This paper reviews recent progresses in the research and development of planar photonic band-gap (PBG) structures, also called electromagnetic crystals, for microwave and millimeter-wave applications. Planar electromagnetic crystals are particularly attractive and intensively investigated because of their easy fabrication, low cost, and compatibility with standard planar circuit technology. Two configurations and their applications are described in this paper: a square lattice of holes etched in a ground plane and the recently developed Uniplanar Compact PBG (UC-PBG) structure. Basic properties as well as applications to microwave circuits are reported. These include harmonic tuning in power amplifier, leakage suppression in conductor-backed coplanar waveguide (CB-CPW), realization of planar slow-wave structure, and performance improvement in microstrip filters and patch antennas.

A narrow-band digital land mobile system has been developed that operates in the frequency bands of 150 and 400 MHz, which are commonly used by transportation-related companies, local government, and public-sector organizations--and are therefore very congested. The number of users that can be accommodated in these bands is almost doubled by reducing the channel separation to 6.25 kHz, about half that of a conventional FM system. A carrier bit rate of 9.6 kbps is achieved by using π/4 shift QPSK modulation with a roll-off factor of 0.2. Laboratory and field testing showed that: (1) Without propagation delay spread, a BER of 10-2 was obtained without using space diversity. (2) With a propagation delay spread of 10 µs, a BER of 610-3 was obtained without space diversity. These measurements confirmed the technical feasibility of this narrow-band system. Its widespread implementation will help mitigate the congestion in private radio systems.

We show how to apply the Feng-Rao decoding algorithm and the Feng-Rao bound for the Ω-construction of algebraic geometry codes to the L-construction. Then we give examples in which the L-construction gives better linear codes than the Ω-construction in certain range of parameters on the same curve.

This paper proposes a new scheduling algorithm named TWFQ (Two-phased Weighted Fair Queueing) not only to maintain the fair utilization of available bandwidth but also to improve the performance of CDV and cell loss probability. The TWFQ algorithm makes use of the cell inter-arrival time of each connection for determining the cell service order among connections, which contributes to get a small CDV. To achieve low cell loss probability, the TWFQ allows connections, which suffer from the more bursty input traffic, to send the cell with more opportunities by using two scheduling phases. Through simulations, we show that the proposed algorithm achieves good performance in terms of CDV and cell loss probability, while other performance criteria are preserved in an acceptable level.

A rapid growth of the Internet and proliferation of new multimedia applications lead to demands of high speed and broadband network technologies. Routers are also necessary to follow up the growth of link bandwidths. From this reason, there have been many researches on high speed routers having switching capabilities. To have an expected effect, however, a control parameters set based on traffic characteristics are necessary. In this paper, we analyze the network traffic using the network traffic monitor and investigate the Internet traffic characteristics through a statistical analysis. We next show the application of our analytical results to parameter settings of high speed switching routers. Simulation results show that our approach makes highly utilized VC space and high performance in packet processing delay. We also show the effect of flow aggregation on MPLS. From our results, the flow aggregation has a great impact on the performance of MPLS.

A management of WWW server is still relying on the expertise and heuristic of administrators, because the comprehensive understandings of server behavior are missing. The administrators should maintain the WWW server with good states that they should investigate the WWW server in real time. Therefore, it is exactly desirable to provide a measurement application that enables the WWW server administrators to monitor WWW servers in the actual operational environment. We developed a measurement application called ENMA (Enhanced Network Measurement Agent) which is specially designed for WWW server state analysis. Furthermore, we applied this application to the large scale WWW server operation to show its implementation and advantages. In this paper, we analyze the WWW server states based on precise monitoring of performance indices of WWW system to help the server management.

Designing control and robotic systems as autonomous decentralized systems introduces a new degree of flexibility in the manufacturing and in the application of such systems. This flexibility is required for the systems to work in environments that are not totally predictable and that can change dynamically. In this paper, we present a new concept for real-time communication that supports this flexibility while still preserving real-time guarantees for hard real-time communication. The concept is designed to work on multiple-access busses. In particular, we consider its application on wireless local area networks and field-busses. The concept addresses requirements of hard-real time, soft real-time and non real-time communication. For this, we extend the TDMA (time- division multiple-access) approach for time-triggered hard-real time communication by the concept of shared channels that support event-triggered communication and coexist with hard real-time channels. A first implementation of concept has been carried out in the context of the CAN-bus.

In this paper, we develop an effective smoothing technique to estimate the optimal software release schedule which minimizes the total software cost. The optimal software release problem is essentially reduced to a statistical estimation problem for the software failure rate, but the resulting estimator based on both the fault-detection time data observed in testing phase and its estimate in future is discontinuous and does not always function well for determining the optimal release schedule. We estimate the smoothed software failure rate using the usual quadratic programming approach and generate the optimal software release schedule with higher accuracy.

