Browsing by Author "Kuo, Yu-Ting"

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A 52mW 1200MIPS compact DSP for multi-core media SoC
(2006)
Ou, Shih-Hao
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Lin, Tay-Jyi
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Huang, Chao-Wei
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Kuo, Yu-Ting
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Chao, Chie-Min
This paper presents a DSP core for multi-core media SoC, which is optimized to execute a set of signal processing tasks very efficiently. The fully-programmable core has a data-centric instruction set and a corresponding latency-insensitive microarchitecture, where the hardware design is optimized concurrently with its automatic software generator. The proposed DSP core has 3X performance (in cycles) of those found in commercial dual-core application processors with similar computing resources. The silicon implementation in UMC 0.18 mu m 1P6M CMOS technology operates at 314MHz and consumes only 52mW average power.
A First-Layered Crustal Velocity Model for the Western Solomon Islands: Inversion of the Measured Group Velocity of Surface Waves Using Ambient Noise
(2018-11-01)
Ku, Chin-Shang
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Kuo, Yu-Ting
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Chao, Wei-An
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You, Shuei-Huei
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Huang, Bor-Shouh
Two earthquakes, M-w 8.1 in 2007 and M-w 7.1 in 2010, hit the western province of the Solomon Islands and caused extensive damage, which motivated us to establish a temporary seismic network around the rupture zones of these earthquakes. With the available continuous seismic data recorded from eight seismic stations, we cross correlate the vertical component of ambient-noise records and calculate Rayleigh-wave group velocity dispersion curves for interstation pairs. A genetic algorithm is adopted to fit the averaged dispersion curve and invert a 1D crustal velocity model, which constitutes two layers (upper and lower crust) and a half-space (uppermost mantle). The resulting thickness values for the upper and lower crust are 6.9 and 13.5 km, respectively. The shear-wave velocities (V-S) of the upper crust, lower crust, and uppermost mantle are 2.62, 3.54, and 4: 10 km/s with V-P/V-S ratios of 1.745, 1.749, and 1.766, respectively. The differences between the predicted and observed travel times show that our 1D model (WSOLOCrust) has average 0.85- and 0.16-s improvements in travel-time residuals compared with the global iasp91 and local CRUST 1.0 models, respectively. This layered crustal velocity model for the western Solomon Islands can be further used as a referenced velocity model to locate earthquake and tremor sources as well as to perform 3D seismic tomography in this region. Electronic Supplement: Figures showing the misfit of inversion process and the comparison between observed and synthetics and the location of experiments in previous studies and tables listing information about the seismic network, parameters of the genetic algorithm (GA), information of earthquakes used in this study, and results obtained from different 1D models.
A Low Power Hearing Aid Computing Platform Using Lightweight Processing Elements
(2012)
Chang, Kuo-Chiang
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Chen, Yu-Wen
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Kuo, Yu-Ting
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Liu, Chih-Wei
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電子工程學系及電子研究所
This paper presents a power-efficient computing platform for hearing aids. The proposed platform composes four heterogeneous processing elements. Each processing element includes one tiny RISC processor and several power-efficient hardwired accelerators. The hardwired accelerators integrate static floating-point and truncated multiplier to improve signal-to-noise ratio and reduce computational complexity. Compared to the post-truncate multiplication in FIR filter, the proposed static floating-point datapath reduces 50.8% area and improves 2.2 dB SNR simultaneously.
Comparison of Gd-Bz-TTDA, Gd-EOB-DTPA, and Gd-BOPTA for dynamic MR imaging of the liver in rat models
(2012-03-01)
Jaw, Twei-Shiun
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Chen, Shih-Hsien
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Wang, Yun-Ming
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Hsu, Jui-Sheng
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Kuo, Yu-Ting
To evaluate the competitive potential of a new lipophilic paramagnetic complex, Gd-Bz-TTDA [4-benzyl-3,6,10-tri (carboxymethyl)-3,6,10-triazado-decanedioic acid] compared with two other commercially available MR hepatobiliary contrast agents, gadobenate dimeglumine (Gd-BOPTA) and gadoxetic acid (Gd-EOB-DTPA), dynamic MR imaging studies were performed on normal and hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) rat models using a 1.5-Tesla MR scanner. The results indicate that normal rats that were injected with 0.1 mmol/kg Gd-Bz-TTDA showed significantly more intense and persistent liver enhancement than those that were injected with the same dose of Gd-EOB-DTPA or Gd-BOPTA. All of these agents showed similar enhancement patterns in the implanted HCC. The liver-lesion contrast-to-noise ratios were higher and more persistent in rats that were injected with Gd-Bz-TTDA. These results indicate that Gd-Bz-TTDA is comparable with the commercially available hepatobiliary agents, Gd-EOB-DTPA and Gd-BOPTA, and can result in more intense and prolonged liver enhancement while still providing better liver-lesion discrimination. These results warrant further large-scale studies. Copyright (C) 2012, Elsevier Taiwan LLC. All rights reserved.
