NAT-PT and DSTM are becoming more widespread as de-facto standards for IPv6 dominant network deployment. But few researchers have empirically evaluated their performance aspects. In this paper, we compared the performance of NAT-PT and DSTM with IPv4-only and IPv6-only networks on user applications using metrics such as throughput, CPU utilization, round-trip time, and connect/request/response transaction rate.

Sinusoidal representation has been widely applied to speech modification, low bit rate speech and audio coding. Usually, speech signal is analyzed and synthesized using the overlap-add algorithm or the peak-picking algorithm. But the overlap-add algorithm is well known for high computational complexity and the peak-picking algorithm cannot track the transient and syllabic variation well. In this letter, both algorithms are applied to speech analysis/synthesis. Peaks are picked in the curve of power spectral density for speech signal; the frequencies corresponding to these peaks are arranged according to the descending orders of their corresponding power spectral densities. These frequencies are regarded as the candidate frequencies to determine the corresponding amplitudes and initial phases according to the least mean square error criterion. The summation of the extracted sinusoidal components is used to successively approach the original speech signal. The results show that the proposed algorithm can track the transient and syllabic variation and can attain the good synthesized speech signal with low computational complexity.

This paper proposes a coordinator for workflow management systems (WFMSs). It is a basic module for developing WFMSs. It is also a coordinator to coordinate multiple WFMSs. The coordinator provides functions to facilitate executing workflows and to ensure secure access of workflow information. Facilitating workflow execution is well-known, but ensuring secure access of workflow information is identified as important only recently. Although many models ensure secure workflow information access, they fail to offer the features we need. We thus developed a new model for the control. This paper presents the coordinator its access control model.

In [1], an algorithm based on phase variations of received pilot symbols was proposed to estimate one of the most important channel parameters, maximum Doppler shift, fd. However, AWGN (Additive white gauss noise) will cause large estimation error in some cases. In order to analyze the influence of noise, we extended the phase probability density function (pdf) in [1] to the scenario with both fading and AWGN, then the estimation error is characterized in closed-form expression. By this error expression, we found that power control will affect the estimator of [1] and we proposed a modification method based on SNR estimation to obtain accurate Doppler shift estimation in moderate low SNRs (signal-to-noise ratio). Simulation results show high accuracy in wide range of velocities and SNRs.

In this paper, an efficient equivalence checking method for two C descriptions is described. The equivalence of two C descriptions is proved by symbolic simulation. Symbolic simulation used in this paper can prove the equivalence of all of the variables in the descriptions. However, it takes long time to verify the equivalence of all of the variables if large descriptions are given. Therefore, in order to improve the verification, our method identifies textual differences between descriptions. The identified textual differences are used to reduce the number of equivalence checkings among variables. The proposed method has been implemented in C language and evaluated with several C descriptions.

Gossip-based reliable broadcast protocols with reasonably weak reliability properties scale well to large groups and degrade system performance gracefully even if node failure or message loss rates increase compared with traditional protocols. However, although many distributed applications require highly steady performance only by allowing causality to be used asynchronously, there is no existing gossip-based protocol offering causally ordered delivery property more lightweight than totally ordered delivery one. This paper presents an application-level broadcast algorithm to guarantee causally-ordered delivery semantics based on peer to peer interaction models for scalability, reasonable reliability and stable throughput. Processes propagate each message with a vector time stamp much like the spread of rumor in society for a fixed number of rounds. Upon receipt of these messages, correct processes immediately deliver the corresponding messages to the application layers in a causal order. Simulation results show that the proposed algorithm outperforms the existing ones in terms of delivery throughput.

Coalition formation in multi-agent systems (MAS) is becoming increasingly important as it increases the ability of agents to execute tasks and maximize their payoffs. Dependence relations are regarded as the foundation of coalition formation. This paper proposes a novel dependence theory namely transitive dependence theory for dynamic coalition formation in multi-agent systems. Transitive dependence is an extension of direct dependence that supports an agent's reasoning about other social members during coalition formation. Based on the proposed transitive dependence theory, a dynamic coalition formation framework has been worked out which includes information gathering, transitive dependence based reasoning for coalition partners search and coalition resolution. The nested coalitions and how to deal with incomplete knowledge while forming coalitions are also discussed in the paper.

