This letter discusses the prediction of the time-varying bit error rate (BER) for a transmitting channel using recent transmissions and retransmissions. Depending on the predicted BER, we propose a maximum frame size control to improve the goodput in wireless networks. It is shown, using simulation, that when the maximum frame size is controlled relative to the time-varying BER the goodput of the network is improved.

In this paper, an algorithm for anchor frame detection in news video is proposed, which consists of four steps. First, the cumulative histogram method is used to detect shot boundaries in order to segment a news video into video shots. Second, skin color information is used to detect face regions in each video shot. Third, color information of upper body regions is used to extract anchor object. Then, a graph-theoretic cluster analysis algorithm is utilized to classify the news video into anchor-person shots and non-anchor shots. Experimental results have shown the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm.

In ubiquitous computing, or ubiquitous network environment, many sensors and devices are embedded in the environment. Moreover, information appliances and smart space technologies allow users to enjoy high computational power, which also gives freedom and extrication from traditional computing style that often caused users' inconvenience and restriction of their demands and needs. However, due to the characteristics of ubiquitous computing, application's high adaptability to the changes of environments is required. To achieve this high adaptability of applications, we introduce a design approach of "snapshot-based application." The snapshot-based application can store its status as a snapshot. By utilizing the snapshot, an application can be recreated as it is in the status of the snapshot. In this paper, we propose an application framework named "u-Snap," which realizes snapshot-based applications. We have exemplified the effectiveness of this framework with implementation of "u-Photo," which utilize a snapshot of an application as contextual information that is embedded in a photo image.

The three main reasons why the new H.264 (MPEG-4 AVC) video coding standard has a significant performance better than the other standards are the adoption of variable block sizes, multiple reference frames, and the consideration of rate distortion optimization within the codec. However, these features incur a considerable increase in encoder complexity. As for the multiple reference frames motion estimation, the increased computation is in proportion to the number of searched reference frames. In this paper, a fast multi-frame selection method is proposed for H.264 video coding. The proposed scheme can efficiently determine the best reference frame from the allowed five reference frames. Simulation results show that the speed of the proposed method is over two times faster than that of the original scheme adopted in JVT reference software JM73 while keeping the similar video quality and bit-rate.

Application of multipled block codes (MBCs) for realizing new flexible and efficient transmission systems that feature in hunting-free reframing and asynchronous multiplexing is investigated. First, the principles of MBC are overviewed to show the capacities of filterless clock recovery. Then it is shown that modification of simple frame structure of MBC line code can be used for attaining hunting-free reframing for multiplexing systems. Two types of MBCs are developed to this end. While the one uses header blocks for hunting-free reframing, the other uses distributed frame patterns. Header design of multipled block codes (MBC) for hunting-free reframing (HFR) is investigated for frame patterns with and without violation compensation. The feasibility of hunting-free reframing is tested in an experimental system. Application of hunting-free reframing to asynchronous multiplexing is also investigated and tested in an experimental system. Finally, advantages of hunting-free multiplexing systems are discussed.

In this paper, we propose a fixed monocular camera, which changes the focus cyclically to recognize completely the three-dimensional translational motion of a rigid object. The images captured in a half cycle of the focus change form a multi-focus image sequence. The motion in depth or the focus change of the camera causes defocused blur. We develop an in-focus frame tracking operator in order to automatically detect the in-focus frame in a multi-focus image sequence of a moving object. The in-focus frame gives a 3D position in the motion of the object at the time that the frame was captured. The reconstruction of the motion of an object is performed by utilizing non-uniform sampling theory for the 3D position samples, of which information were inferred from the in-focus frames in the multi-focus image sequences.

