In this paper a new type of digital proxy signature is proposed. The proxy signature allows a designated person, called a proxy signer, to sign on behalf of an original signer. Classification of the proxy signatures is shown from the point of view of the degree of delegation, and the necessary conditions of a proxy signature are clarified. The proposed proxy signature scheme is based on either the discrete logarithm problem or the problem of taking the square root modulo of a composite number. Compared to the consecutive execution of the ordinary digital signature schemes, it has a direct from, and a verifier does not need a public key of a user other than the original signer in the verification stage. Moreover, it requires less computational work than the consecutive execution of the signature schemes. Due to this efficiency together with the delegation property, an organization, e.g. a software company, can very efficiently create many signatures of its own by delegating its signing power to multiple employees. Another attractive feature is that the proxy signature based on the discrete logarithm problem is highly applicable to other ordinary signature schemes based on the same problem, For instance, designated confirmer proxy signatures can be constructed. As a stronger form of proxy signature for partial delegation, another type of proxy signature scheme is proposed in which even an original signer cannot create a proxy signature. Furthermore, using a proposed on-line proxy updating protocol, the orignal signer can revoke proxies of dishonest proxy signers.

A quasi-optical Superconductor-Insulator-Superconductor (SIS) mixer has been designed and tested in the 270-GHz band. The mixer used a substrate-lens-coupled log-periodic antenna and a tuning circuit for RF matching. The antenna is planar and self-complementary, and has a frequency-independent impedance of around 114 Ω over several octaves. The tuning circuit consists of two Nb/AIOx/Nb tunnel junctions separated by inductance for tuning out the junction capacitances and a λ/4 impedance transformer for matching the resistance of the two-junction circuit to the antenna impedance. The IF output from the mixer is brought out in a balanced method at each edge of the antenna, and is coupled to a low noise amplifier through a balun transformer using a 180-degree hybrid coupler for broadband IF matching. Double sideband receiver noise temperatures, determined from experimental Y-factor measurements, are about 150 K across the majority of the desired operating frequency band. The minimum receiver noise temperature of 120 K was measured at 263 GHz, which is as low as that of waveguide receivers. At this frequency, measurement of the noise contribution to the receiver results in input losses of 90 K, mixer noise of 17 K, and multiplied IF noise of 13 K. We found that the major sources of noise in our quasi-optical receiver were the optical losses.

A new 19-channel SQUID magnetometer system has been developed for research use in order to measure the neuromagnetic fields originating from cortices of the human brain.The system could function for 6 days with a one-time supply of about 25 L of liquid helium. The system consists of Nb/Al-oxide/Nb SQUID sensors with 2nd-order gradiometers, tank circuits, readout electronics, a liquid helium dewar, a gantry, and a prefabricated shielded room. The gradiometers cover a circular area of 15 cm radius. We used fine stainless steel leads for electric connection between the sensors and room-temperature electronics with low thermal conduction in a low helium consumption dewar. The system could function for 6 days with a one-time supply of about 25L of liquid helium. The system can be thermally cycled for repeated measurements, with an intervening nonusage period at room temperature. The noise characteristics, for both the time and frequency domains, of all channels were measured. From an analysis of the voltage output at the phase-sensitive detector, the flux-origin noise which is generated by external sources was dominant in the white noise frequency. The power spectra of the noise field were below 10 fT/Hz1/2 at 10-100 Hz and below 18 fT/Hz1/2 at 1-10 Hz. Some other peaks of power line frequencies such as 50 Hz and 150 Hz were observed at several channels. Sound-evoked magnetic fields were measured from the temporal area of the head upon application of tone bursts. The evoked fields were recorded with the amplitude of about 250 fTpp. The isofield contours of the peak response showed that the measurement area is large enough to estimate current dipoles. It is confirmed that the system has the ability to measure magnetic fields from the human brain.

Throughput analysis of CDMA Unslotted ALOHA with channel load sensing protocol (CLSP) is presented in consideration of the effect of the access timing delay. The access timing delay is defined as the sum of the process time and the propagation time for the packet access control. As CLSP is the scheme to control packet generation by the channel state information from the hub station, the effect of the access timing delay is significant. In our analysis, we extend a continuous-time Markov chain model and queueing systems. As a result, we found degradations of the throughput performance due to the access timing delay. For the value of CLSP threshold, we show that it is smaller than the case without the access timing delay in order to achieve satisfactory throughput. Furthermore, for a large access timing delay, CLSP makes no sense and the throughput is worse than the system without employing CLSP.