Complexity-Aware Quantization and Lightweight VLSI Implementation of FIR Filters
(2011)
Kuo, Yu-Ting
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Lin, Tay-Jyi
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Liu, Chih-Wei
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電子工程學系及電子研究所
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Department of Electronics Engineering and Institute of Electronics
The coefficient values and number representations of digital FIR filters have significant impacts on the complexity of their VLSI realizations and thus on the system cost and performance. So, making a good tradeoff between implementation costs and quantization errors is essential for designing optimal FIR filters. This paper presents our complexity-aware quantization framework of FIR filters, which allows the explicit tradeoffs between the hardware complexity and quantization error to facilitate FIR filter design exploration. A new common subexpression sharing method and systematic bit-serialization are also proposed for lightweight VLSI implementations. In our experiments, the proposed framework saves 49% similar to 51% additions of the filters with 2's complement coefficients and 10% similar to 20% of those with conventional signed-digit representations for comparable quantization errors. Moreover, the bit-serialization can reduce 33% similar to 35% silicon area for less timing-critical applications.
Complexity-effective auditory compensation for digital hearing aids
(2008)
Kuo, Yu-Ting
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Lin, Tay-Jyi
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Chang, Wei-Han
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Li, Yueh-Tai
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Liu, Chih-Wei
This paper describes a complexity-effective design of auditory compensation, which is the most important building block in digital hearing aids. A multi-rate architecture and the filter bank design thereof are proposed to significantly reduce the data rates of the band-limited channels and thus the computational complexity. Several optimizations are discussed to further simplify the implementation of the dynamic range compressors in the multi-rate auditory compensation. In an 18-band 24-KHz digital hearing aid, 94% multiplications and additions are saved from a straightforward filter bank design. Moreover, the computation and memory requirements of the dynamic range compressor of each band are reduced to only 16% and 1% respectively.
Complexity-Effective Auditory Compensation with a Controllable Filter for Digital Hearing Aids
(2012)
Chang, Ya-Ting
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Chang, Kuo-Chiang
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Kuo, Yu-Ting
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Liu, Chih-Wei
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電子工程學系及電子研究所
Auditory compensation consumes significant power due to the computation-intensive operations in the filter bank. To reduce the complexity, a controllable filter was designed to replace the filter bank. Filter order was designed to match prescriptions within a specific error constraint with minimum computational cost. An interpolation scheme according to the variation of signal intensity was implemented to reduce the overhead of coefficients calculations. The proposed auditory compensation reduces 80% of multiplications and 30% of power consumption compared to the complexity-effective multi-rate filter bank architecture [4]. Moreover, the group delay was also reduced from 10 ms to 2.4 ms.
Complexity-Effective Dynamic Range Compression for Digital Hearing Aids
(2010)
Chang, Kuo-Chiang
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Kuo, Yu-Ting
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Lin, Tay-Jyi
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Liu, Chih-Wei
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電子工程學系及電子研究所
Dynamic range compression (DRC) is an essential function in digital hearing aids, which have stringent power consumption constraints. This work minimized the complexity of the DRC algorithm through adopting functional approximation for those involved nonlinear operations. The tradeoff between computation reduction and approximation error was explored for reducing hardware cost without introducing audible artifact. Moreover, finite wordlength analysis is conducted for the wordlength minimization and further complexity saving. The experimental result shows that our design totally reduces 96% computing complexity of the straightforward implementation without introducing audible difference in the output signals. Compared with other approximation methods, our design also requires lower hardware complexity.
