2018 Specially Selected Paper

Winner: Yuhei Kawakoya, Makoto Iwamura, and Jun Miyoshi, NTT Secure Platform Laboratories

Date: December 15, 2018

Organization: Information Processing Society of Japan

For “Taint-assisted IAT Reconstruction against Position Obfuscation.”

Published as: Y. Kawakoya, M. Iwamura, and J. Miyoshi, “Taint-assisted IAT Reconstruction against Position Obfuscation,” Journal of Information Processing, Vol. 26, pp. 813–824, 2018.

IEEE Fellow

Winner: Seishi Takamura, NTT Media Intelligence Laboratories

Date: January 1, 2019

Organization: The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE)

For application of video coding.

The Asahi Prize

Winner: Tatsuaki Okamoto, NTT Secure Platform Laboratories

Date: January 1, 2019

Organization: The Asahi Shimbun Company

For his work in designing pioneering secret codes and developing safety theory.

Kenjiro Takayanagi Achievement Award

Winner: Seishi Takamura, NTT Media Intelligence Laboratories

Date: January 18, 2019

Organization: Kenjiro Takayanagi Foundation

For his pioneering research on video coding and its international standardization and dissemination activities.

The Itakura Prize Innovative Young Researcher Award

Winner: Yuma Koizumi, NTT Media Intelligence Laboratories

Date: January 22, 2019

Organization: Acoustical Society of Japan

For “DNN-based Source Enhancement to Increase Objective Sound Quality Assessment Score.”

Published as: Y. Koizumi, K. Niwa, Y. Hioka, K. Kobayashi, and Y. Haneda, “DNN-based Source Enhancement to Increase Objective Sound Quality Assessment Score,” IEEE/ACM Transactions on Audio, Speech, and Language Processing, Vol. 26, No. 10, pp. 1780–1792, 2018.

IEICE RCS Young Researcher Award

Winner: Riku Ohmiya, NTT Access Network Service Systems Laboratories

Date: February 1, 2019

Organization: The Institute of Electronics, Information and Communication Engineers (IEICE) Technical Committee on Radio Communication Systems (RCS)

For “Three-dimensional Cooperative Carrier Sensing for Un-used Frequency Utilization.”

Published as: R. Ohmiya, T. Murakami, K. Ishihara, T. Hayashi, and T. Yasushi, “Three-dimensional Cooperative Carrier Sensing for Un-used Frequency Utilization,” IEICE Tech. Rep., Vol. 118, No. 435, RCS2018-264, pp. 127–132, 2019.

JSPS PRIZE

Winner: Yoshitaka Taniyasu, NTT Basic Research Laboratories

Date: February 7, 2019

Organization: The Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS)

For his research on wide bandgap semiconductor ultraviolet light-emitting devices.

IEICE IN Research Award

Winner: Tomoki Ito, Information Technology Center, Nagoya University; Misao Kataoka, Hirofumi Noguchi, Yoji Yamato, NTT Network Service Systems Laboratories; Tsutomu Murase, Information Technology Center, Nagoya University

Date: March 4, 2019

Organization: IEICE Technical Committee on Information Networks (IN)

For “Network Architecture with Categorizing Metadata by Locality and Lifetime for IoT Database Management.”

Published as: T. Ito, M. Kataoka, H. Noguchi, Y. Yamato, and T. Murase, “Network Architecture with Categorizing Metadata by Locality and Lifetime for IoT Database Management,” IEICE Tech. Rep., Vol. 118, No. 245, IN2018-47, pp. 25–30, 2018.

The Awaya Prize Young Researcher Award

Winner: Atsushi Ando, NTT Media Intelligence Laboratories

Date: March 6, 2019

Organization: Acoustical Society of Japan

For “Question Detection from Acoustic and Lexical Features Using Feature-wise Pre-training.”

