The a-Si films deposited on quartz substrates were crystallized by lateral sweep annealing in steep temperature gradient using a gas burner. Random nucleation in amorphous region was effectively suppressed in the temperature gradient, so lateral solid phase epitaxial growth from crystallites generated at the initial stage of lateral sweep annealing spread over 100 µm. Their crystallographic orientations were mostly (100).

Recently most of the singularities of the equivalent edge currents for flat plates were eliminated by the authors using the paths of most rapid phase variation. A unique direction on the plate was determined for given incidence and observer. This paper extends this method for arbitrary angle wedges and presents the new expressions of the equivalent edge currents. The resultant expressions are valid for any incidence and observation aspects and have no false singularities. Diffraction patterns and radar cross sections of 3-D objects composed of wedges are calculated by using these currents. They show good agreements with experimental data or the results by the other methods.

The mechanisms for executing concurrent applications proposed so far fall into one of three groups: processes, kernel-level threads, and user-level threads. Each of them is insufficient in terms of either parallelism, the flexibility to combine separately developed programs at run-time, or costs of operations such as creation, switching, and termination. A thread facility in the XERO operating system overcomes this problem and provides a uniform framework for executing concurrent applications. To achieve parallelism of threads, the flexibility to combine separately developed programs at run-time, and fast thread operations, the operating system kernel and a thread management module in a user address space manage threads cooperatively. We implemented the cooperative thread management mechanism and measured its performance to examine the effectiveness of our approach.

This paper describes the integration of a qualitative method and a quantitative method by Bottleneck Diagnosis/Improvement Expert Systems for Synchronized queueing network (BDES-S and BIES-S). On the basis of qualitative reasoning, BDES-S can carry out parameter tuning in order to diagnose and improve bottlenecks of synchronized queueing networks. BDES-S can produce several alternative qualitative improvement plans for one bottleneck server. BIES-S can produce quantitative improvement equations for each qualitative improvement plan. Our method using BDES-S and BIES-S can integrate both quantitative and qualitative methods for parameter tuning on complicated queueing synchronized networks.

Thin Si films grown on anodized porous silicon have been characterized using a high-energy ion scattering technique with related simulations of MeV ions in solids. It turned out that the simulations are necessary and very usuful for quantitative and nondestractive analysis of thin films with thicknesses less than 100 nm. In the case of the epitaxial Si films examined, it is often insufficient for the characterization of crystalline quality to measure only the channeling minimum yield, and therefore, it is emphasized that angular scans over the critical angle in the vicinity of a channeling direction must be performed for the analysis of possible imperfections in thin films. The possible imperfections observed in the epitaxial specimen are treated quantitatively.

This paper describes on the transmission properties of the superconducting coplanar waveguide on LiNbO3 (LN) substrates, fabricated by YBa2Cu3Oy (YBCO) superconducting films. The films have been prepared by the reactive co-evaporation method and patterned by a wet etching process. The surface resistance of the obtained film was 0.04 Ω at 18 GHz and 77 K. It was confirmed from X-ray diffraction (XRD) that these films were highly oriented to the direction of c-axis without a secondary phase. The microwave transmission properties of these YBCO coplanar waveguides were investigated at frequencies up to 20 GHz and compared with that of the aluminum coplanar waveguide. The characteristic impedances of both coplanar waveguides were designed to be 50 Ω. It was found that the attenuation constants of these samples at 77 K were less than that of the aluminum coplanar waveguide for frequencies below 18 GHz.

As the size and complexity of network increases, the distributed systems management (DSM) will be vital in order to improve the availability of network management, to reduce the complexity of network operations, and to provide the high reliability. In this paper, we (1) describe general requirements required for systems management in distributed environment, (2) introduce the basic structure of distributed network management system (DNMS) for efficient network management, and also especially illustrate the concrete design of system management application process which is an important element among them, (3) propose the connectionless CMIP to accomplish for effectively managing the distributed management system, and indicate its efficiency; this protocol is available to manage dynamically changing DSM environment, to negotiate among the managing systems, to handle the dynamic informations etc. Finally, (4) the behavior and software structure of a suggested management system during negotiation to execute the received request for implementation are presented.

This letter proposes an active reflector for calibrating a synthetic aperture radar (SAR), in which the frequency of a received SAR signal is shifted by a certain amount and then it is retransmitted to the SAR. The frequency shift causes a shift of the reflector SAR image in an azimuth direction relative to its background. This function would allow to enhance a signal-to-clutter ratio of the reflector image by moving it onto a radiometrically dark background, and hence it would be of value for SAR calibration even in a narrow test site. The theory, design and development are described briefly.

A 1/2 frequency divider using resonant-tunneling hot electron transistors (RHETs) has been proposed and demonstrated. The circuit make the best use of negative differential conductance, a feature of RHETs, and contains one half transistors than used in conventional circuits. The RHETs were fabricated using self-aligned InGaAs RHETs and WSiN thin-film resistors on a single chip. The RHETs have an i-InGaAlAs/i-InGaAs collector barrier that improves the current gain at low collector-base voltages. Circuit operation was confirmed at 77 K.

In order to provide a low profile wire antenna for mobile communication, we have developed a new type of the transmission line type antenna, which we call a Modified Transmission Line Antenna (MTLA). Analysis of a certain type of the modified transmission line antenna has revealed that the input impedance and the gain can be determined independently by appropriately choosing antenna configuration. In this paper, we first explain the fundamental characteristics of the modified transmission line antenna. We then introduce two types of MTLA, i. e. a zigzag MTLA and a double MTLA, for practical application of the MTLA to mobile communication. Their characteristics are also discussed theoretically and experimentally.