Design and implementation of a high-performance and complexity-effective VLIW DSP for multimedia applications
(2008-06-01)
Lin, Tay-Jyi
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Chen, Shin-Kai
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Kuo, Yu-Ting
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Liu, Chih-Wei
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Hsiao, Pi-Chen
This paper presents the design and implementation of a novel VLIW digital signal processor (DSP) for multimedia applications. The DSP core embodies a distributed & ping-pong register file, which saves 76.8% silicon area and improves 46.9% access time of centralized ones found in most VLIW processors by restricting its access patterns. However, it still has comparable performance (estimated in cycles) with state-of-the-art DSP for multimedia applications. A hierarchical instruction encoding scheme is also adopted to reduce the program sizes to 24.1 similar to 26.0%. The DSP has been fabricated in the UMC 0.13 mu m 1P8M Copper Logic Process, and it can operate at 333 MHz while consuming 189 mW power. The core size is 3.2 x 3.15 mm(2) including 160 KB on-chip SRAM.
Design and Implementation of Low-Power ANSI S1.11 Filter Bank for Digital Hearing Aids
(2010-07-01)
Kuo, Yu-Ting
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Lin, Tay-Jyi
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Li, Yueh-Tai
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Liu, Chih-Wei
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電子工程學系及電子研究所
Due to well matching the frequency characteristics of human ears, ANSI S1.11 1/3-octave filter bank is popular in acoustic applications, such as acoustic analyzers and equalizers. It is also desirable in hearing aids because the famous hearing aid prescription formula, NAL-NL1, prescribes its gains at ANSI 1/3-octave frequencies. However, the high computation complexity limits its usage, in which the power consumption is a critical concern. To address this issue, a low-power design and implementation of ANSI S1.11 filter bank for digital hearing aids is present. We first develop the complexity-effective multirate FIR filter bank algorithm. And, a systematic coefficient design flow is elaborated for the proposed filter bank to minimize the order of the FIR filter thereof. In an 18-band digital hearing aid with 24-kHz sampling rate, the proposed algorithm saves about 96% of multiplications and additions, comparing that with a straightforward FIR filter bank. Moreover, various low-power VLSI design techniques are investigated in detail and applied on our design. The proposed complexity-effective ANSI S1.11 FIR filter bank has been implemented in the TSMC 0.13-mu m CMOS technology with an area-efficient architecture. The test chip consumes only 87 mu W, which is 30%-79% of that of the others available in the literature. The proposed low-power ANSI 1/3-octave bank makes itself being able to precisely apply the prescribed gains obtained by NAL-NL1 prescription formula for hearing-impaired people.
Design of ANSI S1.11 filter bank for digital hearing aids
(2007)
Kuo, Yu-Ting
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Lin, Tay-Jyi
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Li, Yueh-Tai
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Chang, Wei-Han
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Liu, Chih-Wei
Existing digital hearing aids, to our knowledge, all exclude ANSI S1.11-compliant filter banks because of the high computational complexity. Most ANSI S1.11 designs are IIR-based and only applicable in applications where linear phase is not important. This paper presents an FIR-based ANSI S1.11 filter bank for digital hearing aids, which adopts a multi-rate architecture to reduce the data rates on the bandwidth-limited bands. A systematic way is also proposed to minimize the FIR orders thereof In an 18-band digital hearing aid with 24 kHz input sampling rate, the proposed design with linear phase has comparable computational complexity with IIR filter banks. Moreover, our design requires only 4% multiplications and additions of a straightforward FIR implementation.
Development of a Gd(III)-Based Receptor-Induced Magnetization Enhancement (RIME) Contrast Agent for beta-Glucuronidase Activity Profiling
(2012-11-19)
Chen, Shih-Hsien
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Kuo, Yu-Ting
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Singh, Gyan
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Cheng, Tian-Lu
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Su, Yu-Zheng
beta-Glucuronidase is a key lysosomal enzyme and is often overexpressed in necrotic tumor masses. We report here the synthesis of a pro receptor induced magnetization enhancement (pro RIME) magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) contrast agent ([Gd(DOTA-FP beta Gu)]) for molecular imaging of beta-glucuronidase activity in tumor tissues. The contrast agent consists of two parts, a gadolinium complex and a beta-glucuronidase substrate (beta-D-glucopyranuronic acid). The binding association constant (K-A) of [Gd(DOTA-FP beta Gu)] is 7.42 X 10(2), which is significantly lower than that of a commercially available MS-325 (K-A = 3.0 x 10(4)) RIME contrast agent. The low K-A value of [Gd(DOTA-FP beta Gu)] is due to the pendant beta-D-glucopyranuronic acid moiety. Therefore, [Gd(DOTA-FP beta Gu)] can be used for detection of beta-glucuronidase through RIME modulation. The detail mechanism of enzymatic activation of [Gd(DOTA-FP beta Gu)] was elucidated by LC-MS. The kinetics of beta-glucuronidase catalyzed hydrolysis of [Eu(DOTA-FP beta Gu)] at pH 7.4 best fit the Miechalis-Menten kinetic mode with K-m = 1.38 mM, K-cat = 3.76 x 10(3), and k(cat)/K-m = 2.72 x 10(3) M-1 s(-1). The low K-m value indicates high affinity of beta-glucuronidase for [Gd(DOTA-FP beta Gu)] FP beta Gu) at physiological pH. Relaxometric studies revealed that T-1 relaxivity of [Gd(DOTA-FP beta Gu)] changes in response to the concentration of beta-glucuronidase. Consistent with the relaxometric studies, [Gd(DOTA-FP beta Gu)] showed significant change in MR image signal in the presence of beta-glucuronidase and HSA. In vitro and in vivo MR images demonstrated appreciable differences in signal enhancement in the cell lines and tumor xenografts in accordance to their expression levels of beta-glucuronidase. [GRAPHICS] .