Published as: A. Ando, R. Masumura, H. Kamiyama, S. Kobashikawa, and Y. Aono, “Question Detection from Acoustic and Lexical Features Using Feature-wise Pre-training,” Proc. of Acoustical Society of Japan 2018 Autumn Meeting, 2-Q-5, pp. 1049–1050, Oita, Japan, Sept. 2018 (in Japanese).

IEICE OFT Young Researcher Award

Winner: Yuto Sagae, NTT Access Network Service Systems Laboratories

Date: March 20, 2019

Organization: IEICE Technical Committee on Optical Fiber Technologies (OFT)

For “A Study of Solid Type Low Latency Optical Fiber.”

Published as: Y. Sagae, T. Matsui, K. Tsujikawa, and K. Nakajima, “A Study of Solid Type Low Latency Optical Fiber,” IEICE Tech. Rep., Vol. 118, No. 40, OFT2018-2, pp. 5–10, 2018.

A Novel Non-supervised Deep Learning Based Network Traffic Control Method for Software Defined Wireless Networks

B. Mao, F. Tang, Z. Md. Fadlullah, N. Kato, O. Akashi, T. Inoue, and K. Mizutani

IEEE Wireless Communications, Vol. 25, No. 4, pp. 74–81, August 2018.

Software defined networking (SDN) has been regarded as the next-generation network paradigm, as it decouples complex network management from packet forwarding, which significantly simplifies the operation of switches in the data plane. The good programmability of SDN infrastructure also improves network feasibility. To alleviate the burden of the explosive growth in network traffic, in this article we propose a non-supervised deep learning based routing strategy running in the SDN controller. In our proposal, we utilize convolutional neural networks (CNNs) as our deep learning architecture, and the controller runs the CNNs to choose the best path combination for packet forwarding in switches. More importantly, in our proposal, the controller collects the network traffic trace and periodically trains the CNNs to adapt them to the changing traffic patterns. Simulation results demonstrate that our proposal is able to retain learning from previous experiences and outperform conventional routing protocols.

Exhaustive Graph Search and Applications Featuring Compressed Data Structures

T. Inoue

The Sixth International Symposium on Computing and Networking (CANDAR 2018), Takayama, Gifu, Japan, November 2018.

This talk presents exhaustive graph search techniques and their applications. Exhaustive graph search is a traditional but tough problem in computer science: finding all subgraphs in a graph under given constraints, e.g., paths, cycles, trees, degrees, size, and their combinations. Thanks to the recent advancement of algorithms and implementation techniques, exhaustive graph search has opened a new way to solve several network problems including configuration optimization, fault analysis, and reliability evaluation.

Measuring Lost Packets with Minimum Counters in Traffic Matrix Estimation

K. Watabe, T. Mano, T. Inoue, K. Mizutani, O. Akashi, and K. Nakagawa

IEICE Transactions on Communications, Vol. E102-B, No. 1, pp. 76–87, January 2019.

Traffic matrix (TM) estimation has been extensively studied for decades. Although conventional estimation techniques assume that traffic volumes are unchanged between origins and destinations, packets are often lost on a path due to traffic burstiness, silent failures, etc. Counting every path at every link, we could easily get the traffic volumes with their change, but this approach significantly increases the measurement cost since counters are usually implemented using expensive memory structures like a SRAM. This paper proposes a mathematical model to estimate TMs including volume changes. The method is established on a Boolean fault localization technique; the technique requires fewer counters as it simply determines whether each link is lossy. This paper extends the Boolean technique so as to deal with traffic volumes with error bounds that requires only a few counters.

Resource-efficient Verification of Quantum Computing Using Serfling’s Bound

Y. Takeuchi, A. Mantri, T. Morimae, A. Mizutani, and J. F. Fitzsimons

Proc. of the 22nd Annual Conference on Quantum Information Processing (QIP 2019), Boulder, Colorado, USA, January 2019.

