We propose guidelines for LSI-chip design, taking the within-die variations into consideration, and for process quality improvement to suppress the variations. The auto-correlation length, λ, of device variation is shown to be a useful measure to treat the systematic variations in a chip. We may neglect the systematic variation in chips within the range of λ, while σ2 of the systematic variation must be added to σ2 of the random variation outside the λ. The random variations, on the other hand, exhibit complete randomness even in the closest pair transistors. The mismatch variations in transistor pairs were enhanced by 1.41(=) compared with the random variations in single transistors. This requires careful choice of gate size in designing a transistor pair with a minimum size, such as transfer gates in an SRAM cell. Poly-Si gate formation is estimated to be the most important process to ensure the spatial uniformity in transistor current and to enhance circuit performance. Large relative variations are observed for the contact to p+ diffusion, via1 (M1-M2), and via2 (M2-M3) among parameter variations in passive elements. The standard deviations for random variations in via1 and via2 are noticeably widespread, indicating the importance of the via resistance control in BEOL. The spatial frequency power spectrum for within-die random variations is confirmed experimentally, as uniform ('white') with respect to the spatial frequency. To treat the large 'white random noise,' the least-square method with a 4th-order polynomial exhibits a best efficiency as a fitting function for decomposing the raw variation data into systematic part and random part.

A compromising technique is proposed for deterring clients from cheating by robot players in skill-based real-time network games. This technique is to inject a fair random noise into the manual input for a real-time game modeled as a chaotic dynamical system. The fair random noise is determined by means of the bit commitment protocol so that neither host nor client can control the noise in their favor. A scenario possibly plotted by a robot player for its victory may be spoiled by slight noise injection because of the sensitivity of chaotic systems to the input. The noise injection brings a luck-based factor into a skill-based game. In this sense, the technique proposed in this paper is not a solution but a compromise for the inherent problem of robot players with the skill-based network games. An example implementation of pinball is presented.

Fundamentals of parametric processing in highly nonlinear optical fiber are reviewed. Experimental procedures necessary for construction of one- and two-pump parametric amplifier architectures are described. Pump phase broadening, dispersion fluctuation and birefringence form basic impairment mechanisms in fiber parametric devices and are analyzed in two-pump parametric devices. Parametric signal processing is introduced with specific applications in all-optical regeneration, band conjugation, multicasting, packet switching and signal distortion reversal.

Generalized Tsume-Shogi (GTS) is Tsume-Shogi on the board of size n n for arbitrary n. The problem to decide the existence of a winning sequence of moves (where the attacker must always check) on an instance of GTS was proved to be exptime-complete by Yokota et al. (2000). This paper considers the complexity of yozume problem of GTS, which is, roughly speaking, the problem whether a given position of GTS has a winning sequence other than given sequences (though the actual rule of yozume is more complicated). The detection of yozume is an important issue in designing Tsume-Shogi problems, since the modern designing rule strongly prohibits it. We define a function problem of GTS appropriately to formulate yozume problem as its Another Solution Problem (ASP; the problem to decide the existence of solutions other than given ones). Moreover, we extend the existing framework for investigating ASPs so that it can be applied to exptime-complete problems. In particular, since the decision of correctness of given winning sequences is not easy, we establish a framework to treat ASP of function problems with promises. On the basis of these results, we prove that the decision version of yozume problem of GTS is exptime-complete as a promise problem using the existing reduction which was constructed by Yokota et al. to prove the exptime-completeness of GTS.

The DNSSECbis data model has key introduction follow the delegation chain, thus requiring a zone's parent to become secure before a zone itself can be secured. Ultimately this leads to non-deployability since the root zone will probably not be secured any time soon. We describe an early deployment aid for DNSSECbis whereby key introduction can be done via cooperating third parties.