Generalized telegraphist's equations for waveguides are frequently used for analyzing fields in tapered rectangular waveguides. However, the telegraphist's equations do not give exact fields in E-plane tapers of the rectangular waveguides. In this letter, the new telegraphist's equations are shown, and the equations give the fields which exactly satisfy Maxwell's equations and the boundary conditions for the E-plane taper of the waveguide.

A novel coupling configuration consisting of a tapered slab waveguide with a wedge-shaped nonlinear cladding is proposed. Coupling characteristics for TE waves are analyzed by means of the beam propagation method. The proposed configuration is less sensitive to the offset between coupled waveguides than is the configuration with a homogeneous non-linear cladding.

Telecommunication services are accomplished by cooperative networks of widely distributed communication processes and service users. Those specifications are often modeled by a set of possible message sequences among cooperating processes and users. The distributed and cooperative nature of telecommunication services results in a wide variety of message sequences and makes it more difficult for service designers to design such telecommunication services. To mitigate the difficulty, we propose a design support system with MSRs (message sequence rules) as design knowledge. The system supports the following two design activities: (1) specification of a typical message sequence that corresponds to a service behavior in a successful case, and (2) specification of incidentally possible message sequences that involve service behaviors in successful and unsuccessful cases. For the former activity, the system interacts with designers and identifies the messages they give with MSRs to understand the context of the message sequence and suggest possible subsequent messages. For the latter activity, the system applies MSRs to the typical message sequence and reasons possible messages from/to relevant processes and users under every state to suggest incidentally possible message sequences. Accordingly, designers may be relieved of investigating a wide variety of service behaviors in successful and unsuccessful cases. The system capability is based on MSRs equivalent to reusable message sequence components. MSRs can be obtained through abstraction of implementation-dependent messages and decomposition of those sequences into temporal relations among messages. The rule acquisition method provides MSRs with the potential to generate a wide variety of message sequences. In order to verify rule applicability, we have experimentally designed three kinds of services and conducted an experimental rule application to those specifications. The experimental evaluation results indicate that applicability is fairly high.

In this paper an approach to formal specification and verification of ISDN services in LOTOS is presented. As for specification, it is shown that LOTOS can be effectively applied to describe different levels of ISDN service specifications. At the higher level, only the external behaviour of the network is specified. On the other hand, at the lower level, specifications include the behaviour of network components such as switching systems, where each switching system can be specified independently of each other. Such specification style, proves suitable for verification of specifications by using the concepts of the simulation relation.

This paper proposes a hierarchical Digital Signal Processor (DSP) Code Generator VIRGO for large scale general signal processing algorithms. Hierarchical structured Vectorized Signal Flow Graph (V-SFG) description is used as input specifications. Ths DSP independent optimization procedure for both the program size and the execution time is performed each module by each hierarchically with regard to operation order, memory assignment and register allocation. The efficient code generation is demonstrated by comparing both instruction steps and dynamic steps of a practical ADPCM encoder/decoder with a conventional method.

A ner trial of statistical evaluation for a nonstationary traffic flow and its traffic noise is proposed as a prediction method of its probability distribution function by considering the temporal change of distribution parameters especially from a structural viewpoint. First, a headway distribution of the nonstationary traffic flow passing through within a road segment is proposed on the basis of an Erlang distribution by reflecting a temporal change of its distribution parameters. Then, an initial phase density concerning with asynchronous counting method and the probability of counting n cars over a long time interval are derived from the above nonstationary expression of headway distribution. Thus, the statistics of noise intensity at an observation point has been predicted by combining the above probabilistic factors and deterministic factors related to noise propagation environment with use of a compound stochastic process model. Finally, te effectivenss of the proposed theory has been confirmed experimentally by applying it to the actual traffic flow on a highway.

In this letter, a generalized syndrome polynomial is proposed from which several decoding key-equations for Reed-Solomon codes can be derived systematically. These equations are always solved by the extended Euclidean algorithm.

It often occurs in an environmental phenomenon in our daily life that a specific signal is partially or completely contaminated by the additional external noise. In this study, a digital filter for estimating a specific signal fluctuating impulsively under the existence of an actual external noise with various kinds of probability distribution forms is proposed in an improved form of already reported digital filter. The effectivenss of the proposed theory is experimentally confirmed by applying it to the estimation of an actual impulsve signal in a room acoustic.

Plasmaless etching using ClF3 gas has been investigated on nitride films with different composition. For the sputter deposited and thermally grown silicon nitride films containing no hydrogen, the etch rate increases and the activation energy decreases with increase of the composition ratio of silicon to nitrogen between 0.75 and 1.3. This fact indicates that the etching is likely to proceed through the reaction between Si and ClF3. The native oxide on the silicon-nitride films can also be removed with ClF3 gas. Ultra-violet light irradiation from a low pressure mercury lamp remarkably accelerates the removal of the native oxide and the etch rate of the thermally grown silicon-nitride films. For the plasma deposited films, the etch rate is strongly accelerate with increasing hydrogen content in the films, but the activation energy hardly depends on the bounded hydrogen in the films, consistent with the results for Si etching.

For the development of a practical device simulation, it is necessary to solve the large sparse linear equations with a high speed computation of direct solution method. The use of parallel computation methods to solve the linear equations can reduce the CPU time greatly. The Multi Step Diakoptics (MSD) algorithm, is proposed as one of these parallel computation methods with direct solution, which is based on Diakoptics, that is, a tearing-based parallel computation method for sparse linear equations. We have applied the MSD algorithm to device simulation. This letter describes the partition and connection schedules in the MSD algorithm. The evaluation of this algorithm is done using a massively parallel computer with distributed memory (AP1000).