In recent years, considerable attention has been devoted to continuously running software systems whose performance characteristics are smoothly degrading in time. Software aging often affects the performance of a software system and eventually causes it to fail. A novel approach to handle transient software failures due to software aging is called software rejuvenation, which can be regarded as a preventive and proactive solution that is particularly useful for counteracting the aging phenomenon. In this paper, we focus on a high assurance software system with fault-tolerance and preventive rejuvenation, and analyze the stochastic behavior of such a highly critical software system. More precisely, we consider a fault-tolerant software system with two-version redundant structure and random rejuvenation schedule, and evaluate quantitatively some dependability measures like the steady-state system availability and MTTF based on the familiar Markovian analysis. In numerical examples, we examine the dependence of two fault tolerant techniques; design and environment diversity techniques, on the system dependability measures.

Automated reasoning of inductive theorems is considered important in program verification. To verify inductive theorems automatically, several implicit induction methods like the inductionless induction and the rewriting induction methods have been proposed. In studying inductive theorems on higher-order rewritings, we found that the class of the theorems shown by known implicit induction methods does not coincide with that of inductive theorems, and the gap between them is a barrier in developing mechanized methods for disproving inductive theorems. This paper fills this gap by introducing the notion of primitive inductive theorems, and clarifying the relation between inductive theorems and primitive inductive theorems. Based on this relation, we achieve mechanized methods for proving and disproving inductive theorems.

This paper introduces new methods of robust speech recognition using discrete-mixture HMMs (DMHMMs). The aim of this work is to develop robust speech recognition for adverse conditions that contain both stationary and non-stationary noise. In particular, we focus on the issue of impulsive noise, which is a major problem in practical speech recognition system. In this paper, two strategies were utilized to solve the problem. In the first strategy, adverse conditions are represented by an acoustic model. In this case, a large amount of training data and accurate acoustic models are required to present a variety of acoustic environments. This strategy is suitable for recognition in stationary or slow-varying noise conditions. The second is based on the idea that the corrupted frames are treated to reduce the adverse effect by compensation method. Since impulsive noise has a wide variety of features and its modeling is difficult, the second strategy is employed. In order to achieve those strategies, we propose two methods. Those methods are based on DMHMM framework which is one type of discrete HMM (DHMM). First, an estimation method of DMHMM parameters based on MAP is proposed aiming to improve trainability. The second is a method of compensating the observation probabilities of DMHMMs by threshold to reduce adverse effect of outlier values. Observation probabilities of impulsive noise tend to be much smaller than those of normal speech. The motivation in this approach is that flooring the observation probability reduces the adverse effect caused by impulsive noise. Experimental evaluations on Japanese LVCSR for read newspaper speech showed that the proposed method achieved the average error rate reduction of 48.5% in impulsive noise conditions. Also the experimental results in adverse conditions that contain both stationary and impulsive noises showed that the proposed method achieved the average error rate reduction of 28.1%.

The partial projection filter (PTPF) for a given observation operator provides an optimal signal restoration in the presence of both the signal space and observation space noises. However, restoration error by the filter still depends on the observation operator which consists of measurement and sampling processes. In this paper, we determine a sampling operator which minimizes the restoration error by the PTPF. We see that under some assumptions about noise statistics, the restoration error by the PTPF is divided into two terms corresponding to the error arising from the signal space noise and that from the observation space noise. It has been found that although the restoration error due to the signal space noise is independent of the sampling operator, the restoration error arising from the observation space noise can arbitrarily be decreased by increasing the number of sample points in the proposed sampling operator. An illustrative example of optimal sampling in the trigonometric polynomial space is also given.

The Oblivious Transfer (OT), introduced by Rabin in 1981, has become an important and fundamental cryptography technique. An OT protocol should have two important characteristics: the sender's privacy and the chooser's privacy. The sender is a party who will deliver a secret to the chooser. The chooser is another party who acts as receiver to learn some information about the input from the sender. The chooser learns of certain information concerning the sender's input while the sender is not allowed to know what the chooser has learned. Moreover, the chooser cannot acquire any messages that he/she did not choose. Naor and Pinkas have recently proposed an efficient oblivious transfer protocol (EOT) that implementes 1-out-of-n protocol, but this EOT has a flaw: it cannot withstand "the same message attack." In this paper, we will improve Naor and Pinkas EOT and make it resistant to "the same message attack."

A fully Internet-connected business environment is subject to frequent changes. To ordinary customers, online shopping under such a dynamic environment can be frustrating. We propose a new E-commerce service called the CIGMA to assist online customers under such an environment. The CIGMA provides catalog comparison and purchase mediation services over multiple shopping sites for ordinary online customers. The service is based on up-to-date information by reflecting the frequent changes in catalog information instantaneously. It also matches the desire of online customers for fast response. This paper describes the CIGMA along with its architecture and the implementation of a working prototype.