Development of Bifunctional Gadolinium-Labeled Superparamagnetic Nanoparticles (Gd-MnMEIO) for In Vivo MR Imaging of the Liver in an Animal Model
(2016-02-17)
Kuo, Yu-Ting
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Chen, Chiao-Yun
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Liu, Gin-Chung
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Wang, Yun-Ming
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生物科技學系
Liver tumors are common and imaging methods, particularly magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), play an important role in their non-invasive diagnosis. Previous studies have shown that detection of liver tumors can be improved by injection of two different MR contrast agents. Here, we developed a new contrast agent, Gd-manganese-doped magnetism-engineered iron oxide (Gd-MnMEIO), with enhancement effects on both T1-and T2-weighted MR images of the liver. A 3.0T clinical MR scanner equipped with transmit/receiver coil for mouse was used to obtain both T1-weighted spoiled gradient-echo and T2-weighted fast spin-echo axial images of the liver before and after intravenous contrast agent injection into Balb/c mice with and without tumors. After pre-contrast scanning, six mice per group were intravenously injected with 0.1 mmol/kg Gd-MnMEIO, or the control agents, i.e., Gd-DTPA or SPIO. The scanning time points for T1-weighted images were 0.5, 5, 10, 15, 20, 25, and 30 min after contrast administration. The post-enhanced T2-weighted images were then acquired immediately after T1-weighted acquisition. We found that T1-weighted images were positively enhanced by both Gd-DTPA and Gd-MnMEIO and negatively enhanced by SPIO. The enhancement by both Gd-DTPA and Gd-MnMEIO peaked at 0.5 min and gradually declined thereafter. Gd-MnMEIO (like Gd-DTPA) enhanced T1-weighted images and (like SPIO) T2-weighted images. Marked vascular enhancement was clearly visible on dynamic T1-weighted images with Gd-MnMEIO. In addition, the T2 signal was significantly decreased at 30 min after administration of Gd-MnMEIO. Whereas the effects of Gd-MnMEIO and SPIO on T2-weighted images were similar (p = 0.5824), those of Gd-MnMEIO and Gd-DTPA differed, with Gd-MnMEIO having a significant T2 contrast effect (p = 0.0086). Our study confirms the feasibility of synthesizing an MR contrast agent with both T1 and T2 shortening effects and using such an agent in vivo. This agent enables tumor detection and characterization in single liver MRI sections.