BaSnO3 is proposed as a new insulating material with good surface coverage of the lower superconductor electrode for superconductor/insulator/superconductor (SIS) tunnel junctions made of high-Tc superconductor YBa2Cu3Ox (YBCO). This paper reports on investigation of the epitaxial nature of BaSnO3 on YBCO thin films and YBCO/BaSnO3 /YBCO trilayer formation that are grown in situ by reactive co-evaporation in oxygen radicals. Investigation was done by reflection high-energy electron diffraction (RHEED), atomic force microscopy (AFM), and X-ray diffraction (XRD). these observations confirm that (001)-oriented YBCO and (100)-oriented BaSnO3 thin films with atomically smooth surfaces grow epitaxially on each other. In addition, cross-sectional transmission electron microscopy (TEM) observation reveals that an approximately 4-nm-thick layer of BaSnO3 perfectly covers the lower YBCO thin film surface steps to a height of 1 to 2 unit cells of YBCO. The zero-resistance critical temperature Tc zero of both the upper and the lower YBCO thin films is higher than about 86 K.

Many numerical simulation problems of natural phenomena are formulated by large tridiagonal and block tridiagonal linear systems. In this paper, an efficient parallel algorithm to solve a tridiagonal linear system is proposed. The algorithm named bi-recurrence algorithm has an inherent parallelism which is suitable for parallel processing. Its time complexity is 8N - 4 for a tridiagonal linear system of order N. The complexity is little more than the Gaussian elimination algorithm. For parallel implementation with two processors, the time complexity is 4N - 1. Based on the bi-recurrence algorithm, a VLSI oriented tridiagonal solver is designed, which has an architecture of 1-D linear systolic array with three processing cells. The systolic tridiagonal solver completes finding the solution of a tridiagonal linear system in 3N + 6 units of time. A highly parallel systolic tridiagonal solver is also presented. The solver is characterized by highly parallel computability which originates in the divide-and-conquer strategy and high cost performance which originates in the systolic architecture. This solver completes finding the solution in 10(N/p) + 6p + 23 time units, where p is the number of partitions of the system.

When an image of a 3D object is transmitted or recorded, its range image as well its grey-scale image are required. In this paper, we propose a method of coding for efficient compression of a pair of a pair of range and grey-scale images of 3D objects. We use Lambertian reflection optical model to model the relationship between a 3D object shape and it's brightness. Good illuminant direction estimation leads to good grey-scale image generation and furthermore effects compression results. A method for estimating the illuminant derection and composite albedo from grey-scale image statistics is presented. We propose an approach for estimating the slant angle of illumination based on an optical model from a pair of range and grey-scale images. Estimation result shows that our approach is better. Using the estimated parameters of illuminant direction and composite albedo a synthetic grey-scale image is generated. For comparison, a comparison coding method is used, in which we assume that the range and grey-scale images are compressed separately. We propose an efficient compression coding method for a pair of range and grey-scale images in which we use the correlation between range and grey-scale images, and compress them together. We also evaluate the coding method on a workstation and show numerical results.

Introducing a mathematical model of image noise, we formalize the problem of fitting a conic to point data as statistical estimation. It is shown that the reliability of the fitted conic can be evaluated quantitatively in the form of the covariance tensor. We present a numerical scheme called renormalization for computing an optimal fit and at the same time evaluating its reliability. We also present a scheme for visualizing the reliability of the fit by means of the primary deviation pair. Our method is illustrated by showing simulations and real-image examples.

Overheads caused by frequently communicating α-β values among numerous parallel search processes not only degrade greatly the performance of existing parallel α-β search algorithm but also make it impractical to implement these algorithms in parallel hardware. To solve this problem, the proposed architecture reduces the overheads by using specially designed multi-value arbiters to compare and global broadcasting buses to communicate α-β values. In addition, the architecture employs a set of α-β search control units (α-β SCU's) with distributed α-β registers to accelerate the search by searching all subtrees in parallel. Simulation results show that the proposed parallel architecture with 1444 (38 38) (α-β SCU's) searching in parallel can achieve 179 folds of speed-up. To verify the parallel architecture, we implemented a VLSI chip with 3 α-β SCU's. The chip can achieve a search speed of 13,381,345 node-visits per second, which is more than three orders of improvement over that of existing parallel algorithms.