Out-of-head sound localization achieved via binaural earphones is indispensable for a virtual sound system. It is necessary to measure the two transfer functions of each subject, Spatial Sound Transfer Function (SSTF) and Ear Canal Transfer Function (ECTF), for achieving sound localization. It is well known that the quality of sound localization may be poor if the individual transfer functions are not accurately reproduced. This is because each subject has his/her own transfer functions. It is very important to clarify which function includes more individual information, SSTF or ECTF, in order to implement a simpler model. Therefore, we introduce the quantity of "Personal differences" for investigating the subject's transfer functions included in SSTF and ECTF. We measure the transfer functions SSTF and ECTF of 60 subjects in a soundproofed room, and analysis of the data using Principal Component Analysis (PCA) and three subjective assessment tests. This study finds that ECTF differs more widely from person to person than SSTF.

Asynchronous, distributed, decision-making (ADDM) systems constitute a special class of distributed problems and are characterized as large, complex systems wherein the principal elements are the geographically-dispersed entities that communicate among themselves, asynchronously, through message passing and are permitted autonomy in local decision-making. A fundamental property of ADDM systems is stability that refers to their behavior under representative perturbations to their operating environments, given that such systems are intended to be real, complex, and to some extent, mission critical systems, and are subject to unexpected changes in their operating conditions. ADDM systems are closely related to autonomous decentralized systems (ADS) in the principal elements, the difference being that the characteristics and boundaries of ADDM systems are defined rigorously. This paper introduces the concept of stability in ADDM systems and proposes an intuitive yet practical and usable definition that is inspired by those used in Control Systems and Physics. A comprehensive stability analysis on an accurate simulation model will provide the necessary assurance, with a high level of confidence, that the system will perform adequately. An ADDM system is defined as a stable system if it returns to a steady-state in finite time, following perturbation, provided that it is initiated in a steady-state. Equilibrium or steady-state is defined through placing bounds on the measured error in the system. Where the final steady-state is equivalent to the initial one, a system is referred to as strongly stable. If the final steady-state is potentially worse then the initial one, a system is deemed marginally stable. When a system fails to return to steady-state following the perturbation, it is unstable. The perturbations are classified as either changes in the input pattern or changes in one or more environmental characteristics of the system such as hardware failures. Thus, the key elements in the study of stability include steady-state, perturbations, and stability. Since the development of rigorous analytical models for most ADDM systems is difficult, if not impossible, the definitions of the key elements, proposed in this paper, constitute a general framework to investigate stability. For a given ADDM system, the definitions are based on the performance indices that must be judiciously identified by the system architect and are likely to be unique. While a comprehensive study of all possible perturbations is too complex and time consuming, this paper focuses on a key subset of perturbations that are important and are likely to occur with greater frequency. To facilitate the understanding of stability in representative real-world systems, this paper reports the analysis of two basic manifestations of ADDM systems that have been reported in the literature --(i) a decentralized military command and control problem, MFAD, and (ii) a novel distributed algorithm with soft reservation for efficient scheduling and congestion mitigation in railway networks, RYNSORD. Stability analysis of MFAD and RYNSORD yields key stable and unstable conditions.

Recently, because of the expansion of TCP/IP networks, the evaluation of IP networks is being considered as a major task for network operators and administrators. As a result, many IP evaluation tools have appeared, but almost all of them can only be applied to a limited purpose. The authors have already developed an IP evaluation tool, called KITS (KDD Internet Test System) that can generate flexible load traffic. Based on KITS, the authors have now developed a new IP measurement tool. This paper describes the flexible and general IP evaluation tool, STAGE (Simulated Traffic Analyzer/generator for General Evaluation).

This paper presents a heuristic algorithm called CLASSIC for the minimization of the control memory width in microprogrammed processors or the instruction memory width of application-specific VLIW (Very Long Instruction Word) processors. CLASSIC results in nearly optimal solutions with the time complexity of O(n2), where n denotes the number of microoperations. In this paper, we also propose the so-called incompleteness relations which are exploited for the minimization of the control memory width. Experiments using various examples have shown that CLASSIC always achieves smaller microprogram widths compared to the earlier techniques based on the maximal compatibility class or the minimal AND/OR set. The results show that CLASSIC can reduce the control memory width by 34.2% on average compared with a heuristic compatibility class algorithm.

The quality of an architectural design of a software system has a great influence on achieving non-functional requirements to the system, so formal evaluation and validation techniques to designed architectures are necessary in the early phase of development processes. In this paper, we present a technique for describing software architectures formally based on Coloured Petri Nets (CPNs) and a technique for reusing architectural constituents. Architectural descriptions are essentially written with a CPN language, so that the evaluation and analysis on the architectural descriptions can be made in architectural design phrase. We extract reusable architectural parts from standard architecture styles and architectural patterns so that a designer can construct an architecture by only retrieving the parts and combine them. We also designed the language for describing the combination of the architectural parts. To show the effectiveness of our techniques, we illustrate how a blackboard architecture can be composed of reusable parts and be simulated on a CPN tool (Design/CPN).

