An important issue in accelerating the introduction of ATM networks is to offer more convenient access to the customer and a more efficient ATM system architecture. Regarding the first point, ATM network customers are currently inconvenienced by the need to declare traffic parameters, such as peak and average cell rates to the network provider before using the network. However, it is difficult for a customer to predict traffic parameters. This paper proposes a new ATM system with a dynamic bandwidth estimation and allocation scheme. This eliminates the need for traffic parameter declaration, and realizes more convenient ATM service. The proposed ATM system is a ring network. Bandwidth estimation is carried out by the "Network Server" located on the ring network. The estimation is achieved by observing the parameters closely related to media access control (MAC) protocols of LAN/MAN systems. Based on an estimation of customer traffic, the "Network Server" effectively allocates the bandwidth to each customer. This realizes a more efficient ATM network.

By sacrificing approximately ten percent of the transmission speed, ultra-high speed optical time division multiplexed network can be fully operatable by the use of currently available electrical switches. The network utilizes dispersion managed quasi-solitons and transmits TDM packet which comprises of ATM cells that are introduced from a gateway through bit compression to match to the ultra-high speed traffics. The network can provide flexible bandwidth and bit on demand at burst rate of the maximum LAN speed.

A password authentication method PERM has been developed for application to e-mail forwarding. This method is suitable for communications in insecure network environments such as the Internet. In particular, it can be adapted to Internet appliances and Java applets which have limited performance. The PERM method does not require password resettings and enables high-speed authentication processing with a small-sized program. Moreover, it does not use facilities or mechanisms for generating random numbers and writing them into and reading them out of an IC card or similar storage medium on the user's side.

In this work, we give a true concurrency semantics for FIFO-nets, that are Petri nets in which places behave as queues, tokens take values in a finite alphabet and the firing of a transition depends on sequences on the alphabet. We introduce fn-processes to represent the concurrent behavior of a FIFO-net N during a sequence of transition firings. Fn-processes are modeled by a mapping from a simple FIFO-net without queue sharing and cycles, named FIFO-occurrence net, to N. Moreover, the relation among the firings expressed by the FIFO-occurrence net has been enriched by an ordering relation among the elements of the FIFO-occurrence net representing values entered into a same queue of N. We give a way to build fn-processes step by step in correspondance with a sequence of transition firings and the fn-processes operationally built are all those abstractly defined. The FIFO-occurrence nets of fn-processes have some interesting properties; for example, such nets are always discrete and, consequently, there is at least a transition sequence corresponding to each fn-process.

Image restoration using estimated parameters of image model and noise statistics is presented. The image is modeled as the output of a 2-D noncausal autoregressive (NCAR) model. The parameter estimation process is done by using the autocorrelation function and a biased term to a conventional least-squares (LS) method for the noncausal modeling. It is shown that the proposed method gives better results than the other parameter estimation methods which ignore the presence of the noise in the observation data. An appropriate image model selection process is also presented. A genetic algorithm (GA) for solving a multiobjective function with single constraint is discussed.

We introduce an image contour clustering method based on a multiscale image representation and its application to image compression. Multiscale gradient planes are obtained from the mean squared sum of 2D wavelet transform of an image. The decay on the multiscale gradient planes across scales depends on the Lipshitz exponent. Since the Lipshitz exponent indicates the spatial differentiability of an image, the multiscale gradient planes represent smoothness or sharpness around edges on image contours. We apply vector quatization to the multiscale gradient planes at contours, and cluster the contours in terms of represntative vectors in VQ. Since the multiscale gradient planes indicate the Lipshitz exponents, the image contours are clustered according to its gradients and Lipshitz exponents. Moreover, we present an image recovery algorithm to the multiscale gradient planes, and we achieve the skech-based image compression by the vector quantization on the multiscale gradient planes.

In this paper, we present a hierarchical technique for simultaneous pin assignment and global routing during floorplanning based on the minimum cost maximum integer flow algorithm with several heuristic cost functions. Furthermore, our algorithm handles feedthrough pins and equi-potential pins taking into account global routes. Our algorithm allows various user specified constraints such as pre-specified pin positions, wiring paths, wiring widths and critical nets. Experimental results including Xerox floorplanning benchmark have shown the effectiveness of the heuristics.

