Web services (WS, hereafter) paradigm has attained such a relevance in both the academic and the industry world that the vision of the Internet has evolved from being considered as a mere repository of data to become the underlying infrastructure on which organizations' strategic business operations are being deployed [1]. Security is a key aspect if WS are to be generally accepted and adopted. In fact, over the past years, the most important consortiums of the Internet, like IETF, W3C or OASIS, have produced a huge number of WS-based security standards. Despite this spectacular growth, a development process that facilitates the systematic integration of security into all subprocesses of WS-based software development life-cycle does not exist. Eventually, this process should guide WS-based software developers in the specification of WS-based security requirements, the design of WS-based security architectures, and the deployment of the most suitable WS security standards. In this article, we will briefly present a process of this type, named PWSSec (Process for Web Services Security), and the artifacts used during the elicitation activity, which belongs to the subprocess WSSecReq aimed at producing a WS-based security requirement specification.

Collaboration of growing self-organizing maps (GSOM) and adaptive resonance theory maps (ART) is considered through traveling sales-person problems (TSP).The ART is used to parallelize the GSOM: it divides the input space of city positions into subspaces automatically. One GSOM is allocated to each subspace and grows following the input data. After all the GSOMs grow sufficiently they are connected and we obtain a tour. Basic experimental results suggest that we can find semi-optimal solution much faster than serial methods.

This paper presents a lifting wavelet coding technique with permutation and coefficient modification processes for coding the structured geometry data of 3-D polygonal mesh model. One promising method for coding 3-D geometry data is based on the structure processing of a 3-D model on a triangle lattice plane, while maintaining connectivity. In the structuring process, each vertex may be assigned to several nodes on the triangular lattice plane. One of the nodes to which a vertex is assigned is selected as a representative node and the others are called expanded nodes. Only the geometry data of the vertices at the representative nodes are required for reconstructing the 3-D model. In this paper we apply a lifting wavelet transform with a permutation process for an expanded node at an even location in each decomposition step and the neighboring representative node. This scheme arranges more representative nodes into the lower frequency band. Also many representative nodes separated from the connective expanded nodes are made to adjoin each other in lower frequency bands, and the correlation between the representative nodes will be reduced by the following decomposition process. A process is added to use the modified coefficients obtained from the coefficients of the adjacent representative nodes instead of the original coefficients in the permutation process. This has the effect of restraining increases in the decomposed coefficients with larger magnitude. Some experiments in which the proposed scheme was applied to structured geometry data of a 3-D model with complex connectivity show that the proposed scheme gives better coding performance and the reconstructed models are more faithful to the original in comparison with the usual schemes.

This paper proposes a new method for realizing the web page recommendation system by sharing users' web browse history on an anonymous P2P network. Our scheme creates a user profile, a summary of the user's web browse trends, by analyzing the contents of the web pages browsed. The scheme then provides a P2P network to exchange web browse histories so as to create mutual web page recommendations. The novelty of our method lies in its P2P network formulation; it is formulated in a way so that users having similar user profiles are automatically connected, yet their user profiles are protected from being disclosed to other users. The proposed method intentionally distributes bogus user profiles on the P2P network, while not harming the efficiency of the web browse history sharing process.

Drivability-improved MOSFETs were successfully fabricated by using nano-grating silicon wafers. There was almost no additional process change in device fabrication when the height of the gratings was less than the conventional macroscopic wafer surface roughness. The MOSFETs with the grating height of 35 nm showed 21% improvement in current drivability compared to the conventional one with the same device occupancy area. And the roll-off characteristic of threshold voltage of nano-grating device held the line of conventional one in despite of the 3-D channel structure. The technology provides great advantages for drivability improvement without paying much tradeoff of process cost. This proposal will be useful to CMOS-LSIs with high performance in general.

DTW-based text-dependent speaker verification technology is an effective scheme for protecting personal information in personal electronic products from others. To enhance the performance of a DTW-based system, an impostor database covering all possible passwords is generally required for the matching scores normalization. However, it becomes impossible in our practical application scenario since users are not restricted in their choice of password. We propose a method to generate pseudo-impostor data by employing an acoustic codebook. Based on the pseudo-impostor data, two normalization algorithms are developed. Besides, a template compression approach based on the codebook is introduced. Some modifications to the conventional DTW global constraints are also made for the compressed template. Combining the normalization and template compression methods, we obtain more than 66% and 35% relative reduction in storage and EER, respectively. We expect that other DTW-based tasks may also benefit from our methods.

A simple and efficient semi-supervised classification method is presented. An unsupervised spectral mapping method is extended to a semi-supervised situation with multiplicative modulation of similarities between data. Our proposed algorithm is derived by linearization of this nonlinear semi-supervised mapping method. Experiments using the proposed method for some public benchmark data and color image data reveal that our method outperforms a supervised algorithm using the linear discriminant analysis and a previous semi-supervised classification method.