There are the following three targets to be achieved in a software project from the three viewpoints of process management (or progress management), cost management, and quality management for software project to be successful: (a) drafting a software development plan based on accurate estimation, (b) early detection of risks that the project includes based on correct situation appraisal, (c) early avoidance of risks that the project includes. In this paper, the authors propose a method and facilities to project risks in a software project through Kepner-Tregoe program, and propose schedule re-planning by using genetic algorithm for avoiding the projected risks. Furthermore the authors show, from the results of execution of the system, that the system is effective in early avoidance of risks that the software project includes.

The sense of equilibrium is influenced by various factors of visual stimulation, especially far peripheral vision and a motion parallax. An investigation of these two factors was made in order to apply the findings to construct a rehabilitation method for equilibrium disorders. From the experimental results, it was found that the center of gravity for the subjects was greatly affected by both far peripheral vision and the motion parallax. This finding suggests how visual stimulation should be displayed to control the sense of balance in the case of equilibrium disorders.

A min-wise independent permutation family is known to be an efficient tool to estimate similarity of documents. Toward good understanding of min-wise independence, we present a characterization of exactly min-wise independent permutation families by size uniformity, which represents certain symmetry of the string representation of a family. Also, we present a general construction strategy which produce any exactly min-wise independent permutation family using this characterization.

In this paper, we present a new approach for the design of partially adaptive broadband beamformers with the generalized sidelobe canceller (GSC) as an underlying structure. The approach designs the blocking matrix involved by utilizing a set of P-regular, M-band wavelet filters, whose vanishing moment property is shown to meet the requirement of a blocking matrix in the GSC structure. Furthermore, basing on the subband decomposition property of these wavelet filters, we introduce a new dynamic subband selection scheme succeeding the blocking matrix. The scheme only retains the principal subband components of the blocking matrix outputs based on a prescribed statistical hypothesis test and thus further reduces the dimension of weights in adaptive processing. As such, the overall computational complexity, which is mainly dictated by the dimension of adaptive weights, is substantially reduced. The furnished simulations show that this new approach offers comparable performance as the existing fully adaptive beamformers but with reduced computations.

In this paper, we present a class of combinatorial-logical classifiers called test feature classifiers. These are polynomial functions that can be used as pattern classifiers of binary-valued feature vectors. The method is based on so-called tests, sets of features, which are sufficient to distinguish patterns from different classes of training samples. Based on the concept of test we propose a new distance-based test feature classifiers. To test the performance of the classifiers, we apply them to a well-known phoneme database and to a textual region location problem where we propose a new effective textual region searching system that can locate textual regions in a complex background. Experimental results show that the proposed classifiers yield a high recognition rate than conventional ones, have a high ability of generalization, and suggest that they can be used in a variety of pattern recognition applications.

This paper describes a scheme to capture a wide-view image using a camera setup with uncalibrated cameras. The setup is such that the optical axes are pointed in divergent directions. The direction of view of the resulting image can be chosen freely in any direction between these two optical axes. The scheme uses eight-parameter perspective transformations to warp the images, the parameters of which are obtained by using a relative orientation algorithm. The focal length and scale factor of the two images are estimated by using Powell's multi-dimensional optimization technique. Experiments on real images show the accuracy of the scheme.

We have developed a new efficient neural network-based algorithm for Alife application in a competitive world whereby the effects of interactions among organisms are evaluated in a weak form by exploiting the position of nearest food elements into consideration but not the positions of the other competing organisms. Two online learning algorithms, an instructive ASL (adaptive supervised learning) and an evaluative feedback-oriented RL (reinforcement learning) algorithm developed have been tested in simulating Alife environments with various neural network algorithms. The constructive compound neural network algorithm FuzGa guided by the ASL learning algorithm has proved to be most efficient among the methods experimented including the classical constructive cascaded CasCor algorithm of [18],[19] and the fixed non-constructive fuzzy neural networks. Adopting an adaptively selected best sequence of feedback action period Δα which we have found to be a decisive parameter in improving the network efficiency, the ASL-guided FuzGa had a performance of an averaged fitness value of 541.8 (standard deviation 48.8) as compared with 500(53.8) for ASL-guided CasCor and 489.2 (39.7) for RL-guided FuzGa. Our FuzGa algorithm has also outperformed the CasCor in time complexity by 31.1%. We have elucidated how the dimensionless parameter food availability FA representing the intensity of interactions among the organisms relates to a best sequence of the feedback action period Δα and an optimal number of hidden neurons for the given configuration of the networks. We confirm that the present solution successfully evaluates the effect of interactions at a larger FA, reducing to an isolated solution at a lower value of FA. The simulation is carried out by thread functions of Java by ensuring the randomness of individual activities.