The problem of test generation for VLSI circuits computationally requires prohibitive costs. Parallel processing on a multiprocessor system is one of available methods in order to speedup the process for such time-consuming problems. In this paper, we analyze the performance of parallel test generation for combinational circuits. We present two types of parallel test generation systems in which the communication methods are different; vector broadcasting (VB) and fault broadcasting (FB) systems, and analyze the number of generated test vectors, the costs of test vector generation, fault simulation and communication, and the speedup of these parallel test generation systems, where the two types of communication factors; the communication cut-off factor and the communication period, are applied. We also present experimental results on the VB and FB systems implemented on a network of workstations using ISCAS'85 and ISCAS'89 benchmark circuits. The analytical and experimental results show that the total number of test vectors generated in the VB system is the same as that in the FB system, the speedup of the FB system is larger than that of the VB, and it is effective in reducing the communication cost to switch broadcasted data from vectors to faults.

This paper presents a configuration of circularly polarized annular-ring microstrip antenna (ARMSA) and its design method to obtain high gain and low axial ratio including the analysis of finite ground plane effect using G.T.D. for personal satellite communication use. The ARMSA excited at TM21 mode through co-planar branch-line hybrid coupler for circular polarization produces a conical pattern which has high gain in low elevation angle. The relation of gain and axial ratio versus the dielectric constant of substrate are shown and the existence of the dielectric constant which satisfies two requirements, that is, high gain and low axial ratio are clarified. For car-top application, experimental results in the L-band showed satisfactory characteristics for vehicle antenna.

This paper presents a new blind identification method of nonminimum phase FIR systems and an adaptive blind equalization for PAM/QAM inputs without employing higher-order statistics. They are based on the observation that the absolute mean of a second-order white sequence can measure whether the sequence is higher-order white or not. The proposed methods are new alternatives to many higher-order statistics approaches. Some computer simulations show that the absolute mean is exactly estimated and the proposed methods can overcome the disadvantages of the higher-order statistics approaches.

For Nakagami-Rice fading environment which seems to become a principle propagation environment in the next generation wideband and high-capacity mobile systems such as personal communications, we have previously proposed an approximated evaluation scheme for wideband digital transmission characteristics such as errors due to intersymbol interference of multipath waves. We called the scheme 'Equivalent Transmission-Path (ETP) Model.' In this paper, through a discussion about more general equivalent propagation channel expressions, we clarify a theoretical foundation of the ETP model and extend the model to have an ability of expression of instantaneous fading condition varying with time. Also the appropriateness of the instantaneous expression is examined by a computer simulation analysis. Based on this model, statistics of link quality and service availability in Nakagami-Rice fading environments are discussed.

In conventional trellis coded modulation (TCM), higher-ary modulation scheme combining with a convolutional code is employed not to expand the transmitted bandwidth. This forces the system to be attended with signal constellation expansion and increasing the average signal power. As the solutions to avoid signal constellation expansion, TCM systems using totally overlapped signal sets (TO-TCM and RU-TCM) were proposed. These schemes can realize a coded modulation system without signal constellation expansion and achieve more coding gain compared with the conventional TCM. However, a problem that the systems with totally overlapped signal sets might be catastrophic has been remained. In this paper, we propose a novel TCM system using partially overlapped signal sets of non-equiprobable signaling (PO-TCM-NE). This scheme employs the partially overlapped signal constellation to control increasing signal points, and to avoid catastrophic error propagation. The non-equiprobable signaling is employed to reduce average signal power. Coding gain of the proposed PO-TCM-NE is considerably improved in consequence the average signal power is reduced much lower than that of other TCM systems with equiprobable signaling.

In this paper, we evaluate the bit error rate (BER) performance of a coordinate interleaved trellis coded QPSK with T-algorithm. We employ a coordinate interleaving which breaks up burst errors, caused by fading, more effectively than symbol interleaving. We employ a rate-1/2 convolutional codes and the performance is evaluated on Rayleigh fading channels in terms of bit error rate (BER) by analysis and computer simulation. We consider using of the code which having a long effective code length (ECL). For this reason, we employ a decoder based on T-algorithm instead of Viterbi algorithm to avoid the complexity in the decoding. As the results, we achieve satisfactory BER performance with a slight computation in the decoding algorithm and the finite interleaving size.