Fixed polarity Reed-Muller expressions (FPRMs) exhibit several useful properties that make them suitable for many practical applications. This paper presents an exact minimization algorithm for FPRMs for incompletely specified functions. For an n-variable function with α unspecified minterms there are 2n+α distinct FPRMs, and a minimum FPRM is one with the fewest product terms. To find a minimum FPRM the algorithm requires to determine an assignment of the incompletely specified minterms. This is accomplished by using the concept of integer-valued functions in conjunction with an extended truth vector and a weight vector. The vectors help formulate the problem as an assignment of the variables of integer-valued functions, which are then efficiently manipulated by using multi-terminal binary decision diagrams for finding an assignment of the unspecified minterms. The effectiveness of the algorithm is demonstrated through experimental results for code converters, adders, and randomly generated functions.

Incorporating sensor nodes with data aggregation capability to transmit less data flow in wireless sensor networks could reduce the total energy consumption. This calls for the efficient and effective data-centric routing algorithm to facilitate this advantage. In the first part of this paper, we model the data-centric routing problem by rigorous mixed integer and linear mathematical formulation, where the objective function is to minimize the total transmission cost subject to multicast tree constraints. With the advancement of sensor network technology, sensor nodes with configurable transmission radius capability could further reduce energy consumption. The second part of this paper considers the transmission radius assignment of each sensor node and the data-centric routing assignment jointly. The objective function is to minimize the total power consumption together with consideration of construction of a data aggregation tree and sensor node transmission radius assignment. The solution approach is based on Lagrangean relaxation in conjunction with the novel optimization-based heuristics. From the computational experiments, it is shown that the proposed algorithms calculate better solution than other existing heuristics with improvement ratio up to 169% and 59% with respect to fixed transmission radius and configurable transmission radius for network with 300 random generated nodes.

In this paper, we propose a new method for the electromagnetic fields with inhomogeneous media mixed a positive and negative regions by the combination of improved Fourier series expansion method using the extrapolation method which obtains the correct value of the eigenvalue and eigenvectors for the case of TM wave. Numerical results are given for the power reflection and transmission coefficient, the energy absorption, the electromagnetic fields, and the power flow in the inhomogeneous medium mixed the positive and negative regions including the case when the permittivity profiles touches zero for the TM wave. The results of our method are in good agreement with exact solution which is obtained the modified multilayer approximation method.

Current Web services testing techniques are unable to assure the desired level of trustworthiness, which presents a barrier to WS applications in mission and business critical environments. This paper presents a framework that assures the trustworthiness of Web services. New assurance techniques are developed within the framework, including specification verification via completeness and consistency checking, test case generation, and automated Web services testing. Traditional test case generation methods only generate positive test cases that verify the functionality of software. The proposed Swiss Cheese test case generation method is designed to generate both positive and negative test cases that also reveal the vulnerability of Web services. This integrated development process is implemented in a case study. The experimental evaluation demonstrates the effectiveness of this approach. It also reveals that the Swiss Cheese negative testing detects even more faults than positive testing and thus significantly reduces the vulnerability of Web services.

A method for fast but yet accurate performance evaluation of processor architecture is mostly desirable in modern processors design. This paper proposes one such method which can measure cycle counts and power consumption of pipelined processors. The method first develops a trace-driven performance simulation model and then employs simulation reuse in simulation of the model. The trace-driven performance modeling is for accuracy in which performance simulation uses the same execution traces as constructed in simulation for functional verification. Fast performance simulation can be achieved in a way that performance for each instruction in the traces is evaluated without evaluation of the instruction itself. Simulation reuse supports simulation speedup by elimination of an evaluation at the current state, which is identical to that at a previous state. The reuse approach is based on the property that application programs, especially multimedia applications, have many iterative loops in general. A performance simulator for pipeline architecture based on the proposed method has been developed through which greater speedup has been made compared with other approaches in performance evaluation.

In this letter, new results on the BER performance of multitone DS-CDMA systems for transmissions over Nakagami-m fading channels with exponentially decaying multipath intensity profile are presented. The results show that, in viewpoint of the BER performance, there is a critical relation between the number of resolvable paths and the effect of the rate of average power decay.

In the letter, properties of m-sequence are derived, based on these properties, a family of binary nonlinear constant weight codes is presented, these binary nonlinear constant weight codes can apply to automatic repeat request (ARQ) communication system, as detecting-error codes.