In this paper, we extend our framework of speculative computation in multi-agent systems by introducing default constraints. In research on multi-agent systems, handling incomplete information due to communication failure or due to other agents' delay in communication is a very important issue. For a solution to this problem, we previously proposed speculative computation based on abduction in the context of master-slave multi-agent systems and gave a procedure in abductive logic programming. In our previous proposal, a master agent prepares a default value for a yes/no question in advance, and it performs speculative computation using the default without waiting for a reply to the question. This computation is effective unless the contradictory reply to the default is returned. In this paper, we formalize speculative constraint processing, and propose a correct operational model for such computation so that we can handle not only yes/no questions, but also more general types of questions.

In this paper, we propose a PON-based access network based on conventional TDM-PON architecture for the smooth, economical and effective transition to the future optical access network. We also propose a dynamic MAC protocol for wavelength channel and bandwidth allocation in the TDM-PON subscriber networks, which can provide enhanced network scalability and flexibility, and greater adaptability to the increasing number of subscribers in TDM-PON. In the proposed dynamic MAC protocol, several key functions are manifested, such as multiple wavelength channel utilization and dynamic allocation of multiple time-slots to a user depending on SLA between OLT and ONUs to meet QoS requirements. A dedicated control channel is used for delivering the request and status information between OLT and ONUs. We evaluate the performances of the proposed MAC protocol thru a statistical queuing analysis and numerical simulations. In addition, through simulations using various traffic models we verify the superior performance of the proposed approach by comparing it with conventional TDM-PONs.

Previously Verifier-Local Revocation (VLR) group signature schemes from bilinear maps were proposed. In VLR schemes, only verifiers are involved in the revocation of a member, while signers are not. Thus, the VLR schemes are suitable for mobile environments. Furthermore, the previously proposed schemes satisfy the important backward unlinkability. This means that even after a member is revoked, signatures produced by the member before the revocation remain anonymous. This property is needed in case of a voluntary leave of a member or in case of a key loss. However, in the previous schemes, signatures become long, due to the adopted assumption, which should be improved in order to apply the schemes to the mobile environments. In this paper an improved VLR scheme is proposed with the shorter group signatures. This is achieved by using a different assumption, DLDH assumption, and improving zero-knowledge proofs in the group signatures. The length of the proposed group signatures is reduced to about 53% of that of the previous ones.

This paper describes a technique for controlling the degree of expressivity of a desired emotional expression and/or speaking style of synthesized speech in an HMM-based speech synthesis framework. With this technique, multiple emotional expressions and speaking styles of speech are modeled in a single model by using a multiple-regression hidden semi-Markov model (MRHSMM). A set of control parameters, called the style vector, is defined, and each speech synthesis unit is modeled by using the MRHSMM, in which mean parameters of the state output and duration distributions are expressed by multiple-regression of the style vector. In the synthesis stage, the mean parameters of the synthesis units are modified by transforming an arbitrarily given style vector that corresponds to a point in a low-dimensional space, called style space, each of whose coordinates represents a certain specific speaking style or emotion of speech. The results of subjective evaluation tests show that style and its intensity can be controlled by changing the style vector.

The electric fields inside and outside a car must be carefully determined when designing a wireless communication system to be employed in the car. This paper introduces an effective simulation method and a precise measurement method of electric field distributions in a cabin of a simplified scale car model. A 1/3 car model is employed for ease of measurement. The scaled frequency of 2859 MHz, 3 times 953 MHz, is employed. The use of a moment method simulator utilizing the multilevel fast multipole method allows calculations to be performed on a personal computer. In order to judge the accuracy of simulation results, convergence of simulation output in accordance with segment size (triangle edge length) changes is ensured. Simulation loads in the case of metallic body only and a metallic body with window glass are also shown. In the measurements, an optical electric field probe is employed so as to minimize the disturbances that would otherwise be caused by metallic feed cable; precise measurement results are obtained. Comparisons of measured and simulated results demonstrate very good agreement which confirms the accuracy of the calculated results. 3-dimensional electric field distributions in the car model are shown and 3-dimensional standing wave shapes are clarified. Moreover, calculated and measured radiation patterns of the car model are shown so the total electric field distributions around a car are clarified.

This paper proposes pilot-based channel quality reporting for orthogonal frequency division multiple access/time division duplex (OFDMA/TDD) systems with cochannel interference. In the proposed method, a terminal reports his channel quality in multiple subbands to base station (BS) using channel reciprocity of TDD systems. The terminal transmits uplink pilot signals in the subbands with different transmit power which is inversely proportional to the subband-based interference power. The BS can obtain knowledge of the terminal's received signal-to-interference-plus-noise power ratio on subband basis, measuring the pilot signal power. In performance evaluation, accuracy of channel quality reporting and amount of uplink signalling are examined. From numerical results, it is found that the proposed method becomes effective as the number of subbands and terminals for channel quality reporting increases.

In multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) wireless relay networks, simultaneously using multiple relay nodes can improve the capacity of source-to-destination communications. Recent information theories have shown that passing the same message across multiple relay nodes can improve the capacity of source-to-destination communications. We have previously proposed three relay schemes that use jointly QR decomposition and the phase control matrix; computer simulations have confirmed the superiority of these schemes over conventional ones such as amplify-and-forward and zero-forcing schemes. In this paper, we analyze the capacity and achievable gains (distributed array gain, intra-node array gain and spatial multiplexing gain) of the previously proposed relay schemes (QR-P-QR, QR-P-ZF, and ZF-P-QR) and thus provide an insight into what contributes to their superiority over conventional schemes. The analyses show that the location of the relay nodes used has a significant impact on capacity. On the basis of this observation, we further propose a method that enables each relay node to individually select its relay scheme according to its channel conditions so as to maximize the capacity. A computer simulation confirms the capacity improvement achieved by the proposed selection method.

In recent years, wireless communications systems such as wireless LAN, Bluetooth, etc. are being rapidly adopted. As the antennas used in wireless communications systems are usually installed in small mobile devices, it is demanded that the volume should be small. In our research, we focus our attention on flexible printed circuits (FPCs) to meet the miniaturization demand. In this paper, we introduce a planar inverted F antenna (PIFA) suitable for IEEE802.11b/g and Bluetooth. The antenna is made of FPC. We measured the radiation pattern of the antenna when the antenna is successively curved and folded, and it is clear that its radiation performance does not vary much when the antenna is deformed. We analyzed the antenna by using the moment method.

Due to the continuous growth of wireless communication technology and mobile equipment, the history management of moving object is important in a wide range of location-based applications. To process queries for history data, trajectories, we generally use trajectory-preserving index schemes based on the trajectory preservation property. This property means that a leaf node only contains segments belonging to a particular trajectory, regardless of the spatiotemporal locality of segments. The sacrifice of spatiotemporal locality, however, causes the index to increase the dead space of MBBs of non-leaf nodes and the overlap between the MBBs of nodes. Therefore, an index scheme for trajectories shows good performance with trajectory-based queries, but not with coordinate-based queries, such as range queries. We propose new index schemes that improve the performance of range queries without reducing performance with trajectory based queries.

We prove that the Variational distance (and its positive multiples) is the only f-divergence that satisfies both the identity of indiscernibles and the triangle inequality. Therefore it is the unique f-divergence which serves as a metric. This point is interpreted as a fundamental confliction of the convexity for f(x) with the metric properties for its associated f-divergence. Therefore, we relax the convexity of f(x) and replace it with other constraints to create new metrics.

China has experienced fast growth in mobile communications. Now, China is the world largest mobile communication country with about 500 million users. Wide applications of mobile communications are giving strong pull to the research and development on the broadband wireless communication technology to meet the fast growing demand for high speed access into the information infrastructure. This makes the R&D on wireless technology play great role in the Chinese High-Tech program. This paper will review the key project--FuTURE (Future Technology for Universal Radio Environment)--development of the 863 program, which represents the Chinese efforts towards IMT-advance. Taking some works done in the Tsinghua National Laboratory for Information Science and Technology as examples, the paper will show what has been made in China on the broadband wireless technology, including the trial network in Shanghai.

The error resilient entropy coding (EREC) provides efficient resynchronization method to the coded bitstream, which might be corrupted by transmission errors. The technique has been given more prominence, nowadays, because it achieves fast resynchronization without sizable overhead, and thereby provides graceful quality degradation according to the network conditions. This paper presents a novel framework to analyze the performance of EREC in terms of the error probability in decoding a basic resynchronization unit (RU) for various error prone networks. In order to show the feasibility of the proposed framework, this paper also proposes a novel EREC algorithm based on the slightly modified H.263 bitstream syntax. The proposed scheme minimizes the effect of errors on low frequency DCT coefficients and incorporates near optimal channel-matched searching pattern (SP), which guarantees the best possible quality of reproduced video. Given the number of bits generated for each RU, the near optimal SP is produced by the proposed iterative deterministic partial SP update method, which reduces the complexity of finding optimal solution, O((N-1)!), to O(m·N2). The proposed EREC algorithm significantly improves the decoded video quality, especially when the bit error rate is in the rage of 10-3-10-4. Up to 5 dB enhancement of the PSNR value was observed in a single video frame.

This paper proposes a new type of compact waveguide directional coupler, which is constructed from two crossed E-plane rectangular waveguide with two metallic posts in the square junction and one metallic post at each port. The metallic posts in the square junction are set symmetrically along a diagonal line to obtain the directivity properties. The metallic post inserted at each input/output waveguide port can realize a matched state. Tight-coupling properties 0.79-6 dB are realized by optimizing the dimension of the junction and the positions/radii of the posts. The design results are verified by an em-simulator (Ansoft HFSS) and experiments.