The advantages of the use of directional antennas for portable telephones are demonstrated. They contribute to (1) reduction of power absorption into a head, (2) reduction of multi-path interference, and (3) power saving and increase of a battery life time. This paper compares directional and omni-directional antennas existing near the head of operator, in terms of radiation patterns with a head and the power absorbed into a head. It is pointed out that radiation patterns with a head are more or less directive for both types of antennas, while the power absorbed into a head is much smaller for directional antennas.

Recently, there have been intensive studies on protocol methods and applications of short range inter-vehicle communication network (SR-IVCN) and systems. The purpose of the studies is to improve the safety of road traffic systems and the smooth control of the traffic flow by providing information to vehicles. Spread spectrum (SS) communication systems are able to simultaneously communicate and measure the distance between the terminals, thus it is advantageous to apply the spread spectrum technique to inter-vehicle communications. This paper assumes that the vehicles incidentally close to each other, form and manage a locally autonomous decentralized dynamic network. An R-ALOHA (Reservation-ALOHA) protocol for the spread spectrum inter-vehicle communication network using head spacing information is proposed which improve the conventional slot reservation methods. Since the near-far problem in SS communication is one reason for the degradation of system performance, this proposed scheme is shown to improve the efficiency of communication. The performance of the proposed system in the environment where the vehicles are assumed to run freely on a highway is verified by computer simulation. It is shown that inter-vehicle communication can be smoothly carried out between one vehicle and the surrounding vehicles using the propose method.

In this paper we propose a class of byte-error-correcting codes derived from algebraic curves which is a generalization on the Reed-Solomon codes, and present their fast parallel decoding algorithm. Our algorithm can correct up to (m + b -θ)/2b byte-errors for the byte length b, where m + b -θ + 1dG for the Goppa designed distance dG. This decoding algorithm can be parallelized. In this algorithm, for our code over the finite field GF (q), the total complexity for finding byte-error locations is O (bt(t + q - 1)) with time complexity O (t(t + q - 1)) and space complexity O(b), and the total complexity for finding error values is O (bt(b + q - 1)) with time complexity O (b(b + q - 1)) and space complexity O (t), where t(m + b -θ)/2b. Our byte-error-correcting algorithm is superior to the conventional fast decoding algorithm for randomerrors in regard to the number of correcting byte-errors in several cases.

In Perosonal communication systems (PCS), reduction control of call blocking rate on wireless-environments, especially in terminating-call set up, is one of the key technologies to design network architecture. This is because the error rate of transferred messages there is normally much higher than that in wired environments. Terminating-call reforwarding technologies, to forward twice terminating-call messages through paging channels depending on call states, would be essential under such conditions, and in the PCS network architecture there are two possible reforwarding schemes: network-assisted reforwarding (NAR) and cell-station-assisted reforwarding (CAR). We first propose a traffic model for evaluating the performance of terminating-call reforwarding from the viewpoint of reduction of the call blocking rate on PCS, and then we clarify the advocating domains for NAR and CAR. Finally, we present a case study using this evaluation model for the Personal Handy-phone System (PHS), which is a PCS in Japan. The results of this study confirm that NAR is more efficient than CAR.

Recently, the high-speed data transmission techniques that have been developed for communication systems have in turn necessitated the implementation of high-speed error correction circuits. Parallel processing has been found to be an effective method of speeding up operarions, since the maximum achievable clock frequency is generally bounded by the physical constraints of the circuit. This paper presents a parallel encoder and decoder architecture which can be applied to both binary and nonbinary cyclic codes. The architecture allows H symbols to be processed in parallel, where H is an arbitrary integer, although its hardware complexity is not proportional to the number of parallel symbols H. As an example, we investigate hardware complexity for a Reed-Solomon code and a binary BCH code. It is shown that both the hardware complexity and the delay for a parallel circuit is much less than that with the parallel operation of H conventional circuits. Although the only problem with this parallel architecture is that the encoder's critical path length increases with H, the proposed architecture is more efficient than a setup using H conventional circuits for high data rate applications. It is also suggested that a parallel Reed-Solomon encoder and decoder, which can keep up with optical transmission rates, i.e., several giga bits/sec, could be implemented on one LSI chip using current CMOS technology.