We propose a new data link protocol with an adaptive frame length control scheme for satellite networks. The wireless communication channel in satellite networks is subject to errors that occur with time variance. The frame length of the data link layer is another important factor that affects throughput performance in dynamic channel environments. If the frame length could be chosen adaptively in response to changes in the dynamically varying satellite channel, maximum throughput could be achieved under both noisy and non-noisy error conditions. So, we propose a frame length control scheme that acts adaptively to counter errors that occur with time variance. We model the satellite channel as a two-state Markov block interference (BI) model. The estimation of the channel error status is based on the short-term bit error rate and the duty cycle of noise bursts. Numerical and computer simulation results show that the proposed scheme can achieve high throughput for both dense and diffuse burst noise channels.

Applying the formerly proposed classification framework for first order line search optimization techniques we introduce novel superlinear first order line search methods. Novelty of the methods lies in the line search subproblem. The presented line search subproblem features automatic step length and momentum adjustments at every iteration of the algorithms realizable in a single step calculation. This keeps the computational complexity of the algorithms linear and does not harm the stability and convergence of the methods. The algorithms have none or linear memory requirements and are shown to be convergent and capable of reaching the superlinear convergence rates. They were practically applied to artificial neural network training and compared to the relevant training methods within the same class. The simulation results show satisfactory performance of the introduced algorithms over the standard and previously proposed methods.

Cohesion is an important software attribute, and it is one of significant criteria for assessing object-oriented software quality. Although several metrics for measuring cohesion have been proposed, there is an aspect which has not been supported by those existing metrics, that is "cohesive-part size." This paper proposes a new metric focusing on "cohesive-part size," and evaluates it in both of qualitative and quantitative ways, with a mathematical framework and an experiment measuring some Java classes, respectively. Through those evaluations, the proposed metric is showed to be a reasonable metric, and not redundant one. It can collaborate with other existing metrics in measuring class cohesion, and will contribute to more accurate measurement.

There exists a class of nonlinear systems which fail to have a well-defined relative degree but have a robust relative degree. We have removed the full relative degree assumption which the previous results required, and have provided a local state observer for nonlinear systems that have robust relative degree γ n and have detectability property in some sense. The proposed observer utilizes the coordinate change which transforms the system into an approximate normal form. Using the proposed method, we constructed an observer for the ball and beam system on a vibrating frame. Simulation results reveal that substantial improvement in the performance is achieved compared with other local observers.

Web Services (WS) have received significant attention recently. Delivering Quality of Service (QoS) on the Internet is a critical and significant challenge for WS community. This article proposes a Web Services Testing Framework (WSTF) for WS participates to perform WS testing. WSTF provides three main distributed components: test master, test agents and test monitor. Test master manages scenarios and generates test scripts. It initiates WS testing by sending test scripts to test agents. Test agents dynamically bind and invoke the WS. Test monitors capture synchronous/asynchronous messages sent and received, attach timestamp, and trace state change information. The benefit to use WSTF is that the user only needs to specify system scenarios based on the system requirements without needing to write test code. To validate the proposed approach, this paper used the framework to test a supply-chain system implemented using WS.

This paper defines a new kind of a mixture density model for modeling a quasi-stationary Gaussian process based on mel-cepstral representation. The conventional AR mixture density model can be applied to modeling a quasi-stationary Gaussian AR process. However, it cannot model spectral zeros. In contrast, the proposed model is based on a frequency-warped exponential (EX) model. Accordingly, it can represent spectral poles and zeros with equal weights, and, furthermore, the model spectrum has a high resolution at low frequencies. The parameter estimation algorithm for the proposed model was also derived based on an EM algorithm. Experimental results show that the proposed model has better performance than the AR mixture density model for modeling a frequency-warped EX process.

An effective method for lossless video compression using intra-frame coding algorithms is described. Intra-frame coding is mainly used for still image compression and does not exploit a temporal correlation in video sequences. With the proposed method, multiple frames are combined into one large picture by interleaving all pixel data. In a large generated picture, the temporal correlation of the video sequence is transformed into a spatial correlation. A large picture enables images to be coded more efficiently and decreases the bitrate for lossless coding using intra-frame coding. We demonstrated the effectiveness of this method by encoding video sequences using JPEG 2000 and JPEG-LS.