We propose a method of controlling the view divergence of data freshness when copies of sites in a replicated database are updated asynchronously. The view divergence of the replicated data freshness is the difference in the recentness of the updates reflected in the data acquired by clients. Our method accesses multiple sites and provides a client with data that reflects all the updates received by the sites. First, we define the probabilistic recentness of updates reflected in acquired data as read data freshness (RDF). The degree of RDF of data acquired by clients is the range of view divergence. Second, we propose a way to select sites in a replicated database by using the probability distribution of the update delays so that the data acquired by a client satisfies its required RDF. This way calculates the minimum number of sites in order to reduce the overhead of read transactions. Our method continues to adaptively and reliably provide data that meets the client's requirements in an environment where the delay of update propagation varies and applications' requirements change depending on the situation. Finally, we evaluate by simulation the view divergence we can control using our method. The simulation showed that our method can control the view divergence to about 1/4 that of a normal read transaction for 100 replicas. In addition, the increase in the overhead of a read transaction imposed by our method is not as much as the increase in the total number of replicas.

Programmable Logic Controller (PLC) has been widely used in the industrial control. Inherently, the PLC-based system is a class of Hybrid Dynamical System (HDS) in which continuous state of the plant is controlled by the discrete logic-based controller. This paper firstly presents the formal algebraic model of the PLC-based control systems which enable the designer to formulate the various kinds of optimization problem. Secondly, the optimization problem of the 'sensor parameters,' such as the location of the limit switch in the material handling system, the threshold temperature of the thermostat in the temperature control system, is addressed. Finally, we formulate this problem as Mixed Logical Dynamical Systems (MLDS) form which enables us to optimize the sensor parameters by applying the Mixed Integer Programming.

A game-theoretic analysis is applied to the evaluation of capacity and stability of a wireless ad hoc network in which each source node independently chooses a route to the destination node so as to enhance throughput. First, the throughput of individual multihop transmission with rate adaptation is evaluated. Observations from this evaluation indicate that the optimal number of hops in terms of the achievable end-to-end throughput depends on the received signal-to-noise ratio. Next, the decentralized adaptive route selection problem in which each source node competes for resources over arbitrary topologies is defined as a game. Numerical results reveal that in some cases this game has no Nash equilibria; i.e., each rational source node cannot determine a unique route. The occurrence of such cases depends on both the transmit power and spatial arrangement of the nodes. Then, the obtained network throughput under the equilibrium conditions is compared to the capacity under centralized scheduling. Numerical results reveal that when the transmit power is low, decentralized adaptive route selection may attain throughput near the capacity.

This paper proposes a novel multi-layer approach to fundamental frequency modeling for concatenative speech synthesis based on a statistical learning technique called additive models. We define an additive F0 contour model consisting of long-term, intonational phrase-level, component and short-term, accentual phrase-level, component, along with a least-squares error criterion that includes a regularization term. A backfitting algorithm, that is derived from this error criterion, estimates both components simultaneously by iteratively applying cubic spline smoothers. When this method is applied to a 7,000 utterance Japanese speech corpus, it achieves F0 RMS errors of 28.9 and 29.8 Hz on the training and test data, respectively, with corresponding correlation coefficients of 0.806 and 0.777. The automatically determined intonational and accentual phrase components turn out to behave smoothly, systematically, and intuitively under a variety of prosodic conditions.

This paper investigates the parameter tying structures of a mixture of factor analyzers (MFA) and discriminative training of MFA for speaker identification. The parameters of factor loading matrices or diagonal matrices are shared in different mixtures of MFA. Then, minimum classification error (MCE) training is applied to the MFA parameters to enhance the discrimination ability. The result of a text-independent speaker identification experiment shows that MFA outperforms the conventional Gaussian mixture model (GMM) with diagonal or full covariance matrices and achieves the best performance when sharing the diagonal matrices, resulting in a relative gain of 26% over the GMM with diagonal covariance matrices. The improvement is more significant especially in sparse training data condition. The recognition performance is further improved by MCE training with an additional gain of 3% error reduction.

Domain Name System--DNS is a key service of the Internet. Without DNS, we cannot use any useful Internet applications. At the beginning of the Internet, email or file transfer applications were provided. DNS provides key service to them--resource discovery. Nowadays, there are broad range of software making use of DNS as basis of their application. In this paper, we explain the evolution of DNS, how DNS works and recent activities including operational issues. Then, we describe EPC network which make use of RFID to bridge real world and the Internet, and how DNS helps to organize EPC network.

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.