Secret sharing schemes are good for protecting the important secrets. They are, however, inefficient if the secret shadow held by the shadowholder cannot be reused after recovering the shared secret. Traditionally, the (t, n) secret sharing scheme can be used only once, where t is the threshold value and n is the number of participants. To improve the efficiency, we propose an efficient dynamic secret sharing scheme. In the new scheme, each shadowholder holds a secret key and the corresponding public key. The secret shadow is constructed from the secret key in our scheme, while in previously proposed secret sharing schemes the secret key is the shadow. In addition, the shadow is not constructed by the shadowholder unless it is necessary, and no secure delivery channel is needed. Morever, this paper will further discuss how to change the shared secret, the threshold policy and cheater detection. Therefore, this scheme provides an efficient way to maintain important secrets.

Multi-lingual handwriting means the script written with more than one language. In this paper, a hierarchical hidden Markov model network-based approach is proposed for on-line recognition of multi-lingual cursive handwritings. Basic characters of language, language network, and intermixed use of language are modeled with hierarchical relations. Since recognition corresponds to finding an optimal path in such a network, recognition candidates of each language are combined with probability without special treatment. Character labels of handwriting, language modes, and segmentation are obtained simultaneously. However, several difficulties caused by multiple language occurred during recognition. Applied heuristic methods are Markov chain for language mode transitions, pairwise discrimination for confusing pairs, and constrained routines for side effects by language related preprocessing methods. In spite of the addition of other language, recognition accuracy of each language drops negligibly on experimental results of multi-lingual with Hangul, English, and Digit case.

An optical communications technology roadmap leading up to the second decade of the 21st century has been investigated to provide a future vision of the optoelectronic technology in 15 to 20 years. The process whereby technology may progress toward the realization of the vision is indicated. A transmission rate of 100 Mbps for homes and a rate of 5 Tbps for the backbone network will be required in the first decade of the 21 century. Two technology roadmaps for public and business communications networks are discussed. It is concluded both WDM and TDM technology will be required to realize such an ultra-high capacity transmission. Technical tasks for various optical devices are investigated in detail.

We show that characteristic functions of elements of self-similar tilings can be used as scaling functions of multiresolution analysis of L2(Rn). This multiresolution analysis is a generalization of a self-affine tiling multiresolution analysis using a characteristic function of element of self-affine tiling as a scaling function. We give a method of constructing a wavelet basis which realizes such an MRA.

Adaptive estimation of nonstationary sinusoidal signals or quasi-periodic signals in additive noise is of essential importance in many diverse engineering fields, such as communications, biomedical engineering, power systems, pitch detection in transcription and so forth. So far, Kalman filtering based techniques, recursive least square (RLS), simplified RLS (SRLS) and LMS algorithms, for examples, have been developed for this purpose. This work presents in detail a performance analysis for the SRLS algorithm proposed recently in the literature, which is used to estimate an enhanced sinusoid. Its dynamic and tracking properties, noise and lag misadjustments are developed and discussed. It is found that the SRLS estimator is biased, and its misadjustments are functions of not only the noise variance but also, unpleasantly, of the signal parameters. Simulations demonstrate the validity of the analysis. Application of the SRLS to a real-life piano sound is also given to peek at its effectiveness.

This paper describes methods used in the design of a high speed burst modem applied for mobile communication systems. The modem has burst mode operations including burst mode AGC (automatic gain control), burst mode BTR (bit timing recovery), adaptive equalization, and diversity based on a selection algorithm to achieve a higher performance in multipath fading channels. Moreover, the performance of the burst modem, which is developed using analog signal processing devices, DSPs (digital signal processors), and FPGAs (field programmable gate arrays), is analyzed experimentally. Results show that the modem can suppress irreducible BER values below 1. 0e-6 and attains a 2 dB implicit diversity gain over multipath fading channels modeled by a two-ray impulse response system with independent Rayleigh fading.

One-dimensional Cellular Automata (CA's) are considered as potential pseudorandom pattern generators to generate highly random parallel patterns with simple hardware configurations. A class of linear, binary, and of nearest neighbor (radius = 1) CA's is referred to here as elementary ones. This paper investigates operations of such CA's with fixed boundary conditions when non-null boundary values are applied to them. By modifying transition matrices of elementary CA's to include the influence of boundary values, structures of state transition diagrams are determined.