Verifying quantum states is central to certifying the correct operation of various quantum information processing tasks. In particular, in measurement-based quantum computing, checking whether correct graph states are generated or not is essential for reliable quantum computing. Several verification protocols for graph states have been proposed, but none of these are particularly resource efficient: Many copies are required in order to extract a single state that is guaranteed to be close to the ideal graph state. For example, the best protocol currently known requires O(n¹⁵) copies of the state, where n is the size of the graph state [D. Markham et al., arXiv:1801.05057 (2018)]. In this paper, we construct a significantly more resource-efficient verification protocol for graph states that needs only O(n⁵ log n) copies. The key idea that achieves such a drastic improvement is to employ Serfling’s bound, which is a probability inequality in classical statistics. Utilizing Serfling’s bound also enables us to generalize our protocol for qudit and continuous-variable graph states. Constructing a resource-efficient verification protocol for qudit and continuous-variable graph states is non-trivial. For example, previous verification protocols for qubit graph states that use the quantum de Finetti theorem cannot be generalized to qudit and continuous-variable graph states without hugely increasing the resource overhead. This is because the overhead caused by the quantum de Finetti theorem depends on the local dimension. On the other hand, in our protocol, the resource overhead is independent of the local dimension, and therefore generalizing to qudit or continuous-variable graph states does not increase the overhead. The flexibility of Serfling’s bound also makes our protocol robust: Our protocol accepts slightly noisy but still useful graph states, which are rejected by previous protocols.

Quantum Remote Sensing with Asymmetric Information Gain

Y. Takeuchi, Y. Matsuzaki, K. Miyanishi, T. Sugiyama, and W. J. Munro

Physical Review A, Vol. 99, p. 022325, February 2019.

Typically, the aim of quantum metrology is to sense target fields with high precision utilizing quantum properties. Unlike the typical aim, in this paper, we use quantum properties for adding a functionality to quantum sensors. More concretely, we propose a delegated quantum sensor (a client-server model) with security inbuilt. Suppose that a client wants to measure some target fields with high precision, but he/she does not have any high-precision sensor. This leads the client to delegate the sensing to a remote server who possesses a high-precision sensor. The client gives the server instructions about how to control the sensor. The server lets the sensor interact with the target fields in accordance with the instructions, and then sends the sensing measurement results to the client. In this case, since the server knows the control process and readout results of the sensor, the information of the target fields is available not only for the client but also for the server. We show that by using an entanglement between the client and the server, an asymmetric information gain is possible so that only the client can obtain sufficient information on the target fields. In our scheme, the server generates the entanglement between a solid-state system (that can interact with the target fields) and a photon, and sends the photon to the client. On the other hand, the client is required to possess linear-optics elements only including wave plates, polarizing beam splitters, and single-photon detectors. Our scheme is feasible with the current technology, and our results pave the way for an application of quantum metrology.

Verifying Commuting Quantum Computations via Fidelity Estimation of Weighted Graph States

M. Hayashi and Y. Takeuchi

arXiv:1902.03369 [quant-ph], February 2019.

The instantaneous quantum polynomial time model (or the IQP model) is one of the promising models to demonstrate a quantum computational advantage over classical computers. If the IQP model can be efficiently simulated by a classical computer, an unlikely consequence in computer science can be obtained (under some unproven conjectures). In order to experimentally demonstrate the advantage using medium or large-scale IQP circuits, it is inevitable to efficiently verify whether the constructed IQP circuits faithfully work. There exists two types of IQP models, each of which is the sampling on hypergraph states or weighted graph states. For the first-type IQP model, polynomial-time verification protocols have already been proposed. In this paper, we propose verification protocols for the second-type IQP model. To this end, we propose polynomial-time fidelity estimation protocols of weighted graph states for each of the following four situations where a verifier can (i) choose any measurement basis and perform adaptive measurements, (ii) only choose restricted measurement bases and perform adaptive measurements, (iii) choose any measurement basis and only perform non-adaptive measurements, and (iv) only choose restricted measurement bases and only perform non-adaptive measurements. In all of our verification protocols, the verifier’s quantum operations are only single-qubit measurements. Since we assume no i.i.d. property on quantum states, our protocols work in any situation.