The proposed medium access protocol deals especially with the timely-transmission of real-time packets in wireless multimedia networks where users of many types of traffic are present. It works based on Time Division Multiple Access/Time Division Duplex (TDMA/TDD) technique and fixed-length packet switching incorporating two different policies to work differently on either non-congestion or congestion periods. In the policy to deal with congestion periods the concept of urgent packet has been introduced as any packet whose transmission deadline is on the next frame. Hence, during periods of congestion users inform to the Base Station the number and average deadline of the urgent packets in their buffers through requirement messages. According to that information the system is able to distribute its resources in a more efficient way during periods of congestion making the real-time packet loss rate decrease considerably. The simulation results show a very good performance of the method in networks where different types of traffic coexist even under high traffic-load conditions. The results also show a good trade-off characteristic between the real-time access delay and the buffer occupancy of non-real time terminals during congestion periods.

This paper presents a child verb learning model mainly based on syntactic bootstrapping. The model automatically learns 4-5-year-old children's linguistic knowledge of verbs, including subcategorization frames and thematic roles, using a text in dialogue format. Subcategorization frame acquisition of verbs is guided by the assumption of the existence of nine verb prototypes. These verb prototypes are extracted based on syntactic bootstrapping and some psycholinguistic studies. Thematic roles are assigned by syntactic bootstrapping and other psycholinguistic hypotheses. The experiments are performed on the data from the CHILDES database. The results show that the learning model successfully acquires linguistic knowledge of verbs and also suggest that psycholinguistic studies of child verb learning may provide important hints for linguistic knowledge acquisition in natural language processing (NLP).

This paper presents effective methods to calculate dual frame of the short-time Fourier expansion (STFE) in l2(Z). Based on a relationship between the prototype window used for generating a frame and the dual prototype window used for generating a dual frame in the STFE, two useful numerical methods with a finite frame operator are proposed to obtain finite support dual frames in time domain formulation. The methods can be used to construct the multiple STFE (MSTFE) suitable for a time-frequency analysis, synthesis and coding of discrete-time nonstationary signals. Numerical simulation results are given to verify the effectiveness of the calculation of dual frame.

This document analyzes the characteristics of Waiting Time Jitter (WTJ) generated in High-bit-rate Digital Subscriber Lines (HDSL) systems transmitting non-uniform frames. It also derives the Fourier transform of the above WTJ.

Recently, the Guaranteed Frame Rate (GFR) service was proposed as a new service category of ATM to support non-realtime data applications and to provide the minimum rate guarantee. To keep the simplicity of GFR as much as possible and overcome defects of FIFO-based mechanisms, we propose a FIFO-based algorithm extending DFBA one to improve the fairness and provide the minimum rate guarantee for a wider range of Minimum Cell Rate (MCR). The key idea is controlling the number of CLP1 cells which are occupying more buffer space than the fair share even when the queue length is below Low Buffer Occupancy (LBO).

This letter proposes an initial frame synchronization algorithm for orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) systems. Since the proposed scheme utilizes only the cyclic prefix and the phase shift of the demodulated data without the aid of any known signals, it can be applied not only at the beginning of data transmission but also at any instant during transmission. The performance of the proposed algorithm is confirmed by computer simulation for QPSK, 8-PSK, and 16-QAM systems.

This paper describes User Attribute with Validity Period extension field of public key certificate and Certificate Verification Service with Time Stamp. The field and service solve the problems of unavailability of the latest revoked certificate information, large size of the revocation information and lack of non-repudiation mechanism of the X. 509 Authentication Framework. The proposed extension field is useful to reduce the revoked certificate information sent from CA of an organization where there are periodical personnel changes. The Certificate Verification Service with Time Stamp is an on-line service providing certificate status and non-repudiation service. The paper shows how the combination of the field and service solves the problems and that the server can serve hundreds of thousands of messaging system users, and the security of the service is also discussed.