be small and short and therefore the size of the solid state imaging device which can be used is restricted. From this restriction, the number of pixels of the solid state imaging device is also restricted. Also, in order to visibly display such required information as patient data, an object image that is imaged with the solid state imaging device is not displayed on the whole screen at observation monitoring, but the same as in the usual case of this prior art example, a display size of about 1/2 is used as shown in FIG. 2. By the way, said patient data are simultaneously displayed on the left side in the picture in FIG. 2.
Also, in this prior art example, a so-called frame sequential system wherein three R, G and B primary color lights are sequentially radiated by using a black and white (monochromatic) solid state imaging device (specifically the CCD 21) is adopted. In order to provide a distance range in which the observation can be made with a proper brightness, it is desirable to enlarge the illuminating light amount per frame/field by lengthening the illuminating period. Signals are read at a high speed out of the CCD 21 and the signals read out by shortening the reading period are temporarily written into the R, G and B memories 27R, 27G and 27B for synchronizing the signals read out and are read at a standard video signal speed out of said R, G and B memories 27R, 27G and 27B.
Now, the transmission system of the output signal of the CCD 21 within the scope 2 in FIG. 1 is as in FIG. 3.
The length of the transmitting cable 24 from the scope tip section 17 to the video processor (body apparatus) 5 is usually about 2 to 3 meters. A coaxial cable 24 is used for the transmission for this length with as little deterioration of the characterisitcs as possible. A buffer amplifier 23 comprising an emitterfollower-connected transistor 34 arranged just adjacently to the CCD 21 and an emitter resistance R1 is necessary to drive the readout signal from the CCD 21 through this coaxial cable 24.
The signal output end of the CCD 21 is connected to the base of the transistor 34. The power source end of the CCD 21 and the collector of the transistor 34 are connected to a power source end +Vcc through a power source cable 35.
The characteristic impedance of said coaxial cable 24 is usually about 50 to 75.OMEGA.. The resistance R1 interposed between the emitter and one end of the coaxial cable 24 and the resistance R connected between the end part of the coaxial cable 24 on the apparatus body 5 side and ground are matching resistances.
Now, in order to transmit the output signal of the CCD 21 having a band characteristically of several MHz through the cable of 50 to 75.OMEGA., it is necessary to flow an electric current of several mA to several ten mA through the transistor 34 forming the buffer amplifier 23. The power consumption by this current becomes the sum of the consumptions by the transistor 34 and emitter resistance R1, that is, P=Ic.times.Vce+Ie.times.R1 and the generated heat amount brings about a temperature rise of the just adjacently arranged CCD 21. Here, Ic represents a collector current of the transistor 34, Vce represents a voltage between the collector and emitter and Ie represents an emitter current.
Generally, with the temperature rise, a solid state imaging such as the CCD 21 increases the dark current and deteriorates the picture quality. Usually, the operation guaranteeing temperature of this solid state imaging device is an absolute maximum rating of about 55.degree. C. Particularly, in the case of a plurality of horizontal transferring system solid state imaging devices of a high number of pixels, said buffer amplifier 23 will require a plurality of circuits and the temperature range of this maximum rating will be exceeded.
As described above, in the prior art example, there have been problems in that the heat generation by the driving buffer amplifier 23 of the transferring cable 24 will be large, the picture quality will be deteriorated by the increase of the dark current, the temperature range of the absolute maximum rating of the solid state imaging device will be exceeded, the life will be shortened and permanent damage will occur.

Imaging system providing amplified electrical image signal with inhibited heat buildup for visual display input


A method of prevention or treatment of a cholesterol-associated tumor is provided which comprises administering a therapeutically effective amount of an azetidinone-based cholesterol absorption inhibitor, preferably ezetimibe (SCH 58235) and/or its phenolic glucuronide, or at least one ezetimibe analog, e.g., SCH 48461 and SCH 58053, to a patient wherein the patient is either at risk of developing a cholesterol-associated tumor or already exhibits a cholesterol-associated tumor. Formulations of ezetimibe are also provided for the prevention or treatment of a cholesterol-associated tumor further comprising at least one other anticancer agent. An article of manufacture is also provided which comprises a container, instructions, and a composition, wherein the composition comprises a therapeutically effective amount of an azetidinone-based cholesterol absorption inhibitor, preferably ezetimibe or its phenolic glucuronide, and the instructions are for the administration of the composition for the prevention or treatment of a cholesterol-associated tumor.

Although cholesterol metabolism has been studied extensively in the liver and intestinal tract of humans and experimental animals little attention has been directed to the cholesterol metabolism in the male prostate gland and the female mammary gland in both their normal and pathologic diseased states. The etiology and progression for benign and malignant tumors of these glands still remains largely a mystery. Cholesterol-rich diets have had a significant epidemiological association with the variety of human cancer diseases. Particularly, cancers of the prostate and mammary glands and of the colon have been linked to high-fat "western" diets including the intake of fat of animal origin. Kolonel, et al., 1999, J. Natl. Cancer Inst., 91:414–428; Willett, 1989, Nature, 338:389–394. The mechanisms, however, by which these cancers are initiated and progress, as related to the dietary fat, are poorly understood.
The polyene macrolides and in particular, the aromatic heptaene macrolide, candicidin, have been in clinical use for the treatment of human benign prostatic hyperplasia for many years in several countries. Various other hypocholesterolemic drugs that interfere with cholesterol absorption and resorption in the gastrointestinal tract have also been in clinical use for the same human prostatic disease. Schaffner, 1983, in: "Benign Prostatic Hypertrophy", Frank Hinman, Jr. ed. Springer-Velag, New York, pp. 280–307 reviewed clinical studies with candicidin and other polyene macrolides. Candicidin in long-term rat studies has been shown to inhibit tumor initiation and progression as compared to untreated controls. Haditirto, 1974, Ph.D. Dissertation, Rutgers University. Other inhibitors of cholesterol absorption—resorption include the bile acid sequestering anionic exchange resins such as Cholestyramine® and Colestipol®. These have also been shown to alter the course of prostatic disease in animals and humans. Colestipol® inhibited benign prostatic hypertrophy in hamsters. Wang. et al., 1976, Investigative Urol. 14:66–71. Cholestyramine® has been shown to be effective in some patients with prostatic carcinoma. Addleman, 1972, N. England J. Med., 287:1047. As hypocholesterolemic drugs, the phytosterols, beta-sitosterol and stigmasterol, for example, are also known for their ability to inhibit cholesterol absorption and resorption by a mass action effect requiring large doses. In a controlled double blind study beta-sitosterol was found to be effective in the treatment of benign prostatic hyperplasia. Ebbinghaus et al., 1977, Z. Allg. Med., 53:1054–1058. It has been approved for human use in Europe. The phytosterols are also components of a variety of herbal medicines prescribed for the treatment of prostate disease. Extracts of the berries of the plant, saw palmetto, and the bark of Pygeum africanum, also known as Tadenan, for example, contain significant quantities of beta-sitosterol.

Compositions of ezetimibe and methods for the treatment of cholesterol-associated benign and malignant tumors