Two new algorithms are introduced, respectively called syndrome erasing and double syndrome decoding, which permit to achieve fast error correction with a wide class of cyclic codes.

Low-profile, miniaturized and highly efficient power inverters are required to light up backlights, which include cold cathode fluorescent lamps (CCFLs), in color liquid crystal displays (LCDs), replacing conventional power inverters with electromagnetic transformers. The object of this study is to actualize a power inverter to which a novel multilayered piezoelectric ceramic transformer operating in the third order longitudinal mode is applied. The piezoelectric transformer has a symmetrical structure in the lengthwise direction and its generating part operates in a piezoelectric stiffened mode in order to increase both energy conversion efficiency and power density. This transformer has great advantages. Namely, all the electronic terminals in this transformer can be connected at the vibration nodes of the transformer, which contributes to the guarantee of stable transformer performances at high power operation, and this transformer is superior in impedance matching against the backlight load at steady state, because the output impedance of this transformer is much lower than that of conventional Rosen type transformers. Then a power inverter with the transformer was fabricated. In this power inverter, a separately excited oscillation circuit was adopted to drive the transformer with high efficiency, and the transformer drive frequency was controlled by detecting the backlight current in order to adjust the backlight luminance properly. As a result, the fabricated power inverter exhibited more than 90% overall efficiency and 4. 5-W output power, which is enough power to light up a 9. 4 inch color LCD, including the stray capacitance loss resulting from CCFL mounting. The luminance value on a light transmission plate of the backlight was more than 2000 cd/m2.

Since the development of odor sensing system is required in many fields, we have been developing the system using QCM (Quartz Crystal Microbalance, 10 MHz AT-cut) array and neural-network pattern recognition. Since it is important to obtain stable sensor responses, a sensing film of lipid blended with PVC (polyvinyl chloride) was studied here. First, we studied the stability of various sensing films e. g. , phospholipids, GC liquid stationary phase materials and others in odor sensing system. It was found that most of lipids were stable, while PEG 200, octadecane and DBP were not stable materials. Second, we studied to obtain a stable QCM sensor using a sensing film blended with PVC. 4 plasticizers blended with PVC were systematically characterized, analyzing the pattern of QCM sensor responses by multivariate analysis. It was found that the pattern of DOPP was very different from that of PVC. Thus, we adopted DOPP as plasticizer and the stable sensor response was obtained using a lipid film blended with both PVC and DOPP. Finally, we studied the influence of sensing film materials on the stability of QCM sensors. It was found that the loss of sensing film mass after many vapor exposures depended upon the molecular weight.

A communication system which attains an efficient amalgamation of base station (BS) type cellular communication and non-BS type direct communication for mobile terminals (MTs), "cellularad-hoc united communication system," is proposed. In this system, whether a cellular system or an ad-hoc communication system is chosen by distance and whether the condition is good or not between communicating MTs. In other words, when two terminals are relatively near each other and are in sufficient conditions to communicate directly, they select the ad-hoc communication, while for other cases they use the cellular system. The proposed system was confirmed to have effective channel usage and low battery consumption from the simulation results. It can be also said that this system is suited especially for MTs which tend to communicate with closer partners such as operational mobile robots and autonomous carrier vehicles.

We have improved the optical beam induced resistance change (OBIRCH) system so as to detect (1) a current path as small as 10-50 µA from the rear side of a chip, (2) current paths in silicide lines as narrow as 0. 2 µm, (3) high-resistance Ti-depleted polysilicon regions in 0. 2 µm wide silicide lines, and (4) high-resistance amorphous thin layers as thin as a few nanometers at the bottoms of vias. All detections were possible even in observation areas as wide as 5 mm 5 mm. The physical causes of these detections were characterized by focused ion beam and transmission electron microscopy.

Performance of optical asynchronous code-division multiple-access (CDMA) systems with double optical hard-limiters is analyzed in the presence of avalanche photodiode (APD) noise and thermal noise. Optical orthogonal codes (OOC's) are employed as signature sequence codes. In the analysis, chips are assumed to be synchronous among users: the chip synchronous case. Thus, the performance results in the upper bound on the performance of the asynchronous system. The results show that the optical asynchronous CDMA systems with double optical hard-limiters have good performance in the presence of the APD noise and the thermal noise even when the number of simultaneous users is large.