Radio frequency identification (RFID) enables everyday objects to be identified, tracked, and recorded. The RFID tags are must be extremely simple and of low cost to be suitable for large scale application. An efficient RFID anti-collision mechanism must have low access latency and low power consumption. This paper investigates how to recognize multiple RFID tags within the reader's interrogation ranges without knowing the number of tags in advance by using framed ALOHA. To optimize power consumption and overall tag read time, a combinatory model was proposed to analyze both passive and active tags with consideration on capture effect over wireless fading channels. By using the model, the parameters on tag set estimation and frame size update were presented. Simulations were conducted to verify the analysis. In addition, we come up with a proposal to combat capture effect in deterministic anti-collision algorithms.

This paper proposes a time alignment control (TAC) for reducing an influence of multiple access interference (MAI) due to propagation delays (PDs) in uplink transmission from multiple mobile stations (MSs) to an access point (AP) for an orthogonal frequency division multiple access (OFDMA) based mobile communication system. In addition, this paper presents our evaluation of the proposed TAC as applied to dynamic parameter control orthogonal frequency and time division multiple access (DPC-OF/TDMA) which has been suggested for use in new generation mobile communication system. This paper also proposes several formats for an activation slot (ACTS) in which the GIs are lengthened in order to avoid the MAI because the TAC cannot be performed yet in an initial registration of the MSs. Computer simulation elucidates that lengthening the GIs of data symbols in the ACTS adequately to compensate a maximum delay improves the transmission performance of the ACTS at the initial registration without PDs compensation. The simulation also elucidates that the proposed TAC is performed to reduce the influence of the MAI effectively and that updating the estimates of the PDs every certain period is needed to compensate the PDs accurately under high-mobility environment.

Recently Azou et al. proposed a method of model reduction for discrete systems based on a new impulse response Gramian. The reduced model was derived by first approximating the low-order impulse response Gramian, and then matching some Markov parameters and time-moments of an original model. In this note a modified method is presented so that the reduced model exactly preserves the low-order impulse response Gramian together with a slightly different set of Markov parameters and time-moments of the original model.

For fixed initial and destination states (i.e., markings), M0 and Md, there exist generally infinite firing count vectors in a Petri net. In this letter, it is shown that all fundamental particular solutions as well as all minimal T-invariants w.r.t. firing count vectors are needed to express an arbitrary firing count vector for the fixed M0 and Md. An algorithm for finding a special firing count vector which is expressed by using the only one specified fundamental particular solution is also given.

This paper presents an attempt to make rational active adversary passive using mechanism design. We propose a secure Generalized Vickrey Auction (GVA) scheme where the procedure executed by a bidder affects neither the prices nor the allocation of the bidder. Therefore, a bidder does not have an incentive to be an active adversary.

It is known that the original Grover Search (GS) can be modified to use a general value for the phase θ of the diffusion transform. Then, if the number of answers is relatively large, this modified GS can find one of the answers with probability one in a single iteration. However, such a quick and error-free GS can only be possible if we can initially adjust the value of θ correctly against the number of answers, and this seems very hard in usual occasions. A natural question now arises: Can we enjoy a merit even if GS is used without such an adjustment? In this paper, we give a positive answer using the balls-and-bins game in which the random sampling of bins is replaced by the quantum sampling, i.e., a single round of modified GS. It is shown that by using the quantum sampling: (i) The maximum load can be improved quadratically for the static model of the game and this improvement is optimal. (ii) That is also improved to O(1) for the continuous model if we have a certain knowledge about the total number of balls in the bins after the system becomes stable.

In a quasi-synchronous reverse link multicarrier code division multiple access system, the signal detection is vulnerable to the interference due to the insufficient guard interval. A multiuser detection with intersymbol interference cancellation is a potential solution to overcome this problem. In this paper, we proposes a parameter acquisition technique based on a specially designed training sequence for the receiver. The concerned parameters are the transformed signature sequences and the ISI generation sequences. We analyze a criterion for the training sequences to achieve the minimum mean square error and propose the systematic generation of the optimum training sequences. We also propose the noise variance estimator for providing information about noise variance to some classes of multiuser detection. Simulation results prove relevant benefits of the proposed techniques and give useful insights into the system designs.

We discuss a typical profile of the k-error linear complexity for balanced binary exponent periodic sequences and the number of periodic distinct sequences by their profiles. A numerical example with period 16 is also shown.