In vivo magnetic resonance imaging of mice liver tumors using a new gadolinium-based contrast agent
(2013-05-01)
Chen, Shih-Hsien
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Kuo, Yu-Ting
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Cheng, Tian-Lu
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Chen, Chiao-Yun
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Chiu, Yen-Yu
We compared the enhancement effect between a newly synthesized tissue-specific contrast agent, [Gd-DOTA-FP beta G], and a commercially available agent, [Gd(DOTA)](-), in a murine model of liver tumor using a clinical magnetic resonance imaging scanner. The colon cancer cell lines with and without beta-glucuronidase (beta G) expression were implanted into the liver of mice. Self-synthesized gadolinium-based magnetic resonance contrast agent, [Gd(DOTA-FP beta G)], was administered to measure enhancement on magnetic resonance images using a commercially available agent, [Gd(DOTA)](-), as control in a clinical 3.0 tesla (T) magnetic resonance scanner. In vivo fluorescence imaging and histopathology of the liver were also performed to compare and correlate with the magnetic resonance studies. The in vivo fluorescence imaging failed to depict a sufficiently intense signal for liver or liver tumor of mice without exposure of the liver following an incision on the abdominal wall. The tissue-specific magnetic resonance agent, [Gd(DOTA-FP beta G)], caused significantly stronger enhancement in tumors expressing beta G (CT26/m beta G-eB7) than in tumors not expressing beta G (CT26) (p < 0.05). In the magnetic resonance imaging studies using control agent [Gd(DOTA)](-), the tumors with and without beta G expression depicted no significant difference in enhancement on the T1-weighted images. The [Gd(DOTA-FP beta G)] also provided significantly more contrast uptake in the CT26/m beta G-eB7 tumor than in the normal liver parenchyma, whereas the [Gd(DOTA)](-) did not. This study confirms that better contrast enhancement can be readily detected in vivo by the use of a tissue-specific magnetic resonance contrast agent to target tumor cells with specific biomarkers in a clinical magnetic resonance imaging scanner. Copyright (c) 2012, Kaohsiung Medical University. Published by Elsevier Taiwan LLC. All rights reserved.
Low-Power ANSI S1.11 Filter Bank for Digital Hearing Aids
(2008)
Kuo, Yu-Ting
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Lin, Tay-Jyi
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Li, Yueh-Tai
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Lin, Chou-Kun
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Liu, Chih-Wei
This paper presents a low-power filter bank design for digital hearing aids, which is compliant with the ANSI S1.11 standard. A multi-rate filtering algorithm and its coefficient design method are proposed, which reduce 94% multiplications. The power dissipation is further reduced by 31% and 35% with switch activity reduction and multi-VDD silicon implementation respectively. The design has been implemented using the TSMC 0.13 mu m CMOS technology and consumes only 79 mu W for 24KHz 18-band audio processing.
Programmable FIR filter with adder-based computing engine
(2006)
Kuo, Yu-Ting
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Lin, Tay-Jyi
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Cho, Yi
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Liu, Chih-Wei
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Jen, Chein-Wei
This paper presents a programmable FIR core with a compact adder-based computing engine and an automatic code generator. The FIR core saves 50% area of 'conventional MAC-based cores in the 0.13 mu m implementation. Besides, the complexity-aware code generator synthesizes optimized FIR programs for a user-defined sampling period. It explores an optimal scaling factor with common subexpression elimination automatically. In our simulations, the proposed approach reduces about 10%similar to 18% computing time of MAC-based FIR cores with comparable filtering performance.
The Large Greenland Landslide of 2017: Was a Tsunami Warning Possible?
(2018-07-01)
Chao, Wei-An
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Wu, Tso-Ren
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Ma, Kuo-Fong
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Kuo, Yu-Ting
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Wu, Yih-Min
Tsunamis generated by mass movements such as landslides, underwater slumps, and rock avalanches can lead to serious inundation of nearby populated areas. The lack of timely estimations of the moving mass volume, however, makes providing operational early warnings for landslides particularly challenging. In June 2017, a large landslide in Greenland generated tsunami waves of about 1 m high that impacted the small town of Nuugaatsiaq. We show how the seismic analysis of real-time seismic records from the Greenland Ice Sheet Monitoring Network (GLISN) can provide estimates of essential physical properties of the landslide such as collapse mass and sliding velocity shortly after origin time. The estimation of the landslide source parameters can be utilized for tsunami-wave simulations. We demonstrate how the real-time integration of seismic waveform inversion with forward tsunami-wave simulation could have enabled a timely operational warning (about 10 min) before the arrival of the impending tsunami waves at the village of Nuugaatsiaq.
Ultra Low-Power ANSI S1.11 Filter Bank for Digital Hearing Aids
(2009)
Kuo, Yu-Ting
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Lin, Tay-Jyi
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Li, Yueh-Tai
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Lin, Chou-Kun
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Liu, Chih-Wei
This paper presents an ANSI S1.11-compliant filter bank for digital hearing aids, of which the power consumption is minimized through algorithmic, numerical and architectural optimizations. This filter bank has been implemented and fabricated using the TSMC 0.13 mu m CMOS technology. The transistor-level simulations show that the power dissipation is only 79 mu W for 24KHz & 18-band audio processing.